Word: muralism
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...good thing about being stuck in a traffic jam in Philadelphia is that there's a fine chance you can spend your time looking at a mural. There are over 2,500 murals throughout the city--more than in any other place in the world. On South 47th Street, a lush mural shows a row-house scene in the foreground with Van Gogh's Starry Night--inspired sky as a backdrop. Gigantic, stunning portraits of Dr. J and Malcolm X grace other buildings. Prince Charles visited the mural on 40th and Pennsgrove in January to see the outsize rendering...
Driven by her evangelical belief that art can not only beautify but also pacify, Golden, now 51, has spent the past 20 years enlisting as many communities as possible--mostly schoolkids teamed with artists but at times other groups, like cops or prisoners--in planning and painting the murals. A decade ago, she spun off from the Anti-Graffiti Network and started the Mural Arts Program, an organization inspired by F.D.R.'s Works Progress Administration that, as one former student says, is pro-art rather than antigraffiti. "Race, crime and violence, immigration, gentrification--I think it's our responsibility...
...graffiti war continues unabated in other cities. New York City recently doubled sentences for graffiti offenders. Peoria, Ariz., has placed surveillance cameras in graffiti-prone areas. Philadelphia doesn't keep exact stats on graffiti crimes but says the mural-as-peacemaker model has proved its worth. In the late 1990s, the Grays Ferry neighborhood suffered an outbreak of racial violence. Golden believed the divisiveness called for a multiracial mural. Not everyone agreed. "It was a mess, a real mess," recalls Jim Helman, a white neighborhood activist. "And along comes this diminutive little thing [Golden] who promises to do this ridiculous...
Monica Mathieu, 17, spent a recent summer day inside an Olney High School rec room painting a panel for an upcoming mural. She'd ordinarily be sitting at home watching TV, Mathieu said, but on this day she was giddy about the pending arrival of a group of Irish students who have been collaborating with the Philadelphia teens on a mural called Common Ground. As Mathieu talked about raising money for a trip to Dublin to work on a project next summer, she was asked how two such seemingly disparate groups overcame the challenges in creating such...
...Jeezy dons gigantic sunglasses that serve to make his bald head look extra conical and ridiculous. Jeezy and his “boy Kells” then proceed to pose for the camera while a woman with a tarantula tattooed on her armpit moves her body voluptuously before the mural-covered, black and white wall. Cut to scene two: Jeezy sitting on his black bed, with the camera alternating between straight shots and profiles of his face. Following Jeezy’s bedroom scene, set with scantily clad and well-oiled women, comes the most interesting sequence of the video...