Archive for March, 2011
TAP: Hennesy Youngman
Hennesy Youngman talks MAD art in this brief but PACKED video: ART THOUGHTZ: Relational Aesthetics
Nobody’s answering my question…
Nobody’s answering my question about why Rob Pruitt’s Andy Monument sucks so much.
The Law of Maximized Irony
I have a metaphysical theory that I call The Law of Maximized Irony:
In a nutshell, any set of initial circumstances will resolve to the state of greatest irony.
Case in point:
With increasing frequency we see incredulous stories about artists who’ve made careers out of cribbing other people’s work suing artists who have copied them. Is it flat out hypocrisy, or good business strategy — or both? Whatever is behind it, the story makes for a lot of really good laughs.
Check out my latest in Hyperallergic:
Is a Cease and Desist About Irony, Hypocrisy or Legal Strategy?
Portrait 5 Stephen(s), 2010 Lot #1
Portrait 5, Stephen(s), 2010
The whimsical Phillips de Pury & Company website is, as I’ve noted in the past, a remedy to prim auction house hem-haw. And I am pleased that Lot #1 of their Under the Influence auction of March 8, went for a full quarter of it’s estimated $100, 000 to hammer at $26,000 — the full proceeds of which, will benefit DonorsChoose.org, which sends dollars to classrooms with projects in need of materials and resources.
It is much the credit of PdP that they take on nonsense and give full fluff to the requisite irony.
Here’s the site description of Lot #1, in it’s full glory:
1
FULL PROCEEDS BENEFIT DONORSCHOOSE.ORG
STEPHEN COLBERT, SHEPARD FAIREY, ANDRES SERRANO AND FRANK STELLA
Portrait 5, Stephen(s), 2010
ESTIMATE: AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST •
PROVENANCE The Colbert Report
In an ambitious on-going work that calls to mind the sprawling constructed worlds of Matthew Barney and identity-questioning narratives of Sophie Calle, TV pundit and conceptual artist Stephen Colbert has been performing his site-specific installation, “The Colbert Report,”…
You got TV all over my artwork…
Right: Colbert to Serrano, "You made me Charlie Chaplan!" Left: detail of Shep's stencil work
Got a piece of art with some TV sticking to it? Call the fun-loving specialists at Phillips de Pury.
When Abdi Farah won the Bravo reality show, Work of Art, his 2010 “Baptism” went to auction at Phillips de Pury, selling for $20,000.
And now that Steve Martin has declared Stephen Colbert’s re-worked portrait, “a viable artwork” that “could be auctioned,” well: Phillips de Pury has snatched it up.
Created during a segment on The Colbert Report intended to promote guest Steve Martin’s latest book, An Object of Beauty, the portrait was gazed upon by Frank Stella, sprayed by Shepard Fairey, and then doodled upon and signed by Andre Serrano.
Asked what he’d done to improve it, Fairey told Colbert, “I made your agenda as an omnipotent quasi-fascist orator, and shaper of our politics and culture, that much more obvious as manipulation.”
In the brave company of other works of similarly dubious heft, like those of Donald Baechler and Dan Colen, Colbert’s mash-up will be on the block tomorrow. Though the Phillips de Pury site describes the collaboration in hilarious art-speak, the estimate is not ironic at $100,000.
Profits will go to DonorsChoose.org, an online charity designed to connect donors with classrooms in need.
