Abstraction plays a loose but vital role throughout the book, touching on everything from traditional lettering and inks to urban interventions, street training and knit graffiti. Some would argue that all graffiti-based art is abstract, with the artists themselves finding new ways to bend already rebellious conventions. But aside from the obvious, the book is an abstract take on how to think about graffiti itself. Though he definitely addresses the 1970s New York scene, Lewisohn’s main focus is on contemporary fringe cities like Prague, Philadelphia and São Paulo — how each is raising the bar, and rewriting the lingua franca of public art.
     Considering Earth’s current upheaval and Wassily Kandinsky’s quote that “The more frightening the world becomes, the more art becomes abstract”, Lewisohn’s interview with Les Black, a professor of sociology in London, is particularly relevant. Along with race, modernism, and privatized forms of cultural expression, Black talks about what he believes is the essence of graffiti. “Graffiti is a place where an alternative vision of the past and present can be written and painted. The thing about graffiti that makes it so powerful is that it says, ‘Fuck the terms, we’re going to do it anyway’. Graffiti is one of the most ancient forms of writing that we know, and it’s far from over.”

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