Online Art Dealer Offers Print Featuring Golden Age Heroes

[Tropean]

 

Somehow I am on the daily email distribution list for an online art dealer called Artspace (FWIW I have no business relationship whatsoever with the company). I usually take only a casual glance at their offerings, but this one - for obvious reasons - really grabbed my attention:

 

 

Here's what Artspace says about it:

 

About the Work

 

This print by artist duo McDermott and McGough appropriates the imagery of post-war comic books to mock traditional notions of masculinity. Tiny superheroes come to the rescue as a dandified young man in a tuxedo jacket and striped boxers irons his pants. This playfully subversive image juxtaposes mundane reality with heroic masculine fantasies, toying not only with retro imagery, but with present-day delusions.

 

About the Artist

 

McDermott and McGough are multimedia artists known for their nostalgic obsession with by-gone eras. The duo met in New York in the 1980s, where they became known for their eccentric blending of art, fantasy, and daily life. McDermott and McGough immersed themselves in the Victorian era, dressing as Edwardian dandies, reading by candlelight, and living according to the tastes and technological limitations of the late nineteenth century.

 

Artistic polymaths, MCDermott and McGough have faithfully reproduced nineteenth-century daguerreotypes, Victorian silhouette paintings, depression-era movies, and midcentury comics and advertisements. Their tongue-in-cheek images of 1950s suburbia often include homoerotic subtexts, poking fun at the conservative values of the time. Their work is at once nostalgic and ironic, often mocking the illusory past while reveling in it. MCDermott and McGough’s work has been shown in numerous galleries and museums including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. In 1997, their work was featured in a mid-career retrospective at the Provincial Museum voor Moderne Kunst in Oostende, Belgium.

 

This piece looks like it's designed to elicit a variety of different responses in response to the question, "What's going on here?", and it'd be neat to hear your thoughts and reactions. The size of the print is 20" x 24", and the price is $350 unframed, $550 framed.

[comix4fun]

So they lifted images of Golden Age comic characters straight off the covers of their comics, photoshopped them into place, and then placed an utterly silly central image betwixt them...calling it art.

 

Okey Dokey Then.....

[Transplant]

And the "original" image is pretty pedestrian. Purely digital work?

 

It's terrible, IMHO.

[comix4fun]

Where the Captain Marvel Jr. image came from:

 

 

[sckao]

 

I don't like it. Compositionally or otherwise.

[comix4fun]

And Torch:

 

[comix4fun]

One more to seal the point...Black Terror:

 

[Dr. Balls]

 

Oh wait, they're serious about selling it...

 

[Dr. Balls]

Fringe called, they want you to stop using The Observer in your artwork.

[Dr. Balls]

Roy Lichtenstein called, he wanted to remind you that he's the best infringing hack artist of all time.

 

OF ALL TIME.

[Park]

But...it is "playfully subversive"...

 

[comix4fun]

But...it is "playfully subversive"...

 

 

 

What I hate most is how it mocks my traditional notions of masculinity.

[Dr. Balls]

I would be willing to bet that image of The Observer ironing his laundry has also been lifted from somewhere. Norman Rockwell?

[Park]

But...it is "playfully subversive"...

 

 

 

What I hate most is how it mocks my traditional notions of masculinity.

 

Really? The juxtaposition of mundane reality with my heroic masculine fantasies has thrown me for a loop.

 

 

[Ken Aldred]

But...it is "playfully subversive"...

 

 

If that means it sucks, then I agree.

[Speedy-D]

Here's what Artspace says about it:

 

About the Work

 

This print by artist duo McDermott and McGough appropriates the imagery of post-war comic books to mock traditional notions of masculinity. Tiny superheroes come to the rescue as a dandified young man in a tuxedo jacket and striped boxers irons his pants. This playfully subversive image juxtaposes mundane reality with heroic masculine fantasies, toying not only with retro imagery, but with present-day delusions.

First of all, that Capt. Marvel Jr. is not post-war, and I bet the Torch isn't either. Second, if that description is really what the artists were going for, they failed miserably. "Mock traditional notions of masculinity?" That's such an easy target when using superhero imagery, how did these guys shoot so wide?

[Park]

Here's what Artspace says about it:

 

About the Work

 

This print by artist duo McDermott and McGough appropriates the imagery of post-war comic books to mock traditional notions of masculinity. Tiny superheroes come to the rescue as a dandified young man in a tuxedo jacket and striped boxers irons his pants. This playfully subversive image juxtaposes mundane reality with heroic masculine fantasies, toying not only with retro imagery, but with present-day delusions.

First of all, that Capt. Marvel Jr. is not post-war, and I bet the Torch isn't either. Second, if that description is really what the artists were going for, they failed miserably. "Mock traditional notions of masculinity?" That's such an easy target when using superhero imagery, how did these guys shoot so wide?

 

They're lazy.

[Dr. Balls]

Reposting the two ways to sell your artistic endeavors:

 

1. Be immensely talented that the average work-a-day person can recognize it and places value upon it based on the perceived craftsmanship and mastery of the medium that was required to create it.

 

or

 

2. Have some sort of "gimmick" or some long, blathering self-important philosophy that convinces people who are easily persuaded that the value of what you have created can only be quantified by what other people think of it - not by what it actually is.

 

This guy definitely falls into category #2 with that endless spew of pretentious, nonsensical rambling bullshlt.

 

I love art, and I respect art - but not when it's lifted from someone else's work and resold as some sort of lame-@ss attempt at re-imagining with retro sensibilities. This kind of garbage drives me batshlt.

[comix4fun]

 

 

Art = created for the sake of creation and imagination

 

This Carp = creation of marketing

[Park]

Can we just go with lazy?

 

It makes it easier for those of us that are lazy.