Wednesday Edition: Greg Allen
10"x8" ($20) | 14"x11" ($50) | 20"x16" ($200) | 30"x24" ($1000)
Good day collectors! It's been nearly a year since we started planning today's edition. So, while I'm oft inclined to say that we've been talking about an artist and/or his or her work forever, we really have been talking about Greg Allen and Untitled (300 x 404) FOREVER.
From the beginning: In May of last year, internet-y, arty and sharp-thinking Greg responded quickly when Slate was (absurdly) denied the use of Untitled (Cowboy) 2003 by Richard Prince for a slide-show essay on the MoMA exhibition in which the work was featured. Prince's image was appropriated from a Marlboro campaign photographed by Sam Abell. So, following in Prince's footsteps, Greg pulled a low-res jpeg off the web, gave it a new title, Untitled (300 x 404), and offered it to Slate, as his own work. WHa-at? Let me allow our resident copyright expert, Mr. Jonathan Melber explain:
Greg Allen's 300x404 is a nice example of what Richard Prince, and appropriation artists in general, often do: start with someone else's work and present it in a new context, transformed in some way, to make a different statement from the original work's. Prince took Marlboro ads that exploited the myth of the American cowboy to sell more cigarettes, and re-presented them in a way that challenged our notions of authenticity. Allen has taken Prince's work and digitally manipulated and re-sized it, creating a new work that raises questions about the reuse of images online, fair use in the digital age and copyright policy in general.
At yesterday's 20x200 team meeting Jonathan gave us all an opinionated lawyerly, ok, lawyerly AND opinionated, talking-to as our extended round-table conversation surfaced a lot of divergent ideas about Prince's work, the issue at Slate, and Greg's resulting 20x200 edition. Jonathan isn't usually so involved in the details of an edition but this so happens to be his particular area of interest and expertise. The team conversation was layered—as information and details were relayed, almost like a game of telephone—which reminded me of the subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle changes, that images go through, both in terms of visual aesthetics and meaning, as they travel through different contexts.
In Untitled (300 x 404), the image becomes less and less like Prince's version as it is printed in bigger and bigger sizes. As you'll see in the details below, the size of the pixels increase as the print gets bigger, further and further distorting the made-for-web 300 pixel by 404 pixel version. The 40x30 off-menu edition of two is a garish but gorgeous day-glo of a lo-fi Western fantasy. And with that, I'm done telling 20x200 and Greg Allen's cowboy story, so it's time for me to ride off into the sunset.
Details:
Next Email : Edition Announcement #285 - Jennifer SanchezPrevious Email : Edition Announcement #283 - Ed Baynard
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