Art Online. We love the idea of an online gallery. In January 2005, the Wurst Gallery featured the Vintage Vandals show. Artists bought inexpensive (cheap!) vintage artwork and used it as a base for a new work. Most of the work has sold, but this stuff is truly inspiring to us! We especially love Chris Hutchinson's piece, above. Check out some more of our favorites after the jump and look for new shows at Wurst Gallery...
This takes postmodernism to a whole new level... instead of appropriating the mundane and incorporating it into high art (as Warhol did with soup cans), these people are creating new art directly onto the canvas.
But there's a fine line between what these people are doing and what vandals do when they draw a mustache or black out teeth of a person in a billboard ad.
Plus, it seems a little presumptious to assume that today's cheap artwork won't be tomorrow's treasure. I mean, what if someone had decided to paint a neon-colored robot onto the Mona Lisa 300 years ago?
I like the one with the two black figures in the mountains, but all the other ones I checked out looked much better before their transformations. (OK, maybe I liked the tree-people, too.) I'm all for appropriating, but I feel like these re-dos did not recognize the great, genuine kitsch value of the originals. It makes me a little sad...
DavidO, I think that line is quite a bit thicker than you do. Vandals don't usually own what they vandalize. And there have been many masterworks that have been altered at various times throughout their history (especially by the Church). There was also the Dada movement, though that may have been closer at points to vandalism.
Some of these are pretty cool!
Oh, Banksy impressionists! I dig it...
Impressionists maybe, but I think this exhibit was up before Banksy hit it big.
hah,
if someone had painted a neon-colored robot on the mona lisa 300 years ago, he probably would've been burned for witchcraft, as neither of those things existed then.
Max: It's true that vandals don't usually own what they vandalize. But who "owns" art? Is it the person who purchases it? Or is it the person who creates it? Or is it the public? Or perhaps all of the above? Many countries recognize "moral rights" which give artists some say in how their art is treated even after it is sold. For example, "moral rights" would allow the creating artist to prevent a work from being destroyed or mutilated. I'm not saying I think the Vintage Vandals are necessarily destroying or mutilating the original works, but I do believe it's a possibility. So, to me, it's not so clear that what the Vintage Vandals do is not in fact vandalism.
j. You mean neon colors and robots, right? The Mona Lisa was definitely around 300 years ago.
hah, yeah that's what i meant.
see, i try my hand at snarky sarcasm and just end up sounding like a jerk. :)