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      Beyond Outlaw: New Paths for Aging Taggers

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      At Lehmann Maupin, exhibitions of new work pushing the form of street art forward, from San Francisco’s Barry McGee and Osgemeos, the Brazilian artists he inspired.Street art is in a funny place. More than 50 years since its invention as the urgent, unruly markings of kids scrawling their names on walls and the flanks of subway cars, it has evolved into a worldwide language and commercial behemoth — from a position outside the mainstream to one in its center. Its progenitors, having reached late middle age, are still searching for ways to push the form forward, even if that way moves beyond its improvisatory and outlaw mode into something tidier and more well mannered.Two exhibitions of new work by the artists Osgemeos and Barry McGee at the Lehmann Maupin gallery in Manhattan illustrate divergent paths for the aging tagger. Neither represents a significant departure for either artist so much as retrenchments of their well-defined practices, honed for gallery consumption over the last 30 years. But familiarity can be instructive, a map for longevity over novelty. Their work suggests the street is more of a mind-set than a medium.Their presentations here are linked, but not by style, which could scarcely be more different. Osgemeos (Portuguese for “the twins”) — the Brazilian identical twin brothers Otávio and Gustavo Pandolfo — are enamored with the nascent hip-hop culture of late 1970s New York City: style writing, break dancing and D.J.-ing, which the ’80s had floated down to South America. The brothers began making work as teenagers, bombing fat letters that chugged along like a rail car around their native São Paulo.Eventually they expanded into baroque murals featuring cartoony humanoid figures rendered in an obnoxiously lurid palette that looked more like a hallucinatory children’s television show than anything happening on the street. (Even now, it’s easy to imagine their characters launching into an extended reverie on words that start with the letter A, say, or listening intently as an adult patiently explains the concept of anxiety.)Osgemeos, “Cultivando os Sonhos (Cultivating Dreams),” 2023, mixed media on MDF Board.via Osgemeos and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and LondonOsgemeos, “A Vênus (The Venus),” 2023, mixed media on MDF board with sequinsvia Osgemeos and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and LondonMcGee, about eight years older at 58, is a product of San Francisco’s countercultural tendencies. He came to tagging as a reclamation of public space from the incursion of commercialism, and as an empathetic witness to those whom that commercialism dispossessed; his work is often punctuated by a slumped caricature with sagging eyes and defeated air.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Osgemeos Rocked Brazil. Can the Graffiti Twins Take the U.S., Too?

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      Their street murals, monumental sculptures, intricate drawings and vivid paintings pop up at Lehmann Maupin gallery on the eve of their Hirshhorn debut.Just inside the door to the studio of the Brazilian artists Osgemeos is a self-portrait.Spray painted onto the concrete wall of the old metal workshop’s entryway, the image shows the identical twins Otávio and Gustavo Pandolfo, 50, standing next to each other, hands at their sides and looking forward. They’re wearing colorful printed clothing, bags slung over their shoulders and baseball caps propped on their heads.Their skin is the same shade of yellow as the other characters they’re known for throughout their art, a nod to the fact that they, too, might be from Tritrez, the fantastical world they explore in their graffiti-style murals, monumental sculptures, intricate drawings and vivid paintings that have for more than three decades rocked their native Brazil.The self-portrait is just a snippet of what’s to come after passing through a small doorway at the back of the room that leads to a work space that allows the twins to create on an enormous scale. Here, preparations are underway for “Endless Story,” their first museum survey of work in the United States. The full-floor presentation will run at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum, in Washington, D.C., from Sept. 29 to Aug. 3, 2025, using the circular museum and its outside gardens to showcase some 1,000 artworks, photographs and archival materials.One of the brothers’ imposing sculptures, wrapped in black plastic so it can be shipped for the exhibition, hangs from chains on the sweeping ceiling and another is tucked away in a corner, a smidgen of what looks like a subway car visible.Under the studio’s mezzanine sits a model of the Hirshhorn, miniature versions of paintings and a photo of the pair as teenage B-boys placed on tiny gallery walls as the brothers decide where they should go. Working with Marina Isgro, the curator, has been a massive undertaking — not only do the artists have to select pieces they’ve done since art became their profession, but they also have to comb through the thousands of drawings their mother saved that they did as boys. Some depict sketches of cars and fire trucks, while others are an attempt to explain to their parents the importance of Tritrez to their journey.That magical world is also the focus of a solo exhibition at Lehmann Maupin gallery in New York. “Cultivating Dreams,” their sixth solo show with the gallery, runs through Aug. 16 and features 13 new paintings and an immersive installation, taking visitors through Tritrez, a dreamworld they first started drawing when they were just five years old.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What’s a Banksy Museum Without Banksy?

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      Work by the anonymous street artist is hard to find. At a museum devoted to him, it’s even harder.To enter the Banksy Museum, which opened this month above a Bank of America on the lower lip of SoHo, a visitor must wade through the thicket of vendors crowding Canal Street with bootleg Apple products and almost-convincing Prada handbags splayed out on blankets.It’s a fitting approach. The Banksy Museum does not own or display any actual Banksys but rather 167 decent-enough reproductions of them, life-size murals and paintings on panels treated to look like exterior walls that stretch through an exhibition space, designed to resemble the street.The Canal Street entrance to the Banksy Museum, amid gift stores and street vendors.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesThat these replicas of Banksy’s oeuvre since the late 1990s are more or less faithful to their source material. That has less to do with the competence of the anonymous artists who executed them than it does with the simplicity of Banksy’s aesthetic: photo-derived stencil work, more about social commentary than technical proficiency. A Banksy work does not astound with technique or formal innovation, nor is it meant to. Designed to be quickly made and quicker understood, they rely on easy visual gags that don’t always amount to much, all punchline and no windup (a man walking a Keith Haring dog; riot police and protesters having a pillow fight; a boy catching snow on his tongue that’s actually ash from a dumpster fire). His early political satire, like Winston Churchill with a mohawk and teddy bears lobbing Molotov cocktails, had all the profundity of a dorm room poster, a shallow populism that explains his trajectory — populism being a sure route toward cultural phenomenon.The world’s most famous street artist who prefers to work in the shadows, Banksy has traveled that route since the mid-2000s, inspiring a singular devotion. The appearance of a new work is heralded as a cultural event, its removal often met with protests. Few other artists are treated as prophet and savior, and fewer still who insist on a complete allergy to public life. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Patti Astor, Fun Gallery Co-Founder, Dies at 74

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      She was a founder of the Fun Gallery, which staged early shows by Keith Haring and other artists who defined the city’s downtown scene in the 1980s.Patti Astor, the downtown Manhattan “It” girl, indie film star and co-founder of Fun Gallery, the scruffy East Village storefront space that in the early 1980s nurtured young graffiti artists like Futura2000, Zephyr, Lee Quinones, Lady Pink and Fab 5 Freddy, as well as showcasing artists like Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat, died on April 9 at her home in Hermosa Beach, Calif. She was 74.Her death was confirmed by Richard Roth, a friend. No cause was given.With her platinum hair, raspy voice and glamorous ’50s-style dresses, Ms. Astor was a formidable presence among the music, film and art makers who gathered at the Mudd Club in TriBeCa. In the summer of 1981, one of her nightclub buddies, Bill Stelling, told her that he had rented a small storefront on East 11th Street with the thought of turning it into a gallery. Did she know any artists?“Yeah,” she said, “I know a few.”The place was just eight by 25 feet, and the idea was to make a gallery by artists, for artists. They had no money and no art experience, but they had a lot of creative friends.The first show there was an exhibition of pencil drawings by Steven Kramer, Ms. Astor’s husband at the time; all 20 of the pieces sold, at $50 each, which seemed like a promising beginning. Mr. Scharf, who had already turned all of the appliances at Ms. Astor’s home into his signature outer-space critters, was offered the next show. He was also given the opportunity to name the place for its duration.“My stuff was fun, so fun seemed like a good name,” Mr. Scharf said in a phone interview.Fred Brathwaite, otherwise known as Fab 5 Freddy, was show No. 3, and his plan was to name the place the Serious Gallery. But by then Ms. Astor had bought stationery stamped “Fun” and had run out of money. Also, as she often said, “the name was so stupid it stuck.”Ms. Astor in 1983 in the backyard of Fun Gallery in the East Village during the opening of a show. Fun Gallery openings were mobbed, as uptown dealers and collectors mixed with D.J.s and aspiring teenage graffiti artists.Allan Tannenbaum/Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As Graffiti Moves From Eyesore to Amenity, Landlords Try to Cash In

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      Julian Phethean’s first canvas in London was a shed in his backyard where he covered the walls with bold lettering in spray paint. When he moved his art to the city’s streets in the 1980s, it was largely unwelcome — and he was even arrested a few times.“We had nowhere to practice,” he said. “It was just seen as vandalism.”These days, the canvases come to Mr. Phethean, better known as the muralist Mr Cenz. Recent facades, which he shares with his sizable following, have included an abstract mural on a Tesla showroom and a portrait of Biggie Smalls, sponsored by Pepsi Max.“I never would have envisioned that I’d be able to do it for a living,” he said.Landlords wanting to attract young professionals once scrubbed off the rebellious scrawls. That was before graffiti moved from countercultural to mainstream. Now building owners are willing to pay for it.From Berlin to London to Miami, the wider acceptance of graffiti has attracted developers looking to expand into trendy areas, companies wanting to relocate to hipper neighborhoods and brands seeking creative ways to advertise their products.But that attention to once overlooked neighborhoods has pushed up rents, leaving artists, fans and local officials with a quandary: What happens after the street art that brought character becomes commodified?Street art surrounding the Tea Building, a former tea-packing plant in London’s Shoreditch neighborhood.Sam Bush for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Las torres de lujo abandonadas que el grafiti dejó al descubierto

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      En el corazón de Los Ángeles, los edificios fueron un fracaso financiero que mucha gente había ignorado, hasta que los artistas urbanos pintaron sus ventanas.Un trío de relucientes rascacielos fue diseñado para albergar departamentos de lujo, un hotel cinco estrellas y una galería al aire libre con negocios minoristas y restaurantes. Las instalaciones incluirían salas de proyección privadas, un parque de casi una hectárea, servicios de aseo para mascotas y una piscina en la azotea. Un entrenador físico de celebridades ayudaría a crear un estilo de vida saludable para los residentes.El proyecto llevaba por nombre Oceanwide Plaza, y su director ejecutivo declaró que iba a “redefinir el paisaje urbano de Los Ángeles”. Un ejecutivo de la firma de diseño dijo que crearía “un vibrante paisaje urbano”. El sitio web aseguraba que sería un lugar de “momentos inesperados y extraordinarios”.Hay quienes dirían que todas estas afirmaciones resultaron ser ciertas, pero no de la manera en que se imaginó originalmente.El financiamiento para el proyecto se evaporó al poco tiempo. Las torres se erigieron, pero no se terminaron y quedaron vacías. Plagada de problemas financieros y legales, la plaza se quedó en un limbo silencioso durante cinco años.Hasta que, hace poco, una comunidad clandestina la convirtió en un inesperado centro de atención.Ahora, esos rascacielos se han convertido en un símbolo de reputación callejera, “bombardeados” con las obras de decenas de escritores y artistas del grafiti. Sus alias cubren ventanas que se elevan a más de 40 pisos y se ven desde las autopistas cercanas.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      These Downtown Los Angeles Towers Became a Graffiti Skyline

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      Skyscrapers in the heart of Los Angeles were a financial failure that many people had ignored — until graffiti artists tagged their windows.It was a billion-dollar aspiration meant to transform a neighborhood.A trio of shimmering skyscrapers would feature luxury condos, a five-star hotel and an open-air galleria with retailers and restaurants. Among the amenities: private screening rooms, a two-acre park, pet grooming services and a rooftop pool. A celebrity fitness trainer would help curate a wellness lifestyle for residents.The vision was called Oceanwide Plaza, and the chief executive said it would “redefine the Los Angeles skyline.” An executive for the design firm said it would create “a vibrant streetscape.” The website said it would be a place of “rare and unexpected moments.”All these statements, some would say, proved to be true. Just not in the way originally imagined.Funding for the venture quickly evaporated. The towers went up but were unfinished and empty. Plagued by financial and legal issues, the plaza was in a quiet limbo for five years.Until, recently, an underground community pulled it into an unforeseen spotlight.Now those skyscrapers have become a symbol of street swagger, “bombed” with the work of dozens of graffiti writers and artists. Their aliases cover windows that rise more than 40 stories, visible from the nearby highways.“Everybody’s talking about it, of course,” said Ceet Fouad, a French graffiti artist based in Hong Kong, known for his commissioned murals featuring cartoon chickens. “We said it’s amazing what’s happened — we dream to have a place like this. In the middle of Los Angeles? It’s the best promotion you can have.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      L.A. Skyscrapers Covered in Graffiti

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      The graffiti has brought attention to the empty buildings, which have been abandoned since 2019 and are across from the venue where the Grammy Awards will be hosted on Sunday.More than a dozen people broke into the Oceanwide Plaza skyscraper development in Los Angeles, covering the windows of the glossy, unfinished buildings with spray-painted colorful block letters that read, “Crave,” “Dank” and “Amen,” among other phrases, the police said on Thursday.The spray-painters made their way up multiple floors in the 40-story buildings, which were once set to be the tallest residential towers in the city, according to Forbes. It was not immediately clear how long the people were inside the buildings, or how they had entered, but the police were called about the graffiti on Tuesday.The buildings, which have been unoccupied since 2019, are across from Crypto.com Arena at L.A. Live, where the Grammy Awards are set to take place on Sunday.The Oceanwide Plaza project was intended to be a mixed-use space with retail shops, a hotel and luxury apartments, but the project was halted in 2019 after the developer, Oceanwide Holdings, ran out of money, The Los Angeles Times reported.The graffiti has only emphasized the unfinished buildings, which critics say are an eyesore and a source of frustration for many residents.Kevin de León, a member of the Los Angeles City Council, called on the owners of the buildings to do something about the vacant property.“The city of L.A. has already served the property owners in order to comply with a deadline instructing them to fulfill their responsibilities,” Mr. de León said during a news conference on Friday morning. He could not be reached for comment on Saturday.Stefano Bloch, a cultural geographer, a professor at the University of Arizona and a former graffiti artist, said the graffiti had helped draw attention to the incomplete project, while noting that the intruders did still break the law.“This is people taking it upon themselves to use a space that in many ways was abandoned by people with money and power,” said Mr. Bloch, who is a Los Angeles native.The police said that more than a dozen people had been involved in the graffiti incident. All but two had fled before officers arrived, the police said, adding that two men were cited for trespassing and then released.Those responsible for the graffiti might not face the same harsh legal repercussions as in the past, Mr. Bloch said. Decades ago, graffiti artists faced prison sentences, but now they are more likely to be fined for vandalism and trespassing, he said.“In the 1990s, there was this moral panic about graffiti being linked to gangs, but times have changed,” Mr. Bloch said. “Even if people don’t like it — and they’re entitled not to like it — they understand that graffiti is not connected to violence.” More