First appearing in 2017 (above), taking the place of a mural depicting Joey Ramone incongruously sporting a pair of boxing gloves (a hollow allusion to Overthrow Boxing Club just steps away — part of the noxious corridor of fitness that had largely taken over the neighborhood), Shepard Fairey’s Blondie mural depicted the preternaturally gorgeous Debbie Harry gazing unblinkingly to the north from an original photograph by Bobby Grossman, flanked by allusions to their breakthrough 1979 album, Parallel Lines and images from the art of their then-new album, Pollinator, which Fairey had also designed.
Ostensibly conceived as a tribute to the neighborhood’s sadly fading punk roots (the site of the former CBGB is but a cheap beer-can’s toss to the east), Fairey’s painting remained largely unblemished for the past few years, until sometime this summer, when an increasingly less-relevant street artist saw fit to scribble his signature space octopus (or whatever it’s supposed to be) on Debbie’s comely neck.
Following that unsightly blemish, less finessed taggers went to town on the whole thing….
I’m happy to relay, as first reported by EV Grieve, that Fairey’s original work has been fully restored (below) to its sharp-lined glory, and Miss Harry’s distinctive physiognomy is back to being untainted by the sloppy doodling of bottom-feeding graffiti trolls. We’ll see how long that lasts.
I was half-thinking it might be time to mix it up, again, and put someone new on that particular spot. Richard Hell? Stiv Bators? Jayne Country?
Who would you suggest?
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