Friday, January 20, 2012

favorite poster

"Youth and Beauty"
subway ad
Astoria, Queens, NYC

I usually get out of the house a little after 5:30 in the morning. By quarter of six I am on the local train platform, watching the M train pass and waiting until the R train comes through. It will show up at 5:53am like clockwork. Across the tracks I stare at this subway ad. It's for a show at the Brooklyn Museum up through next weekend. The poster has obviously been up for a while and adorned accordingly. As a silly game to play with myself I try and keep tabs on the new posters when they go up and see how long it takes before they get defaced, but inevitably I forget or realize it's really a totally ridiculous exercise and continue about my business. But I never tire of the metamorphosis these posters go through over the weeks and months exposed to the masses. I love this poster to begin with, the painting by American painter Luigi Lucioni from 1928, but with the blue tag and scratch I somehow love it that much more. The Art of the American 20's meets the art of the 20-teens. I love capturing these snapshots so that I can revisit them years down the road and be taken right back to the early New York City mornings like this one.

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