Dalek Print Chuck Taylor All Stars.
Has anyone noticed how the vast majority of ‘artists’ that design products for name brand companies like Oakley, Converse and Scion seem to be spontaneously co-created as and when a new line is due to be released? Has anyone heard of these people in an art context before? Where did they come from? What have they been doing for money until now? will they ever be heard from again?
CAIA KOOPMAN ARTIST SERIES OAKLEY RAVISHING™ Polished White/G40 Black Gradient (24-048).
We have some indication that suggest these artists are in fact designers and/or illustrators who are re-branded as Artists with a capital “A” by name brand companies who then compound Joe Public’s skewed sense of value by jacking up the price of their product (or hip skin on an existing product), their justification: the limited edition Artist series. Alternately, anyone with a shred of the right kind of credibility is paid to Customize (with a capital “C”) products which are then paraded around as trophies from some sort of street-cred safari big game hunt shoot out.
Scion’s Installation Five art tour in Miami.
Apart from further confusing an already baffled art world, these items undermine the cultural importance of art as like-minded contentious non faddy patrons understand it. Is the word ‘Artist’ destined to be just another word in the English language that is overused and undervalued, like the word ‘Terrorist’? Are we doomed to traipse apathetically (if not blindly) into a quagmire of illegitimate meaning, over priced trinkets and mass produced samey decorative clobber?
WILL BARRAS ARTIST SERIES MONTEFRIO® Polished Black/Grey (24-049L1).
The lines that separate and validate passions, reputations and specialties are not drawn in sand and yet the majority of us seem not only to sanction their degradation, but actively support it. The buzz word for companies like Oakley, Converse and Scion it seems is now not quality, individuality or even style, but hype[.]
The Hump Day Cool Finger is a new weekly feature that uses regrettable examples of the dissolution of contemporary art into trinkets to illustrate the times we live in.
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This post was contributed by Thomas Hollingworth.
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8 Comments
It worked for BMW in the 1970s when they enlisted a slew of artists to design art cars.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGfMsGc-2hY
what’s that barf on the side of that carf?
The barf could be a scharf!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDL8joAKHv4
Tom Sachs Moleskine Experience
Seriously, who cares if some fool artist decides to participate in some tasteless product placement. As for Oakley…it has been downhill ever since 1984:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rodneywills/3707446568/
But it’s snot!
incorrigible snoots, disappointing twits.
Oakley is the style of choice for those sporting mullets.
Corporations will continue to reach out to artists offering the promise of EXPOSURE, while the corporations profit.
They believe artists are to freely offer their talent for a pittance.
This is the realm of Britto.
But taken in light of the Lance Armstrong bicycle post, if you are helping a cause raise money for say hair lip babies, cancer or coffee halitosis then there is merit to donating art. I’ve donated work in the past and would continue to do so for the right cause.
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