Ding Dong, The Splasher's Dead

Posted by Camille Dodero at 10:13 PM, July 16, 2007

We always knew it was a dog.

French Artist Dudes Hit Bedford Ave

Posted by Camille Dodero at 11:16 PM, May 2, 2007

These two pieces materialized this past weekend along Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg. The nun-like figure on the right is from FKDL a/k/a FrancK DuvaL, a French guy who we'd like to tell you more about, but his site's all in France-ish. We support international diversity on the streets, but . . . let's just put it like this: Mr. FKDL, how do you say 'Belongs On Sale at the Pottery Barn' in French?

On the left is Mimi the Clown, a character from Miguel Donvez, another European fella who thinks it's funny to make his site in a different language so that we can't understand it. (To that, we say, 'Bah Fongool!') Mimi may be wearing some ugly-ass trainers here and doing some weird sexy pose, but at least the clown has a red mohawk. Or is that a triceratops frill? Either way, we like Mimi.

Some even awesomer Mimi the Clown stuff here.

Speaking of Matt Siren . . .

Posted by Camille Dodero at 8:10 PM, March 22, 2007

Somewhere on the Lower East Side that I forget

A Matt Siren piece in the Pure Project show

A couple Matt Siren pieces we've had on the digi-cam and never uploaded. We adore his stuff, especially when his name doesn't dwarf the image, like it does here. . . she kinda has our hair. . .

American Apparel Sez We Are Not the Splasher(s)!

Posted by Camille Dodero at 12:21 PM, March 6, 2007

Yep, the Lafayette Street billboard advertising Neckface's Vans got splashed too.

To brief all you super-duper latecomers, a quick primer on the "Splasher": there's an anonymous bandit (who may or may not be an entire crew of art-school drop-outs) skulking around New York City and Brooklyn at night, throwing buckets of paint on street-art pieces that've been running for a while (Shepard Fairey, Swoon, and a Banksy have been hit), and wheatpasting up these mumbo-jumbo one-sheets about how street "art is the excrement of action." Biggest irony-that's-so-obvious-it's-not-even-ironic? Between the Times, the Guardian UK, and Wired Online, the "Splasher" has been the biggest street-art development in months since 11 Spring Street, yet one of the points seems to be destroying the hype surrounding it.

But newsflash: Mr/Miss "Splasher" has actually been active since before 11 Spring. Flickr user Niznoz photographed one of those manifestos as far back as November; and if you look closely at the photo accompanying a piece about 11 Spring Street that appeared in the Times last December (right under your noses, NYT!), the then-unnamed "Splasher" had tossed white paint and pasted two manifestos on the snow-globe painted on the left. So my dear Masters of the Obvious, give an anonymous art-dick(s) a comic-book-villain name and the front page of the Metro section = the more he/she/it plays the role of the villain!

The Splasher's actually kind of a genius.

There've been a few whispers about the identity of this high-profile figure, but probably the most interesting (and publicly documented) theory that rippled around was yesterday's suggestion that the Splasher was an American Apparel guerrilla-marketing campaign gone extremely well.

Image nicked from Imjustsayin's Flickr

Of course, American Apparel says no way. "It's definitely not part of any American Apparel campaign," an AA spokeswoman told us yesterday. "We do not deface art, we celebrate art."

Since we've already been known to deconstruct the Splasher's actions, here's our theory. The Splasher doesn't splash his own thesaurus-laden jibberjabber, he/she/it splashes street art, so somebody in Billyburg is now splashing the Splasher.

As for the American Apparel ad? We're guessing the Splashing-the-Splasher's message is something like this: Splasher, you are as street as naked hipsters in kneesocks!

Which brings us to another point: Vans, you wanna offer the Splasher a shoe deal? Y'know, if we had PhotoShop on this machine (hint, Mr. Bossman), we'd use our limited skillz to mock up a design right now: paint splashes on the slip-on toe, windy glass-shard screeds on the heel. Seriously, Vans, can you track the Splasher down so we can all just throw down our guns and admit that everybody's essentially a shill?

Wooster Collective Marc Responds to His Portrait

Posted by Camille Dodero at 4:35 PM, March 4, 2007

Full-size photo here from trixiebedlam's Flickr.*

Schiller doesn't look happy. Personally, we thought he looked distinguished in the portrait. Then again, that was before we realized that Gore-B Skewville (see comments) added the text FAME GAME on Marc's pedestal after we'd last seen the work, plus a fetus in Sara's tummy. Hmm. That could be the problem.

* Trixie, we couldn't find any contact info for you to tell you we were linking!

Wooster Collective's Marc and Sara Get Painted Into Pure Project Show

Posted by Camille Dodero at 1:34 PM, March 1, 2007

Gore-B portrait of Wooster Collective's Marc and Sara

This weekend, there's a Street Art Symposium at Soho's Pure Project. You may've read about the three-day event on Wooster Collective, billed mostly as an exhibition for Brooklyn's Elbow-Toe. But actually, it's not really an Elbow-Toe show, though he has at least one piece in the basement installation — it's more of a collaborative effort between omnipresent street-artists like Celso (who's responsible for this naked lady), Skewville, Gore-B, and Darkclouds, with additional pieces from other artists like Deuce Seven and Michael De Feo.

The rest of the event info reported on Wooster was accurate: "We're told that to attend the opening you need to RSVP to rsvp@thepureproject.com for location details and entry. A special Street Art talk by Leon Reid will be held on Sun., March 4th at 3pm." Plus, the installation is open to the public on Sunday from noon to 6pm.

But the piece that'll likely get the most attention is the Gore-B portrait that turns the liaison into a subject: Wooster Collective's Marc and Sara Schiller. Since 2001, Marc and Sara have become champions, critics (by omission), curators and talking heads on the street-art movement. In a sense, they've become almost as famous the artists on their site; they helped pull together the 11 Spring Street show last December, the Times always calls them for comments (even one today), and they've been profiled in Good Magazine. And so the portrait is definitely a comment on their role: Marc's on a pedestal, carrying a megaphone, and Sara's holding a mirror.

Normally, Marc and Sara look like this:

And this:

Awesome Gore-B portrait. They look pretty damn dignified, right? Certainly a nicer statement than when Sonic Youth titled a song "I Killed Christgau With My Big Fucking Dick."

More sneak-preview flicks from the Pure Project show below and here in C-Monster's Flickr:

NY Times Sez: All City is "One Blog Writer"

Posted by Camille Dodero at 10:55 AM, March 1, 2007

Photo snagged from Gothamist because our morning Times doesn't seem to be in the office. See? We credited them by name!

So the New York Times has another piece about the anonymous street-art "Splasher," posted front-and-center on their Metro section. First off, they already did a piece about one such incident on January 28, a development we'd photographed and posted about 10 days earlier. Fine, whatever, Times, run your story a month late.
But the biggest problem we have with their piece? They backhandedly credited All City with the nebulous distinction "one blog writer."

Some have tried to deconstruct the documents. One blog writer suggested that the author had drawn inspiration from an essay by the English writer Jeannette Winterson called “Product is the Excrement of Action” in which she laments the primacy of material goods in society.

You mean, like, here?

Also, we neglected to mention that the heading of yesterday's manifesto ART: EXCREMENT OF ACTION is a riff on the Jeannette Winterson line, "Product is the excrement of action." So these bombers are trying to tell the world that graf-inspired art is a commodity ultimately feeding the rich? Thanks, duders, we had no idea.

Hey, Mr. Colin "I-know-Marc-from-Wooster-Collective's-e-mail" Moynihan! We have two names: you'll find them both up in the header. Shit, we're even attached to a real-live print publication, y'know?

In Your Face: Freelance and Old-School Nicole Richie Lookalike?

Posted by Camille Dodero at 11:43 AM, February 27, 2007

Freelance, 8th Avenue, ACE Platform

No credit, The Bowery

These people must be walking around New York somewhere. Any artist or subject leads? Drop your clues in the comments section.

Deuce Seven: "New King in Town" Has Left the Building

Posted by Camille Dodero at 7:12 PM, February 21, 2007

Hmm ... maybe this does look like a Siamese-twin va-jay-jay after all.

Street-artist Deuce Seven has been getting lots of NY love over the last month. First, Razor Apple spotted his Hindu-Godly peacock-feather flower-people on the Williamsburg Bridge. Then Wooster Collective posted a few snaps, followed by Gothamist's Jake Dobkin (a/k/a the lens behind Streetsy) crowning him "The New King in Town." But is 27 actually in town?

According to MplsArt.com, dude's gone. Apparently, he's from Minneapolis, where he's been painting for a couple years. Last November/December, the Soo Visual Arts Center hosted 27's solo show; a few Flickr commenters who claim to have been at the opening report that his dreamcatcher-esque images sold very well. We admire an out-of-towner getting up so quickly and deliberately in New York's right spots (even in the Williamsburg Glasslands Paint Room; flick we snapped last week below), but now he's back in the cold-ass Midwest. Looks like New York needs another hero!

Goodbye Starveillance Ad; Hello Blank Wall

Posted by Camille Dodero at 11:17 AM, February 21, 2007

January 18, 2007

February 1, 2007

February 21, 2007

The Bedford Ave/North 5th Starveillance
monstrosity is finally gone. Think we might have to pick another grossly intrusive ad we want to disappear and see if that one goes away too . . . this could be fun.

So the wall's empty, except for the Tats Cru sig. Hint.

Now, Go Take Your Girl Out for Some Nice 40s

Posted by Camille Dodero at 7:23 PM, February 14, 2007

Crappy wheatpasted edicts in Williamsburg: The excrement of lazy action

Posted by Camille Dodero at 1:24 PM, January 18, 2007

Dadaist art-dicks dis Shepard Fairey in Williamsburg, part II

After our camera battery attempted suicide yesterday, we counseled it back to life this morning and then coaxed it down to Bedford Ave and North 7th to survey the walls. More paint-splashings from the SDS of street art:

Hold on a sec -- I got a chocolate-raspberry sticker in my eye.

Help, I represent an "alienated commodity"!

Fake-punk Waldo sez, "Ow, that hurt."

It's worth noting that there's a different glass-shard-sabotaged edict posted here entitled AVANT-GARDE: ADVANCE SCOUTS FOR CAPITAL. It's basically an anti-authoritarian screed against the art-world's co-option of estrangement and rebellion that rants against how street artists are the unwitting A&R guys of the gallery system. It concludes, "Destroy the museums, in the streets and everywhere." Ugh.

Read the second manifesto here.

Also, we neglected to mention that the heading of yesterday's manifesto ART: EXCREMENT OF ACTION is a riff on the Jeannette Winterson line, "Product is the excrement of action." So these bombers are trying to tell the world that graf-inspired art is a commodity ultimately feeding the rich? Thanks, duders, we had no idea. Why'd you miss that Starveillance mural again?

Dadaist art-dicks diss Shepard Fairey in Williamsburg

Posted by Camille Dodero at 12:41 PM, January 17, 2007

Aw, why couldn't "euthanizing your bourgeois fad" take the form of painting over that crappy tag on the right?

Looks like Billyburg street art has its very own SDS. As of this morning, we spotted the above Shepard Fairey Uncle-Sam-propaganda wheatpaste -- the one that's been presiding over a Grand-and-Bedford bodega brickface for a while -- splashed with purple-and-white paint, emptied can still on the curb. The anonymous defacers were self-righteous enough to post a note informing the world that this wasn't a random act of vandalism, but a premeditated act of "true creativity." (You poured paint on a wall, fucktards. How creative.) We get the doing-unto-Shepard-as-he-does-unto-others angle, but we're still unimpressed.

What's even more annoying: their bold manifesto-cum-artist-statement's title (ART: THE EXCREMENT OF ACTION) and their faux-threatening disclaimer at the bottom (WARNING: THE REMOVAL OF THIS DOCUMENT COULD RESULT IN INJURY, AS WE HAVE MIXED THE WHEATPASTE WITH SHARDS OF GLASS). Nice.

Read the whole manifesto here

Our camera battery was so distraught, it committed suicide after the fifth photo. But then walking North, we noticed that many of Bedford's prominent street pieces (i.e. a Spazmat skull phone on Bedford and North 7th) got dissed by the same anonymous group of manifesto-pasting Dadaist dicks. Meanwhile, they didn't touch that terrible E! mural-ad of cartoony Demi and Ashton on the corner of North 5th for Starveillance. Dudes: Spazmat is not the enemy!

More art-dick pics here.