ART ATTACK PHALLIC MURAL ON LOWER E. SIDE SPARKS FURY
Artist deflated as huge organ is painted over
DING-DONG, the mural’s gone.
A Swedish artist’s four-story painting of a purple penis faded to gray Wednesday after workers slapped a fresh coat of paint over the artwork on a Lower East Side building.
“I’m sure the building owner got an earful from the community,” said Naomi Pena, president of the local education council. “I’m surprised it wasn’t whitewashed by the people down here.”
The building landlord ordered the coverup at 303-305 Broome St. amid gripes that the anatomically detailed painting cast a perverse holiday pall over the neighborhood.
Artist Carolina Falkholt put the finishing touches on the enormous organ about 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve.
“At first, I thought it was a flower,” said Ye Su, who works across the street at the Buddhist Guan Gong Temple. “I think they’re crazy. We are a temple. There is a church there, a school, the park.”
Wing Ho, 57, owner of a laundromat next door to the mural, said he was shocked after Falkholt applied the finishing touches to her man-ster piece.
“It’s awful,” said Ho. “It’s making a lot of people upset and uncomfortable.”
Falkholt, in a statement that referenced both male and female genitalia, noted she had just finished an abstract mural of a vagina on nearby Pike St. before starting the penis project.
“I felt like a d--k was needed,” said Falkholt. “The wall space on Broome was a perfect fit for it . . . . No more body-shaming. Talking about these subjects in a public space is a must for a healthy, nonviolent community/world.”
The process of painting over the towering penis began shortly before 4 p.m. and wrapped up in short order.
The initial plan was for the painting to stay in place through Jan. 18, although Milan Kelez of the New Allen art collective wasn’t surprised by the negative reaction.
“Usually, this is what happens with art like this,” said Kelez, whose group has placed 30 lower Manhattan murals in the last year. “They’re taken down because it’s a hard topic of conversation.”
Local mom Pena said it was no chat to have with her 8-year-old twins, who noticed the massive mural as they walked through the neighborhood.
“They said, ‘Mom, that’s disgusting. Why is that there?’ ” she recounted. “From the mouths of babes.”
Not everyone on the Lower East Side shared the negative sentiment toward the giant genitalia.
Sal Balvo, who stopped to take a picture Wednesday, didn’t see what all the fuss was about.
“I find it quite funny,” he said. “I’m walking down the street, and I see a genital. That’s what I came to New York for.”