I’m always amazed when someone writes in about something I posted eons ago. I mean, I am still routinely fielding comments about the whole Radiohead/Chuck Kolsterman thing (a story that will seemingly never go away), but when someone zeroes in on something a little more fleeting, I always get a tiny jolt of validation.
Case in point: In 2013, I posted a trio of entries speculating on the origins of a specific pair of stenciled depictions of an artist that were formerly spray-painted virtually all over SoHo. The original featured the head of an Asian man with spiky hair, framed by the legend, “There’s a New Kid Town.” In due course, meanwhile, someone started spray-painting a morbid parody of that, featuring a replication of the head, but with smoking gun next to it under the unfortunate declaration, “End the Joke!”
I did eventually track down photographic evidence of each, but never really got the whole backstory. Eleven years later, meanwhile, I just fielded a note from a reader named Uli, who is a – wait for it – “ stencil graffiti researcher.” In response to those two posts, Uli wrote:
"I got some news for you. Did you find the artist yet? I found a good photo where you can read the slogan next to the portrait: “There's a new kid in Town.”
He then linked to a frankly remarkable trove of street-art photographs, which you can see here, saying:
“Those photos were shot by late stencil Polish artist Tomaz Sikorski on his visits in NYC in the mid 1980s. Here is the one. I think you did not mention that yet. Also interesting: In a French book, “Pochoir a la Une,” Paris 1986 on page 99. There is an illustration of that very stencil. Another photo of the suicide parody of it is here, and a nearly untouched version of the suicide version is in David Robinson's book SoHo Walls from 1990 on page 72.”
So, there’s a little more information about those stencils. Below are just a couple of shots from Sikorski’s amazing street-art page, though. Check them out!
The shot captured above is almost undoubtedly the work of the late Fran Powers of Modern Clix. The figure with the oddly pointed head was his de facto insignia, as can seen on this post.
I couldn't begin to tell you with the stoop above is (somewhere in the East Village, I'm assuming), but it's the same stairs that served as the location for this MTV News spot on the great Lydia Lunch.
The above is, of course, the former exterior wall of The Gas Station, aka the Space 2B Art Yard, where GG Allin gave his final performance.
Above the former entrance to 9 Second Avenue, otherwise known as The Church of All Nations and/or the Taoist Temple of the Ancestral Mother, which there was an excellent documentary about. See that here.
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