cheeky cherub's classic, maybe better when it's go to hull

I opted for "Tiffany" although I would have probably bought "Sinner" and "Cherub" if they'd been released at a different time(I still will eventually)..I have 3 Eelus images on my walls..I never really was a Star Wars fan but "Creature comforts" is a tidy print..I agree that if these were on POW they would have gone in a short while,but I for one am glad that you can still buy such quality work at your leisure. ..I do see the appeal of "Raven haired" and I love the darker direction E's work is taking,I'm sure this image will be made into a print,but the one I really want is the main Cans festival image...superb work.

Show us a picture of the Micallef. I wasn't aware of this.

"Cheeky Cherub" was a street piece from Nov. 2006..is the Micallef piece older than this?I hardly think the styles are similar anyway.

So are we now agreeing that this is"a blatant and watered 'up' rip off" of Eelus' work? ;D ;D

yer he got that spot on ^ i agree on neither micallef and eelus are the same style.

Eelus is currently in Dublin for the stella dore show,I will be taking some shots of his street work tomorrow night and posting them in the stella dore/eine Dublin thread but here is a quick taster taken on a mobile (tomorrow will be on a better camera)

GENTLEMEN!!! Wot is occuring??? Is this a discussion about the artistic merits of a piece and analysis of recent developments within an artist'sportfolio...!

Sorry, lads, not once was price or flippability mentioned so , please, move along and take your high falluting (sic?) ponciness elsewhere...!

Geezus! Next thing you know and they'll ALL be doin' it...

Interesting debate chaps. May I butt in by asking, can the boat ever have left the harbour, so long as an artist is being true to his/her own inspirations/development of style/pleasure/other needs? Yes, by taking on or continuing with a theme, recently tackled by one of their peers, they are opening themselves to more direct comparison with that peer, but so long as they are being true to themsleves and producing/releasing what they feel is of merit, then what else matters? After all, as PP points out, you're discussing the merits of the work, rather than it's success as a product!

If an artist is happy living in a vacuum or a bubble, completely disregarding the views of the public and focussing solely on "being true" to him or herself, then you have a point. Nothing else may matter.

However, I have yet to meet such an artist. Those I know want their work to be seen and appreciated, usually by as many people as possible. If they wish to be relevant as artists, they therefore need to be conscious of and take into consideration what other artists have already done or are currently doing.

I suspect that most artists also aspire either to do something which hasn't been done before, or to take an existing style/concept/theme/subject matter to a new level or direction. If not, then they probably at least wish to be seen to be doing so.

Here's a concrete but exaggerated example:

It's 2008 and I've been living on a deserted island for 20 years, without access to computers, television, newspapers, or other media sources. I decide to become a conceptual artist and I come up with something great.

My idea is to stick a big shark or some livestock in tanks filled with formaldehyde. I will then call this art. I'm very excited about and proud of this idea (which I came up with on my own, without any external influences). It will annoy a lot of people but, more importantly, challenge their perceptions of what constitutes art.

I don't have the resources and materials to create this work on my beloved desert island, so I travel back to my former home of London. Once there, I discover email and PCs, hear Nirvana for the first time, find out the Berlin Wall has come down and the USSR is no longer. I then pick up an art book and start reading about the YBA movement. Shit. My heart suddenly sinks and I feel slightly sick to my stomach.

Do I carry on with my shark in formaldehyde idea?

The answer is no. Not if I want to look in the mirror and still call myself an artist. Not if I want my work to be relevant to other people. It was my idea also, but much of its merit lay in its novelty. I missed the boat. The best thing I can do now is work on different idea.

RC, while I see your point, I can't help but feel you may be mixing 2 issues, which in my perhaps simplistic, romantic and naive view, should be kept seperate in theory. Artistic integrity and market forces appear to be more interlinked in your post than in the purists' reality imo. Unless you're saying that because someone else has attempted the same subject, it invalidates one's own creativity, which also doesn't seem 100% plausible to me (as a non-artist). After all, my shark and yours may end up looking distinctly different, even if, at first glance they appear pretty similar.

An artist recently commented in writing to me, that he felt that pandering to the market was/is, in effect a betrayal of his art. He went on to say that this attitude led him to feel more satisfied with his product and more appreciative when people bought his work, because they were really buying HIS art - his expression. It made sense to me at the time of reading and gained further respect from me. Admitedly, that artist is not a wealthy man, but he's still young and hopefully has a long time to keep doing what he loves!!!

I want to hear more about the manner in which your original concepts have been modified through the influence of '2 girls 1 cup'.

The line is drawn where, for example, one artist does fucked up banknotes, and other artists just do the same only differently. That's just boring.

The crucial point with the shark piece was less the creation of something new than the recontextualision of an object (in this case, a dead shark) as "art". That was Hirst's main artistic intent, and it is this, combined with the scale of the pieces, which made his formaldehyde work interesting.

[So that the original argument does not lose its focus, I am intentionally not discussing here the accusations of plagiarism against Hirst (which, on the whole, I consider valid), including the fact that the Stuckists had hung a shark in a Shoreditch shop window two years before 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living' was first exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery.]

Although a different medium is used with the works in formaldehyde, it is the same or a similar concept to Hirst's medicine cabinet pieces, Richard Prince's recontextualisation of images from magazine advertisements and, going further back, Marcel Duchamp's 'Fountain'.