Ryan McGinness and Defaults
Posted by v on April 13th, 2007
This jpeg of a print by Ryan McGinness comes from Paddy Johnson’s blog. She’s talking about the marketing of this image and this artist and it’s worth a read to show you the mechanics of the hype and real estate and brand-building. I’m posting it on a slightly different topic, which is the “defaults” school of digital art. This strikes me as a very good example. It’s got the flat “Adobe Illustrator look” but this artist doesn’t make any bones about it. It’s a preset, and he is using it very well. There’s no getting around the content, either–any collector who buys the print will be looking through a prison camp fence, stylishly dressed up and tastefully layered as it might be. Several years ago I wrote about an installation by McGinness in a gutted building, soon to be renovated, on Lafayette–it also didn’t hide the digital “facture.” It was kind of the reverse of the above image–instead of a bleak adornment of a tony loft, the Lafayette show presented slick product logos on the inside of a “pre-owned” structure.
This post could probably read in tandem with one on Nasty Nets showing the similarity of some recent work by abstract/conceptual photographer James Welling and an Adobe Illustrator promotional graphic. Compare and contrast the relations of artists to well-known imaging software.
It could also be read together with my short interchange with a commenter about the use of presets in music (or more specifically the familiar interface Cubase.)
Originally by tom moody from Tom Moody on April 11, 2007, 11:49am
2 Comments »
I am a IB art student and I am currently researching McGinness to try and transform myself and my art into him for a final, and I was personally offended when i read this…
Ryan McGinness, doesnt make his art for you and me, he makes it for himself, he makes it because thats what he likes to do, I think you don’t get it, and you need to “get it ” to understand any of his work”. I think that his work is something that shouldn’t be critized or critiqued because unlike other artists, he doesnt make his art for a poetic feeling, to evoke emotion, he makes it just to make art, his kind of in his own world art. So I think that it should be left, un examined and un interpreted and left un analyzed and just enjoyed as is, as life should be
read up on him, but actually him not his art
October 9, 2007 @ 7:06 am
Ryan McGinness might be a genius. When you have the Style Court set, the “Stealth Wealth” gang, major museums such a MOMA, AND maybe most importantly, the skateboarder set, clamoring for anything Ryan, well, you have something both relevant and important. The fact is that McGinness is a global cultural star and one who i suspect will have the haters in a frenzy for decades to come!