The above photo was taken earlier today. The home was a squat in downtown Madrid and the wall is by 3ttman and Remed.
Photo by Miss Kaliansky
Swings and googly eyes making the world a better place
Yes. Blu and Nunca and Shepard Fairey and all the rest can put up really impressive gigantic murals that tourists will travel from around the world to see and property owners will cover in plexiglass. That’s cool sometimes. But there’s something to be said for the anonymous street art that just makes people smile. It’s an often overlooked segment of the street art world, because a lot of that sort of work is small, very ephemeral, hard to notice, something that doesn’t look like art, hard to capture an image of on film and impossible to experience through a photograph. This is a short post attempting to draw attention to some of that art. To me, it’s just as important, if not more important, than the sort of street art that will one day wind up in museums.
Over the winter break, a high school friend of mine introduced me to Faces in Places. He loves that blog. Me, I’m indifferent, but I see the appeal. When I mentioned to him that there were a bunch of googly eyes appearing on my university campus, where people would put googly eyes on things to help facilitate more Faces-in-Places-like-things, he laughed. Here at Haverford, the googly eyes are a mystery, but it turns out that some of his friends started a bunch of googling (as they call it) on the Wesleyan University campus. I don’t think they were consciously trying to make art, they were just trying to make people smile and take back to the world “googling” from Google. But putting googly eyes on things is amazing street art. Is it as complex as something by MOMO? No. But it makes people smile and it brightens their day! That, to me, is one of the most noble and important goals of street art. And it’s not particularly difficult to achieve. So go and google something or scribble a funny piece of graffiti in the bathroom stall, it’s probably not going to end up in MoMA, but it may just make somebody smile, and that’s much more important.
Another similar project is this one by Oh San Fransisco:
Even though there’s a slight advertising component with that project and it’s not completely anonymous, it’s still a pretty damn good gift to the community. Putting up swings is a simple gift to make the world a better place. Kudos to Oh San Fransisco for getting out and making people have a better day. Random Acts of Greatness also explains well why they like Oh San Francisco’s project.
Photo by waystation
Futura x 12ozProphet full video and new shirts
Futura has done a series of t-shirts with 12ozProphet. Kind of cool. I’m not usually a fan of straight up logo shirts, but Futura’s style trumps my usual reservations and the white t-shirt is just a straight photo of a Pointman sketch, which I think is cool. Check out some more full sets of images on 12oz. These shirts will be available very soon (about 2 and a half hours from now as of this post being published) on the 12oz website.
No word yet on the price UPDATE: Shirts are $32-36, but there is a giveaway that Hypebeast and 12ozProphet are running where you can win a free shirt. You can check out all the rules and prizes here. Seems a bit complicated to enter, but I imagine Futura fans will think it’s worth it for a t-shirt or even a photo print.
And here’s a great video interview that 12oz have done with Futura:
Futura x 12ozProphet Feature from ALSO KNOWN AS on Vimeo.
Who else is excited about that little comment at the end about The Twins? Sounds like Os Gemeos are involved here somehow too. Maybe some shirts of their own coming up with 12oz?
Photo courtesy of 12ozProphet
New Buff Monster toy on Thursday
Like the guys at Very Nearly Almost, I’m not a toy collector on the level that some are, but I still love this new Buff Monster toy, The Destroyer. Hell, I’m not even a big fan of Buff Monster. Still, he seems to do it right when it comes to toys, and this is no exception. This colorway of The Destroyer will be available exclusively on Buff Monster’s website on Thursday.
Photo courtesy of Buff Monster
Even in the snow, Labrona gets up
We all know that graffiti and street art seems to slow down over the winter (except on Christmas), so you’ve got to respect Labrona for still getting out there and painting trains in the middle of a snowstorm.
Photo by Labrona
Identity of Banksy on eBay jumps to almost $1 million
UPDATE: The auction has been pulled from eBay, once again. First it was for not selling an actual item but just information, but then the auction was relisted as selling a piece of paper with Banksy’s name on it. Presumably this time the listing was pulled for just being a joke.
Well, the eBay auction claiming to be selling Banksy’s identity based on tax returns has just gone from a crazy item that a fool could waste $20k on to a complete farce. As of late Monday night here on the East Coast, the bidding has reached $999,999.00! There’s still more than a day left, so I’m hoping it surpasses $1 million, just for laughs.
This whole thing is ridiculous. For one thing, there’s no way that somebody actually used tax returns to figure out Banksy’s identity as he claims, and even if this seller does have Banksy’s identity through some other means and wants to sell it, the original But It Now price of $20,000 was already outrageous. I bet the seller just read this article from The Daily Mail, wrote the name Robin Gunningham on a piece of paper and plans to sell that. That’s what I would do if I wanted to make a quick buck and didn’t care about being a complete asshole. After all, that piece of paper with a name is all that’s for sale in the auction, not any actual records or evidence.
I’m probably taking this whole thing too seriously be even writing about it like this. Does anyone out there know what happens when people renege on eBay bids, even obviously phony ones?
Clearly, eBay should remove this listing again, as they did the first time it went up.
On a related topic, it looks like Banksy has once again hit up the infamous Robbo wall in Camden, London. It hasn’t been confirmed as a Banksy piece, but I’m pretty confident that it is.
Photo by loungerie
Something from Philadelphia
I’m glad to be back in Philadelphia today, so here’s a photo of a mural here by Steve Powers.
Photo by break.things
2nd Ammendment Solutions print from Shepard Fairey
I’ve got to admit that this latest print release from Shepard Fairey looks kind of cool. Second Amendment Solutions is an edition of 450 and will be available on the OBEY website on January 21st for $45. The quote comes from an anonymous resident living in Belfast in 1991.
Strange tribute
Last month in Miami, Tristan Eaton installed the above painting outdoors as part of Primary Flight. Tristan sent over a funny story though. Apparently, that painting isn’t there anymore. Instead, somebody, not the artist or anyone in Primary Flight, recently took the painting off the wall and replaced it with this wheatpaste:
It’s a strange tribute, or something… Post a comment if you know what’s going on here.
Photos courtesy of Tristan Eaton
Weekend link-o-rama
Well I’m on my way back to Philadelphia this weekend. I can’t wait to get there and back into the swing of things. Random comment about Philly: If anyone knows of any photographers who are actively documenting street art and graffiti there, please let me know. Anyway, here’s what we missed this week:
- KAWS/OriginalFake have posted images of their latest line of t-shirts. A few cool (but of course expensive as hell) designs.
- Brooklyn Street Art visited Swoon’s studio and interviewed here. And there are some big events going on at Swoon’s Konbit Shelter project in Haiti.
- SheOne had a show open in Munich this week.
- One more reason to dislike Worcester, MA: The city is forcing property owners to buff a tasteful mural that the property owners like.
- It looks like Urban Outfitters have blatantly ripped off a street artist’s design about the annoyingness of hipsters and turned it into a shirt to sell to hipsters. Hrag at Hyperallergic has some analysis, and although I don’t agree with a lot of what he says in that post, he’s always interesting.
- Shepard Fairey and Mark Mothersbaugh, the frontman for Devo, are having a show together at Subliminal Projects. It opens next week. Shepard might have some interesting work, but from what I’ve seen of Mothersbaugh’s art… Well he’s a really good musician.
- Insa has a number of prints available at Squarity. Insa fanatics will probably love them, but otherwise, they’re nothing particularly new.
- Another group is protesting Jeffrey Deitch.
Photo by nolionsinengland