avant garde
the desultory results of theavantguardian logo competition\/\/the candidates
We have results! For the logo competition we’ve been blathering about for the last month or so. Please admire. What follows is a list IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER of the logos we received. We would like you to admire them, comment on them, hold them, love them, and decide amongst yourselves. We will be... »
compassion for animals \/\/ ?
Vladimir Mayakovsky is perhaps best known nowadays in the U.S. for two things: First, he “taught” Frank O’Hara to speak to the sun. The conceit of O’Hara’s great poem “A True Account of Talking to the Sun on Fire Island” is borrowed from Mayakovsky’s “An Extraordinary Adventure Which Befell Vladimir Mayakovsky in a Summer... »
commodity fetishism gone right \/\/ banzai!!!!! | brooklyn
These days, Brooklyn is the destination where art comes to be born and to die. After all, this is still New York City, the global center for commercial art distribution. But beyond that, Brooklyn is home to the overwhelming majority of studios, ateliers, and actual artists in New York City. Soho and Chelsea obviously... »
salt lick \/\/ branding wounds
The German literary critic Walter Benjamin, as much an avant guardian as anyone yet mentioned in these pages, once saw the revolution in an advertisement for this salt. Bullrich’s. He tells the story in his unfinished Arcades Project, his massive collage of historical ephemera drawn from nineteenth century Parisian street life. Benjamin left his... »
commodity fetishism gone right \/\/ alexander mcqueen, meatpacking district
February 11, 2010: Beneath the flurries of the worst blizzard to hit the northeastern United States in over a decade, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week kicks off in New York City. The crowds flock to the tents of Bryant Park to witness some of the most prominent designers in the world unveil their Fall-Winter... »
commodity fetishism gone right \/\/ consumerism in the age of cyber mud-slinging
“I don’t know the percentage of the internet that’s valid, do you? Jesus, it’s scary.” — Hunter S. Thompson It’s difficult to pin down the spirit of the times when there’s simply so much information and stimulation at our fingertips. The cultural movements that once defined generations have managed to fragment into a dizzying array... »
commodity fetishism gone right \/\/ plantworks, noho
Nature obviously isn’t the sort to ask us if it’s okay before making a decision that might alter the course of our lives. We don’t call it “mother” nature for nothing: when was the last time your other mom asked permission before pulling one of those beloved maternal stunts showing that she never quite... »
commodity fetishism gone right \/\/ buckaroo’s mercantile, boston
Cohesion, external or not, is a pretty attractive idea when it comes to art, especially because of the fact that art itself lacks any hard or fast definition. The navel-gazing that we know today as art history originated during the Renaissance with Italian painter and artist biographer Giorgio Vasari, who collectively grouped the three... »
popop \/\/ hip hop psychasthenia
Is hip hop, like a Miyazaki film, an exploration of “the forgotten future in the past”? To be considered really Real and hard as a rapper is to recount what just happened around the corner and to reaffirm the pursuit a naïve set of symbols. Dave Berman, in his epic poem Self-Portrait at 28... »
an invocation to the \/\/ whose it’s?: whitman’s pants p@rt 2
So last week I gave a little breakdown of the players involved in the Levi’s Whitman commercials, a bit of background on Whitman’s fashion lexicon, and left you with a bit of Whitman’s “Respondez!”– a poem that is decidedly less friendly to the purpose of selling jeans. This week, I’ll float a few ways... »
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