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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. — Hypebeast
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... View full entry
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 New York Times
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. Related on Archinect: Recent Banksy... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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. — Artnet
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. View this post on Instagram... View full entry
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... View full entry
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,"... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
[...] 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.
— artnet
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... View full entry
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. — The Art Newspaper
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... View full entry
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.
— Deutsche Welle
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,"... View full entry
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... View full entry
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 Louvre
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... View full entry
