DRAWING LIFE by fred hatt

New York City is the capital of the advertising business in North America so it is to be expected that commercial imagery is plastered everywhere you look.  The whole city has attention deficit disorder and all kinds of bids for attention have to be extravagant to be noticed at all.  Some of the faces and bodies on the sides of buildings would make King Kong look petite.  This post is a collection of such giants, all taken during the last decade during my daily travels about the city.  On this first one, the face alone is ten stories tall!

Computer-printed vinyl banner or wrap technology is the main way it’s done in our era, but enormous figures on walls have been a part of the New York streetscape for a long time, as evidenced by this 1960’s smoking playboy, brought to light when a building that had been covering him for decades was demolished:

That one’s painted directly on the brick wall, by painters dangling from the side of the building like window washers.  The classic craft of the billboard painter is rare now but not gone.  Hand-painted giants are still to be seen in New York:

Here a hand-painted billboard is seen through a fence upon which tiles have been hung in a memorial for the World Trade Center tragedy:

It always seems to me that a huge proportion of these oversized wall images are sexually provocative beautiful people, but maybe those are just the ones I notice.  Here’s Hilary Swank swooning like Bernini’s St. Teresa:

Male sex gods are always seen towering over this new nightlife area in a part of town that used to be devoted to wholesaling meat.  Well, I guess it still is:

And what sells shoes better than foot fetishism on a Brobdingnagian scale:

I think some of it is just to shock the country people that come to the city as tourists:

But surely if you want to cover up an ugly remodeling job on a fancy shopping street, a near-nude hottie will do the trick:

This example of the same is surely sexual, but what the heck is going on here?

There’s something eerie about colossal figures seen looming behind trees.  Here are three lovely examples:

The legendary Plaza Hotel is all class, so they shielded their condo conversion work with an elegant and demure giant billboard.  Sadly, this development suffered the same fate as most of the other bubble-borne building projects of the late zeroes:

Huge still images are so widespread in the city that more advertisers are investing in monster-sized video screens.  This one reminds me, a bit creepily, that we are all under constant surveillance:

But when I’m stuck in automotive gridlock, a giant cat face cheers me up a bit!

For those of us who lived in New York City, the 11th of September, 2001 was a day of shock and loss, but the years following that day have been a slow-motion tragedy of squandered opportunities and betrayed values.  Here’s the story of the first five years following the attacks, told through pictures of signs and displays that I saw in my everyday urban peregrinations, in chronological order.

The flyer on the left reads:  “Arrest warmonger Bush!  A true genocidal Nuremberg criminal.”   The one on the right reads: “I’m digging my grave now, but SOON it will be YOUR turn.  War: Get used to it.  A message from the Ministry of Homeland Security.”

The caption on the image on the right says: “This will be our response to violence: To make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.  -Leonard Bernstein”

The caption on the flag reads: “To those we lost and their families, our prayers; to those who helped, our love; to those responsible, our wrath.”

The poster says: “Wanted Dead or Alive: Osama bin Laden, for mass murder in New York City.”

The poster on the trash receptacle reads: “If you see something, say something.  Be suspicious of anything unattended.  Tell a police officer, a Times Square Alliance employee, or call 1-888-NYC-SAFE.”

The poster says “George Fernandez.  His nickname was Boo.  Not just a statistic.”

The flyer says: “Seeking Information Alert.  These individuals are being sought in connection with possible terrorists threats against the United States.  Contact Information:  If you have any information concerning these individuals, please contact the local FBI office or the nearest American Embassy or Consulate.”

The city is a forest of signs, words and pictures vying for attention.  Most of them are highly transient, quickly posted over, vandalized or damaged.  They’re usually more interesting in their ruined state.

The cluster of pasted bills above is an example of a recent trend in advertising of using images that are eye-catching without any clear relationship to the product being sold.  Maybe the one above is about sweat socks, as those are the boring element juxtaposed with the iridescent butterflies and the child grotesque, but I really don’t know for sure.  I do think the weathering and paint stains absolutely enhance the collage.

There is something about the ruined signs that suggests that no voice can prevail and no rule can overcome the power of entropy:

A bulletin board that has been cleaned retains fragments of all the messages it has borne:

Some signs have been up for so long those responsible for them have long ago stopped noticing that they have deteriorated to the point of illegibility:

This one was on a Polish candy store in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.  Isn’t that candy irresistible?:

Perhaps you’d prefer a flavored Italian ice?:

A sticker on a glass door is subject to the effects of the sun:

Rust has an almost camouflaging effect on this sign:

Layers of peeling paint blunt the danger, or at least the sign:

And this sign has fallen off the wall, leaving an intriguing calligraphy in dried glue:

If you love decay and erosion and ruined things, as I do, this mat will make you feel very welcome:

Here’s a fluorescent backlit poster, starting to go to seed in January:

And the same sign six months later, in a magnificent state of deterioration:

Some classic signs are worn down in a way that’s perfect.  This sign matches the building, and would hardly be improved by being spruced up:

Destroyed words and letters can be an aesthetic demonstration that “Time is an artist”.  Wrecked pictures of people have a more shocking effect:

They also tend to invite tampering in a way that verbal signs don’t:

A great smile makes you want to buy what’s for sale.  This one makes me want to run out and gather up some void!: