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

Slave trade

Street Art is probably one of the more controversial types of contemporary art. The artist leaves his mark on the street, usually in a wall which doesn't belong to him, so the author of an artwork is not entirely the owner. Neither is it the building owner, as it becomes a part of the street not of the building, so in most cases it's the local authority who will take care of it. Art as a property that can't be sold is an idea from the early twentieth century with artists such as Marcel Duchamp with his ready-made works, which were already critic with the art trading system. Street Art, as an art belonging to the street, began with good premises to avoid falling into the elite of art trade... or am I wrong?

Slave Labour (2012), the disappeared graffity represents a child sewing 

flags of the UK and is interpreted as a criticism of poorly paid job with 

which London has been fittedsouvenirs for the Olympic Games.

Thanks to the persistent criticism and protests the auction house Fine Arts Auction Miami has removed a Banksy artwork which since two weeks ago was in a random wall of a London suburb. Frederic Thut, owner of the FAAM, has said they always check the legitimacy of all the sellers to prevent trading stolen works; although Scotland Yard, London's Metropolitan Police, has said there had been no theft report for this specific but someone just decided to remove it to sell it: "there is no evidence that any crime was committed”. Do not think so residents of the borough of Haringey who had mobilized to stop the auction and return the artwork, that they see as a gift from Banksy to the community, to its place. Luckily it seems that this time is the people united who wins and the artwork will not be auctioned.

The human desire to possess more, inadvertently becoming a salve of his own possessions, has led to Street Art not being longer safe of speculation and anyone seems free to take off a piece of wall and sell it to the highest bidder. In that case the artist remains over of any equation and not only doesn't get any profit but also sees helpless how his criticism to the system inevitably ends up being part of it. Or maybe am I wrong again and I should consider that as the artist is damaging other people's property without permission nobody should either ask for his permission to do whatever they want with his artwork?