Post-art or the Angus McDonagh case

Angus McDonagh works appears with colourful designs and large colour patches that recall Andy Warhol's serigraph printing paintings, it's a branch of the pop-art that we could call post-art. Actually McDonagh's work consist in around 50 post stamps of simple appearance, most of them with his own face on it, and thanks to it this Somerset resident has been able to send letters without spending not even a pound in stamps

His work started as a protest claiming against the extinction of the stamps and ordinary mail on behalf of Internet and social media. “The Queen’s head, it seemed to me, was going to disappear from stamps and be replaced with lots of other images and I felt I had to act” he told a couple of weeks ago in an interview for London free newspaper 'Metro'.

The author created the stamps deliberately with a simple and silly appearance, but still he managed to send more than a hundred letters to destinations as far as Australia, Canada or Hong Kong, with only one of the letters being returned for having a fake stamp. Therefore are we talking about an artist or a scammer? What do you think? Because we know what Royal Mail thinks about it: the British national post company insists it is an offence both the creation or use of fake stamps and so they want to take actions against this case. Although on the other hand it was Royal Mail who was supposed to detect the fake stamps during this last three years.

It should be also said that Angus McDonagh never wanted to avoid the postal costs and he tried to send checks to the post company, but those have been returned. If that is so, instead of a criminal can we see here an artistic protest, a Banksy of the mail services? Or even a better question: Royal Mail's reaction would be the same if it was Banksy whohad  played this “scam”?

Precisely one of the last activities of Banksy in his new period in New York has been to sell his own artworks in a street stand, like the ones that usually sell fakes of his art. What is the difference between them to say that Banksy is an artist and McDonagh isn't? Both of them create original material to supplant as a protest; non of them looks for the economic profit (proceeds from the sale of originals in New York, at $ 60 a piece, were all for the shopkeeper). But beware! Banksy hasn't forced a national company to lose profits, only four strangers who were redecorating their home have lost some money. Does that mean McDonagh is an example that in Art, as in everything, you must be careful who are you protesting against to?

It comes out again the big question “What is Art?” and one of the most plausible and indefinite answers is: “Art is what the somehow (culturally, economically, politically...) more powerful decide that is Art”. It is not everyone's decision, not mine, to decide if McDonagh is an artist, that's a decision for the ones who, sometimes without us knowing completely, decide so much for us. Under that point of view contemporary art is not such a different thing from the Renaissance or Romanticism art, where the great artists were the ones who pleased better their patrons or exalted with better grace the bourgeois class. The trick must be to please who must be pleased and not criticize what mustn’t be criticized.

Ricard Gispert

@ricardgispert

Time to be thankful

Thanksgiving is coming, one of those big American things that we know about only thanks to TV series and films, but in the same way that happens with Halloween (originally All Hallows Eve) it is a festivity that Americans had inherited from the European tradition.

Thanksgiving origin can be found in the traditional church masses and religious festivals that were used in this time of the year to thank Lord (or Nature if you prefer a more secular speech) for the harvest success. Those festival, usually joined with great feasts, were also one of the last opportunities to join the social life before the cold winter arrived and became time for family home confinement.

But the 4^th thursday of November isn't a too late date to celebrate the harvest? Exactly. That is due to the fact that United States Thanksgiving is influenced by the British tradition in the period of the Protestant Reformation during the reign of Henry VIII. As part of this reformation in 1536 the number of ecclesiastic festivities was reduced from 95 to 27 days per year; but the more radical Puritans didn't agree and wanted to eliminate all the festivities, including Christmas and Easter, and to remain only with Days of Fasting to fight against God's disasters or judgements (as droughts, floods and pests), and Days of Thanksgiving for the little miracles like the victory versus the Spanish Armada or the failure of Guy Fawkes Gunpowder Plot against the British Parliament. This last historic fact became into an annual Day of Thanksgiving since de 5^th of November of 1606 and nowadays it's still a festivity (Remember remember the 5^th of November).

The first Thanksgiving , J.L. Gerome Ferris (c. 1915)

With this base it couldn't be rare that in 1621 the Pilgrims and Puritans who migrated to the “New World” continued this tradition celebrating Days of Fasting and Days of Thanksgiving, one of which had a special importance at Plymouth, now in Massachusetts State. It was only ten month since the Pilgrims landed and, after the hard previous winter, they were ready to celebrate their first harvest success. Aware that they wouldn't have survive in hostile territory without the native's help they decided to invite the Wampanoag tribe. It were days of feasts and plays, but also of cultural exchange, learning from the others and thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving tradition was already born, more than 400 years from our days, but it still had a long way to run. At the beginning it was only home-made celebrations with still a great remain of the harvest festivals and each State celebrated it on a different day. It wasn't until 1876 when Sarah Hale started a campaign to turn Thanksgiving into a national day, and only 17 years later Abraham Lincoln listened to her ans established November's last Thursday as the National Thanksgiving Day as a treat for the victories of the Civil War.

Finally during World War II there would be one more change for this celebration of humility and gratitude. It was already sometime that the day after Thanksgiving had been established as Black Friday, the beginning of Christmas shopping season with the big department stores offering unmissable discounts. The American National Retail Federation asked president Franklin Roosevelt to enlarge one week the Christmas season and therefore Thanksgiving in USA ended up being celebrated the 4^th Thursday of November (in Canada is celebrated the 2^nd Thursday of October, as for the different weather the harvest season started earlier).

So there we have another traditional festivity which has been depraved century over century until being turned into something completely different, even if in this case we still have the background of being grateful at least once a year. Cultural Crops wants to be part of this thankful spirit in the air and so we thank you all for reading us and for following us on Facebook or Twitter. Without you it wouldn't be the same, we are working hard to improve and we hope you can all see the results soon.

Ricard Gispert

@ricardgispert