ARTSCAPE MEETS ZATARAIN'S
7-18-09 POST KEYWORDS: zatarains, jazz art, artscape, baltimore, musicians, free arts festival, bad art, cliché, cojo art juggernaut, artsucks.com, cojo
At ArtScape Baltimore I took only a few photos as examples of what I now dub "Zatarain's Art", "The Zatarain's Style" or "The Zatarain's School." I didn't want to take too many because at this fair there was probably more of this type of art than any other. It's this faux New Orleans / Louisiana imagery of abstract musicians playing jazz with twisty keyboards and distorted saxophones. It really just annoys me at this point because it sucks so bad in a "soulless-pretending to have soul" kind of way. I like the color and use of line art in the one above, but it's the subject matter. . . ugh.
I don't know if it's a modern day attempt at Picasso's Musical Instruments or just a lack of salable creative subject matter for the artists who attempt take on the subject. Maybe painting something the artist thinks will sell to rubes that want something jazzy to sit in their apartment so their Philistine house guests will regard them as sophisticated. Painting someone with soul hoping that it gives the piece soul is garbage.
As weird as it sounds 10 years ago every hack illustrator had to have a drawing of steamy coffee cups in their portfolios because it was all the rage to represent that you could draw coffee in mug, and it seems every hack fine artist now is wanting to have abstract jazz musicians in their portfolio.
It's probably just me, but most paintings in this style remind me of the commercials, for that New Orleans rice ZATARAIN'S. The paintings turn out looking like the artists recorded a Zatarain's commercial, freezed the frame on someone playing jazz, and painted from there. Whenever I see work like the two photos above in my mind I hear the commercial Voice Over: "Zatarain's, Louisiana!".
One exception to the Zatarains thing would be my Aunt and Uncle. They attend the Montreal Jazz Festival every year for the past who knows how many, and every year they buy the poster at the festival and have it framed and hung in their music room. I give this a pass for a few reasons:
1) They attend the event and buy the artwork as memorabilia of an event they experienced.
2) The posters are hung in a music room.
3)The art is an illustration overlayed with typography. It's a poster for a specific event. It's not trying to pretend to be something it's not.
YIKES! Maybe Target® and all it's good will towards the arts is partially to blame after all, I just on a whim checked the Target® website and they are currently selling 16 different art jazz prints.
If you are reading this blog, and you buy stock art prints for your home from anonymous artists at Target®, Ikea®, Walmart® or the like; instead of actually hunting out prints or originals from artists you actually are a fan of and who's careers you want to support, rest easy dear reader. You can rejoice in the fact that you really are the kind of person who deserves to own and display mass-produced shit.
The art will look pretty, match the furniture, and will surely not offend the neighbors. They most likely have the same pieces of shit or a slight variation of your displayed shit on display in their own homes. Maybe if your displayed shit is slightly different from their displayed shit you could trade with them for a few months just, you know, to mix things up. Get a little crazy, a little jiggy with it. Get wild you rebellious bastards!
