Via 12. Oz Prophet.

Have you heard of the graffiti artist—or vandal, depending on your persuasion—who goes by the name of Lewy BTM? Well, you're about to, because the guy merits a level of fame (or infamy!) for this.

The last time the Brooklyn Bridge—a national landmark, you might remember—was adorned with graffiti was in 1998. Maybe this is because if you so much as repaint a single spot on it without the highest permissions of the land, the FBI will repaint your face with a federal crime (or something).

But as 12 Oz. Prophet reports, that didn't stop a gentleman who goes by the name of Lewy BTM from hitting it on Tuesday night:

Though Lewy’s handiwork isn’t quite as polished as Sace and Year’s straight letters on the same spot, there is no doubt he hit it harder than ever before crushing three back-to-back-to-back solid fill-ins single handedly across the Manhattan Tower of the Brooklyn Bridge. Fucking beast!

Let us translate that for you:

• "Sace and Year" = The tags of Fellow Urban Spray Painters
• "Hit it" = Painted; also acts as a double-entendre, as it is slang for engaging in sexual congress with a woman.
• "Crushing" = Adorning an object with one's urban spray paint art.
• "Back-to-Back" = Consecutive.
• "Solid fill-ins" = Letters, filled in with paint, as opposed to single-lines or hollowed letters, done with skill.
• "Fucking Beast!" = Huzzah!

 
"Fucking beast" indeed, young sir!

Animal New York's Bucky Turco called the Department of Transportation to ask them what they valued the work at. They clearly don't understand the market for federal vandalism:

ANIMAL contacted New York City’s Department of Transportation and a spokesperson dryly confirmed the unsanctioned fill-ins on the Manhattan tower of the iconic span and said that its been buffed: "Graffiti at this location was removed."

Mr. Turco also fills in some historical context, as he explains those who "hit it" prior to this Lewy BTM fellow (including notoriously loved and reviled street artist Dash Snow—under the previously mentioned tag of "SACE"—who left a not-kind memo to then-mayor Rudolph Guliani on the bridge). But that was then, and this is now: Remember where you were (when you found out of something extraordinary, by which time, our local civic authorities had already done away with it).

Lewy Crushes the Brooklyn Bridge Harder Than Ever Before! [12 Oz. Prophet]
Brooklyn Bridge Bombed For The First Time In Over A Decade [ANIMAL NEW YORK]

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Spiffy sports. (Adidas)

Brought to you by the Parks Department and Adidas.

Bedford Avenue, the perfect home for a mural.

Everyone is waiting to dive into the revamped McCarren Park Pool at the end of the month, restored to its Robert Moses-era glory after decades of neglect. But another corner every hipster's favorite park has just been spiffed up thanks to Adidas.

On the other end of McCarren lies a run of seven popular tennis courts besides Automotive High School. Like much of the park, it is a little worse for the wear. Efforts have been afoot to install a bubble for the winter, but at least for the time being, a new windscreen will help keep conditions better during the blustery spring and fall months. And this being Brooklyn, the windscreen had to take on an artistic flair.

Adidas Originals tabbed L.A.-born, Brooklyn-based designer Brent Rollins to come up with a mural for the screen. He hit upon the idea Brooklyn-Love. Not only does this express his and his neighbors' abiding love of their home borough, but it is also a tennis pun, according to Adidas. Love-love being the starting score in any game, the mural means Brooklyn always wins. Brooklyn beats all.

The players already love the installation, though this project underscores the funding challenges for such work. "Our group of volunteers has been working hard to improve these public courts, but much of the success we've had over the last few years stems from the generosity of donors like Adidas Originals," said Sean Hoess, president of the McCarren Tennis Association.

The Parks Department has recently come under fire for seeking sponsors for some of its amenities—welcome to the Dunkin Donuts playground!

In this project, no money exchanged hands, according to an Adidas rep, though the windscreen was paid for and donated by the company. On the one hand the court gets a new windscreen, and a very nice one at that, with a cool new mural blazing down Williamsburg main street Bedford Avenue. But not without a little Adidas logo poking out next to the Parks Department one.

We have ads on subways and buses, and logos can be found all over the court. Is a little cross-promotions in the park so bad?

If you ever wondered how those massive sculptures magically appear in plazas and POPS around the city, look no further than Jonathan Prince. The sculptor just installed two works at the Christie's Sculpture Garden at 535 Madison Avenue, and while they may look like they crashed there on a meteor or magically appeared a la the Obelisk in 2001, it is in fact a painstaking process involving forklifts and winches.

For such stolid works, it is interesting how gently Mr. Prince works over his sculpture. POPS seem to be a specialty of his, as the video below shows an installation of his work across the street at 590 Madison Avenue, aka the Sony Building. Meanwhile, this is only the latest artwork to go in at the Christie's garden, which was formed through a partnership with the building's developer, Park Tower Group, meant to burnish the building's image.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Painted Construction Crate at East Fourth Street and Bowery (Photo from FABnyc)

However hard to imagine, the East Village will soon be even more colorful. A local group has managed to raise a full $3,000 on Kickstarter to "beautify" the East Village, DNAinfo reports. Apparently deeming itself too urbane for scaffolding and dumpsters, those city scabs we've come to know and love, the Fourth Arts Block (FAB, get it?!) will use the money to paint the industrial construction accoutrements.

The group has been quietly embellishing construction sites in the neighborhood since 2008. Perhaps best known for the sidewalk mural on Extra Place, the non-profit organization hopes both to make the neighborhood more aesthetically agreeable and to evoke the neighborhood's gritty, guerilla-art past.

The group's executive director, Tamara Greenfield, hopes to expand the project with the Kickstarter funds.

"We're a neighborhood that's in a pretty rapid transformation," Greenfield told DNAinfo. "There's no reason for there to be a big ugly wall of construction for months and months — there should be opportunities to do art projects."

Arnold Belkin's "Against Domestic Colonialism" (1972) in Hell's Kitchen, before its deterioration.

A gigantic mural by the renowned Mexican painter Arnold Belkin that is emblazoned on the side of a playground in Hell's Kitchen and has deteriorated in the 39 years since its creation can be restored, the Heritage Preservation organization announced.

But there is a problem: repairing the mural will cost at least $70,000, and no one has yet to offer funding.

The Washington, D.C.-based group, which is not to be confused with the conservative think tank known as the Heritage Foundation, reached that determination after examining the state of the work, which has chipped and faded in many places, last week. (The AP has photos of its current state.)

The piece in question, called Against Domestic Colonialism, is located in the May Mathews/Alexandra Palmer Park, between 45 and 46th Streets and between Ninth and Tenth Avenues. Some experts believe it may be the only outdoor work that Belkin, died in 1992, produced in the U.S, according to the wire service.

The late 1960s and 1970s saw many community murals--works created by artists in consultation with, and with assistance from, residents of the local area--painted throughout New York. Using a grant from the McGraw-Hill publishing company, Belkin worked with 10 teenagers to create his large-scale mural.

In 1968, New York magazine profiled a number of mural projects in an article called "Graffiti Are Growing Up." Many of the works it depicted, including a five-floor mural by the Pop artist Allan D'Arcangelo in the East Village, have since been painted over or destroyed in construction projects.

The AP provides this description of Belkin's work:

"Split into three separate scenes framed by circles, in the first is a bulldozer against a backdrop of skyscrapers depicting the threat of development; in the other two circles are images of multiracial groups of people looking forward. They hold up flowers, a city block with trees and signs.

"'We the people demand control of our communities,' reads a sign held up by one woman."

It is, to put it bluntly, not exactly an apolitical work. Will someone come forward to save it?

Seward Johnson’s peculiar statue of Marilyn Monroe.

The travel website Virtualtourist.com has compiled a list of the world’s ten worst public artworks, and The Observer is pleased—albeit somewhat surprised—to see that New York’s numerous public artworks managed to avoid the list entirely.

Topping the list is Seward Johnson’s 26-foot-tall statue of actress Marilyn Monroe in a white dress in Chicago, which has rightfully earned the scorn of art critics across the nation, followed close behind by works like a statue of fictional television star Mary Richards in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and a work by Jean Dubuffet in Chicago.

We were somewhat disturbed to see Mark di Suvero’s 40-foot-tall steel sculpture The Calling (1981-1982), which is installed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on the list. Virtualtourist writes, "[T]hese orange beams of steel inspire a 'Really?' in many who view it." This is sad to hear, since we're a fan of the piece, which is painted Mr. di Suvero's trademark orange red.

Surely Mr. di Suvero’s work could have been dropped to make room for Tom Otterness’s bizarre “Life Underground” sculptures, the small, metal top-hatted men who fill the subway station at 14th Street and 8th Avenue. As a colleague points out, one of the works even sits on a wooden seat on the uptown A/C/E platform, obnoxiously filling one of the few seats at that stop.

We'll keep the lights on for you. (MAS)

For the past nine years, two gigantic beams of light have shown over Lower Manhattan—a beacon of loss and hope, a searchlight for something that would never be found and yet would stay with all New Yorkers forever.

Known as the Tribute in Light, it was a public art project created by the Municipal Art Society and Creative Time to commemorate the fallen Twin Towers. Beginning six months after 9/11, and relit every anniversary thereafter, the temporary, luminous memorial will return this year for the 10th anniversary of the attacks. It could be for the last time ever.While it seems as simple as flipping a switch, Tribute in Light actually costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce each year. Here is how the MAS describes the process:

It takes more than a week to produce Tribute in Light. The process starts Friday, September 2, and continues through dusk on September 11, when a switch is flipped and the powerful beams shoot four miles across the sky, visible for 60 miles around.

Everything is done by hand by the crew of 30 electricians, lighting technicians, stagehands and production assistants. From September 2 to 11 they’re at the projection site, the roof of the Battery Parking Garage in Lower Manhattan, installing, arranging, calibrating and testing 88 refrigerator-sized, 7,000-watt xenon searchlight bulbs so powerful that everyone handling them must wear eye protectors and special gloves.

And it's not just labor and expensive light bulbs that drive up the cost. There is also storage costs and site fees, plus one heck of a Con-Ed bill. Still, it's worth it, and the Municipal Art Society is hoping New Yorkers and other will help keep the Tribute in Light on. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and other donors have spent millions of dollars to produce the project over the years, but that funding does not extend beyond this year.

The MAS is launching a Tribute in Light fundraiser to make the project permanent, including finding it a new home.

"Tribute has become a world-renowned icon of remembrance, honoring those who were lost, as well as those who worked so hard to get our city through that terrible trial," according to the MAS. What will it take to ensure the tribute itself is not lost?

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Sculpture by Sol LeWitt, photo Jason Wyche, courtesy of Public Art Fund, The LeWitt Fund, Artists Rights Society

Amid the heat, the stench, the slow-moving tourists and the quick-moving taxi cabs, there is another obstacle (albeit an often far more pleasant one) for New Yorkers to maneuver around when they venture out this summer: the slew of sculpture, performance and temporary architecture that makes up the city’s public art.

This museum city grows larger with each passing year. These days, a walker in Manhattan can spend an afternoon stumbling from City Hall Park, where a sculpture exhibit of Sol LeWitt’s empty cubes competes for the attention of chain-smoking European tourists, unaware of the new prohibitions; to Union Square, where a cool, chrome-plated statue of Andy Warhol by artist Rob Pruitt looks over what’s become of the area around Warhol’s former Factory. Across the harbor sits one of the summer’s biggest blockbusters—massive metal sculptures from Mark di Suvero arrayed on Governors Island. The show marks the first foray of the Storm King Art Center in the Hudson Valley to New York City.

That a venerable outdoor sculpture institution like Storm King is edging onto the city’s turf speaks to the fact that over the past several years New York City has become a ground zero of sorts for public art, the depth and variety of which perhaps no city has ever seen before.

“I think it is fair to say that what we are witnessing is nothing less than a golden age for public art in New York City,” said Jean Parker Phifer, the author of Public Art New York.

Cities have been putting up statues and monuments for as long as they have been putting up buildings. But the general-on-horseback era is long over, even though New York still has one of the most ambitious permanent public art efforts in the world through its Percent for Art law, a 1982 ordinance requiring that 1 percent of the budget for city-funded construction projects be spent on artwork for city facilities.

Just 20 years ago, New Yorkers appeared to have little appetite for art in the public realm, after Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc was removed from Federal Plaza downtown following an outcry over its appropriateness. There are now hundreds of organizations in the five boroughs devoted to art outdoors, from those like Creative Time and the Public Art Fund, organizations with decades of experience in putting art before the public, to the public parks big and small that have turned their spot of greenery into a makeshift gallery, to various quasi-public agencies like the Downtown Alliance and the other business improvement districts that sponsor occasional projects.
This golden age, though, isn’t populated by heroes, or by monstrous sculptures meant to reside permanently in public squares, but rather by smaller, ephemeral art that often doesn’t last the changing of the seasons.

“With every new public space that comes online—the High Line, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Governors Island—they all offer a new opportunity to think about how to present contemporary art there,” said Nicholas Baume, director of the Public Art Fund. “Even though there is a great density of organizations, there is so much scope to engage with something as huge as the fabric of New York City.”

Forget bronze. The new public art can be sound installations, graffiti-inspired commissions for roll-down gates, and cartoonish painting over public buildings, as in 2009, when a mini-uproar was created over the Public Art Fund’s commissioning of the artist Richard Woods to paint the guardhouses in front of City Hall in Lego-land-looking redbrick design. One of the more talked about pieces of public art in the past several years was Roof Piece, a performance by Trisha Brown’s Dance Company on rooftops around the city.

Art world insiders say that the renaissance of public art in New York began in 2005, when the environmental artists Christo and Jean Claude decked out Central Park in 7,503 saffron-colored nylon flags. Critical reception was mixed, but more than a million people are estimated to have flocked to the spectacle. Three years later, Olafur Eliasson’s Waterfalls cascaded the East River over four scaffolds he built there. Mr. Eliasson not only convinced city officials that the resultant headache—which involved overlapping federal, state and city agencies—was worth it, but reportedly convinced Mayor Mike Bloomberg to foot part of the bill as well.

Just like the art presented inside the city’s many institutions, there is a hierarchy and an ecosystem for public art organizations. The oldest and most venerated public art agencies are the Public Art Fund, which seems to have the easiest access to City Hall, and Creative Time, which has cultivated a reputation for edgy, politically minded projects. In this schema, Art Production Fund is a relative newcomer; its shows tend to be flashier.

Among the parks, the field is highlighted by Bryant Park, which has showcased art and performance to highlight its own transformation over the past several years; the High Line, which wins the contest on density alone, with so many public artworks of all sizes and sounds populating its narrow walkway that it is hard to keep track of them all, and Madison Square Park, which has quickly developed a reputation as one of the more sought-after gallery spaces of any type in the city.

Public art curators point to several factors that have led to N.Y.C.’s becoming a minefield of public art. There is the continuing influence of Conceptual Art from the 1970s on today’s artists, even though few practicing artists would cop to the label. The day-to-day running of public parks has increasingly been turned over to privately funded conservancies, which view art as a way to get increased attention and funding. Major cultural institutions and granting organizations have made it a priority to get their work before the general public. A gentrified city less concerned with cleaning up blight and more concerned with value-added public spaces has had a big role, too, as has an extremely supportive administration in City Hall that views the presentation of public art as essential to keeping tourists coming back to the city.

“We have a mayor who has been the most supportive mayor for cultural institutions that I have seen in my lifetime,” said Debbie Landau, the president of the Madison Square Park Conservancy, which this season put up Jaume Plensa’s gigantic sculpture of a 9-year-old girl’s face, called Echo, and caused a sensation last year with Event Horizon, a work that edged out of the confines of the park proper and featured 31 metal sculptures of naked figures by the artist Antony Gormley perched on rooftops and standing on sidewalks. “No one has been more supportive [of what we do] than Mayor Bloomberg and [First Deputy Mayor] Patti Harris. It would be a great model to hold someone else up to.”

Artists and curators are already talking with concern about what life will be like in the post-Bloomberg era. Getting a piece of art into the public realm remains difficult. Will Ryman’s Roses featured 25 oversize fiberglass and steel flowers planted on the Park Avenue Mall last spring and he recalled a tangled process that involved getting permissions from the Parks Department, the Department of Transportation and the local community board. Mr. Ryman originally wanted his roses to be a darker hue—he also considered making some that looked like huge pieces of litter—but acceded to local concerns.

“I’m glad it all worked out, but it was frustrating,” Mr. Ryman recalled. “It always is. Whenever you have a group of people or several groups of people trying to agree on something, it is always an adventure.”

Mr. Ryman’s experience with putting a piece of art in the city was unique—he had an idea and approached the necessary agencies and boards needed to see it to fruition. Most of the presenting organizations have an advisory committee and in some cases a curator dedicated to sniffing out talent and putting up the work. That so many are dedicated to putting art before an unsuspecting public has led some to worry that the quality of art going up in the city has weakened.

“We should have the same standards for art in the city that we have for art in museums, or art in galleries,” said one curator, who asked to remain nameless for fear of antagonizing colleagues.

“Why should we be promoting bad art? You don’t see MoMA promoting bad art.”
This is not a view shared by most in the field, however.

“I am of the let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom theory,” said Ms. Landau. “More is always better. It’s a big city. I don’t think you could ever have enough programming.”

And now that every block association and public park is trying to become a center for culture, competition among them has grown fierce. Artists say that if they do a project with one group, they are effectively blacklisted by the others for several years.

“They have said to me, ‘We don’t want you showing anywhere in New York from now until the show,’” said one artist. “It’s like a journalist with an exclusive—they don’t want anyone else to have what they have.”

More worrisome, art world professionals say, is a growing trend that has privileged spectacle above all. For this, we may have The Gates and Waterfalls to thank—shows of, to some, questionable merit that achieved boatloads of media attention. Media attention begets the craning necks of visitors, visitors beget more money, and more money means more encouragement from City Hall.

“I won’t tell you that I love 80 percent of what I see in the public realm,” said Anne Pasternak, the executive director of Creative Time. “But I love that the city can still be a space for free expression and creativity, and it’s not just all reserved for the realm of commercial space. There is a lot here, but there is a lot of everything.”

dfreedlander@observer.com

A reader named Kevin sent along a YouTube video of a giant wind veil that had been constructed at Target Field, the year-old home of the Minnesota Twins. Measuring 285 feet long by 60 feet high, the sculpture by California artist Ned Kahn is stretched across a four-story parking garage--not typically the prettiest of structures. When the wind blows across the 51,000 individual panels, they ripple in dramatic fashion. At night, when most people are heading for their cars after the game, the screen is illuminated by color-changing LEDs. It's like a technicolor dream dress swishing its way down the catwalk.

Which is why this would be the perfect solution to the unsightly problem of 1 World Trade's bomb-proof base. What better way to herald the arrival (in four years) of uber-chic Condé Nast at the building than to stick a giant 20-story skirt on the bottom of the tower.

You're welcome, David Childs.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

That is the idea behind Contrail. Developed by a Brooklyn couple, it is a small device that attaches to a bike's seat tube, dispersing a liquid chalk mixture on the tires and then the street. Not only can it be used to create cool patterns on roads and parking lots, but for big bike rides, like charity events or critical mass, it can help keep groups together. It also serves a safety function, alerting drivers to the presence of cyclists ahead. And like all chalk, the Contrail washes away in the rain.

ULICU is the social enterprise behind the device. The name is Serbo-croatian for "street," and the company's mission is to foster an active, sustainable relationship for all people on the road. ULICU has just launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $10,000 to begin mass producing Contrails--they currently cost $1,000 a piece to make, but this would buy a mold and some other fancy tech that would greatly bring down the cost.

This is not simply a business plan. Like all social entrepreneurs, ULICU plans on doing more with its products and will be donating half of the first 2,000 devices it makes to non-profits such as Biddeford Maine Community Bicycle Center and Brooklyn's Times Up. "Our big angle is that we recognize that this is a fun product for individuals, but the real power is in groups," co-creator Pepin Gelardi told The Observer. "We know a lot of non-profits are looking to use these in creative ways, and we want to make Contrail as accessible to them as possible."