Friday, August 19, 2005

Gay Batman art illegal?

Carrie McLaren at Stay Free Daily:

D.C. Comics is going after a Chelsea art dealer, demanding that it cease and desist from exhibiting Mark Chamberlain’s series of “gay Batman” watercolors. As Kathleen Cullen of Kathleen Cullen Fine Art explained to Artnet, “D.C. Comics wants me to hand over all unsold work and invoices for the sold work!”

I hope she told them to make their own gay Batman watercolors.

More images from Artnet (if they stay--they’ve also also received a cease-and-desist). And check out Carrie’s Illegal Art: freedom of Expression in the Corporate Age.

From Artnet news:

The use by fine artists of mass-market and commercial cartoon imagery goes back decades—both Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol were pursued by photographers for copyright violations (the artists tended to settle), and Jeff Koons famously litigated the String of Puppies case all the way to the Supreme Court (he lost). The Walt Disney Co. brought an infringement suit against Dennis Oppenheim for using small statuettes of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck in his sculpture Virus, with mixed results—the artist was forbidden to sell the work but allowed to exhibit it.

Via Cory at Boing Boing.

Homey messy home

Steve Portigal’s post on a series of Target ads featuring messy and wire-filled rooms moved Virginia Postrel to look at the comforts of a messy home:

Whatever happened to wireless glamour? The same thing that tends to happen to every other kind of glamour: We got tired of it, because it was too much work. The grace, mystery, and idealism that give glamour its power aren’t terribly compatible with everyday life, at least not the way most Americans want to live it. And when we’re furnishing our homes (or our dorm rooms), we often prefer a comfortingly homey mess to glamour’s impossible grace.

She quotes from Culture and Consumption II:

Respondents used a very particular set of adjectives to describe “homeyness.” A favorite characterization of the homey place was to say that it looked “as though someone lived there.” The terms “informal,” “comfortable,” “cozy,” “relaxed,” “secure,” “unique,” “old,” “rich,” “warm,” “humble,” “welcoming,” “accommodating,” “lived in,” “country kitchenish” were all used as glosses…

The enemies of homeyness...were easily characterized. One respondent described an ornately formal living room as “cluttered up with a whole lot of fancy stuff” and therefore unhomey. The terms used to characterize unhomey homes were “pretentious,” “formal,” “stark,” “elegant,” “cold,” “daunting,” “sterile,” “showpiece,” “reserved,” “controlled,” “decorated,” “modern,” and even “Scandinavian.”

With the floors and painting done, this weekend we complete the furniture move. I expect it will be homey.

The consequences of using aid as a weapon

Nathan Newman on the United States cutting aid to nations that refused to sign immunity agreements that shield Americans from the International Criminal Court:

If economic aid is withdrawn whenever countries refuse to do what the US dictates, it pretty much destroys any good will created by it, since it makes it clear it is just a weapon, not something representing values other countries should be loyal to in a crisis.

If those countries can get a better deal—and China is starting to offer it—why shouldn’t they take it, since the US has just forfeited any moral superiority to China by choosing to use the denial of economic aid as a weapon of domination.