PosterBoy recently posted this photo on his flickr. It’s described as a “collaboration” with Hargo, who does the Cash For Your Warhol billboards and signs. Besides reminding me of Specter‘s sidebusts, it brings up some interesting questions. Like a lot of work that critiques advertising and a capitalist art world, Cash For Your Warhol’s work seems to have become, to a small community, an advertisement for the art as much as a critique of the art world. While I like what Hargo does, I think there’s also a lot of value in PosterBoy modifying the billboard. Jordan Seiler, someone I consider an authority on this subject, has said that the best advertising takeovers are those where there are no identifying features to turn the disruption into an ad of its own, and Hargo’s work certainly doesn’t fallow those rules. Nonetheless, the vast majority of art-fair visitors who say the above billboard outside of Scope this year in Miami would have had no idea about Hargo and not seen the work as advertising.
And of course, I could be misinterpreting this and PosterBoy could essentially be agreeing with Hargo’s sentiment about the absurdity of the art market by ripping apart the billboard as if it were a real ad promoting a sort of Warhol pawn shop.
Photo by Poster Boy NYC
