Earlier today, a colleague sent me a press release for the latest episodes of BOOSTED FILMS, a periodic podcast series from the fine folks at Boost Mobile. While EMERGE has nothing bad to say about either of the featured artists (Revok and Saber), we do feel like the urban marketing/graffiti thing has ceased to be particularly exciting or even interesting. It just feels like cliche. Perhaps it's not meaningful as marketing at all, but remains culturally significant? One could certainly argue that point, but we think that these sorts of tie-ins aren't even culturally relevant. Sure they offer exposure and a paycheck to the artists involved, but what does it do to add to the culture of street art, fine art, or even full-on illegal graffiti? What legitimacy that world has obtained in recent years seems to have come much more from the realm of fine art (think Beautiful Losers, Aaron Rose, etc) than the simple burner paid for by brand...
What is more interesting- in our opinion at least-from both a cultural and marketing standpoint is this article critiquing the art and commerce of vanguard graffiti kid made good Shepard Fairey. His iconic work is world renowned and his clothing brand Obey does big big business, but it seems that much of his work may in fact be plagiarized. Read and judge for yourself...
Never Ending Story
It most definitely feels cliche to those of us who have been involved with urban art and culture for the last 15-20 years. However to those who may not be familiar with urban arts and consider it criminal the ads give it some sort of validity. I think those of us involved within the culture tend to forget about the masses. The latter means of exposure (think Beautiful Losers, Aaron Rose, etc) great as they were, were still only recognized by the community of urban artist and the greater powers who were feeding on the culture so they could make Boost features.
The people in the second piece are the same types of people who would deny that any producers who use samples are not musicians. They completely lack any understanding of the motives behind the work. The Obey work is visual expression and over the years has been accepted by the greater art community as a form of art. I don't think anyone would argue that in a traditional sense Shepherd Fairey is amagnificent artist?
Posted by Gary Rivera on 01/10/2008 12:14 PM
It most definitely feels cliche to those of us who have been involved with urban art and culture for the last 15-20 years. However to those who may not be familiar with urban arts and consider it criminal the ads give it some sort of validity. I think those of us involved within the culture tend to forget about the masses. The latter means of exposure (think Beautiful Losers, Aaron Rose, etc) great as they were, were still only recognized by the community of urban artist and the greater powers who were feeding on the culture so they could make Boost features. The people in the second piece are the same types of people who would deny that any producers who use samples are not musicians. They completely lack any understanding of the motives behind the work. The Obey work is visual expression and over the years has been accepted by the greater art community as a form of art. I don't think anyone would argue that in a traditional sense Shepherd Fairey is amagnificent artist?