Barry McGee’s latest book, which came out towards the end of last year, has been posted online in its entirety. Here it is:
And you can buy it online for 40 euros.
Via Tagsnthings
Barry McGee – TRANSFER SP Brasil
Barry McGee – TRANSFER SP Brasil from Antonio de Paula Ternura on Vimeo.
Cool little video of Barry McGee at work in Sao Paulo.
Miami mural mayhem
Here’s a hodge-podge of photos of some of my favorite murals from Miami this year… Probably more to come in future posts as well. Most of these were part of Primary Flight.
Photos by S.Vegas, Hargo, tatscruinc and courtesy of Thinkspace and Remi
Miami Madness
With so much of the art world migrating to Miami this week in a frenzy, there seem to be too many events and parties (and I promise not to blog about the parties in detail. This isn’t a gossip site) and exhibits and festivals and everything else to keep track of. Here’s a roundup of some of the things that I’m most interested in seeing (or not seeing).
Things that have already been mentioned on Vandalog:
- This year’s Primary Flight mural project has an impressive list of artists including Roa, Escif, Retna and Boxi.
- Fresh Produce looks to be a solid group show of graffiti and street artists.
- There will be some new Cash For Your Warhol billboards.
- Retna has a solo show at the new Primary Projects space.
- Wynwood Walls is a mural project (among other things) with some big-name artists but questionable motives.
And things that I haven’t already blogged about:
- Elisa Carmichael has her list of Miami must-sees, which includes a Dan Witz book signing and a Trespass book signing with Marc and Sara from Wooster Collective and Carlo McCormick.
- Sorry to bring this up, but Sanrio’s exhibition of Hello Kitty art is just annoying. They got some great artists like Jim Houser to paint Hello Kitty characters. I’ll be avoiding this show like the plague.
- I mostly go for Ryan McGinness’ really abstract work and this isn’t that, but McGinness fans will probably want to check out his solo show.
- Barry McGee will be showing work and signing books at Ratio 3’s book in Basel Miami.
- Jonathan LeVine Gallery has a pop-up show as part of Wynwood Walls. Some of the artists include AJ Fosik, Judith Supine, Doze Green, Dan Witz and WK Interact.
- FriendsWithYou are filling a park with giant blow-up sculptures.
- Last year, OHWOW Gallery’s It Ain’t Fair show was one of the most interesting shows in Miami. Once again, they have a killer line up for the show including José Parlá, Rey Parlá (José’s brother who is, I believe, a filmmaker), KAWS, Phil Frost, Barry McGee and Neckface.
- OHWOW Gallery are also opening a bookstore at The Standard Hotel in Miami.
- New Image Art’s pop-up show includes Neckface, Judith Supine and Os Gêmeos. Probably going to be a must-see.
- Tristan Eaton and his partners are launching Contra Projects with a wide-array of events this week including a tent/lounge space, a mural (by Mr. Jago, Tristan Eaton, Ron English and others) and a TrustoCorp carnival aka TrustoLand. More info on the Thunderdog blog.
- Carmichael Gallery, Joshua Liner Gallery and others will have booths at SCOPE, and I think Maya Hayuk is painting a mural there, which should be awesome if I’m remembering that correctly.
- And of course there’s all the fairs I haven’t mentioned, because there are just so many. So many. Too many. It’s gonna be art overload. But if I’ve missed anything that you think is particularly special, please leave a comment.
Photo by Hargo
Sace tribute by IRAK over McGee’s legal mural in NYC
Looks like the IRAK guys have just hit up Barry McGee aka Twist’s legal wall of tags at Bowery and Houston in NYC and covered it with a massive fire extinguisher tribute piece to Sace aka Dash Snow. As much as I loved McGee’s mural, this piece is damn beautiful and I love that this wall got hit up so massively and illegally. Given that McGee’s mural was a bunch of tags, it only seems right that they spot be covered by something nice and illegal. Sace’s name was put up in the original mural though (see the Sacer by the top left corner in this photo)
If you don’t like it, it’s probably worth pointing out what McGee usually does when someone commissions him to paint murals.
Update: Based on this photo by Dante Ross, it looks like somebody’s already been brought in with a scissor lift to cover up the wall. Pretty useless to try buffing it if you ask me. IRAK will just be back if they want to be.
Update 2: Okay nevermind that first update. Not totally sure what’s going on here anymore, but based on info from Luna Park, photos from Martha Cooper and a photo by EssG (thanks to foodofthefuture for those tips) it now sounds like the wall was painted legally.
Update 3: Kathy Grayson’s blog clarifies things. The wall was repainted with permission. It will last 1 day only (which sucks for me because I’ll be in NYC tomorrow evening) before being completely buffed over, and another artist or artists will be repainting the wall next week.
Photo by Sabeth718
Weekend link-o-rama
Wow. It’s actually Friday night already? This week went by really fast. I think I’ve been sleeping too much. Well, while I was sleeping, these things nearly slipped me by:
- A film is being made about The Underbelly Project, and they are looking for reactions from the public. This Sunday, New Yorkers get have their reactions (positive or negative) on film. More info on the film’s website. I’ve been interviewed for this a couple of times, and I can’t wait to see the finished film.
- Shepard Fairey is guest-editing the latest issue of PAPER Magazine. Great price for an art/culture magazine by the way: I just realized that a two-year subscription to PAPER Magazine is $15! Juxtapoz costs more than that per year just for a digital subscription (more issues per year though)!
- Graffoto are raving about Mantis‘ solo show in Hackney Wick. Honestly, I saw a few photos in the preview and thought something along the lines of “What? These are paintings and they aren’t funny or clever and they aren’t amazing. This isn’t what I love about Mantis at all!” Well I stand corrected. While I still think a lot of the paintings are pretty unappealing, there are some great drawings and even a nice painting or two. The man can draw!
- Jordan Seiler is playing a game with outdoor advertising companies in NYC and Philadelphia.
- Kid Acne has a solo show in London open now.
- A Basquiat was defaced in Paris. Kyle Chayka asks if it really even matters?
- Political graffiti in Afghanistan is pretty interesting.
- People have been tagging up Barry McGee’s wall of tags in New York. Not writers, but just regular people. As beautiful as that wall was when it was first painted, I love that more people are writing on it. I guess the existence of the tags and a while background is sort of inviting average people to interact.
- I really enjoyed this interview with Phlegm.
- Arrested Motion has photos from Best Ever’s London solo show.
- Swoon is building at musical house in New Orleans.
- This street art/graffiti film festival event in Spain looks pretty interesting.
- There’s a new interview with me online at $200 Art Collecting, a blog with one of the best concepts I’ve heard in a long time: buy great art for $200 or less.
The week’s not up yet though, and I’ve committed to doing at least one useful thing before it is: Tomorrow I’m going to try using my kitchen for the first time since going to university. Wish me luck…
Photo by LoisInWonderland
Weekend link-o-rama
A lot of events have been happening this week, most likely so that everyone can make a last minute push in shows and such before the holidays. Then we have nothing to write about. Gotta love when a whole industry shuts down for a month or so.
Anyways, so here is what has been going on:
- Tonight is the opening of the London Miles Gallery “The Idol Hours”. The show is a group show that gives artists like Luke Chueh, Travis Lampe and Scott Young the opportunity to portray artworks from the art canon in a modern sense
- Factory Fresh will be hosting a Block Part in Brooklyn Nov. 20th with a live mural painting from Gai, Imminent Disaster, Chris Stain and Skewville. The Burning Candy Crew will also be showing new portions of their ongoing documentary Dots
- New Blu piece in France popped up recently. Such detail as usual
- Remi/Rough has been busy in England lately. He has a new print released, designed the decor of the new Wahaca Soho eatery, and put up a nice piece in Birmingham with time lapse video
- Finally, A Barry McGee retrospective will take place in 2012 in Berkeley, California in conjunction with the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. The two organizations were awarded a $100,000 grant by the Andy Warhol Foundation to put on the show
- Unusual Image has some great photos of the Best Ever show that took place at Blackall Studios last night
- Stolenspace will play host to the second solo show by Ronzo entitled “Crackney’s Finest.” The show will open Nov. 19th
Beautiful Losers film now streaming online
Beautiful Losers, the film about some of low-brow and street art’s 1990’s pioneers, is now streaming online on Babelgum. If you haven’t seen this movie yet, now you’ve really run out of excuses. If you enjoy reading Vandalog, this is a key film for you to see. Artists interviewed include Barry McGee, Steve Powers and Shepard Fairey. I think it even includes one of my all-time favorite quotes about art:
“From a distance it might look straight, but when you get close up, you can always see the line waver. And I think that’s where the beauty is.” – Margaret Kilgallen
So yeah, get over to Babelgum.com/beautifullosers to watch the entire film. Now I kind of feel like an idiot for buying the dvd…
The art market makes no sense!
The nice thing about street art is that, for 99% of the people who look at it (the people who see it on the street and not on blogs like this one), there’s not market consideration about “how much is that worth?” or anything like that. But then there’s the 1% of us (the people who follow blogs and write and forums and so on) who do see the art market side of street art. Sometimes the art market provides opportunities for Boxi, Steve Powers and other artists can show up in London and paint walls with permission and free paint. Other times, the art market makes me want to cry.
This week, Philips de Pury had a few pieces in their London day auction by low-brow and street artists. Street Art Is Dead notes that two Mr. Brainwash pieces sold for £42,000 and £75,000 even though the estimates were already a seemingly insane £7-9,000 and £15-20,000 respectively. What makes those results even more disgusting is when you compare them to other results in that same sale:
- A massive and beautiful Ryan McGinness which has been shown in The Saatchi Gallery sold for just under £19,000. A collector could have 4 of those paintings, or one crappy Mr. Brainwash.
- The Kaws piece pictured above sold for £13,750. Not my favorite, but you would think that Star Wars fans would be all over that one.
- And then the two most surprising results were that both a Margaret Kilgallen cluster and an old Barry McGee piece failed to sell at all! While this particular Kilgallen cluster has been floating around for quite a while, it’s not a bad piece and Kilgallen’s art is almost impossible to find for sale.
Similarly, while it doesn’t outrage me quite as much, I don’t exactly understand why this Banksy sold for $75,000. It’s just not a strong image.
The art market makes no sense and sometimes I wish it would just go away.
Photo courtesy of Phillips de Pury
Weekend link love
This link post is definitely going to be a weekly thing. Hopefully it will allow me to link to things that I just haven’t had the time to cover here on the blog, my Twitter or Vandalog’s Facebook page. So here’s what you may have missed in street art this week:
- My Love For You Is A Stampede of Horses and Arrested Motion have two sets of amazing photos from Fecal Face‘s 10 year anniversary show at The Luggage Store in SF. This show has a pretty sick line up including Barry McGee, Margaret Kilgallen, Jim Houser, Swoon and Maya Hayuk.
- Nychos’ solo show at Pure Evil Gallery (in cooperation with End of The Line) opened on Thursday. Go here for the press release sort of info or go here for photos from the opening.
- That I May See, Matt Small’s latest solo show, opened last week at Black Rat Projects and it looks absolutely stunning. My family and I can’t thank Matt enough for his support of the Robert Shitima School in Zambia, which is where Matt and Black Rat Press have decided to donate 40% of the proceeds from this show.
- Eelus, Logan Hicks, Eine, Lucy McLachlan and others are headed to Gambia next month for the Wide Open Walls project.
- OFFSET has once again put together an interesting conference of creatives who will be speaking next month (October 1st-3rd) in Dublin. OFFSET 2010 will have presentations from Gary Baseman, Steve Powers, Marc and Sara Schiller of Wooster Collective and many more. Early bird tickets are available online for 150 euros (with discounts for students thankfully).
- A very touching work of street art in Brooklyn.
- Just Seeds has put together Resourced, a set for political posters that you can download and print at home. There are designs by Gaia, Armsrock, Chris Stain, Josh MacPhee and many more artists.
- When I first heard about JR’s new Unframed project, I didn’t really care for it. Basically, JR is wheatpasting other photographers (often famous) photographs around in cities. To me, this sort came out of left field. I don’t mind when Blek le Rat does similar things, but with JR, I always liked the stories behind the photos as much as the images themselves. I thought that with Unframed, that aspect of the art would go away. Luckily, Angelo at FAME Festival reassured me in an email and said once I learned more about the project, these would be just as interesting as the rest of JR’s art. Because I trust Angelo, I waited and didn’t write anything about Unframed or JR’s piece at FAME Festival. Earlier this week, Hi-Fructose’s blog posted a better explanation of the project as well as some photos of Unframed taking place in Switzerland. As usual, Angelo was right and after reading that post on Hi-Fructose, I’ve been convinced about Unframed.
Photo by Mobstr