“POLITICALLY CHARGED: THE PRINTS OF SHEPARD FAIREY” UP FOR AUCTION AT SOTHEBY'S

Politically Charged: The Prints of Shepard Fairey, is an online only sale featuring an extensive selection of prints by the contemporary street artist, graphic designer and activist.

According to Sotheby’s,

For over 30 years, Fairey’s work has explored important themes including climate change, propaganda, political corruption and injustice, to name a few. 

His art not only asks viewers to question and contemplate their surroundings, but also serves as a call to action to take an active role in their society and their democracy. 

To change everything, we need everyone. As the US presidential election approaches, the message of Fairey’s art becomes increasingly imperative. 

These prints are affordable with most estimates between $300- 500. To bid and see the full auction go here.

Bidding is open at Sothebys.com and will run through November 11 at 12pm.

ART WYNWOOD FAIR-GOERS PAINT THE ANSWER TO MY QUESTION, "WHAT KIND OF WORLD DO YOU WANT?"

So, my coloring book/ life story by Regan Arts, Yes, Transform Your Life With Color By Number came out on, November 8, 2016, election day and it did not end up being a happy day, needless to say. In it, one of the first images to color, based on a commissioned painting of mine (which was originally based on a rare vintage paint by number from the 50s) was What Kind of World Do You Want? In December I went on a mini book tour (sponsored by Design Within Reach) that started in New York, continued in Miami for Art Basel, L.A. & then Austin, Texas. Twyla.com is a new artist platform that offers 4 large scale prints of mine, and when visiting their headquarters in Austin, I chatted their new “Artist Relations” person, Ariel Salvidar. That meeting planted a seed for an important question to take root…

Fast forward to a brand new year, and What Kind of World Do You Want? had become my 2017 theme, so when my curator from Twyla, Heidi Lee-Komaromi, called to ask if I wanted to create a mural for the upcoming Art Wynwood fair in Miami, that image was the first thing that popped into my head. (It was also fresh being part of World of Wonder‘s Holiday gift this year. They kindly sent out 1400 copies of my book to Wowlebrities along with cards and markers, and also included it in a new digital version in their exhibit, Surviving Trump: The Art of Resistance just two days before the inauguration)

So, 10 days ago I found myself in Miami at Art Wynwood with a fun crew from Twyla and my long-time assistant, Amy Paschall, painting a 16 foot mural of the image, LIVE. Twyla created a limited edition print and and offered it to fair-goers giving part of the proceeds to The Trevor Project which supports LGBT at risk youth. We had an amazing location right at the entrance, and the response over the 5 day fair was overwhelmingly positive. People were there to look at art, but when they were offered the opportunity to paint with us, they were really excited. I’ve done this live painting before with for kids at The New Museum in New York, just before First Lady Michelle Obama arrived to sign my Drink Up mural, in support of her Partnership for a Healthy America. I created another for Squarespace at the Newport Folk Festival in 2014, and over 500 concert-goers helped paint All Over This Land in an installation in Fort Adams over 3 days. 

This fair and mural was timed to President’s Weekend, so the question after just a month of Trump being in office hit home especially hard. We also created action cards for people to answer the question, adding a crucial follow-up;

What Kind of World Do You Want? 

AND 

What Will You Do To Get it?

THAT second part of the question was the sticking point after reading many of the cards that were filled out. The first part is easy if all that’s required is a wish, but once you put yourself in the equation, the action is the tough part. I’m not saying I aced it either. Myself, along with Amy and the Twyla team; Ariel, Heidi, William Carson, Nick Nadeau, Cornelia Clay and Emillie Trice all talked to people for hours and hours over 5 days and got all sorts of responses that informed our experience. William noted,

“Asking people the question, led to discussions of religion, immigration, race, geography, politics, philosophy, and everything in between.”

So, that’s what WE did President’s weekend. I made the mural, thanks to the help of lots of folks and the generosity of Twyla. We got lots of press too. At one pint there were 3 camera crews in the booth! I met all sorts of people over the course of the weekend. Like artist, Cey Adams the original creative director of  Def Jam, who was showing at the fair too. Artist Shepard Fairey stopped by the booth and we chatted about how we first met. (I had to remind him, as he didn’t remember... I created a Hope painting for Art for Obama in ’08 and also was part of Manifest Equality in L.A. which he helped judge.) He was being honored for Lifetime Achievement, something he was happy about but he questioned it’s timing, seeing as he is in his mid-40s.

Anyway, I still struggle with the question on a daily basis. What can I constructively do to create that better world that I want? But that’s what art can do –prod us to ask questions we don’t know the answers to… 

SHEPHARD FAIREY SELLS SHOCKING ART SUPPLIES ON PORTLANDIA

Portlandia kicked off its fifth season a few weeks ago and in a recent episode shock art gets bashed in one of the best send-ups of bad art genres ever. Fred & Carrie peddle “shock art supplies” to art students at a warehouse-type art supply store called, yes, “Shocking Art Supplies.”

Artist Shepard Faireymakes a cameo as a store clerk holding a doll with its head on backwards and keeping a straight face, it’s a “radical juxtaposition,” then asks: 

“What does that say about our society?”

This season they also enlisted contemporary art photographer Catherine Opie to shoot their promo pictures (above). Opie is a fan of the show since its first season: 

“My portraits are so quiet and so still and they’re also really serious. So I was a little bit surprised at first that they wanted to go for my style. But they wanted my style because as a comedian, you don’t need to make comic-looking images.”

And last season’s promos (below) were shot by hot property and art world darling, Alex Prager in her signature “face in a crowd” style. Watch the video. It should be mandatory for art students.

(via ArtNet)

TAKE IT TO THE BANKSY: WILL STREET ART THROWDOWN MAKE GRAFFITI MAINSTREAM?

Well, Work of Art: The Next Great Artist and Gallery Girls weren’t exactly mainstream hits but people are interested in becoming famous, and art is just another way of getting there. Enter Oxygen‘s new reality competition Street Art Throwdown, starting February 3. It will follow these 10 aspiring street artists as they compete for the $100,000 grand prize. According to the press release: 

“The series tests not only their physical stamina, but also pushes their artistic skills to the limit in hopes of jump-starting their career…furiously scaling walls, climbing fences and navigating underground tunnels, these artists must have the talent, style and hustle to battle it out to the end.”

Commercial artist Justin Bua, who Oxygen says is known for his fine art posters and clients like Nike and Target (never heard of him) is host and co-judge alongside Lauren Wagner, the director of Pop International Galleries. Not exactly on the same level as art critic Jerry Saltz and dealer Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, among others, from “work of Art”. What, Shepard Fairey said no? And the whole idea that you need money or the established art world’s recognition seems to be the antithesis of street art. But hey, this is TV and fame is a drug. Rod Aissa, Oxygen’s executive VP of programming says:

“Street Art is the most accessible art form there is— it takes art out of the galleries and into our everyday surroundings with themes reflecting our social and political climate as well as fun, vibrant, and bold forms of self-expression from those who create it.”

It’s worth a watch of episode 1, but I feel already this could be a recipe for disaster. But we sure have enough reality shows based on nothing, so I’m all for watching a show about making art –unless it’s bad. Check out the preview here.

#ARTBASELMIAMI: ART COPYCATS ARE TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL

For going on 100 years, modern and contemporary art have been referencing, imitating and even flat-out copying itself and other artists. This was VERY apparent to me walking through the Scope Art Fairduring Art Basel Miami on Friday. I sometimes look for a theme to thread through a blog post about any given fair, which is a journalistic convention, that isn’t always fair, but it gives one something to hang an idea on. Art copying art came to the forefront about the sixth booths and fifth Warhol “hommage” in. Fair to say that, Marcel Duchamp (Warhol’s idol, btw) started it with his mustachioed Mona Lisa and it continues up to the preset with Romero Fudyama‘s relief Mona. Andy aped old masters as well, like this Georgio di Chirico, but no one is copied more than Andy himself. In the 70s with Richard Pettibone and Elaine Sturtevant made their Warhols, which were considered by many at the time, copies in the first place. Sherrie Levine, Mike Bidlo and a host of others have made their “fake” works as conceptual commentary but this is nothing new and the proliferation continues…

Andy Warhol

Alex G. Cao

Alex G. Cao

Andy Warhol

Jochen Holler

Jochen Holler (detail with text from Arthur Miller)

Ron English

Han Jinping

Trey Speegle, 1982

Bill Claps, 2012

The impulse to do this, especially as a young artist who is finding their own voice, is multi-layered; paying “homage”, exploring aspects of originality, authorship and context like Richard Prince, are anothers, as well as the notion of “taking-down” the anointed, like Ryan McCann’s “Death To Shepard Fairey“, a 3D wall sculpture that plasters Fairey beneath his own OBEY logo. Mark Beard takes another tact by creating various painter alter-egos like Bruce Sergeant, below, aping an art star of another era. Martin. C Herbst paints fragments of old masters on reflective wall sculpture and Christian Voigt showed this large-scale photo of museum interior/ temple of art lovers use to worship. Now, it’s the art fair.

Vik Muniz

Ryan McCann

Mark Beard/ Bruce Sargent

Mark Beard/ Bruce Sargent

Martin C. Herbst

Christian Voigt

Joe King (Money Burger)

Richard Pettibone, 1962

Jonathan Stein, 2014

Morten Viksum

Clay Sinclair

Greg Gossell

I’ve been working on a new series for a few years now called “Originality Is Overrated”… that, well, that’ll have to be for another post. This is a BIG subject. I’ll leave you the piece of mine below entitled, “I.O.U. (everything.) While I had this piece show up in New York in a solo show in 2011, I went to the Armory Show just down the street and discovered this new series by pop art star, Mel Ramos. Mine was made with vintage originals from the 70s –when Ramos’s star was still rising– and his “Hollywood Suite” is brand new. (Note the “pop stars” of the day, like Paris Hilton, Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Aniston…) So, to all those artist who have come before and those still in art school, a quote, that I’ve now “appropriated”;

“My work is completely original. I take other people’s ideas and make them my own.”

Trey Speegle

Mel Ramos

HAPPY 4TH FROM ED, ANDY, GEORGIA & ME!

I thought I’d give you a little sampling of some of the most famous works most closely associated with these Unites States. This isn’t a museum survey that is all-inclusive… it is deficient in many areas – but this is just me, not a curatorial body, so take it for what it’s worth. Warhol appears a few times as does Ed Ruscha, two of my favorites. When Obama ran in 2008, I created this HOPE piece for Art For Obama from a vintage paint by number original. When it was auctioned, with the proceeds went to his campaign, the buyer ended up being in his administration and subsequently, I got a tour of the West Wing! (It was also made into a soap box for Anthropologie.) So, I had to include it here – sue me if I’m not quite in these guy’s league. It’s a free country, isn’t it?! I’m SO excited that the new Whitey Museum, whose mission is to highlight American artists, is opening up next Spring just a block from my studio in the Meatpacking District. I have to say, I AM proud to be an American artist –specifically, a gay New York one – but I really it doesn’t differ much from being an artist from anywhere else in the world. The best work grabs you by the shoulders and shakes you, no matter what country the maker lives in. That’s why it’s called “universal truth”. But it takes the viewer to mean ANYTHING at all. That is what makes it art.

Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, Peter Max, Georgia O'Keefe

Ed Ruscha

Jasper Johns, Robert Indiana, Shepard Fairey, Trey Speegle

Norman Rockwell

Diane Arbus, Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, Robert Frank

Edward Curtis