Tag Archives: icons
In New York … Terry Richardson Street Art Skull Portrait by Bradley Theodore
Artist Bradley Theodore‘s street art of recent months is a series of portraits depicting iconic fashion-world celebrities — such as Anna Wintour, Karl Lagerfeld, and Diana Vreeland — as colorful, impressionistic skulls. His recent work pictured below is of infamous downtown photographer and Vice magazine alum Terry Richardson on the exterior wall of a pizza joint on Allen Street in New York’s Lower East Side.
New York Street Art … “Smoke Trees”
This stenciled “Smoke Trees” wheat-pasted street art poster in the Lower East Side of New York City has a graphical, lo-fi propaganda feel. The bear iconography and message harkens to Smoky the Bear and public service ad campaigns to create awareness about forest fire prevention. The message here is subversive and explicit, though unclear. The colors are beautiful and and make for a striking visual on the side of the general clutter of the graffiti- and street art-bombed Jay Maisel Building at the corner of Spring Street and the Bowery.
Design … Man + Woman Symbols at Ij Kantine Amsterdam
The international symbols for man and woman often used on signage for restrooms at airports, museums, restaurants and public places, etc., throughout the world are sometimes reinterpreted by designers. We noticed a lot of variations on the symbols at various places in Amsterdam on our recent visit there. Pictured here are the even more minimalist and pared down and arm-less versions of these symbols used in signage at Ij Kantine, a massive, beautifully designed restaurant and bar in Amsterdam’s northside across the Ij River. We’ll post images of the restaurant in a separate post soon.
French Street Artist “Invader” Re-Invades NYC
French street art suprstar Invader (a.k.a., Space Invader) is back in New York City, re-invading the Lower East Side where he’s been putting up some new mosaic artworks the past few days. We spotted this fresh New York-themed “Big Apple” Space Invader piece on a tenement building, above the entrance to the bar Marshall Stack, at the northwest corner of Allen and Rivington streets in the LES. Invader’s visit to NYC coincides with the screening of his new film “Art4Space” and comes on the heels of British street art phenom Banksy’s month-long residency in the city.
Empire State Building at Twilight
The Empire State Building in New York City as seen at twilight on a recent evening from the rooftop of an artists’ studio in Chelsea. We love that moment when the lights first come on atop this most iconic of New York skyscrapers, especially when the lights are just plain white and it’s still kind of bright outside. (We could live without the building’s other array of garish symbolic and seasonal colors.)
Space Invader in New York
Invader (a.k.a., Space Invader), the French international super-duper street-art star, put up another of his iconic mosaics on the Bowery in NoHo, in downtown New York City. We just noticed this work, but it looks slightly worn already, like it’s been around for awhile. And we’re wondering — if it has been around for a while — how we missed it, since we walk or ride by this spot a couple of times a week.
Japanese Street Art Logo … Tokyo
This graphic on a wall in Shibuya, in Tokyo, looks and feels like a piece of street art and could have been created by stencil, paint-print, heat transfer or painted by hand. It may be graphical logo for a restaurant or company brand mark. Whatever it is, we think it’s frackin’ awesome. The image itself looks like a super-simplified rendering of a mythological Buddha-like character from Japanese historical iconography.
(Hey readers! If you can identify what this is, send us an email.)
Design Rework of “Ampel Man” Symbol … Berlin
The “Ampel Man” symbol is a beloved design artifact from the days of the former Communist East Germany and the country’s transportation infrastructure. Ampel Man or Ampelmannchen, in German, was the hat-wearing icon used in traffic lights at pedestrian street crossings in the GDR.
In spite of German re-unification, the symbol has endured throughout parts of the former East Germany and can be found throughout East Berlin. The icon has been riffed on and subject of design appropriation often, as befits such a well-established symbol. We recently spotted this use of the symbol on the men’s washroom door in a Berlin building, where Ampel Man sits on a toilet.
