Tag: shepard fairey

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“The New Blood” curated by Morgan Spurlock

Morgan's Last Supper by Ron English

I love the idea behind The New Blood, a show that Morgan Spurlock (of Supersize Me) has curated at Thinkspace Gallery: He asked established artists to each select one up-and-coming artist whose work they want highlight, with both artists having work in the show. Here’s what Spurlock has to say about the show:

I’m a massive art collector who, by way of my habit formed a relationship with Thinkspace’s Andrew Hosner, and when he offered me the opportunity to curate a show I jumped at the chance. The concept of the show is how the torch is passed from one artist to the next. One opens the door so another can follow. And this show is all about artists who I think have and are continuing to impact and change the art world, and each one of these artists is bringing along an ‘apprentice’ or ‘protege’ who they think we all need to know about, the artists they believe are the ‘New Blood’ of the art world.

The line-up looks really exciting…

Camille Rose Garcia / Travis Lampe
The Date Farmers / Albert Reyes
Dzine / Jesus Bubu Negron
Elizabeth McGrath / Morgan Slade
Gary Baseman / Jesse Dickenson
Gary Taxali / Adrian Forrow
Jonathan Yeo / Charlie Gouldsborough
Mark Jenkins / Sandra Fernandez
Nicola Verlato / Marco Mazzoni
Ron English / Kid Zoom
Saber / ZES
Shepard Fairey / Nicholas Bowers
Tim Biskup / Patrick Hruby

The New Blood opens at Thinkspace Gallery on April 28th and runs through May 19th.

Image courtesy of Thinkspace Gallery

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Weekend link-o-rama

Jade and Seth

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:

Photo by Jade

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Weekend link-o-rama

Snyder in Beijing

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:

Photo by Snyder

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The Simpsons guest star Shepard Fairey and more street artists

Last night The Simpsons aired the highly anticipated episode “Exit Through The Kwik-E Mart”, which guest starred a few of street art’s all-stars: Shepard Fairey, Ron English, Kenny Scharf, and Robbie Conal. The episode has Bart covering Springfield in wheat-pastes of Obey-esque posters of Homer, which eventually leads him to the likes of the street artist guest stars. If you want a full recap of the episode go here.

What struck me was actually something we all already knew- street art is on the market and has seen some fast and steep increases in its value. It’s just weird to see it satirized on The Simpsons: Bart’s street work leads him to show work in a gallery. Bart jumps on Homer’s car and tags the hood, and as Homer starts to yell at him for doing this, Bart points out that he just increased the car’s value by 50x.

Being on the Simpsons is definitely noteworthy for street art history. But this isn’t the first time art vandals have rocked the cartoon world:  Obey Giant was on Family Guy. Invader was referenced on Futurama. Shepard Fairey’s Obama poster was featured on South Park. Banksy directed this cool Simpsons’ intro.

If you’ve seen the episode what did you think? If you haven’t, but still feel the need to insert your opinion, what’s your take on street art getting Simpsonized?

Photos thanks to The Dude Box

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Judith Supine Does PFW12

 

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.

Photos courtesy of Simjee Textor

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Shepard pleads guilty to contempt during AP case

Looks like Shepard Fairey‘s problems stemming from his Obama “Hope” poster just won’t stop. Hyperallergic reports that today Fairey “pled guilty to one count of criminal contempt for destroying documents, manufacturing evidence and other misconduct” relating to the AP’s lawsuits over the source photograph for Fairey’s image. The fact that Fairey did all this is nothing new. He admitted so himself back in 2009. He settled those civil lawsuits with the AP, but this charge is a criminal charge brought against Fairey by the state of New York. By pleading guilty, Fairey faces up to six months in prison and thousands of dollars in fines. The sentencing will happen on July 16th.

Check Hyperallergic or The Boston Herald for more details.

Photo by craigCloutier

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Weekend link-o-rama

Ima Golden Phoenix by Loaf

Fun side note from my week: William Parry, author of Against The Wall, spoke at my college today. He’s currently on a speaking tour around the USA, so if you happen to hear that he is in a town near you, I highly recommend going to see him. And here’s the link-o-rama:

Photo by Loaf

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OFFSET conference brings street art to Dublin

FriendsWithYou

This year’s OFFSET conference is less than a month away. OFFSET is a conference in Dublin for creative folks. For this year’s line up, they have some really interesting speakers including Shepard Fairey, FriendsWithYou and Conor Harrington. You can find the full lineup here. The conference takes place March 9th-11th. Tickets are available now for as low as 50 euros for a day pass (if you’re a student).

OFFSET has videos online from past conferences, including presentations by Wooster Collective, Gary Baseman, David Shrigley and James Jean.

Photo by Willy Volk

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Magazine covers by Shepard Fairey and WK Interact

In a funny coincidence, Time Magazine commissioned Shepard Fairey to illustrate their “Person of the Year” issue cover and Arrested Motion reports that Wired commissioned WK-Interact to illustrate their cover. In a further coincidence, Time’s Person of the Year is “The Protester” and Wired’s cover article is “#Riot: Self-Organized, Hyper-Networked Revolts—Coming to a City Near You.” Unfortunately, Wired changed their mind and used this cover, delegating WK’s art to staying inside the magazine.

Regarding Fairey’s cover for Time Magazine, the responses have been mixed. Here’s Fairey’s explanation of the work, an article criticizing it and an argument for it’s success for having mass appeal.

WK-Interact’s aborted cover for Wired is a real shame. The reasons for the change are not known, but I have seen the cover they used and it pales in comparison to WK-Interact’s work. My low-quality photo of the actual cover does not really do justice to how lame it is compared to what could have been. Sticking with the “rebellious street art/graffiti” vibe, even the Wired logo has been made to look it has been poorly stenciled onto the page, as you may be able to see more clearly in this close-up shot. I don’t know if Wired made their decision before or after news of Time’s cover came out, but maybe the Wired editors just thought that two street artists designing covers for major magazines in one month was too many. It’s too bad though, I think WK-Interact’s cover would have been much cooler than Fairey’s is.

Images courtesy of Arrested Motion and Obey Giant

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Miami mural madness 2011 begins…

Neuzz at Wynwood Walls

Peter Vahan sent over these images of what’s been going on over the last few days in Wynwood, Miami. Primary Flight and Wynwood Walls each have a number of murals being painted by a range of artists. Here’s just a small selection of the progress so far from Neuzz, How & Nosm, Above, Shepard Fairey and Retna…

Retna for Primary Flight
Above and Shepard Fairey
How & Nosm, click image to view large
How & Nosm

Photos by Peter Vahan