Shepard Fairey's Occupy Wall Street design supports the 99 Percent, although we're pretty sure he's a 1 percenter.

Meanwhile Europe is flailing and talk of a euro collapse is now a bit of a broken record.  The financial markets are whipsawed daily while the art market, on the eve of Art Basel Miami , steps around the see-saw and the swings and heads for the candy store where everything is shiny and new and all dressed up for the big lick.

But there’s a disconnect going on – and there has been for quite a while.  Anyone who seriously makes art has always felt the tug of war between what goes on in the studio and what goes on in the galleries. Work with paint, canvas, paper, wood, or video, and what you take in annually from these aesthetic investigations compared to what the blue chip artists pull in is undoubtedly a pittance.  Yet the art world ticks on. Yes, we understand it’s all supply and demand, but there’s also hype and myth and probably price rigging.  Recently a New York art dealer came to Paris and told me that he’s really only interested in working with artists whose works sell for at least $5000.

Clearly no parent in his or her right mind would encourage his or her art school child to attempt to earn a living as an actual artist. Better to become a baseball player; at least the odds seem better. (For the record there are fewer than 750 professional Major League baseball players and practically every boy and many girls entertain the fantasy of playing shortstop for the Yankees, or even the Phillies).  Most artists are in the 99.9 percent category.

So along comes the OWS, the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon,  the swelling ranks of the 99%, the disgruntled, often out-of-work folks gathering in New York’s Zuccotti Park and other public areas around the country and the world.  What are they doing?  Mostly grumbling about how the rich people are rich – and have great tax advantages! – and gosh darn it, they’re not and they don’t.  If they were rich, would they have spent nearly two months in the Park?

Clearly the wealthiest slaves of capitalism – the investment bankers, hedge fund traders, the quants – have done pretty well since the financial tsunami hit the shores of New York and London and the rest of the capitalized world – wiping out trillions in wealth, killing home values, and putting friends and family out of work.

The OWS crowd though recently turned its ire to another ivory tower of privilege and wealth – The Art World – surrounding the entrance of MoMA a month ago and whining about ticket prices ($25) and the elitism of high-priced objects in the Museum’s collection.  So, a quick vote, please check: Stupid [  ] Dumb [  ]. They could get an annual membership for $75 and come and go as they like. And support the museum in more fruitful ways than stopping traffic on W 53rd Street.

The OWS Art World splinter group is pissed off because…well, why?  They don’t like supporting an institution that is world class and not on the government teat? Or because these protesters (artists) are not in MoMA themselves?

An acute artist-observer of the 99 per-centers takes umbrage with me over my vitriol: “I think it’s appropriate to criticize art institutions because they mainly support the 1% of artists and art collector class,” he writes.  “And the commodification of that top 1% of art products to a hyped-up and overvalued object status is akin to what we have in the rest of society, particularly in the investment community.  I believe the only way to prevent the masses from revolting and killing the rich is to have a buffer class, a middle class. So, you spread the wealth around; in my opinion, this is the role of government.  Where is the 1% going to get their income from in the future if they’ve already taken it all  from the 99%?”

Well, okay, then. Why not Occupy Julian Schnabel? Or better, Occupy Jeff Koons!  Or heck, why not occupy The FIAC, the art fair in Paris?  It would have been easier to occupy this year as the fair was reunited under a single, glorious roof: The oxidized copper struts and gleaming glass of The Grand Palais. However, 33 euros a pop (FIAC’s ticket price) to have the opportunity to pay $3 million+ for a collection of Damien Hirst’s fish might irritate the Occupy folks.  In any case, you can download free Occupy posters made, one would believe, by the Occupy Artists, like the always controversial Shepard Fairey.

I have to admit I didn’t go to the FIAC this year, but I did stroll through the Tuilleries where several large-scale sculptures were on display during one of the most beautiful autumn days in Paris in my memory.  Here’s a report about the FIAC in The New York Times :  Sales were exceptionally strong despite the global economy swirling around in the “toilette.” Key quote: “Maybe we’re in a bubble.” – Nathalie Vallois, Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois Gallery, Paris.

So last week, as I am ambling along rue Saint-André-des-Arts, between St Michel and Odéon in Paris, I pull into a retail store called Carré d’artistes, one door down from a Starbucks.  Their slogan (above the door) is for the 99 percenters: “L’art pour tous en grand format.”  (Art for everyone in large sizes). There were four artists on view – one who sticks things on canvases, another who schmeers paint, another who does a Latin number in a surreal portrait style and the last who knocks out cityscapes that capture, in thick globs of paint, the movement of yellow taxis and wet pavement.  It was all horrible, but hey it came in five sizes, and three prices, right up to 3000 euros.  I asked one of the half dozen sales girls if on this day, a Sunday, anything sold.  “Oh yes, we sold five works today.”  I couldn’t imagine anyone buying anything there, but that’s a pretty good day, I imagine, in any art gallery.

FYI, here’s the “concept” announced on their site:  Our ambitions  Liberate Art ! Carré d’artistes® is the crazy gamble of art lovers whose ambition is to revolutionize a market previously inaccessible and compartmentalized, and to become a major actor in that market. 
The self-service exhibition spaces of Carré d’artistes® do away with any distance, or any intermediary, between the spectator and the artwork. By presenting all the artists on an equal footing, Carré d’artistes® shakes up the traditional rules. It is an alternative that democratizes contemporary art, and a generous undertaking that is respectful of the artists.

Grapes of Wrath? Andy's "Grapes" pulled in $104,500 at Phillips de Pury's New York October editions sale.

Maybe we’re not in a bubble. Recently I had a phone conversation with the folks at London-based The Fine Art Fund, an investment group that uses art as an asset class for profit.  Its CEO, Phillip Hoffman, who famously doesn’t collect art himself says : “The world’s rich are putting their money into art.”  He said it here.

Launched in 2004, The Fine Art Fund is one of several new investment instruments that seeks to take a hard asset like art (it could be real estate or gold or teak wood futures for all that matters) and hold it for a time period until there’s interest enough to sell it for a profit.  The track record is actually pretty good according to Ruth Knowles, the Director of Global Marketing & Business Development at The Fine Art Fund.  While the private equity group remains tight lipped regarding most everything  – until, of course, you invest the minimum $250,000 –  the group reported more than 25 percent returns on one of their investment venues and better than that on others. And at the end of the 10-year run investors earned before management fees about six percent or better on their investment, and notably for The Western Art Fund the annualized return of 33% on works sold.

While The Fine Art Fund incubates the value of works, investors can “borrow” the paintings to hang on their walls. You just have to pay for the privilege. For the Fine Art Fund II, the minimum investment is $250,000; for the Chinese Fine Art Fund, the minimum investment is $100,000. As a shareholder, can publicize your savvy with an original Matisse in your study.

“We don’t speak about the names of the artists we have in our portfolio,” explains Morgan Long, Director of Art Investment at The Fine Art Fund.  She explained however that the composition of the portfolio is “35% Old Masters, 15% Impressionist, 15% Modernist and the balance in Contemporary. Old Masters are very much in demand and they are not correlated to the rise and fall of the stock market… Contemporary art, though, is highly risky asset.”

So who’s hot?  Who should the Occupy Art World folks be fuming at?  Morgan Long wouldn’t exactly say which artists the fund is buying but in mentioning Damien Hirst, and his 1990s stuffed and sliced horses, sharks and sheep, you’ve got a long term holding. She indicated that these works are “unique, iconic works,” adding: “I don’t think anyone disagrees that he’s the most important artist of his generation.  Tate Museum will do a major retrospective during the London Olympics and that will bump up his…I would put my money into these unique 1990 works…they are consistently high.”

What to do?  Don’t look at your 401k account and let go the creeping feeling we’re all going down the proverbial krapper.  As much as artists want to maintain some aesthetic integrity – and their dealers some kind of cash flow – it’s pretty clear that only the bluest of the blue chippers can maintain and increase their values as well as the distance (in dollars) between themselves and the rest of the pack.  So while few artists like talking about money, dinero, dinars and dollars are what make the world go round.  However seeing your own art star rise and zeroes added to your prices is another kettle of fish; complaining about your occupying art world career won’t get the pot to boil. Better to haul down those Old Master paintings your grandmother bought 70 years ago and call up Christie’s to come take a look. Then take your profits and get yourself a MoMA membership.  For most artists (and dealers), now is a great time to be poor.  Isn’t it?  Real artistic creation has nothing to do with creature comforts.  Think Van Gogh, think early Pollock, think early de Kooning, think early Me.

Latest issue of Nicola Midnight St. Claire
On September 11, the newest issue of the Nicola Midnight St. Claire came out. In this installment, there are some articles on Katie Murken’s installation Continua as well as Bodega’s show Mobile Device. There is also a video “centerfold” and a curious take on a relic from 9/11 on display in the Penn Museum’s show Excavating Ground Zero: Fragments from 9/11. And in breaking news ...this just in from Matt Kalasky, editor of the Nicola: “Tonight at 7 PM in Temple Gallery the editors of the Nicola Midnight St.Claire will be presenting selected readings from our past and current issues. If you don’t have plans, I would encourage you to come. If nothing else it should be really interesting. Here is a link with slightly more information. Hope to see you there.”

Bruce Conner film screenings at International House

Bruce Conner

On September 23 and 24, International House will be hosting Bruce Conner: The Art of Montage. This is a rare opportunity to see some of this iconic filmmaker’s works in their intended 16 mm format. There will also be a Q&A with Bruce Jenkins and Michelle Silva after the screenings.

Delaware County Community College drawing show
We told you about the opportunity, now see the show! The gallery at Delaware County Community College will be hosting its drawing exhibition 215/610 juried by Kate Kraczon of ICA. It runs from September 21 until October 28.

SXSE Photo Magazine
Philly photographer Ellie Brown is working with a new online and print photo magazine entitled South by Southeast (SXSE). It is a regional magazine for the Southeastern U.S. However, a local artist already helping out with the publication is proof that there is sure to be an overlap with the North and Mid-Atlantic. Check it out and keep them on your radar!

Urban farming documentary screening at Dock Street

On September 20 there will be a screening of the film Urban Roots at Dock Street Brewery. The film explores an urban farming collective in Detroit and emphasizes community and sustainability. Oh, and they also have a very snazzy, limited-edition poster by none other than Shepard Fairey!

Help paint a Phillies mural!

Artist Dave McShane will be at Sunday’s Phillie’s game to sign up Phillies fans to help him paint the new mural. Come out, see the ballgame, and sign up to help make some art — and actually paint on the mural at the game (they use those parachute cloth panels to paint on and then glue them to the wall to make the mural). McShane said in an email that if you aren’t going to the game but would like to participate there will be a lot more paint days scheduled in the future that will be opened to the public. We will let you know.

Penn Design Fine Arts lectures
We told you about the Tyler lecture series last time. Now, equal time for the University of Pennsylvania, which will be holding public lectures at ICA and Meyerson Hall on the UPenn campus in West Philadelphia. Some interesting people will be speaking including Kota Ezawa, Matthew Day Jackson, and Robert Pruitt. Check the full schedule here.

Opportunities

Vox Populi‘s new AUX performance space will be accepting submissions of written work that can be performed, read, screened, experienced and last about 10 minutes. Submit ideas to becky@voxpopuligallery.org by October 15.

Pterodactyl is having a Moleskine project of ideas that you usually keep hidden from plain view in your journal. But don’t wait long! Submissions are actually due today (September 16)!!

Artist News

Michael Konrad is a new 40th Street Artist-in-Residence. He will get a one year residency and studio space at 40th and Chestnut as well as participate in teaching, leading workshops, and exhibiting work. (Roberta and Libby interviewed Konrad for an artblog radio episode a while back–when he had his Fleisher Challenge show).

"Memorial" by Joe Boruchow

Joe Boruchow is everywhere these days! He just snagged a billboard space that he will design for Krain Outdoor Advertising at 15th and Cherry.

Diane Burko will be participating in The Value of Water exhibit at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York through March 2012.

Isaac Lin has a new mural at the Chinese Christian Church & Center Mitzie Mackenzie Playground 927 Spring Street.

Norm Paris has his first solo New York show The Wall Stands Still at The Proposition.

Glamorosi, spouse of City Paper and Inquirer writer A.D. Amorosi, won the Tea as Art design competition as part of Verdant Tea.

Shepard Fairey and Jane Golden, of Mural Arts

waiting and watching

Fairey’s body of work has had a consistent graphic language for a long time now. This particular language was developed with the OBEY campaign in the 1990s, where the high-impact renderings let non-sequiturs fracture a public space normally bound by the reasoning of advertisements.  I was curious, then, how Fairey made sense of a very similar visual vocabulary being used quite differently—to connect and build community—for the Obama poster.  So I asked Fairey about it.  I also had a chat with his long-time team member, Dan Flores.  Below is some of our conversation.

Fairey seems to carry OBEY gear with him, and was happy to give it out

Shepard Fairey: When I first did the OBEY pieces, I was interested in the spectrum of human psychology. In terms of images, it was the mysterious and open-ended stuff I liked. If you questioned it, you questioned other things.

David Muenzer: And your use of the vocabulary of dated-advertisements and socialist-realism? The “propaganda-poster” look?

SF: I don’t think people—rebellious people—like being told what to pay for, they [see an ad] and they reject this.

DM: But the Obama poster does something quite different in that same vocabulary?

SF: Well, with the world at that time—the Bush era—not to be completely non-committal seemed better. With all the double-speak, it was important for me to show that you could be for something. Being committed and direct in a time of open lies was a counterpoint to the dominant flow of information. During Bush, it was not then difficult to decipher [the direct endorsement of Obama] as a critique. As questioning indoctrination. Even though it departed from my “brand.”

DM: A more practical question. This mural, and others, are really large and technically complex. Are they composed beforehand, after scouting a site, or are they more improvisational?

Dan Flores: The designs are modular. We have different images in different sizes, so we can respond to the location. We were originally going to use that wall [gestures to the wall across the street, which is uniformly gray and stuccoed], but the texture would be bad for pasting. So we switched.

DM: And this image here? Who is the large face?

DF: It’s actually a picture of his wife Amanda. He uses her a lot. She appears in the Houston mural as well.

Shepard Fairey goes up against a Keith Haring knock-off in the Boteri Cafe, Venice, Italy.

“He was a little drunk, but very nice,” says the barman.  The Boteri, also known as Al Genovesi (San Polo 1701 Venezia) on the Calle Del Botteri, is a tiny little art hangout covered with Keith Haring inspired drawings.  Fairey must have thought the café was ripe for some more American graffiti and so he returned the next day with a fat portfolio of his Obey propaganda and asked the owner if he could paper the back room with his designs.  “No problem,” said the owner, eager to have some live art to go with the Haring installation and create a wall-sized souvenir from a clandestine Venice Biennale

Stylized little girl and big fascist eyes offer Fairey fans a touch of Futurismo with their apero.

The posters fit nearly perfectly and, while not a shrine for Fairey fans, it does give a contemporary glow to the place which is crowded at apero hour with older locals and crowded til one am with students and bohos.

Fairey’s trying to climb back on the sweet roll since his confession about the Obama poster mishagas.  His latest foray into political scandal is an Italian love-hate story.  The cover of The Rolling Stone featuring the recently clobbered-with-a-small souvenir model of the Milan Cathedral, Italian Premier, Silvio Berlusconi. [See it here].

Shepard Fairey does Berlusconi for Rolling Stone.

Meanwhile, on Christmas Eve the Basilica San Marco was both mobbed by Venetian believers and flooded Noah-style from the ever-rising rushing acqua alta.  So enjoy these pictures of the Venetian Lagoon waters running rampant over yet another Italian institution and art piece – floods get in your eyes.

Matthew Rose is an artist and writer based in Paris.  An interview with him about his project A Book About Death was broadcast on Writer’s Voice, here.

Before I knew it, I was implicated. Walking up to Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, I noticed a man’s face, simple and graphic, stuck on a lamppost, looming from atop the ICA and plastered on newspaper dispensers in the lobby. LA-based artist Shepard Fairey had infiltrated my visual world without my knowing it.

A first view towards the ICA. Fairey's work had already begun. Photo by Stefan Zebrowski-Rubin.

The face is the simplified version of Fairey’s earliest work Andre the Giant Has a Posse (1989), a graphic appropriation of an image of a wrestler that he turned into stickers, posters, stencils and other media and has since evolved into the brand Obey Giant and populated most of Fairey’s work. The ICA show, running until August 16, is the first to survey Fairey’s 20-year career, ranging from skateboards to wall murals, from hybrid propaganda posters to graphic icon portraits.

Shepard Fairey, Obama HOPE, 2008, Mixed media stencil collage on paper, Courtesy of Obey Giant Art

While unfamiliar with his work, I knew Fairey’s most famous piece: his patriotically colored campaign poster of now-President Barack Obama gazing upward over the word HOPE. This image has garnered both great praise – the National Portrait Gallery acquiring the work into its collection – and negative attention – the Associated Press suing the artist (and the artist the AP) over the copyright of the photograph.

Shepard Fairey, Obey Bush One Hell Of A Leader, 2004, silkscreen print. Taken from Carmichael Gallery: www.carmichaelgallery.com/

Overall, the artist accomplishes his goal of his 1990 Manifesto to “reawaken [in the viewer] a sense of wonder about one’s environment.” By reusing imagery, both known and unknown, he asks the viewer to reconsider his/her visual surroundings. Fairey’s propaganda posters are incredibly strong, drawing well-known imagery from Russian and Chinese revolutionary posters and American counter-cultural iconography, as well as playing with common concepts. For example, in Presidential Seal (2007), Fairey turns the American eagle into a vulture.

Shepard Fairey, OBEY MIDDLE EAST MURAL, 2009, Mixed media stencil collage on canvas, Courtesy of Obey Giant Art.

Fairey’s strongest images by far are those that shy away from re-imagined propaganda posters and embrace the more complex tension between war and humanity. In a series of works mixing guns and flowers, children and war, Fairey creates compelling conflicting statements. Most striking is the installation created for the ICA Obey the Middle East (2009). Looking beyond the larger images of Arab women and weapons, I found in the works layers the face of Andre the Giant, a few of Fairey’s earlier posters, decorative passages and newspaper clippings. Fairey has evolved his work into more of an art, creating his own common imagery by reusing his earlier creations. Fairey creates his own icons in compelling, richly layered works of fine art.

Beyond being the Obama artist, Fairey’s oeuvre showcases his strong graphic style and textual wit coupled with an astute intelligence to appropriate and reinterpret symbols of modern visual culture. Fairey easily fits the mould of a modern-day Andy Warhol, appropriating common imagery, using advertising techniques of production (stenciling, screen prints, rubyliths) and distribution, and creating his own message, brand and icons in order to capture his viewer.

Shepard Fairey: Supply & Demand runs at the ICA until August 16. The exhibit continues on to the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh from October 17 to January 31, 2010 and then to the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati thereafter.