A few days ago, a new work of art popped up in the bathroom of Lower East Side’s Lost Weekend boutique. It is called “The Great Gatspee,” and it is a toilet seat with Leonardo DiCaprio’s face on it.
No, Marcel Duchamp has not risen from the grave to comment on pop culture. It is Read More
With tongue placed firmly in cheek, New York’s street artist Hanksy has built a career out of poking fun at the self-serious subversives in the gallery graffiti circuit. Even his name is a satirical homage to the British Banksy, with Hanksy being a shortened tag for “Tom Hanksy.”
Picking subjects more pop than political, Hanksy has focused his art on animals and celebrity mash-ups: like the hilarious Ferrell Cats, or the pun-y “Pie Hard” stencil in Bushwick.
If Banksy’s monkeys are telling us, “Laugh now, because one day we’ll be in charge,” than Hanksy’s message might be better summarized as, “Laugh now, because this is funny.” Read More
It was the glowing plastic bag seen round the world.
Over the weekend, Takeshi Miyakawa was arrest for his clever I [heart] NY shopping bag installation, which was mistaken for a bomb by the police on two occasions, the first of which shut down Bedford Avenue.
Rather than releasing Mr. Miyakawa on $250,000 bail Sunday morning, as the Kings County District Attorney recommended, the presiding judge at his arraignment ordered him remanded into custody for mental evaluation, which could keep him behind bars for up to a month.
Today, another Brooklyn judge will decide whether or not Mr. Miyakawa, who has been in prison for almost five days now despite reports of his cooperation, can go free. Read More
Plastic shopping bags, the city’s dandruff, get stuck in trees and wrapped around light poles all the time.
Rarely do they cause a bomb scare.
But that is what happened on Friday morning, shortly after 10:30 a.m. According to Gothamist, someone had simply called 311 to complain about a bag a gentleman had recently deposited into a tree on Beford Avenue and inquire about its removal.The 311 dispatcher, apparently spooked by the description of an installation by Brooklyn designer Takeshi Miyakawa—an I [heart] NY plastic shopping bag with a wire hanging out—directed the annoyed neighbor to call 911.
The cops showed up, then the fire department, the the bomb squad, which shut down Bedford from North Fourth Street to North Seventh Street for two hours.
Each May for New York Design Week, Mr. Miyakawa has made various installations throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn to coincide with the annual festivities, including a floating chair that, like the bags, glowed. It was a spirited—if unsanctioned, but also generally harmless—effort. The installations had gained a modicum of notoriety within the art and design communities, but little notice elsewhere. This year, the work got him thrown in jail, for up to a month, if not longer. Read More
Could this become any more wonderful and/or absurd? Apparently, yes.
Last week, French street artist Kidult took a fire extinguisher full of pink paint, and unleashed it on Marc Jacobs’ SoHo boutique last week, painting the word “ART” over the store. Marc Jacobs had some fun with it on social media, and then, commodtized the ostensible political message by turning a photo of his painted store—which is vandalism or art, depending on how you see it—into a $700 T-Shirt, with the caption “Art by Art Jacobs.” Kidult, the artist, was pissed, and made it known. Read More
On the night of the Met Ball, the Marc Jacobs boutique in SoHo was vandalized by a French street artist named Kidult, just like Supreme, Louis Vuitton, and Hermes had done to them. The next morning, Marc Jacobs made light of it by turning it into a canny social media (and thus: marketing) joke. After that, Marc Jacobs and Company decided to turn it into a $689 T-Shirt, and moreover, turn an indictment of capitalism into an indictment of street art.
Needless to say, Kidult is pissed. Read More
Earlier this week, on the night of the Met Ball, the Marc Jacobs boutique in SoHo was hit by French graffiti artist Kidult, who has famously vandalized Supreme, Hermes, and Louis Vuitton, among others. The hit? Kidult took a fire extinguisher filled with pink paint, and sprayed the word ART over the front of the store (seen above). Read More
Making our way along the Bowery yesterday, The Observer happened by 190 Bowery, the former Germania Bank building and last bastion of graffiti and grit on the now tony thoroughfare.
There, next to the Swoons and spray can scrawls, we noticed perhaps the most unusual campaign poster yet seen for Mitt Romney. Read More
While on our way to lunch yesterday, The Observer passed by a most unusual tree on West 44th Street, a block from the mothership. And no, it was not strange simply because trees are such a rarity in Midtown. Even in the sweltering heat, it had on a sweater. After our sweat-clogged mind cleared, The Observer realized it is, in fact, unusual for a tree to be wearing a sweater, even in November. No, this tree had been yarnbombed. Read More
Felix Morelo crouched in Union Square on his hands and knees on Sunday morning at 10:30, as passersby prepared for the Pride festival that would provide hours of marriage-themed glee. Chalk in hand, he scrawled: “I WILL ATTEMPT A TRAIL OF CHALK FACES AROUND THE PARK. (DONATIONS ARE COOL)”
By 3 p.m., when the park Read More
