I like Xeniās take on this. The way Prince has done his latest āappropriation artā feels wrong. The best way to fight him is to make him irrelevant.
The nature of this kind of art takes us out of our comfort zone. I think that has value. But thereās nothing redeeming about it. He makes a ton of money on the art, and the subjects (who did 90% of the work) get no part of that action. At the end of the day, Prince seems more like an exploiter than an artist.
Heās worth $30 million, and will remain relevant as long as other people with similar amounts of money consider what he produces to be potentially profitable - this isnāt really art, itās finance. These days heās moved on from stealing - or āre-photographing,ā as he chooses to call it - images of the Marlboro Man from print advertisements (arguably saying something about advertising, the construction of American masculinity, blah blah etc.) to stealing from individuals, rather than corporations. If it was my photo, his attorneys would shortly be receiving a contract specifying licensing terms and an invoice for $20,000, due net 30 as a courtesy. To start with.
Then again: who knows whether these things actually sold? āDealers: They lie to you sometimes!ā
Liked! Especially because of that last line.
One one level I agreeā¦because I donāt care this type of art works.
But on another level it reeks of ageismā¦with Xeniās major complaint boiling down to āHeās an old guy and doesnāt understand social mediaā. and āhe was good in the 70āsā¦now heās worthless and oldā.
If it was a younger person like say. Charles Lutz that copies Andy Warholā¦itās high artā¦because itās new and the artist young. http://charleslutz.com/Paintings/WarholDenied
The major sin it seems is being OLD PERSON that doesnāt keep up with hip socail mediaā¦and is now worthless.
The fact the guy actually did appropriate the art from social media and scribbled his own piss on it and sold itā¦is in fact the very basic of appropriation artworks.
I also think he does understand social mediaā¦and putting appropriated media from instagram and scribbling on the āwallā his comments etcā¦is a very much the essence of social media.
If only he could be disenvowelled.
No, I think the point is that itās not good art. Yes he happens to be old, which is why this comparison (your dad, rapping badly) is apt. If he wasnāt old/a man, a different comparison would be made (your privileged self entitled rich white sorority cousin from the suburban midwest, rapping badly, for example) to illustrate how bad and embarassing and exploitative his art is.
Yesterday on Reddit, a woman associated with Suicide Girls whose own pictures were used in this manner fought back in what I found to be perfect. She is selling the same pictures for 90 bucks. Just cut the market out from under him.
While I appreciate this analogy was trying to be as universal as possible, a more accurate analogy would be, āits like watching @OtherMichael and @japhroaig do their NWA dance routineā.
(Hey, when is our next practice session?)
Tuesday night at 7pm, EST. Donāt forget your parachute pants!
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