By Patrick Hedlund
DNAinfo News Editor
EAST VILLAGE — The latest street art installation landed on the Houston Street graffiti wall early Monday just days after Shepard Fairey’s controversial mural was taken down.
Barry McGee took to the wall made famous by Keith Haring in the 1980s by covering the entire canvas with red spray-painted tags — a simple follow-up to Fairey’s politically charged piece, which blended pop art and social commentary.
McGee created “the ultimate graffiti writer’s roll call” by painting the names of well-known taggers across the massive wall, producing “a strangely beautiful, if not challenging piece of commissioned abstract art,” according to the Art Collectors.
The artist colored a bit outside the lines, however, painting portions of the building behind the wall that crews quickly covered in white paint the next day.
Online reaction to the new work ranged from the appreciative to the disdainful.
“This beats everything that was on this wall prior in my humble opinion... almost playing the art world,” wrote commenter ivee on Animal New York. “Its legal, so it's considered art and not graffiti. [T]ake any one of those tags off tha[t] wall and place it somewhere illegally and its vandalism.”
Others thought Fairey’s piece had more depth.
“Looks like s—t,” wrote an anonymous commenter on EV Grieve, “at least Fairey had something to look at.”
