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It's funny how commercial Banksy's art has become. People track down his art, rip it out of walls and sell it for millions of dollars to the very people that th
by BillTheCat 11y ago
It's funny how commercial Banksy's art has become. People track down his art, rip it out of walls and sell it for millions of dollars to the very people that the art is mocking.
I like what Max Tempkin said in regards to selling people literal crap for $6 a piece: "... [T]here's no protesting capitalism. There's nothing you can say about capitalism that it won't subsume and sell back to you." [1]
[1] http://blog.maxistentialism.com/post/105481561063/ http://blog.maxistentialism.com/post/105481561063/
- serg_chernata 11y agoActually, an interesting bit of information on the topic of selling Banksy's art. The HBO documentary I mentioned concludes with a statement that while several of NY Residency pieces are up for sale none have sold to date. I don;t know if they have between then and now however.
- kaolinite 11y agoMy favourite story on a similar note is how a Marc Jacob's boutique was vandalised a few years ago. The vandal spray painted "ART" across the front of the store. Marc Jacobs responded by photographing it and putting it on a teeshirt and selling it for $700. http://www.huhmagazine.co.uk/3721/art-by-art-jacobs-t-shirt http://www.huhmagazine.co.uk/3721/art-by-art-jacobs-t-shirt
- qq66 11y agoMind-boggling to think about, but could the vandal assert copyright over the spray painted wordmark?
- nosuchthing 11y agoNot really. For reference, Richard Prince's derivative 'artwork', particularly the slight modification of artwork from other artists without consent has more often than not been ruled fair use — http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-17/richard-prince-instagram-and-authorship-in-a-digital-world http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-17/richard-pr...
- PhasmaFelis 11y agoGeez, it's depressing what this stuff says about us. The definition of "art" becomes "anything produced by an Approved Artist," nothing less or more. If I showed up at the Frieze Gallery trying to sell them a piece of shit on a plate, they'd laugh in my face. If I produced documentation proving that the plate had in fact been shat upon by Andy Warhol, it would suddenly be Art and worth a fortune. If I revealed that I had faked the documentation, it would suddenly be worthless again--unless the whole routine had attracted enough attention for the art world to crown me a Designated Artist, in which case anything I smeared shit on henceforth would become, by fiat, Art. There is literally no quality intrinsic to the work itself that contributes to its status as Art. Traditionally someone says "Hah, I could have made that," and someone else smiles smugly and says "Yes, but you didn't, did you?" The thing is, it wouldn't matter if I had. I'm not an Artist, so wouldn't be Art. Art is reduced to nothing more than a subset of Celebrity. Richard Prince could print out this post and sell it for $50,000.
- ctdonath 11y agoI've concluded art = that which was made to be looked at.
- Natsu 11y agoI've concluded that art is anything an 'artist' can sell to someone, whether the sale price is reputation or money.
- nosuchthing 11y agoConceptual/performance art is often unsolicited.. Some art is simply about creating an experience for the recipients / audience /
- Natsu 11y agoRight, that's why I put 'reputation' as one of the possible payments to the artist.
- collyw 11y agoThe more I read about stuff like this the more I am convinced that most modern art is just pretentious crap.
- Joeboy 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_%28politics%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_%28politics%29
- analog31 11y agoIn Hans Richter's Dada: Art and Anti-Art, he noted the unexpected commercial success of Dadaist art. The best that I can remember the quote, he said: They expected people to react with shock, and to open their minds. Instead, people reacted with amusement, and opened their wallets.
- SonicSoul 11y agoI disagree I'm sure some people want his art enough to open their big wallets but that should not detract from others who's minds were actually opened, and whom I believe to be the majority
- uxcn 11y agohttp://www.villagevoice.com/music/updated-jay-zs-occupy-all-streets-shirts-are-back-on-sale-6631583 http://www.villagevoice.com/music/updated-jay-zs-occupy-all-...
- pparkkin 11y agoThere's a term for this: recuperation[1]. The opposite of which is détournement[2]. Banksy's art seems to me to be a good example of the dialectic between the two. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9tournement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9tournement
- riffraff 11y agoFWIW, literal crap has been "artified" and commercialized more than half a century ago[0] > A tin [of shit] was sold for €124,000 at Sotheby's on May 23, 2007 [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist%27s_Shit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist%27s_Shit