N.Y. Journal: Poster Boy

When I saw that the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was hanging posters of classic art in the Atlantic Avenue-Pacific Street subway station, I knew that New York's artistic art defacer couldn't resist the temptation.

"Poster Boy," an elusive street artist, remixes subway posters by cutting and pasting different ones together to create original work. It's technically vandalism (the NYPD recently claimed it had arrested him), but it's also humorous and inventive. Above, from his Flickr account, is one of my favorites: a kind of self-portrait using the poster from Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail.

All those classic art pieces hanging there, all bright and freshly pasted, turned out to be irresistible to his irreverent sensibilities. He took the piece of art from the MoMA poster collection on the left and turned it into this.

It was so obvious that people wondered if MoMA actually authorized him to do it, especially when Doug Jaeger, the marketing executive who created the campaign, tagged along and took photos. Jaeger told New York Magazine's blog:

"Early on we saw Poster Boy's work, and we realized it was inevitable that if we did this project, his crew would likely see it as an opportunity. Whenever you create something, you want to make sure you're prepared for that. . . . What I would hope is that it would cause debate and generate some argument, at a minimum."

MoMA denied that it authorized the slicing, and by the time I got there, the posters were restored to their original humdrum glory.