![]() ![]() On behalf of our sanity, and art, we have every right to question when a wheat-paste sticker is peeled off a brick wall, taken to auction, and ends up hanging on a Park Avenue mantlepiece. London gallerist Steven Lazarides, who helped catapult Banksy’s career, notes the genre’s distinctive state today: “I can walk into collectors’ houses and see a Francis Bacon, an Anish Kapoor and a piece of street art.” The same year that Jeff Koon’s Balloon Dog (Orange) sold for a record-breaking $58.4 million at Christie’s New York, the elusive British Street artist Banksy was believed to already have a net worth of $20 million in sales. Since the turn of the 21st century, the genre’s domination of visual media has risen both in the institutional and financial sectors this is evidenced by exhibitions such as the groundbreaking show on the history of graffiti at MoCA in 2011, as well as by six-figure sale points at fairs and auctions worldwide. ![]() If we are to excuse the fashion world for simply following suit with the ebb and flow of the art world, then we might come to terms with one reason why brands pursue street artists more and more. A renegade marking his space with tag and spray seems a world away from a couturier whose tag reads MADE IN ITALY, and whose spray exists only in the form of eau de parfum. ![]() Since the early 2000s, we have seen and felt the rebellious itch scratched onto upscale surfaces: Stephen Sprouse spray-tagged Louis Vuitton’s classic monogram, KONGO’s bubble letters bombed Hermès silk the next decade, GucciGhost haunted Gucci with sardonic graffiti last season, and soon RETNA’s glyphic markings will cover a limited edition cashmere blanket by Hale Harden in the fall of 2017.įew can deny that there is something inherently unsettling, something overtly faux pas, when an old-age institution steeped in glamour and tradition invites in a notorious vandal whose values and aesthetic lie far outside the realm of luxury quite literally outside. Yet we find ourselves at a runway crossroads when faced with the most recent expression of the trending collaboration formula: namely, when a high-end brand turns not to high art, but rather to the street artist, as its collaborative muse. Some results have been museum- and CFDA Award-worthy: Cindy Sherman extended the eccentricities of COMME des Garçons, Richard Prince’s painted nurses morphed into models giving life to Louis Vuitton, and French conceptual artist Daniel Buren illuminated the house of Hermès with his silky light installations. Today, the artist has also become contemporary culture’s own muse, being summoned by fashion and lifestyle brands seeking to enhance their image through his artful input. If history repeats itself, then art history has painted the same picture time and again: an artist invites in a muse to inspire and elevate his work Jeff Koons got Lady Gaga just like Vermeer got his girl with a pearl earring. ![]()
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