Opinion
Bradley Manning "Hero" Mural Returns in Greenpoint, Trial Starts Today
Greenpoint's "HERO BRADLEY MANNING" mural returned to Nassau Avenue after a brief hiatus. Manning's trial begins today.
Street Art
Art
Capturing the Graffiti Impulse Without the Cliché
From hard-edged, angular, and zig-zagging lines inspired by graffiti tagging styles to thick, swooping curved lines reminiscent of calligraphy, Opera Gallery's Saber & Rostarr exhibition sets up a fascinating and fruitful comparison between two artists who combine street culture and aesthetics with
Art
Paste Your Face on Times Square with JR
In an attempt to show the faces of the New Yorkers and tourists who swiftly move through Times Square at an unrelenting 24-hour pace, French street artist JR has set up a photo booth right in its center. Inside Out New York City, which started last night as part of the Times Square Arts public arts
Art
The Poetic Parisian Street Art of Fred le Chevalier
PARIS — As I've been wandering the streets of Paris this week, one artist seems to be haunting my path with his dark and elegant street art. Fred le Chevalier, as he signs his work, has paste up drawings of red-lipped pale women posed with strange creatures like owls, large cats, and anthropomorphic
Opinion
Homophobic Egyptian Mural Transformed With a Pro-Gay Message
Global Voices is reporting on a new social media hashtag that is demonstrating that pro-LGBT proponents in Egypt are not afraid to speak out. The hashtag #ضد_رهاب_المثلية (Against homophobia) has been generating conversation between LGBT supporters and opponents, but its very existence points to a b
Art
A Bolivian City Where Street Art Means Activism
It’s a drizzly Sunday in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and the cafés near the Simon Patiño Cultural Center are closed. We duck into Blueberry, a Bolivian knockoff of the Pinkberry franchise, where on a warmer day, affluent teenagers might be making out on the candy-colored couches, the boys occasionally turn
Art
Scope New York Brings the Streets to the Fair
When I entered the doors of Scope New York, taking place in the Skylight at Moynihan Station, part of the former James A. Farley Post Office, I almost walked right into a can of spray paint. Jutting with a horse head and a skateboard from the walls in French street artist Shaka’s large-scale, three-
Books
An Appreciation for the Often Hilarious, Usually Horrible, World of Bad Graffiti
Who cares about bad graffiti or street art? The spray paint scrawls of ill-chosen tag names ("Piggy Nasty," "Pony Tail," "Tricky Trout, Jr."), reckless vulgarity (penises and boobs drawn on absolutely everything), and sad drawings that barely shape into the animal, face, or whatever they're trying t
Art
Cardboard Portraits from Crumbling Cities
On a dark street in Bushwick on Beat Nite last week, one storefront stood out. From the plate-glass façade gazed out a classical, simplified portrait of a smiling girl’s face filling the entire doorway. Her hand stretched over the rest of the window, grasping a paper airplane, about to let it go.
Art
The Activism of Buenos Aires Street Art
Between 1975 and 1983, tens of thousands of people went missing in Argentina's "Dirty War." The exact number of the tortured and murdered in state-sponsored detentions is impossible to determine due to the discreetness of the disappearances and disposal of the bodies. Free speech was nonexistent; th
Opinion
A Roller Tribute to Two Digital Anarchist Heroes
A little corner of 21st C. heros has sprung up in the form of street art just north of McCarren Park, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Roller works by BAMN (aka By Any Means Necessary), the artist explained to Hyperallergic why he chose Swartz as the subject of his mural …
Opinion
Whitewashing Judith Supine
Last November, I was delighted to find this lovely work by Judith Supine on the streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn … and then it was gone.