I started a Content Aware blog titled Very Aware. It can be viewed at http://veryaware.tumblr.com . Go there to view more images and the ongoing concept. Thanks.…And Then There Were Two
Title Credit - Ben Cureton
You’ve got to be kidding me
A douche bag from Linkin Park links up with another asshole to rip off KAWS
If you want to see more of this douche baggery, click here*.
* i could have linked to lemon party because I know no one cares about a guy from Linkin Park plagiarizing art.
Further proof that Damien Hirst Doesn’t Give A Fuck About Art”
I mean, Jeff Koons/KAWS much? But, we could’ve said that a year ago.
I mean, it’s one thing to market that one thing, but the more you chase that same thing, your abstractions will just become distractions. We know you’re only here for the money, any way you can get it. Sure, I understand that you, Damien Hirst, would claim artistic freedom, that no one creates in a bubble, and that the artists that your peers are inspiring and inspired by you, but this is the first “new” thing you’ve done in a decade, and everyone can see through your thinly veiled guise. No wonder your corporation has been suffering.
I’m not going to stand around while everyone praises you for some kind of god that you aren’t, because even Jesus was more than a one trick pony.
Jeff Koons, I’m on to you, too.
Typical hipster bullshit at work here: “Yeah, his earlier stuff was better.”
Get Rich or Die Tryin’ turned into Got Rich and Stopped Tryin’ again.
Can’t really call a man with a corporation a “sellout”, can we?
Original Fake Earmuffs. I’ve been looking for a $100+ dollar solution to keep my ears warm in the winter.
Hopefully this census job pans out.
No, I will not recklessly spend my first paycheck on earmuffs, the way I should.
Toledo Museum of Art was my introduction to Kehinde Wiley, back in 2006. I haven’t seen it in a while, but I recall having to write a visual analyzation report on the piece, and I remember making note of the iconography in the piece, the fleur-de-lis, the white on white air force ones, and even the sperm sporadically patterned between the all over fleur-de-lis pattern. I recall getting the report back, with the phrase “sperm?” scrawled across the paper in red pen.“Randerson Romualdo Cordeiro (The World Stage; Brazil)” by Kehinde Wiley
I went out to get the mail today and peeped Mr. Wiley himself on the cover of Juxtapoz this month. I must say it’s about time because dude has been blowing up for a minute now doing portraits for the hip-hop honors, a clothing line, and a shoe collabo with Puma. However, I haven’t heard him discuss the connection/intersection between his sexuality and his artwork very often (which is shocking because his portraits, although not nude, evoke what seems to be very intentional erotic undertones).
Juxtapoz did ask, however. Here’s a piece of the interview:
Since you’re a gay man, which youth culture often finds hard to come to terms with, did the guys you cast care or know? Is there even a need to be upfront about that?
That’s a very important question. I think a lot of people prefer not to talk about that part of the work because so many other aspects of it satisfies even the most homophobic that they just deal with it.
Like the aspect of power?
Sure, but power and sexuality are so intricately laced for me I can’t separate them really. Yet there’s another part of the art-consuming public that’s fascinated by this because there has been very little space for a type of Black male sexuality to be expressed that isn’t hyper-sexualized. For me, I’ve been able to exist in the world of Black male representation because I’m in the art world and it’s almost expected that there be some weird shit in there. You know what I mean? It’s like art world street cred, “oh, and he’s gay too.”
Male beauty is a pursuit that’s a very fixed and specific vocabulary. We feel comfortable talking about the vocabulary surrounding beautiful women because women have been relegated that type of power. That’s the power they’re said to posses most strongly in the world. Men feel emasculated when associated with that type of power because they feel it’s superficial and they have “actual” power, material power. Any serious man, even if he possesses physical beauty as a type of power or currency within the world, would never discuss it as such because it’s considered effete. The fear of the illusive disarming strength of beauty, all that stuff, is a very potent and strong calculus with the black body, which is fun to play with. I’m really having a fun time pulling these strings and seeing what happens.
It’s interesting to hear his take on, and understanding of being kind of “exotified” in the art world by having all of these unique identities at work (unique to the art world canon at least). But he still didn’t speak to the dialogue that happens between him and the men who pose for him. That would also be interesting to hear.
I must say that the rest of the article is also quite interesting, as well as the beautiful images of his work. check it out if you have a chance…
Kehinde Wiley!! Randomly the Toledo Museum of Art owns one of his beautiful pieces.
It was awesome.
A Barack Obama poster that I designed.
Thanks, Cage, for giving me a name to a face.
If I have to explain it, don’t bother.
Also, it’s a lot larger than this and there is considerably more detail, but I’m tired of giving away things for free.
Ed Templeton, one of my favorite illustrators from the skateboard world (he runs Toy Machine Skateboards), recently had a show. Hypebeast has the details.
I remember loving Toy Machine decks as a kid, the illustrations, the toys and their merch was always the most innovative for skateboard company graphics.
