An Upper Eastside Home with Halloween Decoration

An Upper Eastside Home with Halloween decoration, photo taken October 25, 2009.

SHEPARD FAIREY Live Art Installation Outside Levi's Times Square Commemorating "Obey x Levi's"

Shepard Fairey

Shepard Fairey, the street artist behind the President Obama "Hope" picture, created a live art installation in front of the Levi's Store in Times Square earlier this evening. The unveiling of the new work of public art commemorated the launch of the new Obey x Levi's collection of street inspired styles for men. Poster signing also followed after the installation. I captured these images of Mr. Fairey during the live art installation.

Frank Shepard Fairey (born February 15, 1970 in Charleston, South Carolina) is a contemporary artist, graphic designer and illustrator who emerged from the skateboarding scene and became known initially for his "André the Giant Has a Posse" sticker campaign. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston calls him one of today's best known and most influential street artists. Mr. Fairey's portrait of President Barack Obama has been acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. The large-scale, mixed media stenciled collage was the central portrait image for the Obama campaign. His technique for adapting borrowed imagery for this piece was controversial and has been criticized by many. During the Levi's event in Times Square, Mr. Fairey was treated like a rock star by his admirers, autograph seekers and press photographers.

Mark Beard's Art at the Abercrombie and Fitch Fifth Avenue Flagship Store

The mural of artist MARK BEARD is the centerpiece of the interior of the Abercrombie and Fitch Flagship Store on Fifth Avenue. Above are some portions of the artwork on the wall and ceiling of the popular store. Mr. Beard is a New York City based American artist.

Mark Beard, born in 1956 in Salt Lake city, now lives in New York, His works are in museum collections, including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the Atheneum; the Whitney, Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Princeton, Harvard, and Yale Universities; Graphische Sammlung, Munich, and others worldwide, as well as more than 100 private collections. A visit to Mark’s studio is like discovering Michelangelo’s lair: oil paintings layer the walls, lifedrawings litter the table at the feet of heroic bronzes; ceramics, architectural maquettes are everywhere; virtuosity, in every medium. And then it gets even more interesting.
 Mark’s talent is so overflowing that, years ago, he needed to channel himself into alter egos. Mark invented the persona of “Bruce Sargeant,” an imagined English artist, contemporary of E. M. Forster, Rupert Brooke, and John Sloan. Mark also created Bruce Sargeant’s teacher, Hippolyte-Alexandre Michallon, a 19th-century French Academist. Michallon also taught Edith Thayer Cromwell, an American avant-gardeist; and Brechtolt Steeruwitz, the German Expressionist, a most complex personality. The style of each of these artists is individual, brilliant and true.
 Mark Beard is unprecedented, but not singular. Accomplished in every medium, he is more than a complete artist—he is at least five. (A sixth is now emerging as well.)

Design USA at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

On exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum from through April 4, 2010 is Design USA featuring the accomplishments of the winners honored during the first ten years of the prestigious National Design Awards. The exhibition includes outstanding contemporary works in American architecture, landscape design, interior design, product design, communication design, corporate design, interaction design, and fashion. The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum is located along the Museum Mile at 91st Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

Marble Head of a Greek General and other Marble Heads

The photo on top is that of a marble head of a Greek General, a copy of a Greek bronze statue of the mid-4th century, B.C., on exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Greek and Roman Galleries. This powerful portrayal of a man of action belongs to a type popular in Roman times. One suggestion for his identity is the strategos (general) Phokion, pupil of Plato and one of the foremost Athenian statesmen of the fourth century B.C., but there is little evidence to support that theory. The sculptures at the bottom are marble head, which are head portraits of real individuals from the same period. I made these images during my visit to the Metropolitan Museum earlier this afternoon to view the exhibit of the Vermeer paintings.

Zombiecon 2009: Zombies Invade Bloomingdale's

It's not even Halloween and the zombies roamed the streets of Manhattan today. ZombieCon is the annual, loosely organized parade of the slobbering undead, the bloody, and the battered, combining the things that many people in the city love - street theater, costume and make-up, and Halloween parties. The zombies assembled at The Carriage on 59th Street (off 3rd Avenue), invaded Bloomingdale's, and horrified other parts of Manhattan.