210 pages Edited by Rae Martini Designed by Andrea Caputo 24,7 x 30,5 cm Language: English Hardback Publisher: Damiani 2011
Rae Martini started painting Milan at twelve, pulled in by the first hall of fame he saw, and spent the next twenty years as one of the central figures of Italian graffiti — first as Rax-E, then as Rae, on walls and on trains across Europe. What makes him unusual is what he did in parallel: a painting practice on canvas built without ever abandoning the street, the two running alongside each other for two decades instead of one replacing the other.
24 Carat Dirt is the monograph that puts both on the same table. It goes back to the background first — the writing, the yards, the years that formed the vocabulary — then follows the work as it moves onto canvas and into galleries, with the sketch on paper acting as the hinge between the two. The creation-destruction pairing that governs graffiti doesn't get left behind at the studio door; it's what the paintings are still arguing about. Few writers of his generation have kept both lives going with this much consistency, and the book is the clearest account of how it was done.
