The Toxic Side of Being, Literally, Green

Via the NYT, Design – The Toxic Side of Being, Literally, Green re-published, or re-presented, or whatever from the International Herald Tribune. I had no idea that ‘greenwashing’ (as a term) had been around for so long—almost 25 years—and was interested to read of the history of green pigments and green in culture. Good times. Also, …

Robbo vs. Banksy: Graffiti FTW!!!1!

Graffiti Artist Robbo Took the Road – WSJ.com. I don’t have any idea how long this will be available for free, but it’s up as of today, so I hope it will remain freely available in perpetuity. Here’s the nutshell: Banksy dissed a ~25 year old ROBBO INC. piece, and now ROBBO has come out …

Keith Haring at Deitch Projects

From “Bad Boys of Art at Manhattan Galleries,” by Roberta Smith, 11 February, 2010: The 1980s certainly had no shortage of genuinely hopeless bad boys from both sides of the Atlantic, but Keith Haring 1958-1990 deviated from the norm by having something close to a heart of gold. It always seemed emblematic that his subway …

Amazon, “Name Tagging” and “today’s street art culture”

From time to time, Amazon sends me email advertisements for books and whatnot based on other stuff I’ve purchased from them. From my view, this is an occasionally helpful—if often useless and slightly annoying—and sometimes amusing ‘service,’ and I’ve actually purchased maybe .001% of the books that have been advertised to me in this way. …

Guerilla Marketing

In a previous post, I briefly mentioned an advertising phenomenon known as ‘Guerilla Marketing.’ It occurs to me that this concept might prove useful as this examination of graffiti continues. In 2005, Sony hired TATS Cru to design and carry out an advertising campaign in major cities throughout the United States. Stencil graffiti and wheat-pastes …