DIVINE KIM KARDASHIAN AND SAINT / NORTH

This simple photographic wheat-paste street art in Venice, Los Angeles, depicts Kim Kardashian with, we assume, one of her two children (Saint or North West-Kardashian). In this image, she appears saintly, head wrapped in a manner like the late Mother Teresa. Kardashian may have once seemed an unlikely celebrity and pop-cultural phenom. The reality-TV star initially rose to notoriety on the heels of a leaked homemade sex tape back in the 2000s. Since then she has transcended from her role as TV celeb of dubious talent to an international beauty and fashion icon. She married hip-hop megastar Kanye West and bore her children with him. Recently she has become a vocal advocate for prison reform going so far as to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump to make the case for issuing a pardon on behalf of a convicted drug offender. Her profile is slowly changing. Perhaps motherhood, success, experience and a relentless media presence have led to an awareness of how to wield her influence, her megaphone, for a greater cause.

CONFUSED: LUMBER YARD OR ART MUSEUM?

The answer to the question is  …. art museum, obviously. Specifically the Hammer Museum of Art in Los Angeles. The logs you see pictured here not actually lumber but rather utility poles that for decades stood along the streets of Limassol on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.  When changes in technology rendered these obsolete, the poles were removed. The artist Christodoulos Panayiotou’s acquired these as a kind of readymade, found objects and material for this artwork, titled “Independence Street.”

ALL THE FEELS WRIT LARGE

This poignant street art, if it can be called that (we think it qualifies), is essentially poetry painted in black, handwritten cursive style on an back-alley gate in Venice, Los Angeles.

SNEAKERS : ARTIST DUMPS USED KICKS ON FLOOR, INSTANTLY CREATES CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED MASTERPIECE

Hey, you! Yes, YOU! You, the savvy reader of this blog. In case you did not know it, you are an artist!

Well, to clarify, if you aren’t, then you can be. Instantly! Yes, INSTANTLY! What if we were to say that you can be an artist within minutes, if not seconds?  

You don’t believe us. Well, let’s a try a little experimental exercise in art production. You have a pair of sneakers, yes? (If you don’t, that’s fine — for this exercise any type of footwear will suffice.) Ok, now grab those sneakers or loafers or mules or flips-flops or whatever, in fact grab a few pairs, as many as you can muster up really. Got ‘em? Great!

Now find some empty floor space, preferably bleached hardwood floor space and pick a spot near a wall, preferably a white wall. Place those pairs of shoes there, and by “place” we mean just dump the shoes on the floor and leave these as they lie when dropped.

And voila, you, savvy ready, have just created a work of art. In fact, it’s a conceptual artwork. It’s kind of like the artwork titled “Skin” by the awesome Moroccan artist Latifa Echakhch pictured in this post. (It’s was recently on view as part of the wonderful and cheeky “Stories of Almost Everyone” exhibition of conceptual art at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.)

You see, you are an artist! (To be more precise, you are conceptual artist!) Great job!

The real artistry here is in the next step: Getting somebody to pay you for this artwork, or at least to devote exhibition space to it.  

Of course, you can always just call the space you dropped those shoes a “gallery” and you’re now an artist with a gallery show. Look at you! You’ve come so far in just a few short minutes.

 

STREETSY : STENCIL STREET ART NOT DEAD, APPARENTLY

Stencil street art seems like it’s everywhere these days. It wasn’t always so. There was a time when mere graffiti art was put up either using cans of aerosol spray paint or for early graphical street art as poster sheets stuck on to walls using buckets of wheat paste and a brush.

The first use of stencils to create artwork allowed creators to much more quickly put up spray-painted works with more detail and graphical realism. Banksy was not the first to use stencils but much of his body of artwork uses elaborate stencils and the stenciled image is associated with his style. Using stencils made it so that he (he, she, they, whoever Banksy really is) could put art on walls in mere minutes if not seconds, thereby minimizing risk of detection by authorities.

The stencil may seem played-out now. Though the means of creation is not the artwork itself, stenciled street art has a distinct aesthetic quality. But unless the street artwork is super compelling, we’re a little jaded when it comes to seeing a stenciled work. The look is old, but the possibilities of its aesthetic potency remain undiminished.

Stencil street art is not dead, apparently.

The wheat-pasted stenciled artwork pictured here is rendered in red paint and shows a hand clasping a flower, possibly a rose. It’s in Venice, in Los Angeles, and it’s simple and poignant. What does it mean? You tell us.