The majority of the art commentary in here is above that in the io9 article.
Which is a bar so low a depressed snake with broken arches could fit under it.
Let me just lob this one out there for some context: Appropriation Art and Walker Evans - read or scroll down until you get to the Sherrie Levine bit.
THAT being said [I love that phrase. It means so little!] I don’t know how transformative this work is. Definitely size – hand-painting a large canvas from a small book cover or print (unless Foss loaned the original when he gave permission) is a technical feat. Not earth-shattering, but it takes skill. Pumping up the colors, flipping the design from left-to-right [different painting], changing the background… eh. I dunno.
BUT when the artist claims that he’s exploring other worlds with these paintings, that’s beyond the pale, because he is not. He is exploring the reproduction, enhancement and transformation of somebody else’s exploration.
However, does he ever claim that?
His wikipedia page says “I‘m rather like a Dr Frankenstein, constructing paintings out of the residue or dead parts of other artist‘s work. I hope to create a sense of strangeness by bringing together examples of the way the best historic and modern-day artists have depicted their personal sense of the world. I see their worlds from multiple or schizophrenic perspectives, through all their eyes. Their sources of inspiration suggest things I would never normally see – rocks floating in far-off galaxies, for example, or a bowl of flowers in an 18th-century room, or a child in a fancy-dress costume.”
So, while some of the critics talk about Brown’s use of wild imagery, Brown himself credits (to some extent) the original artists’ inspiration.
Okay. I’m out. This is a facile response.
