Barry McGee & Josh Lazcano for Houston Street
Barry McGee and lifetime graf’ partner Josh Lazcano were commissioned to do a piece on the corner of Houston Street and Bowery. Many are perturbed by the classic, rough-around-the-edges graffiti approach adopted but to it’s admirers it offers a stunning insight into the incoherent nature of human interconnection. Each word relates to a partner’s “tag”
In an amazing twist, life imitated art in New York Sunday night when Barry McGee and crew descended on the Houston Street wall. Beginning at midnight, McGee, together with longtime collaborator Josh Lazcano (Amaze), began a massive spray-painting spree, bombarding the surface with hundreds of simple red tags. Working through the cover of night, the team created the ultimate graffiti writer’s roll call and a strangely beautiful, if not challenging piece of commissioned abstract art. By dawn, it would go much farther than even they could have imagined.
In the coming weeks, reactions to the piece are sure to be mixed, and it didn’t take long for questions to begin. Police made their first visit around 2am, clearly not knowing what to make of the Tony Goldman sanctioned property previously occupied by a Ketih Haring replica, a meticulously illustrated mural by Os Gemeos and the design heavy graphics of Shepard Fairey. No, this couldn’t be legit, this couldn’t be art. After a minor interruption a permit was produced and the police were on their way. They’d be returning though.
What the hell had just happened? Walking west from the wall, a few hundred feet down the street to the accident and back up again, I started to take it all in – the totaled truck flipped on its side, the broken glass, the flashing lights and sirens all set the backdrop of 850 sq. feet of graffiti. I felt a certain sort of chaotic energy and unnerving excitement, as if one of Barry’s frenetic gallery and museum installations had spontaneously slammed full force into the middle of Houston Street. By 6am he and his mates were in there clear and off to the airport to get the hell out of New York City. Me? I walked up the block and back home where I couldn’t fall asleep for another three hours.
It sounds as though the night of the installation was an adventure itself, police and spectators aplenty. However, do you see the beauty in the art form or does it hold negative connotations in your mind?
(Images: Jeff Newman / Images and text: TheArtCollectors / Images: Sabeth 718)
[...] art mural Scharf had been painting since Nov. 24th, a piece that sprawls across the north side of Houston Street, near the Bowery. Thoughts of latter-day graffiti and of cartoons and amusement parks spring to [...]
[...] I stumbled across Barry McGee and Josh Lazcano’s commissioned piece of graffiti on the corner of Houston Street and Bowery (left picture) perhaps in late October and immediately snapped a shot of the eye-catching site. What looks like a fascinating jumble of tags is actually a sort of “the ultimate graffiti writer’s roll call.” [...]
[...] Jamie Reid James Prigoff Jane Dickson Jean-Michel Basquiat John Ahearn John Fekner Jon Naar Josh Lazcano Jr KawsKeith Haring Kenny Scharf Kiely Jenkins Koor Lady Pink Larry Clark Lee Quinones Loomit [...]