who, or what, does have the right to "speak" in public, and how much does free speech cost?
Coming home from the opening at the Whitney at Altria last night, I spotted the graffiti comment on the poster shown in a detail above.
The Times Square terminus for the S train has been turned over entirely to Target corporate images. The eponymous red logo is prominently repeated on a white ground and it's wrapped around every column. Images of happy customers on huge shiny white posters cover almost every inch of every wall in sight.
It's finally absolutely impossible for a fare payer to avoid the assault of advertising even while running through the station to catch a train; if you have to wait a minute or more, the pain of overload becomes acute. [This observation comes from someone who is normally almost immune to the lure of advertising campaigns in any medium.]
New Yorkers have just paid a fortune to restore or re-build their MTA stations, and public art and concerns for a decent aesthetic were both a major part of the program; who decided to sell our heritage to the highest private bidder who then would be free to corrupt a very public facility? There's expensive new tile under those billboards, and in the image above it seems to be doing its damndest to overcome the rude advertising defacement.