According to Alan Yentob in the Guardian today, those great current saviours of British art (now that the YBAs have lost their once urgent appeal) Gilbert and George are ploughing the latest technological furrow in democratising art. Apparently they have produced an art piece that is freely available for download online from the BBC web site. “This sort of thing has never been done before,” said Yentob,”
Ermm – sorry to disappoint you old bean but it does have precedents. In fact, even I’ve done it before, and I wouldn’t like to lay claim to being ‘first’ (which as we know is all important in the art world). I wouldn’t expect Mr Yentob to have checked out my site print from three years ago but I would have thought it was an obviously dangerous, dodgy journalistic line to anybody with half an ounce of common sense and an awareness of the nature of both artists and the internet.
The Guardian are a little more circumspect, “It will be the first time that artists of this stature have made work available in this way.”
Get out a bit Alan. Or at least kick your researcher up the arse.
free print “Art is the hammer” from 2001
guydenning.org 