Tag Archives: eyeball

Modern Art Monday Presents: Naissance By Laurent Marcel Salinas

naissance photo by gail worley
Photo By Gail

In 1938, Egyptian-born Surrealist Laurent Marcel Salinas (19132010) signed the group manifesto Art et Liberté that denounced attempts to bind art to the political demands of the state. The signatories declared art a means to liberate society and the individual from the “artificial restrictions” of nationality, religion, and ethnicity. In Naissance (1944) Salinas’s choice of a disembodied and tentacled eye takes up a subject – the naked eyeball – frequently depicted by Surrealists in other locations as a surrogate for male castration anxieties. By the early 1950s, the Cairo group had begun to disband; following the coup in 1952 led by Mohamed Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser, Salinas fled to Paris.

Photographed in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Welcome, Summer 2022!

jayson naylor ice cream cone photo by gail worley
Art By Jason Naylor, Photo By Gail

While it’s been hot and steamy for a few weeks already, the official first day of Summer, June 21st, has arrived at last. Despite the inherent stickiness of a NYC summer it is, hands down, my favorite season of the year. Summer ushers in a feeling of joy and freedom that cannot concisely be put into words, and I am so ready to launch into three months of crazy fun. Feel free to share the reasons why you love summer, in the comments!

Eyeball Street Art By Billy Barnacles

eyeball by bill barnacles photo by gail worley
All Photos By Gail

In last week’s post about the Ocean Shoe, I promised to give equal time to the sculptural work that replaced it: this hyper-realistic Eyeball, from the same artist, who is known as Billy Barnacles. I hope you can appreciate my attempted cleverness in waiting patiently to get the eyeball to align with the head of the cyclist in the background. You’re welcome.

Continue reading Eyeball Street Art By Billy Barnacles

Pink Thing of The Day: The Art of Eye Sticker

aiw by eye sticker photo by gail worley
White Rabbit, Alice in Wonderland/Dali-Themed Art By Eye Sticker (All Photos By Gail)

The pandemic has changed a lot about the way I live my life, and it has definitely changed my relationship to art. During the months when galleries and museums were closed, I turned to the galleries of the streets for inspiration, and spent hours each week walking and documenting what I saw. I discovered that many street artists were inspired by the experience of isolation due to Covid, and the increasingly dystopian nature of society imposed by the previous administration, to step-up the surreal nature of their creations. One new artist I kept seeing all over the city, whose work moved me immediately, was called Eye Sticker. Of course, the Eye is Pink.

trump troll by eye sticker photo by gail worley
Trump Troll

Eye Sticker (also known as EYE) is an anonymous, gender-unspecified persona whose work often centers on a familiar, pop-culture image distinguished by the inclusion of a bright Pink Eye with an x-shaped iris at its center. The first work I saw by Eye Sticker was a paste up on St. Mark’s Place in the East Village, where I  live. The piece depicted Dump as a Troll Doll, with a shock of pink hair and beady pink eyes that looked like those drawn by cartoonists to indicate that a person or animal is deceased. Appropriate, I thought. Continue reading Pink Thing of The Day: The Art of Eye Sticker

New Buff Monster Mural Goes Up On Allen Street

buff monster mural full 2 photo by gail worley
All Photos By Gail

Oh, what pure joy it was to stumble upon this fantastic mural by the great Buff Monster while I was walking home from an already wildly successful Street Art Safari in Freeman Alley. Featuring the artist’s beloved and iconic Mister Melty character, the mural is located just inside a gated parking lot (visible and fully accessible from the street, as seen in the photo below) on Allen Street just below Houston.

buff monster mural full from street photo by gail worley

According to Buff Monster’s Instagram, this piece went up in late October and is just his second outside project painted all year! Because 2020 has sucked that hard!

buff monster mural left side detail photo by gail worley

I love the artist’s pristine attention to detail, which includes painting the mural over the metal guardrail, instead of restricting his canvas to just the wall behind it.

buff monster mural right side detail photo bye gail worley

It’s beautiful!

buff monster mural full photo by gail worley