Houston-Bowery Murals Mix Public Commissions and Subversive Artistry

The intersection of Houston Street and the Bowery in New York City has changed dramatically since Keith Haring and Juan Dubose composed their radiant, day-glow mural on the North East corner in the summer of 1982. As Haring recalled in 1989:

“It was pretty disgusting, rat infested, almost a garbage dump, and an eyesore in a neighborhood where an eyesore wasn’t a problem. [It] was a desolate area to begin with, so we decided that we didn’t have to ask permission because the wall was covered with garbage and we thought that if we cleaned up the garbage then no one was going to ask us whether we had permission to paint it.”

Today by contrast, the area is quite clean, home to urban gentry; the vacant, and decaying buildings of the Lower East Side are now world-class luxury apartment buildings, and five-star hotels. This May the building (home to a Whole Foods Market as well as a Y and apartments that rent from $3,000 to $6,000 per month) adjacent to the site of Haring’s 1982 mural sold for nearly $400 million.

During the 1970s and 80s, the wall on the North East corner of Houston and Bowery was an irresistible canvas for illicit graffiti writers, a “highly contentious graf spot,” according to Luna Park because of its high visibility along a heavily travelled thoroughfare. In 1984 developer and real-estate mogul Tony Goldman acquired the site along with other properties in the area, which he intended to renovate and convert into residential lofts, replicating the gentrification of SoHo and TriBeCa in the 1970s. Goldman has since used the wall to present top contemporary artists from around the world; the inaugural mural was a reproduction of Keith Haring’s 1982 mural, which was completed in 2008 on the artist’s fiftieth birthday. The wall is now a revolving public art installation, which Goldman Properties hopes will spearhead “many a renaissance, forwarding movements of its own accord.”

“While we’re enjoying these murals it’s important to keep in mind their hidden subtext,” historian Jeremiah Moss tell us; that is their “transformative role in the Bowery’s conversion from Skid Row to intentionally created ‘art district’ to high-end consumer playground.” It is true that the art world has historically been a catalyst of urban gentrification, and public art, perhaps more subtly than high-end art galleries, has contributed to this process; but as we’ve seen with the case of the Mission School, public art can critique inequitable urban change as well. While the Houston and Bowery murals are legal and commissioned art works, artists have used this space to produce art imbued with radical political and social messages drawing from the site’s history as an illegal graffiti magnet.

Shepard Fairey, courtesy of Matthew Kraus via Flickr

Produced in the spring of 2010, Shepard Fairey’s May Day Mural is one of the most explicitly political pieces in the history of Houston and Bowery. Fairey, who is famous for his Obey Giant  anti-establishment campaign, which includes graffiti posters, stickers, and traditional tags, began his street art career in Lower Manhattan during the 1990s. “Haring…was a big inspiration for me,” said Fairey remembering his days tagging in TriBeCa, SoHo, and Bowery, “I’ve done illegal work on this little nook around the corner from this wall.” From the beginning, illegality has been an essential element of Fairey’s work, but the commission on Houston and Bowery has enabled him to expand the scope of his art, from stickers, posters, and tags to the entire wall of a building; “I could never do a wall this size illegally, its impossible.” The mural is nonetheless poignantly political, expressing the artist’s “frustration with the two party [political] system” in America, economic and social equality, as well as his concerns for global warming. It reflects “what’s going on politically,” Fairey said in an interview with Wooster Collective, about “how we’re reshaping America into what we want, or how other forces are shaping it into something we don’t want.”

In August 2010, following Fairey directly, Goldman Properties commissioned Barry McGee, the Mission School artist also known by his graffiti tag “Twist,” to decorate the Houston Bowery wall. Like Fairey, McGee’s mural was political, reproducing the tags of historic graffiti writers, many of whom, like “the Wiz” and Dash Snow “Sace,” produced their graffiti illegally on New York City subway trains during the 1970s and 80s. McGee’s homage to the history of political graffiti venerates the heroes — and heroines — of the street art world through a raw, traditional tag aesthetic, which McGee considers more visually abrasive, and thereby more political than most pictorial street art today.

Courtesy of Matthew Kraus via Flickr

In May 2014, Fernando Carlo, known by his tag “COPE2,” began a mural that celebrated the history of graffiti much like McGee’s work, but with Wildstyle tags and bubble letters, rather than stripped signatures, recalling a particular style of graffiti in New York during the late 1970s when it was indeed “wild.” The Houston and Bowery location is the “best wall in New York City. Most walls are ruined now,” said COPE2, perhaps commenting on the destruction of 5 Pointz this last year. COPE2’s mural also features a tag from INDIE 184, one of the few female graffiti artists in a historically male-dominated subculture.

COPE2 courtesy of Ryan Purcell

In all, the Houston-Bowery murals demonstrate how legal, commissioned public art can be subversive, ironically critiquing their own role in the process of urban gentrification. The value for political artists in such a position, however, is the added financial support behind their art, i.e. a commission from a wealthy investor like Goldman Properties, as well the immense exposure the artist, and idea in the art gain from being in a highly visible, heavily travelled intersection of New York City. “It’s not only a tribute to Haring and others being brave enough to push against the traditions of the art world and create a new valid form of expression,” said Grand Life Magazine, “but it’s continuing on an important local tradition that does enhance the neighborhood. The only glaring difference is that the artists haven’t had to mask their identities and work stealthily at night, afraid to be arrested for their vision.”

While the definition of “enhance” in this instance is contestable — as Houston and Bowery is an exclusive home of urban gentry — the murals have amplified the voices of political artists who continue to fight for social equality through subversive art.

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Ryan D. Purcell (@RyanDPurcell) holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York.

Featured image courtesy of [Matthew Kraus via Flickr] 

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.