another casualty: ALL HAIL CARDIEL!

Thank God Keith Harring isn't alive to see this.

and the sheep goes back to pasture

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! is right.

He also can make pay phones disappear, apparently.

A lot of point to that, there...

You've got to love how some jerk immediately tagged the freshly painted wall. A short lifespan is built into graffiti art, at least it should be, was a neat one though.

PS: Art was made with a stencil. Will return elsewhere, no need to be sad.

@TheHonJudgeSmails: Dude, I learned that in my first semester at Hogwarts.

Maybe he's Duchamp's grandson.

Whoever took these pictures is a total asshole.

It's pretty obvious that this guy didn't know how valuable that mural was -- and equally obvious that the photographer did know (otherwise, why photograph this?).

So, instead of photographing this event, why didn't the photographer just speak up and say "hey, don't paint over that! It's worth money!"?

Because it was better to get some really interesting photographs instead, I guess.
Asshole.

@TheHonJudgeSmails: Yeah, what's up with the missing phone?
And why is there a reddish color on the bottom of the whitewash pictures, but not on the first picture?

I will send a special prize to any New Yorker who finds that wall and tags my Gawker handle on it.

@MisterHippity: Interesting point, Mister!

This story reminded me of this story. Though the latter is much more hilarious.

@MyCubeHas3Sides: Maybe they could tag it with a combination of ours?
My Pickle Cube has 3 tits, Turner.

hey, so.. this is totally non sequitur, but those ads for the Bravo "Affluencer effect"? those ads are kind of vile.

@MisterHippity: @ninety_nine:

ninety_nine, was it you?

Are those wee-wee marks in the first picture? Somebody isn't giving art any respect.

how would he have sold it and profitted from it? I know it's worth money but enough money to make it worth losing a wall? probably not... and that Banksy art wasn't even that good. I bet conducted some statistical analysis and found the IRR to be too low to make the deal feasible... or like you said, he's just an idiot.
ADismalScience - thoughts?

@MyCubeHas3Sides: Other tags on the wall don't match up either. The "before" photo is not the same wall.

No, I would have just taken a picture and walked away.

Does this mean the photos are now worth something? Because they record it?

All art is useless - Oscar Wilde

Where was this?

I think the photo before the jump is another example of the Little Bo Peep piece, but not specifically the whitewashed piece. That's why there's no phone in the photos after the jump.

Am I thinking about this too hard?

My impression is that the first picture IS the same wall, but an older version. Like it may have been taken quite a while before. There's an expanded version of the photo here, compare the tops of the wall, for example:

[www.hypebeast.com]

@Bell County:
@ninety_nine: -1 99.

@MyCubeHas3Sides: He put down some paper to catch paint drips.

But my favorite is the green traffic cone. Very thoughtful of him to make sure that anyone climbing under his ladder realizes that there's a project underway.

Yeah, in the first pic you can see part of a tag that ends in "ER" (Gawker, was it you?), and then in the other ones, that same tag has been crossed out and re-tagged "GHOST."

Also, the "reddish color" is actually just painting paper on the sidewalk.

Uh, not to obsess, or anything.

Uh. Does anyone else agree that the only reason the stencil was relevant was in relation to the pay phone?

Otherwise where is all that change spewing from?

Maybe the whitewasher fancies himself an artiste.

It's obviously an homage to Rauschenberg's "Erased de Kooning," and as such considerably more valuable at auction.

@sharpeiboy:

The dogs know.

@MyCubeHas3Sides: Who are you guys, Andre the Giant? Find the damn wall yourself and tag it. Oh, right. Maybe you're living in the outerlands.

@Hamilton Nolan: You are right, as usual.

However, I don't know that you can compare this storeowner's situation too closely with that of the people from Bristol. The Banksy piece in Bristol was free-painted, not a stencil, and so presumably more valuable. (There's also the question of removing and replacing the wall of the building, which, given NYC building codes, might cost a potential buyer more than the recovered piece might fetch on the market.)

@TheHonJudgeSmails: perhaps the first was reference? he can tag multiple areas with one stencil.

@winniemc: HA!
I'm in Chicago, and don't have enough vacation time to meet @PickleTitsTurner: for said tagging. :-(
Can you do it for me? Thanks, I prefer Dark Green paint.

@GingerVitis: Painting paper, yeah, now I see it upon closer look.

Maybe neither wall exists! It's all a Gawker Photoshop Conspiracy. For all I know, in my non-New York of a city, Banksy may not even exist!

Criminy, is anything real?
*cowering in corner*

"I AM UNDER SURVEILLANCE! Aaaargh!"

Street art is inherently temporary in the very nature of the medium. While it is certainly sad that a good Banksy piece was covered, it is simply the nature of the beast.

This very point was one of the many things the Splasher was commenting on over the past year (he too "ruined" a beloved Banksy in brooklyn).

So I'm the only one here whose first reaction was "Thank God, one less Banksy"?

@MyCubeHas3Sides: @winniemc: Yes, I am in the outerlands (hinterlands, actually), where none of us know how to read and we sit around all day dreaming of NYC with stars in our eyes.

That's a few blocks from where I live in Alphabet City (please no jokes, I'm sensitive). I can tell you that phone hasn't been there for a while, and that wall now has a lot more graffiti on it.

A lot more artistic graffiti at that.

All of the art museums in New York will close for one minute at noon in mourning for the loss of this piece of art.

@Nick Douglas: Oh God, right!? So over it. Lets see more shitty tags like EMAIL and JADED and PREDICTABLE BACKLASH JUMPER.

@Nick Douglas: Yes, now shut up and sit in the corner wearing your "4chan" cap.

If Banksy's work were not by definition ephemeral and environmental, it wouldn't be as precious. It certainly wouldn't have gotten the attention it has. I know a muralist and most of her work is destroyed within five years. She has the finest portfolio of no-longer-extant works in the world, I swear. Except maybe for Banksy.

The destruction of a Banksy work is in a very real way a part of the art itself, albeit one which Banksy anticipated and made possible, but of which the individuals directly responsible are completely unaware.

It's beautiful.

That building is on the corner of 12th and Avenue A. I live right down the street.

@Nick Douglas: Yeah, pretty sure.

I love Banksy's work. Even if the guy was completely unaware of the artist, you'd think he would have painted around it or something. It's just plain cool. Why mess with it?

Maybe the whitewash is this dude's take on Rauschenberg's "Erased de Kooning"?