Very Nearly Almost issue 16 has been out for about a month and a half now, so I’m a bit late on this one. Issue 16 has Invader on the cover, a must-read interview with Kid Zoom, photos from the streets of London, Paris and Melbourne and much more. The stand-out of this issue is definitely that interview with Kid Zoom, and if you’re a fan of his, I’d pick up VNA16 just for that piece alone. It’s one of the most honest and mature interviews I’ve read from any young artist. That dude is going places.

You can buy Very Nearly Almost in their online shop.

Photos courtesy of Very Nearly Almost

Sam3 in France

This week it seems like I’ve been appearing elsewhere on the web as much as here on the blog. I’ve been more active than usual on Vandalog’s tumblr, which I’ve finally getting a feel for; I was interviewed by Brian Sherwin over at FineArtViews; and I wrote a post for my friend at Hyperallergic about advertisers utilizing the style of Liu Bolin to sell stuff. Here’s what didn’t make it to Vandalog:

• Revok called out Fab 5 Freddy for appropriating (or in Revok’s words “stealing”) letters from other artists including Sever and using them in his own work. You can read Revok’s post here, and hopefully I’ll have some thoughts about it in a post on Vandalog over the weekend. A commenter on Vandalog actually noted that Fred was doing this about two months ago.
• New York Magazine published an article, and not a particularly brief one, all about a painting that is supposedly by Jean-Michel Basquiat but was denied by his estate’s authentication committee. Well, while the writer of the article tries to get readers to sympathize with going through a potentially daunting and certainly not transparent authentication process, there was really no point for the whole thing: The painting is clearly by Phil Frost, something that the article doesn’t mention at all. So, umm… good work. Thanks to Known Gallery for pointing this all out.
• Nunca, Titifreak, Invader and more at this show in Paris.
• Retna painted a mural in Miami.
• Here’s some images of Bast’s show in Newcastle.
• The New York Times went with graffiti writer Freedom back to The Freedom Tunnel where he used to paint and took some photos.
• A street art / mystery investigation documentary film thing. Looks kinda cool except that they are trying to “out” an artist, so I’m not sure I’m 100% cool with that.

Photo by Sam3

El Mac

First week of school down. Just a boatload more to go. Here’s what I’ve been checking out to procrastinate doing homework:

• A nice time lapse video of Kid Zoom.
• Very Nearly Almost’s latest issue (with Invader on the cover) launches on September 8th in London.
• TrustoCorp have been putting up some clever new work recently. Arrested Motion has the images, and they’re running a TrustoCorp-related contest.
• The NYTimes has an article about the potential demise of 5Pointz.
• Euth, a street artist, sued Green Day for appropriating one of his images in background graphics for their live show. That lawsuit has been dismissed. Melrose&Fairfax seems to lean towards agreeing with Euth on this one, but while Green Day might have been in an ethical grey area by not compensating Euth, they were undoubtedly legally in the right, and on the whole, that’s a good thing. No idea is 100% original and appropriation is appropriate. As M&F point out in this post, a lot of street artists base their work on appropriation.
• Something new from Morley.
• A guy in the Hamptons is selling a bunch of Banksy pieces that were ripped out of walls from around the world. Gawker has some explanation of what happened. Of course the work is all unauthenticated and the morals of the whole situation are pretty sketchy.

Photo by unusualimage

Neckface

With my mind still on Living Walls, I’ve got some catching up to do with what’s been going on outside of Atlanta. So here’s some of that catching up…

• King Robbo is currently having serious health issues, and there’s a fundraising art auction at Cargo for him next month.
• Brooklyn Street Art’s LA show, Street Art Saved My Life, opened and BSA has photo of the entire thing.
• The Zoo Project are a major street art force in Paris, and this wall is one of my favorites from them in a while.
• Tristan Manco contributed a list of his 10 favorite pieces of street art to The Guardian.
• Shepard Fairey had quite an ordeal in Copenhagen. On the whole, I’ve got to agree with Shepard on this one. He made a mistake and tried to make it right, but people still beat him up and newspapers still sensationalized their stories in inaccurate ways. Uncool. That said, it’s worth pointing out that right in the midst of Shepard complaining about newspapers getting their facts straight and being ethical, he writes “I adhere to my ethical beliefs in all areas of my artistic and business practice.” I hate to kick a guy while he’s down, but it needs to be mentioned that Shepard did attempt to falsify evidence during his lawsuit with the AP, so those ethics aren’t always adhered to. Anyway, sucks that Shepard and Obey Clothing’s Romeo Trinidad were beat up.
• Futura and Stash getting up in NYC.
• James Marshal aka Dalek is trying something very different with his new work.
• Nunca, Miss Van and others are at work on a mural project in Berlin.
• Sao Paulo’s Museum of Art just opened a huge show of street artists including JR, Swoon, Invader and Remed.

Photos by Sabeth718

A.Bot

If you’ll notice that there were a good number of posts on Vandalog this week, you’ll notice the opposite thing next week. With family in town visiting and moving in with some friends and starting the couch-hopping segment of my summer in just a few days, things are rather busy. And so is the art world. Here’s what I have been reading this week:

• Romanywg has a new book out about art in abandoned places.
• The indoor segment of Bristol’s Upfest looks really great.
• Swampy’s show in San Fransisco looks like it would have been spectacular to see in person. I’m jealous.
• Two fabulous new murals by Blu and Ericailcane.
• Essu makes great stickers (if you’re okay with a strong McGee influence).
• Someone seems to agree with me on the court case that Mr. Brainwash recently lost. Fair use applies even to bad art.
• Skittles needs to find a new advertising company.
• Faile have a prints show in Venice Beach.
• San and Escif are collaborating.
• Everyone’s talking about this Shepard Fairey thing, but frankly I don’t really care. Dude was being hassled and got a bit irritated and snapped. We all do it. Oh and didn’t everyone know that he has assistants to put up his street work?
• This video features Marcelo, who is one of the 127 carts that carry the art of the graffiti artist Mundano, and just one of the 20.000 that have in São Paulo.
• Some Banksy pieces are up for sale at Sotheby’s.
• Performance artist is jailed for not harming anything at all.
• Photos from the show that Barry McGee and Josh Lazcano curated at V1 Gallery.

Photo by Get.off.My.Spaceship!

"Black Rose" by Ludo

Were you at the launch of Very Nearly Almost on Thursday? Well we probably didn’t see each other, since I was out of there by 8pm! Damn jet lag. Dunno how it lasted so long. Anyway, I’m in London for the summer now. I missed a link-o-rama post last week, so here’s some stuff you should check out but haven’t seen on Vandalog over the last few weeks.

• I plan to pick up this book on San Fransisco graffiti in the 80′s and 90′s.
• Don’t Panic interviewed Kid Acne.
• 1000 swings are going to be installed across LA in strange places. Yes.
• Speaking of 1000, Invader has placed his 1000th piece in Paris and has a show there soon to celebrate.
• Street artists like Herakut painted murals in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
• KAWS has some new paintings at Art Hong Kong.
• Faile have brought their random cube paintings to a new interactive level with their Puzzle Box pieces. There are original “puzzle boxes” for sale where you can rearrange the cubes any way you would like, or you can try the puzzles out online or through an iPod/iPad app. Check it all out here.
• This piece by Cyrcle and Chad Muska is either one of the most annoying pieces of so-called street art I’ve seen all year, or a very clever conceptual piece that still fails. Either, it’s an ad for some Chad Muska shoes trying to be street art, or it’s a commentary on the apparent double-standard that many street art fans (myself included) have when it comes to encouraging individuals to place art on the street but discouraging advertises from using the streets in a similar way to sell products. Problem is, if this is some conceptual joke (which I highly doubt), it fails like a lot of attempts at conceptual street art because it requires an artists’ statement or so much prior knowledge that it is extremely likely to be effectively be an advertisement for the vast majority of viewers, negating any conceptual/humorous basis for the piece. Or I suppose it’s both an ad for his shoes and a commentary on that double-standard, but since I don’t like wheatpasted ads, particularly those that try to pass themselves off as street art, well then I’m just upset about that. Stick to skateboarding Chad.

Photo by Ludo

Invader inside of MOCA for Art in the Streets

As I mentioned yesterday, the LAPD and LA residents are getting their feathers all ruffled because street artists and graffiti writers have been getting up in LA a lot over the last week or so, particularly in the Little Tokyo neighborhood where MOCA’s Art in the Streets show is located. When asked about this activity, museum director Jeffrey Deitch told Culture Monster that it could be attributed to, “some of the young taggers who are anarchic…. It’s a language of youth culture, and we can’t stop it. It goes with the territory.” Well, as I also pointed out yesterday, those young taggers include some of the most established artists in Art in the Streets (including Barry McGee and Shepard Fairey). Well now it looks like two artists (most likely Invader and an assistant) have been arrested (correction: detained but not arrested) for putting up some work in Little Tokyo. The two suspected vandals have French passports, and they “were each carrying plastic buckets and inside there was glue or grout, plastering equipment and tiles.” That sounds like Invader to me, whose art is part of Art in the Streets (see photo above), but nobody has confirmed that it was Invader so this is just speculation on my part. If Invader and a friend do get arrested, I wonder if MOCA will bail them out…

Sure, Deitch is trying to be diplomatic by calling street artists anarchic taggers, but I find it a bit insulting. Yes, a museum exhibit of street art and graffiti is going to lead to an increase in street art and graffiti near the museum, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I just wish Deitch could try to put a positive spin on the new street art in Little Tokyo. As it is, he sounds a bit absurd celebrating street artist who have moved their art indoors and dissing street art when it appears outdoors, its rightful location.

Anyway, good luck to Invader, or whichever Frenchmen were arrested (correction: detained) for suspected vandalism.

Photo by helhimchee

Check out this Funny or Die parody of Exit Through The Gift Shop:

Via Reid Harris Cooper

Remi/Roughe and Stormie Mills. Photo courtesy of Remi

Here’s a hodge-podge of photos of some of my favorite murals from Miami this year… Probably more to come in future posts as well. Most of these were part of Primary Flight.

Kid Acne, The London Police, Will Barras and Ema. Photo by S.Vegas

How and Nosm (click to see a a large size of this wall). Photo by tatscruinc

Invader. Photo by Hargo

Shepard Fairey and Overunder. Photo by Hargo

Jeff Soto and Maxx242. Photo by S.Vegas

Amaze by Barry McGee. Photo by S.Vegas

Cash For Your Warhol. Photo by Hargo

Dabs and Myla. Photo courtesy of Thinkspace

Photos by S.Vegas, Hargo, tatscruinc and courtesy of Thinkspace and Remi

Id-iom modified this piece in London by Invader with a tractor beam and a cow. Makes me chuckle. And on a deeper level, a nice example of how artists can interact with street art by other artists.

Photo by Id-iom