Photos 29 Jun 2008 08:32 am
PhotoSunday – MoreSignage
- As you may have noticed in past photo pieces, I have an interest in signage. I’m a type freak, so I look at type all the time and read everything in my eye’s path. As such, I’ve always had a fascination for hand painted signs that look as though they’d been printed. Generally, they’re indistinguishable from the traditional poster.
This sign for The Incredible Hulk recently appeared in the Village at
Houston and 6th Ave. It looks like any other Hulk poster around town.
(Click any image to enlarge.)
However getting closer you get to realize that someone had hand painted this
on a brick wall. One wouldn’t have been able to paste a poster.
Take a look at the type at the bottom of the sign.
The copyright type turns into blobs of paint.
I wonder if the copyright holder realizes that
this is what they were paying for.
Here’s another painted wall I found on line.
No story behind it that I can find, but it’s a great hand painted image.
Many of the posters in the Village aren’t hand painted; they’re screens that are bound to brick walls by wires.
You can see, in the closeup, that this sign is a screen.
This sign completely hides the small building behind it.
There don’t seem to be any windows being covered by the screen.
In these two closer shots you can see the hardware better.
Yes, it does say, “I love TOUS, Kylie Minogue.”
This sign for the Museum of Modern Art hangs over a playground area.
Up close, you can see that it’s a screen bound to the wall.
on 29 Jun 2008 at 10:35 am 1.Hardeep Kharbanda said …
The blobs of paint made my morning! Thanks for taking that picture up close. It’s amazing how the painters “took the trouble” of maintaining the layout and proportions, at the cost of readability.
I often wish for a return to more hand painted signs and murals. I think they bring a wall to life in a way no printed poster can.
on 29 Jun 2008 at 2:08 pm 2.Jenny said …
They put up screens like that all over the Village? *sobs*
Are there any of the old, old, painted signage(usually text only) still extant on the sides of older buildings anywhere in Manhattan, I wonder? After the 1987 Whittier earthquake had one such older brick building collapse in Pasadena, the one next door had a great partial piece of c.1920s advertising revealed; it read, tantalizingly: “…”T.E. Lawrence exclaimed as he lifted his fork.” The rest had been obliterated at some point. I think even that part is gone now.
Getting back to figural murals: here on the other coast we used to have so many of those Kent Twitchell murals all over town…some have since been painted over, often illegally. And I remember being fascinated with the huge side of the then-Playboy building on Sunset Blvd.–there’d always be a gigantic movie poster recreated on that enormous space that could be seen for miles, facing west. The first one I saw painted there was for “Young Frankenstein”.
on 29 Jun 2008 at 3:38 pm 3.Michael J. Ruocco said …
I remember walking through the city earlier this winter/spring & one particular building had a different movie poster painted on it’s wall almost monthly. I don’t quite remember exactly where the building is, but the painting was done on the south side of the building & I can see it from 21st St.
I remember seeing the posters for ‘I Am Legend’ & ‘Bucket List’ (& possibly ’10,000 BC’ at one point) in the process of being painted as I headed to class each day. It was a real amazing sight, I wish I had a camera with me. The funniest thing was seeing Jack Nicholson’s grinning face half painted up. His pearly whites alone probably took up 2 stories & were 30-40 feet wide.
on 30 Jun 2008 at 7:29 am 4.Kellie Strøm said …
The gun image is on the wall of the Tate Modern, London, and is not a painting but a printed poster by this person.
Another artist in the same show, Blu, does paint and has also done animation.
on 30 Jun 2008 at 7:32 am 5.Kellie Strøm said …
Did I say gun? It’s a camera playing at being a gun, isn’t it?
on 30 Jun 2008 at 10:54 pm 6.John said …
It’s interesting how long some of those painted ads can last. The Forgotten New York website has a whole section devoted to building ads that have legibly endured for over a half a century or more.