https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/nyr ... rade-center-graffiti.html







Trade Center Tower Is Splashed With Graffiti, by Invitation

New York Times
By JAMES BARRON
FEB. 20, 2017

Joohee Park, who goes by Stickymonger, used vinyl stickers to create ?Cosmic Tower? on the 69th floor of 4 World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. Several street artists were invited to create works on the floor. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times
The 69th floor at 4 World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan has been hit by street artists. There is evidence of spray paint, stencils and wheat paste, clues that artists who go by names like Rubin 415, Stickymonger, Gumshoe and Layer Cake have been there.

The walls, and in one section the floor, pop with colors and shapes usually found at street level ? surreal splashes here, images with phrases like ?No Brain No Pain? there. There are Statues of Liberty with almost kaleidoscopic faces. There is a giant $10 bill composed of words that theatergoers would recognize from ?Hamilton.?

But the art on the 69th floor is different from street art, and not just because it is indoors and several hundred feet above the street. It is different because none of it is illegal. It is different because the artists were not on the run, chased off by a landlord. In fact, the artists were invited by a creative consultant working for Larry Silverstein, the developer of the 72-story building.

The consultant, Robert Marcucci, called the result a ?contradiction on all levels? ? a ?blend of both inner-city street art tension and fine-art meditation? in a corporate setting. It is art, he said, that reflects ?the extremely stressed fabric of modern society that is evolving more and more each day.?

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To create it, he welcomed artists who work in eye-popping genres that once exasperated the establishment. Only a few are old enough to remember the 1970s, when street art and graffiti exploded in New York City. Since then street art, in particular, has moved away from its renegade roots. Now it claims mainstream respectability; galleries represent the artists and exhibitions put their work before the public.

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Robert Marcucci, left, a creative consultant, and Dara McQuillan, the chief marketing officer for Silverstein Properties, which developed the tower. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times
And it was a gallery that pointed the artists to Mr. Marcucci. The idea for doing street art on the 69th floor started when Dara McQuillan, the chief marketing officer for Silverstein Properties, took some photographs to a nearby framing shop, the World Trade Gallery, which doubles as an exhibition space. Mr. McQuillan was intrigued by what he saw and struck up a conversation with the owner, Doug Smith.

?He said, ?I?m curating these artists and I thought I?d offer them a space, but it?s small,?? Mr. McQuillan recalled. ?I said, ?Would they be interested in a bigger space?? He came by and I took him up, and his eyes practically popped out of his head.?

A bigger space, in this case, meant wide. ?A lot of artists are accustomed to 30 inches, 40 inches,? Mr. Smith said. ?Street artists, they can do 30 feet.? Ron English?s ?No Brain No Pain? is one inch wider than that. David Hollier?s ?$10 Bill? is 23 feet 11 inches wide by 11 feet 8 inches high.

The floor?s south side evolved into a text side, with ?$10 Bill? on a wall there. (It faces the graveyard at Trinity Church, Mr. Smith noted, where Alexander Hamilton is buried.) The east side of the floor became ?more fine art,? Mr. Marcucci said, while the west side was ?more of a graphic side, something akin to a graphic novel ? fantasy, comic.?

One work ? ?In Bloom,? by David Uda, who is known as Duda ? is a tribute to Sept. 11, Mr. Marcucci said.

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Photo

Sean Sullivan, left, and Joe LaPadula working on the 69th floor last week. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times
For some artists, the 69th floor was a departure from their previous work spaces. Mr. English once wandered the streets with a bucket of glue, plastering paintings on billboards, and once he barely escaped an angry mob in Jersey City (which later gave him keys to the city). The 69th floor was quiet, and the artists had as much time as they wanted.

Another artist on the 69th floor, Sean Sullivan, said his street name, Layer Cake, came from his fascination with the way street art was made ? layered over what was there before. For one of the Trade Center works on which he collaborated, Mr. Smith used images of people who had come before: the face of his grandfather, who, he said, ?beat federal indictments, like, for running numbers.? Not pictured is his father, who he says is a detective on the New York Police Department?s bomb squad.

Angela China, known as Gumshoe, did three panels titled ?Stripes and Stilettos.? Ms. China said she had wanted to do an image of a Campbell?s soup can with legs, similar to a mural she had created in Bushwick, Brooklyn. But she said it had not proved suitable for the 69th floor. ?I heard through the grapevine, ?Keep it very PG,?? she said.

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Mr. Marcucci said he had been concerned about content that could be seen as offensive, and had discouraged it in some cases. He also said he had worried that as the artists worked, the 69th floor would be the scene of soap-operatic dramas driven by egos and tempers. ?But it didn?t turn into ?Housewives of Beverly Hills? or something,? he said. ?I was actually shocked to see the camaraderie.? Mr. Marcucci also said he was intrigued to see ?people crossing over into fine art from street art.?

Street art is often temporary, painted over fairly quickly. The 69th floor may be different.

Last week, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that the music-streaming service Spotify was leasing space at 4 World Trade Center and would move its American headquarters there. The 378,000 square feet that it will occupy will include the 69th floor.

?It is our intention to keep as much of the images as we can,? said Graham James, a spokesman for Spotify, noting that several artists with creations on the floor had done work for Spotify. ?We?ll be reaching out to all of the artists as we move forward with the design planning.?