Chris Pape

The New York Times recently reported on Chris Pape, 50, whose street art works from the 1980s decorated an abandoned stretch of subway on Manhattan's Upper West Side. It is the abandoned freight train tunnel under Riverside Park where he began painting huge murals on the walls in 1980.  He is inspired by famous artists and often incorporates elements of famous works in his own work. See the photo of Pape's meling watched aka Salvador Dali.

According to wikipedia, Chris Pape (aka Freedom) is an American painter and graffiti artist. Pape started tagging subway tunnels and subway cars in 1974 as "Gen II" before adopting the tag "Freedom". Pape is best known for his numerous paintings in the eponymous Freedom Tunnel, an Amtrak tunnel running underneath Manhattan's Riverside Park. Prominent paintings in the Freedom Tunnel attributed to Pape include his "self-portrait" featuring a male torso with a spray-can head and "There's No Way Like the American Way" (aka "The Coca-Cola Mural"), a parody of Coca-Cola advertising and tribute to the evicted homeless of the tunnel.

Another theme of Freedom's work is black and silver recreations of classical art, including a reinterpretation of the Venus de Milo and a full train car recreation of the iconic hands from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel.