The love/hate affair between Kidult and Marc Jacbos (here and here) continues… First Kidult painted the word “ART” on a Marc Jacobs store in New York. Then Marc Jacobs began tweeting about the piece as if it were created intentionally and selling a t-shirt with a photo of the defaced storefront for $698. Now, Kidult is making his own similar shirts, editions of 50 in white and 50 in pink, which will sell for €6.98.
Marc Jacobs’ shirt is available at the Marc Jacobs shop on Mercer Street in New York.
I still can’t figure out for sure of this whole series of events is a secret collaboration between Kidult and Marc Jacobs, or just two parties generating publicity and money through an actual fight/game of one-upsmanship. It’s a bit of a street art soap opera. Is Kidult working for Marc Jacobs? ISN’T HE?
Caroline and I were in Baltimore this week checking out Open Walls Baltimore. If you have the chance, definitely make a trip over there. Full posts about Baltimore coming soon. Point is, between Baltimore and moving this weekend, I’ve been lax this week. Things should return to normal on Wednesday or Thursday, but in the mean time, here’s what I’ve been meaning to post about:
Late link-o-rama this week. Troy Lovegates and Labrona are visiting to paint a mural at Haverford College, and it’s the week of all my final exams. Here’s what I’ve been reading to distract myself:
With these twopieces, Carmichael Collective looks like a group of artists on the way up.
This week’s link-o-rama is a few days delayed. Parents were in town earlier this week and even came to an event some friends of mine organized at Haverford College: A talk by Jayson Musson (the artist who created and plays the character Hennessy Youngman). I don’t think my mom was amused. Here’s what I’ve been reading this week:
Seven Years with Banksy by Robert Clarke allegedly offers a behind-the-scenes look at Banksy. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s out in the UK here and USA here.
I’ve heard a lot of people talking about Crash lately. While I don’t buy the hype myself (but I’m willing to be convinced), it seems worth mentioning that he has a show of watercolors on now in Paris.
So I’ve been working a lot lately on Re:Humanities, a symposium of undergraduate work in the digital humanities. It’s taking place next week at Swarthmore College, just outside of Philadelphia. I hope you’ll come check it out if you’re nearby. I’ll be speaking about how the internet has changed street art, and there are a bunch of other great topics up for discussion for anyone interested in the digital humanities. Okay, that’s my personal announcement for the week, now onto the news:
Okay so this video of a piece by Verbo isn’t the best quality, but the piece is pretty awesome and very different from a lot of what is out there. I wish I could have seen the animation in the flesh and I hope he continues to work with this combination of mural and digital projection.
2 Many Printers is a cool little clothing brand with t-shirts by Husk Mit Navn, Ian Stevenson and others.
This mural is probably my absolute favorite piece of public art that I’ve seen related to the Egyptian Revolution.
Glad to see I’m not the only one who thinks Anthony Lister’s “Planet of the Apes” mural was problematic and a disservice to the art community.
Last month, we relaunched The Vandalog Shop with two new t-shirts by Labrona. Initially they were priced at $30 each. But I screwed up. I’m not a math guy. Turns out, we didn’t really need to sell the shirts for as much as $30. Actually, we can happily sell them for just $20. Whenever possible, we will try to price items in the The Vandalog Shop at something reasonable and affordable. We said that last month. So why would we sell shirts for $30 that we could afford to sell for $20? We’re not trying to be greedy, so we’re not going to do that anymore. From today on, Labrona’s shirts will be available at The Vandalog Shop for just $20. And if you purchased one over the last few weeks for $30, you’ll find a $10 refund in your PayPal account.
While I spend my day at my other job explaining to people how a skee-ball tournament is art (seriously), I hope you’ll enjoy these newsbites from the past two weeks:
You can listen to this conversation between Retna and his friend Med if you want a bit of insight into the Bowery/Houston mural, although it may just confuse things further in a good way.
GrafRank is an attempt to graph the popularity of street artists and graffiti writers online using data from flickr. Interesting idea, but they need your feedback to make sure they are getting things right.
Geo Street Art launched two iPhone apps this week for locating street art in NYC and London. The Street Art NYC and Street Art London by Lois Stavsky (also a Vandalog blogger) and Griff respectively. Basically, the apps are street art guides to individual cities with both hundreds of currently running pieces and historical data and bios of artists you might come across. Lois and Griff are out hitting the streets all the time, so these apps actually have a good chance of staying up to date. Similar iPhone apps have often relied on crowdsourcing their data and that’s not a bad idea, but maybe it’s time to try putting a small monetary incentive behind the work of keeping a street art map up to date and relying on experts. Each app costs a few dollars and since I’m not in either city right now, I haven’t purchased them myself, but the screenshots definitely make the app look quite professional and the map in NYC already includes over 400 active locations to spot art.
In conjunction with the app, Lois has also started up a new blog, Street Art NYC. If you love Lois’ posts here at Vandalog like I do, I highly recommend checking out Street Art NYC.
India based designer Manish Arora took to the streets as inspiration for his debut collection of ready to wear at Paris Fashion Week. The clothes featured superimposed images of Judith Supine‘s famed work throughout the collection. Created to look like a high end city street, the catwalk was transformed with the help of several Parisian graffiti artists who spray painted their colourful tags.
While many artists are turning to clothes to sell products to the mainstream (hey we have Labrona creating shirts for us), it is interesting to see the fashion world turning to street artists to sell expensive wares to women. While Judith Supine may not be a name that most fashionable will be familiar, they certainly know that prints are in this season (yes this is my girly side showing). Most importantly however, it is evident that Supine’s work translates well into clothing. We already know that Shepard Fairey, Miss Van and Keith Haring all know how to make street art fashionable, but few artists besides Supine have translated their works into catwalk worthy creations.
Today we are relaunching The Vandalog Shop and kicking off a new series of product releases with two t-shirts designed by Labrona which are now available online. Starting with these shirts, The Vandalog Shop will be releasing a new product / artist collaboration every month. We will focus on releasing affordable products ranging from apparel to posters to whatever else we think would be fun. We can’t say yet just what else we’ve got up our sleeve, but these shirts by Labrona are only the beginning…
Labrona’s shirts are based on a new image called Lying in Wait. The shirts are unisex, come in two colorways of either purple and teal or blue and yellow, and each colorway has a print run of just 20 tees.
Why is Labrona the artist we chose to help us relaunch The Vandalog Shop? There are a lot of talented artists in the world, but Labrona stands out to me because he is one of the nicest and humblest guys around. The first time I met Labrona, he convinced me to buy a painting by one of his friends. It wasn’t until after he had left the room that someone showed me Labrona’s own artwork. We met again years later. That time, we slept on a floor with about a dozen other men and women at the Living Walls Conference in Atlanta. Some people might have complained about the accommodations, but Labrona was just ecstatic because he had the opportunity to paint a mural and put up posters in Atlanta. At Vandalog, I want to bring great art to as many people as possible, but that great art has to be made by artists who are great people too.
Marketing people tell me that mild rebellion sells and Banksy seems to agree. But are they right? Let's find out...
Both versions of Lying in Wait are available online now at The Vandalog Shop for $30 each plus shipping and handling.
The shirts were printed at Station16 in Montreal, and Labrona has also worked with Station16 to release a fine art screenprint of Lying in Wait. Eachcolorway of the prints is an edition of 16. The print is also for sale beginning today and can be at their online shop.
