March 26, 2005
Fresh Stuff From "Infamily" in Santiago, Chile
Posted by marc at 10:59 PM in | Recommend this! (1) |
| Banksy Story Spreads Around The World
The weekend the Banksy story is appearing in newspapers around the world. Yakisoba sent us this photo of today's Yomiuri news in Japan.
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The Photos of Patrick Barry Barr
Patrick Barry Barr has been taking photos of graffiti and murals in various cities including Milan, Barcelona, Bilbao, BeloHorizonte (Brasil), Lima and, Queens, NYC. The photo above was a mural he found in Lima. He puts his photos up on Flickr. You can check them out here.
Posted by marc at 9:57 PM in | Recommend this! (1) |
New York | March 31 | Ricky Powell's Slide Show
Posted by marc at 9:51 PM in | Recommend this! |
A Field of TV's in Silverlake
The Los Angeles based artist Tofer sent us the photo above. He says about it - "This is a public piece done in Silverlake (LA) that I came across last Monday --- a hill full of TVs w/ some interesting messages painted on them. The author is unknown at this time..."
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March 25, 2005
Stickman Has Made Contact
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De La Vega on the Streets in Soho
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Friendly Fire on the Streets of Bulgaria
Posted by marc at 6:42 AM in | Recommend this! |
March 24, 2005
Banksy Speaks With Reuters
About an hour or so ago, Banksy gave an interview to the American wire service, Reuters. In the interview he sheds a few more details on the how he pulled it off.From the article:
Speaking by telephone from an undisclosed location in Britain, Banksy said he conducted all four operations on March 13, helped by accomplices who filmed him and provided distractions where necessary. "They staged a gay tiff (lovers' quarrel), shouting very loudly and obnoxiously," said the artist.
... ""My sister inspired me to do it. She was throwing away loads of my pictures one day and I asked her why. She said 'It's not like they're going to be hanging in the Louvre."' He took that as a challenge. "I thought why wait until I'm dead," he said. "
Here's the entire article, hot off the press as they say:
British Prankster Smuggles
Art Into Top NY Museums
Thu Mar 24, 2005 2:25 PM ET
NEW
YORK (Reuters) - Many a visitor to New York's Museum of Modern Art has probably
thought, "I could do that."
A British graffiti artist who goes by the
name "Banksy" went one step further, by smuggling in his own picture of a soup
can and hanging it on a wall, where it stayed for more than three days earlier
this month before anybody noticed.
The prank was part of a
coordinated plan to infiltrate four of New York's top museums on a single
day.
The largest piece, which he smuggled into the Brooklyn Museum,
was a 2 foot by 1.5 foot (61cm by 46 cm) oil painting of a colonial-era admiral,
to which the artist had added a can of spray paint in his hand and anti-war
graffiti in the background.
The other two targets were the
Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History, where he
hung a glass-encased beetle with fighter jet wings and missiles attached to its
body -- another comment on war, Banksy told Reuters on Thursday.
"It
was just an outsider's view of the modern American bug, bristling with listening
devices and military hardware," he said.
An art Web site called
www.woostercollective.com has posted pictures of the artist -- wearing an
Inspector Clouseau-style overcoat, a hat and a fake beard and nose -- hanging up
his work at the four museums and describing how he did it.
Speaking
by telephone from an undisclosed location in Britain, Banksy said he conducted
all four operations on March 13, helped by accomplices who filmed him and
provided distractions where necessary.
"They staged a gay tiff
(lovers' quarrel), shouting very loudly and obnoxiously," said the artist,
declining to give his real name or any personal details beyond his occupation as
a professional painter and decorator.
It is not the first time he has
staged such stunts. Last year he smuggled work into the Louvre in Paris and
London's Tate, attracting attention in the British media.
"My sister
inspired me to do it. She was throwing away loads of my pictures one day and I
asked her why. She said 'It's not like they're going to be hanging in the
Louvre."'
He took that as a challenge. "I thought why wait until I'm
dead," he said.
His preferred creative outlet, graffiti on trains,
was growing more difficult due to greater security so he decided to branch out
into infiltrating museums. "I tend to gravitate to places with less
sophisticated security systems," he said.
Officials at the Natural
History Museum declined to comment on security. Museum of Modern Art officials
said only that the offending picture was taken down on March 17.
It
was unclear what gave the game away but Banksy's version of Andy Warhol's iconic
images of Campbell's Soup Cans showed a can of Tesco value tomato soup, a
discounted brand sold by a British supermarket chain.
"Obviously
they've got their eye a lot more on things leaving than things going in which
works in my favor," Banksy said. "I imagine they'll be doing stricter bag checks
now."
He said the painting in the Metropolitan Museum, a small
portrait of a woman wearing a gas mask, had been discovered after one day, while
the others stayed up for several days. The paintings were fixed to the wall with
extra-strong glue.
Asked how he managed to escape notice while
putting them up on a busy Sunday at the museums, he said: "They do get pretty
full, but not if you put the pictures in the boring bits."
Posted by marc at 3:02 PM in | Recommend this! (2) |
Street Art Rountable on The Morning News
In all the crazyness yesterday surrounding the Banksy piece, we forgot to mention and link to a terrific roundtable discussion on Street Art that was posted on The Morning News. Sara and I participated along with Swoon, Faile, Michael DeFeo, and Dan Witz. You can read it here. It's definately worth a read.Posted by marc at 11:12 AM in | Recommend this! |
Outakes from The New York Times Article
One thing we thought we'd share with you this morning, is an email exchange that we helped coordinate between Randy Kennedy, a writer for the New York Times, and Banksy.
(If you haven't seen it yet, the photo of Banksy placing his piece in the Metropolitan Museum of Art was published on the Front Page of today's NYT)
1. is this the first time you've installed works of your own in new
york museums?
In New York, yes. Before this my paintings have only been exhibited in the
Tate gallery in London and the Louvre in Paris. Then they took them down.
2. why did you choose the four you chose?
I went for the biggest four museums in New York, I wanted to do the
Guggenheim but there weren't enough paintings in it, I would have had to
appear between two Picasso's and I'm not good enough to get away with that.
3. were the works you installed all paintings on canvas?
Two of the works were fine oil paintings. I vandalised them so they had
some actual meaning. In the Natural History museum I installed a real dead
beetle but with model missiles and satellite dishes stuck to it. A bug in
the true American spirit.
4. how did you attach them to the wall?
I was careful to attach them in a way they wouldn't fall down by themselves.
5. what message, if any, were you trying to convey by putting up these
works?
I've wandered round a lot of art galleries thinking 'I could have done that'
so it seemed only right that I should try.
These Galleries are just trophy cabinets for a handful of millionaires. The
public never has any real say in what art they see. Its good to screw with
the selection process sometimes. 'Comfort the disturbed, and disturb the
comfortable' as Eleanor Roosevelt once said.
The gas mask painting is about how fear of terror is disfiguring society.
The military officer painting is dedicated to all those who joined the
forces to fight honorable and just wars, and ended up feeling like maybe
they should have stayed home and been peace activists instead.
6. how did you put up the works without being noticed by guards or
other visitors? was it easy?
As a graffiti artist its harder to paint subway trains in New York these
days than it is to paint your major public exhibition spaces.
You just have to glue on a fake beard and move with the times.
7. How did you manage to get the paintings into the museums?
After reading 3 biographies on Harry Houdini
Posted by marc at 7:58 AM in | Recommend this! (2) |
Happy Easter Everyone
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March 23, 2005
A Wooster Exclusive: Banksy Hits New York's Most Famous Museums (All of
The British pensioner in the hat and coat....
Banksy
The piece...
New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art...
The British Pensioner....
Banksy
The piece...
New York's Museum of Natural History...
The piece...
New York's Museum of Modern Art....
The piece....
The images above - exclusive to the Wooster site and
provided by Banksy - are of Banksy installing four pieces in New York's most
prestigious museums - The Brooklyn Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The
Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Natural History.
Dressed as a
British pensioner, over the last few days Banksy entered each of the galleries
and attached one of his own works, complete with authorative name plaque and
explanation.
He says - "This historic occasion has less to
do with finally being embraced by the fine art establishment and is more about
the judicious use of a fake beard and some high strength glue." Banksy continues
-"They're good enough to be in there, so I don't see why I should wait"
Staff at the New York Met discovered and removed their new aquisition early
Sunday morning while Banksy's discount soup can print took pride of place in the
MoMA for over three days before being torn down.
As of now, the other
two pieces currently remain firmly in place...
To learn more about Banksy, go to... www.banksy.co.uk
Posted by marc at 7:21 AM in | Recommend this! (28) |
March 22, 2005
A Day In The Life Of Tvboy
"wake up early in the morning and catching the metro to go to the design studio in which i'm workin'"
"while i'm waiting for the train to arrive i find a marker in my pocket and i customize a propaganda poster on the metroway"
"my boss is wating me seated outside the bar and he tells me about a new project in which i'll have to do some illustrations
"an insight in the studio, a wicked mao poster , i really like it :-"
"makin' late with the work, looking forward to have a pizza outside with my girfliend ana from barcelona, she's so cute :-)"
Posted by marc at 7:43 AM in | Recommend this! |
On The Streets With The Tape Crew in Washington D.C.
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Catchin' Up With Oles in Rotterdam
Here are some pictures of a live painting session by us, the infamous Lastplal/EchtNiet, in a place called Club Waas. It was a really good night, the owner kept giving us free drinks, the vj played a lot of images of us painting in another place and doing stuff in the streets and they een released a CD with us on the cover, true moviestars ha ha ha! The artists who participated include Booreiland, Tomek, Pbloem, ACAB, Pinwin, WatNou, Foxy, and me Oles
Oke, hope to send more and other stuff soon, but for now, greetings from a sunny Rotterdam!
Oles
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Zezao Hits the Sewers of Sao Paulo Brazil
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March 21, 2005
Toronto | March 31 | Mr. Brown vs. Val Kilmer
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Wooster Hits Chicago - Next Week
This coming Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings (the 28th, 29th, and 30th), we'll be visiting one of my favorite cities, Chicago. If you live in the area and would like to jolin us for a beer, we're gonna get a bunch of Wooster artists and art lovers together on Tuesday or Wednesday evening. Place and time TBD. Shoot us an email at woostercollective@hotmail.com if you're around and would like to join us.
(The photo above, of Chicago's Lake Shore Drive, was nicked from Google images)
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Fresh Stuff From... Kryot in Venezuela
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+he Future Beautiful :: Skewville
Earlier this week Jose Serrano sent us a link to his first video documumentary - a terrific little portrait of Skewville, two of our favorite NYC street artists. The short film was recently selected amongst 10 finalists in a contest which IndTV is currently holding online. The general public will decide the winner by voting for their favorite on indtv.tv. You can check out, '+he Future Beautiful :: Skewville', and vote for your favorite until March 31st. Check it out here.
Posted by marc at 6:51 AM in | Recommend this! |
Street Art Films Tonight in Hereford, UK
Later tonight, Tristan Manco, author of Street Logos and Stencil Graffiti, will be presenting a series of films with Brad Downey (Darius and Downey) at the Borderlines Film Festival in Hereford in the UK.
Here's some info on the films:
Acces(s)
Director: Eko.
France, 2003, 7 minutes
See www.ekosystem.org for more information. On the
theme of "access", this short film features over 40 artists worldwide including:
Abbominevole, Captain Rouget, Cheba, Eko, El Euro, Flying Fortress, Font,
Graffitilovesyou, Opt, Pez, the Plug, Santy, Senor B, Shes 54, Sickboy,
Supakitch, Zozen.
Public Discourse
Director:
Darius and Brad Downey. USA, 2003, 45 minutes
Features artists such as
Darius & Downey, Swoon, Faile, Darius Jones aka Verbs, Bob Dombrowski, JJ
Veronis, Shepard Fairy aka Giant aka Obey, Desa, Nato, Ellen Harvey, Jack
DeMartino, Adorn, Ewok 5MH, Rate, Oze 108, Nymz, Tore, Buddy Lembeck Brad Downey
will be present to discuss his film as will Tristan Manco who runs Tijuana
Design (www.tijuanadesign.com) in Bristol. Tristan has written about graffiti
and produced album covers (with renowned graffiti artist Banksy) for Blur and
Scratch Perverts.
Posted by marc at 6:29 AM in | Recommend this! |
Human Rights Day in South Africa
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