next post previous post

To celebrate Viennese artist Gustav Klimt's 150th
birthday, the Vienna Tourist Board has invited on Tue 21 August nine
famous graffiti artists - including Ron English, Mode 2 and Shepard Fairey
- will produce Klimt-inspired artworks in front of a live audience in
London’s Grosvenor Gardens.The completed works will be displayed in the famous
Lazarides Gallery in Soho as a public exhibition, ‘Klimt Illustrated’. The free
live event runs from 9am to 7pm on 21st August, and the exhibition at Lazarides
Gallery will be free and open to the general public from 24th August to 1st
September, Tuesday to Saturday 11am – 7pm. Austrian DJ, DEF Mike, will also be playing in
Grosvenor Gardens throughout the day.

I will post photos of the event and artworks so
watch this space.

For those who don't know Ron English or Shepard
Fairey, below a short bio and a selection of works. 

Ron English

Ron
English is an "agit-pop" and culture jamming street artist who bends
and twists popular advertizing and cultural icons in all kinds of directions.
English's inspirations include Andy Warhol and uses his image and style in his
works. His paintings are often photorealistic with a neon color pallate
frequently using his children as subjects in odd settings. Or he can take a
modern painting (he has done dozens of alterations of Picasso's Guernica)and
pop-ulate it with his own characters, add KISS make-up to the subjects of a classical
painting as a parody of "high art," or add a black boy to a Norman
Rockwell painting (above) as a critique of Rockwell's all white world. His
artwork often serves as a critique of modern consumerist culture using humor
rather than a sword to cut his enemies. His obese Ronald McDonald and Marilyn
with Mickey Mouse breasts have themselves beome part of pop iconography.Ron English has been doing illegal street since the
80s. Called culture jamming, English uses mainstream media images to subvert
mainstream media, such as MdDonalds, Camel cigarettes, and Disney. He hijacks
public billboards to transgress consumerist advertizing liberating the space
for an alternative social vision. Unlike graffiti artists, English produces
slick, realistic images mimicing actual billboard advertisements.Religious
images are not off limits for English - see below for example Mickey Mouse
crucified on a mousetrap or American Express card.In the hands of Ron English
pop icons and art become tools for subverting destructive and mind-numbing
aspects of our consumerist culture.

Ron English wesite: http://www.popaganda.com/blog1.php

Ron English - 1

Ron English - 2

Ron English - 3 

Ron English - 4

Shepard Fairey

Frank Shepard Fairey (born February 15,
1970) is an American contemporary graphic designer and illustrator who emerged
from the skateboarding scene. He first became known for his "Andre the
Giant Has a Posse" (…OBEY…) sticker campaign, in which he appropriated
images from the comedic supermarket tabloid Weekly World News. His work became
more widely known in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, specifically his
Barack Obama "Hope" poster. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
calls him one of today's best known and most influential street artists. His
work is included in the collections at The Smithsonian, the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary
Art San Diego, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, the Virginia Museum
of Fine Art in Richmond, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

More info on the Obey Giant Campaign

http://www.obeygiant.com/

Shepard Fairley - 1

Shepard Fairley - 2

Shepard Fairley - 3 

Web sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_Fairey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_English_(artist)

share