Category: Art News

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Kaws for Interview Magazine

Been looking forward to this for the last week. Interview Magazine has posted an interview with KAWS, conducted by Tobey Maguire. While not exactly earth-shattering like Shepard Fairey’s comments in Interview Magazine about the AP case, it’s a good read.

There was one particularly interesting bit for KAWS collectors. This is going to get into a bit of art-world-collecting-and-commercialization-bullshit, so if you don’t like that sort of thing (and I know a lot of people don’t), I guess just skip the rest of this post. Maguire asks Kaws about his Kimpsons, Kurfs and Spongebob paintings. About the Kimpson series, KAWS says that he used The Simpsons’ characters because they are instantly recognizable around the world. Makes sense. Seems like some thought went into that. If you want to insert your brand into pop culture, take a brand that you and the rest of the world loves and identifies with and use that. But then about the Spongebob series of paintings, KAWS says:

I started doing SpongeBob paintings for Pharrell. Then I started doing smaller paintings, which got much more abstract. And SpongeBob was something I wanted to do because graphically I love the shapes. But honestly, when I’m painting SpongeBob, I’m not thinking, Oh, I loved this episode. Honestly, I’ve never even watched it.

My immediate reaction to that comment is that the Spongebob paintings are basically KAWS just phoning it in concept-wise. Does it mean that his Spongebob paintings are essentially just him doing things because people like them and nothing more? Maybe that means the Kimpson and Kurf paintings are the more “significant” works by KAWS.

On the other hand, maybe that’s just a natural progression for KAWS. I’d guess that most KAWS collectors haven’t seen many episodes of Spongebob, but they don’t have to. They’re familiar with the character. He’s that much of a pop-culture icon. In which case, maybe these Spongebob paintings are even more meaningful and significant that Kurfs, which are based on a show that KAWS and his collectors probably did grow up watching.

Anyways, that comment just threw me for a bit of a loop and I’m curious to hear what other have to think about it.

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The “Free Poster Boy” group on Facebook

Poster Boy, more accurately Henry Matyjewicz who is one of the artists involved with the Poster Boy movement, was recently sentenced to 11-months in prison for a just few hundred dollars worth of “damages” (depending on your point of view) to ads on the New York subway system. Mark Batty Publisher, the publisher of Poster Boy’s upcoming book (can’t wait to get this in my hands), has started a Facebook group in support of Poster Boy. There are just a few hundred members of the group so far, but I’ve joined and I hope you will too.

This whole thing is absurd. Henry should not be in prison for making the world a less ad-filled cesspool, and even if he did damage a few ads and the advertisers think he needs to pay for that, 11-months is a vindictive and cruel sentence.

What really upsets me is that Poster Boy has clearly been targeted and is being made an example of solely because he modifies advertising. Poster Boy has done a great job of trying to stay anonymous, but the police crashed an art opening last year just to find him. And yet, much more public street artists like Mr. Brainwash and Swoon seem to avoid arrest without much difficulty. I’m not saying that they should be arrested, just that it’s clear that police specifically targeted Poster Boy. Maybe this is a stupid argument to be making. I dunno. At the very least, I think it’s fair to say that disbanding NYPD’s Vandal Squad and reassigning those police to investigating drug dealers would be a better use of taxpayer dollars. Anyway, that’s my rant about a crappy justice system.

Here’s a good quote from Poster Boy’s flickr:

“I don’t care if I fall as long as someone else picks up my gun and keeps on shooting.”
-Che Guevara

Free Henry!
-Poster Boy

Once again, please join this Facebook group in support of Poster Boy and Henry.

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Eames Foundation In Urban Art Hot Seat

Elbow Toe

20 of today’s most celebrated street artists recently teamed up with the prolific Eames Foundation to create their very own personalized and re-imagined designs on the seat of the iconic and timeless Eames Molded Plywood Dining Chair. Artists such as Aakash Nihalani, Elbow-Toe, Skewville, Darkcloud, Cake and Peru Ana Ana Peru are a few of the names who were able to add their own urban aesthetic to what is often referred to as “the cornerstone of modern furniture design” by utilizing the chair as their canvas. But what exactly is all this for I hear you ask? Well, the creation of these one of a kind chairs is all part of an online charity auction in aid of Operation Design. Whilst these chairs do look very tempting they are definitely pieces not to be sat on! So get off your ass and take a look at a few of our favorite creations below!

Dark Cloud
Matt Siren
Skewville

See more at Operation Design

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Shepard Fairey says AP could “bankrupt” him

In an interview of Shepard Fairey by Iggy Pop for Interview Magazine, Fairey addressed his legal issues with the Associated Press. While it was good to hear exactly what Fairey’s argument is for fair use in this case and also his thoughts on copyright law in general (a topic I’m nearly as passionate about as art), the real bombshell is this quote from Fairey:

I think it’s fair use, but the Associated Press thinks it’s copyright infringement, and they’re really going after me. It would bankrupt me entirely if they won, so I’m hoping, for the sake of creative expression and political speech, that that doesn’t happen.

The best of luck to Fairey in his legal battle. The man has worked for two decades and could potentially see so much of what he has built up essentially thrown in the toilet all because American copyright laws are seriously screwed up.

For all those Shepard Fairey haters out there who are just hoping that he loses this case, think about the wider issues here. Here’s another quote from Fairey taken from the same interview:

The problem with copyright enforcement is that when the parameters aren’t incredibly well defined, it means big corporations, who have deeper pockets and better lawyers, can bully people. I don’t want to start making enemies in the corporate world, but there are plenty of cases. For example, there is a tradition of certain fairy tales being reinterpreted, and now, all of a sudden, a big corporation that has a mouse on its logo decides it’s going to copyright these fairy tales, which ends the cycle of these things being reinterpreted. What happens with these big entertainment companies is that they start to get a monopoly on the creation of culture. But I think that the more people participate in the creation of culture, the richer the culture becomes.

This case isn’t just about Fairey and OBEY. If he wins, it would be a real victory for artists and content creators in America. Though if he loses, maybe it will spur a change in the country’s copyright laws. After all, the National Portrait gallery has a HOPE painting as an official portrait of President Obama.

And just because it’s remotely relevant, here’s the song “Talkin All That Jazz” by Stetsasonic:

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The controversial and the just plain wrong

Sometimes the art world is full of good news and smart people. Not today.

  • In LA, photographer Jonas Lara was arrested back in February while taking pictures of graffiti writers working on an unauthorized piece. After police changed their minds multiple times, in the end he has been charged with aiding and abetting. His trial is scheduled for this coming Tuesday May 11th. PDN Pulse has the story so far. If he’s convicted, it certainly wouldn’t be a good sign for other photographers of street art and graffiti (or photographers of gangs, illegal immigrants or many other things for that matter).
  • Roger Waters of Pink Floyd has hired some folks to wheatpaste a quote for President Eisenhower around the country for him in order to promote his upcoming tour. One of those awkward situations. Since it’s not a blatant advert, I suppose it’s equivalent to Banksy putting up work in Utah right before his film premieres at Sundance, but that was already controversial. Where this gets bad though is that one of these posters ended up covering the wall that was photographed for the cover of Elliott Smith’s album Figure 8, which has become a bit of a memorial to Smith (even if the wall is pretty damaged now). LA Weekly has the full story.
  • The Sun, a UK “newspaper,” had an interesting front page today (it’s election day here).
  • Some guy in Australia is all upset about Banksy coming to town and he’s written an article with the headline Hey Banksy, graffiti is vandalism not art for the Sydney Morning Herald. There’s certainly an argument that can be made for all graffiti writers and street artists to be thrown in prison and whatnot and all their artwork should be removed, but the article is so poorly researched that it becomes hard to read.

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Shepard, Banksy and Shepard

As I write this, the first images are starting to appear on Twitter from Shepard Fairey’s May Day show at Deitch. That’s not what this post is about though. More on May Day tomorrow. This is more about two random bits of news that Shepard is involved with.

Animal NY is reporting that Shepard Fairey’s mural at Bowery and Houston might actually be illegal. That would definitely be unexpected, since this is the same wall that Deitch has used three times in the last few years (but this is the first time that they have built a structure onto the wall). I wouldn’t at all be surprised if this was another prank though. This mural has been taking some abuse.

And if you read the latest issue of Time Magazine, you may notice that Shepard has written one of the profiles in their annual Time100 list of 100 influential people. Which profile has Shepard written? Banksy’s. That’s right. Banksy is one of Time’s 100 most influential people this year. You can read what Shepard has to say on Time’s website.

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News from Swoon

Some fantastic news from the world of Swoon this week.

Today is the release date of Swoon’s first monograph. The book is almost 200 pages long and features photos of Swoon’s work as well as essays by people like Jeffrey Deitch. The book will be published by Abrams and is available on their website for $35.

And the second bit of news from Swoon is her latest undertaking: The Konbit Shelter Project. Swoon has been studying architecture, and in an effort to aid the relief efforts in Haiti, she plans to work with a team of people (including artistic collaborator Ben Wolf) to build superadobe structures in Haiti this summer. These structures are amazing because they are relatively easy and cheap to build but also very strong. To raise awareness for Konbit Shelter, Swoon and her team will be building a prototype of the structures in New York City this weekend. The structure will be unveiled on May 2nd at East River Park in Brooklyn. For more information on the project read this post on Hyperallergic and check out The Konbit Shelter Project’s website.

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London screenings of Burning Candy film Dots

Yesterday, I posted about a box set of screenprints by Burning Candy. The prints are being used to fund the making of Dots, a documentary being made about the crew. Most of the film hasn’t actually been filmed yet, but the first 20 minutes are so are done. The first segment of the film explains the history of the crew and follows one artist on a journey to bring their art to the next level.

We’ve organized a few screenings of this first part of Dots for next week. These will be the first time that any of the film has been shown publicly. In addition to screening the film, we’ll also be displaying (and selling) the print set and original paintings from the entire crew.

If you want to be at this first look at Dots and the Burning Candy screeprints box set, just sent an email to rsvp@dotsfilm.com. The guests for each night (Tuesday and Thursday) are going to be randomly selected and notified by email by Saturday May 1st and we’ll let you know exact details of when and where.

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Anonymous pranksters react to Shepard’s mural

Shepard Fairey’ mural at Bowery and Houston in NYC has been a frequent target of attacks and modifications since before it was even finished. The latest addition comes in the form of a Target label. I think that there was a video I saw somewhere in which a member of the public actually confused the mural with the latest Target ad. Hyperallergic notes that the target image in the mural is probably actually a reference to Jasper Johns.

Photo by an anonymous activist