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Thursday, March 4, 2010

The Urban Art Form, Downtown

Truck graffiti, East Village
Photo by myself somewhere in the East Village.

A truck was completely covered in graffiti in beautiful colors. You can barely make out that it belongs to a company on Delancey Street.

Is this art? hm....I wouldn't park the truck in the Guggenheim, but it's certainly better than a grimy white truck and it brightens my day. What do you think?

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Speaking of graffiti, this week readers of the City Room Blog of the Times wrote in questions to a graffiti artist named Lee Quiñones. Quiñones began painting NYC subway cars in the 70s. This was before subways were made to resist spray paint.

Quiñones' work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of Art and the Museum of the City of New York. He does most of his work on canvas now. You can see his entire range of work on his blog.

Amazing to think that art in the most banal places is accepted by such museums, and that the artists are now interviewed by the Times. Note, not everyone accepts graffiti as 'art'. Many of the readers' questions are about defacing property.

To read more about the questions and answers to Lee Quiñones, click here.

The Truth in Advertising, in the East Village, Ninja Assasins, in the East Village and Abandoned Lot, East Village.

11 comments:

Olivier said...

je me demande si ils font les tags quand le camion roule ;o)) "Couleurs dans la ville"

Reluctant Blogger said...

Yes, I agree, I find graffiti quite interesting and do like to see some imaginative stuff occasionally.

I guess it's a question of moderation - if all the trucks started to be decorated in that way it would lose its appeal.

But yes, I like it too.

Pat said...

Yes, I do like this artsy truck! Better than white...they predict more snow here....argh. I need color, and this truck does the trick.

Say....is this a major coincidence? Does Lee Quinones have a sister....I think I know here and she's here in Belgrade now. She's from NY. I will ask her if Lee is her brother....

Lou said...

Usually i don't think graffiti is art. Well, apart from banksey but he's more than graffiti.

But i think the truck is art. Someone was that dedicated into making their boring white truck into something colourful and interesting. That's art to me.

Love it. :)

dianasfaria.com said...

like it or not it is definitely art. but like all art, not everyone likes the same thing. & though I like this truck I like your photograph of it more than the truck itself.

valeria said...

I like it, it's almost Woodstock...!

spandrel studios said...

love the colorful-ness of this shot, especially with the brick wall in back and the meinecke sign in view!

Ken Mac said...

yea, that's it

Louis la Vache said...

«Louis» votes with those who view this as defacing property. When «Louis» owned a Pepperidge Farm distributorship, his three trucks were frequent targets of graffiti vandals. It was not a happy experience. «Louis» also notes how the ever-increasing amount of graffiti has deface Paris. When he first visited Paris in 1996, there was very little graffiti, except in the "Red Belt" suburbs. Each year when «Louis» returned, the graffiti had crept deeper into Paris. When he moved to France in 2005, it was out of control and when he returned to the U.S. in 2007, it was a complete epidemic. Shame on the Times and the museum for encouraging this epidemic. (Here endeth the rant of «Louis».)

Paz said...

I like the truck. ;-)

Interesting about Quinones.

Paz

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