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Early Addition
Street artist Dan Witz has some entertaining pieces around town, mostly on condo walls in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side. Imagine buying the luxury condo of your dreams only to discover one of these alarming scenarios. Witz explains his series, Ugly New Buildings:
In the past few years much of my neighborhood in Brooklyn has been torn down to make way for luxury housing. For better or worse it's a whole new street-scape out here. Personally, I can't say I like the new modern architecture very much, it's so arrogantly disconnected with the neighborhood that it's just plain bizarre. I miss the crooked old frame houses and grungy bodegas. Sometimes I wonder about the people who lived their lives here and were forced to move. I realize that to them a street artist like me is probably part of the problem, but still I wanted them to know someone misses them.
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I would be interested to know where Mr Witz grew up. I was born and raised in Manhattan and currently live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and actually rent an apartment in a building he has decorated. I very much enjoy the piece.
That being said, if you look into the not too distant past of this very neighborhood, you will find a steady stream of different waves of immigrants from many areas of the world (where I live in South Williamsburg was very Irish and Eastern European 100 years ago).
Imagine if we all had to live in the first buildings that were ever built on this land after white settlers arrived?
Personally, I can't say I like the new modern architecture very much, it's so arrogantly disconnected with the neighborhood that it's just plain bizarre
So because he doesn't like them, he arrogantly "decorates" them the way he wants. Drop dead, Witz. I want to see a real-life version of an old comic strip. Can't remember what strip it was. A graffiti writer has almost finished his spray-painting on a wall. It says something like "The end is nea..." The word trails off because he's lying dead on the ground with a knife in his back.
And it's extremely disappointing to see Jen Carlson glamorizing vandalism yet again.
What is the medium?
color copied paper & wheatpaste?
ya what is the medium? sculpture or photograph?
Why are there all these articles on Gothamist promoting vandalism and graffiti? It's really sickening.
SimonLok, Spiritof76,
We get it. You are losers.
Go cry where someone cares.
A piece of ART! An articulate expression yet simple and a new thing for the eye...
I wish I could d something like that in my own country.
A piece of ART! An articulate expression yet simple and a new thing for the eye...
I wish I could d something like that in my own country.
Personally, I'd draw a line between this and some of the other shit Carlson has glamorized. It's somewhat clever, appealing to look at, took some skill to produce, and is probably not that expensive to remove. Witz's obsession with condos is somewhat twatty but not a huge problem.
It's too bad that Carlson & Dobkin cannot distinguish between this and a total disgrace like the fire extinguisher guy, or get over their obsession with "street art" and cover some real art.
i agree w bklynd 100%
I don't think Jen Carlson's heart is really into this. She's just covering it because Jake doesn't want to take the heat here anymore and she has to do whatever the boss says. Jake still runs his streetsy.com site, "All graffiti, all the time."
explain to me what real art is? crap that is meant to be hung on sanctioned gallery walls? Approved by critics? The people that hang int he galleries DO NOT have insight into what's happening, they enjoy throwing parties, and doing interviews for the nytimes. I don't like all street art or graffiti pieces, but a lot of the good public art comments on the streets.
It's really sad these pieces garned such angry comments. Why does this even bother you @ all, and why all the hostility? They are not even permanent. Are you threatened by people who create something that's even mildly entertaining and put it out there, and thereby create a conversation piece?
Worried you'll never be a conversation piece, just someone motoring through your boring life? Not impacting anyone or anything?
Keep your wits about you, Dan Witz. ;)There are a lot of uncreative assholes out there...and they are apparently quite adamant about expressing this!
You don't see us creative types demanding that you all quit being so boring and wishing you would do something interesting, clever and entertaining YOURSELF, do you??
Dan Witz is amazing! This is what street art should be.