Jan Olav Forberg, Stencils Oslo Cityhall Gallery

"OPPLEV LARVIK" Open to May 10. 2009

Blagojevich art: Graffiti stencil of disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich appears around city

By Colleen Mastony |Tribune reporter

May 1, 2009

A mysterious mural has turned up on a half-dozen concrete walls around the city in recent weeks. The black graffiti stencil shows former Gov. Rod Blagojevich wearing his familiar tracksuit, running through the street and glancing over his shoulder, as if he is being pursued. The image leaves it to the viewer to speculate about who is trailing Blago -- U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald, perhaps?

Regan HaHa Tamanui

Phat Of The Land

Exhibition dates: 30 April - 23 May 2009
Opening: Thursday, 30 April 6 - 8pm

http://www.boutwelldrapergallery.com.au/

Vandals target Banksy mural in Bristol

Ah. So much for not being an early riser. I missed the initial discusson on KQED about graff in SF.

Hopefully they'll post a mp3 of the talk soon here.

For now, ther's a discussion going on in the forum here. 

Guess this is leading up to the "huddle" that's happening later today on Kearney St.

Still not sure if the huddle will spark anything new on the topic beyond "call police, paint over, call police."

April 10, 2009, 1:08 pm

Graphic Content | Shepard Fairey Is Not a Crook

By Steven Heller

Here is the original post, with pics

Steven Heller, a former art director at The New York Times, is a co-chair of the MFA Design Department at the School of Visual Arts and a blogger and author.

Even before Shepard Fairey’s Barack Obama “Hope” poster became the focus of legal and ethical scrutiny — for Fairey’s use of Mannie Garcia’s A.P. news photo as the basis of the now ubiquitous image — some design critics and practitioners had already questioned the street artist’s habit of “sampling” existing imagery. A scolding essay by Mark Vallen, entitled “Obey Plagiarist Fairey,” which was published online in 2007, accused Fairey, who created the “OBEY GIANT” project in 1989, of “expropriating and recontextualizing artworks of others.” The booty in this alleged thievery is primarily propaganda imagery from the 1920s (Russian Constructivism and Bolshevist posters) to the 1960s (Chinese Socialist Realism and counter-culture rock posters). However, Vallen’s harsh indictment seems not to have hurt Fairey’s reputation. If anything, the criticism enhances his subversive agenda, as it fosters debate about the line between influence and theft in art and design.