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Post by shine166 on Apr 15, 2011 10:08:56 GMT -8
Yer I agree the show looks amazing, fingers crossed I can make it over in the next few months
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Post by saL on Apr 15, 2011 10:30:18 GMT -8
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Post by jediak on Apr 15, 2011 13:04:55 GMT -8
More shots popping up, just keeps on getting better, truly looks like a spectacular show.
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Post by thinkspace on Apr 16, 2011 11:14:31 GMT -8
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Post by epicfai on Apr 16, 2011 15:02:23 GMT -8
An interesting and thought-provoking perspective and essay on Art in the Streets by Drew Snyder over at Hyperallergic.com I can't wait to see the show for myself next week. hyperallergic.com/22882/street-art-first/Everyone Wants to be FirstLos Angeles — There is apparently something about institutional street art shows that move museum folk towards declarations of firstness. In 2008, Street Art at the Tate Modern was announced as “the first major public museum display of Street Art in London,” while just last winter Hugh Davies, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, glowed that he was “really proud” to be “the first (American) museum to do an international street art show of this scale and scope.” Art In The Streets, the latest and of course much buzzed exhibition opening today at Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art is billed by MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch as — surprise surprise — “the first exhibition to position the work … from street culture in the context of contemporary art history.” The justification for Deitch and MOCA’s claim turns on the debut establishment of a historical context for this often elusive phenomenon, tracing its roots back to old-schoolers such as Cornbread and Taki 183 as well as Fab 5 Freddy, Kenny Scharf, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Art in the Streets takes these godfathers and attempts to unite them with the later-generation players that have risen to fame in the last ten years, figures such as JR, Barry McGee, Shepard Fairey and others. The jury is still out on the extent to which all of this fits neatly into one seamless narrative. Nevertheless, the show does pull off a feel of history. In fact, the exhibition itself is probably best described as one part art show one part natural history museum display (complete with animatronic taggers). Deitch, along with co-curators Roger Gastman and Aaron Rose (and what must have been an army of preparators) have built out large sections of MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary to recreate the environments in which the movement is said to have developed; things like trash-filled New York alleys in the eighties, cramped bedrooms littered with tag-sketches or even the fabled FUN Gallery where some of the movement’s most notables had their first solo shows. Driving home the historical aspect of the show, an illustrative timeline runs on the walls throughout, laying out the movement’s pivitol moments (Deitch Projects unsurprisingly features prominently under 1996). Yet Gastman, in an interview with LA Weekly, seemed to contradict the show’s historical dimension, asserting: The common misconception here is that this show is a complete history or an LA graf show … It’s neither of those things. It’s 30 to 40 artists who raised the profile of an entire movement with high artistic merit … The participating artists were very supportive once they understood this intent … This quote from Gastman brings up an important point, because if the show is not a history, then, even in all its grandeur, it is suddenly not so urgent. Viva La Revolución: A Dialogue With the Urban Landscape — the major San Diego show that took place some 100 miles from MOCA and which closed January 2011 — featured twenty artists, almost all of which are represented in the MOCA show. The Viva show discussed many of the same themes and presented many of the same brands of works as are on display in Art in the Streets, if only on a slightly smaller scale. The point is that for anyone who saw the Viva show (and for the historical record), everything about Art in the Streets that is not “historical” is somehow not so compelling, or at least not a “first,” because it is all so close in time, space, and content to Viva La Revolución. That’s not to say that Art in the Streets is not an impressive show. Aside from the large-scale builds and grandiose historical reproductions, you can expect to see the contemporary stars of the field doing their thing to great effect. Os Gêmeos, for example, is a clear stand out, dominating large walls with their trademark caricatured faces, some of which cover a hoard of makeshift speaker-boxes with wires feeding into a band set up. In general, the artists on display are all doing what they do best. The question becomes, what exactly is that thing they do? And what is MOCA doing to package and present the whole thing? Are the artists partaking in a great and loudly trumpeted historicization under the direction of Deitch and other museum directors, many of whom on a certain level represent the kind of space which consitutes the movement’s implicit target? Are they ironically flaunting the institutional egoism that could be seen as infecting the entire enterprise? Or is it an important step in the validation of an artistic mode that has often been brushed aside? It is a complicated situation, one that becomes more complicated with each new ‘first’ major museum street art show. Standing on one of the open upper floors of the Geffen Contemporary and looking down at the maze of temporary rooms, installations and corporate sponsored (Nike) skate ramps, it is hard to tell with any certainty just who the joke is on. Art in the Streets at LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art (152 North Central Avenue, Los Angeles) opens April 17 and continues till August 8, 2011. |
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Post by saL on Apr 16, 2011 15:43:06 GMT -8
indeed!... thanks for sharing the photos... now, 2 questions: - can we see the sketches/tags you scored? - whos the bum on your photos?!  |
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Post by thinkspace on Apr 17, 2011 11:14:15 GMT -8
Neckface was playing a full on homeless person in his own install - during the press preview on Thurs AM, back on Thurs night for the VIP and he was there all night on Sat too for the members opening and he told me he planned to be there today too for the public opening. He's in rare form and seldom breaks character, even drawing drunken scrawls in my book with a confused look as to why he was asked to draw in a black book. Priceless! haha
Will take some pics, got a slew of great pieces in the ol' black book including an amazing tag of my own name from Mode 2.
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Post by saL on Apr 17, 2011 14:00:05 GMT -8
Neckface was playing a full on homeless person in his own install - during the press preview on Thurs AM, back on Thurs night for the VIP and he was there all night on Sat too for the members opening and he told me he planned to be there today too for the public opening. He's in rare form and seldom breaks character, even drawing drunken scrawls in my book with a confused look as to why he was asked to draw in a black book. Priceless! haha Will take some pics, got a slew of great pieces in the ol' black book including an amazing tag of my own name from Mode 2. ha!.. yeah, realized later on that was him.. pretty cool idea too.. but, are you sure that wasn't a REAL bum, really being surprised why do you want him to draw something for you?! .. looking forward to seeing the pics (I saw you got Roa in there as well, nice!).. for all the Harring heads out there:  via SlamXHype |
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Post by saL on Apr 17, 2011 14:43:07 GMT -8
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Post by shine166 on Apr 17, 2011 14:46:49 GMT -8
Does anyone know how I get one of these tee's ?  |
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Post by saL on Apr 17, 2011 15:51:40 GMT -8
hehe.. I knew that shirt will raise some questions.. if you end up finding out, please let me know as well!  |
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Post by The Gorgon on Apr 17, 2011 23:26:07 GMT -8
Mat Gleason, of Coagula Art Journal, does a video review of the show. To paraphrase Mat's comment, "Your art world theory is dead. Our art has arrived." Love it.
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Post by shine166 on Apr 18, 2011 8:09:31 GMT -8
hehe.. I knew that shirt will raise some questions.. if you end up finding out, please let me know as well! Will do. I read somewhere of Mcgee tee's in the merch shop, but ive heard nor seen anything else |
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Post by jujurocs on Apr 18, 2011 9:47:55 GMT -8
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Post by shine166 on Apr 18, 2011 10:53:55 GMT -8
cool cheers... I want one |
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Post by buschrj on Apr 18, 2011 11:21:18 GMT -8
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Post by jujurocs on Apr 18, 2011 18:06:34 GMT -8
yep...that's the one
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Post by tarone on Apr 18, 2011 22:55:35 GMT -8
same design but moca has some exclusive,different color way. didn't seen any os gemeos tee tho... |
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Post by Weezy on Apr 19, 2011 19:09:31 GMT -8
Wondering if folks read this blistering review in City Journal and had comments? I've seen it linked to in a number of blogs, but not here. www.city-journal.org/2011/21_2_vandalism.htmlI like graff art because it's often innovative and fresh and has something to say. The hypocrisy about the vandalism part I totally acknowledge, but I deal with it-- I'm as annoyed as anyone to have to paint over some gang tag on my building or look at some lame stuff someone wrote in wet cement on my sidewalk, so I get that. I simply differentiate such vandalism from say Vhils taking a chisel to the side of my building, EVOL stenciling my front door or Retna tagging my car, which, even if not consensual, would be something that I'd likely consider fortuitous because I embrace these artists' work. I say this recognizing full well that one man's art is another person's vandalism. Accordingly, I'm okay with someone expressing outrage as a reasonable POV, but this attack was so personal. I'm not sure how it could have the intended effect of shaming anyone the author names to take a different tack. It's not like Dietsch's embrace of graff art at MOCA is the first time The Establishment sought to elevate the art of the street. I can remember when I was a student at UCSB many years ago, and the school lined the central quad with with boards so what I presume were students could tag them. I thought it was lame at the time because it was such a non sequitur for the university to be involved on so many levels. Of course once armed with cans, nobody kept to the designated boards, and it was a mess the university soon regretted. Weezy |
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Post by sleepboy on Apr 19, 2011 20:25:08 GMT -8
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Post by lowpro on Apr 19, 2011 20:50:48 GMT -8
read this earlier and had been thinking about it. guess i'll flesh out some thoughts here.
i commend her for the time she's taken to construct these articles. i actually read her previous review of the show itself before going to the museum on mon. she provides a compelling, well researched bit of writing in both accounts. this one certainly challenged me to think a bit more about the flipside of the proverbial coin than i might otherwise..which should be the intended purpose of opinion pieces. there's something to be said for her illumination of the hypocrisies, and in some cases disgusting behavior, from seemingly most of the represented artists, as well as the overall pretense and mum attitude exercised by moca board members. she certainly did her dirt digging.
however, there's also something to be said for restraint and tact when it comes to oped style writing. she's clearly writing from a deeply impassioned place, as evidenced from the amount of backwards legwork done on the research front. yet she is so overtly assertive with her thoughts it has the unintended consequence of completely castigating the group she's challenging so much that they might discount her entirely as some embittered social reformist who has misguided her focus on an art movement with an admittedly troubled, crime infused genesis story. this would be unfortunate, as a great many of her arguments hold plenty of water. but the overbearing nature of her exaggerated bias and gross generalizations in some instances were almost nauseating, if not completely baffling and unfounded. the extent to which she cites the early onset of graffiti in new york as singlehandedly being the root cause of it losing it's stature as a great city during that time, rather than taking into consideration the economic circumstances of the era, came across as preposterous.
ultimately, i suppose she comes from a certain place, a certain time and undoubtedly a certain set of ideals and is specifically appealing to a certain demographic in a call to action. i'm not sure what it is, but there just seems to be some deep seeded contempt for the movement that goes well beyond providing critical argument, as if her life was somehow irrevocably damaged in those subways by the art alone. would love to know what's at the core to provide so much fuel for her flames.
and i think she illustrates an inability, or simply an unwillingness, to effectively distinguish between the graffiti that she bemoans on the streets of la, and is imminently convinced such elevation by a major institution will lead to an exponential rise in, that even those most entrenched in support of this genre would condemn and the contemporary street art, along with the early well conceived graffiti, that probably most here all know and love intimately and that deitch and co has strived to substantiate. that said, perhaps moca failed in their slated mission of heightening "street art" to the layperson by not providing sufficient differentiation and not defining clearly enough why one should garner artistic merit and is deserving of this stage at this point in time. or perhaps they did and this woman has a bone to pick for unknown reasons. much like the author, i'm biased in my own right and would argue the latter.
still a great read nonetheless.
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Post by commandax on Apr 19, 2011 22:00:56 GMT -8
Seems a little histrionic to me. Oh, and thank goodness New York got its graffiti problem under control, or we would never have had the pleasure of watching four rich white Manhattan b-tches totter around whinging about their love lives on television. What?
I think I will just quote Chaz Bojórquez: "I feel that if the city was a body, graffiti would tell us where it hurts. By cutting out the pain, you risk damage to the whole. No one part is more important than another."
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Post by Weezy on Apr 20, 2011 4:57:07 GMT -8
Lowpro really captures many of my sentiments, far better articulated than me.
I dunno, Commandax. I'm a believer in Broken Windows Theory (in a nutshell that the enforcement of petty crime sets expectations about law enforcement that stops a slippery slope toward more serious crimes), and I have not yet concluded that any of the attacks on it that I've read have much merit, particularly vis a vis the empirical evidence. New York City is definitely a better place than it was. I've always appreciated that the city had an edgy kind of grit to it that added to the excitement of being there, but there also is a tipping point which I think had been crossed where crime and decay threatened a unique dynamism that makes it one of the best cities in the world.
People shouldn't be made immune to the consequences of their actions, and graff artists proceed at their own risk. In fact, I think the risk associated with the illegality of doing the work is sometimes embraced as a kind of "because I sacrifice for my art, my passion makes me a "true artist" worthy of your notice and respect" and seeks to elevate even sometimes mediocre work or pure claptrap of a message with the unspoken premise of "I wouldn't take these risks if there weren't something deeply important about my work that is more valuable than respecting private property rights" which the public is then supposed to take at face value. I don't buy into that attempt to add cachet to street art. I for one don't care whether a graff artist was commissioned by a building owner, with all the permits and approvals from the city, or did the work without any approval. If it's good, worthy and interesting, I'll allow that the art and the message can be more valuable than the harm of the transgression against private property rights, but in the end the property owner must trump-- if Banksy does work on my building I have the right to paint over it. I'm also sympathetic to graffiti in blighted or abandoned areas, as a forum for organic exploration of media and styles that leads to innovation and brings a different point of view to art-- I also can understand the motivation to create and explore that comes from competitive tagging, which requires that the art be in a public setting, etc. Important talent is honed in such an environment. But should that trump the violation of private property rights?
I agree with Commandax that, for example, the gratuitous use of adjectives with pejorative intent and characterizing the other's motivations as pure ill intent reads like so much histrionics and seriously undermined the merits of the author's arguments. Generally when I see that kind of thing, I tune the author out as unserious and read no further. Here because it's a local story, I'd gotten through the whole thing.
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Post by commandax on Apr 20, 2011 7:32:45 GMT -8
.I dunno, Commandax. I'm a believer in Broken Windows Theory (in a nutshell that the enforcement of petty crime sets expectations about law enforcement that stops a slippery slope toward more serious crimes), and I have not yet concluded that any of the attacks on it that I've read have much merit, particularly vis a vis the empirical evidence. New York City is definitely a better place than it was. I've always appreciated that the city had an edgy kind of grit to it that added to the excitement of being there, but there also is a tipping point which I think had been crossed where crime and decay threatened a unique dynamism that makes it one of the best cities in the world. People shouldn't be made immune to the consequences of their actions, and graff artists proceed at their own risk. In fact, I think the risk associated with the work is sometimes embraced as a kind of "I sacrifice for my art," that seeks to elevate even sometimes mediocre work or pure claptrap of a message with the unspoken premise of "I wouldn't take these risks if there weren't something deeply important about my work that is more valuable than respecting private property rights" which the public is then supposed to take at face value. I don't buy into that attempt to add cachet to art. I for one don't care whether a graff artist was commissioned by a building owner, with all the permits and approvals from the city, or did the work without any approval. If it's good, worthy and interesting, I'll allow that the art and the message can be more valuable than the harm of the transgression against private property rights. My main problem with the "broken windows theory" is that it is founded too much on control and corrections and too little on showing young people that there is something to live for — giving them a sense of hope and holding out the possibility of a better future, less enclosed by the boundaries of class and race. Without that, we end up with our current situation, where a generation of young minority men rot in prison for petty crimes while their children grow up in the hood without a father and end up on the streets at 12 selling drugs and defending their territory because they have few other options and can see no other way to survive in the world they know. People aren't inherently bad. If you give them something to live for early enough in life, they will almost always choose hope. |
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Post by jediak on Apr 20, 2011 10:36:52 GMT -8
There is far too much opinion in the article for me to give it any weight, the author makes quite a few assumptions and often relies on name calling and loses any credibility on her valid points as a result. I equate much of her argument to people who call out vegans or vegetarians on the use of leather products, it’s not about what you don’t do it’s about what you do do. She also applies the same rules and reality to everything and as we all know not everything in life is equal. I can enjoy something in one context and not in another but she seems to believe it’s all or nothing as if by attending a concert of a band I enjoy means I would want them playing outside my home every night or to be more topical one can support the troops but not the war can they not? I suppose in her eyes the traditional work displayed in such institutions is drama free, as if the masters weren’t drunks, drug addicts, pedophiles etc.. who were commissioned by rich aristocracy guilty of the same things if not worse. I could go on and on but it’s pointless there is clearly something else going on here and any counterargument would be as pointless as debating the Phelps family over same sex marriage
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