Last week I mentioned The New York Art Book Fair, I went with a couple of friends on Sunday and ran into a few more and missed seeing even more. I had to be a be almost physically restrained from spending money on all the incredible stuff there, but I did splurge at Goteblud‘s table on a couple of ‘zines and a great book of Japanese street photography.
The best part of the show was the collision of the zine/art project/d.i.y./comic/street art aesthetic, although it was interesting to see who was playing it cool and who was more aggressive. Seeing a bunch of vintage JDs (scroll down) and Straight to Hells made me rethink my affection for recent porn zines like Butt andPinups which utterly appeals to me visually, but finally seems a little too tidy and happy with its situation. The Pinup guys were however selling a great button with a giant dick on it.
The other strain in all this that makes me question my taste is the new crafty homespun look that is all over alt/popular culture like at this site. On a case by case basis I like most of the stuff for sale here, and I followed the link to it because I saw some teaser images of drawings that looked good to me. And I’m all for artists coming up with new ways to support themselves. But when I look over all this work I’m struck by how divorced from any sense of contention it all is. There were lots of things like that at the fair as well, where an imagery of oddball juxtaposition presented itself as the new hipster grooviness. All those overprinted silkscreen t-shirts with animal imagery.
There’s something about this that reminds me of the 70′s aftermath of 60′s radicalism, to use a lazy intellectual formula. But who am I to carp? I eat muesli every morning, if not granola. But I can’t help thinking that in a few years thrift stores will be filled with heaps of etsy derived clutter.
There certainly is something interesting in artists turning away from the mass produced high finish values of the last couple of decades of art production. This seems like a great project to me. God knows we have enough stuff that needs fixing, and that impulse is important whether it’s born of anger or not.
And until I finish my latest queerangstsexzine I’m going to teach myself something useful like scrimshaw.
PS: great collection of scrimshaw images here.
Tags: art, big link friday, craft, pop culture, zines