Answer: I guess not.
Being a Fine Arts major you get to have ample discussion and debate on the topics of Art vs. Design, Commercial vs. Non and High Art vs. Low Art and of course Does it Matter? Does it Matter is actually one of the valid rebuttals. I tend to think that these things do matter but only in letting things be taken for what they are in order to allow a person to have a generalized opinion. I mean, some art uses science and some science is aesthetically beautiful and conceptual, but they are just in different categories.
That said, you wont see me drawing any skulls and I probably wont design a skate board. Its just not my thing, but that doesn’t mean that when I see something really awesome that I turn my nose up at it. I don’t use spray cans but that doesn’t mean I don’t like getting stuck behind a train crossing. Graffiti is fine, I would refer you to Wild Style. But I can’t help but remembering a critique at school where a person had a video where a graffiti artist did a mural and then tagged at the bottom the words “Fuck Art School”. And the rational behind it was that this person was kicked out of art school and he wanted to show that you can still make sweet art without the tyranny and limitations,establishm– and blah blah blah of Art School and Academia, which is fine, if you’re actually sweet. But this dude was the worst, and I didn’t really think that you could be kicked out of art school but if a person would be then I guess it was this guy.
Which brings me to Kid Zoom the “Australian Low-Brow Dirtbag”. Now that “low-brow dirtbag” thing is the subtitle of his site so don’t think I’m being snooty again. I actually don’t consider a majority of his work low-brow, specifically the in-gallery installations and some of the more non-conventional tagging canvases (like barns, stamps, playboy magazines). And he does get down on skulls and skate boards and quite honestly is following suit of a lot of “urban” artists. But all that aside, he just does this ish better.
T.HAKES
Dude is illy.