Schwarz
View current page
...more recent posts
art news flash: skulls are out spider webs are in
big wheel keep on turnin'
black plywood shingle house from:
arkinetia
via zoller
hardware store display
Two lavish new books, New York Noise: Art and Music From the New York Underground and No Wave, trace the highs and lows of this short-lived scene, proving along the way that downtown—conceptually speaking—was less about geography than the importance of staking out one's cultural identity and artistic autonomy.
*excludes the comics in low-scoring cartoon issue
If the Copy Is an Artwork, Then What’s the Original?“I never associated advertisements with having an author.” a cute rejoinder but i find this quote a tad disingenuous. i wish prince was more articulate in his discussion of open source subjects and that as targets of assault advertising we in turn own it and freely repurpose it. back at ya!
By RANDY KENNEDY, NYT
Published: December 6, 2007
Since the late 1970s, when Richard Prince became known as a pioneer of appropriation art — photographing other photographs, usually from magazine ads, then enlarging and exhibiting them in galleries — the question has always hovered just outside the frames: What do the photographers who took the original pictures think of these pictures of their pictures, apotheosized into art but without their names anywhere in sight?
Recently a successful commercial photographer from Chicago named Jim Krantz was in New York and paid a quick visit to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, where Mr. Prince is having a well-regarded 30-year retrospective that continues through Jan. 9. But even before Mr. Krantz entered the museum’s spiral, he was stopped short by an image on a poster outside advertising the show, a rough-hewn close-up of a cowboy’s hat and outstretched arm.
Mr. Krantz knew it quite well. He had shot it in the late 1990s on a ranch in the small town of Albany, Tex., for a Marlboro advertisement. “Like anyone who knows his work,” Mr. Krantz said of his picture in a telephone interview, “it’s like seeing yourself in a mirror.” He did not investigate much further to see if any other photos hanging in the museum might be his own, but said of his visit that day, “When I left, I didn’t know if I should be proud, or if I looked like an idiot.”
When Mr. Prince started reshooting ads, first prosaic ones of fountain pens and furniture sets and then more traditionally striking ones like those for Marlboro, he said he was trying to get at something he could not get at by creating his own images. He once compared the effect to the funny way that “certain records sound better when someone on the radio station plays them, than when we’re home alone and play the same records ourselves.”
But he was not circumspect about what it meant or how it would be viewed. In a 1992 discussion at the Whitney Museum of American Art he said of rustling the Marlboro aesthetic: “No one was looking. This was a famous campaign. If you’re going to steal something, you know, you go to the bank.”
People might not have been looking at the time, when his art was not highly sought. But as his reputation and prices for his work rose steeply — one of the Marlboro pictures set an auction record for a photograph in 2005, selling for $1.2 million — they began to look, and Mr. Prince has spoken of receiving threats, some legal and some more physical in nature, from his unsuspecting lenders. He is said to have made a small payment in an out-of-court settlement with one photographer, Garry Gross, who took the original shot for one of Mr. Prince’s most notorious early borrowings, an image of a young unclothed Brooke Shields. (Mr. Prince declined to comment for this article, saying in an e-mail message only, “I never associated advertisements with having an author.”)
Mr. Krantz, who has shot ads for the United States Marine Corps and a long list of Fortune 500 companies including McDonald’s, Boeing and Federal Express, said he had no intention of seeking money from or suing Mr. Prince, whose borrowings seem to be protected by fair use exceptions to copyright law.
But with the exhibition now up at the Guggenheim — and the posters using his image on sale for $9.95 — he said he simply wanted viewers to know that “there are actually people behind these images, and I’m one of them.”
“I’m not a mean person, and I’m not a vindictive person,” he said. “I just want some recognition, and I want some understanding.”
Mr. Krantz, whose clients generally own the copyrights to his photos for them, said he had been aware for several years that his work had been lifted by Mr. Prince, along with that of several other photographers who have shot Marlboro ads. But he said he did not think much about it, and said he had never talked with other Marlboro photographers about the issue.
“If imitation is a form of flattery, then I will accept the compliment,” he said.
But on one occasion a woman active in the art world visited his studio in Chicago, and, seeing a print of one of his pictures, Mr. Krantz recalled, “she said, ‘Oh, Richard Prince has a photograph just like that!’” And in 2003 Mr. Prince’s version of an image that Mr. Krantz shot for Marlboro — showing a mounted cowboy approaching a calf stranded in the snow — sold for $332,300 at Christie’s. Although the shot was blown up to heroic proportions, “there’s not a pixel, there’s not a grain that’s different,” he said. And so Mr. Krantz, whose Marlboro ads now appear mostly in Europe and Asia, began to grow angry.
He said that while he is primarily an advertising photographer, when he was growing up in Omaha, he did attend workshops with Ansel Adams. He studied graphic design and got into commercial photography, starting out in Omaha taking shots of toasters and pens and heating pads because that was where the work was. But he has long exhibited his own art photographs, recent examples of which show stark images of an empty prison as if seen through defaced or broken glass.
Mr. Krantz said he considered his ad work distinctive, not simply the kind of anonymous commercial imagery that he feels Mr. Prince considers it to be. “People hire me to do big American brands to help elevate their images to these kinds of iconic images,” he said.
He has considered trying to correspond with Mr. Prince to complain more directly but said he felt it would probably do no good.
“At this point it’s been done, and it’s out there,” he said. “My whole issue with this, truly, is attribution and recognition. It’s an unusual thing to see an artist who doesn’t create his own work, and I don’t understand the frenzy around it.”
He added: “If I italicized ‘Moby-Dick,’ then would it be my book? I don’t know. But I don’t think so.”
A tiny house with enormous glass walls sits on some of the priciest property in New Canaan, Conn. A town of 20,000, its proximity to New York City (about an hour's commute by train) continues to fuel a steady climb in local real-estate values. And with the current trend toward larger homes, many smaller ones face destruction—even gems.
Christened the "little jewel box" by its designer, Philip Johnson, and named after its original occupant, Alice Ball, the glass-walled house stands at the center of a controversy. But it's not simply a local controversy—it's one that touches not only New Canaan, but also many other upscale metropolitan suburbs. At stake could be the future of post-World War II architecture and the legacies of its architectural pioneers.
The Impasse
The Ball House, built in 1953 as a residence for a single woman, is a doll-sized home that the real-estate listing puts at 1,773 square feet, perched on a 2.2-acre tract of land. The one-story dwelling sports a flat roof and glass walls, all in keeping with its International Style.
The house, considered a fine example of Johnson's architectural skills, also comprises a diminishing commodity in New Canaan, where buildings designed by the Harvard Five (Johnson, Landis Gores, Eliot Noyes, Marcel Breuer and John Johansen) are falling under the wrecking ball.
A preservation group has found a new owner for one of the country's few remaining taverns, the DeJarnette Tavern, built c.1780 in Halifax County, Va.
Named after Daniel DeJarnette, son of a Revolutionary War captain, the building was a colorful stagecoach inn and watering hole. "The tavern is said to have attracted a fun-loving clientele, particularly those who enjoyed horseracing, card playing, and cockfighting," according to the National Register nomination, which APVA Preservation Virginia prepared.
The Oct. 15 sale transferred the dilapidated tavern to a Connecticut couple, Mark Hubina and his fiancee, Tania Bongiolatti. Using state historic tax credits, the owners plan to restore the 1,300-square-foot building to its Civil War appearance, APVA Preservation Virginia announced this week.
In 2001, APVA Preservation Virginia used money from its revolving fund program to rescue the building, listed on the National Register and a state landmark. DeJarnette's Tavern was priced at $29,000. The former state program, transferred to the nonprofit in 1999, is a $1.5 million fund to purchase endangered properties, find the right buyer, and place easements on the property before the sale.
Texas lost a mid-century modern house last month.
Once called the "Carousel House," the circular house in Meyerland was designed and built in 1964 by Robert Cohen, who constructed the house out of wood frames and steel.
In 1987, the elderly Cohens moved out, and the house remained empty until June 2004, when Texas lawyer John O'Quinn purchased it for his classic car collection's manager, Zev Isgur. After Isgur went to jail, the house was deserted.
Over the next two years, the house was neglected and subjected to roof leaks, vandalism, and furniture theft. For some reason, the house was never marketed publicly and in September 2007, a construction company called Granit builders purchased it with plans to build a new house in its location. The Carousel House was demolished on Nov. 20.
"The house was smashed to bits," says Ben Koush, president of HoustonMod, a nonprofit that advocates the preservation of modern architecture in Texas. "I cannot imagine how it could be salvaged at this point."
The house was destroyed despite efforts of preservationists and locals. "I think the perception of the expense of restoring it is one of the reasons it was demolished, but there's also just the fact that it was never offered for sale publicly," says Jason Smith, HoustonMod board member. "I think if we had been able to do a 'Mod of the Month’ open house, we may have been able to find a buyer."
post apocalyptic classics
"that guy who burns furniture" via adman