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Post by jediak on Feb 2, 2011 11:03:05 GMT -8
Thanks afroken, +1 I actually have a strong opinion on A Bathing Ape. I have quite a few pieces that I picked up in the mid 90’s. I was introduced to the company in Mo Wax’s hey day when James Lavelle, the Beastie Boys and crew were heavily promoting it and it was quite exclusive. I loved the referencing of long lost American and Japanese pop culture and when you’re a kid having that exclusive piece that only a select few understand gives you some false sense of pride and importance, color me guilty of this. The amount of coin I dropped on some pieces would make the 2011 version of me cry. I still actually have everything and it’s all in great condition, I’ve even had multiple times when people have offered to buy pieces off me while walking on the streets here in NY, always respectfully declining. The point is I really liked what they were doing then but my opinions on what they produce now are less then favorable. To put it simply in my opinion American hip hop culture destroyed any interest I ever had in the company. Their designs have gone the way of Kiddy oriented graphics much like a lot of Kid Robot stuff, Baby Milo etc… What happened to the Planet of the Apes referencing? Now the ape graphics look like a Bearbrick toy, there is nothing even remotely appealing about them or even edgy and when you charge what they do it better be edgy, exciting and exclusive. When I turn on the tv to see these main stream rappers sporting it like Pharell I puke a little in my mouth because where were these folks 15 years ago? Hell I even like some of these peoples music but that doesn’t change the fact that they are about a decade late. These folks in turn influence tweens so now I see little kids wearing it, and I don’t mean the little kid in the know, I mean the kid who in my day would poke fun of such things. I’m having troubles articulating exactly what it is but I guess for lack of better words It’s like someone not cool buying credibility so that they may be cool but being late to the party in their methods, it reeks of being phony. It be like buying a bunch of Obey clothing now, I think a lot of folks here would be embarrassed to wear such stuff because of what it’s associated with now, the artistic element has disappeared, it’s lost all meaning like many things have in this age of hypercommericalization of youth culture. There are new cool things that I am too old to know about, It’s the cylce of life and A Bathing Ape should have died a respectful death maybe 10 years ago instead of churning out the garbage it does now, appealing to the Every Man. I know it’s all very silly but I feel like something that was important in my youth and a symbol for certain things is none of that now and the whole thing makes me sad. The same goes for Fuct and World Industries Sorry for the rant.
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Post by sleepboy on Feb 7, 2011 14:37:57 GMT -8
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Post by The Gorgon on Feb 25, 2011 14:36:49 GMT -8
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Post by troom on Mar 2, 2011 10:19:31 GMT -8
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Post by lowpro on Mar 3, 2011 23:25:04 GMT -8
www.thevillager.com/villager_410/whois.htmlFound this over on the Banksy board, where I've seen people post this guys work and been confused by the allure. I knew nothing about him and assumed, quite incorrectly, he was biting Haring's aesthetic. I respect Haring, and apparently LA2's, place in the scheme of things. However, this style of work never did it for me, so admittedly I'm far from well versed on it. So if this article is accurate at all, it's pretty upsetting. Dude needs to get his due respect if he really did have as large a hand in shaping the Haring look as the article suggests. Pretty interesting read.
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Post by havana09 on Mar 4, 2011 3:42:19 GMT -8
www.thevillager.com/villager_410/whois.htmlFound this over on the Banksy board, where I've seen people post this guys work and been confused by the allure. I knew nothing about him and assumed, quite incorrectly, he was biting Haring's aesthetic. I respect Haring, and apparently LA2's, place in the scheme of things. However, this style of work never did it for me, so admittedly I'm far from well versed on it. So if this article is accurate at all, it's pretty upsetting. Dude needs to get his due respect if he really did have as large a hand in shaping the Haring look as the article suggests. Pretty interesting read. Another shameful piece of re editing which unfortunately continues to disregard the works of others 'who don't fit' which should not even be a feature in the 21st century. Another low in the art world.
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Post by svenman on Mar 4, 2011 5:02:41 GMT -8
www.thevillager.com/villager_410/whois.htmlFound this over on the Banksy board, where I've seen people post this guys work and been confused by the allure. I knew nothing about him and assumed, quite incorrectly, he was biting Haring's aesthetic. I respect Haring, and apparently LA2's, place in the scheme of things. However, this style of work never did it for me, so admittedly I'm far from well versed on it. So if this article is accurate at all, it's pretty upsetting. Dude needs to get his due respect if he really did have as large a hand in shaping the Haring look as the article suggests. Pretty interesting read. Another shameful piece of re editing which unfortunately continues to disregard the works of others 'who don't fit' which should not even be a feature in the 21st century. Another low in the art world. yes, LA2 has been pushed a little on the banksy board by someone who apparently is friends with him. I don't enjoy the work, and some of it is pretty poor, but from my vague understanding of this guy's involvement with Haring - he acted essentially as his assistant, or you may even equate that to 'intern' nowadays. Artists work with assistants all the time. They use them to output the work. I visited 2 artist studios yesterday and each had 2 assistants happily working away and chatting whilst I snapped some flicks. I can't see that these people will be asking for collaborative credit in the work they are assisting with, even though they may be bringing their own ideas into the studio and incorporating them in the work. Artists use people who are useful to them. If this guy worked with Haring for 6 years, why didn't he seek collaborative credit at the time? Surely in 6 years he had time to understand how him working with Haring was panning out? Watch out for a solo show and the associated print release coming soon. Hype.
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Post by jediak on Mar 4, 2011 5:26:27 GMT -8
www.artinfo.com/news/story/37136/the-nine-best-and-five-worst-booths-of-armory-show-2011/9 best and 5 worst booths at Armory. Worst: 4. Giving this one to Honor Fraser hurts, since we're normally big fans of the Los Angeles gallery. We would've loved to have seen paintings from Annie Lapin, featured by Modern Painters as one of "Nine to Watch" back in December. What do we get? A booth full of KAWS that made us feel like we were hanging out in the Kidrobot store five years ago.
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Post by havana09 on Mar 4, 2011 7:45:44 GMT -8
Another shameful piece of re editing which unfortunately continues to disregard the works of others 'who don't fit' which should not even be a feature in the 21st century. Another low in the art world. yes, LA2 has been pushed a little on the banksy board by someone who apparently is friends with him. I don't enjoy the work, and some of it is pretty poor, but from my vague understanding of this guy's involvement with Haring - he acted essentially as his assistant, or you may even equate that to 'intern' nowadays. Artists work with assistants all the time. They use them to output the work. I visited 2 artist studios yesterday and each had 2 assistants happily working away and chatting whilst I snapped some flicks. I can't see that these people will be asking for collaborative credit in the work they are assisting with, even though they may be bringing their own ideas into the studio and incorporating them in the work. Artists use people who are useful to them. If this guy worked with Haring for 6 years, why didn't he seek collaborative credit at the time? Surely in 6 years he had time to understand how him working with Haring was panning out? Watch out for a solo show and the associated print release coming soon. Hype. Wow! That is a bit harsh! If you took the time to read Keith Harings authorised biography with John Gruen you might find that in Keith's words, LA II was far from being an intern! He discovered LA II making these distinctive tags and tracked him down and found out he was only 14!!!! He then with LAII's mothers blessing, did a range of works were they both collaborated together. What was a poor, from the streets 14 year old gonna do against the might of the established art world to get his just due? Anyway, write it up anyhow you want to, make it look like LAII's looking for a gravy train to ride, enjoy your pieces you bought and keep thinking you are an intellectual, when in reality you are a closet racist! Goodbye!
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Post by sleepboy on Mar 4, 2011 8:04:46 GMT -8
Well, I think it's pretty harsh of you to call him a closet racist. I know Sven personally and can say he is far from a racist. As for the Haring / LAII discussion, I know nothing about it so can't comment. But, I would assume that Haring's authorized biography would be a good source although again, have not read it so can't verify your viewpoint.
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Post by lowpro on Mar 4, 2011 8:19:49 GMT -8
Like I mentioned, I know very little about this situation and, as appeared to be the case, figured some folks might have some insight here. I didn't think it would cause a forum member to opt out of the board entirely. Quite interesting, indeed.
Obviously, the piece is riddled so blatantly with bias, it's hard to take it seriously from the jump. Beyond opening a historical discussion, it does appear the author has some ulterior motives. But I found the direct insinuation of racism in the article itself to be the most egregious component of it all and detracted from the overall message they were trying to convey. I will far from deny that racism is still in full force in pockets of this country. I live in Center City Philly, where it shows it's ugly face on a daily basis. But I find it hard to believe that LA2's racial heritage has anything to do with why so many respected art players haven't given him credit, if it's due at all. As an uneducated bystander in this, I have to assume there's something else to this story that I'm missing. Maybe not.
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Post by jediak on Mar 4, 2011 8:25:52 GMT -8
"Anyway, write it up anyhow you want to, make it look like LAII's looking for a gravy train to ride, enjoy your pieces you bought and keep thinking you are an intellectual, when in reality you are a closet racist! Goodbye!"
WOW, talk about throwing around a word with no regard for the weight it has, Goodbye indeed! There is no indication in anything that Sven said to call him a racist, where the heck did that come from?!
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Post by afroken on Mar 4, 2011 9:33:55 GMT -8
With supporters like that LAII doesn't need any enemies to guarantee his place in obscurity. Oh and there's the small matter of the work not being very good too.
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Post by gildoinc on Mar 4, 2011 10:56:07 GMT -8
Over the past few months someone has been putting a lot of LAII work up on artnet auctions to seemingly poor results. I think anyone that works in a creative industry has felt the sting of having their creative contributions remain unacknowledged. LAII has had a couple of decades to prove himself as a relevant and interesting artist. I get that he "collaborated" on some work with Haring (you can see his tags) but maybe it's time to move on and try to get some credit for what he is doing today. By the way, I'm NOT a racist. Sven on the other hand. . . Also, there was an interesting NYT article about this when the Haring Mural was put up on the Bowery. LAII kept coming back and adding his tag. I'll try to find and post it.
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Post by oldfartatplay on Mar 4, 2011 11:10:02 GMT -8
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Post by gildoinc on Mar 4, 2011 11:15:26 GMT -8
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Post by epicfai on Mar 4, 2011 12:14:18 GMT -8
fascinating read. thanks for posting.
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Post by svenman on Mar 4, 2011 12:50:39 GMT -8
erm... what happened there? in what way was i racist?
i was equating his involvement with Haring with other artists who have people working with / assisting them.
thanks for giving me a laugh though.
thanks for posting those other reference links ofap and gildo.
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Post by commandax on Mar 25, 2011 18:39:56 GMT -8
"Stealing Murakami: The Plot Gets Still Thickerer"This was supposed to be a happy story, simple and just. Ring gets stolen. Ring gets recovered. Thief gets nabbed. Natural order is restored. Since the ring happened to be a rare, one-of-a-kind artwork from Takashi Murakami, and that the theft happened during Art Basel, made it a story well worth telling. That the recovery took place in a pawn shop some two years later, just days before the ring was to be scrapped, and was only made possible by the keen eye of a certain David Tamargo, gave it a serendipitous slant -- not to mention a storybook ending. Then the tale took turns no one could have envisioned...
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Post by troom on Apr 3, 2011 17:24:03 GMT -8
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Post by lowpro on Apr 8, 2011 21:13:12 GMT -8
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Post by troom on Apr 18, 2011 8:07:49 GMT -8
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Post by sketchv on Apr 18, 2011 17:03:14 GMT -8
"Anyway, write it up anyhow you want to, make it look like LAII's looking for a gravy train to ride, enjoy your pieces you bought and keep thinking you are an intellectual, when in reality you are a closet racist! Goodbye!" WOW, talk about throwing around a word with no regard for the weight it has, Goodbye indeed! There is no indication in anything that Sven said to call him a racist, where the heck did that come from?! Well said. People love to throw that word around these days and have no idea what it means, just that it's PC enough to scream it at somebody when you have no real point to make.
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Post by lowpro on Apr 26, 2011 22:36:26 GMT -8
The Trouble With Warhol artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=3268A high-profile lawsuit and a scandal over "posthumous" Brillo boxes have brought scrutiny to the methods used by the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board—and its responsibility to the owners of Warhol works by Eileen Kinsella Old news to an extent, as it revolves around the interesting Brillo box-gate as well as the much publicized Warhol Self Portrait authentication dispute from which an insightful documentary was self produced that shed light on the shadiness involved with the secret society-esque board and their inconsistent verification methodology, despite the challenge involved with the task at hand thanks to Warhol's many assistants producing, if not entirely conceptualizing, his work for a large part of his career. Just some new information regarding the settlement in the lawsuit due to a lack of finances on the plaintiffs side, who seemed to have a legitimate case from my perspective, and a seemingly endless pile of cash on the Warhol Authentication Board..who dropped $7 mil defending this single case it seems just to set a precedent that they'll fight those dissatisfied with their decisions to the bitter end. Pretty crazy.
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Post by The Gorgon on May 1, 2011 12:59:20 GMT -8
Interesting article from NYT regarding the risk MOCA chose going with Dietch
FROM NY TIMES April 22, 2011
A Risk-Taker’s Debut
By GUY TREBAY LOS ANGELES
NECK FACE banged a metal pipe on the side of a blacked-out doorway, jumping out at unsuspecting passers-by to shout, “Aaarrgh!” Banksy floated anonymously (or so went the rumor) around the perimeter of a room dominated by a huge cathedral window the graffiti artist had scrawled with spray paint. Skateboarders skidded off geometric ramps designed by Lance Mountain and Geoff McFetridge just inside the entrance of the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA as an art mob filed in from a brisk evening and up a ramp into the enveloping graffiti world of “Art in the Streets,” the first major American museum exhibition devoted to street art, and a first for an occasionally controversial museum director making a debut.
It is just over a year since Jeffrey Deitch, a longtime New York gallery owner, was named director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and charged with rescuing an institution whose attendance had dwindled by 2009 to a paltry 148,616, as its endowment shrank to the lowest level since the museum’s founding nearly three decades ago.
Even the number of museum trustees had diminished when its board surprised the art world with what even David Johnson, a chairman of the museum’s board noted last week, was a risky choice to head the museum. “Jeffrey was way, way, way out there as a candidate,” he said.
The risk in hiring an established risk-taker was a calculated one, said Eli Broad, the billionaire collector and arts patron whose $30 million challenge grant to the museum in 2008 helped save the faltering institution.
“We wanted someone who was, call it what you want, a game-changer,” Mr. Broad said by phone before the opening of “Art in the Streets,” Mr. Deitch’s first full-scale show. What the board sought during a worldwide search, added Mr. Broad, was someone who was, frankly, “an impresario.” What it got in Mr. Deitch was an unorthodox choice and yet a canny one, an owlish 58-year-old with a Harvard M.B.A., a background in finance, a former corporate art adviser and a person who, after shifting careers from finance and consulting to become a full-time art dealer, mounted shows like “Session the Bowl,” devoted to the culture of skateboarding, and installations like “Black Acid Co-op,” which recreated a burned-out methamphetamine laboratory, or “Nest,” in which two artists moved into his Grand Street gallery, first filling it with the shredded remains of numberless telephone books.
Mr. Deitch — trim, mild-mannered, a distance runner who favors custom-made suits from Caraceni and buffalo-horn eyeglasses he designed himself — gives little appearance of being the sort of person who might stage a dinner to celebrate the publication of a photographer’s new book and then invite the members of an all-male artist collective to entertain the 250 seated guests by clambering (wearing tuxedo jackets, stilettos and fishnets) across a wooden structure vaulting dinner table set with fine napery and silver candelabras and, once installed there, to urinate into one another’s bucket hats. Yet he is.
“It was spectacular, perverse, uplifting, beautifully horrifying and deeply transgressive,” Mr. Deitch said of that particular evening, in a New Yorker profile. It was also, like many of Mr. Deitch’s seeming transgressions, professionally well judged.
Among the unlikely-seeming reasons that the Museum of Contemporary Arts board bypassed more-conventionally-trained museum professionals for a man sometimes termed an heir to P. T. Barnum, Mr. Broad suggested, was his involvement in the Art Parade, an annual procession through downtown Manhattan in which the Dazzle Dancers and motley locals disport themselves in mainly Spandex and glitter.
If, as Andy Warhol used to say, business art is the best art, the best business art in a town like this one may be the show business kind. Mr. Deitch is an avowed Warholian who considers obscure performance artists like the intellectual transvestite Vaginal Davis a celebrity, and celebrities like Kim Kardashian artists manqués.
From the pool terrace of the 8,000-square-foot house that Mr. Deitch currently rents in the hills near Griffith Park (and that Cary Grant is said to have shared with Randolph Scott), a postcard panorama takes in his new city: terraced movie-star gardens, downtown skyscrapers, the far-off Pacific wreathed in haze. Above Mr. Deitch’s bed hangs an abstract Aaron Young painting that, when stared at, produces an after-image of Christ; in a nearby hall is a preparatory sketch for Warhol’s painting “Before and After.”
“This is such an important, early, seminal work,” Mr. Deitch told a visitor one recent morning, referring to Warhol’s celebrated image, taken from an newspaper advertisement, depicting a woman before and after a nose job. It makes sense that, among the artworks Mr. Deitch has acquired, those he chose to show a guest depict a messianic prophet and radical metamorphosis.
“We want to set the agenda” for the coming decade, Mr. Johnson, the museum co-chairman, had said, referring to the museum.
That agenda became more plausible with the appointment last year of Mr. Deitch, following that of Michael Govan, the former director of the DIA Foundation, to head the Los Angeles County Museum; and of Ann Philbin, the well-regarded director of the Drawing Center, to run the Hammer Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The arrival of this troika, a seemingly unbeatable combination, and the decision of prominent New York galleries like Gagosian and Matthew Marks to establish outposts in Los Angeles (Mr. Marks’s gallery will open next winter), did much to bolster Mr. Broad’s grand assertion that “Los Angeles could become the contemporary art capital of the world.”
If Mr. Deitch shares Mr. Broad’s ambitions, it’s in a played-down manner that can seem oddly like an asset in a town where hyperbole is the norm and personalities are often as bloated as floats in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. (See: Weintraub, Jerry.)
“We’re acculturated to the fusion of media now,” and equally to the decades-old institutionalization of high/low aesthetics, Mr. Deitch said one day last week over lunch at the down-home Urth Caffe, his hangout, where patrons bus their own trays. “Art, film, fashion, music are all going on and interacting simultaneously,” he added. “And L.A. is very receptive to that fusion.”
Critics of Mr. Deitch, and there are many, hold their noses at his apparent indifference to art-world hierarchies, equating his appointment with the death of civilization.
“The supreme opportunist,” Jed Perl, art critic for The New Republic, wrote of him in a critique that stopped just short of accusing Mr. Deitch of running a shop for art-trend knickknacks.
Some, like the blogger who attributed a series of moronic remarks to Mr. Deitch on Twitter, under the handle @fakedeitch, see him as a carpetbagger. Some, on the evidence of stealth videos that made the rounds for a time, view him as an art-world Führer, a heavy-handed censor who, shortly before “Art in the Streets” was set to open, ordered a graffiti mural by the Italian artist Blu painted over because its content, rows of coffins draped in dollar bills, was too political.
“That killed me,” said Mr. Deitch of the controversy surrounding his decision to blot out Blu’s mural, a move he explained was made necessary by the mural’s position facing a memorial commemorating Japanese-American soldiers who fell during World War II.
None of this mattered to the crowds lined up outside the Geffen Center in Little Tokyo last Saturday, not the censorship or the future of museums or the tendency among many in the art world to scour each minor occurrence for meaning, the way ancient divines did the entrails of birds.
They had come to see Neck Face, the graffiti artist whose installation — a menacing alley replete with flashing lights and the artist as a filth-covered hobo — was inspired, he explained, not by such obvious forerunners as the artist Mike Kelley but by his family’s unofficial trade constructing haunted houses. They’d come for the gloomy, wall-covering murals of inverted dead mammals by the Belgian graffiti artist ROA and the candy-colored cartoon ones by graffiti elders like Kenny Scharf and Futura 2000, né Leonard McGurr.
They’d come for the gorgeously calligraphic markings by Retna; the demented funhouse installations by the Brazilian twins Os Gêmeos; the wall of faux naïve placards by the late Margaret Kilgallen; the “period” spaces recreated or taken intact from such shrines to the graffiti movement as the Fun Gallery or the black-lighted TriBeCa loft long inhabited by the graffiti legend Rammellzee.
This list barely begins to cover the extent of an outlaw artistic movement in “Art in the Streets,” which tracks the great graffiti dispersion from styles first created in New York by Lee Quinones, Dondi, Futura 2000 and others and that soon enough made it to Philadelphia, Chicago, the West Coast and the world.
The Los Angeles Times termed “Art in the Streets” a “bombastic, near-overwhelming cavalcade of eye-candy,” a crowd-teasing pull-quote if ever there was one. And while it’s too early to know how the exhibition will fare with critics, there is little reason to doubt Mr. Broad’s assertion that it will likely pull the crowds in and engage a new public, most particularly “audiences that would not otherwise go to museums.”
But the greater challenge faced by Mr. Deitch and others in the field is not luring new audiences accustomed to consuming media in blended form as much as it is attracting those who consume most media on hand-held tablets back into a brick-and-mortar temples to art. Will he be able to draw Angelenos off the freeways and the often gritty streets with even grittier and dystopic-Disney versions of American lives as conjured in a raunchy, immersive installation titled “Street”?
Will the decision to make his directorial mark with an ephemeral and often outlaw art form pay off for Mr. Deitch and the museum? Is “Art in the Streets” his signature gesture, his tag?
“We have to be very careful here to keep things rigorous and not pollute” the underlying mission of institutions like MOCA to uphold the highest standards of culture, Mr. Deitch said. “But at the same time, the art world has a tendency to academicism and aridity. I’m very interested in seeing that art remains connected to emotion. I’m a very optimistic person and it’s important to me that the museum conveys that optimism to people, that the art we show stays connected to life.”
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