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The Bowery Wall, New York’s premier street art showcase, has been blank for awhile now, as owner Golden Properties has done some refurbishing to the plywood structure overlaying the original masonry relic first painted by Keith Haring back in the ’80s. Last week, though, scaffolding around the site came down, revealing a clean white surface prepped and ready for the wall’s latest masterpiece. That would be American Temper Tot by veteran street artist Ron English, which went up over the weekend.
The image features the Stars and Stripes, with each star overlaid by a skull and each stripe made up as a band of English’s advertising parodies, which have cropped up around town as part of his “Popaganda” project (some examples include a Marlborough cigarette box with “breathe” instead the usual brand name and a Diet Coke label that reads “Diabetic Coke.”) In the middle of it all, English has added giant image of the Incredible Hulk as a baby in the middle of having a melt-down—a great metaphor for a post-9-11 America that’s been throwing a global tantrum for nearly 14 years.