BUA, the artist who created the best-selling college dorm poster "The DJ", brings his unique urbane art-melding hip-hop, graffiti, and old-school break dancing style into this visually arresting book.
Justin Bua creates cool art. His wiggly-armed D.J. intently scratches vinyl on a turntable, head and shoulder wedging in place a set of headphones that he is too cool to wear, while surrounded by the tools of his trade. In another painting, two bald, shirtless basketball players on a city playground rise into the air as the backboard and pole snake ever upward towards surrounding tenement buildings. In the background, a third player stands by in awe, mouth agape, Afro Pick at attention in his hair, while their earthbound buddies are a study in attitude. In "1981", a break-dancer spins on his shoulders, Adidas-clad feet in the air -- a collection of characters from the uptown 'hood circling him to marvel at his amazing moves.
These are just a few of the pieces included in 'The Beat of Urban Art', which showcases a motley cast of jazz musicians, homeboys, street hustlers, and neighbourhood toughs-from the heavy-lidded "Piano Man" in his cubist yellow jacket tot he slyly romantic "El Guitarrista", strumming his acoustic guitar and peering lazily out of his bedroom eyes; from the exuberant night-time craps players of "Green Street" to the joyously sneaky graffiti artists entering the subway yard through a hole in the fence in "The Artist".
