Happy 54th birthday Keith Haring!

Google search bar on Keith Haring's birthday

Happy birthday Keith (#Haring)

Today is Keith Haring's birthday. The Keith Haring Foundation sent me an invite to save 10% by going shopping :)

Little tidbit, Haring set up his foundation after he was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS to promote awareness of the disease and create programs for kids.

Art in the Streets When I was interviewing Futura for UNleashed Magazine special on MOCA's major street art exhibition he told me how Keith Haring put his artwork into his Foundation as gifts for the kids of his New York City artist friends! This never made it into the final article, but you can read the rest of the interview here.

Subversive street art is rising!

In LA there have been stories about fake street parking signs put up by commercial parking companies to drive customers to their parking lots (only in LA!) and other such stories. Then I happened upon this *insane* video which has to be one of the best public service guerrilla moves and shows the passion Los Angeleans have for their city!

Art in the City When I saw the Trustocorp work getting attention online from installations at Miami Art Basel I took a look into who else was doing similar work. LA's Total Crisis Panic button is kinda cool, but Trustcorp takes the guerrilla move idea further. These street art projects are taking issues and giving them a lighthearted twist to make us think more about our surroundings, local government policies and societal behavior.

Where next? Hmmm...Going foreign language would be cool! But it seems that there's already a street sign movement out there in Europe with tons of worldwide respected and established artists (Kozyndan, Dalek, London Police....) doing it Benny Hill style (aka few words, just pics to overcome language barriers.)

LA's valet parking land grab

Kaws came to town, but disappointed

http://vimeo.com/4910854 from stevio on Vimeo.

Kaws came to LA, but his "The Long Way Home" show was so flat. And I was so bored with it I only just edited my video from back in March and definitely had to spice it up with some classic dancehall to give it some flavor!

Kaws comes to town...

My mate JC hit me up to the Kaws show that opens tonight at Honor Fraser in Los Angeles. But someone forgot to send me an invite to Royal-T's pre-opening event last night...pah!?

KAWS - "The Long Way Home"
Honor Fraser gallery
February 21, 2009 — April 04, 2009
Opening Reception February 21, 2009 6:00 — 8:00 PM

Now, I'm not sure when I first saw Kaws' work, but it's memorable in a Hello Kitty kinda way. It even looks Japanese in style. Those "X" eyes, skull head and Mickey Mouse hands are all so familiar.

If you don't get to see the show try visiting your local Stussy store since it commissioned his mural work for its store walls. The last time I thought about Kaws was when I was chasing after the limited-edition i-D magazine issue that he illustrated (but, I got bored and eventually gave up. ;) )



i-D magazine interview

Murakami leaves NYC...

I didn't make it to New York to see the Murakami shows (Brooklyn Museum and Gagosian Gallery), but I celebrated in my own way by (finally) hanging my Supreme Murakami skateboards. Those sold out quickly, but I scoured the stores and found a complete set available last year. They've been sat in my climate-controled secure storage (aka my bedroom) until now!

Fraudulent artists...MBW Mr Brainwash

There was a show in LA that I was going to see, but it kinda made me puke! Mr Brainwash has created an art franchise for the masses. His ideas are instantly likeable, yet they don't say anything. But what's worse than some screen-printing, stencil artist is that he can leap from nothingness to having the cover of LA Weekly.

It's the beginning of the end It's an amazing demo of hype, public relations and money. It stinks as art!

Am I jealous? May be, but I hate Mr Brainwash. F*#k his quotes from Banksy and Obey. Come on people...he's got you on his dick! Look at the images above. Such an obvious idea that these are from two different artists. Which one is "original"? Which one is Mr Brainwash?

The one on the left is from Rene Gagnon, a contemporary artist of merit with lots of interesting work and shows around town. The one on the right is from fraudster Mr Brainwash. Bollox to him. For more balanced opinions may be go to Known Gallery's blog.

Eric Haze and Alife LA put on a show

Last night was an opening party for Haze's new artwork collaboration with Alife for Dumar Brown's new book, "Nov York City". I looked around and wondered why half those peeps were there...was it for Squeak E Clean's mash-up music? For Alife's bold, but dull clothing? Or the complimentary rum bar?

Who is he? Did anyone care that Haze has been down since the 80s with RTW (Rolling Thunder Writers) or his 90s show at PS.1 in Queens? May be not. To me, this is the man behind the classic Public Enemy logo with the target man, the Tommy Boy Records logo, as well as working with The Beastie Boys, Delicious Vinyl and a long list of dope design projects since moving to LA!

The Party's Over Haze has returned to New York now after a decade in California, but tonight's work didn't bring the energy or excitement I'd expect. Monochrome and big, ironically the canvases didn't say anything to me even though the message was clear. Except may be "The Party Is Over"!

I know that Brown has been selling books with Alife since 2003 so there's love there, but the $75 Haze/Alife t-shirt with the signed Dumar Brown novel seemed contrived and commercial...like Alife lifestyle marketing without the heart.

One online reviewer joked (I think...) about Brown's first book, "Nov York": "This book is really really really cool. It has inspired me to move out of my mother's basement and to get a job!" So go read it!

Enough already...No More Obama!

Everyone's inspired by the race for the Presidency. For me, I'm bored and have been numbed from all sides as even the artists have got in on the act!

Upper Playground and Sam Flores did a nice poster to show support for the Obama campaign, but can you beat the propaganda king Obey? Nah, man! Posters, limited-edition eBay fare, t-shirts in Urban Outfitters...it's crazy!

Nick Walker fans go camping

If you're not in London or the UK like me you might have missed the buzz around Nick Walker's latest show at the Black Rat Press space last month. He sent me a link to Romanywg's reportage photos, but this scene captured the spirit of his recent success. People were camped out the night before to get hold of one of the limited signed prints!

Imported success It's sad that it took a sell-out foreign show to establish Nick in his home country. He's probably going to do more shows in the US than in Britain this year, but as we all know you can be a millionaire in the States just selling t-shirts and baseball hats 'cause are so many people. Let's hope that the looming recession doesn't affect the street art market 'cause Nick's time has come!

Here is some commentary on the show...




















And a couple of great videos from Romanywg

Keith Haring's 50th birthday

If Keith Haring was still alive he'd be 50 years old today!

His work is a reminder of how something as simple and fragile as a chalk doodle could manifest into an art organization for learning and understanding. For me, as Haring was in New York and his art was in public places it immediately grabbed me.



Pop Shop Haring's images had street cred, yet were critically-acclaimed by the establishment too as his work was collected by galleries and museums. And there's no doubt Haring inspired others to experiment with the high and "low" culture of art - the art of selling a commission for millions or a selling millions of t-shirts for $30. Just look how Haring pre-dates the likes of Murakami's and his KaiKai Kiki studio by at least a decade.

Thanks Keith for inspiring my interest in the Pop Art scene and collecting stuff. Peace.

My trip to New York

I was excited to read the story about some recently 'excavated' old skool graffiti in New York's SoHo district. "Wow! I need to see that", I thought to myself, so I jumped on Farecast and patiently waited till fares fell to $277 (on Virgin America, baby!)



Bust my bubble As I was eagerly reading about the graffiti, I found an article entitled, "Writers of the Lost Ark", which was posted as a comment on NY's Paper Magazine blog. Although it didn't put the dampeners on the trip for me, but did put it all into context:

"Is anyone really interested in the ‘mystery’ behind this ugly and hilarious artifact? Because there’s no mystery at all. Everyone who scrawled on it is alive and well and willing to talk - but few of us are (or ever were) graffiti artists. The 80’s were an era of ‘fake it till you make it’, so we might give 1 or 2 poseurs a pass here, but the only legitimate exception on the ‘151 Wooster Street Mural’ is Lenny (futura 2000), who got up (note the clean background) well before any of us came over to Edit Deak’s and pretended to be ‘writers’ for an evening or two.

If a legend exists concerning this mess it is one that’s been actively hyped by a number of respectable people, no doubt with the best of intentions. Since hype is the dope of today, we might forgive a group halucination, at first. But I know that an email naming each artist and spilling the beans on Jean-Michel’s perfect absence was forwarded to Lisa Denisson at the Gugenheim well in time to head off the howlers that are now everywhere in print. What hapened to those beans? And what do we actually have here? Fragment’s of a lost Basquiat? Francesco Clemente’s only graffiti? The birth of Graffiti itself? Why not the lost Amber Room of Catherine the Great? Certainly the truth will devalue this treasure."

Full disclosure Read the full story to see whether Basquiat's work is actually part of the graffiti discovered and who else is "up" on the wall (or not)! I have no idea who Seth Tillett is, but he's obviously a 40-something hipster from back in the day ;)

VIP, baby If you couldn't make the opening, like me, here's the video. Love the soundbites - bag o' shite!

Keith Haring...still #1

I noticed that the Keith Haring store on Lafayette had closed when I was in New York in June 2007. It was a real landmark for me as it's always there, from my first visit to NYC in 1988 till my previous visit, may be in 2004.

Videos
Here are a couple of videos I hadn't seen before as a tribute to Haring.



I drove down to Long Beach to buy these adicolor Keith Haring/Jeremy Scott sneakers. There was a jacket too covered in Haring characters. Too loud to wear, but when did that ever stop me buying stuff?! ;-)

Kanye vs Fiddy...

I don't care who outsells whose album, or who's gonna retire because they lost the battle for sales. Nah! All I care about is the artwork Murakami did for Kanye. But, that wasn't such a 'genius' idea really when you think about it.

The breakdown: Murakami & Kanye
Let's work backwards: Kanye loves LV ("Louis Vuitton don"); LV loves Murakami (one year brought in an extra $300m); Murakami is Japanese (where 75% of LV's customers live); Murakami was brought into LV by Marc Jacobs who's American. Kanye is American! Okay, the last bit is bollocks, but you get my drift ;-)

Snob? Moi?
I think this might be the start of the end for Murakami...Louis Vuitton bags was a biggie with some real trashy designs, but a Billboard album cover is big-time crossover. I'm not cool with it...sorry! But, I'm not missing the point of Murakami's work...I know about his at Kaikai Kiki factory. It's just that I'm a snob. There, I said it! ;-)