Art News – Page 7 – Vandalog

May 17, 2013June 4, 2013

Banksy’s “Slave Labour” street piece is back at auction

The piece in question. Photo courtesy of Banksy. — The piece in question

Banksy‘s Slave Labour mural is back at auction. It and another piece (Wet Dog) were up for sale at an art auction in Miami back in February, but both pieces were withdrawn at the last minute after intense media attention, outcries from the local community where the piece used to be located, and speculation as to the legality of the wall’s removal. For more background on the original sale, read this post from February.

This time, Business Insider (your news site for all things Banksy) is reporting that the Slave Labour wall is being sold at a private event scheduled for June 2nd at the London Film Museum. While Business Insider claims that the piece could sell for as much as £450,000, I think that’s a bit high. Yes, street pieces might one day be valuable, but so far Banksy’s street pieces have failed to reach anywhere near the price that his gallery work has sold for, presumably at least in part because Pest Control refuses to authenticate street pieces. For £450,000, you could get a really iconic and authenticated Banksy painting.

Alan Strickland, a local politician representing the area where the piece was originally located, credits his efforts and the efforts of his community for the piece being withdrawn back in February and hopes to stop the sale of the piece this time as well.

It’s still not clear who owns the wall at the moment, but my money is on the owners of the building where it was painted. Otherwise, would they run to the police and report the wall as stolen property?

Also, isn’t this whole business of naming Banksy’s street pieces a bit funny? These aren’t names that Banksy came up with. They are just names that the media and us fans use to identify the works, but we treat them like official titles.

Photo courtesy of Banksy, aka lifted from his website

May 7, 2013May 6, 2013

New films and a Kickstarter from Dega Films

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Brooklyn-based Dega Films launched a Kickstarter last week to fund their upcoming series of street art films, Wild In The Streets. To me, the series looks like Dega Films is trying to make street art videos in the style of skate videos. It’s a really cool idea. I’m not sure if it will work, but it’s definitely worth a shot. Obviously graffiti writers have been making bombing videos for decades that work on that same principle, but those were always circulated among other writers and not really made for the general public.

Here are two of Dega Films most recent videos:

ART POLLUTION: The Yok & Sheryo – 5Pointz – Queens, NY from DEGA films on Vimeo.

Wild In The Streets: Jilly Ballistic from DEGA films on Vimeo.

May 4, 2013May 4, 2013

Kidult and Barbara Kruger respond to Supreme craziness

Update: gilf! sent me this screenshot from a post on Instagram by @willnyc. @13thwitness is Tim McGurr, the son of Leonard McGurr aka Futura. Futura designed the original Supreme logo. Futura’s daughter Tabatha McGurr blogged for years on the Married to the MOB website. @willnyc’s post went up before Kidult’s image. A case of “it’s a small small streetwear world” and “Suepreme” was an inevitable and obvious gag for people to pick up on, or (and this is a total conspiracy theory) a case of collaboration between Supreme and Kidult, facilitated by Tim McGurr? Thoughts? This isn’t the first time Kidult has been suspected of working for the brand he is supposedly skewering. And of course, even if Supreme didn’t hire Kidult, there’s the argument that even a “Suepreme” parody t-shirt is still a great advertisement for the real Supreme.

Supreme is suing Married to the MOB’s Leah McSweeney for the Supreme Bitch t-shirts that she’s been making for the last decade or so. In response, Barbara Kruger (the obvious inspiration for Supreme’s logo and an artist who many people do not realize got her start on the street) commented on the lawsuit with this Word document.

Other artists have taken to commenting on the ridiculousness of this suit as well, most notably Kidult. The artist known for painting his name on storefronts (including Supreme’s NYC shop) who have appropriated graffiti aesthetics for fashion or advertising purposes is going to be giving away free t-shirts on his website today with the above “Suepreme” graphic.

Kidult’s Suepreme shirts will be available for free at 3pm east coast time from his web “store”.

April 27, 2013

Weekend link-o-rama

I wish I had time for a weekend…

Aryz’ show in San Fransisco looks like a hit.
London street art photographer Delete is organizing three shows at Doomed Gallery in Hackney throughout May.
Jace’s new work is cute as always.
JR is taking over Times Square with his photobooth. Caroline already stopped by.
mobstr does it again. Perfect placement.
Leon Reid IV wants to remind you just how much that college degree is really worth.
Nychos is killing it in Turin.
New billboard takeover by the California Department of Corrections.

Photo by Peter Fuss

April 23, 2013April 22, 2013

Kenny Scharf arrested for street art

ec05cff0aa1911e28e0122000aaa0935_7 — The piece that got Scharf arrested

Kenny Scharf, the 55 year old artist, was arrested this past weekend and spent approximately 20 hours behind bars for the little doodle shown above. Hyperallergic spoke to Scharf and has the full story. Basically though Scharf did not enjoy jail, but some of the cops were fans of his work, and Scharf expects to get community service when he is sentenced this summer.

Okay, I know this is just one small piece and he wasn’t busted after some months-long investigation so these aren’t perfect comparisons, but graffiti writers have gotten sentenced to months or even years of time in prison (10Foot, Oker, Tox, Utah, Ralph Mirabal, Revok…). I’m glad that Scharf isn’t facing months of jail time, but the double standard upsets me. Nobody should be facing jail time for graffiti or street art.

Photo courtesy of Kenny Scharf

April 12, 2013April 13, 2013

Weekend link-o-rama

"The American Cousins" by Cekis in Fleury-Les Aubrais, France — “The American Cousins” by Cekis in Fleury-Les Aubrais, France

So as finals exams and essays begin to creep up on me (70-ish pages to write in the next month), these link-o-rama posts are going to become essential until the school year is up, so you know, I encourage you to read them closely.

Aryz has a solo show coming up in San Fransisco at Upper Playground’s Fifty24SF. David Choe is a fan, and says that it’s gonna be a “feeding frenzy” with collectors wanting to buy out the show 100x over even before anyone has seen the work.
Of course, if you’re looking for something you can get your hands on, I’m loving this print from Unga.
Ron English recently released a monochrome grey version of his Temper Tot figure on his website.
Sam3 gets me every time.
The Carbon Festival is on this weekend in Melbourne.
I’ve got to hand it to TrustoCorp for making this sweet suitcase device to spray stencils in broad daylight. They also been distributing a bunch of custom cereal box artworks (in collaboration with other artists like Shepard Fairey) around LA for people to hunt down.
Those pretty blah painted shutters near the New Museum are getting painted again. Sounds like more blah.

Photo courtesy of Ville de Fleury-les-Aubrais

April 4, 2013April 4, 2013

All the KATSU news that’s fit to print

KATSU, one of my favorite writers of all time, has had quite a week. I was just going to throw these things in the weekend link-o-rama because other blogs have covered the events so well, but then stories about KATSU just kept piling up. So, here they are:

Need a bit of a refresher on the awesomeness of KATSU? Brooklyn Street Art has you covered.
KATSU has a series of 3 prints available this week at 1xRun. They have almost sold out already. Personally, I picked up the black on black version.
KATSU is part of F.A.T. Lab, and they have a show (F.A.T. Gold) on right now at Eyebeam in NYC. This evening from 5-7pm, KATSU and Mike Baca aka 2ESAE will be in conversation live online. That event should be streaming here and will presumably be available to watch at a later date as well.
It seems that KATSU’s most noticeable contribution so far to F.A.T. Gold has been to paint the outside of Eyebeam with a fire extinguisher, as pictured above. As it turns out, those things are hard to control when it’s windy. Some of the paint got onto the gallery next door, Paula Cooper Gallery. Paula Cooper is not happy about that. For the rest of us, there’s a hilarious video to watch of a Paula Cooper Gallery employee trying to figure out what’s going on with all the gold paint flying everywhere.
KATSU is also using launching a new postering campaign on the street this week called Status Update. The posters feature Facebook’s Marc Zuckerberg, but with a black eye and chipped tooth. KATSU emailed with Gizmodo about the project.

Photo by Dani Mozeson

March 31, 2013

Art.com to compensate street artists whose work they sell

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Wooster Collective announced tonight that they have been and will continue to be working with Art.com to solve a very frustrating problem that many street artists face: Photographers will take pictures of street art and graffiti and then license those images to online and physical shops around the world so that they can be printed onto t-shirts, canvases, posters, bags, clocks, and other knick knacks. The street artists and graffiti writers get no money from the sale of these photographs. While I’m not a big fan of our current copyright laws and I’d rather they be much more lax, this is pretty clearly a case where the morally right thing to do would be to pay the artists whenever possible.

Art.com is a major online seller of these offending photographs. According to Marc and Sara Schiller of Wooster Collective and at the couple’s urging, Art.com “has agreed to remove every photograph of street art in which the artist who’s work is in the photograph is not being compensated, and does not want photographs of their street work to be sold in this manner.”

As for how things will work under this new arrangement, the Schillers write:

While we’re still working out the details, in the coming weeks we will be working with Art.com to help identify the artists who’s work is being featured in over 600 street art photographs currently being sold on the site. If the artist wishes to have the photograph removed, Art.com has agreed to remove it. If the artist wishes to replace the existing unauthorized photograph with a new photograph or image that they own themselves, we will be assisting the artist in putting a licensing agreement in place for their work to be sold on the site.

This is exciting news for street artists and graffiti writers everywhere. It doesn’t solve the problem entirely since Art.com is not the only company currently selling street artists’ work in this manner, but it is a step in the right direction. The exact copyright issues could be debated in court, but Art.com has done the right thing in offering artists the opportunity to control their work if they wish to do so.

This all came about because the Schillers and Evan Pricco (Editor-in-Chief of Juxtapoz) will be having a public conversation this coming Thursday evening in NYC at an event sponsored by Art.com.

Read more about Art.com’s new policy and the upcoming conversation between Marc, Sara, and Evan over at Wooster Collective.

Photo by canonsnapper

March 12, 2013March 13, 2013

Web hosting craziness link-o-rama

8547548666_500b981fb3_z — Photo by Luna Park

For the last week or so until today, we’ve been in the process changing Vandalog’s web hosts. No need to get into the technical details, but now the site should run more smoothly and with less downtime. Unfortunately it means that we haven’t been able to write anything new on the site since that process began (everything that’s gone online was pre-scheduled). So this is a mega-link-o-rama combining the usual weekend link-o-rama content with stuff that I could have written about last week even if I’d had the time.

Martha Cooper turned 70 this weekend, and the graffiti community came together at Bowery and Houston to give her a giant surprise birthday present (pictured above). How and Nosm told Cooper that they were planning to repaint their piece at Bowery and Houston and told her to come by at noon on Saturday, but they didn’t tell her how they were going to have to piece repainted. They brought together a bunch of new and old graffiti legends and painted a giant blockbuster tribute to Cooper. BSA has plenty more great photos of the piece in progress and a perfect shot of Cooper reacting to seeing the mural.
WK Interact’s pop-up show in NYC is absolutely fantastic, a must-see show. Think it this way: This show, as I understand it, is a retrospective but it’s made up of the work that WK had in his studio, not work borrowed or on the secondary market from collectors, so this is a lot of unsold work. And yet, the show is still one of the strongest I’ve seen from any artist in quite a while, and the work holds up just fine next to anything else by WK. Even the work that has been sitting in the WK’s studio for a few years is just masterpiece after masterpiece. Good stuff.
I love this t-shirt designed by Snoeman for Carnage (Snoeman is the zine’s featured artist in their latest issue).
Sick new Dabs and Myla mural in Melbourne.
Mr. Brainwash has lost another lawsuit by a photographer upset with MBW’s appropriation. Basically, it boils down to MBW’s work being too similar to the original photograph, with no original contributions to the work by MBW.
Aiko’s installation at the Japan Society in NYC is beautiful. Can’t wait to see it in person.
Sounds like Logan Hick’s show in LA was a big hit. Here are photos of the finished and installed work.
Some crazy walls from Abik.
This year’s OFFSET lectures in Dublin will include JR and Faile.
NYC has some amazing graffiti on trucks.
A quick Overunder tag.
Os Gemeos talk about their show at the ICA Boston and their massive mural there from last summer (if you can spot me in the video, you have eagle eyes by the way).
It appears that Phil Frost hit a massive billboard in LA, and then the billboard was stolen. But the whole thing seems like a shady PR scam for Ace Gallery. Melrose&Fairfax has the full story, but one point they don’t make is that Ace Gallery has a history of controversy, so that makes me even more doubtful that this billboard and its theft are real. Also, let’s face it, there’s a good chance that the billboard is illegal anyway since this was in LA, so who cares if the ad was stolen off of the billboard?
Is this new David de la Mano piece a comment on the removal of Hyuro’s Atlanta mural?

Photo by Luna Park

March 2, 2013March 1, 2013

Weekend link-o-rama

As I’ve been gearing up for midterms, I’ve missed posting some great outdoor work (and other things) this week.

Does the buffman have a sense of humor or did mobstr do this himself?
Barry McGee, Chris Johanson, & Laurie Reid showing together in SF.
You may have seen the video of Margaret Kilgallen on Art21 before, but here’s some previously unseen footage of her and Barry McGee from that shoot.
I love this piece by Disk.
And also this one by the highly underrated Ludvig.
There’s a fundraiser to benefit Essam, the artist who was beyond those brilliant drone strike posters and then subsequently arrested, taking place later this month.
Graffiti geeks will love this tattoo flash.
Jack Murray aka Panik ATG has written a must-read post about some historic London graffiti on The Foundry being covered by a street-art-emulating ad for Microsoft’s Surface. Hopefully somebody once again uses that surface for something creative very soon.
Ron English has a new colorway of his Temper Tot art toy for sale exclusively on his website.
I’m not quite sure what has happened here. First, an artist who goes by the name Edwin painted this piece in Hackney Wick. Now, it looks like this. It seems to me that Sweet Toof went up and added his teeth to the piece as a subtle diss to Edwin for ripping off Lenny The High Roller, the character that Sweet Toof and Cyclops used to paint back when their Burning Candy crew really dominated Hackney Wick. Yes, lots of street artists paint skulls and graffiti writers paint skulls, but the similarities here, particularly the eyes and given the location, are too much to ignore as mere coincidence. Also, this might be a stretch, but the hands in Edwin’s piece kinda look like Gold Peg’s hands (who also painted with Burning Candy in Hackney Wick and elsewhere).
This film about M. Chat is screening in Philadelphia next week at the Slought Foundation. Strange thing though. The description of the film actually never gives the name of the artist, but M. Chat has a Wikipedia article and a Twitter account and shows work in galleries. Additionally, the Slought Foundation has posted downloadable templates of M. Chat’s work for people to customize and put up on their own. I called up the Slought Foundation and was told that Thoma Vuille, the man who it seems was behind M. Chat, is not involved in the show, although the man I spoke with suggested that the M. Chat logo may have been painted by a collective rather than just one man (like The Toasters collective with one logo and multiple members). So, is this appropriation of an unexplained urban mystery or theft an artist’s creation? I’m not one for strict copyright laws, but it does seem to me like the moral thing to do here would be to at least give some credit to Vuille aka M. Chat rather than pretend that the cat is still a complete mystery.

Photo by Carnagenyc