Fans of the late Margaret Kilgallen should definitely watch this video where one of her mentors, book conservator Daniel Flanagan, speaks about Margaret and the work at her recent show at Ratio 3.

Photo by Meighan O’Toole

Peter Fuss

This week the link-o-rama is coming from Steph’s room, where I’ve been staying. After all, got that beautiful baby boy to take care of… Here’s what’s been going on elsewhere in street art this week:

• Margaret Kilgallen’s show at Ratio 3 is open.
• Faile are releasing some gold prints at their print show in LA (opening tonight). Because gold = awesome. Or something like that.
• Cyop and Kaf painting for FAME Festival. And they now have a book.
• Definitely check out this video of Anthony Lister, Mymo and others in Berlin.
• Loving this portrait of a certain clown named Ronald by Zoltron.
• ABOVE has a book coming out later this year.
• This war memorial in Bulgaria has been taken over by superheroes.
• Mathieu Tremblin is interesting as always.
• West Berlin Gallery is showing some photos by Brenna.
• A nice interview with Stik.

Photo by Peter Fuss

Patti Astor at Keith Haring's Fun Gallery show, 1983, Photo by Eric Kroll

If you’re the Jeffrey Deitch or museum-hating type, the next few weeks are not going to be your favorite weeks, at least not when it comes to Vandalog posts. I’m gonna be talking a lot about this topic. I could hardly be more excited for MOCA‘s upcoming Art In The Streets show, and some substantive information about the show is finally starting to come out:

• First of all, what lots of people have been asking for: a solid and confirmed opening date. Art In The Streets opens on April 17th.
• There will be 50 artist installations including Futura, Margaret Kilgallen, Swoon, Shepard Fairey and Os Gêmeos. Arrested Motion has some photos of Shepard’s installation process.
• The MOCA iteration includes a lot of West Coast stuff like Cholo graffiti and writers like Revok and Saber.
• Oh, clarification on the last point: The show movies to The Brooklyn Museum next March. Presumably the show will be refocused a bit NYC graffiti for that iteration.
• The show will include some mini-shows within it including a space dedicated to The Fun Gallery, a RAMELLZEE installation and Todd James, Barry McGee, and Steve Powers’ new iteration of their legendary Street Market show.
• Because MOCA is looking at skateboarding as art on the streets too, there will be a custom skate ramp in the museum and Nike’s skateboarding team will be skating there throughout the run of the show.
• There will be a film festival component to the show.

So yeah. Sounds good. Can’t wait for the opening. If this show succeeds, it could be the American equivalent of Banksy Versus The Bristol Museum in terms of impact.

Here’s some more preview images:

Chaz Bojorquez, Señor Suerte tag with ‘veterano/veterana’ roll calls, Arroyo Seco River, Los Angeles, 1975, photo by Blades Bojorquez

RAMMELLZEE, Battle Station, New York City, 2005, photo by Charlie Ahearn

Photos courtesy of MOCA

Sure and Faust. Photo by euniyah

I’ve been out of the loop and stuck in libraries lately (and then in Miami for the weekend), and that’s led to me miss posting about a lot of things. I’ve got some catching up to do, so here’s the start of that:

• EPOS 257 built a fence in a public square in Prague. A. It reminds me of Richard Sera’s amazing Tilted Arc and B. Seems like a great way to screw with the local bureaucratic government. I guess there’s the important question left though of if the public actually thought about anything when looking at the work. I’m hoping that some did, but perhaps it was too nondescript to provoke much thought.
• Cost’s newspaper box (mentioned recently) was stolen from the street and ended up on eBay. The winning bidder paid over $4,000!
• The first show from YellowPants Gallery will open in Lisbon this week with a great lineup including Maya Hayuk and Remed. More info here.
• If you’re feeling the recession, you’ve got to check out this artwork by Patrick Martinez.
• Evan Roth gets clever with the TSA full-body scanners.
• SF’s Ratio 3 Gallery will be holding a solo show of Margaret Kilgallen’s work in March.
• Ending on a very sad note, Brooklyn Street Art has received word from Faust that his friend and fellow graffiti writer Sure has died while serving the USA in Afghanistan.

Photo by euniyah

Beautiful Losers, the film about some of low-brow and street art’s 1990′s pioneers, is now streaming online on Babelgum. If you haven’t seen this movie yet, now you’ve really run out of excuses. If you enjoy reading Vandalog, this is a key film for you to see. Artists interviewed include Barry McGee, Steve Powers and Shepard Fairey. I think it even includes one of my all-time favorite quotes about art:

“From a distance it might look straight, but when you get close up, you can always see the line waver. And I think that’s where the beauty is.” – Margaret Kilgallen

So yeah, get over to Babelgum.com/beautifullosers to watch the entire film. Now I kind of feel like an idiot for buying the dvd…

The nice thing about street art is that, for 99% of the people who look at it (the people who see it on the street and not on blogs like this one), there’s not market consideration about “how much is that worth?” or anything like that. But then there’s the 1% of us (the people who follow blogs and write and forums and so on) who do see the art market side of street art. Sometimes the art market provides opportunities for Boxi, Steve Powers and other artists can show up in London and paint walls with permission and free paint. Other times, the art market makes me want to cry.

This week, Philips de Pury had a few pieces in their London day auction by low-brow and street artists. Street Art Is Dead notes that two Mr. Brainwash pieces sold for £42,000 and £75,000 even though the estimates were already a seemingly insane £7-9,000 and £15-20,000 respectively. What makes those results even more disgusting is when you compare them to other results in that same sale:

• A massive and beautiful Ryan McGinness which has been shown in The Saatchi Gallery sold for just under £19,000. A collector could have 4 of those paintings, or one crappy Mr. Brainwash.
• The Kaws piece pictured above sold for £13,750. Not my favorite, but you would think that Star Wars fans would be all over that one.
• And then the two most surprising results were that both a Margaret Kilgallen cluster and an old Barry McGee piece failed to sell at all! While this particular Kilgallen cluster has been floating around for quite a while, it’s not a bad piece and Kilgallen’s art is almost impossible to find for sale.

Similarly, while it doesn’t outrage me quite as much, I don’t exactly understand why this Banksy sold for $75,000. It’s just not a strong image.

The art market makes no sense and sometimes I wish it would just go away.

Photo courtesy of Phillips de Pury

Billboard by Mobstr

This link post is definitely going to be a weekly thing. Hopefully it will allow me to link to things that I just haven’t had the time to cover here on the blog, my Twitter or Vandalog’s Facebook page. So here’s what you may have missed in street art this week:

• My Love For You Is A Stampede of Horses and Arrested Motion have two sets of amazing photos from Fecal Face‘s 10 year anniversary show at The Luggage Store in SF. This show has a pretty sick line up including Barry McGee, Margaret Kilgallen, Jim Houser, Swoon and Maya Hayuk.
• Nychos’ solo show at Pure Evil Gallery (in cooperation with End of The Line) opened on Thursday. Go here for the press release sort of info or go here for photos from the opening.
• That I May See, Matt Small’s latest solo show, opened last week at Black Rat Projects and it looks absolutely stunning. My family and I can’t thank Matt enough for his support of the Robert Shitima School in Zambia, which is where Matt and Black Rat Press have decided to donate 40% of the proceeds from this show.
• Eelus, Logan Hicks, Eine, Lucy McLachlan and others are headed to Gambia next month for the Wide Open Walls project.
• OFFSET has once again put together an interesting conference of creatives who will be speaking next month (October 1st-3rd) in Dublin. OFFSET 2010 will have presentations from Gary Baseman, Steve Powers, Marc and Sara Schiller of Wooster Collective and many more. Early bird tickets are available online for 150 euros (with discounts for students thankfully).
• A very touching work of street art in Brooklyn.
• Just Seeds has put together Resourced, a set for political posters that you can download and print at home. There are designs by Gaia, Armsrock, Chris Stain, Josh MacPhee and many more artists.
• When I first heard about JR’s new Unframed project, I didn’t really care for it. Basically, JR is wheatpasting other photographers (often famous) photographs around in cities. To me, this sort came out of left field. I don’t mind when Blek le Rat does similar things, but with JR, I always liked the stories behind the photos as much as the images themselves. I thought that with Unframed, that aspect of the art would go away. Luckily, Angelo at FAME Festival reassured me in an email and said once I learned more about the project, these would be just as interesting as the rest of JR’s art. Because I trust Angelo, I waited and didn’t write anything about Unframed or JR’s piece at FAME Festival. Earlier this week, Hi-Fructose’s blog posted a better explanation of the project as well as some photos of Unframed taking place in Switzerland. As usual, Angelo was right and after reading that post on Hi-Fructose, I’ve been convinced about Unframed.

Photo by Mobstr

I’ve noticed a number of links piling up over the past few days, so it’s time for one of my link compiling posts. Oh and thanks to C-Monster for featuring Vandalog on today’s Daily Digest (the probably superior link post series that I try to emulate a bit from time to time).

• On the Beautiful Losers front, the DVD is coming out this month. Anybody who has seen the film will tell you the same thing: buy the DVD. Also, there was a touching profile of Margaret Kilgallen, one of the artists featured in Beautiful Losers, in The Guardian over the weekend.
• The extremely talented Titifreak has a book. I didn’t know he had one coming out, but apparently plenty of people in Rio did because his launch party looks like it was a huge success.
• Some people love D*Face. Some people hate him. If you’re a hater, just pretend this is somebody else, because D*Face says some things work listening to in this interview with Walrus TV (via Juxtapoz)

• And the best link of the day, Posterchild (no, not PosterBoy) is not happy about the illegal ads in the streets of NYC. A really fantastic example of artivism.

It is also quite well-presented and easy to use; you can either scroll the catalogue page by page or search by artist. The biographical information is nice to have and I like the inclusion of sales results for comparable work – this is particularly handy if you are considering placing a bid.

I have highlighted a few of my personal favorites. Clicking on the image will take you to the lot.

Dondi White "Style Maneuver" 1983

Dondi White "Reflections", 1983

Keith Haring "Luna, Luna, a poetic extravaganza!" 1986

Keith Haring "Untitled (DOG) Oil on Wood" 1983

Mr. "Untitled (Yellow Hair)" 1996

Banksy "Have A Nice Day" 2004

Nick Walker "Sweet Revenge" 2008

Jean-Michel Basquiat "Anti-Baseball Card Product" circa 1979

Doze Green "Ancestros Totemic Series: Cuba" 2008

Date Farmers "Untitled" 2006

Barry McGee "Untitled" 1999

Margaret Kilgallen "Kingpin" 1997

Elisa x