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MURAL OF KANYE WEST GETS AN UPDATE
"A little bit of light dispels a lot of darkness."
Black for the suit. White for the pocket square. Silver for the Rolex. The street artist was halfway through spray painting his 14-foot mural in the West Loop neighborhood of Chicago last August when people began recognizing the subject.
“Kanye West!” Chris Devins recalled one woman yelling. “I love Kanye!”
The street artist had aimed to turn a defunct
catering company’s wall into a tribute to the superstar that, with regular touch-ups, could last decades.
Then Ye launched into a weeks-long tirade against Jews, and attention abruptly shifted from his creative legacy to his antisemitic rants.
“I’m going death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE,” Ye tweeted in October, apparently referencing Defcon, the U.S. military defense readiness system. He blamed Jews for society’s ills on podcasts and live streams. He refused to back down after
losing a $1.5-billion sneaker deal with Adidas, among other lucrative partnerships. “I like Hitler,” Ye said in a December interview with Infowars founder Alex Jones. “Hitler has a lot of redeeming qualities.”
The antisemitism reverberated.
Now when people regarded the street artist’s work, they saw something else. Friends and strangers flooded his inbox, asking if he planned to remove it. One wrote: “You have to take responsibility for immortalizing an idiot...read more
