About Those Holes

Yesterday, the New York Times' ArtsBeat Blog followed up on the recent attacks on Shepard Fairey's Houston Wall mural, asking if this weekend's puncture should "be considered an attack... Is it mere hooliganism? Or is it, in the vein of Mr. Fairey’s friend Banksy, all an elaborate stunt?"



Blogger Melena Ryzik spoke to Mr. Fairey, who has not seen the damage. He said he expected to see tags and stickers and such on the work, “Because I’m straddling the line between all these different worlds--the fine art world, the street art world, commercial design, fashion--I think I’m a target for a lot of narrow-minded people who just aren’t comfortable with my multi-platform approach."

“If that’s how they express their view is by vandalizing my mural, that’s fair. I assume that they think that putting a bullet hole through it is a clever interactive addition, which I actually agree with.”



Animal New York shows a later photo with more holes--mine (both above) were taken on Saturday night--which means there may be more than one rock-tosser.

Fairey's straddling does seem to be stirring up feelings. It's good to live in a world where artists can make money and have a wide audience for their work. And yet there seems to be a line that gets crossed in the hearts of their fans. Is it when they design shopping bags for Saks? And what does it mean when their approved canvas includes controversial walls, like the ones on the Cooper Square Hotel and the Ace Hotel?


NYT

I'm an admirer of Fairey's work, especially the early Andre the Giant viral stuff, but about all this, I have mixed emotions. I feel for Fairey, but I also understand the rock-tossers' motivation.

Earlier this month I wondered if the Houston Wall, once Deitch is done with it, will fall back into the hands of renegades. Maybe it already has. The best thing Fairey and Deitch can do is to allow the mural to become street--let the taggers, rock-tossers, and sticker bombers do their thing. Let the layers pile up, let it become an organic urban collage. Just let it be.

In any case, Fairey's team will be out to Houston soon to fill in those holes.



Previously:
Fairey Gets Targeted
Buffing Mr. Brainwash
Revs/Cost Vanishing

Houston Wall

The graffiti wall on Houston is scheduled to undergo another change, from the Os Gemeos mural to something from Shepard Fairey. (He's also looking for more wall space.)

While we're enjoying these murals, it's important to keep in mind their hidden subtext--how they are, in fact, a cog in the wheel of the Big Machine that is turning the Bowery into a luxury lifestyle destination.


2008, from Super Touch

Long an open canvas for graffiti artists, the celebratedly sanctioned muraling of the Wall began in 2008 when Deitch Projects recreated Keith Haring's work from the 1980s, one that Jeffrey Deitch called, "a fabulously renegade piece of New York City public street art."

As Deitch told the New York Sun, "At the time, the corner of Houston and Bowery was the center of the downtown art world, because the galleries were in SoHo and the artists were in the East Village. 1982 was the peak of this downtown art world culture, and it's also when it started going mainstream. This project is a celebration of the dynamism of this time."


Original mural, 1982 photo by Tseng Kwong Chi

The dynamism of renegade street art going mainstream is one that gets many people riled up.

Mr. Brainwash gets labeled a FAKE and covered up by street artists. D*Face stops defacing and moves into a gallery. Shepard Fairey designs an ad campaign for Saks. The Cooper Square Hotel adds "graffiti" to its wall.

Sometimes, walking the streets, it's hard to tell if you're looking at gallery art, graffiti, or advertising. Questions about authenticity, reality, and intention arise. As for the Houston wall, it is playing a transformative role in the Bowery's conversion from Skid Row to intentionally created "art district" to high-end consumer playground--a replay of the Soho Model.

And it just happens that the man who created the Soho Model is also the owner of the Wall.


1983, photo by Martha Cooper

Since perhaps as early as 1984, the Houston wall has belonged to a real estate company called Goldman Properties. Developer of luxury condos and hotels, art philanthropist Tony Goldman donates the wall space for the Deitch murals.

Writes Ocean Drive magazine, "'Visionary' is the word most often used to describe Tony Goldman by those who have worked with him during his 40 years of rejuvenating neighborhoods. 'Tony will take the most barren, uninteresting space and infuse it with a vitality that you just didn’t think was possible.'"

Goldman is credited as a creator of liveable neighborhoods. Haute Living has called him "the founder of New York’s Soho... He was a pioneer into the area, snatching up properties as quickly as he could...renovating and turning them into lofts, the living style of the future."

Here's the Goldman guide to Neighborhood Building 101. Simply put: "Control the street life" and "effectuate what the vibe is going to be."


1990: photo by Verplanck

The New York Times this week featured Goldman and his move into Miami's Wynwood neighborhood, which appealed to him because, he said, “It had an urban grit that was ready to be discovered and articulated.”

The Wynwood street artists who came before Goldman aren't entirely happy about the project. Wrote The Biscayne Times, "The murals at 'Wynwood Walls' are not graffiti. They are paintings, and Goldman has hired 24-hour security to make sure no one defaces them. As [artist] BooksIIII points out: 'Look, they’ve got tended grass and lighting and whatnot. Our stuff is still unpoliced; It’s just out there on the street.'"

Wynwood has also been known as "Little San Juan" since the 1950s, and Goldman, according to the New York Times, believes the Puerto Rican population there won't be displaced by his plans. But we all know how Soho-ification goes.


2006 photo, OtherThings

For years, until Goldman and Deitch's Haring recreation, the Wall was, as Luna Park says, "a highly contentious graf spot." Often (but not always) illegally, they painted over each other without the interference or direction of mastermind gentrificationists or urban Svengalis. It was, by and large, an organic thing. It just happened--unlike hyper-gentrification, which doesn't just happen, but is carefully plotted, orchestrated by the powerful and the patient.


2006, legal Jace mural, from Razor Apple

The Fairey show signals the end to Deitch Projects and I wonder what will happen to this wall, once it has outworn its use. Will it be sold? Torn down? Or will it be permitted to fall back into the hands of renegades?

If there are any left in the neighborhood.


2007, legal OMNI, from Super Touch


More NYC street art:
Stolen Legos
The Decapitator
Bloody Payphone
D*Face Paints
Industrial Art
Mom & Popism
Revs/Cost Vanishing

Clayton on The Wall

Last week, as I reported here, Shepard Fairey invited a trio of taggers to add their work to the sides of his mural on Houston Street. Lower East Side photographer Clayton Patterson was there, snapping pictures of taggers Cope, Indie, and Ewok. His photos are included here. I also asked him some questions about the Houston Wall and his famous graffiti door, which is under threat from the Bloomberg Graffiti Police.


All photos on this page courtesy of Clayton Patterson

You've been intimate with the Houston graffiti wall for some time. You actually painted a mural on it. Tell us about that.

Yes, Elsa Rensaa and I painted a mural on the wall in 1990. The imagery came from my black-and-white drawings. The message of the piece was political and related to the LES struggle for Truth and Justice. All the writing on the image was taken from the inscriptions carved into the walls of the downtown courthouses.



What's your opinion of the Houston wall's shift from open canvas for street artists to a showcase for Deitch Projects?

The wall like everything else has been gentrified. In this day and age there are very few free public spaces for artists to work on. The other day I walked through SoHo and was quite surprised to see that there was almost no graffiti. And even more surprising was that there was almost no street art, a few paste-up pieces, and very few stickers.



What would you like to see on the Houston wall in the future?

More NYC artists. I want to see support for the locals--would like to see more outsiders and outlaws. Not just corporate art, or commercial art that already has a strong market base. It is like waiting to see if Banksy will do the wall.

It is my guess that since Deitch has now brought enough attention to himself, that he now has the MOCA director's job, the wall will once again go dormant.

I know for Tony Goldman the wall is just a business deal. Around 10 years ago Anthony Zito, Steve Ellis, Marco, and I approached Goldman about doing the wall. He wanted big money, so we suggested we could make something in support of a non-profit organization, like the LES Girls Club--he hemmed and hawed and hemmed and hawed until it became obvious that he was only playing us. Pay or get out.



I understand Bloomberg is coming for your famous graffiti door?

Bloomberg has already come for my Front Door. His message was loud and clear: Clean it or the city will, and if you don’t, I get a $300.00 fine!

Elsa stopped the city workers from trying to clean our door. It was at night, and Elsa heard this loud smashing. Her first thought was: Someone is attempting to break in. She ran to the window to investigate. Turns out it was not robbers, but a crew of city graffiti cleanup workers using some kind of power chisel to hammer off the stickers on our door. Stupid as this sounds, the tool left a trail of little chatter marks, and small dents where they chiseled away the paint and the stickers.

In the 'hood, my front door is famous. I have photographed in front of that door for over 25 years. Documented kids growing up in front of that door. There is a book of photographs out called the Front Door Book, published by OHWOW. All the photos were taken in front of my graffiti door.

The graffiti on the door is as important as the photos. In the old days when drugs controlled the streets in our community the graffiti was almost only neighborhood tags. You had to be familiar with those working the streets in order to hang out on the block and to leave your mark. Today the block is not watched in the same way--it is possible for people from outside the community to come into the neighborhood and tag or to do large pieces.

So the tags on my front door, in the old photographs, are another history of this community.



More Wall Stuff:
Billy on The Wall
Houston Wall
Fairey Gets Targeted

*Everyday Chatter

See what the East Village streets were like in 1993. [EVG]

Billy's Antiques adds a farm stand. [BB]

Shepard Fairey releases spray-can man collectible toys. [LM]

What's great about America? Ray's Candy. [EVG]

American Dream is "elusive"...for adult children who live at home yet turn down $40,000 jobs. “My parents are subtly pointing out that beyond room and board, they are also paying other expenses for me, like my cellphone charges.” [NYT]

Zelig Blumenthal's move to Brooklyn as his LES landlord gets too tight. [TLD]

BP lives like a troll in Queens. [Restless]

So, the controversial TGI Friday's in Union Square--it's already doing a brisk business, packed upstairs and down with New Yorkers who inexplicably say to themselves and their friends: Hey, I worked hard today, I deserve some Sesame Jack Chicken Strips washed down with a coupla Pink Punk Cosmos, and there's no better place in the whole darn city than Friday's!

*Everyday Chatter

The Times Square public lounge-o-rama sinks to a new low with giant plastic baseball mitt seats for tourists to rest their weary backsides:


Meet Mr. Feibusch of the ZipperStop, “Unzipping America since 1941.” [NYT]

Ray becomes finally legal! [NMNL]

Meet the Newspaper King of Chelsea. [WIC]

You gotta love lost telephone exchanges on city signage. [FNY]

Tuesday: Check out the latest Vanishing City event. [EVG]

New Yorkers with doormen potentially freak out about not having a doorman: "Who will safeguard my apartment as I sleep? Greet my children when they come home from school? Accept deliveries? Clean the hallways? Sort the mail? Operate the elevator? And who, for goodness sake, will let the cleaning lady in?" [NYT]

Houston Wall gets primed for Shepard Fairey. [BB]

Enjoy Richard Sandler's "Former New York" at the Millennium Film Workshop. [Gothamist]

Even today, now and then, "indie bookstores truly are the ones that can be movers and shakers when it comes to a book." [NYT]

Meatpacking Bway

A big chunk of the block of Broadway between 17th and 18th has been shuttered and is being refurbished for new businesses. What kind of businesses? High-end chains, of course, replacing low-end chain Blimpie, a pizza joint, and J&S Imports.



#863 will be restored to its 1885 Ladies Mile style to house a True Religion Brand Jeans shop, where jeans sell for up to $328.



At #865, J&S Imports--with its cool signage offering novelties from Africa, India, Haiti, and Spain--is vacating the first floor to move upstairs.

#861 is gone, too, and the demolition of its facade has revealed a mysterious ghost sign: RBACKS, it says, maybe once PAPERBACKS? Could this have been part of the famous Book Row that stretched down to the Strand?



I don't know what's coming to these last two spots, but I have to imagine they will all be in the True Religion Jeans vein--maybe a Juicy Couture? How about another Marc Jacobs? And the virus we'll call Meatpacking Creep appears to be spreading ever further.

Coincidentally, an interesting juxtaposition on the corner--Shepard Fairey's "Operation Oil Freedom" poster pasted onto one of the last old-school newsstands right next to a gleaming Bentley ($200,000):

*Everyday Chatter

Please attend the Community Meeting to discuss nightlife noise from the LES Thompson Hotel: May 27, 6:30 p.m., in the Raphael Hernandez Community Room, 189 Allen (bet Houston & Stanton):


Inquiring minds want to know, what goes on inside the Free Willie Nelson? [EVG]

Enjoy Christmas on the Bowery--back in the bad old days. [AP]

"If New York City were to slide back into the crumbling anarchy of the 1970s, as some fear, would that be so bad?" ..."Artists’ lofts--boxcars of light, raw space, and drafty windows—were actually occupied and used by artists and not titled Eurotrash, trustafarians, investment bankers, hedge-fund hotshots, and similar bonus babies who would model their cheekbones and cutlery collection on Patrick Bateman’s in American Psycho." [VF] ...but people in Kansas disagree.

Are people bombing Starbucks because their logo looks like Queen Esther? [RS]

The "herring people" hover outside Clinton Street Bakery. [WL]

The demolitions continue in Chinatown. [BB]

From a tipster: "This formerly blocked painted billboard has now been exposed at the corner of Broadway & 76th":


Shepard Fairey designs Saks 5th Ave's Communist-style ad campaign. [NYT] via [ADB]

Addicted to your screens? "increase in screen use has rewired our brains and led to a decrease in our empathy and our ability to read facial language." [ABD]

As more "green" condos and towers blossom, remember: "there is nothing green about construction." [ABD]

One more from Micah White: "The Kindle is not a book. It is instead a machine mimicking the external traits of a book while destroying the essence of the book: the trace of the author, the community of readers and the call to deep, meditative reflection." [ABD]

*Everyday Chatter

Coming soon to a bike shop near you, free stickers from street etiquette artist Jason Shelowitz--made for sticking on cars and perfect for stirring up the bike-lane agita: "Please look out for cyclists before swinging door open."

photo: Jay Shells

Where will Mama and Papa Burger go once they're evicted from the Coney Island Boardwalk? [ATZ]

Tonight at MOMA: Joe Dante's 1968 Movie Orgy is coming--originally screened at the Fillmore East. [TFH]

Check out Every Night in Drag--Linda Simpson's vintage '80s and '90s photos of NYC's drag scene. [LS]

LES thieves get wise to the cluelessness of people who leave their stuff unattended. [EVG]

Bloomberg backs off evicting the Occupation of Wall Street. For now. [Gothamist]

New York's "new low." [SLR]

Shepard Fairey designs the Times Square Occupation invitation [WNYC]:

Visit Occupation Party

*Everyday Chatter

Fedora's new owner: "I'm already bracing myself for the criticism that I'm going to get. People are going to say, 'It's not like Fedora, Fedora looked nothing like this.' ... I'm choosing to keep the name because it's a great name. I'm keeping the bar because it's brilliant, the original bar from 1917. Aside from that, it's now our restaurant." [Esquire]

The saga of Shepard Fairey's mural comes to a close. [EVG]

Evidence that sometimes people still use payphones--for what they were made for. [EVC]

Remembering Johnny Thunders. [COS]

A parting shot of the gorgeous Gordon Novelty. [GVDP]

If you haven't watched them yet, these mini-docs of city people are great. [13]

Williamsburg hipsters, MTV wants you: "Do you own skinny jeans, old school chucks, cabbie hat, the 70's vest, an ironic t shirt or hat, a fitted sweater, flannel shirt, or chunky lens-less glasses? Do you drink PBR, have an ironic mustache, have a blog that allows you to post pictures you took with your digital camera? ... Smoke Parliaments? Got any cool tattoos? Perhaps one of a star, maybe on your wrist or elbow? Own a vintage dress or have an awesome beard?" [Craigslist]

Billy on The Wall

Billy Leroy is the owner of Billy’s Antiques and Props, on the Bowery since 1986, and still hanging on despite a recent doubling of the rent and a raid from the NYPD. As The Villager wrote, "CBGB may have closed, high-rise luxury co-ops are invading the area, the local American Apparel is attracting yuppies in droves. A Whole Foods mega-supermarket has opened on the other side of the street, but Billy’s is still hanging in there."

Billy also happened to hold the lease on the Houston Wall, where Deitch Projects has displayed murals by Os Gemeos and Shepard Fairey, along with a reproduction of a long-buried work by Keith Haring. Billy wrote in and let me know about his instrumental role in bringing the Haring back to life.


photo: Billy Leroy

He recalls: “In 2005 I was working on a project around the wall, a sorta cafe with Bistro tables, when I discovered through research that the wall had been Keith Haring’s first mural. I thought it would be cool to clear away the rotting bathtubs and wrought iron and recreate the mural.

I brought the whole project to Tony Goldman. Unfortunately the project fell through. A few years passed and Tony teamed up with Jeffery Deitch and the Keith Haring Foundation. Since I was renting the whole property, Tony had to get me to release The Wall from my lease. We made a deal and the new Wall started.

But there was one fly in the ointment. The OMNI mural was still up and OMNI had to be contacted. Fortunately, I knew him and explained that they where going to paint over his mural and do a 50th anniversary to Haring. He was not thrilled but I convinced him. So that’s how the last illegal mural was painted over, and the rest is history."


photo: Billy Leroy

"When the workers started scraping away the years of old paint, giant chips of florescent orange paint fell to the ground. I gathered them into a bucket--they were the original Keith Haring and I have a bucket full."


photo: Billy Leroy

"Am I happy about the new Wall? Yes, because the neighborhood has changed forever and we have to deal with the new people on the Bowery. But I am strong believer in the spirits and ghosts of the old Bowery and they will never leave! Just hang out in my shop at night and things can get pretty creepy."

*Everyday Chatter

Slacktivists rallied this weekend to Save Ray's. There were cops and bikers, and there were Slum Goddesses. At least one cowboy showed up. And of course, the man voted "New York City's cuddliest anarchist":


Find out more ways you can help Save Ray's. [EVG]

Ian Frazier: "Freddy’s Bar & Backroom is indeed in distress, sitting as it does in the 'footprint' of the massive, multibillion-dollar Atlantic Yards project." [NYer]

A crazy clapboard house rises in glassy Times Square. [SNY]

Condo owners throwing eggs at noisy Park Slope dogs. Wrote Brownstoner, "a Novo resident came out one morning recently and asked owners to quiet down their dogs because his baby was sleeping." [Gothamist]

Dreamland Artist mural to vanish with Feltman's fate. [ATZ]

StuyTown handed over to its creditors. [NYT]

Thaasophobia: fear of boredom. "One cellphone company has even promoted the idea of microboredom, which refers to those moments of inactivity that occur when we’re, say, stuck waiting in line for a latte without our BlackBerry." [NYT]

Shepard Fairey will be the last artist to paint the Deitch billboard space on Bowery. [BB]