Pizza restaurants controversial new muralsparksoutrage: An act of cultural erasure

Things are getting saucy at a New Jersey pizza joint.Artist Jen Flaum was commissioned to paint a new mural on the exterior wall of Brick & Dough, a pizzeria in Montclair, New Jersey.Flaum posted a video to TikTok on April 12 of her working on the new mural while people walked by and shared their reactions — and while nearly all were positive, one passerby expressed their immediate disappointment.“Right when I started, someone was upset about the restaurant updating their mural,” Flaum wrote.In the video, which has garnered 26.2 million views, watchers can hear someone asking, “You painted over those murals? Why did they do that? What’s going up there?”The artist shared that she was painting pizzas, and the person simply responded, “OK, thank you.”Throughout the rest of the video, neighborhood residents walked by praising Flaum’s pizza paintings, and one even asked if she was a famous artist.“I’m sure you’ll be famous soon,” they added before taking her picture.But that one out-of-place interaction was enough to get people to do some sleuthing and find out what the artist painted over.One eagle-eyed person used Google Street View to take a look at the original mural, noting that they “just had to see this for myself.”The internet quickly discovered that the original artwork was titled “The Curse of Socrates” and was done by artist Jayemaich.The painting, commissioned by Brick & Dough owner Jason Rosenthal in 2021, depicted two elderly women with notable wrinkles and longing faces.“That wall was blank forever, so we really wanted to put something cool up,” Rosenthal told TODAY.com of the original mural.“We started talking, and I commissioned him to paint what was up there.”Jayemaich previously told Montclair Local in 2021 that this work of art was inspired by Socrates’ philosophy of teaching morality, which ultimately led to his execution.Now, people are discussing the stark contrast between the two murals.“Big d...