It looks like Kidult hit a Marc Jacobs store in New York, but rather than panic, buff and pretend it didn’t happen like most other stores that Kidult has hit, Marc Jacobs’ Twitter has claimed the work. Of course, they still buffed the piece. The New York Observer has more, and as they point out, maybe Kidult was commissioned to do the piece, as has often been speculated about his work. After all, it’s well-known that KAWS was approached by companies to do ad disruptions for him (which he eventually sort of did, in that he has designed work for use on billboards, but without the illegal look).
One of our favorite walls in Williamsburg is the one fashioned by Tristan Eaton on Fillmore Street off Roebling. For the past few days, he’s been back on Roebling bringing his stylish visual rhythms once more to NYC before leaving for the West Coast. Lenny Collado – my fellow street art and graffiti aficionado – has been busily documenting the work in progress:
And here’s a close-up of Eaton’s riveting rendition of Mickey Mouse spray-painted onto a board that will surface soon in Brooklyn:
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 previousposts that I’ve written on this topic relating to the last time Mr. Brainwash was sued for similar reasons.
Exciting week next week: Troy Lovegates and Labrona will be coming to Haverford to paint a mural here, so look forward to some pictures of that… If I find the charger for my camera. Also, I’ve taken the plunge and I’m finally on Instagram. Here’s what I’ve been reading this week:
I’ve mentioned this before, but here’s a reminder that No Longer Empty is hosting a talk about the Fashion Moda this Sunday moderated by Joyce Manalo and including Stefan Eins, Lisa Kahane, Crash and Lee.
Last weekend, as I was walking down Eldridge Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, I was lured into GHOST, a café/bar that recently surfaced on the block. It wasn’t the food and drink — though certainly enticing — that lured me in, but the art that I glimpsed from outside. Among the works on display are a series of signs designed by Matt Siren — all featuring his signature ghost — in collaboration with some of NYC’s most prolific street artists including Dark Clouds, Celso and Royce Bannon. Particular standouts include huge pieces by Richard Hambleton and by Japanese-born Boston-based Kenji Nakayama. It soon became apparent that GHOST is an extension of one of my favorite galleries, Woodward Gallery, that will be presenting Kenji’s first NYC exhibition. (More on that in a later post!) Meanwhile, if you are anywhere in the vicinity of of 132A Eldridge Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, GHOST is certainly worth a visit.
If that is the case, they aren’t hiding very well these days.
I suppose you could blame TNT’s popular TV cop drama Southland for some of that. The group’s “Painting the Painters” mural was prominently featured in a recent episode titled, oddly enough, “Risk.” In addition, UGLAR member Evan Skrederstu was commissioned by The Wende Museum (the same institution that commissioned RETNA, D*face, and Herakut to paint portions of its Berlin Wall) for the L.A. Chamber Orchestra’s “Play Me, I’m Yours” Project to paint a piano to stand across from LACMA, next to the wall segments.
The group has also completed two murals with ZES (including one in collaboration with PUSH for L.A. Freewalls), and features in the upcoming La La Gallery show.
The word is out, it seems. So who are they?
UGLAR stands for Unified Group of Los Angeles Residents and consists of five members: Evan Skredertsu, Christopher D. Brand, Steve Martinez, Espi, and Jose A. Lopez. They recently added ‘works’ to their name in honor of the great public works projects that were once commonplace in Los Angeles during the era of Rivera and Siqueiros. Originally, however, the group took their acronym from the Ulysses Guide to the L.A. River when they created a book celebrating the river and its inhabitants in 2008. This culminated in a show at the Pasadena Museum of California Art that featured Chaz Bojorquez and others. Perhaps what is most remarkable about that show is that the group fabricated and installed the entire exhibition by hand and brought the feel of the concrete L.A. riverbed indoors by obliterating the white gallery walls.
And yet, just a glimpse of their work shows it to be incredibly diverse. Martinez paints, photographs, and is the only member to use Photoshop in conceiving his pieces. Lopez graduated from graffiti lettering to abstraction years ago, even taking to etching some recent works on copper. Espi adds a spiritual element to the group it seems, but what else would one expect from the Art Director of the Los Angeles Friends of Tibet?
As a group, they do far more than walls. They are kings of scale, from the huge to the tiny, from murals to bugs. Yes, bugs. The story goes that Skrederstu and Brand were painting in the L.A. River a decade ago and accidentally sprayed a cricket blue. What grew out of that happenstance is amazing to see. Yet, what I find so fascinating is they do more than simply paint, and they don’t work exclusively with aerosol. Brand also sculpts, and is capable of some incredibly lifelike pieces similar to those of Ron Mueck. By way of example, check out the severed head below.
At a time when many are asking if street art can transition indoors (obviously the techniques can, but how well, and to what effect?), it is fascinating to watch contemporary street artists adapt to new spaces after having few limits. I can’t help but wonder which artists will transcend such labels by producing regardless of venue, and which will be limited in new environs. Considering the breadth of UGLAR’s skills and polish, it seems reasonable to conclude that they have all the potential necessary to effectively make that leap. Perhaps most importantly, they don’t seem satisfied to work exclusively on the street, but anywhere their creativity takes them.
Remember that film about Shepard Fairey that was on Kickstarter last year for about a day before the project disappeared? It didn’t actually disappear. Actually, a crew went and filmed the damn thing. Now they are back on Kickstarter looking for some funding to finish post-production. The film, OBEY THE GIANT, is directed by Julian Marshall, a 21-year old student at Shepard’s alma mater RISD. OBEY THE GIANT tells the true story of Shepard’s first major billboard takeover. It was an assignment for a class at RISD where he had to illustrate the words from a fortune cookie. His fortune read “TO AFFECT THE QUALITY OF THE DAY IS NO SMALL ACHIEVEMENT.” So he took that and ran with it. I could say more, but the trailer is one of the best things I’ve seen all year and so I don’t want to spoil it anything.
Update: This post is factually inaccurate. As it turns out, Jeice2 did not wheatpaste this poster to the shutters. Instead, as I suggest in the article might be a kinder alternative, he actually taped it to the wall temporarily, took a photo and then removed the poster. If you look very closely at the edges of poster in the above photograph, you can see the tape. I am keeping this post up because the concern that street artists often do not respect graffiti is still generally valid, even if it is not valid in this example.
Sometimes I wonder why so many graffiti writers have such a negative view of street art. And then I see pieces like this by Jeice2 and remember at least one of their reasons: The lack of respect that young street artists often have for graffiti. This poster by Jeice2 is not bad. Clearly he’s spent some time on it. Okay, it’s not amazing or particularly unique, but it will probably look pretty cool in person while it is fresh.
There are two problems though:
It’s a wheatpaste on a shutter. If that shutter opens regularly, the paper may rip and and look a lot worse very quickly while still taking up lots of space on the spot.
Jeice2 seems to have gone over as many tags (and possibly throw-ups) as he possibly could.
What Jeice2 seems to have done is put up a piece over a bunch of other work without any consideration for those writers, and it’s a piece that will quickly look terrible. Since the primary audience for the pristine piece seems to be the internet, maybe Jeice2 should have just taped his poster to the shutter, taken a photo and then removed it, leaving the graffiti undamaged and visible.
It’s difficult to do a piece that large that isn’t going to cover at least one tag, but surely there was at least one more appropriate spot in all of Seville for this poster.
It’s mistakes like this one by Jeice2 that give street artists a bad name among graffiti writers.
PS, Some people may wonder why I am pointing this out while I have (mostly) defending Banksy’s initial piece in the Banksy versus Robbo feud. The difference that I see between Jeice2 and Banksy versus Robbo is that Banksy actually brought way more attention to Robbo’s piece, Banksy’s piece interacted with the graffiti already on site and Robbo’s piece was tagged over a lot already. But I imagine a lot of people don’t see that same distinction. That’s fair enough and only furthers my point that graffiti writers see street artists as often being disrespectful to graffiti.
That was a long week. But at least it was a fun one too. For one thing, Jill Cohen was in town for a show at my university. Definitely have a look at her drawings. That’s some crazy skill. Here’s the art news I’ve been reading:
Shepard Fairey’s latest print is called Eat The Rich. I hate to be the one to call him out on this one since many will understandably perceive it as hypocritical of me, but can a millionaire artist really legitimately make that statement? I know he is a hard-working guy who has been at this for decades, but then the proper time for that rhetoric was 20 years ago. Not when his art sells for hundreds of thousands to millionaires and his overpriced t-shirts are found in the fanciest clothing stores. Plus, the man is a committed and unashamed capitalist. Thoughts? Maybe he is just using the phrase as an example of a culture he is interested in, rather than as part of an intended propaganda poster?
RJ shared background info and some photos last week regarding This Side of Paradise,an extraordinary exhibition that opened this evening at the Andrew Freedman Home in the Bronx. Curated by Keith Schweitzer with No Longer Empty, it features the work of over two dozen artists who — working in a wide array of styles and media — have transformed an abandoned mansion into a fascinating aesthetic experience, embracing a range of social and cultural issues. Here are some photos captured at the opening that focus on those artists whose works have been surfacing on the streets of the Bronx for years:
DazeCrash installation, close-up with young documentarian at workHow & Nosm, close-up of huge 3-dimensional installation
Photos by Lenny Collado, Sara Mozeson and Lois Stavsky
