Check out Wall to Wall, an essay posted at the visual magazine Topic by Prospect Heights artist and activist Peter Krashes, taking off on--with his own paintings--the curious August 2015 block party in which muralists were hired to paint the giant green wall along Dean Street between Carlton and Vanderbilt avenues.
His essay, with paintings, also addresses his own block association's annual block party, and the 2013 block party sponsored by MTV to herald the Video Music Awards.
One relevant paragraph:
Krashes writes, regarding a set of murals in San Francisco:
His essay, with paintings, also addresses his own block association's annual block party, and the 2013 block party sponsored by MTV to herald the Video Music Awards.
One relevant paragraph:
From my vantage point, the event seemed primarily directed toward the cameras and media in attendance. It was as if the artwork—mostly geometric abstractions—was curated to be an anodyne backdrop for Instagram photos and TV interviews. The murals would stay up for more than two years, but little construction seemed to be taking place behind the fence, as the developers failed to meet their own deadlines again and again.
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| By Peter Krashes |
[Artist Anton] Refregier’s insertion of a progressive political narrative into a public space—in this case, a post office—stands in stark juxtaposition to the market-directed murals placed on my own block, innocuous temporary placeholders for a neighborhood in flux.
Regarding that 2015 block party, I'd written that even other controversial examples of real estate developers working with street artists have led to edgier examples. My nomination, which would have fuzzed the "Brooklyn" neighborhood focus, was "Investment from China In, Profits for Shanghai and Green Cards Out."
That, rather than geometric abstractions, would've traced the flow of capital.
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