POPaganda: The Art And Crimes Of Ron English
In this endless stream of images, that we exist in, in a world where kids are growing up where their entire visual landscape is bought and sold and entirely co-opted, you can either have an acquiescent, passive approach to it and sort of enjoy the spectacle or you can try to confront it in some way.
-Carlo McCormick, editor Paper Magazine
In American society where art isn't a part of people's lives, I feel like I'm almost on a mission to bring art back to people. Everywhere I looked, I saw billboards, so I started co-opting billboards to put my art on.
-Ron English
Corporations don't deserve free speech, people deserve free speech.
-Ron English
These are some of the quotes that open the film Popaganda: The Crimes and Art of Ron English, along with quotes of passers-by who say things like, "This is truth, ads are lies", and the kid who observed that the billboard satirizing Joe Camel will make kids laugh the next time they see a real Joe Camel billboard. And there were lots of cigarette and alcohol billboards in the poor neighborhood that black kid lived in. Camel faced the pesky problem of its customers dying off and it became increasingly desperate to capture the youth market. They made their models younger but it still didn't appeal to kids so they began a campaign using a cartoon character, Joe Camel, which was hugely "successful", for them anyway.
Ron English didn't like this, none of us do, but Ron actually did something. He went after their billboards (and all cigarette boards) using their look, logo, taglines, like "Smooth Character", or “Salem Spirit” but incorporating his own ghostly, garish images that show the death and lies these images really represent. He also twisted their tags into things like "Cancer Kid". He would change the warning label to stuff like, "Courting kids leads to early retirement", or ask “Hook any new kids today?”. Camel did indeed discontinue the billboards, and Joe Camel, after a while.
He also went after Apple which, at the time, was appropriating the images of great, but conveniently dead, artists and thinkers like Einstein, who may or may not have wanted to endorse Apple products. They were using the motto "Think Different". So did Ron English, who put up similar billboards, only with faces of Charles Manson and Bill Gates. If you want to attack Apple, fine, but at least do it for the right reasons. Ron himself makes a living appropriating images and has been sued by Disney and the company owning the rights to Charlie Brown. So, it's a bit hypocritical to criticize Apple for doing it, even if for far less savory reasons.
I think the common images of our culture should not be sold off by heirs like crown jewels to big companies who extort huge fees for their use. Copyright law is one of our biggest enemies to free speech and English should have focused on this for Apple, which is extremely litigious and aggressive in protecting its IP. It had Ebay remove artwork by someone who offered an iPod altered to highlight the fact that U2, with whom Apple had joined, sued Negativland for parodying their songs. The story on that incident is in my blog.
One of Ron's favorite targets is McDonalds because, like the cigarette companies, it targets children. He has attacked them many times with numerous images such as the one of a bloated Ronald McDonald pictured on this blog below. He paints each public piece individually on canvas to hang in front of a billboard, almost all of which are dead ads, meaning the advertiser up there has received the time on the board he has paid for. Once the time is up, billboard owners typically just leave it up there for free because blank boards indicate to potential advertisers that it's not a location that sells well.
One of his McDonald's billboards was the inspiration for Morgan Spurlock's excellent film, which I reviewed on this blog, Super-Size Me. Morgan noticed the billboards in his neighborhood. Ron has inspired other artists who are featured in the DVD such as the Billboard Liberation Front, who wear bandanas and disguises and paste up messages on public spaces, including billboards, where they worked with English to put up the mileage statistics on SUV ads along with comments on how pleased Saddam would be, such as, “Saddam’s SUV Oil Dependence Day Sale.”.
Speaking of Saddam, Ron learned that he is the living person with the most songs about him, many probably written at gunpoint. Ron, while not at all competitive with his fellow renegade artists, did apparently want to best Saddam here and implored similarly minded musicians to write songs about him and his art. These little ditties run all through the film, and are pretty funny, as are the sayings on Ron’s billboards, in a sad sort of way. Mostly, they just make you think about the corporate messages that are usually up there in a different way. Here are a few:
The media is the massage.
You are what you own.
America: Home of the homeless
Your apathy is our strength. (image of the Capital)
Shop while they drop. (image of bombs)
Ron tackles all the sacred cows and powers that be, including the church and Bush administration. His goal is to take back the media and the message from those who have the only real access to most mediums of communication in our society. People have asked why Ron risks the arrests and doesn't just rent the billboards. The boards, owned by huge conglomerates like Viacom, Clear Channel and Ted Turner, who made his fortune off billboards, won’t sell the ad space to Ron.
Sure, you can paint your little painting and hang it in the gallery, or your studio, for a few eggheads, but people like Michael Moore and Ron English have no real access to media that has any sizable audience. Those entities take too much money from McDonalds and gas guzzling car companies. Independent film, fine art and internet, which is currently in grave danger from big telecom who would like to destroy net neutrality, are the only avenues open to those who oppose the messages bombarding us constantly.
There’s a commentary track with Ron English and the film’s editor saying that they had no idea that the director, Pedro Carajal, would ever actually make a film out of all this. Apparently, he just followed them around with a camera a lot. There’s no shortage of footage of these illegal capers, or anything else. Being an indie filmmaker myself, I’m pretty sure why Ron and the editor, not the director, did the commentary track. It’s all in the editing people! It’s the most under-appreciated endeavor there is, and the most necessary. And as art becomes more and more accessible (I got the photos of Ron's work for this blog from Flickr in a few minutes) editors will rule the world. They already do.
I’m sure it was a huge job on this project because you could make a four-hour film just showing Ron’s art at a pic a second. Talk about prolific, he works twelve hours a day and is a very popular and strong selling fine artist, hanging in galleries all over the world. Originally, he just wanted to bring his art to the people and put his incredibly detailed photo real pop/surrealistic art up for free. After a while he realized he could raise awareness of social and political issues in a big way and do what any good artist is supposed to do, encourage free and original thought.
The beauty of this art form is that you get something immediate and real. The artist just goes up there and plasters their message, like graffiti art. No editors, no censors, just the comment of someone willing to stand up and be counted. Ron puts his website address on all his boards, he doesn’t live in hiding and in fact refers to himself as a soccer dad. He does brag about coming from a family of outlaws though and says he didn't make the rules and sure as hell isn't going to follow them.
I have nothing but respect and awe for Ron and all artists willing to be that .01% of the population daring to say that the Emperor has no clothes, that consumption is costing us our planet, and we need to think about how much we really need, what we’re eating, what we’re doing to our bodies and minds and spirits and souls. They are competing with corporations that have the only meaningful “free” speech in this world and whose existence depends on our continued consumption.
We’ve come a long way since Andy Warhol replicated soup cans to show how mundane our lives had become. Ron has replicated Andy and his muse, Marilyn, over and over and over. They are some of his most requested pieces. Even art dealers want what is familiar. Of course, Ron’s Marilyns have Mickey Mouse boobs… but doesn’t everybody? We all live in the house of mouse, for now, but with a little more satirical, low-brow art, we at least have hope.
-Carlo McCormick, editor Paper Magazine
In American society where art isn't a part of people's lives, I feel like I'm almost on a mission to bring art back to people. Everywhere I looked, I saw billboards, so I started co-opting billboards to put my art on.
-Ron English
Corporations don't deserve free speech, people deserve free speech.
-Ron English
These are some of the quotes that open the film Popaganda: The Crimes and Art of Ron English, along with quotes of passers-by who say things like, "This is truth, ads are lies", and the kid who observed that the billboard satirizing Joe Camel will make kids laugh the next time they see a real Joe Camel billboard. And there were lots of cigarette and alcohol billboards in the poor neighborhood that black kid lived in. Camel faced the pesky problem of its customers dying off and it became increasingly desperate to capture the youth market. They made their models younger but it still didn't appeal to kids so they began a campaign using a cartoon character, Joe Camel, which was hugely "successful", for them anyway.
Ron English didn't like this, none of us do, but Ron actually did something. He went after their billboards (and all cigarette boards) using their look, logo, taglines, like "Smooth Character", or “Salem Spirit” but incorporating his own ghostly, garish images that show the death and lies these images really represent. He also twisted their tags into things like "Cancer Kid". He would change the warning label to stuff like, "Courting kids leads to early retirement", or ask “Hook any new kids today?”. Camel did indeed discontinue the billboards, and Joe Camel, after a while.
He also went after Apple which, at the time, was appropriating the images of great, but conveniently dead, artists and thinkers like Einstein, who may or may not have wanted to endorse Apple products. They were using the motto "Think Different". So did Ron English, who put up similar billboards, only with faces of Charles Manson and Bill Gates. If you want to attack Apple, fine, but at least do it for the right reasons. Ron himself makes a living appropriating images and has been sued by Disney and the company owning the rights to Charlie Brown. So, it's a bit hypocritical to criticize Apple for doing it, even if for far less savory reasons.
I think the common images of our culture should not be sold off by heirs like crown jewels to big companies who extort huge fees for their use. Copyright law is one of our biggest enemies to free speech and English should have focused on this for Apple, which is extremely litigious and aggressive in protecting its IP. It had Ebay remove artwork by someone who offered an iPod altered to highlight the fact that U2, with whom Apple had joined, sued Negativland for parodying their songs. The story on that incident is in my blog.
One of Ron's favorite targets is McDonalds because, like the cigarette companies, it targets children. He has attacked them many times with numerous images such as the one of a bloated Ronald McDonald pictured on this blog below. He paints each public piece individually on canvas to hang in front of a billboard, almost all of which are dead ads, meaning the advertiser up there has received the time on the board he has paid for. Once the time is up, billboard owners typically just leave it up there for free because blank boards indicate to potential advertisers that it's not a location that sells well.
One of his McDonald's billboards was the inspiration for Morgan Spurlock's excellent film, which I reviewed on this blog, Super-Size Me. Morgan noticed the billboards in his neighborhood. Ron has inspired other artists who are featured in the DVD such as the Billboard Liberation Front, who wear bandanas and disguises and paste up messages on public spaces, including billboards, where they worked with English to put up the mileage statistics on SUV ads along with comments on how pleased Saddam would be, such as, “Saddam’s SUV Oil Dependence Day Sale.”.
Speaking of Saddam, Ron learned that he is the living person with the most songs about him, many probably written at gunpoint. Ron, while not at all competitive with his fellow renegade artists, did apparently want to best Saddam here and implored similarly minded musicians to write songs about him and his art. These little ditties run all through the film, and are pretty funny, as are the sayings on Ron’s billboards, in a sad sort of way. Mostly, they just make you think about the corporate messages that are usually up there in a different way. Here are a few:
The media is the massage.
You are what you own.
America: Home of the homeless
Your apathy is our strength. (image of the Capital)
Shop while they drop. (image of bombs)
Ron tackles all the sacred cows and powers that be, including the church and Bush administration. His goal is to take back the media and the message from those who have the only real access to most mediums of communication in our society. People have asked why Ron risks the arrests and doesn't just rent the billboards. The boards, owned by huge conglomerates like Viacom, Clear Channel and Ted Turner, who made his fortune off billboards, won’t sell the ad space to Ron.
Sure, you can paint your little painting and hang it in the gallery, or your studio, for a few eggheads, but people like Michael Moore and Ron English have no real access to media that has any sizable audience. Those entities take too much money from McDonalds and gas guzzling car companies. Independent film, fine art and internet, which is currently in grave danger from big telecom who would like to destroy net neutrality, are the only avenues open to those who oppose the messages bombarding us constantly.
There’s a commentary track with Ron English and the film’s editor saying that they had no idea that the director, Pedro Carajal, would ever actually make a film out of all this. Apparently, he just followed them around with a camera a lot. There’s no shortage of footage of these illegal capers, or anything else. Being an indie filmmaker myself, I’m pretty sure why Ron and the editor, not the director, did the commentary track. It’s all in the editing people! It’s the most under-appreciated endeavor there is, and the most necessary. And as art becomes more and more accessible (I got the photos of Ron's work for this blog from Flickr in a few minutes) editors will rule the world. They already do.
I’m sure it was a huge job on this project because you could make a four-hour film just showing Ron’s art at a pic a second. Talk about prolific, he works twelve hours a day and is a very popular and strong selling fine artist, hanging in galleries all over the world. Originally, he just wanted to bring his art to the people and put his incredibly detailed photo real pop/surrealistic art up for free. After a while he realized he could raise awareness of social and political issues in a big way and do what any good artist is supposed to do, encourage free and original thought.
The beauty of this art form is that you get something immediate and real. The artist just goes up there and plasters their message, like graffiti art. No editors, no censors, just the comment of someone willing to stand up and be counted. Ron puts his website address on all his boards, he doesn’t live in hiding and in fact refers to himself as a soccer dad. He does brag about coming from a family of outlaws though and says he didn't make the rules and sure as hell isn't going to follow them.
I have nothing but respect and awe for Ron and all artists willing to be that .01% of the population daring to say that the Emperor has no clothes, that consumption is costing us our planet, and we need to think about how much we really need, what we’re eating, what we’re doing to our bodies and minds and spirits and souls. They are competing with corporations that have the only meaningful “free” speech in this world and whose existence depends on our continued consumption.
We’ve come a long way since Andy Warhol replicated soup cans to show how mundane our lives had become. Ron has replicated Andy and his muse, Marilyn, over and over and over. They are some of his most requested pieces. Even art dealers want what is familiar. Of course, Ron’s Marilyns have Mickey Mouse boobs… but doesn’t everybody? We all live in the house of mouse, for now, but with a little more satirical, low-brow art, we at least have hope.
posted by Intervision at 8:56 AM
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