Art hooligans have struck again. Followers of POPaganda artist Ron English have caused a stir in Boston.  Working in a neo-Warholian mode, which both misses and reinforces whatever Warhol was on about, English has morphed portraits of Abe Lincoln and Barack Obama: Set aside the curiously Alfred E. Neumanesque effect of Lincoln’s cranium on Obama’s visage.  Bracket out– as evidently the good people of the South End have done– any apparent semiotic purchase achieved by the inapt comparison.  The real punch here is that fans of English have taken to the streets, leaflets and posters in hand, to promote the work:

…it stirred a tempest in this insular arts community, though it had nothing to do with Lincoln, Obama or English himself.

Rather, residents, business owners, and even fellow gallery owners expressed frustration, angst, and anger over the way some English enthusiasts descended upon the city, plastering windows, telephone polls, and other surfaces with miniature posters meant to advertise the massive exhibit.

Here, the gently transgressive artistic mischief of a renegade billboarder gone legitimate gives way to the obnoxiously ingressive promotional mischief of his legion of popycat plasterers — a comical outstripping indeed.

Meanwhile, other artistic laborers in the same semantic field have made strides in a different direction.  Rather than echo Warhol’s pop appropriations of extant photography to remake what’s old, digital modelers such as Ray Downing at Studio Macbeth have decided to add a new wrinkle to what’s fauxld. They’ve created a high-resolution, high-poly model of Lincoln and have staged their model in optically naturalistic virtual settings to create what appear to be fresh photographs of the sixteenth president no less persuasive than whatever Matthew Brady wrought. Ron English and Ray Downing are reworking classic iconography.

I find the Downing’s way much more relevant and telling in relation to contemporary political stagecraft.  It’s not the readily identified trappings of consumer culture that gives pause; Pop has long sinced ensured that overt adverts will dwell in inescapable irony.  Half a century later, is that insight not yet played out?

In this, the early 21st century, what rightly gives pause is the convergence of digital simulation and dissimulation under the emotion-stoking aegis of honest Abe.  In studio, it’s an academic exercise with commercial applications.  But how about in the polis?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 3:57 pm and is filed under The Daily Decoction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.