Part II: The Word on the Street, by Alex Smith

by pmaxwell, 22 August 2008

Take a walk through Williamsburg, Brooklyn with Alex Smith, Phillips de Pury & Company Urban Art Specialist for the Saturday@Phillips sale. Lots for sale are highlighted below.

Auction Info:
September 6 2008 12pm London
Phillips de Pury & Company
Howick Place London SW1P 1BB

You turn a corner and there you see it: a looming acid green face staring back at you. Sublimely gazing through piercing blue eyes, its countenance beams angelically with pink paper lips, gaping mouth, and flattened chin. Upon closer inspection, you notice this mysterious character has been torn open to reveal an obscured face that listlessly peers out from beneath it.

Startled by this discovery, you keep your calm realizing that this is no Incredible Hulk or Green Goblin but a life-sized painting on Xerox cut out and wheat-pasted to an anonymous building. Here is one of a handful of exquisite examples of public or street art installations by 29-year old Brooklyn-based artist Judith Supine (Lot 208).

Judith Supine, Williamsburg Brooklyn, photo by Alex Smith from 2008

Down a few desolate blocks from the Williamsburg bridge, you'll find life in a cluster of rare screen prints that have recently been plastered up across a plywood divide by local art collective Faile, known for their collaged and appropriated imagery from comic books and romance novels.

Using repeated images from pulp novel and science fiction covers, these particular prints offer witty visual metaphors for the challenges of modern life and the urban experience. Faile demands that passersby interact with a series of ironic, promotional-type images that feature hand-held space shuttles caught in orbit, titled "Strange Encounters.” The black-and-white spacecrafts have an uncanny albeit cartoony resemblance to the Challenger shuttle that met its tragic demise during liftoff in 1986. Adjacent to these, a striking sequence of damsels in distress stylishly fight off the clenching jaws of a toothy T. Rex as skyscrapers close in on them. These scantily clad heroines bravely brandish high-heeled shoes as weapons above Faile’s italicized text that ominously warns “It Happens Everyday!"

Faile, Williamsburg Brooklyn, photo by Alex Smith from 2008
Lots by Faile: 223, 225, 227, 228, 229, 230, 261, 266, 271

As if you aren’t already over-stimulated enough, nearby this site, a dizzying sea of graffiti reads like an ongoing dialogue played out on the streets where writers have marked their territory and other artists have found clever ways to respond. Construction sites and warehouses have been extensively layered with a vibrant display of stickers, graffiti tags, wheat-pasted posters, and stenciled spray-paintings, several of which bear the signature trademarks of world-class artists such as KAWS, Nick Walker, and Os Gemeos.

You’re able to find focus in a familiar image that lines the side of a local music hall, immediately recognizing the graphic portrait of US presidential candidate Barack Obama. Created earlier this year by Los-Angeles based artist Shepard Fairey (Lots 268, 269, 270, 272, 276), this particular version of the famous campaign poster serves as a striking larger-than-life example of contemporary propaganda art, dwarfing you with its Giant proportions while coercing with suggestions of “Progress” and obedience.

Shepard Fairey, Williamsburg Brooklyn, photo by Alex Smith from 2008

Almost overwhelmed by the endless variety of artistic expression found on nearly every available surface, you can't help but stop and pay tribute to one last work: a tattered linoleum print by legendary artist Swoon.

Posted last season among a group of other aggressive graffiti tags, concert flyers and art posters, this gentle depiction of a young woman standing tall among a pack of cut-out wolves seems to have weathered the storm quite well. You can’t help but take comfort in this peaceful image of a resilient girl staying grounded as she is swarmed by the predatory elements of the wild.

Gaia, Williamsburg Brooklyn, photo by Alex Smith from 2008
Lots for sale by similar artist, Swoon, 213 & 214

It's just another day in New York and like so many major cities across the globe such as London, Paris, Sao Paolo, or Berlin, it is hard to deny the growing influence of this ever-changing urban art movement that seems to know no boundaries.