According to Artinfo, Kathy Grayson, the current director of Deitch Project space on Wooster Street, plans to open her own gallery after Deitch Projects closes later this year (Jeffrey Deitch is closing the gallery to become director of MOCA in LA). Deitch is such a unique space that it’s probably too early to say exactly what this means, but Grayson has already said that she plans to bring some of the staff from Deitch Projects with her. Also, she is hoping to open the space with a show with Todd James, Barry McGee and Steve Powers (much like the Street Market show at Deitch Projects in 2000), which would be just plain awesome. Unfortunately, it sounds like Swoon and Os Gêmeos could be less welcome at her gallery.
I’m pretty sure that I’m the only journalist/blogger/whatever to have taken a video camera inside Banksy’s Leake Street cinema, where he hosted the UK premiere of Exit Through The Gift Shop. If you didn’t have a chance to see the cinema in person, here’s your chance to check it out:
Anthony Lister can be one of my favorite painters. He was once described to me as “an extremely talented painter, who happens to use a spray can,” and I completely agree with that assessment.
Terms of Engagement by Anthony Lister
Lister’s next solo show is at Lyons Wier Gallery in New York City, and it opens on March 19th. Should be pretty awesome.
Also, Lister recently painted a mural at the Pulse art fair in NYC for the Lyons Wier Gallery.
The germ of this particular collaborative project (full PDF of the essay here) between Hrag Vartanian and I, began a little under two years ago when someone on flickr called a fake New Yorker article to my attention that had been pasted up on N7th and Bedford in the epicenter of Williamsburg. Entitled “Canal Street Swoons”, the scathing feature was pasted abutting a piece that I had committed to the streets entitled Rachel and the Wolves. While the anonymous author was particularly trenchant in its tone regarding my and Elbowtoe’s work in comparison to Swoon, I was excited that my pieces had engendered such a vehement reaction within somebody that they wrote, designed and pasted their own essay on the street.
Often, artwork in the gallery space is contextualized and its full scope realized by a supplementary text that provides the insightful background material and motivation for the piece. These auxiliary words help to complete the work and neatly establish the piece as apart of a larger narrative. Alternatively, what is so intriguing about street art is that it exists within the space that it occupies more autonomously and mysteriously. There is no description of materials employed or sources referenced; there is rarely even an associated name or moniker present. Such a floating image without any support gives the work an enigmatic character that is intriguing but simultaneously opaque.
This collaboration attempts to bridge that gap between the viewer and the art’s broader situation by producing more points of access into the work. The adjacent text fills in the art historical gaps and suggests at the intention behind the seemingly ambiguous figure. Furthermore, it extends the physical conversation on the street by demonstrating another form of interaction with the environment. Personally, this is an exciting moment because I am hopeful that it will spur more street art criticism that will exist physically alongside its subject.
Well the Oscars were Sunday night, and two good things came out of them: 1. Avatar didn’t win best picture, and 2. D*Face put some new statues in LA. D*Face made two 7-foot tall modified Oscars and put one outside of Mel’s Drive-In and the other in Runyon Canyon Park.
Personally, I think the giant Oscars are a bit much, but I love this regular-sized one. D*face aught to send them to all the actual Oscar winners.
These awesome photos of D*face’s studio are by Viktor Vauthier
Last year, I had the amazing opportunity to visit the FAME Festival in Italy. This year, the festival looks like it will be bigger and better than ever. It opens on September 25th, which is a long way off of course, but they’ve just announced a tentative line up:
Note from RJ: The following is a guest post by Jordan Seiler of Pubic Ad Campaign. The opinions are entirely his own, but I did ask him to write this post. I was asking myself the same questions that Jordan has considered, and I knew that he could provide a more intelligent analysis of the situation than I’m able.
Is this new Banksy Street Art or advertising, and does it even matter when it manipulates the public and negatively affects people’s relationships to the streets that surround them?
It is my contention that Street Art’s positive affect on the viewer and therefore the public in general is directly related to the producer’s intent to manipulate for self-interest. For pedestrians, the appropriation of public space by advertisers and artists is an interruption to the normal architecture of the city. When that interruption has no clear expectation of the viewer, the work becomes a point of dialogue and conversation between two unknown parties. It is as if a gift has been left behind to be appreciated or forgotten according to the viewer’s discretion. When that interruption is motivated by self-promotion, as in the case of advertising, this dialogue becomes a monologue that demands the viewer recognize a specific person, product, or thing. It would seem the intention of the imagery put in our public spaces can create two very different reactions in the viewer to the space itself.
Photo by caruba
Banksy is a hard nut to crack. His work very successfully uses the street to do what good Street Art always does, create moments of interaction and dialogue between public individuals where once a barren emptiness stood. And yet I often find myself wanting give him shit for some of the stunts he pulls (for example the above rat painted by Colossal Media) because they ride a thin line between being good street art and the work of someone with money to burn and a staff to pull off his antics. For me, having someone else do your work for you seems too close to advertising and therefore a manipulative abuse of public space. But this is clearly my personal opinion. As the Banksy machine grows in size and scope, the line he walks becomes ever more treacherous as possibilities to taint his street credibility multiply. The upcoming release of Exit Through the Gift Shop, and its subsequent promotion on Portabello Road in London, is a good example of this thin line we expect Banksy to carefully navigate. More importantly, it provides us with some insight into when street art has abandoned its initial interest in creating dialogue in favor of an outright promotion of the artist, and how that affects the public.
Photo by RomanyWG
I was recently made aware of the above “advertisement” on Portabello Road in Notting Hill. It seems to be the work of Banksy, or his PR firm, and promotes the upcoming release of his new documentary film. What stood in this location before the infamous vandal got his hands on it was a more traditional advertisement. To me this reinforces the notion that indeed Banksy has started advertising for himself. If so, this is an interesting juxtaposition to earlier works attributed to Banksy, which include this YouTube anti-advertising piece done over a blank advertising frame. Although Banksy may not be at work in this video, writing “The joy of not being sold anything” on a billboard is something we could expect out of an artist who describes his relationship to outdoor advertising like this:
Any advertisement in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It belongs to you. It’s yours to take, re-arrange, and re-use. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. – Banksy in his book “Cut It Out”
This advertisement makes me want to get up there and buff it, a reaction against this piece and how it uses public space. One could argue that Banksy has crossed a line here by using public space for outright promotion instead of artistic practices and that this should affect how people see his work. Some would say that this line is dependent on whether or not Banksy has paid for this space or not. If he has rented the billboard, then he is simply promoting his personal agenda by buying public space, which seems counter intuitive to Banksy’s interests. If he has not rented the space and this appropriation of advertising real estate was done without permission in typical street art fashion, then is he simply continuing a long history of public appropriation?
Whether or not this Banksy piece is good or bad, art or advertising, tainted by the hypocrisy of advertising for himself using street art, or bettered by his wholesale appropriation of the public for his own means, is open for debate. To me the answer to the argument lies in the larger question of how we utilize public space productively so that our artwork creates more interactions and public relationships, instead of separations and points of friction.
The notion of intention as it is applied to artists and advertisers’ self interest when appropriating the public environment might reveal how the public receives the work and what benefits the work might have for the public at large. As I said before, both of these visual forms in public are interruptions, and maybe even distractions, so they have a serious affect on the way the public experiences its space. That said there are four examples of intention that create reactions with varying degrees of animosity or endearment for the viewer. These examples apply directly to advertising and art and I believe explain how visual works can affect the public’s feelings of separation or connectedness to public spaces.
If someone intends to distract you for their own purposes, they are manipulating you and your relationship is one of conflict.
If someone distracts you for their own purposes without intending to do so, you are upset but will generally not hold them responsible in the same way.
If someone interrupts your day for the sake of pure communication without intending to do so, you might appreciate their action but not commend them for it.
If someone intends to interrupt your day for the sake of pure communication it may endear you to them, developing a relationship through your appreciation.
So Advertisement, intending to distract you for its own purposes, creates a conflicted interaction where the viewer recoils from an environment that is manipulative. Good Street Art, with an interest in dialogue and two way communication, builds relationships by integrating the viewer into his or her experience of public space. Banksy’s traditional street work, intending to interrupt your day for the sake of communication is therefore experienced as a positive use of public space and leaves the viewer happy about his or her serendipitous run in. Alternatively, Banksy’s use of public space to promote his upcoming movie, whether intending to or not, is a use of public space for self-interest and therefore manipulative to the viewer. Whether or not this is advertising or Street Art is really not the question so much as is this a poor use of the public environment by an artist whose long history or work should have taught him better? To someone who greatly appreciates Banksy’s Street Art this image tarnishes the shine on much of his work. For someone who is unfamiliar with the artist it is just another image on the wall repeating a self-interested meme.
There seems to be so much going on right now with street art being sold or auctioned off for charity and other good causes, so I thought I’d throw a few things all together in one post. Also, how great is it that Shepard Fairey is involved in so many of these things? See it all after the jump… Continue reading “Art for charity”
Thanks to Unurth for introducing me to the work of Hyuro from Spain. Hyuro paints some really qualities walls, sometimes collaborating with Escif. Here are a few of my favorites:
