I wondered why people weren’t responding, or even viewing my posts of the last week. I was particularly ambitious, and made 5 new art pranks combining original Photoshop art, art criticism, and humor. All the writing, design (such a magazine layout), and the art is by me. Below are the significant posts that didn’t appear in reader because my feed was not validated (If this happens to you, I now know how to fix it).
This is the one that started the problem. I admit to being disappointed people weren’t enjoying this one. I took a picture of me in a mall next to a rabbit figure, then Photoshopped it into a gallery space, painted big lips on it, wrote a magazine article hoax, and designed my own magazine layout to put it in. Lotta’ work went into this post. Few people saw it. Makes salient points about the art market and how sales determine what is valuable culture.
Next up, a very thorough analysis of Koons’ painting technique, with examples. I had to search hard to find high quality pictures to use as illustrations. But it also contains another hoax. That painting behind him is by me. This is also about power and authority in the art world. By putting my own “painting” behind him, it appears grandiose and worth millions. So much is achieved with appearances.
If you read the one above, you don’t really need to look at the one below UNLESS you want to buy a print, which someone did (my first sale during the year of art). My favorite Koons is actually by Kuns. After analyzing the living crap out of his work, I produced my own piece in his style, incorporating all his techniques and adding a couple new ones. I thought I improved on his direction. The result is rather lovely.
I busted my ass on this next one. Stayed up all night a couple nights finishing it. Don’t think that just because I made a giant bug in Photoshop that it was easy. No, I had to move around his legs to the front of his body, draw on a realistic dong, get lighting and shadows down convincingly. I put the people in. It tested my Photoshop metal. Asks relevant points about scale in art. It’s not just a joke, it works on several layers, including attacking the idea that the idea is more important than the execution in art.
The stencils are by me, but I did them in PS. Again, don’t think it was easy. I think it would have been easier to make a stencil and spray paint them (I learned to do stencil in art school). I even came up with my own signature tag! Actually, doing this helped me appreciate street art more. But I am questioning the elevation of Banksy’s stencil art to fine art selling for millions. THAT is more about celebrity and fetishization of the art object than about actual merit. By me, it would be kinda’ hard to be a stencil artist and NOT be as good as Banksy.
And finally another faux magazine article, designed and written by myself. What a pain in the ass, especially when you keep rediscovering typos and grammatical errors AFTER posting a Jpeg version. I had to post the main image 9 times before I finally got it right. I F up a lot. Here I did a write up in the third person, giving it all the apparent authority of an article in an art magazine, about the Banksy phenomenon and the art market.
And, just in case you missed the granddaddy of them all, this is the first in the series, though it DID appear in reader. No, there is no giant Sigmund, or an anatomically correct one (so to speak). That’s someone’s Photoshop homework assignment, er, mine.
Take a look at these if you have a chance. I invested countless hours into them, and they are quite informative about art in their special way, while also being (conceptual) works of art in themselves.
Art & Crit by Eric Wayne 
It happens sometimes that very good posts get totally missed ))
Getting over to them right now!
LikeLike
I’m afraid I’ve been away from WordPress for quite a while due to a change personal circumstances. Some real fun stuff here. Your photoshop work looks best when it’s got those montage mismatches that occur in those simulations of how a proposed piece of architecture would look. You knw the sort of thing?
The newsy bits are very The Onion. I can’t help wondering what artists and art writers want their attacks on the blue-chip end of the art world to do? Obviously such attacks aren’t (on their own) going to change the socio-economic system that puts the top percent where it is. And I notice yours include placing yourself in their position. Is there any jealousy involved in this?
There’s also a concern about status over content in the jist of anti art establishment sentiments. Don’t you think that the need for celebrity has overtaken other requirements that contemporary societies place upon art?
You might enjoy (or even despise) Grayson Perry’s Reith Lectures for the BBC this year: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/reith-lectures/id318705261
His comments about International Art English are hilarious.
You might also like this blog btw: http://artsociology.wordpress.com/2013/11/25/do-art-resumes-serve-the-function-of-a-company-prospectus/
Apologies for being away so much. Partner lost job. Things a bit busy here!
LikeLike
Hi Jeff:
What do I hope to achieve by attacking the blue chip end of the art world? The same one might want to achieve in attacking the decision to launch a misguided war – to show it’s stupidity and corruption. Why attack lousy Hollywood blockbusters? Why lament the salaries of the Wall Street bankers responsible for the worldwide economic crisis? To speak the truth back to the master. To not drink the Kool Aid. To refuse to be duped.
Whose need for celebrity are you addressing, the artist’s or the consumers? It’s an interesting question that I haven’t thought too much about. But I read something about how our brains are wired (I don’t tend to buy into such ideas, but I didn’t forget it) to know a certain number of people, and thus we only have room for a certain number of each type of person. In the end we all know a handful of artists, musicians, athletes, and so on. I think celebrity for artists is kind of lame. The art is more important than the celebrity. I don’t care a hoot about Beethoven’s celebrity status, or lack thereof, when I listen to his late string quartets. It’s the music that astonishes.
Ah, my using myself in art pranks. OK, maybe I need to address this for anyone who happens to follow my blog and doesn’t really know me. I’ll do a post about this. I use myself to get more audience, which I desperately need if I’m going to be able to scrounge out even a bare bones existence by making art. That’s just on a practical level, which isn’t working anyway, yet, but I have much more subtle reasons for including myself than mere jealousy, which I don’t think I have for these artists, and I think I’m self-aware enough to know if I were jealous. The closest I come to feelings of jealousy in regards to other artists is for their skill, or output, but that would be overshadowed by admiration, and even gratitude. I would not be jealous of highly paid artists, because I just don’t care that much about money. I would rather be the penniless writer of a great novel, than the millionaire writer of a lousy one. Similarly, the person I would be jealous, or envious of, if I were in that kind of a mood, would also be the artist who created fantastic works, and not the overinflated churner of mediocrity. Koons’ work, for example, bores me to tears. In a word, it “sucks”. If I haven’t hashed out enough cliches, I’m more jealous (though I am NOT a jealous type of person) of Van Gogh, who made nothing for his art, than I am of whoever of his contemporaries raked in the most cash (and perhaps that I have no idea who that is testifies to my not giving the flying crap about that person).
LikeLike