Dan Witz — Wall Street Journal

Dan Witz hand painting the front cover of his limited edition book, In Plain View.


Dan Witz, Painting the Streets Since 1970
NOVEMBER 23, 2010, 8:30 PM ET
Alexandra Cheney

He’s in and out in 10 seconds, but don’t call him a graffiti artist. That’s all the time he’s got to create his works of art, large and small, on boarded up windows, walls, doorways and other surfaces around New York City. If it takes more than 10 seconds, the chances of getting caught intensify greatly.

His name is Dan Witz, and he’s been painting the streets since 1970.

“The surfaces of the city keep changing,” said Witz. “But the police know what’s going on. There’s a pressure to not get arrested, so you have to get more resourceful, crafty and creative.”

One of those resources is speed.

On Monday night at the Clic Gallery in SoHo Witz celebrated the launch of his linen cover, hand-painted edition of “In Plain View: 30 Years of Artworks Illegal and Otherwise.” People sipped their sparkling water as Witz hand-painted the covers of nearly two dozen of the 120 copies of the book that were released. On a white table with locked-in roller, Witz used one hand to support another as onlookers craned their necks to watch his every stroke.

Other than the cover, the innards of the 250-page book are exactly the same. It took three years to produce the book, but Witz said he’s completely satisfied with the way it turned out, from the reproductions of his work to the chronology of his artistic career.

“I got to choose my greatest hits,” Witz said, “except for this year. This year was my best.”

Witz is known as an artist always trying to top his previous project.

His first large scale street art was a series of over 40 hummingbirds painted below 14th Street and excluding SoHo, “where all the galleries were,” said Witz. That was in 1979 when it took him approximately two hours to complete each one. Cops and supers alike caught him, but he never got in any serious trouble. Most, in fact, let him finish once they realized what he was painting.

“He’s what’s going on in the street,” said Christiane Celle, the owner of the gallery and founder of the luxury clothing line Calypso, which she sold in 2008, the same year she opened Clic. “I admire his work, his lifestyle.”

Throughout the night, old friends, admirers and some fellow street artists came into the gallery to offer congratulations and have Witz autograph their book. The regular book is $40, the linen cover, $150.

“My art is like a performance,” Witz said. “You prepare continuously and then you forget about it all and just paint.”


http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/11/23/dan-witz-painting-the-streets-since-1970