Tour ‘the most eccentric, colorful wall mural on Planet Earth’ before it is destroyed

Despite years of petitions and protests, the 7,000-square-foot mosaic mural by Isaiah Zagar at the former site of the Painted Bride Art Center is set for demolition this fall. Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, which preserves and provides access to Zagar’s art around the city, is offering a “last look” tour at the iconic public piece on Aug. 19 and another in September.

The building, at 230 Vine St. in Old City, will be demolished by developer and architect Shimi Zakin of Atrium Design Group to build a new 85-unit short-term rental building. Zakin wanted to preserve the full mural and build apartments above, but neighbors sued to stop the city from granting him the zoning exceptions he said he needed.

» READ MORE: Pieces of the Painted Bride mural could be incorporated into a plan to build short-term rentals in Old City

Now Zakin and Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens say they will work to incorporate pieces of the mural into the facade of the new building — but preserving the tiles during removal could be nearly impossible.

We compiled recent and past photos by Inquirer photographers of Skin of the Bride, the name of Zagar’s mural, to provide a digital last look at the full piece. Black netting that had shrouded the mural for the last five years was removed in June.

The Painted Bride Art Center, now based in West Philadelphia, commissioned Zagar in 1991 to create an exterior mosaic for its “simple industrial building with no character,” as the executive director told the Philadelphia Daily News in 1993. At the time, Zagar had never created a fully embellished wall from street level to rooftop, according to a failed historic nomination the Magic Gardens submitted to the city in 2018.

Zagar’s self-taught technique, in which he uses broken crockery as well as whole teapots and figurines, pieces of mirror, and hand-painted tiles, is now known as “The Zagar Method.” He does not map out a project fully before beginning, but creates as he goes.

The text along the top of structure reads “The Bride has many suitors, even,” a reference to artist Marcel Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, according to the historical nomination. Duchamp’s piece has a home at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

In this part of the mural, Zagar mosaicked a 1978 article from the Philadelphia Bulletin about a South Street merchant named Abe Kravitz. Across Zagar’s works, words are sometimes misspelled and letters appear upside down or backward.

“I’m dyslexic, so I use it in my art,” Zagar told the Daily News in 1993. The newspaper described Skin of the Bride at the time as “the most eccentric, colorful wall mural on Planet Earth.”

To the left is the acronym “PITCOTAW,” which stands for “Philadelphia is the Center of the Art World,” said Allison Boyle, events & marketing manager at Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens. Zagar had a mid-career retrospective at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which he felt didn’t receive enough press, Boyle said. He considered trying to break into the New York City art world but instead decided to make Philadelphia the center of his art. He started including the acronym in his work in 1979.

Zagar was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War and joined the Peace Corps in Peru in 1965. While there, the artist studied and was inspired by “folk art,” a kind of art made by a community for a community, often using a variety of mediums including ceramics, textiles, metal, paper, and wood, the historic nomination said. Upon his return to Philadelphia, he suffered a personal crisis: He was hospitalized and attempted suicide.

He began making mosaics as a form of therapy.

“While I was working, I found myself breaking and breaking things and putting them back together,” he said in an interview included in the historic nomination. “It was the whole idea of recovering that which is broken and healing through art.”