Surely every aging dentist or accountant wants to be OH SO HIP by showing a...why, wait a minute, it's a mash-up of the famous "Abbey Road" album cover and the "Hotel California" cover. Oh, WOW.
ROCK POSTERS...Jesus Christ, what century are we in? When did idiotic lithographs of POP CULTURE crapola take the place of actual creative work by living painters?
Come on, you can't throw $500 toward a real live PAINTER who is exhibiting in a gallery or at a fair, or a street corner? Or on EBAY? You prefer a trite "re-imagined rock album cover?"
But I progress. That's digress forward when I should regress. I'll start my rant at the beginning. I got this idiotic e-mail about some guy named KOSH having POSTERS for sale, with a bargain $50 off:
First thought: who the FUCK is KOSH? Isn't that...a toy?
My mistake. That's a KOOSH. A Koosh ball. But this KOSH has balls all right. GENERATIONS ago, he got lucky. The Beatles used him to photograph themselves walking into Abbey Road. Wonderful. Not a bad photo.
What did he do after that? Not much. When you think about it, "iconic" rock album photos were a dollar a dozen back then. In fact, you could go and gather 'em up at bargain prices, frame them, and put them on your wall. If you had no brains. "Frame your record album and put it on the wall..." Yeah, remember that? They made 12x12 frames. Then what did you do with the fucking record?
Nevermind. Now you could still get a perfect record album in a charity shop for a dollar. Or less.
Somehow, the great KOSH either didn't have clearance to use this shit, or he figured everybody was bored shitless by it, so voila, the re-invented mashups. Are you still awake?
The Internet mag that led me to his boring website assured me that with a code, I'd get $50 off on one of these grand pieces of ART. So how...much...are...they?
Ah. RINGO prices. A mere $500. And I get a $50 discount with a price code.
And what do I do with this fucking thing? Put it in my dentist office? My accountant office? The wall of the office in the fast food restaurant I run? Maybe in the elevator of my office building? That's where this kind of shit usually turns up, doesn't it? It's either that, or a reproduction of Van Gogh's sunflowers, or a fucking Marilyn Monroe Warhol deal, or, these days, some shitty BANKSY thing.
No thanks.
It's too bad that this KOSH guy is trading so heavily on the past. People go obsolete very quickly. If Richard Avedon was still alive he'd shoot himself. And who wants a self-portrait of HIM?
Nobody has respect for photographers anymore. Any monkey with a camera, literally, can point and shoot and take a picture. The credit on most photos today is SELFIE.
Fact is, after a few "iconic" photos, including a few Beatles covers and Simon & Garfunkel's Bookends (Avedon) and "Bridge over Troubled Water" (who knows; it was blurry anyway), the whole idea got BORING. Worse than that, if you consider "Two Virgins."
For a while, we had smart-ass artwork. Check out those old "Strawbs" albums, and "Nursery Cryme" from Genesis, and that fucking monstrosity King Crimson thing. Wowie Zowie. And then? Oh. CDs. Squint-squint. When was the last time you noticed ANY cover on ANY music album? Right.
Sorry Mr. K, you might find some affluent, easily amused fools, just as Ringo still does, and Dylan, and a few others who put out hugely expensive "limited edition" items and art, but the market is dwindling because the people who would put this shit on their walls are DYING.
Like I said. The better alternative is to buy from living artists, OR, show some class and get a reproduction of a Courbet, or Massys or if you must, Van Gogh or Seurat. But lithographs of movie stills, and record album covers? SO lame. SO sad.
"Hey, I photographed McCartney with the baby sticking out of his jacket!" "Hey, I did the stupid drawing of Lola and the Powerman." "Me? I drew that lovable guy called Aqualung!" Got the idea? This is NOT GENIUS!
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