An artist adds some pounds to the cereal icon, in an attempt to draw attention to the unhealthy breakfast treat. more ›

For the holiday season, Barney's harnessed the imagination of Lady Gaga for their seasonal window displays, but now "Victorian Punk" artist and icon Colette is calling her out for stealing (it wouldn't be the first time?). more ›

Hey, artists! Can't afford that $21 million loft in Soho? That's okay—you can get FREE studio space from the city! The only catch? Your art has to involve old people. more ›

Famed painter Joseph J. Stefanelli, one of the New York School Abstract Expressionist artists, has disappeared after dropping his wife off at NYU Medical Center, authorities say. The 90-year-old suffers from dementia and wandered off near the East 30th Street hospital, where his wife was receiving treatment. This occurred yesterday, and he's still nowhere to be found; according to the NY Post, police don't suspect foul play. more ›

Not to point fingers, but after six-year-old Natalie Shea was busted for chalking up a sidewalk back in 2007, it's been rough going for the rest of the city's chalk artists. The (adult) chalk artist Ellis Gallagher has been arrested three times since then, and now he's fighting back by bringing the NYPD to court. All summonses have been dismissed, but he's now suing the city for $1 million as a punishment to the force that forced him behind bars for a legal art form, according to the Brooklyn Paper. more ›

On July 17th artist Julie Torres was taken in by Brooklyn's Finest for painting on her own paper, that was taped up at North 11th Street and Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg. Plainclothes cops approached her on that afternoon and arrested her for graffiti, despite the fact she was painting a watercolor on her own store-bought paper that was only temporarily taped to a wall. The entire story is over at Hyperallergic, where they note that as Torres was being taken away by the cops, she asked if she could take her paintings with her because they were "her livelihood. She says the undercover cops started to laugh at her. 'You sell these, these are art? You’re a funny girl.'” more ›

A Central Park artist near East Drive and 5th Avenue attacked another artist with a folding chair earlier this week, reports the Post. Artist Xiongjie Zhao allegedly attacked a 35-year-old colleague over who would draw a portrait of a customer. The victim got in one punch before Zhao picked up a metal folding chair and repeatedly hit the victim in the head, causing seizures. Zhao was charged with assault and criminal possession of a weapon. It's unclear if the customer ever got a portrait in Central Park, but the scene that unfolded would have made an awesome caricature. more ›

Artist Sofia Maldonado has been learning about the art of publicity following her Times Square mural controversy. The imagery she unveiled proved so controversial a protest was held demanding its takedown (even though it isn't really all that controversial!). more ›

Have you ever found one of these little tokens? Artist Beriah Wall (pictured) has been making them in his Brooklyn home for decades—each one containing his initials, the year, and a phrase. He began making them in 1977, after he used a similar ceramic coin to announce his marriage. Wall, now 63, tells the NY Times that he's likely dispersed hundreds of thousands over the past few decades, leaving them not only around New York City, but California, Africa and Tibet, as well. Currently he grabs a bunch whenever he leaves the house and drops them along his journey that day. His latest batch read: "Stuck in Brkln," which he explains: "I came to New York with stars in my eyes thinking I’d hit it big, and here I am, stuck in Brooklyn.” more ›

Following a lot of noisemaking by artist/activist Robert Lederman after his two recent arrests on the High Line, Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe has personally assured him there will be no more trouble. Quite the change of tune considering it had been reported that Benepe personally ordered his arrest earlier this month! more ›

Police are looking for the boyfriend of the Queens artist who was discovered dead in her Long Island City apartment on Saturday. more ›

A Queens artist was found dead in her Long Island City apartment yesterday. After 49-year-old Susan T. Woolf didn't respond to calls for several days, friends visited her 10th Street apartment and discovered her body in a pool of blood in the kitchen, with multiple stab wounds and packing tape around her neck. more ›

Yesterday Robert Lederman and fellow ARTIST member Jack Nesbitt were both arrested on the High Line for hocking their art — specifically, they received 5 summonses for vending without a Parks permit. In 2001 they were both plaintiffs in a Federal lawsuit that overturned the Parks permit requirement for artists. Since then no permit has been needed to sell art in public parks. more ›

Artist Stephen Wiltshire has been hard at work this week drawing the Manhattan skyline from memory over at Pratt. He only took a 20 minute helicopter ride prior to getting started, "during which time he impressed on his mind thousands of landmarks, great and small." He told the Brooklyn Paper: “My arm starts to hurt sometimes, but I push on.” more ›

Amazing. 34-year-old British artist, Stephen Wiltshire, who was diagnosed with autism at an early age, is currently taking residence at Pratt to do what he does best: draw. But not just draw; the artist is creating a detailed panorama of New York's skyline from memory, after only briefly visiting the city and taking it all in from a helicopter. He has done this around the world, 8 times in total, and says this is his finale. more ›

Pro tip for all you artists out there: make your work look exactly like a photograph and you will win cash prizes! The NY Times reports that 50-year-old Brooklyn painter Ran Ortner was awarded the grand prize of $250,000 last night at ArtPrize, a public competition in Grand Rapids, Michigan. more ›

Astonishing. Graffiti artists are still doing the ol' "sneak into a museum and hang unsolicited work" trick. The latest, Mat Benote, fancies himself a "Fine Art Graffiti Artist" and has actually already pulled this stunt at the Guggenheim. His latest conquest was the walls of the Brooklyn Museum, and one of his minions wrote to tell us this is "the Cloak & Dagger style of graffiti art that he has become known for." So controversial! So... 2005! more ›

Earlier this year Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara was busted for doodling on the wall of an East Village subway station. Well, as of yesterday, the charges against the multimillionaire have been dropped. The NY Post explains that he "was given an adjournment in contemplation after being charged with making graffiti and criminal mischief and spending the night in jail. That meant if he kept his nose clean for six months, the charges would be dropped." His lawyer says the case is officially over (and "he can get back to wowing the art world with his great art"), but the paper points out the MTA missed out on some easy money by wiping away the doodle that could have easily been sold for $10,000 (the bar Niagara was smarter). Perhaps Nara should donate a sketch to them for letting him off the hook. more ›

Remember when, in 2005, Banksy snuck in to museums and illegally hung his own work (video!)? Well, another artist has just done the same, catching up four years later—but at least he hit a different museum: the Guggenheim (Banksy got the Met, MoMA, the Brooklyn Museum, and American Museum of Natural History). more ›

It's not just the suits looking out for their money in the Financial District these days. The artist behind the Charging Bull sculpture near Wall Street is suing Random House for using an image of his work for the cover art of a book about the fall of Lehman Brothers. 1010Wins reports that Arturo Di Modica was filing the lawsuit in federal court yesterday, and seeking unspecified damages. He is also asking the picture be removed from the book, titled "A Colossal Failure of Common Sense." Indeed, he had the sculpture copyrighted in 1998, 9 years after its creation. Maybe Sad Panda can go on the new cover! more ›

It's been over a week now since Dash Snow was confirmed dead from an overdose, and today the NY Times sheds some light on what exactly happened to the artist, who would have turned 28 on Monday, during his last hours. more ›

Not that we needed any convincing about Belgian artist James Ensor (1860-1949), but after New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl declared that the "astonishing" Ensor retrospective at MoMA "will affect many viewers like the detonation of a bomb whose fuse has been fizzing inconspicuously for a century," we quit procrastinating and finally humped it to midtown on Saturday. It was definitely worth the trip, and we were pleasantly surprised to find that the exhibit wasn't disastrously mobbed in the way that blockbuster museum retrospectives tend to get. more ›

On June 17th the legendary graffiti artist Iz the Wiz died, but just five days prior to that he was back in the Bronx tagging up a mock subway car. The work is at the Tuff City graffiti and tattoo studio and was meant to be endlessly repainted over by different artists, but it will now remain as Iz, if you will. Back in the day he would tag his name in bubble-letters all down a train, and he said: “You would have these pieces running like this 10 cars straight. When that hit the train station, bam! Impact. No doubt about it.” Tuff City employees aren't sure how they'll preserve Iz's last piece just yet, but they told CityRoom they are considering "donating them to a museum, making them part of a traveling exhibit or disassemble them for galleries." Check out some images from Iz's show, and from his memorial at Tuff City, here. more ›

It may be easy to judge someone like Dash Snow. His pedigree, his art, his drug abuse, his lifestyle. But when the artist joined the 27 Club and departed for the big "hamster nest" in the sky, he left behind many Polaroids, many tags, many works of art, and many grieving friends. Gavin McInnes, who you know from Vice, wrote a tribute to his friend and his relation to New York City.

The best part of living in New York is the feeling that you’re in the center of everything. This feeling is like heroin and soon you want more. Eventually, Brooklyn isn’t enough. Then, certain parts of Manhattan aren’t enough. You feel like you’re visiting your parents when you’re in Soho or you’re on a road trip when you’re in Chelsea. St. Marks is a mini mall and even the East Village feels like a pale imitation of the Lower East Side. You never felt like that when you were partying with Dash Snow. You felt like you were in the center of New York. He was the kind of thing people move to New York for.

[UPDATE BELOW] A not totally unsurprising rumor is going around that downtown artist Dash Snow has died of a heroin overdose. Snow is the maternal grandson of Robert Thurman (and nephew of actress Uma Thurman), and his lifestyle was well-documented in a sprawling New York magazine piece two years ago. That lifestyle at one point included making what he called a Hamster’s Nest with friends, where they would "shred up 30 to 50 phone books, yank around all the blankets and drapes, turn on the taps, take off their clothes, and do drugs—mushrooms, coke, ecstasy—until they feel like hamsters." more ›