Actually, Foss’ original would have been quite a bit larger than the finished cover. It is standard practice to do illustrations at a comfortable (large) size, and then shrink them to format. That way, it is simple to get in a decent level of detail, and slight flaws become unnoticeable.
1 Like
There was a short interview with Foss on the BBC’s PM this week. I don’t know if you can access this outside the UK, but it starts at 37:00, and gets to round to talking about Brown at 41:00.
Brown apparently asked permission for a homage back when he was a fresh graduate, and Foss, distracted by work, gave it. He doesn’t seem too bitter about it, but Foss is puzzled by the fact that Brown gets millions for his “homage”, whereas his latest painting gets enough to buy a “state of the art diesel tractor”.
2 Likes
Oh, so… Which would you say it is and what is your opinion of that comparison? 
Me I just used the can as an example because it would probably be familiar when responding to:
“I’m not an art scholar, but isn’t that a description of Warhol did?”
Which is a response to:
“Which is bullshit, because you could effect the same “transformation” by making mechanical differences to the original (size, saturation) and selling it at Sotheby’s with some arty bollocks.”
Well yes, but has anybody ever seen Foss’ original, in its original state (other than the folks that commissioned it and got it put onto the book cover)? That’s the point I was trying to make earlier in my post re: recontextualization.
Well, exactly - which is why I mentioned that whether or not this work actually has any recontextualization to it, recontextualization alone isn’t really enough to make Brown’s work interesting (or valuable, which I didn’t state in my original post) any way.
Popular sci-fi artists often sell their originals at SF con art shows, these days. I don’t know if there was much of a market back in the 70s, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the original is above some fan’s mantelpiece.
Foss also sells 100 prints (in various sizes) of each painting - which would lower the value of the original.
What I would say the art world is? I would say it is something that cannot be summed up in a single sentence without being at extreme risk of creating a strawman argument 
I feel more sorry for the art critic. He has to work so hard to convince himself that there is something of value here. Then he needs to write it up in pseudo-academic prose and actually publish it somewhere – under his own name! Poor guy. I’m sure it only bothers him, though, on those dark nights of the soul, when insomnia forces him to confront every stupid thing he has ever done or said. On those occasions, I imagine the misery is overwhelming.
2 Likes
I know there s a lot of ‘appropriation’ style discussion here right now, but the thing that annoys me the most is that the work had to be appropriated by Glen Brown in order to be appreciated by high/ fine art curators and buyers. I have stood in a bookstore with artist friends and been ridiculed for drooling over a coffee table book on the history of sci fi illustration. I am an artist and love fine art and sci fi illustration both. For what it s worth, lichenstein did alter most of his works a fair amount, esp. his later work, he ended up kind of using an abstract ben day dot style really. also, I have admired in the past Glen Browns other work , which is pretty cool, but had no idea about these kinds of appropriations. comparisons with Warhol are certainly fair game, but Warhol sorta painted a giant arrow on capitalism with what he did, whereas Brown just situated Foss (who is already a huge legend in his own right within sci fi illustration) within art history. so this might be akin to the permeable barrier that seems to be developing between artist and curator.
Many of the bookcover illos you see at art shows are unique, too – in acrylic or even oil – but they sell for thousands, not millions, and are often much better art.
I read about this somewhere else this morning, and the article stated that he started adding attributions AFTER a court case (I think it was on io9/Gawker, mind, so…).
I think I’d rather have the original Foss, thanks.
3 Likes
It probably wasn’t 79 1/8" by 118 1/8" though, which is what the auction catalog lists as the canvas size. I have the same general reaction everyone here has of “dude, really?!?”, but will grudgingly admit that making the image the size of a wall probably does change some of the impact.
No, I mean, whats a better comparison? You mentioned the photographs of car wrecks, So, how do those compare and how does that affect the point I was making?
There is so little actual transformation here, though, that this is the visual version of Vanilla Ice’s infamous “da da da DA da da” theory of rhythm tracks.
Chris Foss, now an elderly man, does not take any cut. In a recent BBC interview he sounded quite sad - if phlegmatic - about the whole affair.
Brown only asked Foss for permission once. Shortly after graduating Brown asked Foss for permission to produce a work that would be an “homage” to his. Foss assumed it would be a one-off project. He was very surprised when Brown entered his version of “Stars Like Dust” for the Turner prize, years later. You can listen to the whole interview here - at 37 minutes in: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03nt7dl
The interview is very worth listening to, just to hear a little about Foss’s life.
3 Likes
Well, yeah, especially as recontextualisation is the normal situation for original works nowadays anyway. Consider the act of listening to Bach’s Passions in the comfort of your living room or to the 48 in a concert hall, or looking at classical paintings used as illustrations for articles or as backgrounds for YouTube music videos - these are all recontextualisations of the originals (without reattribution). We really don’t need Brown to point out how this process works.
He is an artist and he says it is art.
I think he ruined it by going into too much detail as to why it is art.
Well, you are getting close to understand Bitcoin.
2 Likes
Contextual transformation has been a part of the art world since Duchamp exhibited a urinal a hundred years ago. It’s an accepted and well understood aspect of contemporary art. It’s part of that world, where the image or the object is only a small aspect of the actual art work.
You can call that arty bollocks, but that’s what the art world is interested in. You don’t have to like it (I’m not claiming to), but it can’t be dismissed. Or at least, it will not be dismissed within the art world.
One way I like to think about this sort of thing, as well as other strange boundary pushing work: People in the art world have seen a lot of paintings and sculpture. A whole lot of them, thousands of years of paintings and sculpture. They know everything in all of those million page art history books. Many are no longer impressed by a technically accurate image, a nice design, or another well rendered object. It’s old hat. Boring. They want something new. They want to be surprised, to wonder, to experience something new and interesting. To some of them, this transformation - from book cover to large painting in a fine art context - will intrigue them. Partially, perhaps, because of the audacity, and the thought that an artist shouldn’t get away with that sort of thing. It’s edgy and new and interesting. Unlike the original book cover. And therefor, for some, transformed into an object worth millions.
2 Likes
