Monday, June 21, 2010

Ninth Street: Allan D'Arcangelo, 1968/2010


Mural by Allan D'Arcangelo, 340 East Ninth Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenue), in Peter Blake, "Graffiti Are Growing Up," New York, April 29, 1968. Photo: 16 Miles [more]


340 East Ninth Street, 2010

“Some blocks in New York are so polychrome they make Carnaby Street look like just another Saville Row,” Peter Blake proclaimed in New York, in 1968, the year of the magazine’s founding. Public art was popping up everywhere, Blake explained, thanks in part to a “determined urban designer” named David H. Bromberg, who was running around downtown Manhattan convincing landlords to let the exposed sides of their buildings be painted by contemporary artists. This “hard-edge roadscape with directional signs, clouds, abstract flora, and railroad crossings” by the underrated Pop artist Allan D’Arcangelo (whose estate is today represented by Mitchell-Innes & Nash) was Bromberg’s first project. It has since been painted over.


Peter Blake, "Graffiti Are Growing Up," New York, April 29, 1968

Related: Houston & Broadway: Joseph Kosuth, 1979/2010, Cooper Union: David Hammons, 1983/2010, and the Lost Art of New York Map

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