as I walk Toronto

There have been previous Paste Platz posts on this site, starting with the original post just after the first artworks went up in Sept 2021.  It was subsequently revisited and updated in Dec 2021.  Street art is never permanent and anything at street level is subject to the whims of others who might want to deface, attempt to remove, or just add their own to the mix.   Unsurprisingly, there have been more changes to the “installation” since then.  Jumblefacefoto face and eye mash-ups now dominate part of it.

What has also appeared is a series of small collages underneath the faces and these smaller ones tell part of the history of graffiti and street art, especially with respect to wheatpaste.  They are small and easily overlooked; you can see the difference in sizes in the photo above.  Here are some of them:

Graffiti Dates
“1980s/90s
Wheat paste as an art process and medium –
Street artists adopt or incorporate wheat paste into their practice often former graffiti/stencil based artists trying to avoid further criminal charges.
1988/89 Shepard Fairy
1991 Blek le Rat
1992 Michael De Feo
1998 D’Face
1999 Faile collective
1999 Logan Hicks
other notable street artists who worked with wheat paste and paved the way include Hutch, duo Sten & Lex, Jestonorama, Christofer Chin/Tofer, Ludo, JR, and Swoon”

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caption on photo: bleu O noir, 1955, Jacques Villegle

text  on paper: “Jacques Villegle, an artist involved in Nouveau Realisme, began creating artwork from ripped and torn posters he salvaged from the streets of Paris in the late 1940s.”
“Decollage is a French word meaning literally un-pasting or to unstick, and generally associated with a process used by artists of the Nouveau Realisme (New Realism) movement in the 1960s that involved making art from posters ripped from walls. The process of decollage took an archeological character and was seen as a means of uncovering historical information. The Nouveau Realistes exhibited their ripped poster artworks as aesthetic objects and social documents.”

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text: “Faile – An artist collective with graphic design roots active since 1999 who view their wheat paste street art os a development of an image process over which they will ultimately have no control, and as a frame for other people’s work. Inspired by Nouveau Realisme and The Situationists, Faile accepts and welcomes decay, damage to their work by ripping and tearing, and other people pasting over their work.”

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text (above): “Shepard Fairey – Screenprint, sticker, and wheatpaste artist Shepard Fairey became known for his 1989 “Andre the Giant has a Posse (“Obey Giant”) sticker campaign featuring the image of wrestler Andre the Giant. Fairey’s mysterious imagery was seen around the world and often confused as advertising and propaganda. Fairy intended Obey Giant and his later works to inspire curiosity with a “non-message” and cause people to question their relationship with their surroundings, society, and values. “The medium is the message.” Fairy used the philosopher Marshall McLuhans’s theory of communication and combines it with the notion of repetition, symbolism, and iconography.”

text (below): “Shepard Fairey’s historic poster of Barack Obama for the 2008 U.S. presidential election became a widely recognized however divisive symbol, challenging ideas of hope in political systems.”

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text: “Swoon – Brooklyn-based artist and activist Swoon became known for her intricate engravings on recycled paper, creating elegant life-sized portraits of family and friends. Her work is about place, home, family, community, and also global issues of environment and climate change. Swoon has successfully navigated both the street art world and the art gallery setting with her only rule to be proud of the result. Her works have entered permanent collections in MoMA and the Brooklyn Museum.”

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There are also some panels featuring the past work of well known documentary photographers including two American women Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971) and Dorothea Lange (1895-1965).

Billboard featuring “World’s Highest Standard of Living – There’s no way like the American Way” behind a line of African-Americans displaced be the Great Ohio River Flood line up at a relief station in Louisville Kentucky.  ” The Louisville Flood, 1937″ by Margaret Bourke-White

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Residents of Japanese ancestry appear for registration prior to evacuation. Evacuees will be housed in War Relocation Authority centers for the duration (FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps)  Photo by Dorothea Lange, “Waiting for Registration, San Francisco, 1942”

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