Untapped Mailbag: What Are Those Yellow Robots on the Streets of NYC?

Untapped Cities reader Darren Gopaul recently pointed out the presence of a lone yellow robot pasted on the streets of New York City. He asked, “I saw this close to Lincoln Center and also in DuPont Circle in D.C. What’s it all about?” Well, it turns out that an anonymous artist by the name of Stikman has been gracing the roads of New York with these ubiquitous yellow robots for about twenty years now. The street artist was inspired to create him after encountering a plaster plaque with the image of a man made of sticks.

These adorable robots have also spread to several other cities in various shapes, sizes, and forms. When asked about the message he was trying to convey, Stikman wrote in a Street Art NYC interview:

I like my art to speak for itself. There is no hidden message or meaning in the traditional sense, but it is possible to analyze the work on many levels if one is so inclined.  I do hope that the viewers develop a keen sense of the visual environment that is all around them.

When we think of art in New York City, we typically default to world-renowned museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art (where we’ll be hosting our architecture and design tour on November 9th) and the MOMA. But just by simply walking down any street in Manhattan, we would easily be able to find street art, from murals to colorful graffiti. With the recent arrival of Banksy in New York, street art in New York has recently come to the forefront, but other, more subtle forms of art have been appearing on this city’s streets—literally.

For more street art, see Banksy in New York, Christiaan Nagel’s Mushrooms, the Hurricane Sandy mural by Swoon, and the demolition of 5 Pointz in Queens