In 2009, Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara was hanging out with his business manager Tim Blum in the Manhattan bar Niagrara. Nara pulled out a marker and drew some of his fantastic figures on the walls. (Later that night, he did the same thing at a subway station and was promptly arrested.) Last week, one of Nara's paintings sold in a Sotheby's auction for $24.9 million, driving up the value of his other work including this graffiti. According to Blum though, Nara doesn't want anyone to pull out the bar walls and sell his graffiti. Fortunately, the bar owners seem to agree. For now anyway. From CNN:

"The (drawings at the bar are) quite in keeping with his style," said David Schrader, head of private sales at Sotheby's. "My guess is it's probably worth hundreds of thousands. For sure, when an artist gets a record-selling price, it elevates them in the market. My gut is there are definitely people who would want to own this or the multiple pieces individually..."

The Niagara's management declined to comment, but a bartender told CNN that the artwork "has been a part of the bar for a long time and will stay that way." The drawings are safeguarded by a thin layer of plastic that was installed by the bar's ownership.

#DailyJapanArt via #NYPost:Yoshitomo Nara’s Decade-Old Doodles At East Village Dive Bar Niagara Could Be Worth Millions.Value Skyrocketed After His Painting “Knife Behind Back” Sold For $25 million @ Sotheby’s Hong Kong On Sunday#奈良美智 #YoshitomoNarahttps://t.co/P8AEGWSMjP pic.twitter.com/sqOEBtAuPr

— DailyJapan (@DailyJapan1) October 11, 2019

Mindbending work by Portugal-based graffiti artist Rodrigo Miguel Sepúlveda Nunes, aka Vile. See more at his Instagram feed, vile_graffiti.

(via Kottke)

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A post shared by 💥VILE💥 (@vile_graffiti) on Aug 15, 2019 at 9:59am PDT

Graffiti Diplomacy is a Brooklyn-based graffiti art studio and educational outfit with a terrific Web site containing free lessons, handouts, and craft activities for beginning (and advanced) artists. Their "Urban Blight" diorama how-to, complete with popsicle stick picket fences, looks like a lot of fun to build and tag.

Graffiti Crafting # 1 - Learn How To Make A Popsicle Stick Graffiti Picket Fence

Read the rest

Last week, residents of a Sammamish, Washington neighborhood woke up to racist graffiti, including swastikas and the n-word, on their homes and garages. (Video report below.) Now, it seems the perpetrators returned to spray-paint an apology. From KIRO 7:

“More graffiti was found at Klahanie Park. It was a couple different things,” King County Sheriff’s Sergeant Ryan Abbott told KIRO Radio. “First it was the word spray-painted ‘Sorry’, and then next to that there was another spray-paint — it was hard to read — that read, ‘Not hate, just’ something, and then another ‘Sorry.'”

It’s in the same red spray paint as before,” Sergeant Abbott said, “and they were just trying to say that they didn’t mean any hate by their tags, which of course were offensive as you had read, but now they’re updating it to say this..."

Police are continuing to investigate. They’re hoping that surveillance video will provide additional information.

Read the rest

On Tuesday morning, an Australian pilot took some artistic liberties with his flight path.

ABC News:

The Diamond Star plane, operated by Flight Training Adelaide, spent a little over three hours in the air on Tuesday to draw the letters over South Australia.

The message was not seen by people on the ground, but was visible to aviation followers watching live flight tracking programs and websites.

It is believed the pilot, who was working out of Parafield Airport, north of Adelaide, was "running in" a new engine.

The FlightAware website captured the pilot's work between 8:53am to 11:57am.

The pilot flew several loops, creating some somewhat explicit graffiti along the coast, before tracing "I'm bored" over the Princes Highway.

Retired Qantas A380 pilot Chris Wilson said he thought the message was "harmless".

screenshot by Flightaware via ABC News

(Gizmodo) Read the rest

This weekend, thieves stole the Banksy mural painted on the emergency exit door of the Bataclan concert venue in Paris. The Bataclan is where on November 13, 2015 Islamic State militants launched a terrorist attack by killing 90 people during an Eagles of Death Metal concert before continuing with shootings and suicide bombings that resulted in 130 deaths total and more than 400 injuries. From the BBC News:

The theft, which occurred overnight on Friday, involved "a group of hooded individuals armed with angle grinders", AFP news agency reports, citing a source close to the investigation.

The suspects then reportedly drove away with the artwork in a truck.

L’œuvre de @originaIbanksy hommage aux victimes du 13/11 a été volée. pic.twitter.com/FMHoobzRXm

— Bataclan (@bataclan_) January 26, 2019

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This Banksy artwork was painted late last night a on a steelworker's garage in Port Talbot, South Wales, UK. From CNN:

The art, which appears to pay homage to the town's industrial past, depicts a child playing in what looks like snow. But viewed from another angle this appears to be embers and smoke from a skip fire....

Properties and cars were covered with black dust from the town's steelworks in July, which has been suggested as a potential inspiration for the work...

A Neath Port Talbot council spokesperson told CNN in a statement that they are sending officers to liaise with the property owner in order to assist in protecting the artwork but noted that the graffiti is on private property.

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. . . . Season’s greetings . . .

A post shared by Banksy (@banksy) on Dec 19, 2018 at 6:53am PST

Fashioned after real full-sized galvanized steel dumpsters, these miniature desktop Dumpsty's stand in at just 10 inches tall and 11 inches wide (which is big enough to hold magazines). The blank models come in a variety of body and lid colors and are ready to be customized (or not).

Priced at $195 each, they ain't cheap. But, wow, what a cool conversation piece.

Beautifully pre-designed one-of-a-kind editions are available too, like this one by street artist Jimbo Phillips ($495):

Or this one by Burn353 ($395):

Check out their Instagram for more inspiration.

(DudeIWantThat) Read the rest

Political art collective INDECLINE (previously) create provocative works. Their latest repurposes a gold ore processing facility on the Mojave National Preserve that was closed in 1994 and declared a Superfund site. Read the rest

There are Advent calendars and then there is the Banks's Brewery's Advent calendar.

Launched on December 1, the UK beer brand's countdown to Christmas stands over 36 feet tall because it's spray painted on the boarded-up windows of a deserted building in the English city of Wolverhampton.

Their bluntly-stated calendar is part of a larger campaign called "Tells it like it is" and its gritty commentary is meant to appeal to a young, working class audience.

Big Al’s Creative Emporium, the London-based creative agency behind it all, explains:

How do you reassert an identity for a traditional pint of Black Country bitter on a shoestring? Paint it on the walls. That’s how.

Banks’ was a traditional West Midland’s beer in decline, feeling a bit dated and with an ageing core of traditional drinkers. Despite an extremely limited marketing budget, we wanted to give the brand new lease of life by appropriating the straight talking wit and grit of its industrial Black Country roots.

Our solution was to develop a graffiti campaign around the thought ‘Tells it like it is’ and getting our messages on to unconventional urban spaces to create a subversive ambient campaign, which in turn we were able to activate as social media campaign taking on a life of its own.

Here's a peek at some of those messages:

See the rest over at Ads of the World.

Previously: There's an advent calendar full of weed Read the rest

Instagram user Lonseometown9 documents their ongoing series of street art that transforms dumped sofas, chairs, and televisions into sad clowns. Read the rest

Swedish street artist Huge creates a lot of cool stuff, but he's best know for his balloon art that looks like those novelty letter-shaped mylar balloons in various levels of inflation. Read the rest

Shahak Shapira reported hundreds of racist, sexist, abusive or otherwise hateful Tweets.

Twitter didn't delete them, so he sprayed them on the pavement outside the company's offices in Germany.

Update: Shahak Shapira's name was missing the "r". I eget the eo. Read the rest

Jonk Photography captured the remarkable work of dozens of street artists given weeks to create whatever they want inside a school that's about to be renovated. Read the rest

Anna Christova snapped this fantastic street art project called "CTRL+X," which paints items tagged with graffiti to look as if they've been selected and deleted in Photoshop, revealing the default transparent layer. Below is the before photo: Read the rest

Authorities in St. Petersburg, Florida, are battling an onslaught of graffiti depicting a three-buttocked arse. NBC affiliate WFLA reports that the design has appeared at least twenty times across the city. It is thought to be the calling card of a single anonymous artist, who police stress is breaking the law.

St. Pete is a city known for its beautiful art and stunning murals. Many people are upset by this new graffiti involving a tush trend. They don’t like the fact that the bold buttocks are suddenly everywhere.

“This is not art. At all,” said one woman. “It’s vandalism.”

“There should be consequences. You can’t just take it upon yourself to do whatever you want to do,” another man said.

We shall speak in hushed tones, over the beachfires where the Suwannee meets the shore, of the great triple-arsed god worshiped by those who once lived in the sunken cities of the Florida sea. Read the rest

Enjoy Paul De Graaf's gallery depicting the sedimentary layers deposited by 30 years of graffiti on a wall in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

It's a Graffiti Hall of Fame in the city of Nijmegen, the Netherlands. What started as a 70's Hippie cult place, became a center of music and art in the early 80's. One of the first places where it was legal to smoke cannabis. It still a Music studio and Graffiti Hall of fame. The building is surrounded by walls that are all spray painted from top to bottom.