Archinect - News

JR debuts latest Italian commission 'La Nascita' for Milan Design Week

2024-04-11T13:03:00-04:00

French street art pioneer JR has debuted his latest piece, a massive illusory trompe l’oeil piece animating the facade of Milan’s Stazione Centrale railway station, in advance of the start of Milan Design Week in the Italian cultural nexus.

His latest commission is titled La Nascita (Italian for “the birth”) and will run until May 1st, following two previous Italian projects at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence and Palazzo Farnese in Rome that were completed in 2021.

“In spaces that have social issues, my work is about bringing people together. In a place like this, a huge range of people come to catch the train. When they find themselves in front of an exhibition, they will suddenly have a different kind of interaction,” he told The Art Newspaper at its unveiling.

More of our coverage of Milan Design Week can be found here.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by JR (@jr)

LA City Council orders graffiti removal on infamous unfinished Oceanwide Plaza towers

2024-02-12T13:33:00-05:00

City Council Members in Los Angeles have issued a mandate to owners of the graffiti-tagged Oceanview Plaza development in Downtown to remove the artwork weeks after its unfinished exterior became a national news item and the latest flash point in a debate over the citywide housing crisis that has lingered for a number of years.

By a vote of 14-0, Council Members approved Kevin de León’s motion calling for the city to foot the bill for cleaning up the stalled $1 billion towers if China-based developer Oceanwide fails to meet their February 17th deadline for removal. (CoStar first reported on the motion this weekend h/t Bizow.com.)

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Chop ‘em Down Films (@chopemdownfilms)

The internet sensation was covered in tags last month by artists apparently inspired by an early December operation in downtown Miami and able to bypass the security detail on site, which has been embroiled in a payment dispute with developers since last ye...

Banksy murals to be digitally preserved as part of new UK art database

2024-02-09T14:28:00-05:00

Art by the famous artist Banksy is to be included in a new initiative to document the UK’s murals. As reported by The Art Newspaper, the project will see more than 5,000 murals from across the UK digitally recorded for access in a free public database.

The project is being overseen by the educational charity Art UK with support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The three-year initiative will see public works recorded by a network of volunteer researchers and photographers, alongside documenting the stories behind the pieces.

“The location of murals, the circumstances behind their creation, and the materials used to create them can result in this type of artwork being ephemeral in nature,” Art UK says about the project. “Buildings and housing estates are demolished to make way for new developments meaning that many murals have been lost. We will record the murals as they look now, to provide a record if they are removed, defaced, or suffer environmental damage.”

Related on Arc...

Banksy's latest mural on abandoned UK farmhouse has been demolished

2023-03-17T14:13:00-04:00

Banksy had just put the finishing touches on his latest artwork on an abandoned farmhouse in in Kent, England, when shortly after completion, a construction crew demolished the building. Entitled Morning is Broken, the work featured a silhouetted cat and a boy with arms outstretched opening two dilapidated sheets of iron, which were shaped like curtains.

News of the demolition spread across media channels and social platforms like Instagram and Twitter. A report from The Guardian explained that the site, owned by Kitewood, was "earmarked for dozens of new homes" as demolition on the site began on Tuesday, March 14. When workers began demolishing the site, one contractor told the local press they felt "gutted" and "sick realizing it was a Banksy."

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Banksy (@banksy)

This is the second Banksy piece demolished in Kent after another Valentine’s Day message on domestic violence was taken down and reinstalled at the popular town Dreamland theme park by the town council.

For sale in LA: a building with a Banksy OR a Banksy with a building?

2022-09-05T09:00:00-04:00

In 2010, while in town for the Los Angeles premiere of his documentary “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” the British street artist Banksy left a gift for fans: a mural of a girl on a swing, dangling beneath the five-foot red “A” of the word “PARKING” on a gritty downtown lot. Now that girl — as well as the historic building in the downtown fashion district that serves as her canvas — is for sale to the highest bidder.

The historic 26,000-square-foot Downtown Los Angeles building was purchased for $4 million three years prior to the popular documentary's premiere and underwent a $1.8 million renovation before its then-owners filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April this year.

Art dealer Jeffrey Deitch says the 12- by 33-foot mural’s intrinsic value merits a different kind of appraisal. (“This is free public art. It is not meant to have a commercial value and be resold. That’s not the intention of the artist.”) The best estimate from the previous owners was reportedly $16 million without the girl, which Sotheby’s placed at a minimum of $10 million standing alone. A resolution will come when the building goes to auction on October 6th.

The Asphalt Art Initiative expands to more cities as new statistics point to improved pedestrian safety

2022-04-19T20:06:00-04:00

Bloomberg Philanthropies has announced a European expansion of its Asphalt Art Initiative on the heels of a new study from the organization and Sam Schwartz Consulting that revealed some eye-opening statistics about the improvement of blacktop spaces in urban areas. A total of 20 new cities will be given grants of $25,000 each as part of the program’s next round of funding, which has to date gone to fund 45 projects in 41 different locations across the United States.

The joint study of 22 different U.S. test cases revealed that arts-driven transportation projects produce, among other outcomes, a 50% drop in the rate of crashes involving pedestrians or cyclists, a 37% drop in the rate of crashes involving serious injury, another 25% drop in road rage incidents between pedestrian and motorist, and a 27% increase in drivers yielding to pedestrians who have the right-of-way, suggesting tremendous public health and safety benefits overall.

Asphalt Art Initiative, Amsterdam. Lead artist: ...

Banksy offers support to turn an infamous UK prison into a new arts center

2021-12-06T15:20:00-05:00

Banksy is getting into the shuffle in the effort to preserve a grade-II listed former prison complex in England called Reading Gaol.

The BBC is reporting that the famed street artist intends to sell the stencil he used for an Oscar Wilde-inspired mural placed on the building’s exterior wall in March at a charity auction which he hopes will command somewhere on the order of £10 million ($13.3 million) to be used towards creating a new arts center.

The historic structure has been up for grabs since 2019 and is reportedly under consideration to be purchased and remade in a scheme authored by the local Reading Borough Council.

A rendering of the proposed arts center plan. Image courtesy Reading Borough Council.

Now, with his literary idol in mind, Banksy’s pledge would help support the Council’s effort that could keep the former complex from being turned into apartment buildings while also paying homage to the artistic underpinnings from which the Picture of Dorian Gray author drew some...

Artist JR 'cracks open' Florence's Palazzo Strozzi with monumental optical illusion installation

2021-03-22T19:10:00-04:00

Titled La Ferita, Italian for “The Wound,” the work creates an optical illusion of a great gash running through the institution’s external walls. Through the cracks, those on the outside can once again peer into a black-and-white vision of the interior of the shuttered building, with some of Florence’s famous artworks and cultural heritage on view.

The new site-specific trompe-l'œil installation — measuring 28 meters/92 feet tall and 33 meters/108 feet wide — by prolific French artist JR opened on March 19, shortly after many major Italian cities were ordered back under another COVID-19 lockdown.

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"By including iconic works of Florence’s art heritage and directly citing real places such as the library of the Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, JR proposes a direct and evocative reflection on accessibility not only to Palazzo Strozzi but to all cultural sites in the era of Covid-19," explains the project description.

Related on Archinect: How Art and Design Museums Switched to Working From Home and Sharpened Their Digital Experience. Photo: Wikimedia Commons user BRENAC/CC-BY-SA-3.0.

"Palazzo Strozzi becomes the spectacular stage for a symbolic yet painful wound suffered by all cultural institutions both in Italy and abro...

Architect provides downloadable "Black Lives Matter" street mural template amid cities adding the piece to its centers

2020-06-11T12:33:00-04:00

Following the now famous Black Lives Matter street mural in Washington D.C., activists later painted one in Oakland, California. This urban activism has garnered the attention of another city as well, Berkeley, who plans to paint a new street mural on Martin Luther King Jr. Way, in front of Old City Hall.

Berkely architect Yes Duffy was one of many participants who helped paint the Oakland mural and after learning his city was considering a mural, created a template that he sent to Berkeley's mayor and councilmembers, reports Berkelyside.

Portuguese street artist combines tagging, illustration, and animation to create building-scale optical illusions

2019-09-16T19:30:00-04:00

A Portuguese graffiti artist who goes by Vile has been painting since he was a teenager, a depth of experience that, when combined with his skills in animation and illustration, allows him to "create stunning optical illusions whereby his name appears as a window cut into the side of a wall," as My Modern Met reports.

"The most challenging part of his creative process," My Modern Met explains, "is color matching, as the palette must be selected carefully in order to make the final product convincing."

Below is an image of the wall before the painting:

Image courtesy of Vile

Check out his instagram for more of his work.

Los Angeles-based artist turns concrete ruins into luxury handbags

2018-06-27T19:16:00-04:00

Out in the deserts of Lime, Oregon, an unexpected site of boulder-sized luxury handbags has taken over the arid landscape. The gigantic purses, which sport the designs of Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Prada, Gucci, Chanel and McQueen, are part of Thrashbird's latest project titled 'Valley of Secret Values." Known for his cheeky sense of humor with which he subverts mainstream culture, the LA-based street artist has transformed the concrete ruins of an abandoned power plant into new art.

The boulders have been spray painted to suggest the iconic patterns of various luxury designer handbags, and in some cases, with found materials to look like straps, handles, and other accessories—gold painted tires are made into chains and rocks, into beads. Stuck into the absurd, crumbling landscape, the works appear as a graveyard for the cult status symbols. Part cautionary tale, part beautification project, the bags, in Thrashbird's own words, "continue the important discourse surrounding society’s d...

Recent Banksy addition in NYC removed with rumors that property owner will profit from auction

2018-03-20T17:15:00-04:00

Last week, a piece by the anonymous graffiti artist was stenciled onto a building at the northwest corner of 14th street and sixth avenue in New York City. The structure—a former bank building—was tagged with one of Banksy's trademark rats running around a clock that is native to the property. Along with another piece that popped up in the city last week, it is believed to be his latest intervention in the city since his October 2013 "residency".

The work has been drawing crowds to the old HSBC, which is slated for demolition in order to build a 13-story mixed-use building. This morning, according to Hyperallergic, the clock was taken down by four workmen who dismantled the clock motor and mechanism from the interior. The removal was apparently ordered by the property owner and is rumored to be going to auction for the owner to conveniently profit off of.

5Pointz lawsuit: Judge rules in favor of street artists, awards $6.7 Million

2018-02-13T14:10:00-05:00

[...] a judge has ruled that a New York developer must pay $6.7 million to a group of graffiti artists to compensate for painting over their work without warning in 2013. The decision represents a decisive victory for street artists in a case that pitted their rights against those of a real estate executive. The artists sued the developer, Gerald Wolkoff, for violating their rights after he whitewashed their work at the famous 5Pointz art mecca in Long Island City to make way for condos.

Citing protection of the artists'—historically significant but ultimately destroyed—works at 5Pointz under the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA), Judge Frederic Block ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in this closely watched landmark case: "Since 5Pointz was a prominent tourist attraction the public would undoubtedly have thronged to say its goodbyes during those 10 months and gaze at the formidable works of aerosol art for the last time. It would have been a wonderful tribute for the artists that they richly deserved."

5Pointz lawsuit enters next round: Is street art protected under the Visual Artists Rights Act?

2017-12-26T18:09:00-05:00

Was the street art covering 5Pointz, a largely empty warehouse in Long Island City, Queens, significant enough to preserve under US federal law? A federal judge in Brooklyn in currently considering the arguments in a case that tests the limits of the Visual Artists Rights Act (Vara), and could soon decide whether a developer Gerald Wolkoff and his companies violated the act when he tore down the graffiti-covered building to construct residential towers and what, if any, damages they will pay.

Artist Joshua Smith builds urban decay miniatures

2017-12-01T13:14:00-05:00

Australia-based artist Joshua Smith expresses his love of decrepit urban spaces by recreating them in 1:20 scale. Building all of his miniatures from scratch, Smith designs every element himself. The artist's work is built on his past experiences as a stencil artist and gallery director. Inspired by street art, graffiti, and old forgotten buildings, Smith is fascinated by the layers and history found within the dirt and grime of city spaces.

Pictured above is a recreation of 23 Temple Street, a building in the Kowloon area of Hong Kong, made by the artist for New York's VOLTA art fair. Smith's process starts with hours of searching on google street view for his next subject. Once his next project is underway, it can take months to finish a piece. The 23 Temple Street miniature took Smith three months of full time work to complete.

Scroll down and check out these mini architectural masterpieces.

'Big Bang Fireworks Company', based on 10 Pell Street in Chinatown NYC, by Joshua Smi...

Street art museum opens in Berlin and presents itself as canvas

2017-09-21T14:31:00-04:00

Street art is the ultimate form of democracy according to the curators of the new Museum for Urban Contemporary Art that has just opened in Berlin. But does street art belong in exhibition halls? [...] Construction for the Urban Nation Museum of Urban Contemporary Art began in May 2016. A late-19th century house in the Berlin district of Schöneberg was redesigned by German architecture studio Graft.

Image: Graft, via dw.com.

In Deutsche Welle's interview with Yasha Young, the artistic director of the new Museum for Urban Contemporary Art, Young defends the need for a permanent home for street art: "Yes, street art belongs to the street and should stay there. The label "Museum for Street Art," although we often use it ourselves, is not quite accurate. We are much more: the museum is designed to be mobile, to connect the outside and the inside. The façade of the house always changes, which means the art that is created out there can be dismantled, changed and exhibited inside."

JR's "Wrinkles Of The City", portraying the faces affected by gentrification and rapid urbanization, hits Istanbul

2017-05-04T23:42:00-04:00

If I was a poet, I would speak of Istanbul If I were a musician, my music would belong to Istanbul If I was a painter, I would paint Istanbul -Mihail

Prolific French artist JR continues to produce impactful work, following up his latest public exhibition with a special installation of his “Wrinkles of the City” series. First launched in 2008, the series is meant to visually portray the faces affected by gentrification and rapid urbanization in the world’s largest cities. Accordingly, JR spent the past two weeks in the alleyways and rooftops of Istanbul, forcing residents to confront the elderly’s personal stories through singular images.

Artist JR covers the I.M. Pei's Pyramid in giant image of the Louvre

2016-05-24T13:28:00-04:00

Whether it be the Middle East, the favelas of Rio, slums of Kenya, New York, Le Havre or Shanghai, JR’s works leave no one indifferent, because they return our gaze and cut to the very heart of our innermost selves. [...] Invited by the “biggest museum in the world”—which also generates the most selfies—JR has set his sights on one of the Louvre’s symbols, the Pyramid, which he intends to transform with a surprising anamorphic image.

The artist JR, best known for his series of giant portraits wheat-pasted in cities around the world, has been commissioned to create a piece for the Louvre. Documenting the progress on his Instagram account, JR has been covering I.M. Pei's iconic glass Pyramid with an anamorphic image of the edifice behind it: the Sully Wing of the Louvre.

"I will never forget this day. Today I'm going to make the Louvre Pyramid disappear," JR told the Humans of Paris Facebook account. "I want to make the Louvre Pyramid disappear because I want people to see themselves alone, just their head and the Louvre.

"I find it funny seeing people taking selfies all day in front of the pyramid but always with their back to the Louvre," he continues. "It says a lot about our society where people turn their back on things and focus on themselves."

For related coverage, check out these links:

Miniature manhole rooms highlight reality of Bucharest's underground dwellers

2016-04-15T13:30:00-04:00

Borderlife is a street art intervention by Biancoshock in which three abandoned manholes in Milan’s Lodi district have been transformed into miniature dwellings. [...] With Borderlife the street artist wants to make us aware about the distressing living conditions of many fellow humans who are forced to live in confined spaces, especially manholes. He got his inspiration from the reportedly hundreds of people that are occupying manholes and sewer systems in the Romanian capital Bucharest.

Images of the BORDERLIFE street art intervention via Biancoshock's website.

David Choe: "Why Saving Banksy Means Saving Yourself"

2016-04-09T09:00:00-04:00

Who the fuck cares what Banksy’s real name is. You should care about his art instead, what he’s given you, and stop trying to take more than what’s to be had. Don’t deny yourself great artistic creativity simply to satisfy the curiosity of some blip of an itch that will deny him his anonymity to create. Doing that will make you less than the worst, you wouldn’t even be a super villain scientist, but a spectator searching for a sport to watch that you’re too inept to participate in.

Giant "calligraffiti" mural unites community in Cairo slum

2016-04-07T13:32:00-04:00

Amid Cairo's brick buildings and heaping piles of trash is a sprawling work of art, which, at first, looks messy and incoherent. But when you stand on the nearby hillside and read the spray-painted Arabic "calligraffiti," as its creator Tunisian-French artist eL Seed calls it, the message reads loud and clear: "If one wants to see the light of the sun, he must wipe his eyes." [...] in total secrecy from the Egyptian government due to the country's strict laws forbidding artistic expression.

All images by the artist, eL Seed. For more images click here.

More Cairo-related stories in the Archinect news:

Leading street artists weigh in on the gentrification debate

2015-11-16T18:32:00-05:00

Earlier this week, the online street art community was abuzz about an article by Rafael Schacter for The Conversation, From dissident to decorative: why street art sold out and gentrified our cities. [...] Basically, Schacter argues that street art isn’t rebellious anymore. Rather, that it’s most notable form is as a tool used by corporations to spur gentrification. Agree or disagree, the article is a must-read.

Vandalog author RJ Rushmore reached out to some of the influential figures in street art and muralism to get their reactions to Schacter's claim that street art has sold out and become complicit in the corporate gentrification of our cities. He received responses from Buff Monster, Living Walls, 1xRun, Jeffrey Deitch, Libray Street Collective, Tristan Eaton, John Fekner, Gaia, Ganzeer, Carlo McCormick, The Painted Desert Project, Jessie Unterhalter, Vexta, Wall Therapy and shared their views here.

Related news and one exclusive interview with Buff Monster on Archinect:

Banksy about to open "Dismaland" pop-up exhibition in British seaside resort

2015-08-19T15:31:00-04:00

Rumors have been circulating around the internet for a few days, but later this week Banksy is now set to open a new pop-up exhibition entitled "Dismaland" at in Weston-Super-Mare, UK. The venue is called "Tropicana", a 10,200-square-foot site to be transformed into "Dismaland", a probable attack on American entertainment giant Disney. [...] As usual with Banksy, the details are very scarce, but earlier this morning Iain Brimecome and Jon Goff were able to fly their drone above the site [...].

Another aerial view of "Dismaland," expected to open later this week. Photo: Iain Brimecome & Jon Goff, image via streetartnews.net.

Photo via @francisclarke on Twitter.

Banksy in the Archinect news:

Detroit issues arrest for "vandal" Shepard Fairey

2015-07-03T12:48:00-04:00

World famous street artist Shepard Fairey - the man whose “Hope” poster massively boosted Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign – has described an attempt to arrest him by Detroit police as “hilarious” after he was commissioned to do a mural in the city. Last night authorities issued an arrest warrant for Fairey, 45, on graffiti charges with Police Sergeant Rebecca McKay issuing a statement warning: “Just because he’s a well-known artist does not take away from the fact that he is also a vandal.”

Detroit's most recent charge against Fairey is for damages amounting to $9,100, caused by nine of Fairey's works. Detroit police are asking that he turn himself in, and say that he'll be arrested should he ever return to Detroit. Fairey doesn't seem to be phased, calling the charges "hilarious". Throughout his career, Fairey has been arrested 17 times.

More accounts of so-called "vandalism", both solicited and not:

Detroit's struggle to distinguish between graffiti (boo!) and murals (yay!)

2015-02-20T14:50:00-05:00

But how to draw the distinction between unauthorized graffiti and murals? Late last year, city officials issued thousands of dollars worth of fines before admitting they couldn't tell the difference between vandalism and authorized artwork (they eventually dismissed the fines). To correct this, Castañeda-López says the city is working on the seemingly Herculean task of creating a registry for all Detroit's existing street art.

Mapping the City: maps through the eyes of street artists

2015-01-21T17:53:00-05:00

Street artists are showing how they’d map cities differently in a new show that lets visitors step into their clandestine worlds. [...] Mapping the City, an exhibition of the responses by 50 international street artists to being asked to map their cities “through subjective surveying rather than objective ordinance”. Conventional cartography this is not.

"Big Mother" the tallest mural in the UK to highlight affordable housing issues

2014-11-21T15:21:00-05:00

A newly completed 125 ft high mural painted by Stik on a condemned council owned tower block in Acton, West London is the tallest street artwork in the UK. The artwork depicts a mother and child looking forlornly from their condemned council block at the luxury apartment complexes being built around them. [...] Charles Hocking House was built for low income families in 1967 and is earmarked to be torn down in 2016.

Bed-Stuy In Memoriam

2014-11-10T15:46:00-05:00

Neighborhoods of contemporary New York are primarily defined by the choices and actions of the people who call them home. They are collages fashioned from layer upon layer of small accretions that we plaster and paint onto our environments. Sometimes, this paint is literal [...] rich diversity of murals in memoriam found throughout Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn — public artworks that reflect a particular history of violence, racial prejudice, and, in some cases, the mixture of the two.

Related: Bed-Stuy Prices Soar

In light of 5 POINTZ demolition, DEFACED fights to protect NYC's artistic roots

2014-09-30T17:20:00-04:00

Upon the recent controversial demolition of the "5 POINTZ" graffiti mecca in Long Island City, NY, a group of architects consisting of Arianna Armelli, Ishaan Kumar, David Sepulveda and Wagdy Moussa came up with the idea of DEFACED. In the proposal, DEFACED is an organization that is dedicated to the preservation of cultural landmarks, districts, and neighborhoods worldwide.

Using 5 Pointz as a starting point, DEFACED asserts not only the timeless value of open artistic expression but also the need to build communities where all inhabitants can benefit and thrive. The proposal calls attention to NYC's gentrifying cityscape over the last decade, ongoing socio-political concerns, and last but not least, that a structure like 5 Pointz — although considered an eyesore to some — was truly a luxury of its own kind.

Below is the project in fuller detail, provided by the architects:

"INTRODUCTION: You see, it goes like this; New York City was affordable when it was ugly and unpleasant; whe...

Can Graffiti Be Copyrighted?

2014-09-22T14:05:00-04:00

In July, Anasagasti hired a lawyer and filed a copyright-infringement lawsuit, accusing American Eagle of stealing his work and seeking monetary damages. If it sounds novel to apply copyright to graffiti art, that’s because it is: Lawyers who work in this area say it’s not clear anyone has ever tried this in court. Copyright law, as its name suggests, lays out the rules for when it’s okay to copy something. But does it extend to art that's on public walls?