Just saw this great video of attending the Westminister Dog Show while on acid. Found it on www.vice.com where there are other great videos. Just another way to expand your vision, I guess.... in time for the new year!
Happy whatever.
Won and Secr Photographed by Luna ParkWe’re
counting down the last 12 days of 2012 with Street Art photos chosen by
BSA readers. Each one was nominated because it has special meaning to a
reader or is simply a great photograph from 2012 that they think is
great. Our sincere thanks to everyone who shared their favorite images.
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Labrona Photographed by Andre Pace in QuebecWe’re
counting down the last 12 days of 2012 with Street Art photos chosen by
BSA readers. Each one was nominated because it has special meaning to a
reader or is simply a great photograph from 2012 that they think is
great. Our sincere thanks to everyone who shared their favorite images.
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Tomek and False Photographed by Sabeth 718We’re counting down the last 12 days of 2012 with Street Art photos chosen by BSA readers. Each one was nominated because it has special meaning to a reader or is simply a great photograph from 2012 that they think is great. Our sincere thanks to everyone who shared their favorite images. Our second entry comes [...] |
Os Gemeos Photographed by HieronymousWe’re counting down the last 12 days of 2012 with Street Art photos chosen by BSA readers. Each one was nominated because it has special meaning to a reader or is simply a great photograph from 2012 that they think is great. Our sincere thanks to everyone who shared their favorite images. Our first entry for [...] |
(VIDEO) 2012 Street Art Images of the Year from BSAOf the 10,000 images he snapped of Street Art this year, photographer Jaime Rojo gives us 110 that represent some of the most compelling, interesting, perplexing, thrilling in 2012. Slideshow cover image of Vinz on the streets of Brooklyn (photo © Jaime Rojo)
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There’s No Place Like Swoon For The HolidaysGoing to Swoons studio in Brooklyn for a piece of blueberry pie and a cup of hot cider on a windy and rainy grey day is sort of like going home for the holidays. There are so many familiar faces here, printed and hand colored, like the ones you have seen in decaying doorways and [...] |
JC Has Something On His Mind in InstanbulAs
winter settles in, I’ve been thinking about getting a fur hat. Is that
wrong? How about fake fur? What about just hoisting a cat up on my head
and balancing it there? They sleep all the time anyway so they might as
well provide some service to mankind aside from hunting the occasional
mouse.
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New Labrona Shots in Miami“It was an amazing trip!,” says Canadian Street Artist Labrona, who was in Miami for the Art Basel 2012 festivities this month. While there he collaborated on four walls. Two were with the Canadian art collective En Masse, who has been working with a monochromatic palette to allow a multitude of styles to co-exist in [...] |
Images of the Week 12.16.12Ahhhhhhhhh, we are all going to Hell in a hand basket! That’s what your music teacher Mrs. Penny Whistle said as she picked that last little caramel-colored shard of peanut brittle out of the box at her desk and crunched loudly as you played your Top 40 musical contribution for the whole 6th grade class [...] |
Don’t Fret Brings the Comedy to MiamiChicago based Street Artist and satirist Don’t Fret was among the many art pilgrims in Miami this month who got a bunch of work up in the streets. Occupying an unusual place among average Street Art styles and themes, Don’t Fret labors with comedy and caricature, making you crack a smile while you wait for [...] |
Fun Friday 12.14.12Hey bro and sis! Here are some of our favorite picks for the weekend around the global way as we head into the final holiday and New Year beauty that we hope everyone is surrounded by. Happy 7th night of Hanukkah to the Jews, and Happy ongoing holidayz to the Christmas and Kwanzaa and Solstice [...] |
Chris Jordan “Locost Queue” Debuts from a Tower in QueensNew Yorkers will stand in line for many things; heavily frosted confections from the Cupcake Cafe, the new iPhone 17, or the chance to rub against a sweaty stranger on a light-crazed dance floor while paying 8 dollars for a plastic cup of ice. Since the superstorm Sandy hit last month, many of us have [...] |
Jaye Moon Builds Lego Housing Units on the StreetStreet Artist Jaye Moon is doing a diminutive deed to alleviate New York’s ongoing housing crisis by leaving new buildings cradled in the limbs of trees, or wrapped around their trunks. Street Artist Jaye Moon gets a hand from kids in Seoul, South Korea, where she has brought her distinctive tree houses from New York. December [...] |
LNY In South Korea with Tradition and GPSAs traditional cultures grapple with technological change that appears at lightening speed the most successful ones are neither rejecting nor accepting it fully: rather they are integrating. While broadcast television had a homogenizing effect on world culture for decades, today’s multi-channel, multi-platform electronic ecosystem affords people the chance to retain local flavor and customs while [...] |
Miami Recap ’12 : Brand New Art in the StreetsShots from the weekend here by photographer, artist and frequent BSA contributor Geoff Hargadon. He caught a lot of new pieces as they were being installed, as well as some newly fresh ones. Heads were rolling as soon as Anthony Lister hit the ground in Miami. (photo © Geoff Hargadon) These tires on the back of large [...] |
THE 12 PHOTOS OF ’12 – As picked by BSA Readers
Nominate Your Uncle Melvin!
Nominate that girl on Streeturthalog.com!
Nominate yourself!
Show BSA your favorite Street Art Photo of the year and it could be one of our top 12 of ’12!
Photographers and Street Art Fans: What is your favorite photo of Street Art for 2012? Probably millions [...]
Creative agency Mooz has created the ‘Taste Tree’ which is made up of 5,000 crockery items donated by various people. The installation was in collaboration with the local residents of the city of Hasselt, which is known as the ‘Capital of Taste’ in Belgium. Inge Vanluyd and Stefan Vangergen of Mooz, came up with the idea after they noticed that friends and family had odd plates and cups hanging around the house that otherwise would have remained “invisible.”
The impressive porcelain Christmas tree reaches nine meters high and six meters in diameter. It will remain in the main square of Hasselt until 6 January, 2013. Take a look at some of the photos below:
Ovation is really the only art-oriented network around and Time Warner is dropping it from its line-up. If you feel as strongly about the arts as I do, please sing the petition to keep Ovation on the line-up:
Now THIS is neat: A group of guerrilla lighting designers left 2,000 transparent plastic bags in the middle of a busy footpath in Caracas, Venezuela. The street team, Luzinterruptus filled each bag with water, tiny lights, and even plants and fish. Thankfully, the fish were plastic toys, but did get passers-by to look twice, prior to closer inspection.
Billed as a Garbage Bag River, here is the full story. The installation encouraged people to take these “mini ecosystems”
home so the river could “circulate around the city, in the hands of
children and adults.” The idea behind Portable River is explained
by Luzinterruptus:
"With the piece, Portable River, we wanted to bring a river of water to the center of Caracas, for which we had to package it and lay it at rest, quite an unusual thing, because there it is normal to see it overflowing the streets every time it rains,” they explain. “We wanted to stop it for one night so that people could sit down and admire its beauty and perhaps, think about the value of this element, essential to life and the challenge presented in bringing it closer to the citizens, especially in the big cities."
Images of the Week: 12.09.12Here’s
our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Cruz,
Herakut, How Nosm, Jesse Hazelip, Jilly Ballistic, MCity, Nether, RISK,
Sonata, Trip, and VHILS.
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Overunder and ND’A in NevadaA Street Art Residency is born in Reno
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Fun Friday 12.07.12Happy
Friday! Wipe that stain off your shirt from last nights office holiday
party and brush your teeth and get to work so you can be a zombie all
day. For our part - it’s time for a little Street Art roundup of some
things that you might like.
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New Shots Miami 2012 UpdateAs the crowd rolls in, the walls are already up – sometimes by night, sometimes by beer.
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Best Miami Street Art: BSA Picks Awesomest for Basel ’12BSA Recommends: Where to Hit for the Best Street Art
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FIRST LOOK at Miami 2012: Walls, Street Art, Action!Street
Art is already smacking up Miami walls – an aerosol advance committee
of art in the streets to welcome the bacchanal of collectors,
performers, artists, fans, galleries, hoodlums, charlatans, thumping
beats, and very famous and important celebrities you have never heard of
are all here for Art Basel and related fairs.
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Entes Y Pesimo Taking a Swim in Chile, Buenos Aires and SarasotaPeruvian Street Art duo Entes y Pesimo move quickly like two cats in the back alley when the garbage truck rattles by. When not doing the occasional billboard remix intervention, they are painting large murals of silent and intense young men and women navigating in the river of life. In many of their recent aerosol [...] |
Images of the Week 12.02.12As you know, this is the last month in human history so it’s been great knowing you. Hold still, let me memorize you.
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ALL the JOBURG VideosYesterday on Fun Friday we featured ROA in the first video from the I Art Joburg Festival. The festival took place this fall in Johannesburg, South Africa and featured people like Falko, Cameron Platter, ESPO, and Remed. Today we’re pleased to offer you the full compliment of all the videos that were directed, shot and [...] |
Fun Friday 11.30.12
It’s
Friday yo! Tomorrow starts December but the tree is already up at
Rockefeller Center and the city is flushed with wide-eyed tourists
bumping into each other and we are busy touring graffiti covered
abandoned buildings smashed with paint balls. It’s all good. Here’s
some ideas for dope stuff to check out this weekend.
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David and Goliath : Fintan Switzer Paints Arab SpringAs Arab Spring enters a new chapter this week with Egypt’s Islamist president making decrees granting him near-absolute powers, it looks like this piece by Fintan Switzer is perfectly timely. This is where the artist and the activist intersect, on a wall and in the street, and it has for centuries; a place to seek [...] |
Peek Inside Organized Chaos of CYRCLEBeauty
is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the
chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. – William Somerset
Maugham.
CYRCLE “Organized Chaos” (photo © theonepointeight)
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Specter Under a Bridge in ChicagoStreet Artist Specter stuffed himself with Turkey and hit up a wall under a bridge in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago last week to help Pawn Works with their ongoing project. You would think these guys would take a break for the holiday, but at least the weather was cold and bleak and depressing, so [...] |
The City of Baltimore just got hit with its second large scale mural project in one calendar year as Articulate: Baltimore joined Open Walls Baltimore during a five week period this autumn.
Chris Stain . Billy Mode. Articulate, Baltimore 2012 (photo © Martha Cooper)
A mixture of local artists and some Street Artists who are known internationally, [...]
When does the excessive flow of money into the art world begin to corrupt the quality of art being produced?
The New York Times reports on a fascinating back and forth discussion - from critics to monied art buyers - on how the glamorization of the artworld through high spending collectors is diminishing the cultural quality of the art being produced. Click here -- Here is the article in its entirety.
In short --
The article says that prominent art writers and critics, including Sarah Thornton, Felix Salmon, Will Gompertz and Dave Hickey, have been attacking the art world, arguing that the staggering sums of money being spent on works are distorting judgments about art and undermining its long-term cultural significance. “Money talks loudly and easily drowns out other meanings,” Ms. Thornton wrote in TAR magazine in a recent article, “Top 10 Reasons NOT to Write About the Art Market.” In its special edition for the opening day of the fair, The Art Newspaper asked whether “the art world is facing a crisis of values” because of the “pernicious influence of the market on art.”
And in the eyes of many critics, Art Basel Miami Beach — or what Simon Doonan, writing in Slate last week, labeled a “promo-party cheese-fest” — has become a symbol of everything that’s wrong with the art market. The fair’s extraordinary success in just over a decade, and its celebration of wretched excess, have triggered a backlash.
But the Rubells, along with a growing number of other prominent collectors, art dealers and curators, are having none of it. The backlash against the backlash has begun.“The market supports artists,” Jason Rubell said. Given the limited amount of government support for the arts, he added, “it’s an industry that without commerce doesn’t exist. What do people want — to go back to the recession?”
Ms. Rubell was annoyed that critics seemed to ignore the social, economic and cultural transformation of Miami that the fair and collectors like her have helped bring about. She noted that the Rubells’ 45,000-square-foot art center — where one huge gallery is now filled with works by Oscar Murillo, a 26-year-old Colombian immigrant who lived with and was supported by the Rubells while he created dozens of mural-sized canvases — used to be a Drug Enforcement Administration storage center.
Outside, in the center’s courtyard, visitors like Martha Stewart admired the French artist Bernar Venet’s collaboration with Bugatti, the superluxury sports car brand, on a one-of-a-kind Veyron Grand Sport Venet car (a price hasn’t been set, a Bugatti spokeswoman said, but will undoubtedly be in “the higher end of the millions”).
“I’m grateful to Bugatti, Perrier, Bank of America and other companies,” Ms. Rubell declared. “Their support helps facilitate quality programs and opens exhibits like this” — the Murillo show — “to the public.”
In Miami Beach, at the main fair, the consumer-oriented glitter abounds this week: coffee carts with $20-a-glass Ruinart Champagne; Davidoff cigar rollers; BMW’s artist-designed cars; and Takashi Murakami’s $70,000-and-up commissioned portraits. One could almost imagine that the Barbara Kruger work on display at L&M gallery — a super-sized sign reading “Greedy” on one line and an unprintable expletive on the next — had an invisible subtitle telling the wealthy V.I.P.’s who had come to shop, “I’m Talking to You — Yeah, You!”
Of course, rich patrons have always supported artists, Don Rubell pointed out, from the pharaohs to the Medicis. Today, multimillion-dollar sales represent only a silk-thin layer of a deeply varied and thriving art market. The art world, Mr. Rubell asserted, is “actually becoming more democratic.”
Okay, let's take a breath here. First of all the art market is not a democracy. Any market that relys on the fickle tastes of gallery owners, the self aggrandizing, status seeking art buyers and a starving artist underclass whose hourly rate day job pays the rent, is not going to foster democracy. It is not an environment where all is created equal, given the same access and opportunity.The artist that creates a "bad boy" (and yes most highly successful - read: saleable - artists now are men) persona, like a Schnabel or a Koons, will succeed. The artist that quietly works in their studio turning out impressive art is more likely than not, doomed to obscurity. For those who get that glimmer of opportunity to showcase, they soon realize that they need to produce what sells, creating a commoditization of art as high end "must have to demonstrate your cultural savviness" status product.
So yes, art buyers support an art market. But no, they are not altruistic. They do not buy a pile of rocks labeled as minimalist art to support that artist. They do it for far personal and selfish reasons. Just as the Medicis made sure that their portraits were added to an adoration scene, today's art buyers want to feel part of the trendy emanence that the art world emits.
In fact today's art buyer help create a toxic atmosphere where less is more. Or should I say less costs more.
I can't help but send out this link to a Leonard Cohen film.