My MA has started at London Met and I'm excited and nervous but I can't actually do any thing. We've had our first lectures and on theoretical writing and research methods but they were really just introductions to the course, we have no actual work to do. We have also had our studios allocated but they're not actually ready to work in.
So I've decided to blog, about something almost completely unrelated, about celebrity art, not artists as celebrities but particularly celebrities that take up painting. Well not take up painting , but take up exhibiting paintings.
The example of these that has grabbed my attention, thanks to www.ArtInfo.com is Bob Dylan, whose "Asia Series" is being exhibited by the Gagaosian Gallery. They are paintings of scenes inspired apparently by his travels in the far east. Although they have subsequently turned out to be paintings from vintage photographs, which in itself isn't that shocking. If I had travelled in Japan and Hong Kong, I might well buy old photos and make paintings from them, but it turns out he found them on Flickr, and mostly on one particular 'photostream'.
There are so many levels on which I am finding this amusing. I don't really care that Bob Dylan has copied the photos, but that the Gagoasian has exhibited them is funny, they have already been involved in the Richard Prince making art out of Patrick Cariou Rasta photos lawsuit in the past year. Wonderfully Prince has written the text to the Dylan Catalogue.
Just when you think Gagoasian can't damage its reputation further they are showing unoriginal paintings which, purely because they are by someone famous for his music, which no-one seems to have mentioned aren't very good,
