Outcome

Foreword

This week’s assignment is provocative for a person who considers herself as distant from this subject as possible.

The progress of this project seems to have gone in a direction as distant from expectations as possible.

It is likely that the reactions toward this assignment are as distant from expectations as possible.

Intention

The goal is, foremost, to make money through art. We see that there are multiple ways of achieving this goal; Exit Through the Gift Shop focuses on the affluent people who treat art as Veblen goods, and elsewhere, destitute people are willing to pay for art to satisfy certain cravings or fantasies. Therefore, being willing to design anything on commission is remarkably lucrative. The latter method of art has several advantages that make it commercially appealing:

• Given that most people have primal impulses, compared to the small amount of people who find art tasteful enough as a commodity, there is a much large pool of potential customers.

• Given the huge demand, designing art of this form requires a much lower entry barrier. People will come to the artist, rather than the artist needing to come to collectors. In addition, these commissioners are more accepting of unoriginal art, and, given how under-wraps commissions can be, it is less likely that the transaction falls into legal issues.

Context

As these assignments must not be offensive or explicit, I will focus on the same. There is a market for art of other franchises’ copyrighted material, and that would suffice as a subject for this project. I would be ripping off the designs that other people would have carefully crafted, and I would be stealing other people’s talent for composition and using it for a profit. This sort of work requires little originality—as long as the artist can replicate and synthesize other people’s works, he or she will find consumers.

Video games tend to have a pervasive fandom. The Touhou fandom, in particular, is nearly completely built upon derivative works. There are entire conventions dedicated to Touhou, and no one really minds any sort of monetary transaction that occurs from playing for Touhou merchandise. The creator of the Touhou series didn’t even mind when someone else tried to trademark the name of the franchise. Therefore, the franchise seems like a tame choice of franchise to produce artwork from.

(I had previously considered League of Legends as the game of choice, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was provocative in the wrong direction.)

Process

The internet is a bastion of stock images with fair use policies, so I shouldn’t have trouble finding another person’s art and taking it for my own work. I decided on photomanipulation as a choice of media, and I chose Utsuho Reiuji as a choice of subject. The character looks like this:

Her design is strange, even by Touhou standards; she has raven wings on her back, a Sauron-like eye on her blouse, a control rod on her arm, and strange materials around her feet. Yet, her design has pros:

• Those characteristics make her recognizable and marketable to Touhou fans.

• A hodgepodge of design elements means that I do not need to integrate a photomanipulation.

• People unfamiliar with Touhou see the design as bizarre enough to be interpreted as modern art.

I had two challenges in front of me, given this decision:

• I had not before attempted photomanipulation. Thankfully, there is no restriction on the amount of time I could spend on this assignment, so I didn’t need to rush.

• My creativity would be limited to the resources I could borrow from; I no longer have ultimate freedom on a canvas if I want to make a suitable composition.

Product

I went to my bread-and-butter of Adobe Photoshop, and I used a collection of stock images from around the internet to piece together. In addition, I launched Autodesk Maya to make the geometry of Utsuho’s control rod. Here is the final product:

Here is a small video that shows frames of progress, through the assembly, editing/touch-ups, and filters:

For a first-time photomanipulation, I must say that it came out better than I expected. After a few filters and many, many edits, the product looks halfway decent. The lighting matches, the character looks familiar enough, and the overall composition teeters on the edge of surrealism, which may suit what the public considers modern art. The technical details, however, are less interesting compared to the conceptual ones.

Critique

I say I have matched my expected outcome, if only because I set my sights within tangible reach. Commissioned art, with an established customer base, guarantees money—and the Touhou subculture guarantees the character base for that money. Even outside of the subculture, it’s possible for other cultures to pick up the work and interpret it as art for more financial gain.

I might argue that such a means of producing art is subversive to both fine art and street art. Consider:

• Both art forms require reception of the piece to an audience. We consider street art ‘art’ as the artist sends a message to the public. In contrast, my approach leaves nothing to interpretation. Can we still call such a concrete composition art? If not, its message might be arguing against the nature of art itself.

• The approach of my composition defies other art forms in that it completely monetizes art. For most works, the value in art is what people make of it. In contrast, in commissioned art, the value of the art is precursor to its creation. The action of producing art creates the value. This is another method of subverting art consumerism.

Reflection

The dichotomy of culture vs. counterculture, provocation vs. conformity, and fine art vs. modern art is that of irony.

• As mentioned in the assignment’s document, subversive countercultures become established culture on its own, and trying to follow the counterculture means following its trends and conforming to it. What might be considered subversive now is a return to classical art styles.

• Is art truly provocative if the artist is assigned to be provocative, or would defying provocativeness be provocative in itself? As I lean toward less audacious actions, I also lean toward the latter argument, yet that would be provocative, yet that would not be provocative.

• Banksy’s pieces were made for the public, but now they are sought after and privatized. What was once a protest against traditional displays of art is now twisted back into tradition.

In essence, matching the trend for either counterculture or conventional culture contributes is no longer provocative. I see that the only room for an artist to be provocative is to take a third option—that is, to neither follow traditional culture nor counterculture, but some offshoot subculture that is not recognized by both the straight man nor the subversive man.

Images Used

• Woman

• Rocks

• Wings

• Eye

• Bow

• Skirt

• Blouse

• Sky

• Cave

• Metal texture

• Sun texture