All posts tagged: Brooklyn

BSA Images Of The Week: 04.05.15

April 5, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

ECB was back on the streets in Bushwick this week doing his portrait of a Moroccan street barber from his series of portraits in Morocco of traders whose trade is in danger of extinction. That is what BSA Images of the Week starts off with.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Caroatoes, ECB, Hendrick Beikirch, Icy & Sot, Jaye Moon, London Kaye, ROA, Scott Lickstein, SOBR, Ten Hundred, Trice, Wing, and X-O.

Top Image >> Hendrik Beikirch AKA ECB. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hendrik Beikirch AKA ECB (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Scott Lickstein (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy & Sot (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy & Sot in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

London Kaye (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Wing (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Amanda Marie. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Amanda Marie (photo © Jaime Rojo)

X-O (photo © Jaime Rojo)

SOBR in Berlin. It’s Time To Dance! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jaye Moon may have gone to see the On Kawarwa exhibition at the Guggenheim before hitting the street with this date. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

If I’ve asked you once I’ve asked you Trice. Quit clowning around. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ten Hundred (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sketches from ROA’s cabinet of curiosities as he prepared this week for his new show at Jonathan Levine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Caratoes (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Watcha looking at? Apple Store. SOHO, NYC. March 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!

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Basquiat’s Notebooks Open at The Brooklyn Museum

April 1, 2015 Artists, Interview

As lines continue to blur in fields of art and technology (and everything else) it is easier to see Street Art as an online/on-street diary, a forum for speech making, a laboratory for testing ideas, a publishing platform for the dispersing of truths and lies and theories and maxims and slogans and aphorisms. A timely new exhibition of personal notebooks by the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat further affirms the direct relationship between the personal and the public voice of one New York expressionist, revealing lesser-known aspects of him as artist and individual.

A teenage poet on New York streets, Basquiat used his own brand of graffiti to pursue his own brand of fame. His text was intended in part as a visual element but unlike graffiti writers who produced ever more expressive tags during that heated moment in New York graffiti history, Basquiat also sought an audience who may be hip to his cerebral wordplay of poetry that puzzled and enticed – a foxy style of William Burroughs-inspired automatic writing he adapted for his own uses.

Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks, now running at The Brooklyn Museum until August 23rd, the genius of his fragmenting logic is revealed as a direct relationship between his private journals and his prolific and personally published aerosol missives on the streets of Manhattan’s Soho and Lower East Side neighborhoods in the late 1970s and 1980s.

These notebooks were for capturing ideas and concepts, preparing them, transmuting them, revising them, pounding them into refrains. In the same way his text (and glyphic) pieces on the street were not necessarily finished products each time; imparted on the run and often in haste, these unpolished missives didn’t require such preciousness.

Untitled. Circa 1987. Basquiat:The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The art collector Larry Warsh lends these eight notebooks that span 1981-1987, 160 pages in all, for you to scan and contemplate. New to most audiences, they also feel familiar. While they do not provide a play-by-play account of his daily affairs, they do provide insight into his state of mind, interests, and creative process. Knowing his reputation for being very aware of his public perception, you may wonder how private these were in his mind – if he was at least partially writing for a greater audience here sometimes as well.

But these are definitely his voice. Even in lengthier poetry pieces, Basquiats’ reductive approach to writing produces the same clipped cadences that appeared on walls and gallery paintings, a process of addition and subtraction that he could eventually pare down to one word that would command a canvas.

“Famous”.

Famous. 1982. Basquiat:The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A two sided, free standing piece from 1982 midway through the gallery space gives a bittersweet focus to one of his aspirations, as well as to his application of photocopies of his own work in multiples on the canvas – a replication/repetition technique from commercial wildposting that was popularized on walls and lamp posts by graffiti writer/street artists like Revs and Cost in New York in the 90s.

“I think this show points out that the conceptual and poetic side of JMB’s work is central to and integrated with his more overtly visual and expressionistic paintings,” says Tricia Laughlin Bloom, who worked in collaboration with Dieter Bucchart, Guest Curator in organizing this exhibition. “He enjoyed exploring the play between text as visual sign or symbol and the layers of historical, sociological, personal meaning that words activate. Some of the very restrained word drawings and notebook entries are intensely expressionistic, for instance, without the use of gesture or color.”

Famous. 1982. Detail. Basquiat:The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The notebooks are part of a larger offering of paintings, drawings, and moving image in this well balanced show that keeps the focus on the writer and painter of text while placing it in the greater context of all his work. Included here are drawings of his fictional character Jimmy Best, for example, who appeared in early SAMO© street writings and elsewhere as an ongoing and developing narrative that hinted at his self image.

Most riveting for the new generation of writers may be the film clips shot in 1980-81 during the filming of New York Beat (released in 2000 as Downtown 81). Not true documentary footage, it nevertheless captures the artist outside mark-making in a determined, self-aware, sometimes hesitating manner across walls with letters and lines of simple black aerosol.

Famous. Verso. 1982. Basquiat:The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Moving into “the City” from his middle class Brooklyn home as a teenager in the late 70s, you have to wonder how or if his street practice with friend Al Diaz had been influenced by the students and workers who wrote slogans, epigrams, maxims, in black aerosol letters during the Paris uprisings of 1968. Quick passages on the street then like “Sous les paves, la plage” (under the paving stones, the beach) also played with text and sometimes cryptic meaning in ways similar to his on city walls and in these notebooks. Neatly penned, his was a deliberate meditation and experiment with words – a process that allowed you to see the deletions and additions, fully part of the finished product.

“We were presented with the rare opportunity to exhibit Basquiat’s notebooks, which offer fascinating access to his thoughts and process,” says Sharon Matt Atkins, Vice Director for Exhibitions and Collections Management, when talking about the decision to mount Notebooks.

Untitled. 1980. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Of course its not the first time Street Artists have been featured meaningfully here. Under the guidance of Director Arnold L. Lehman the Brooklyn Museum has shown a serious and committed interest in highlighting the contributions of artists whose practice comes directly from the streets of New York and its graffiti/Street Art traditions; including the huge Basquiat show a decade ago, the Graffiti show in 2006, the more recent Keith Haring show, Swoon’s Submerged Motherlands last year, Olek’s display at the annual Artist’s Ball, and the upcoming Faile exhibit this July, which will also feature their collaboration with Bäst. For Matt Atkins, this show is in perfect alignment.

“The Brooklyn Museum has had a commitment to showing artists whose work embraces contemporary culture. Basquiat seamlessly synthesized the world around him in his art, including elements culled from the streets, music, literature, history, and more,” she says.

Untitled. 1986. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

It has been 27 years since Basquiat died at the age of 27. Somehow you can imagine that mathematical equation appearing here on one of the larger canvases; dense with symbols, sentence fragments, lists and formulas. Sifting through the tenuously connected word constellation it occurs to you that people like Basquiat and Burroughs and the Beats were forebears of the post-Gutenberg dislocation of text from its moorings – one that we all swim in – with passages and words and texts floating to us and past us from multiple screens of varying sizes throughout each day.

As this stream of messages blurs from the intensely personal to the public spheres, this show confirms how the art-making process for the street has always been rich with storytelling, even if not evident at first. A show of this moment, seeing these notebooks first hand will complete a cycle for many.

Untitled. 1986. Detail.. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We had an opportunity to speak further with one of the curators, Tricia Laughlin Bloom, about Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks.

Brooklyn Street Art: Often we think of the work we see on the street as part of a continuum, a conversation back and forth between the artist and the passerby. How does this exhibition illustrate the continuum that extends from private neatly penned journals to public aerosol missives?
Tricia Laughlin Bloom: Going through the exhibition you find a lot of similarity between the voice he used in his street writing and in his notebooks, that also extends to his word paintings. Fragments of SAMO text recur in larger scale works that we have included, and many of his notebook passages read like they could have been SAMO texts.

Untitled. 1986. Detail. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Brooklyn Street Art: Can you describe the dynamic between yourself and the guest curator Dieter Buchhart and how it informed some of your joint decisions for presenting the work?
Tricia Laughlin Bloom: Dieter brought the initial checklist together as Guest Curator, and we shaped it together from there. We both felt it was important that the show be about the notebooks—that the paintings and drawings should be carefully selected to compliment the notebooks and not overwhelm, and to highlight Basquiat the poet and thinker AND visual artist. Getting the right number of works and the precise balance was a long process, and many conversations.

Brooklyn Street Art: How has preparing this exhibition changed or affected your perception of his work in the intervening ten years since the “Basquiat” exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, if at all?
Tricia Laughlin Bloom: I was always a fan, and I loved the 2005 show, but I feel I understand him better and my admiration has deepened after the opportunity to work with the notebooks. It’s more intimate in scale and the whole experience feels more personal.

All Beef. 1983. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

All Beef. 1983. Verso. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. 1982-83. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. 1982-83. Detail. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

From left to right: Untitled (Crown) 1982. Tuxedo. 1982. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Famous Negro Atheletes. 1981. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Antidote. 1981. Untitled (Ego) 1983. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Photo taken from the video Downtown 81 Outtakes. 2001. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks is organized by Dieter Buchhart, Guest Curator, with Tricia Laughlin Bloom, former Associate Curator of Exhibitions, Brooklyn Museum and current Curator of American art at the Newark Museum.

With special thanks to Tricia Laughlin Bloom, Sharon Matt Atkins, and Sally Williams.

Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks at the Brooklyn Museum opens on April 3, 2015 to the general public. Click HERE for further details.

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This article is also published on The Huffington Post

BSA Images Of The Week: 03.29.15

March 29, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

BSA again proudly shouts out Young New Yorkers this week as they offer you works by many Street Artists on the scene today at auction. Check out the auction on April 1st of some of New Yorks’ finest (and generous) Street Artists whose work will benefit the programs of “restorative justice” which YNY offers to 16 and 17 year olds in NYC who have become entangled with the law. (Video at bottom)

Also our hearts go to the neighbors who lost homes and were hurt (some very badly) in the explosion and fire that destroyed two buildings on the Lower East Side this week. Meme-making selfies by callous bimbos aside, stories of strangers and neighbors reaching out to help out remind us why we love NYC.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring B.D.White, City Kitty, Claw Money, Enzo Sarto, Hot Tea, Jeff Soto, Philippe Vignal, Rhino, Sbagliato, Sobr, Stikman, Tona, Urban Solid, and VK .

Top Image >>Urban Solid on Berlin’s East Side Gallery AKA Berlin Wall. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Stikman (photo © Jaime Rojo)

City Kitty bidding farewell to his prominent spot on the soon to be renovated Maisel building on the Bowery. Photographer Jay Maisel paid 102K in 1966 for the former Germania Bank building built in 1898. He sold it last year to developer Aby Rosen for 55 million. True story. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rhino Berlin on Berlin’s East Side Gallery AKA Berlin Wall. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Enzo Sarto (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sobr in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sbagliato in London. In case you were wondering the art is the passageway on the left. That’s not real. It is an optical illusion created with a photograph wheat-pasted on the wall. (photo © Blind Eye Factory)

These bars in Berlin provide a number of great image making opportunities – like this pooch from Tona. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Claw Money (photo © Jaime Rojo)

VK in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Philippe Vignal in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hot Tea gets fancy. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jeff Soto in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Which is more flammable, the EU crisis or this polyester dress? Various Artists on a “magnet wall” in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

B.D. White (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Let the right one in. Berlin. March 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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BSA Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!

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NohJColey and Katharina Oguntoye – “Persons of Interest”

March 12, 2015 Artists

BSA is in Berlin this month to present a new show of 12 important Brooklyn Street Artists at the Urban Nation haus as part of Project M/7. PERSONS OF INTEREST brings to our sister city a diverse collection of artists who use many mediums and styles in the street art scene of Brooklyn. By way of tribute to the special relationship that artist communities in both cities have shared for decades, each artist has chosen to create a portrait of a Germany-based cultural influencer from the past or present, highlighting someone who has played a role in inspiring the artist in a meaningful way.

Today we talk to NohJColey and ask him why he chose his person of interest, Katharina Oguntoye.

For his portrait at Urban Nation the Brooklyn native NohJColey chose Katharina Oguntoye, the Afro-German feminist writer, historian, activist, and poet raised in Nigeria and Heidelberg, Germany. Her study of German culture and her status within it led to her co-editing of the 1986 book Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out (Farbe Bekennen) and to the founding of Joliba, a nonprofit intercultural association in 1997. The organization provides support to a varied intercultural community and hosts educational and cultural events like dinners, seminars, kids events, reading groups, and public art events.

“I have chosen to create a piece that focuses on Katharina Oguntoye because of her contribution to the woman’s equality movement in Germany, “ says NohJ. “She has overcome countless obstacles in her lifetime and has changed so many lives for the better because of her relentless efforts.”

Street Artist NohJColey tells stories with his figures in the public sphere, examining their interrelationships and their place within an urban environment that is often hostile, fraught with anxiety and hypocrisy, yet tempered with humanity. Using various art making disciplines he constructs the stage; hand-carved linotypes, paper cuts, mobile sculpture, painting. A shrewd observer and communicator, his sometimes surreal narratives can be complex, often involving critique of classism, consumerism, racism, addiction, and a broken justice system – each from the perspective of characters who are affected by or perpetuating them.

NohJColey in Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

NohJColey in Albany, New York (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Check out the Facebook page for PERSONS OF INTEREST

See Full Press Release HERE

Esteban Del Valle and George Grosz – “Persons of Interest”

March 10, 2015 Artists

Today we talk to Esteban Del Valle and ask him why he chose his person of interest, George Grosz.

An interdisciplinary artist living in Brooklyn, Del Valle has been rendering figures and scenarios on walls here and in his native Chicago, San Antonio, Kansas City, Spartanburg – even at 5 Pointz, the graffiti holy place in Queens that was recently buffed and destroyed. A performance artist in the public sphere as well as painter, his complex stories run deep with his contemplations on an imbalanced world. His is an activist approach to tearing apart and rebuilding to reveal influences, emotions, and motivations. In these ways and others he is not unlike his selected subject, George Grosz, a pivotal figure in Berlin’s Dada movement.

A German artist known especially for his drawings of people as caricature during the roaring days and nights of Berlin’s 1920s, Grosz was acerbic, crude and corrosive in his depiction of corruption and abuse of power. Eventually moving to New York and settling down in Bayside, Queens, the artist continued his work as a painter and cultural critic. For his portrait of Grosz, Del Valle inserts the artist into Grosz’ own 1926 painting, Eclipse of the Sun, along with ex Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley and some headless businessmen. Too much to describe here, Grosz can speak for himself:

My drawings expressed my despair, hate and disillusionment, I drew drunkards; puking men; men with clenched fists cursing at the moon. … I drew a man, face filled with fright, washing blood from his hands … I drew lonely little men fleeing madly through empty streets. I drew a cross-section of tenement house: through one window could be seen a man attacking his wife; through another, two people making love; from a third hung a suicide with body covered by swarming flies. I drew soldiers without noses; war cripples with crustacean-like steel arms; two medical soldiers putting a violent infantryman into a strait-jacket made of a horse blanket … I drew a skeleton dressed as a recruit being examined for military duty. I also wrote poetry. —Grosz Friedrich, Otto (1986). [note] Before the Deluge. USA: Fromm International Publishing Corporation. pp. 37. [/note]

“I believe art is inherently powerful,” says Del Valle, “and that power can be used to reflect and reshape reality. Much like I aspire to do, George Grosz used satirical imagery to call attention to social inequalities while blurring the line between illustration and painting. His poignant content and aesthetic seems just as relevant today as it did in post 1920’s Berlin.”

Esteban Del Valle in Brooklyn (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Esteban Del Valle in New York (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Check out the Facebook page for PERSONS OF INTEREST

See Full Press Release HERE

GAIA and Fereshta Ludin – “Persons of Interest”

March 9, 2015 Artists

Today we talk to GAIA and ask him why he chose his person of interest, Fereshta Ludin.

It has been nearly 12 years since Afghanistan-born German Muslim school teacher Fereshta Ludin won the right to wear her headscarf in the public school system and the topic remains very hot around the country. For one thing, eight German states forbid the practice and as the website DW reported “the verdict’s results continue to spur controversy and leave some asking what is more oppressive: wearing a headscarf or excluding those who do?” . If this teacher and Afghanistan advisor/minister had tried to get a job as a sales clerk at Abercrombie and Fitch in the United States, Ms. Ludin might have been part of a headscarf case before the US Supreme Court this spring.

Street Artist Gaia typically studies the society and culture in which he paints murals and depicts figures who reflect the history and forces of change and stasis that characterize that neighborhood, town, or city. A leader in what we’ve been calling the New Muralism, Gaia has produced these amalgams of symbols, history, and persons – these glocalized paintings – around the world in cities from Seoul to Perth to Honolulu to Baltimore to Miami and Johannesburg, among others in the the last five years.

Since his earliest days as a Street Artist in Williamsburg and Bushwick, Brooklyn, Gaia has engaged the personal, social and political with his artistic ability; first as linotype prints, later as full-blown aerosol murals. So it is no surprise that he chooses as his subject for this show a figure who has held a pivotal role in the evolution of a necessary conversation in classrooms, boardrooms, courts – and the court of public opinion. It is here in the public sphere that Gaia has always drawn inspiration and energy and returned it back with an impetus to spark examination, discussion and debate.

“The proposal for ‘Persons of Interest’ features a portrait of Fereshta Ludin superimposed over a sky and images of peace,” Gaia says. “I chose to focus on Fereshta Ludin because of her advocation for multicultural understanding and cooperation in the face of intense national debate regarding the sphere of religious expression in German politics.”

A Gaia lino print piece based on a photograph by Martha Cooper in Baltimore, 2011 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gaia in New Jersey 2015 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Sol 25 and Hannah Höch – “Persons of Interest”

March 7, 2015 Artists

Today we talk to El Sol 25 and ask him why he chose his person of interest, Hannah Höch.

A collage artist who often creates paintings of his original cut compositions and wheat-pastes them onto walls, El Sol 25 has been entertaining and perplexing passersby on the street with his theater of the absurd for the last half decade in New York. Considered part of the new breed of Street Artists who are breaking conventions, for this show El Sol 25 looks back to a Berlin rebel and one of the most important collage artists of the 20^th Century, Hannah Höch, for inspiration and as tribute.

Indeed there are many similarities in the works of both; a true fragmentation of elements that reflects a chaotic aspect of current society, an embracing of diversity and abstraction, the questioning of gender constructions, even the inclusion of elements that may have shown in Höch’s fictional “ethnographic museum”. Where Höch was a singular woman in a Dada movement dominated by men, the former graff writer El Sol 25 has steadily constructed his unusual oeuvre in a sometimes sea of Street Art sameness.

El Sol 25 is creating a portrait of Höch for PERSONS OF INTEREST because she proved to be a leader and because he admires her different standards of composition and beauty. “She’s one of my all time favorites and also a native German so I really wanted to pay my respect by painting her portrait,” he says. “She was a key innovator in the original Dada movement and her collages are the strongest I’ve ever seen.”

Then he adds, “She is my hero for many reasons.”

A piece by El Sol 25 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Sol 25 in Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Check out the Facebook page for PERSONS OF INTEREST

See Full Press Release HERE

Don Rimx and John A. Roebling – “Persons of Interest”

March 6, 2015 Artists

Today we talk to Don Rimx and ask him why he chose his person of interest, John A. Roebling.

What better symbol of connectedness than the symbol of the bridge? For PERSONS OF INTEREST we wanted to draw attention to the bonds we share with our creative communities and Brooklyn mural artist Don Rimx chose the German civil engineer who designed the Brooklyn Bridge, a feat that joined Brooklyn and Manhattan in the late 1800s and became an iconic symbol of New York.

Rimx was born in Puerto Rico and moved to Brooklyn as a young man to paint many of his architecturally inspired aerosol murals during the last decade. Inspired by the portraits of Rembrandt and paintings of Joaquin Sorolla as well as the work of Puerto Rican graphic artist Lorenzo Homar, Don Rimx is developing his own vocabulary of portraiture that often includes rough-hewn architectural elements like wooden supports, trussing, cables and limestone brick to form the contours and details of faces and features.

Born in Mühlhausen, Germany (Prussia at the time), Roebling was an immigrant to Brooklyn along with a huge number of his countrymen in the mid 1800s. It is reported that Brooklyn had a population of 200,000 in 1855 and about 30,000 of those were a new wave of immigrants from Germany. In many ways the very diverse culture of Brooklyn and its millions of immigrant stories are told as well in this portrait of a bridge maker.

“For me, Roebling fits perfectly into the line of work I’ve been developing lately. Roebling’s design aesthetic provides me with the inspiration for how to play with structure to connect and make links. I love the concept of the bridge, which reminds me how in art we carry culture and send ideas from one side of the world to the other,” says Rimx.

Don Rimx in Brooklyn (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Don Rimx in Manhattan for a mural program called Los Murales Hablan. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Check out the Facebook page for PERSONS OF INTEREST

See Full Press Release HERE

DAIN and Marlene Dietrich – “Persons of Interest”

March 5, 2015 Artists

Today we talk to DAIN and ask him why he chose his person of interest, Marlene Dietrich.

Over the last decade Street Artist DAIN has made many famous actresses from the silver screen his muse in his collages for the streets of Brooklyn: Betty Davis, Liz Taylor, Audrey Hepburn…all popular icons from an era he didn’t grow up in but has a fascination for. For him, the women of that era exemplified a time of demure glamour, one that didn’t need to disrobe to draw avid attention, leaving something to your imagination. His modern remixes that jump from walls and pop out of doorways on the street invariably grab the eye and garner a second look, creating a new sense of mystery that can seem futuristic and nostalgic at once.

The Brooklyn native and former graffiti writer told us that he thinks he gained his appreciation for mid-century Hollywood aesthetics from listening to his parents talk about their favorite stars and points to them as an influence on his work. “I guess it was maybe my folks. They’re from Brooklyn – Coney Island. And they’re kind of caught up in that. One of my favorite movies is On the Waterfront. I remember being a little kid and my father telling me ‘You gotta see this movie’,” he says. “I love that stuff. I love black and white. You use your imagination in black and white.”

Born in Leberstrasse 65 on the Rote Insel in Schöneberg (now a district of Berlin) in 1901, Dietrich became a star of screen, stage, and music with a career that some would easily call legendary. While she became an American in 1939 and continued her career giving concerts and appearing in movies around the world into the 1980s, she also famously included in her singing repertoire a song called, “Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin” (“I still keep a suitcase in Berlin”).

“I chose Ms. Dietrich because she was one of the most famous German American actresses. She had a style and look that were both glamorous and exotic. I love the fact that she continually reinvented herself – not only within acting but as a show performer later in her career,” says DAIN

Check out the Facebook page for PERSONS OF INTEREST

See Full Press Release HERE

BSA Images Of The Week: 03.01.15

March 1, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Happy March! With the brutally frigid temperatures we had for the whole month of February it is no small wonder that we can still find fresh new pieces on the streets. Some are weeks old and others are days old — all are executed under bitterly cold conditions. Just ask the artists…if you catch them.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Agni, Alex Seel, Alex 25, Bifido, Brown Boyz, Don Rimx, Eder Muniz AKA Calangoss, Foxx Face, LMNOPI, LNY, Clint Mario, Mata Ruda, McDemott & McGough, Mr. Prvrt, Osch,

McDermott & McGough collaborate on most of their projects in a varied range of disciplines such as painting, photography, movies, sculpture and the occasional piece of performance art. Add to that Street Art if you will. From their Facebook page, “From our recent tribute to the late Andy Warhol. In 1986, when were were living in Naples, we were inspired by the Italian tradition of posting posters to commemorate the recently deceased. After we returned to NY and were confronted with the untimely death of Warhol we decided to plaster to the East Village with commemorative posters in his honor. This year, since we find ourselves once again in Italy during the anniversary of his death, we had the poster reposted all over NYC. Look for them in Chelsea, LES, Williamsburg and Bushwick!” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Signed by Brown Boyz, the piece was executed by Don Rimx, Ricardo Cabret, LNY, Alex Seel and Mata Ruda. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA Images Of The Week: 02.22.15

February 22, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Ador, Antonie Trouve, Brain Alfred, Clint Mario, Daco, Delphine Carre, Dran, EZK, Hiss, Icy & Sot, M Chat, ME, Meer Sau, Phillip Vignal, and Sweet Toof.

Top Image >> A warm embrace during our coldest week of the winter. Icy & Sot for Centrifuge Project. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For our full coverage of Dran’s show “Public Execution” click HERE.

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!
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BSA Images Of The Week: 02.15.15

February 15, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Winter has been beating New York with a stick this week, but there’s still new Street Art going up – you just might miss it because you are rushing home to get warm. Also we have a smattering of shots from other cities this week to give you an idea of what’s up.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Bifido, Bradley Theodore, BustArt, Claudio Ethos, Clet, Gore-B, GumShoe, Jilly Ballistic, Li-Hill, Mark Samsonovich, Mr. One Teas, Paul Insect and SeeTf.

“This time Winnie the Pooh is taking his crew to the streets and claim a new graffiti area” says the artist.

What do you want to be when you grow up. There are number of options. Bifido’s new installation in Rome, Italy. (photo © Bifido)

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Top Image >> Hendrik Beikirch AKA ECB. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hendrik Beikirch AKA ECB (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Scott Lickstein (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy & Sot (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy & Sot in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

London Kaye (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Wing (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Amanda Marie. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Amanda Marie (photo © Jaime Rojo)

X-O (photo © Jaime Rojo)

SOBR in Berlin. It’s Time To Dance! (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jaye Moon may have gone to see the On Kawarwa exhibition at the Guggenheim before hitting the street with this date. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

If I’ve asked you once I’ve asked you Trice. Quit clowning around. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ten Hundred (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sketches from ROA’s cabinet of curiosities as he prepared this week for his new show at Jonathan Levine Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Artist Unknown (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Caratoes (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Watcha looking at? Apple Store. SOHO, NYC. March 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Circa 1987. Basquiat:The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Famous. 1982. Basquiat:The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Famous. 1982. Detail. Basquiat:The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Famous. Verso. 1982. Basquiat:The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. 1980. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. 1986. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. 1986. Detail.. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. 1986. Detail. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

All Beef. 1983. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

All Beef. 1983. Verso. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. 1982-83. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. 1982-83. Detail. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

From left to right: Untitled (Crown) 1982. Tuxedo. 1982. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Famous Negro Atheletes. 1981. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Antidote. 1981. Untitled (Ego) 1983. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Photo taken from the video Downtown 81 Outtakes. 2001. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Photo taken from the video Downtown 81 Outtakes. 2001. Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks. Brooklyn Museum. April 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Top Image >>Urban Solid on Berlin’s East Side Gallery AKA Berlin Wall. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Stikman (photo © Jaime Rojo)

City Kitty bidding farewell to his prominent spot on the soon to be renovated Maisel building on the Bowery. Photographer Jay Maisel paid 102K in 1966 for the former Germania Bank building built in 1898. He sold it last year to developer Aby Rosen for 55 million. True story. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rhino Berlin on Berlin’s East Side Gallery AKA Berlin Wall. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Enzo Sarto (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Enzo Sarto (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sobr in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sbagliato in London. In case you were wondering the art is the passageway on the left. That’s not real. It is an optical illusion created with a photograph wheat-pasted on the wall. (photo © Blind Eye Factory)

These bars in Berlin provide a number of great image making opportunities – like this pooch from Tona. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Claw Money (photo © Jaime Rojo)

VK in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Philippe Vignal in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hot Tea gets fancy. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jeff Soto in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Which is more flammable, the EU crisis or this polyester dress? Various Artists on a “magnet wall” in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

B.D. White (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Let the right one in. Berlin. March 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

NohJColey in Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

NohJColey in Albany, New York (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Esteban Del Valle in Brooklyn (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Esteban Del Valle in New York (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A Gaia lino print piece based on a photograph by Martha Cooper in Baltimore, 2011 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Gaia in New Jersey 2015 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A piece by El Sol 25 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

El Sol 25 in Brooklyn. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Don Rimx in Brooklyn (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Don Rimx in Manhattan for a mural program called Los Murales Hablan. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

DAIN in Brooklyn, 2011 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

DAIN in New York. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Top Image >> LMNOPI. Boy holding a pigeon. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

LMNOPI (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mr. PRVRT (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Eder Muniz AKA Calangoss. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Alex25 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Agni (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Agni (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bifido. New piece in Marseille, France. (photo © Bifido)

Any takers? He is asking politely. Artist Unknown. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A well placed collab between Clint Mario and Foxx Face. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

OSCH. New piece in Shoreditch, London. (photo © OSCH)

Signed by Brown Boyz, the piece was executed by Don Rimx, Ricardo Cabret, LNY, Alex Seel and Mata Ruda. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Central Park, NYC. Winter 2015 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Top Image >> A warm embrace during our coldest week of the winter. Icy & Sot for Centrifuge Project. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sweet Toof for Woodward Project Space. (photo © Jaime Rojo)