This series is semi disappointing; not that it makes it any less worth sharing, but it turns out that what I thought was an interesting choice of medium ended up being more of a sales pitch for a book than anything else. Yes, artists need to promote themselves in order to make money and with that money they can procure resources to create more art; it's a cycle, I get it. Does it make me any less annoyed that I just wasted my time on a sales pitch for a book that belongs in Urban Outfitters next to the ironic mustache band-aids? Nope, but then again, how seriously can you take a series about tattooing bananas?
Watch the video to understand my perspective though. It begins in a way that recalls the style of Vic Muniz, an artist who often works in impermanent media and creates reproductions of classic images from art history. The decomposing bananas speak of impermanence, yet the images chosen speak of the linear path of art, borrowing from previous movements and interpreting them to apply to the present. You could make ties to Pointillism and discuss Seurat. As I watched I thought of Robert Frost:
"Nature's first green is goldThen appears Phil, from Phil In the Wall, like a character from Bill Nye the Science Guy talking about how "awesome" banana tattooing is! Neat. Don't get me wrong, I actually really like Bill Nye and I do like that Phil is encouraging people to be creative with what they have on hand. It's just that, there is so much more to art that blindly copying a famous painting without knowing why it's important and then watching it decompose just because "it's awesome" to watch fruit go brown! I hope the hipsters are happy with themselves.
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay."
