20 Years Art Make-over

This year Germany celebrates 60 years of the Bundesrepublik and also 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Well. There are few remaining parts of the wall still standing and the graffiti work on those parts has also taken it's place in history, for instance the East-side Gallery. However, many of the graffiti is so badly damaged, the city, wanting to preserve the few remains of that era, have invited the artists from around the world to come back and repaint their graffiti. From Spiegel Online:

Russian painter Dimitri Vrubel (above) measures a chunk of the Berlin Wall in preparation for a project that will see him repainting his famous "Brothers' Kiss" mural on one of the last remaining stretches of the famous Cold War monument. The original mural, which shows former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev kissing his East German counterpart Erich Honecker and was created just months after the fall of the Wall, had deteriorated over the years. Vrubel's work -- along with those of other artists, 117 from 21 countries, on display at the so-called East Side Gallery -- are currently being recreated using materials that will make the art more resistent to weather and vandals. Vrubel expressed anger when the East Side Gallery's curators erased the original image without informing him. In the end, though, he agreed to come back and cover the Wall with his provocative brush strokes.

The top picture is a reminder of why I love Keith Haring so much. Here is the original article I took the image from, there is a KH movie!