The Internet, of course, has a profound effect on the concept of revolutionary paradigms. Certainly, it has helped both Conal and Fairey find new audiences, educate volunteers, energize their bases. The Internet has become the electronic equivalent of those “town hall” debates (that the presidential jockeys joust dicks about every four years in a laughable […]
Thirdly, Fairey in particular has collapsed many of the distinctions between outsider art and the mainstream by both developing new markets whilst simultaneously controlling the means of production. His images seems equally at home on the walls of skateboard park walls and the editorial pages of east coast magazines. Conal, too, is a regular contributor […]
Fairey’s use of the phrase “real world” is an interesting one, because it lays down a kind of value system of legitimacy that begins and ends in the court of urban space. That’s a tough bar to jump over; I think the idea of what is ”real” is a loaded term in current political art […]
No. The streets are hard, for ingénue and veteran artist alike. The streets are a litmus test, sui generis, and the only artists who tend to succeed in their temporary colonizations of these negotiated sites are the ones who not only understand the streets but, generally, also have something of real import to actually transmit.
As […]
This week, I was fortunate enough to interview a couple of artist activists, for a magazine article, who represent the respective lodestones of their generations in terms of getting ‘political’ art out onto the street. Robbie Conal is an authentic satirist whose signature scabrous portraits of politicians have been invading urban space since the mid-80s. […]
The Fly was resoundingly inauthentic. Neither fish nor fowl, this strange production lumbered onto the stage with leaden gravitas and inconsequential philosophy, satisfying none of the people for none of the time. Some of the expensive seats certainly thrilled to the sight of a half-man half-fly crawling upside down through Dante Ferretti’s (sumptuous) set design; […]
Apart from baseball, I’ve never had to spectate using binoculars; and certainly not in an enclosed space. Opera halls like the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion do not, unfortunately, have giant video screens to relay the on-stage events for those seated at the back, wherein the opera singers could come off as some kind of Kid Rock-sized […]
It’s no coincidence, then, that the only opera crazy enough to get my attention was the avant-garde creation of The Fly. Playing at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown LA it offered a hybrid feast for the chatterati and the Geek alike: a reworking of David Cronenberg’s 1986 masterpiece, with music by original film composer Howard […]
I’m not even any good at what music I do like: I have an inability to remember lyrics - any lyrics - that drives my wife insane (though asking what the singer was “going on about” used to be a good ploy to pick up those women of loose morals), I have no idea of […]
I went to the opera for the first time, the other night; to see the LA leg of The Fly. This was strange enough, but coupled with the fact I went to see some live classical music for the first time too, at the Hollywood Bowl the week before, I am beginning to worry that […]