Thomas MacMillan Photo
BiP carried out his latest guerilla art caper in broad daylight.
“SUPA-THUG” painted his name in big block letters on a wall overlooking a State Street parking lot.
Oh wait, it wasn’t painted by a real super-thug, but by a cute little girl.
Oh wait … she’s not real either.
The giant tag, the cute little girl — they’re both created by New Haven’s resident guerrilla street artist, a man known only as Believe In People, or BiP.
They appeared in downtown New Haven this week.
In a brazen daylight caper, BiP and two other guys painted the tag and a trompe l’oeil stencil of the little girl on a wall visible from a parking lot near the corner of State and Chapel streets.
The piece is the second large-scale BiP painting to appear in just over a month. BiP painted an enormous yellow hand on the side of lumber yard building last month, just over the border in West Haven. The latest work is the most visible piece BiP has done in town since his mural of Anne Frank on the side of Partners Cafe on Crown Street.
The “SUPA-THUG” piece deals with some themes BiP has tackled in previous work: shifting identities, things not being what they seem, meta-commentary on street art. It also brings to mind the work of international street artist Banksy, to whom BiP has often been compared.
Assumption
“SUPA-THUG” was unveiled on Monday after BiP and two other men apparently worked on it over the weekend. Frank (pictured), who works in the parking lot and declined to give his last name, said three men showed up on Friday.
Frank said he helped the men pull down a fire-escape staircase. They got up on the roof of the building and attached two-by-fours, then hung a huge blue tarp over the wall, Frank said. They had scaffolding and ladders. On Monday, they took the tarp down and revealed the piece, which has BiP’s initials in the lower left.
“It’s all right,” Franks said of the painting. “Whatever it means, I don’t know. There no word at all with S‑U-P‑A. It’s not in the dictionary. … Well, it’s an eye-catcher, that’s all.”
Frank said he figured the men must have been doing the work legally. “They would have had to get permission from the owner.”
The owner, Chris Nicotra, said they didn’t have permission: “Frank just assumed that they were there to do work for me.”
Nicotra, reached by phone in Florida, said he started getting calls about the new painting on Tuesday. “I was quite confused at first, then somebody sent me a cell phone picture.”
“I think it looks pretty cool,” he said. Nicotra said he was reserving judgment until he sees the painting in person, but will likely not paint over it, as long it’s not offending anyone.
“I’ve heard about this quote unquote mystery artist,” Nicotra said. “It never crossed my mind that he would attack one of my properties.”
“I guess from the scuttlebutt that I’ve heard, he’s an up and coming artist,” he said. “So that’s kind of cool. … I’m not opposed to it. I’m a big supporter of the arts community.”
Treachery
One woman walking by on Wednesday compared the piece to work by Banksy, which she said she’d seen in Israel. It’s not the first time a comparison has been made between the two pseudonymous artists, and the “SUPA-THUG” piece invites it more than others have. Banksy also works in detailed stencils, and has even featured little girls in dresses in some of his work, like this piece (pictured) from Jerusalem.
People are also noticing how convincingly BiP rendered the paint roller leaning against the wall. BiP took care to paint in a shadow cast by the roller. “What people keep telling me is that the paint roller just looks incredibly real,” said Nicotra.
Ben Berkowitz, who works in a nearby building, said he’s overheard people exclaiming that the artist left his roller behind.
By painting a picture of painting tools, and a fictional painter, BiP sets up a kind of meta-meaning — an invitation to explore the story behind a huge tag like “SUPA-THUG.” In this case, what’s behind it is a little girl with a bow in her hair, no kind of thug at all.
The piece can be seen as a commentary on graffiti art or graffiti culture, a scene in which the toughest tagger might not be all that he seems. Or, obversely, the cutest little girl might harbor a secret identity as a — literally — big-name graffiti writer.
The clash of meanings between text and image recalls Rene Magritte’s “The Treachery of Images.” That painting (pictured) depicts an image of a pipe paired with the sentence, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” French for “This is not a pipe.” All images are illusions, Magritte reminds the viewer. A picture of a pipe is not a pipe.
Maybe all graffiti tags are illusions too. BiP’s “SUPA-THUG” stands “The Treachery of Images” on its head. While Magritte used text to question the meaning of an image, BiP uses an image of a little girl to question the text above her. Ceci n’est pas une super-thug.
But BiP’s painting has even another layer of identity-mystery: This isn’t a super-thug, but it’s also not a little girl either. The piece asks the viewer to question his assumptions about the identity of people who paint illegally on buildings. A question that inevitably leads back to the most basic mystery in BiP’s work: Who is he?
Whoever he is, he may not be what you assume. At least, that’s one message of “SUPA-THUG.”
Previous stories on Believe In People:
“Believe in People” Strikes Again
“Believe In People” Hits Downtown Rooftop
Church Embraces Guerrilla Artwork
Believe In People Returns From, To Underground
BiP Reaches Out
How do folks know it was BiP? Is his tag on the painting? (I can't see it in the photo, unless I'm just missing it.) Was there any sort of communication from BiP to the NHI?
[It's signed in the lower left. I changed the photo so it shows his initials. Thanks. -- TM]