Rob I love you but you totally missed the point this time.
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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 donât know how transformative this work is. Definitely size â 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 heâs exploring other worlds with these paintings, thatâs beyond the pale, because he is not. He is exploring the reproduction, enhancement and transformation of somebody elseâs exploration.
However, does he ever claim that?
His wikipedia page says âIâm rather like a Dr Frankenstein, constructing paintings out of the residue or dead parts of other artistâs 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 â 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.â
So, while some of the critics talk about Brownâs use of wild imagery, Brown himself credits (to some extent) the original artistsâ inspiration.
Okay. Iâm out. This is a facile response.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this work itself is old hat â itâs from 1994. And was not mechanically reproduced. Nor did the Brown himself get any cut of the $5.7 million. Since he hasnât owned the painting in more than a decade. [Iâm not disagreeing with you; Iâm ⌠amending?]
[The problem is my comments are technically trivial, with the bulk of the alleged comment taking place in the realm of context. Which is bullshit, because you could effect the same comment by making mechanical reproductive tweaks (ngrams, oulipan) to a dictionary and posting it at BoingBoing with some arty bollocks.]
Ah⌠Well, you seemed to be responding to Mcsneeâs comment about Warhol by emphasizing that what Warhol did was markedly different than Chris Fossâs work. You explained how no one would confuse Warholâs silkscreen prints of the soup can with an actual soup canâthat they would understand the authorship is in his interpretation (or, arguably, lack thereof).
My point is that your argument may stand for that particular work (and certainly others of Warholâs work), but Mcsneeâs comment is still valid because Warhol did appropriate images (e.g., the car wrecks) that the viewer could easily mistake as originating with Warhol.
Every now and again the stitching between fine art and technology looks a little more naked and pisses people off. So letâs scratch the scab and look at why.
and a new article over on io9
First of all, a few details that may have slipped through the cracks in yesterdayâs story (in which case I apologize) â Glenn Brown copied Fossâ work over a dozen years ago, and it previously sold in 2002. Brown himself is not going to see a penny of that $5.7 million because he already sold the painting. Also, by all accounts, Brown hasnât been copying science-fiction book covers in the past decade,
http://io9.com/how-to-understand-why-an-awesome-book-cover-became-expe-1497969800
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Granted, thatâs why I said that I wasnât going to try and defend Warhol, Iâm not in a good position to pit Browns body of work against Warholâs. 
I just felt that its unfair to say that this painting is a transformation of the original work.
Thanks for posting this, youâve saved me looking it up to post, as the PM item was the first I heard about the whole thing 
The big news I took away from the PM item was that Chris Foss, whoâs work adorns many books on my shelves DID THE ILLUSTRATIONS FOR âTHE JOY OF SEXâ!
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âyou conflate the artist with the marketâ
I didnât conflate the artist and the market, I explicitly separated them in the context of a talking to someone else who does: âIf youâre ever frustrated when someone looks at modern art and dismisses itâŚâ
âsecond, if you want to plagiarise somethingâ
I put âplagiarizedâ in quotes because this isnât plagiarism, as Iâve said several times! The story is the public accusation of plagiarism in the wake of the sale; that is how you indicate attribution.
" donât preach to the choir about how pointless contemporary art is."
I didnât say that contemporary art is pointless; I lamented the frustration of discussing it with âsomeone who looks at modern art and dismisses itâ thanks to works like this.
" if you donât know what youâre talking about (and you clearly donât), shut up"
Reading comprehension, do you speak it? You spent hundreds of words ranting about things not said, and you were as smarmy and hostile about it as they come.
This is totally how you explain art to random strangers, isnât it?
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Because thatâs the news event that triggered the discussion.
An embarrassing, straw-burning rant; cries of âweasel wordingâ; pasted dictionary definitions; goalpost-shifting when itâs all pointed out to them⌠Ugh! Slow down, strap down that bouncing knee, and read.
Sad that after a pretty decent thread covering all these issues, someone turns up with the USENET art-expert act and âOh, do be quiet.â
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If youâre not conflating the two, then why is Brown the reason why people dismiss art, artists, and the market?[quote=âbeschizza, post:73, topic:18943â]
Sad that after a pretty decent thread covering all these issues, someone turns up with the USENET art-expert act and âOh, do be quiet.â
[/quote]
To be honest, this strikes me as pretty disingenuous. Itâs not like you treat these forums as snark-free zones, and a similar general atmosphere around here often makes it difficult to have substantively engaging discussions. Indeed, first you (smarmily) criticize a commenter for being smarmy, and then you engage in the highest level of smarm in your next response to him.
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Because his work is easy to interpret as trivial pastiche and appropriation, and few think far beyond the work.
The public reacts to it, but the market (alongside the media and other channels of acclaim and opprobrium) is generally what brings it to their attention. To point out that the viewer suffers from a âconflatedâ view at the end of this, and that itâs frustrating, isnât the same thing as suffering from it.
The artist and the salesmanship/speculation (and the language used around Brown is inane âskiffyâ sci-fi) are both worthy of criticism, but in different ways. This isnât conflating the two, clearly.
Smarm flows easily as a response to smarm, but youâre right. Iâm sorry I responded in kind and will endeavor not to do so again. Smarm is a terrible thing, and Iâm glad weâre all developing an immune response to it.
Snark though; snark is OK, and people here are pretty good at aiming it the right way.
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I was surprised to read your apologia, Rob â because it sounds completely opposite to how you came off in the post and all of your previous comments [which in turn were surprising, because they didnât seem how you normally thought things through].
If we are finally getting to what you wanted to talk about, great! But it hasnât seemed that way until this morning. Context.
Thereâs a good stuff about the transformative qualities of Brownâs work and lurking assumptions regarding âintellectual propertyâ. If youâre surprised, you shouldnât be. It is, after all, the internet.
Brownâs work might be pretentious, but whatâs worse is that its appropriation of Foss is meaningless, either as irony (as is assumed the case by many, whatever one might think of it) or simply as an unknowing, overblown recapitulation of themes that were already fully expressed by the original in its own context.
Yeah â itâs just that⌠you didnât come off that way in the post or most of the comments. Glad to see we were misinterpreting you.
Write succinctly in the knowledge that people will misunderstand it in predictable ways.
Itâs not a confession, itâs a manifesto!
A useful point IMO is that much of the blog-reading public (forgive me) tends to see this in terms of plagiarism, copycatting, etc., but much of the blog-writing public (forgive me!) tends to see it in terms of genre, co-optation, appropriation, and so on.
So, if Brownâs painting was of a generic space scene of his own imagining, would the painting have more or less merit? Does the âtransformationâ of Fossâs work contribute to your appreciation of Brownâs? How? What if Fossâ original was the same size as Brownâs? Is Fossâs work greater or lesser than Brownâs?
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I get what youâre saying about the photorealism thing. However, I think the object matters. If it was a giant, photorealistic painting of the book, Iâd have more time for it. As it is, If I saw that hanging on a wall, I would say, âWow, a Chris Foss pictureâ. Thereâs the difference, to me.
Iâd say personally, that the golden rule of art is, people donât have to agree with you. Especially if you tell them to shut up.
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You failed in your quest to not be smarmy! Itâs always last sentences that get us.
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My God, I just did it myself.
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