This poster began as a satirical art experiment, my response to the proposed development on Albania’s coast and that country’s growing Flamingo Revolution. I had already designed the work and sold two prints when pop star Dua Lipa publicly expressed her support for the Albanian protests, and my friends urged me to be bold.
Putting the image into the world raised a question for me: what should political art actually do once it leaves the studio? I didn’t want to make an image about Albania and congratulate myself on having made a clever poster that a couple people liked enough to buy. This poster had already done that!
I decided that a portion of the proceeds from Visit Beautiful Albania will be donated to PPNEA, Albania’s oldest environmental organization, whose work includes the protection of the country’s threatened coastal habitats.
Eleven more signed and numbered fine-art prints will be printed by Pressfriends in Chinatown, Los Angeles, while a slightly different version appears on useful, mass-produced things as print-on-demand. To me the two forms compliment the message.
There is nothing particularly new about putting art on useful or commercial objects—Greek amphorae for example. Boucher’s paintings and designs migrated readily into the decorative arts like porcelain, tapestry, furniture, prints, and objects made to be lived with. In Victorian England, Richard Cadbury carried something of that tradition forward with his elaborately decorated chocolate boxes, some painted from his own designs and intended to remain as keepsakes long after the chocolates were gone.
Then comes what might be called the degradation of the chocolate box and the dismissive term “chocolate box art.” The beautiful object becomes packaging; packaging becomes souvenir; and eventually Mozart, enrobed on chocolate, and his muse Constanze envisioned as raspberry mousse, move from portrait to instant iconography reproduced on bonbons for tourists. The image has traveled an enormous distance from portraiture and patronage to something you buy at an airport as an edible souvenir in a disposable cardboard box.
Warhol reversed the journey. The package became the artwork: Campbell’s soup cans and Brillo boxes entered the gallery, and the distinction between commercial image, commodity, and fine art became considerably harder to defend.
Street art complicates it further. Chaz Bojórquez’s Señor Suerte began on a wall by the 110 Freeway and now finds itself preserved behind museum glass. Contemporary streetwear makes those boundaries even less useful. Blazzy, creator of Nothing Personal, moves comfortably across art, design, clothing, and objects without requiring one category to confer legitimacy on another, while limited editions drops of his pop objects confer the preciousness of the item. The thing you wear or use doesn’t merely reproduce the artwork; it is the artwork. And the medium carries the message.
Skate culture has its own particularly California version of the same idea. A skateboard deck is emphatically useful. It is designed to be ridden, scraped, damaged, and eventually destroyed, yet it is also an extraordinary surface for art. The California Locos skate decks occupy this territory beautifully: they can be ridden, hung on a wall, collected, or exhibited. None of those uses necessarily makes the image more or less Art.
This is my ongoing process. Original art work, signed and numbered limited editions, and limited edition artist enhanced prints of works will be presented here while slightly different versions appear on useful, mass-produced things. To me, the two forms complement the message of the art. Art does not lose value when it becomes accessible. Circulation is part of its power.
