This past weekend I visited the Institute of Contemporary Art and saw the exhibition Street Level. Before seeing Street Level, street art to me was graffiti. However, Street Level shows that street art can be a collage assembling a sneaker, an installation of plenty used speakers, or a photograph sequence showing a skateboarder skating on a chalked-out half-pipe.

This is an interesting show and will be held until Oct. 19. Don’t miss it if you like street art.

It’s supposed to be a good thing when art meets marketing, because marketing bridges the gap between a piece of art and those who appreciate it. However, it becomes almost nauseating when art actually is the marketing. An e-mail from the Kluger Agency, who represents Mariah Carey and Ludacris, proposed offering the owner of Double Happiness Jeans, a virtual sweatshop in Second Life, an opportunity to include Double Happiness Jeans, with the right price, in the lyrics of an upcoming Pussycat Dolls song. While Pussycat Dolls is not a band with too much integrity that will cause heart attacks to their fans, it’s still scary to imagine the possibility of other artists writing songs to advertise products and companies that pay them.

However, who is to blame? Digital music and file sharing have forced the musicians to scour for new revenue sources. Music itself has become less of a product, but more of marketing, branding, merchandising, and targeting rolled into one. This trend can be verified by the fact that more and more major artists such as Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails offer their music for free or whatever price people want to pay. Licensing deals, brand extensions, product lines, live events, movie and TV deals are where the money really is.

What about the contemporary art industry? The sales shows that an art piece is still the product, one that can sell for millions of dollars. Sotheby’s and Christie’s, the two main auction houses, together sold an eye-popping $12.5 billion in artwork last year—an annual increase of more than 40 percent. However, who determines the value of an art piece? Artists?  Buyers? Dealers? Or galleries? My answer is the marketing. Marketing stimulates demand, marketing creates a social status of ownership, and then marketing determines the value of an art piece. The success of some of the most popular artists throughout history is often due to their performance as businessmen. Damien Hirst, undeniably the most profitable artist alive, was once accused by The New York Times of being less of an artist than “the manager of the hedge fund of Damien Hirst’s art.” And as we all know, Andy Warhol once observed: “Good business is the best art.”

Art, when it meets marketing, sells.

The winner of the 2008 Next Star Artist Competition, Herb Williams, is currently having a solo exhibition of his work at the Monsoon Gallery in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. According to the Monsoon Gallery press release “The Monsoon show will include many flowers ­ a perfect subject choice due to the intense saturation of color the crayons give Williams ­ as well as several homages to great artists throughout history. Williams’ art can be enjoyed by all, but audiences with knowledge of art history will especially enjoy seeing his take on the work of artists such as Jim Dine, Alexander Calder, Paul Cezanne, and Albrecht Durer”

Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants
July 11 - September 3
Opening Friday, July 11

Location:
Monsoon Gallery
11 East 3rd Street
Bethlehem, PA 18015
610.866.6600
www.monsoongalleries.com

Press Reviews:

• According to Caroline
• Museum PR News
• Montgomery Newspapers

Image Source:
“Homage To Andre Serrano”
15? x 17? x 17?
mixed media
in artist collection
©Herb Williams

About the Author
Nicholas Forrest is an art market analyst, art critic and journalist based in Sydney, Australia. He is the founder of www.artmarketblog.com, writes the art column for the magazine Antiques and Collectibles for Pleasure and Profit and contributes to many other publications.

The more information you have about artists and the art market, the better your chances of being a successful art investor.  Check out the full post to see my top ten sources for videos

“New law proposed in response to exhibition: It would criminalise those who harm animals when making art”

Sounds like a logical proposition, right? Not when such a law is based on an artwork that was created to bring attention to the slaughter animals face—not because of the artist, but farmers. As The Art Newspaper reported, Algerian-French Adel Abdessemed made a video installation to demonstrate the killing of farm animals, which raised legislators’ attention when it was shown at the San Francisco Art Institute. The Institute closed the show after receiving death threats from animal rights extremists. “The SFAI says that Abdessemed was documenting traditional methods of food production in Mexico and that no gratuitous violence took place to make the videos,” the paper reported. It seems to me that Abdessemed was taping something that would have occurred with or without his presence, and in the same vile manner, and he wanted the public to know what otherwise would have been hidden from them. Is that not the essence of a documentary?

And then the law proposal emerges. What does this pending law tell us? Not that killing animals is wrong. No. The person who brought such a horror to the public attention (yet again, since we never seem to get the hint) is being silenced while those who write death threats against their own kind are rewarded.

Abdessemed is someone fighting for social causes, for the good of man—and animal—kind, using art as his platform. Would attempts be made to silence a journalist in the same way? In all likelihood, a journalist would have been rewarded for bringing this issue to public attention. Perhaps the farm where the documentary was filmed would be fined, suspended, or even shut down completely. If Abdessemed was a journalist, rather than an artist.

Maybe that’s a strong statement. Either way, the Institute should have stood its ground, perhaps requesting protection from the government. Instead, the government’s response was completely backwards, and such thoughtless acts against artists should not be tolerated. Neither should the slaughter of animals—so maybe the headline should have read, “New law proposed in response to exhibition: It would criminalize those who harm animals” Period.

Click here to read the original article that caused such outrage.

In a recent trip to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, I stood in front of Heide Fasnacht’s Sneeze IV from 2003 (punctured paper) and couldn’t help but think, “Hm.. I guess that is what a sneeze would look like” (if it became tactile, that is). As I looked at it, enjoying Fasnacht’s flippancy, I wondered what else this hallway had to offer. But when I glanced to its side, I suddenly switched from enjoying a clever piece of art to analyzing curatorial decisions and the impermanence of art.

Sneeze IV hangs next to Sigmar Polke’s Untitled from 1988 (black ink and stenciled spray paint on paper). Looking at Untitled, all I could do was chuckle a little, thinking “Well that looks like a sneeze, too.” For some reason, however, I don’t think the post-war German artist aimed to represent a sneeze.

The most astounding aspect of curatorial decisions is that they allow for interpretation – and misinterpretation – of art that otherwise may not have been considered. Unless I’m in the middle of one, sneezing is not frequently on my mind, so I cannot imagine I would have ever seen Untitled and thought “sneeze.” (Or, for that matter, seen Sneeze IV and thought “sneeze,” if not for the title.) By viewing Polke’s work this way, I began to consider the organic quality of a work that otherwise would have made me think of machines and mass production, with its repeated dot pattern, layers of design, and shades of grey.

Artwork on the whole, however, is organic and ephemeral. It comes from within (its maker, ie, the artist) and is put onto a piece of paper (or canvas; or shaped into a form; or is a recorded moment). The features that make up the – at least in these two instances – are permanent. The dots and lines that float in the foreground of Untitled look like they are about to move, but they will not go anywhere. They will exist as is for as long as the work exists.

The work as a whole, however, can be torn, burnt, or have coffee poured on it. It can be ruined. It may represent something mechanical, but it is not as sturdy as a building or the objects of an industrial age. Art, as I was reminded by this pairing, is always just as ephemeral as a sneeze.

When I lived in Paris “Laissez-Faire” was just another expression used in conversation. When I went to college and took economics it took on a new meaning.

It has taken me most of my adult life to “Laissez-Faire” instead of forcing things to happen. It is amazing that with less effort and stress I am accomplishing so much more than when I was so ambitious and relentless in my pursuits.

It is the boomerang effect- let it go and it comes back to you. The Universe knows our needs and desires and as soon as you let go - they come back.

This image, “Laissez-Faire”, is a compilation of all of that.

People ask me to show them what is what in my images - but I don’t. Every observer sees something unique in my art work. Yes, there are hidden meanings in each of the images and if you can find them you will enjoy the image even more.

My work is created with passion. Passion from the heart . . . sharing my perspective with others. Hopefully inspiring them to think and feel.

At one of my shows I included a piece of art that was very controversial - and one of the people at the show told me how much he hated the image - how it disturbed him and how he couldn’t even look at it.

I thanked him. He was shocked. I told him I had succeeded in the creation as I had made him feel. He didn’t get it…..but I moved him - just not in the direction he wanted to go.

“Laissez-Faire” has several hidden meanings. There are elements that are obvious and many others that are subtle and may never be noticed. Even the title holds a subtle meaning far from the obvious. But, it is for you the observer to see or not. In any event I hope you enjoy the image . . . or at least feel something when you are looking at it - if you do - then I succeeded with this image.

About the Author

Stephen Moody’s Visions in Art shimmer with the movement, color and vibration that has fascinated him since childhood. His mother provided him his first art class at the young age of five.

The family home was a gallery to many original paintings and other works of art and by the age of 13 he had visited most of the great museums throughout the United States and Europe. While living abroad, he studied artists in France, England and the Middle East.

Moody has explored light and color through many different mediums; photography, paint, motion pictures and technology. He imagines his subjects, not as moments frozen in time, but as animated movements in life, and orchestrates movement, color and vibration together in one fluid image. Moody’s interpretations don’t hang on the wall but rather live in the room, changing perspective and feeling as the viewer experiences them in different ways. READ MORE . . .