Long Island City’s renowned graffiti mecca 5Pointz is one-of-a-kind, as its devotees span cultural backgrounds, nationalities, social classes and ages with their love of expressive aerosol art. Visiting today, we would never know that the threat of closure looms. Writers from Australia, Poland, and Spain, as well as locals, were at work on new walls, and tourists and sightseers were everywhere. It is difficult to imagine this city without 5Pointz. Instead of becoming the site of an apartment complex as its developer is planning, it could ideally evolve into a museum that would provide an outlet and a showcase for the talent and creative energy that continues to find its way there. And as it has in the past, it should continue to serve as a valuable resource for educators and students. When we asked Meres, the tireless force behind 5Pointz’ success, what we can do to help preserve 5Pointz, he urged us to sign the petition http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/support5pointz/. A sampling of what we saw today follows:
Ego Crew, Madrid; photo by Lenny Collado
Meres, Cortes, Zeso; NYC & Paris; photo by Lois StavskySamp, NYC: photo by Lenny ColladoMonstrinho & FlyPelicanFly of the Get Vicious Collective; NYC, photo by Lois Stavsky
Found on the Circle Line in London. Judge Clark sentenced Tox to 27 months in prison.
Since the UK graffiti writer Tox was sentenced to 27 months in prison a couple of weeks ago, there’s been some controversy drummed up about Tox between HurtYouBad, Don’t Panic, Channel4 and Ser. As I mentioned last month, Don’t Panic and Channel4 a hosting a competition where people could contribute design ideas and the winners could get their ideas made into a mural. Someone clever submitted a design by Tox. Naturally, that design got the most votes by a mile. And yet, he did not win. This thing did. HurtYouBad explains just how absurd that choice was. Oddly enough, while Ser was supposedly meant to be the judge who helped to determine the winner, he was overruled by the contest organizers. So I guess Channel4 and Don’t Panic didn’t actually want a competition. They just wanted some design ideas. By all rights, as silly as this competition might seem to many people, Tox should have won, if only to bring more attention to this absurd jail sentence.
So yeah, lame job Channel4. Don’t ask for street art and graffiti and then reject any real graffiti that you see. You could have helped draw attention to someone’s unjust legal troubles. Instead, you ignored him.
Is it time for another link-o-rama already? The week has flown by. Except for when I had to read the multiple formal press releases I received this week which promoted artists’ gallery shows by talking about a recent campaign of wheatpasting that they were doing solely for the purpose of promoting their shows. Bleh. By contrast, Stinkfish has been in London for a bit and just seems to be getting up with posters, spraypaint and other materials because it’s fun. Here’s some of the things I’m not going to be kinda bitter about this week…
Anthony Lister has beengetting upin LA. Okay, to be honest, one of those annoying press releases was promoting a new Lister show. That opens tonight in LA and runs through August 29th. I’m looking forward to seeing some pics. To be fair, the posters that Lister put up to promote the show were on advertising space (albeit probably illegal street level billboards) and he probably paid for them, so at least he’s not putting up ads over street art but rather over other ads, but the press release and hype around some ads was kind of unnecessary. And now to not be bitter!
Speaking of advertising, Jordan Seiler/PublicAdCampaign has been testing a new iPhone app that replaces real-world ads with art by people like Ron English and John Fekner when you view them through your phone. A fun little experiment for sure.
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 day late, but here’s the link-o-rama. Let’s just say it feels like I’ve been competing, exactly one year on, with Ben Eine for the title of having had the strangest week. Here’s what I’ve missed:
Well, it’s been quite a week for me at least. Here’s what I wasn’t posting about while I was busy breaking up fights…
Tox has been jailed for an absolutely insane sentence of 27 months for writing graffiti. There are not words the express who screwed up that sentence is. The British Transport Police claim Tox’s graffiti caused passenger delays, but sending him to jail for 27 months just costs taxpayers a boatload of money. Graffiti writers should receive sentences of community service and/or fines. Not jail time.
Labrona and Gawd. Click the photo to view it large.
Last night might have been my busiest 1st Thursday ever, and I didn’t even stop off everywhere I wanted to. Either way, I’ll have to go back to a few galleries this week to actually look at the art properly. Even with a cursory glance though, the Charming Baker show was the highlight by a mile. I’m not sure how sustainable it is to sell paintings at the prices they sold for last night, but damn it looked good. Here’s a few things I could have posted about last night, had I not been out being a gallery-hopping scenester…
Everfresh have created the graffiti writer’s dream machine: The Graff Mobile.
Conor Harrington has been painting some murals of bulls in Ireland. I like this one. This one, not so much. Unfortunately, I cannot figure out why that is about either of the walls.
Showpaper has done round 2 of its Community Serviced project where they get artists to paint newspaper bin boxes for Showpaper. Check out all the photos from round 2 here.
There’s was an interesting story on NPR’s All Things Considered a couple of days ago about how advertisers in Egypt are using references to the revolution to sell product, but, at the same time, political street art and graffiti are becoming more popular as well. Check out the article here.
Swoon isn’t just in New Orleans now for her installation at NOMA, she’s also been working on a crazy new outdoor project there. As we mentioned back in November, she has been working on constructing a musical sculpture that will be built in New Orleans. And yes, musical sculpture, that looks like a house. Visitors will be able to play the building. Kind of like David Byrne’s Playing the Building project, but with a Swoon vibe. I could write something about how a bunch of sound artists are going to be working on this or how local residents will be able to play the instrument, but you can read all of that here. Basically though, this is fantastical musical architecture, which sounds beautiful to me.
This project is being funded through Kickstarter, so Swoon and her crew are looking to raise $12,000 from members of the public over the next 20-some days. So far they have over $5,000 in pledges. Like most Kickstarter projects, a pledge to help fund Swoon’s sculpture comes with a variety of goodies from a handmade thank you card on old wallpaper to a stunning handpainted screenprint based on Swoon’s Ice Queen image (the one in her installation at Art in the Streets). This Kickstarter campaign won’t be funding the house itself, but a musical laboratory for sound artists to experiment and develop ideas for the eventual construction of this sculpture.
One thing that is missing from the work of too many street artists who also work in galleries is an element of whimsy. Well I think this project has a hell of a lot of whimsy. And what’s better than a boatload of whimsy?
