“What do you think of Banksy, Peter Saville?” More here.
The Problem with Shepard Fairey
Shepard Fairey’s much hyped Institute for Contemporary Arts show, “Supply and Demand”, probably never would have happened without the new president. But that famous image fails as anything more than a reminder. It is not that it borrows so obviously from communist propaganda design, but because it doesn’t transcend its source of inspiration.
There is nothing about it to communicate that this is about 2008, and there’s an election in America, a country deeply fearful, frustrated, and cynical. It is as it looks: a Dear Leader-like swoon….which could work only if you interpret it at it as a self-mocking, self-aware rub at “drinking the Obama kool-aid.” However, the poster came out early in the primaries, before thousands of people stood in queues to hear him speak. Fairey himself admits the famous Che Guevara image was a major source of inspiration.
True, it is an inspired choice of image of Obama. He is captured exactly as we like to think of him: looking caring, but just a bit distant and analytical. That is precisely why people who really like Obama tend to really like Shepard Fairey’s Obama poster.
Now that the right person for the job ended up the White House, it’s worth pointing out Tony Puryear’s poster of Hillary Clinton was a hell of a lot better:
Puryear is also taking inspiration from propaganda posters, but by using a photograph, rather than illustration, it moves beyond its source. It mocks the Communist propaganda that was the inspiration. You can see the lines on Clinton’s face, she looks relaxed. She radiates warmth as much as power and intellect. She’s a human being, not an icon.
There is a twist to the Clinton image. But with Shepard Fairey, what you see is what you get.
Before the Boston show opened, Fairey came to town to wheatpaste images, mostly around Harvard Square. The first one I noticed, was outside the Gap. At first glance, I thought the Gap commissioned it. It’s next to the door and looks “urban” but in a way that wouldn’t scare the suburbanites off from buying socks and down jackets. It is intricate, but so totally inoffensive, it is virtually indistinguishable from contemporary jeans advertising. Positioned by a store front, it only looks like an extension of the store.
Image of Fairey in front of the Gap from ICA’s Flickr
What’s the point of street art that only encourages more foot traffic at the Gap? Was the Saks campaign pro bono too? I don’t have a problem with artists doing commercial work to pay the bills, but if and when you do work for free, why not make something that doesn’t look like the Gap commissioned you to do it?
And before someone comments that the wheatpaste is all about the juxtaposition and its placement in the city and the street — hold on.
It communicates nothing in the context of this space. For the non-Cantabrigians: Harvard Square is Boston’s equivalency of Santa Monica. Nor is it more of the They Live-inspired non-advertising like the Andre the Giant stuff.It’s a poster in front of a Gap that looks like the Gap paid him a few grand to put up.
If you aren’t easily frustrated by visually interesting things which can only be considered at surface level, you may enjoy his ICA show. Otherwise you’ll likely get annoyed by many parts of it.
An entire room is filled with about 40 screen printed images of Joe Strummer, Tupac, Lou Reed, Ian MacKaye, even, good lord, Henry fucking Rollins. As the ICA explains, “Fairey’s graphic style, which takes celebrity portraits and transforms them into iconic cool, is a perfect fit for the music industry.” There’s nothing to the images. The design is nothing above what you’d see in Spin magazine. Is it an attempted visualization of the “favorite music” section in Fairey’s Myspace profile? Or is he really this low concept?
Another room has as a quote, “I use figures in my work who I feel are used and abused as symbols, but without telling the viewer how to feel about them.” And to be honest, the image of Angela Davis is just that. He illustrates her from a unique angle. It’s a dramatic image, but, while I wrote down in my notebook to praise it, I now can hardly remember what it looks like or why I liked it in the first place. Nor can I whole-heartedly recommend my favorite piece in the show — Commanda. It’s an image of a veiled ambiguously Asian/Persian woman holding a spraycan furtively, with the cap facing forward about to be pressed. It’s nice. It’s clever. It’s kinda like something Banksy would do but with lots of pretty embellishments.
As a political street artist, it’s hard not to compare him with Banksy. But Banksy couldn’t possibly create work as moving as he does without staying well-informed of politics. Fairey’s work makes you wonder if he even quite knows what’s going on in the Middle East or what Guantánamo Bay even is. What Fairey communicates about politics is apathy and a vague directionless feeling of dissent. The ornate details that set him apart may add prettiness but no depth to his work.
I was tempted to title this post “Rubylith without a cause,” because that seems very much like a Shepard Fairey pun. Like his fake currency that says says “No Cents” on it. Or the title of the show: “Supply and Demand.” Is this all a commentary on the recession/international economics/ geopolitical risk? Naw, man.
A gallery assistant played up Fairey’s attention to detail, pointing to how precisely the rubyliths were carved with an X-acto. And that’s about right, Fairey does seem to be a perfectionist. But a workhorse isn’t always a great visionary. And his art mostly deals with politics, the limits to his vision are made obvious.
You can find art right down the hall that combines beauty, ferocious attention to detail, and a clear, eloquent, unmistakable political message: Paul Chan’s 1st light (hands down the ICA’s finest piece in their permanent collection). It’s not like artists can’t be both. While a hardworker and gifted graphic artist, Shepard Fairey’s show is verging on boring.
Banksy is the Ty Pennington of graffiti artists. He can turn a £495,000 pub into a £1 million pub overnight! The auction house should consider a siloxane polymer shield, as the last time Banksy was up for sale in a real estate transation, it didn’t go so well. (Previously: Urban Safaris: Graffiti Sites Considered for Heritage Protection.)
Melbourne graffiti is world-famous — and protected by the government. Their city council even covered work by Banksy with perspex to keep vandals away. Now Epcot Center, in Orlando’s Disney World uses it as inspiration for their Australia exhibit: “By Disney’s schmaltzy standards, the Melbourne set is understated. Lanes covered with graffiti art are filled with cafe tables, where people sit to eat tapas-sized meals.” However, Premier John Brumby is embarrassed it is representing the country abroad, creating a countrywide debate over “street art” vs. “graffiti.”
Tomorrow is the third anniversary of Katrina. Check out what happened during Banksy’s NOLA visit. And here’s Life Without Buildings on preserving Modernism in New Orleans.
Urban Safaris: Graffiti Sites Considered for Heritage Protection
Simon at Ballardian says Melbourne is not quite as lovely as the Treehugger article I linked to suggests:
[The] Treehugger article only explores Melbourne’s inner city. The suburbs are a different matter. Perhaps the overseas versions might weed out the worrying strain of Mad Max style behaviour that sees cyclists as game to be hunted.
But then again, such behaviour inspired Mad Max itself, one of the finest films ever made.
Well, it may not be a “pedestrian paradise,” but Melbourne is in the middle of a debate that could lead to some curious developments in urban landscapes around the world. Australia’s National Trust and Heritage Victoria is considering graffiti for heritage protection (via.)
Scott Hilditch, chief executive of Graffiti Hurts Australia, says that protecting graffiti would effectively condone acts of vandalism and cost the Australian government over $260 million (U.S. $250 million) a year to clean up.
Some artists oppose the idea as well, protesting that it is contrary to the spirit of the art form itself. Melbourne curator and artist Andrew Mac says it would interfere with the natural process of street art: “The work is ephemeral. It’s not meant to last. It lasts purely as long as the weather and other graffiti artists allow it to last.” Mac also feels that the councils backing protection may have real estate motives in mind, such as promoting graffiti sites to fuel tourism.
The Banksy House
A London suburban Victorian terrace house tagged by Banksy famously went for bid at four hundred thousand dollars, “a buyer would receive the mural—with the house thrown in ‘for free.’” The house was later destroyed by “vandals” — nevertheless — maybe therein lies the answer to our national housing crisis.
We could send Swoon and Elbow-Toe to the poorest neighborhoods in Cleveland, Washington Dc, Detroit, and elsewhere. Why stop at the cities? We could tag barns in North Dakota too. 
I’d pay a lot to live in a Swoon-tagged house. And I’d certainly move in a neighborhood I’d never otherwise consider in order to do so. But bidding would be fierce. We could see these properties turning into hipster summer homes, for when the trust fund PBR drinkers want to rough it in the “Common People” sense.
Anyone can see street art, not just the people willing to step in a gallery. And that adds value. The more eyes on a work of art, (usually) the more valuable it becomes (although diminishing marginal returns plays here too.) This is why artists will often reduce the price of their work to display it in a museum rather than sell it to someone for his personal collection.
If art economics is difficult to understand, the economics of street art is unprecedented in its confusion. In England, Banksy is as famous as Damon Alburn and earl grey tea. His prints sell for millions. But this month, one of his pieces was whitewashed in Northern London.
Art critics know that street art and graffiti refer to very different things. As Hrag Vartanian put it, “What appears to differentiate street art from its graffiti predecessor are two things: the self-consciousness in its conversation with the city and its lack of the aggression and violence.” But city workers can’t be bothered to appreciate the difference, and maybe there is aesthetic merit to be gleaned from its aggressive older cousin.
I think the Australian preservationists are on to something, and one day we all will be thinking bigger. Maybe downtown Detroit will be heralded as an architecture splendor — an UNESCO site, the modern day Cesky Krumlov. Tourists in fannypacks and shorts will motorbus out to see it, and marvel at the public artwork as they would walking through Florence, Italy.
Already tourists enjoy the spectacle of poverty. When I was in South Africa a few years ago, i was shocked at the opportunities to visit the shantytowns (”Townships”) by bus tours. Brazil is notorious for its “Favela tours.” Here’s a good post on poverty tourism by Vagabondish, explaining how to minimize the exploitation of the people who live in these areas:
I think that if it’s managed by real, interested professionals, and sensible ground rules are set – don’t take photographs, don’t give money or candy away (donate through a suitable charity or organization instead), stay in small groups, and so on – then perhaps poverty tourism really does provide some benefits for the locals. And at this stage in its development, when it’s mostly undertaken by fairly seasoned travelers who are genuinely interested in understanding more about a country and its people, it seems that such tours can truly be managed in this way. My fear is that poverty tourism could become a more mainstream activity, and money-hungry travel agents will start sending in large air-conditioned buses full of ignorant tourists snapping hundreds of pictures, and then the rot will really set in.
Still, I can’t feel comfortable with the idea of the New Orleans disaster tours. Something about busing out to see a someone’s personal possessions strewn about, reduced to trash and chaos, bothers me more than seeing human faces of a tragedy.
Art by Elbow-Toe
Related links:
- The Very Public Life of Street Art by Hrag Vartanian in the Brooklyn Rail
- My Love for You interviews Elbow Toe
- Shadow Cities by Robert Neuwirth
- Graffiti artist Mike Baca (standing trial for seven years for graffiti vandalism and trespassing, which is twice the usual sentence in NY) Juxtapoz
How to make it as an art critic: “enjoy poking hornets nests with sticks.” Witness The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones: “Banksy is a thick person’s idea of a radical artist. Twombly is a thinking person’s.” Jones also says Twombly is “the only graffiti artist I care about.”
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