In 2011 and 2012, Patrick Waldo aka Moustache Man tagged thousands of subway advertisements. His tag was simple and fun. He wrote the word “Moustache” on the ads where someone else might scribble a crude moustache. The intervention was simple but extremely popular and fun. Unfortunately, NYPD disagreed. They arrested Waldo and charged him with criminal mischief. Not surprising, but certainly disappointing and a waste of their time.

This week, Waldo is taking the Moustache Man identity indoors for his first solo show. The show will be held at Krause Gallery in NYC, opening on the 21st (7-9pm) and running through February 24th.

Although Andrew Hosner of Thinkspace Gallery has implicitly suggested that I am shaking my head over this show because of Nico Glaude’s piece last week, I’m actually curious about this show. Outdoors, as a little prank, I think Moustache Man is pretty funny. And I love that he turned his experiences tagging and then being arrested for the most ridiculous of offenses into a one-man-show for the UCB Theater. But indoors, what is he supposed to do? What is Moustache Man without vandalism and a lack of consent, and how do you bring that indoors? This is bound to fail, right?

Well, now I’m not so sure. Part of Waldo’s show includes “Forced Collaborations” between himself and various other artists. In the case of Mr. Brainwash, Waldo has taken an actual Mr. Brainwash print and added his tag to it. Additionally, since Mr. Brainwash puts his thumbprint in ink on his prints, Waldo decided to dip his testicles in ink and the print has a print of Waldo’s left testicle next to Mr. Brainwash’s thumbprint. Mint and Serf tried something similar a few years ago, but I believe that was with the permission of the involved artists. I’m not sure if this is going to work, but it might, and I’m very curious to see how it goes.

I won’t be able to see the show in person though, so if you do go and see it, please leave a comment and let me know how it goes.

Photo courtesy of Patrick Waldo

Rothko from beyond the grave by Freddy Sam

Not much to say this week except of course that I’m pumped for The Art of Comedy. Not too much news either, but some important stories…

• Bonhams is holding an Urban Art auction in LA (Christ, 5 years after I first heard it and I still hate that term). This has been going on in England for years and of course Doyles New York just did something similar in NYC, but this is the first time Bonhams is doing an Urban Art auction in the USA. Notable lots include this absolutely classic Banksy, some very expensive kindling, an alright Shepard Fairey (a bit special since his originals don’t go to auction often), a Calvin Klein ad by KAWS, a nice Barry McGee panel from 1996, another nice Banksy, one of Chaz Bojórquez’ Señor Suerte stencils on canvas, and a large COST and REVS collaboration from the early 1990′s (yes, its legit, and yes, I would like to hang it in my dorm room if anyone feels like gifting me $20,000).
• Caleb Neelon recently painted some work in Turkey.
• Butterfly and Opera Gallery London have teamed up for a show of 33 artists including Sweet Toof, El Mac, Roa, Shepard Fairey, Ron English and many more. It opens next month.

Photo by Faith47 and via Wooster Collective

Outside of the Mr. Brainwash/Google Music event

Star of Exit Through the Gift Shop and supposed-artist Mr. Brainwash is being sued again for his use of appropriated imagery. This time it’s the estate of the photographer James Marshall (not this James Marshall) suing Mr. Brainwash over his appropriation of photographs that Marshall took of Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane and others. The works in question were part of Google Music’s launch event, which took place at Mr. Brainwash’s studio last fall, so Google is also named in the suit.

Despite the poor quality of Mr. Brainwash’s work, I have to once again defend his right to appropriate Marshall imagery. Better to allow bad art based on appropriation that not allow appropriation at all. Here are two previous posts that I’ve written on this topic relating to the last time Mr. Brainwash was sued for similar reasons.

Photo by Lord Jim

Portrait of Steve Jobs in France

This weekend I’ll be in Boston. If you have any ideas for what I should get up to, leave a comment. I’ll definitely be checking out Swoon’s installation at the ICA Boston. Here’s what’s been going on in street art while I’ve been locked in my room studying all week:

• Steve Powers aka ESPO designed some beer cozies for The World’s Best Ever. They’re pretty okay, but should your beer cozy really be more than pretty okay? I would honestly feel a bit weird of my beer cozy had some brilliant high-brow design on it. Much more impressive is the latest in Powers’ Love Letter series.
• Philips de Pury and MTV had a charity auction for MTV’s Staying Alive Foundation, with particularly nice work by Shepard Fairey and Faile.
• Stik’s latest solo show just opened in London.
• Some beautiful pieces by Sam3 in Porto, Portugal.
• AvoidPi designed the latest cover of Showpaper.
• Blu’s latest mural is in Greece.
• A nice booth for Joshua Liner Galler at Pulse in LA.
• Mr. Brainwash has a show opening soon in LA, but it’s going to be full of other people’s art. Anyone can submit work to be wheatpasted around the exhibition. On the one hand, yay, artists can benefit from Mr. Brainwash’s stupid fame and hype. On the other hand, I guess Mr. Brainwash has acknowledged that he doesn’t have any ideas for art, so he’s just openly benefiting from the art of others to further his own art career. So it’s mutually beneficial, except that individual artists submitting work will gain a lot less from this arrangement than Mr. Brainwash will gain overall.

Photo by Abode of Chaos

Ron English

An interview with Ron English has revealed a number of new twists in the stories of Banksy/Shepard Fairey/Mr. Brainwash/Exit Through the Gift Shop, as well as confirmed some major long-time rumors. Read Ron’s words in full over here, but here’s a summary:

• Thierry Guetta/Mr. Brainwash is a real guy and he’s really like how Exit portrays him. He’s not some actor hired by Banksy or whatever else people have claimed.
• Even before becoming Mr. Brainwash, Thierry was pretty wealthy and he owned a bunch of property in LA. That was his big “in” to connect with street artists: He could offer them the best walls to paint legally.
• Exit Through the Gift Shop came out of Banksy’s intervention in a lawsuit between Shepard and Thierry over Thierry essentially holding hostage all these tapes that Shepard and Banksy wanted access to.
• Banksy is a smart dude, and also cynical.

But make sure to check out the full story on herald-review.com.

Photo by Brandon Shigeta

Via Inside The Rock Poster Frame

Photo by catheadsix

Earlier this year, Mr. Brianwash lost a court case where he was sued by the photographer Glen E. Friedman over the use of one of Friedman’s photographs as the basis for some artwork by Mr. Brainwash. MBW based a number of pieces (including the one shown above) on Friedman’s iconic photo of Run DMC, but did not license the image from Friedman. The prevailing opinion online seemed to be that Friedman was right to sue and that MBW should have paid the license the photo. I defended MBW. Recently, another fair use case has come up where the circumstances are very similar to this case, but for some reason the internet community has come out in favor of the appropriator and against the photographer. That is the case of Andy Baio versus Jay Maisel over the use of a Maisel photograph, modified by Baio, being used as an album cover. It’s an interesting story and you can read the whole thing over here. Supporters in this case have overwhelmingly sided with Baio, to the point where people put up wheatpastes criticizing Maisel on the outside of Maisel’s home. What’s the difference between Friedman versus MBW and Maisel versus Baio?

It seems to come down to one simple thing: likeability. In the MBW/Friedman case, Friedman is the likeable character. His photographs are iconic and he’s put in years of hard work. Mr. Brainwash is just bleh, and Exit Through The Gift Shop doesn’t paint the prettiest picture of him. With Baio/Maisel, Baio modified Maisel’s photograph as one piece of a much larger and likeable project, a musical project where the visual component was not a major consideration, but a nice afterthought, and that musical project was a really cool project. Baio looks like he’s been blindsided by Maisel’s legal threats. So now Baio is the likeable character in the story. But the amount of change that each artist did was probably about the same. In fact, Baio probably made less changes to Maisel’s photograph than MBW did to Friedman’s. MBW was trying to be somewhat transformative, and Baio was trying to imitate Maisel.

The other component here is money. Maisel is a millionaire and forced Baio to pay over $30,000 to settle a case about a project that Baio wasn’t going to make money off of anyway. And while I’m not sure about Friedman’s financial situation, Mr. Brainwash is known to sell millions of dollars of artwork in one night. And nobody wants to side with the rich guy who is just getting richer off of the poorer guy’s hard work. That’s no fun. So even this comes down to likeability. Everyone wants to root for the underdog.

It seems that, at least in the court of public opinion, legal appropriation is little more than a popularity contest. Appropriation is such a grey area that whoever is more likeable is deemed to be in the right. It’s certainly something that I’ve fallen for in the past as well, but in the future I’m going to be a lot more careful, and I hope the rest of the blogosphere will be as well. Street art fans should be particularly aware of these issues, as so much street art and pop art relies on some degree of appropriation.

For the record, I think that both Mr. Brainwash and Baio were in the right.

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!

"Circus" ad disruption in Philadelphia by Sorry

Wow, last week went by quickly. And Steph moved in with me today, temporarily. Should be a crazy few weeks. Here’s what I’ve been meaning to write about:

• JR’s show at Centre Pompidou is open.
• Ludo’s got a new sculpture for sale.
• Faile’s new print with Paper Monster could have been great, but I think they picked such a weak image to work with. Oh well. I’m sure there will be more and better Faile prints in the future.
• The remnants of a historic Cost/Revs piece can now be seen up close from a newly opened section of the Highline in NYC.
• Banksy is sponsoring Art in the Streets at MOCA in LA so that visits are free every Monday from 11-5 through the rest of the show’s run.
• A large Kaws sculpture moved from the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum to The Standard Hotel in NYC. And there’s this new video interview with Kaws too.
• New from Phlegm.
• Lois posted some photos, but here’s even more from Logan Hicks’ show at Opera Gallery.
• I’ve never heard of Anton Steenbock, but I want to see more like this.
• Glen E. Friedman has won his lawsuit against Mr. Brainwash for using Friedman’s iconic photograph of Run DMC. I still say I’d rather have seen MBW win this case. Not because I think MBW’s work based on that photo looked good, but because I’d rather see more room for artists to re-appropriate content and less restrictions on copyrighted material. What MBW did to Friedman’s photograph was transformative. The original photo is a great photo and an iconic one. What MBW did was make it look totally silly. And that should be covered by fair use, for the benefit of better artists.

Photo by Carolinecaldwell

Ad disruption by Homer. Check out more on Rebel Art

Because I missed this post last week, this is kind of a long Link-o-rama. Definitely at least check the first link here.

• Most important article in this list: How the current NYC graffiti removal policy is seriously fucked up and needs to be changed.
• It’ll be interesting to see if Mr. Brainwash reacts to this. By the way, I met him last week and he signed my black book. As terrible as I think he is, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Maybe one day I’ll put the page on eBay and retire on the proceeds. Hopefully not. To be fair though, he was a super nice guy even though I think he knew that I hate his artwork, so that’s big of him.
• Interesting commentary on Art in the Streets from Eddie Colla I guess, but I can’t ignore that he signed the work and even included a QR code. I’m pretty sure he would’ve participated in Art in the Streets had he been invited. In fact, he is part of a group show that opened on the same weekend as MOCA’s show.
• Artinfo interviews Retna.
• Is graffiti unfair competition when the artist starts working indoors? I don’t think that’s the intent of most writers or street artists, but this might be the case for street artists who are just using the streets for the purpose of advertising.
• Maybe the best street intervention I’ve seen all month.
• The Chinese government is afraid of some political street art/graffiti.
• That illegally buffed mural in LA was unbuffed by the graffiti removal company. Haha.
• An interview with Leon Reid IV.
• Dadara’s guerilla banking project.
• Maya Hayuk and Jen Stark will be at Show & Tell Gallery next month.
• A critique of Art in the Streets and street art and graffiti in general by someone who hates and doesn’t understand the culture.

Photo by Homer

Photo by Lord Jim

So with the Oscars less than a week away and an Oscar nomination under his belt, of course Banksy has hit up LA with some new work. Some of it’s good, some of it is barely worth a mention and all of it is getting lots of attention.

My personal favorite from this series of hits is the above billboard, the aftermath of which can be seen in this video. Expect it to show up on eBay any day now.

The other piece I really like is this Charlie Brown on a burnt out building:

Photo by Lord Jim

Hieronymus spotted the Charlie Brown piece getting covered by the property management company. His thoughts on the subject as well as on the general way that Banksy’s outdoor work has such a strange life these days are worth checking out. I would pretty much echo his sentiments. There’s also this video of the piece getting covered, but not much is clear except that the building owners want the work covered for now.

I think with either of those two pieces, they’d be worth mentioning even if they weren’t by Banksy, and that should be the measure by which his work is judged. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, and massive amounts of attention have also been paid to every new Banksy in LA, even the two mediocre ones. First, there’s Dog Wizz, which is kinda funny I guess but definitely not top-notch Banksy work:

Photo by Hieronymus

And then there’s this piece which looks to me like something Mr. Brainwash would dream up after looking at Banksy and Dran’s stuff for a bit too long:

Photo by Lord Jim

Besides being a really weak concept compared to the rest of Banksy’s work with kids drawing, there are a few crazy things about this crayon-gun stencil: It was first “discovered” by Lauren Conrad from The Hills and she posted a photo on her twitter. As Hrag speculates, this was pretty clearly staged for maximum publicity for both Lauren and Banksy. Additionally, there’s this painting by Nils Westergard from about a year ago that is pretty similar, so if you like this Banksy but can’t afford to hire somebody to chop a wall out for you, you can always buy the Westergard version on canvas for $500. I’m not saying that Banksy ripped off Westergard, just trying to point out how simple the concept of a crayon-gun is (then again, you could argue that the simple concepts are what makes some of Banksy’s art so good). Finally, I think it’s pretty hilarious to see Banksy fans loving this piece when the first thing it made me think of is that infamous Mr. Brainwash image of Elvis holding a toy gun instead of a guitar. Honestly, the concept of this piece seems so MBW-esque to me, even though the style is obviously Banksy’s. Oh, and it looks like somebody trashed this wall already.

So that’s Banksy’s most recent LA advertising campaign. Some good art and lots of hype. Hopefully it all works in his favor, because I’d still love to see him win that Oscar on Sunday. I just re-watched Exit Through The Gift Shop last week for the first time since the premiere, and I liked it more the second time around. It’s not a bad film.

Photos by Lord Jim and Hieronymus