“Inspired by the Hennessy Artistry curation process, Hennessy has invited a posse of artists to express themselves around the iconic Hennessy V.S bottle with true creative freedom creating five new iconic bottle designs.
Hennessy Artistry’s Questlove and Q-Tip, alongside the musical talents of A-Trak, Kid Sister and Steve Aoki and stunning visual artists Dust La Rock, Spaceknuckle, Aerosyn-Lex Mestrovic, Fafi and Laundry are all part of this collaboration process.” – Hennessy Blending of Art
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You guys, I swear I’m not as obsessed with Banksy as my post history might suggest. But SERIOUSLY his work is so interesting! Here is the Simpsons opening he wrote and directed. It’s pretty epic.
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If you’ve been in Los Angeles recently, you may have seen French graffiti artist Above’s celebrity arrows hanging around town. If you’re in Paris, keep an eye out for his new piece, parodying the success of art world darling Banksy.
Last year I was traveling for 3-months around Europe and spent 2 weeks in Paris. One day when I was walking around Paris I found this spot but unfortunately I had just 1 day before my flight to Rome. After observing the large concrete frame on the wall, it gave me a lot of inspiration for several ideas on how to creatively interact with the un-used frame and location. One idea was to juxtapose an “art thief” stealing a popular painting like the Mona Lisa from the frame. I felt the idea and site-specific stencil would interact well with the un-used frame and the fact that the Mona Lisa is located just 10 minutes away inside the Louvre museum.
Time always changes things and with that new situations arise. Since last year when I was in Paris I’ve noticed a lot of new topics in street art and more importantly the thievery of art works in the street. I felt it more interesting and relative to have the art thief portrayed in the stencil stealing a piece of art that actually gets stolen quite often. The English artist Banksy is one of the most popular street artists and highly publicized victims of his street artworks being stolen. It’s not by random chance this happens to Banksy’s art as first and foremost he makes great work but also due to the fact that his indoor works have sold for several hundred thousand dollars you can imagine when he paints outside in the street his works are soon sought after by thieves.
It’s an interesting concept and somewhat of an irony as we the artists and the thieves are both working in an illegal manner. One illegal activity inspires another. The artist paints illegally with spray cans on a wall, while the thieves jack hammer and chip off illegally painted walls, illegally. It’s kind of like the pot calling the kettle black to a degree.I took the initiative to comment and create a situation in this piece that could mimic both illegal acts simultaneously executed here in the painting and in the process.
Many years ago before Banksy’s mass appeal he painted his popular rat image that read, “Because I’m worthless.” Times have changed Banksy is a common household name as well as the increased value of his artworks. I felt like it would be applicable to the current state of affairs to appropriate his previous statement to “Because now I’m worth it” to reflect the past and current thievery of his street artworks. – Above
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“A graffiti/film/music three-way
Dulux Valentine and BETC Euro RSCG Paris brought together graffiti artist Matt W Moore, directing collective Le Groupuscule and techno artists Monsieur Monsieur to create a colorful installation/video.
MWM painted murals in Marseille, Lyon and Paris which were brought to life with music and video.” – Creativity Online
The making of and public reactions:
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This is epic and engrossing, def worth 10 minutes of your time.
BIG BANG BIG BOOM – the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.
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Since March of this year, Shepard Fairey has been installing murals all over town, and I, like many artsy people my age, think it’s great, as greater Cincinnati is sorely lacking in much public art, plus, well, his stuff is cool. I even got one in my neighborhood.
But as is probably not unexpected, the subject matter of Fairey’s pieces have been pretty seriously divisive here in the middle Midwest. Some responses have been positive and thoughtful:
“Many people, when they saw [the Silverton mural] and we talked about what it meant, thought it was beautiful,” Wade said. “We talked about how depicting disturbing images is not the same as condoning them.” Source
Fairey’s Silverton mural, pre-paintover
Other responses have been with outrage and paint. Both the Pike Street and Madisonville murals have now been covered over with white paint. Amusingly, while the Pike Street removal was carried out by the owners of the building the mural is on, the Madisonville mural was NOT authorized to be painted over, and the incident is being referred to as vandalism against the mural. So, wait…is Shepard a vandal, or are the people painting over his work the vandals?
“I think adults will see [the Pike Street mural] as a commentary on war, but kids will see it as a school kid carrying a big rifle,” [one local resident] said. “On the other hand, I think its removal is a travesty. It’s an awful commentary on the lack of tolerance in our society.” Source
Pike Street mural, pre-paintover
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Apparently everyone’s favorite stenciling Brit has been busy on the West Coast in recent weeks in promotion of his new film, Exit Through The Gift Shop.
“I’m thinking of quitting the art world. I want to do something a bit more creative.” Check out TONY’s interview with Banksy here.
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Stenciling conjures up images of floral and fruit patterns in my head.
I think I can safely attribute this to the type of old-schools stenciling I believe I’ve seen my grandma do in the past. Not that stenciling of that sort is bad, it just isn’t necessarily my cup of tea.
Well, I stumbled onto a Tweet out in the Twitterverse the other day that shows that stenciling is more than just a bunch of pastel flowers or pretty images of fruit.
Old-School Stenciling
This tweet I stumbled upon was about Sten and Lex; Italian street artists that utilize an approach to stenciling called ‘hole school.’ Apparently, they cut a huge stencil, basically paste it on a poster (it appears the canvas they use is primarily wood as far as I can tell), paint over the whole thing in black and then peel everything away leaving behind a negative image. Through the removal of the stencil, scraps are left behind as the stencil is destroyed. From there, the scraps are actually left on and are allowed to become part of the art. The resulting stencils are just awesome.
Sten & Lex Stencil
If you want to see how the whole process goes down, check out the quick video below. And if you find yourself in Brooklyn in the fall, you might want to look up their showing at Brooklynite Gallery.
STEN LEX stencil poster from STEN on Vimeo.
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