Anti-intellectual ventures can't be neat?
What is supposed to be the reasoning behind the claim it's anti-intellectual?
I too don't see why it's anti-intellectual. Too long, perhaps, but so are most many intellectual endeavours.
Also, anything with Tilda Swinton in it wins.
The "anti-intellectual" comes from the not-quite-so-subtle whiff of "My kid could do that!" coming from this.
That said, I still think some of them are funny (and some of them are just thieving -- Beyonce, I'm looking at you.).
Yeah. Some of the copying is clearly witty commentary or deliberate tribute or reference/'intertextuality', some unthinking convergence on the same basic concept, and quite a bit is lazy or outright plagiarism/theft. Beyonce has 'previous', esp. with Fosse.
Art is art. And this is art.
Really well curated, in my opinion. Thanks for sharing.
This space reserved for why wanking about austerity is more important, that the greed heads won again, or that the bugs always win. I'm not actually talking about anyone who comments here. I would note that the bugs seem to facilitate an awesome business model.
7: The Beyonce/Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker thing was super egregious as well.
The question I keep asking isn't "who wore it better" but "coincidence, homage, or theft?" Sometimes the answer is clear, but most of the time I'd need more backstory to know. And the tumblr leaves me really curious about what the backstory is.
In some cases, you seem to have two pictures of what seems to be the exact same event, like the burning white car on a muddy backwoods road (Kranitz vs. Ashcom), or a man carrying an assault rifle in a South Dakota parking lot (Wolf vs. Rafman.) Are these cases of different artists appropriating journalistic photos, or maybe photos from Google World? Did we just have two artists on the same scene?
With Strauss vs. Graham, the real creator is the graffiti artist who seems to have done the same design at least twice in different Mississippi cities.
Dijkstra vs Grennan has the same model wearing the same bathing suit at different locations. What is the story there?
There goes my idea for a picture of Tilda Swinton carrying an assault rifle made of meat.
the not-quite-so-subtle whiff of "My kid could do that!" coming from this.
I don't get that whiff at all.
My kid could have made that comment, except that he can't spell contractions yet.
6, 13: "You stole that" and "My kid could do that" are similar, but distinct, odors.
6: It's not clear to me why "My kid could do that!" isn't perfectly legitimate criticism. But I'm a bit of a Philistine.
They're not similar at all, and it's far from obvious that the commentaryless side-by-side presentation amounts to "you stole that".
17: See 10.
16: There are a huge number of standard answers from the artistic community, such as "yeah, but you didn't think to do it, did you, and that is where the art comes in." I'm not really satisfied with any of these answers.
I prefer to take a lesson from punk. Saying that something is easy to do isn't a criticism of it. It is an invitation to do it yourself.
A good example are blank or monochromatic canvasses. Avant-garde types have been making these for over a hundred years, and you can too!
In my first apartment in Chicago I nailed a piece of copier paper to the wall and called it art. It was great. The paper was a brighter white than the walls, so when the light was dim, it looked like a place a picture used to hang, rather than a picture that was currently hanging.
16: You're supposed to be trying to look at at the art and appreciate it, not worrying about how much time, effort and/or skill it took the artist to make it.
Also, your kid might be a great artist.
Dijkstra vs Grennan has the same model wearing the same bathing suit at different locations. What is the story there?
No, it doesn't.
Or did you mean that they have the "same" i.e. parallel/similar/whatever model and suit? In which case, sure, but what kind of story would you need to explain it?
The slender, dark-haired boy wearing tight, high-waisted swimming trunks? That's not the same kid?
You're supposed to be trying to look at at the art and appreciate it
Maybe it isn't worth appreciating, though.
17: See 10.
I don't see in 10 any reason to think that "my kid could do that" is similar to "you stole that", or to think that if you're getting a whiff of "you stole that" from the site, it's because the site emits that odor, rather than because you've got a keen nose for theft.
My kid could get a whiff of that.
23: True. And if that's the case who cares if it required great skill to make it.
the exact same event, like the burning white car on a muddy backwoods road
Are they the same? The people are wearing different outfits, and the road looks like it goes back to something manmade in one, but not the other.
They are the same up to an unspecified transformation.
The slender, dark-haired boy wearing tight, high-waisted swimming trunks? That's not the same kid?
No. And it's not the same bathing suit either.
With Strauss vs. Graham, the real creator is the graffiti artist who seems to have done the same design at least twice in different Mississippi cities.
I'm super fascinated by the difference between what helpy-chalk thinks is the same and what I think is the same. This one looks to me to be clearly two photographs of the exact same building.
The one I really don't get is this one. Is the similarity supposed to be the layout?
Also they're both paintings of ads for other artists' shows.
32: and typography, I think so, yes.
31: They look like the same building to me too, but it's a little confusing that one is labeled "Biloxi" and the other "Gulfport".
The weeds don't match, so they're at least taken a while apart, but everything else matches up perfectly.
31: I was going off the fact that one is labeled "Biloxi, Mississippi" and the other "Gulfport, Mississippi." Looking at the buildings again, I see now that they are the same building.
On the other hand these still look like the same car to me and these look like the same boy. I admit, though, that my visual recognition systems are somewhere between eccentric and a disability.
We can agree that this is simple theft, right? Rosas danst Rosas is 1997 and Beyoncé's Countdown is 2011, and Beyoncé would not have thought her audience would get the reference (although they might have with Fosse.)
My friend collected a neat, printed canvas rice bag in Africa somewhere and wanted to frame it and put it on his wall as "found art." It would've probably been really cool! But he balked at the price of a frame, so the transformation into art never happened. There's a lesson in there somewhere.
although they might have with Fosse.
Given that every single reference I saw or heard to that video mentioned Fosse, I'm going with "definitely would have".
Cool site, neat to see.
Probably spelling out something obvious but: even in this limited medium, people with the same resources get the same idea independently (say the duplicate Helter Skelter references in the thread about dancing). Common in science-- people working with similar techniques and similar background knowledge get the same ideas independently. Nice to see the same creative phenomenon pointed out so clearly in visual art, but that's what I see the site to be demonstrating.
I liked both photos of adolescents burning cars a lot, by the way, a strong image for visual artists working in a shitty apathetic cultural milieu.
On the other hand these still look like the same car to me and these look like the same boy.
I think the cars are the same and the photos may well be of the same event -- I googled around a bit and both artists have done stuff at Skatopia in Ohio. The boys, however, are definitely different people.
It's not graffiti after all! It's a pawn shop. (in Gulfport, not Biloxi). They seem to have repainted since but you can see the same fist with money logo and the same windows (in different relationships to each other) from the street view thing.
What a useful way for me to have just spent 30 minutes!
I wish all of these had dates on them.
We can agree that this is simple theft, right? Rosas danst Rosas is 1997 and Beyoncé's Countdown is 2011, and Beyoncé would not have thought her audience would get the reference (although they might have with Fosse.)
The video lifted so much stuff that it's not clear that it lifted anything
44: Yes, my God, that's not "stealing" one fucking bit.
If it was done by some big-swinging dick auteur in a movie or TV show it would uncontroversially be viewed as homage.
45.2: I think it is in this case as well.
42: What a useful way for me to have just spent 30 minutes!
Thanks for spending them so I did not have to. Biloxi is contiguous with Gulfport and the airport that serves them is the Gulfport-Biloxi, so the confusion is somewhat understandable. But then again it is not located that close to the border between thm.
Welcome to the desert of the Imaginary.