The Harry Potter of the Street Art Vanguard Has Taken Me Down A Notch

Uh oh!
The Situationists and the Graffiti kids are at war in New York City!

I'm excited and I am totally siding with the Situationists on this one - in theory. But not the part where they are literally throwing explosives into galleries where graff artists are getting shows.

The NY Times reporter seems a bit offended and accuse the new Situationists of looking like Harry Potter and being unfocused, arguing that there is nothing wrong with artists making money. That's fine, but he then acts like Guy Debord shares his opinion. Guy Debord does not share that opinion, Guy Debord slept on couches until he was like 103. Still, I enjoyed this paragraph, if only because Situationists never really make it to the NY Times these days:

"Guy Debord, the Situationist writer and spokesman who, before he died in 1994, couldn’t resist responding to anybody who barely mentioned him, would no doubt be exercised by this latest invocation of his legacy. A Situationist in Paris did once dress up as a Dominican priest and read an anti-theist tract to a baffled congregation at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. In Copenhagen, in the ’60s, members of a group calling itself the Movement for a Scandinavian Bauhaus Situationniste were suspected by the police of being responsible for the decapitation of "The Little Mermaid," the city’s famous symbol, and absconding with the head. Still, Situationist pranks were pointedly political. Across nearly half a century of random art world mischief, they seem almost scientific in their focus, by comparison with young people who toss stink bombs at gallery openings or splash paint on street art."

Maybe the intention is nice, but I suppose stink bombs aren't exactly revolutionary, either. There is a situationist trick - adopted by hipsters in regard to music and 14-year olds in regard to everything - where you find something your friends think is cool, then declare it co-opted by the bourgeois. Well, maybe that's not the words they're using, but you know what I mean.

I discovered that I can never fully embrace the rejection of bourgeois art simply because I like pretty things too much.

(Image: Cover, The Situationist Times #6, Bramsen et Georges Clot, Paris 1967)

Music: Vampire Weekend, "Oxford Comma"

This song by Vampire Weekend has been lodged in my head all week thanks to numerous other music blogs, so I'm passing it on, with commentary on the subject matter that most will find ingratiating:

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford Comma? I do, for one. Given that I was bitten by the copy-editing bug a year or so ago, it is mildly concerning. Given that I worked with people who are much more passionate about that job than I was, it was the source of contention and some passionate discourse.

For those who are not grammar enthusiasts, an Oxford Comma is the comma that comes before "and" in a list.

Example, with:
I told him to buy a bag of lemons, limes, and cherries.
Example, without:
I told him to buy a bag of lemons, limes and cherries.

It's controversial because it is grammatically correct either way, but various publishers have unique standards for it. Otherwise, it's a matter of taste. I tend to avoid it. Where do YOU fall, grammatically engaged reader?

"Scout" by Josh Keyes

Josh Keyes has a number of paintings up at his Web site, primarily a collection of whimsical-yet-macabre scenes of animals on small plots of land, floating in an isolated space. It evokes feelings of a peacefully-exploded Earth, while also serving up an all-too-apt metaphor for human sprawl and the dwindling spaces for nature. That said, it also looks a lot like Katamari Damacy.

There's a number of recurring themes in his work: the floating concrete, the signposts, animals growing extra heads, or prey animals that are missing cleanly excised areas of their bodies. When Keyes shifts to the dwellings of humankind, they become planes of inter-folded lawns, literally confronting us with the illusion of infinite space.

Not to say all of his work is Adbusters-level dreary, there's an element of satire that makes the pieces clever (in a good way) in getting at the message involved.

Deconstructing Lichtenstein

The Web site Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein is a fascinating, side-by-side compendium of Lichtenstein's images and the source materials they derived from - which must have taken countless hours of researching 60s-era comic books.

Girl and Bear

A poster-glue-and-wall collaboration between marketing genius Obey and graff writer Gaia that caught my attention.

It's "Dressed In Bags" Monday!

This dress was made out of recycled plastic shopping bags. It was ironed together to form "seams" and you can see pictures of it being worn here.

The Treehugger blog has some other great links to this and other plastic-bag fabric projects, including a link to Etsy's helpful plastic-bag revamping tutorial.

Super Amigos!

Super Amigos is a Mexican-based documentary (really!) about five activists who have adopted super-hero identities to fight problems in their communities. Taking on the characteristics of the Luche Libre tradition of Mexican wrestling, they don capes, masks, and costumes while fighting injustice. There are five wrestlers, including:

- Ecologista Universal, who fights pollution.
- Super Barrio, essentially "Super Union Worker."
- Super Gay, who battles homophobia in Mexico City.
- Super Animal, who battles matadors on behalf of animal rights.
- Fray Tormenta, a priest who fights poverty on behalf of children.

From the distributor:

"With a mixture of live action, comic book-style animation and a surf guitar soundtrack inspired equally by mariachi music and Batman, Super Amigos shows that with a little imagination, a good heart and the right mask, anyone can activate their communities to triumph over evil."

Finally, a trailer:

Drawing with HTML Tables

Go ahead and keep the volume turned down for this one. It's a fast-motion video of a "Japanese guy" (that's all the info I have) who has figured out how to draw images using table elements within HTML. It's a bit like ascii art, only he's doing it in real time and using free-hand techniques. Pretty impressive!