My infatuation with this city seemingly knows no bounds and the project “Art Adds” which is putting local artists on Taxi cab top billboards is yet another example why I never tire of this place. It just constantly renews me…and itself.
NY is a major character in the daily lives of the people who live here. Endless movies have recognized this but it’s the city itself that keeps making heroes of its people and the people feed the city by recreating this uniqueness through celebration and art. It’s a natural response to glorify the energy of NY urban life, downplay the difficulties and celebrate those that memorialize the place through art and individual spirit.
“Art Adds” is something small and seemingly trivial but telling about the place and its people and the need to memorialize itself. In a nutshell, Show Media, a Las Vegas company that owns 500 or so of the cab top billboards, forfeits $100,000 of revenue for the month of January and donates the ‘billboard space to artists to give back to the city and because ‘art adds to the public’s vision’ of the city itself.
Sometimes it’s a formal gift like this one, or it’s Lichtenstein tiled art in the midtown subway, Keith Haring murals bordering a school in the West Village or an endless array where art intersects, soothes and inspires in this perpetually busy and cozy place.
The three NY artists in this project represent the wild diversity of this place. Alex Katz, a figural artist with roots in the pop art movement with an homage to people and diversity. Shirin Meshat an Iranian visual artist, with a nod towards the immigrant cab drivers themselves. And Yoko Ono, taking “The War is Over” theme that she and John Lennon carried around the world in 1969 and displaying it as sign language as moving art on the cab’s 14 x 48 inch ad space usually occupied with airlines and gentleman’s clubs.
Check out the New York Time’s article on the project.
NY is a place that celebrates itself daily with small things spotlighted on a world stage.
