NYT Arts: A World Springs to Life on an Urban Wall (Manhattan)

With their first public artwork in Manhattan, which went up at the northwest corner of Houston Street and the Bowery on July 17, the Brazilian brothers Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo, who call themselves Os Gêmeos, bring graffiti art to its Rococo phase. Which is to say that their fantastic, epic mural, on a concrete wall about 17 feet high and about 51 feet long, is light and frothy, a dream of happiness with an underlying chord of melancholy. And everything in it is exquisitely fine-tuned and detailed, a dazzlement of effortless technique that sustains long bouts of close looking. It will remain up until March.

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While the onslaught of figures, episodes and colors is at first overwhelming, a casual left-to-right reading suggests some narrative possibilities. Basically what we have here is a tale of escape and growth that begins in darkness and — after taking a few tips from the Bible, Hieronymus Bosch and M. C. Escher — ends in a stunning vortex of brilliant color. At far left, in the gray dimness of a narrow, cell-like space, a small figure strains toward the golden light seeping through a chink in the wall. Wearing pants, a jacket and a girlish scalloped bonnet and shouldering a bag, she’s leaving home, as the song says. A small spotted dog watches from the safety of a tenderly, elaborately wood-grained floor.

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This telling omits many wonderful details. One of the best is front and nearly center in the image: a boy who seems to sit on a waterspout, wearing a fish mask and a T-shirt that is one of the painting’s best moments. It depicts a landscape: note the white stenciled stone wall, the changing greens of the tiny stenciled trees, the golden setting sun. It is an idyll of pastoral, escape-from-the-city living, cottage and all.

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LOVE Peter Max! :thumbsup:

Mornin'/evenin', sunshine! :hi:

:hi:

My younger son would love that wall. His high school designated a wall so the guys would stop painting and writing all over. It worked out pretty well. :)