Briefcase Pick of the Week (POW) - Vigilante Vigilante: The Battle for Expression

Welcome lovely blog readers,

This is the first installment of Briefcase Blog's Pick of the Week aka the "POW!" (cue Adam West's Batman fighting sound fx). Let's review the trailer to the indie documentary Vigilante Vigilante: The Battle for Expression. 

For those of you who've been living under a cultural rock for the last, oh let's say 30 years, graffiti has been an ever prevalent art form in urban neighborhoods (and quite a few NY subway trains during the 70's and 80's). Yet as with all movements, there's evolution and graffiti eventually became a mainstay (supported by artists like Keith Haring, Banksy, Os Gemeos, Space Invader and Shepard Fairey). Street art has become the new cultural measuring stick in the art world. Simply put, what was once considered lewd and incongruous behavior by "hoodlums" and "trouble makers" in urban societies, those same artists have now become the taste makers and the reigning kings of an art landscape forever changed (Watch: Exit Through the Gift Shop, Read: Trespass: A History of Uncommissioned Urban Art).

However for every movement, there's an Anti-Movement. That anti-movement has been documented by Max Good and Julien de Benedictis, the Writer/Directors of the documentary, and it captures one of the strangest, if not totally surprising reaction of buffing street art. Buffing is basically vandalizing street art by painting over it. The film speaks with the likes of New Orleans' "Grey Ghost" and LA's "The Grafitti Guerrilla" some of the many graffiti "crime fighters" as the film delves into a world perhaps little, if any of us at all, know much about.

As a fan of film making that turns societal norms on it's head, this film seems spot on. Who would've thought vandalism would become art and now that art has beget a new standard of vandalism. Is it so strange that previous lawbreakers (writers, artists, etc) are quite possibly now the victims of their own movement? You judge for yourself.

The film will be released this Friday August 12th to a limited release, so check your local listings for showings and make sure to tell a friend. Cheers!

Art is the new TV and the impact of Shepard Fairey

I've become consumed with art. Curating, attending galleries and just visually consuming as much as possible. And then it hit me. Art is the new TV. It's no longer counter culture. Today's art might as well be full fledged commercials Still images that run for 15 or 30 seconds at a time and say nothing, because it's more powerful that way. And yet, even though we've become accustomed to viewing art through certain filters, it doesn't mean that art isn't at the mercy of large corporations. Actually, there's a really fucked up bastard child relationship with corporate ad mongers and artists.

Take Tobias Wong for example, who very much displeased McDonalds (among others) for his depiction of coffee stirrers made of gold and making it's associations to their part in drug culture as addicts would use the stirrer to scoop cocaine and indulge. It became quite the statement to some, helping forge the connection between the addictiveness of both unhealthy McDonald's food and cocaine. But really it gestures at how corporations truly feel about us and what I am getting at is, despite counter cultures, we're still at the mercy of money.

Shepard Fairey

Check this out:

I saw a Shepard Fairey "Obey" poster on Westchester Ave in the Bronx recently (somewhere near the non existent Morrison Ave stop on the 6 train). Is it because he needs to promote there anymore? Not when you've already been part of a campaign that helped elect our current President (see right).

So why do it? Why bother coming all the way into the epicenter of graffitti culture in the south bronx and put up a poster everyone and their mother has seen, especially after you've been commissioned to murals on Houston street (over an old Keith Haring by the way and it's still shameful that the city would let that happen) and ads by Saks Fifth Ave?

Because if you don't do the little things anymore you're considered a sell out and people feel justified in it because you were once a struggling street artist and should stay there.

This is partly why people love Banksy, Os Gemeos and the late great Keith Haring and on and on. Because they have yet to put themselves in a spot where a large corporation is not paying their bills. But we forget, Warhol was a designer. So is Shepard Fairey. And this become part of the problem. Designers are better promoters.

Andy Warhol

It's everywhere and nowhere at once. I recently had taken a stroll through my current gallery, on saturday night and there was a resounding amount of pop art on the walls. Not necessarily in the conventional Andy Warhol's "Campbell's Tomato Soup" pop art, but in the way that taking something else and moving onward with your own influence on it still resonates because of guys like Shepard Fairey. We strolled through the gallery and it came to me that there was once a fine line between fine art and pop art and street art and now it's becoming that much more difficult to draw that line without wanting to run it through Adobe Illustrator.

This is not to say that Shepard Fairey should be run through the meat grinder and guys like Banksy should be canonized (although he's definitely close). No, instead I think it's worth being mindful of how full circle we've really come as a community of art consumers. And I say consumer because if you buy into anything, even if it's not a product but an IDEA, than WE ARE ALL CONSUMERS.

We have Andy Warhol to thank for starting such things and Yves Klein for perpetuating the ridiculous in said things, Banksy for finding a way to share a message but we have Shepard Fairey to thank for making it true.

It is not impossible to sell an idea of importance because it IS the case now. Pure mass promotion has actually launched the career of a designer like Fairey into artistic superstardom. Where he was once as underground (and I use the term loosely) as guys like Blu or Space Invader or Eine or Basquiat or Fairey himself during the mid 90's.

So what am I saying? I don't know exactly. What I do know, is that at one point the same art that you reveled at for being so daring will also be the art you second guess for being put into a museum and finally you'll end up hating it because it sold you a handbag. Don't judge the art because of what it's doing to you, judge it because of what it is.