Printing & Copying

For years now trends have trickled down from the catwalk onto the high street but lately they seem to be taking their inspirations from the catwalk a little too literally. In fact they seem to be getting away with just blatently copying them stitch for stitch.

So what's in it for the designer, do they get a share of this profit? who knows. If not it doesn't seem very fair, after all the huge chain stores are making money on the back of the designers creative originality. Perhaps however it is flattering to the designer and of course they will recieve more attention and publicity as it shows that joe public wants a piece of the action too. Or could it be that once the high street start copying their garments it de-values the status of the piece and makes customers think twice about paying through their nose for something they can pick up in Topshop??

Here is an example of blatent catwalk copying. Topshop is my favourite example as they seem to be replicating the whole Luella range this Spring/Summer. Some may argue that they pay for the quality of designer clothing however surely a t-shirt is just a t-shirt, right?

Luella Original V.S Topshop remake for £18.

Yes, according to recent research, but they don't neccessarily know what constitutes fair use of other people's work. The research has been reported by IWR.

Well so far its been going good . I have learned many things about how teens are forming america its like everything out there in the world is made for teens. Many teen are starting there own trends and other people are copying it and thats wat peoplerputtin out there for others to buy.

This vid gives just a small taste to how much I have the ability to annoy Sibyl. The basic game is that I copy everything Sibyl says, by whistling it back to her. It's simply wonderful.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-152409884807216807&hl=en]

Sorry Sib.

Modern Guilt, the eighth LP from perennial shape-shifter Beck, is upon us, and with it come an avalanche of reviews from wildly differing publications. Yet it fell to Drowned In Sound to give us a rare preview review of the album, about a month ago, where, having attended an XL Recordings listening party, Sean Adams heaped praise upon it. Just this morning, I drove over to Pitchfork to read their review of the same album (in which they awarded it a 7.0 score, giving it some decent justification), and now, this evening, turning to Drowned In Sound on a whim, in actual fact looking for another review of Mercury, which I've already approached with a smile earlier on this evening, what should I find but another review of Modern Guilt, penned by Dan Wale.

So far, so normal. It's perfectly fine to publish a preview, and then a review. But I advise you to read both the Pitchfork review and then the new DiS review side by side, and perhaps comment on the numerous similarities in detail and in tone between both reviews. I think someone's got a case of cold feet.

Sorry if I sound ridiculously paranoid, but it appears that Mr. Wale has given to his readers a veritable simulacrum of the review provided by a rival publication earlier on today.

If he had ever seen a computer keyboard (which I don't believe he ever did), Jackson Pollock might have done something like this to it. This is the second of my computer keyboard art pieces. I felt the technique Pollack used was particularly suited to my feelings toward the keyboard (See Keyboard No. 1). I attempted to keep the colors somewhat in the range of Pollock but they turned out brighter than his usual palette. Working on trying copy Pollock's strokes, a task at which I failed, I realized how difficult it is to control paint when it is used in this manner.  I think each artist has a  signature that comes through in his or her brush strokes so that copying a Pollock, which at first glance seems like it should be an easy task is actually, I believe, more difficult than copying a representational painter such as Van Gogh.  His brush manipulation was instinctual and instinct is difficult to reproduce. 

This piece is the size of a standard keyboard (obviously) and can be hung on a wall via its hanger (its own cable).

To make this photo, I took two collages and set them at 90 degree angles, one lying flat on the floor, the other propped on the wall, and I photographed them from the center.  The result is the dimensional blending of the two. 

The wonderful thing for artists living today is that modern technology offers up so many new avenues for getting ideas.  I take things like this and paint them.  I still pursue my thought in direct and traditional tools, but I use the new gadgets to produce ideas.

When I look at something like this, it's like trying to enter a dream.  This is my way of looking for the doorway that opens onto thought.

[Top of the post:  Two collages photographed together, by Aletha Kuschan]

Here's another shot of the "Heirloom Apples" collage, a detail of two apples first posted June 22.  This kind of collage is similar in character to what Henri Matisse made in the latter part of his career.  The paper is painted with tempera and then cut into shapes.  Streaks from the application of the paint show in the cuttings and become accidental elements of the work, giving it additional texture and interest.

This is like drawing with scissors.

[Top of the post:  Detail of a Study of Apples, by Aletha Kuschan, collage]

Earlier I posted a squared up drawing of this bridge, which was a study for the landscape of a large commission.  Here's another.  Both pictures are drawn from the same photograph.  Both are approximately the same size (about 8 x 10 inches).  Yet the differences in media transform them into quite different works.  In an earlier era (just after the dinosaurs roamed) this was called "translation," at least as regards rhetoric.  But I think the old masters (some of whom are my personal friends) took this rhetorical idea and used it (translated it) into their visual idiom.

I'm quite sure Rubens did.  He had the most distinquished rhetorical education.  Never would he misplace a modifier, of that I'm quite sure!

So, let's see.  Rhetoric and Rubens makes this picture traditional. Whereas the grid,  that staple of  Dame Jennifer Bartlett (with the authority vested in me I've just knighted her -- or Dame-ed her)  ah hem, I was saying  that Bartlett-sizing it makes it modern.  And grids are just tiles by another name, which brings back my old pal Pierre Bonnard who actually invented Bartlett. (I wonder does she know?)

I'm on a goof ball roll.  (Somebody stop me!)

[Top of the post:  Watercolor study of a foot bridge, by Aletha Kuschan]

This is the third (and last) little copy I made while strolling among Bonnard's paintings at an exhibit in 2003.  Now it's a stroll down memory lane. 

The poignant thing about an exhibit like that, when it's an artist whose works you really love, is the transcience of it.  Bonnard's paintings will appear together in other future exhibits, sometime, somewhere. But each time you have a chance to see works together this way, you know that you are not likely to see them again -- at least not in ensemble.  Some of them one is unlikely to ever see again, unless one happens to be the most assiduous globe trotter, for normally they are scattered everywhere.

This white jug (that's what it is) appears in the same painting as the orange jug, on the table in the Dining Room overlooking the Garden of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  My copy of the white jug turned out to be rather less legible than the orange jug.  (The yellow circle is the rim of the jug, and its bright interior is blue.) However, the fuzziness is Bonnardesque in its own way.  This little jug is a very tender keepsake to me.  From it rises up memories of veils of color from Bonnard's scintillating and chalky colored surfaces, of his dining room and its primeval forest beyond.

[Top of the post:  Notebook drawing after Bonnard, by Aletha Kuschan]