“Drawing when I was a kid was an escape for me, and now as an adult it’s a profession. I always draw. I’ve always drawn. I love the line that comes from the hand, it’s real power. Now my favorite kinds of drawings are the sketches I make to plan the works from. They’re the most personal. I got a B.F.A. in sculpture, which was the closest thing in the college catalogue to a drawing degree. I was never inclined to painting, it seemed too messy, too slow. I also have a major in art history, those are my weapons. My drawings are like sculptures, when I draw with graphite I smudge it with my fingers, move it around physically, it’s like clay. Painting is painting on the surface, covering up, where drawing is putting the picture into the paper like a photograph.”

Robert Longo in interview with Richard Price, Robert Longo: Men in the Cities, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, p.94-100.)

This via the Art Collectors blog:

"Someone stationed in Iraq has been leaving these around." - theartcollectors.com

This begs the question whether the U.S. will ever truly be out of Iraq. Since the Obama/Hope portrait, Shepard Fairey has become something of a national hero (in general, if not to the Boston Police Department). It has been interesting to watch the shift from vandal upstart to mainstream Pop Art (or even propaganda?) that Fairey has experienced. He is a new symbol of recognizable political art coming out of America. Thus, does the Obey stencil’s presence in Iraq represent just another cog in the machine of American imperialism?

If anything, it’s positive to have a recognizable, populist, open source symbol of contemporary art coming out of the United States.

Getty Images

“They don’t have to bring anything with them other than exactly what they are, and they’re perfect for that experience because it’s about them…I want people, when they look at my art, to have engaging moments. I want them to feel that everything about their lives is perfect – their history, their culture, their selves. Everything is in play. Everything is possible…” – Jeff Koons on his works in the Independent.

There has been much talk about whether Jeff Koons’ populist (not to mention popular) form of contemporary art is, in fact, art at all. I ask, why not? Why does art have to be inaccessible and abstruse to be considered quality? It seems that, more than artists, criticism has forgotten its roots. True, times when art creation was literally ecclesiastical propaganda have passed but, if the accessibility of Koons’ work is the problem with considering it art, then what is the Sistine Chapel? Michelangelo depicts arguably the best known biblical story after Adam and Eve and shows it in grand scale. In a way, Koons, with his enormous balloon animals and grandiose Popeye paintings, has done something similar, evokes for most of us, the well known imagery of our childhood. And what’s wrong with a little art therapy?

In today’s difficult times, the pinch all around us is impossible not to feel, so why not let people find their escape in art instead of the next Transformers film? The truth is that Koons may be exactly what the art world needs at this very moment: the curiosity that draws attention back to the arts. Of course, when money is tight, art is one of the first non-essentials to suffer as funding and interest drop off. But, if Koons is engaging an audience wider than the art elite, then it’s time to reconsider his value to the art world.