Brian Sherwin
Encyclopedia
Brian Sherwin is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 art critic
Art critic
An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...

, writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

, and blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...

ger with a degree from Illinois College
Illinois College
Illinois College is a private, liberal arts college, affiliated with the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church , and located in Jacksonville, Illinois. It was the second college founded in Illinois, but the first to grant a degree . It was founded in 1829 by the Illinois Band,...

 in 2003. Sherwin is the Senior Editor for the artist social networking site myartspace, where he has written an extensive interview series with emerging and established visual artists. Sherwin is also an advocate
Advocate
An advocate is a term for a professional lawyer used in several different legal systems. These include Scotland, South Africa, India, Scandinavian jurisdictions, Israel, and the British Crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man...

 for youth art education
Art education
Art education is the area of learning that is based upon the visual, tangible arts—drawing, painting, sculpture, and design in jewelry, pottery, weaving, fabrics, etc. and design applied to more practical fields such as commercial graphics and home furnishings...

.

Life and work

Brian Sherwin is the Senior Editor for myartspace and an advocate for emerging artists. His interview series is titled Art Space Talk and is included in the myartspace Weekly Featured Art Edition. The Weekly is an "opt-in" only publication that is sent to subscribers by email, and can be found archived on the site. Since 2006, Sherwin has interviewed over 500 emerging and established artists and has conducted up to 30 interviews per month. Sherwin said, "I consider myself to be one of the few authentic neutral voices at this time as far as reporting what is really going on in the artworld instead of being told what I should report on and when. Neutral with a bite."

These interviews serve to document aspects of contemporary art culture. He bridges the mainstream art scene and the underground art scene in his interviews. He has interviewed mainstream artists, Michael Craig-Martin
Michael Craig-Martin
Michael Craig-Martin RA is a contemporary conceptual artist and painter. He is noted for his fostering of the Young British Artists, many of whom he taught, and for his conceptual artwork, An Oak Tree...

, Vito Acconci
Vito Acconci
Vito Hannibal Acconci is a Bronx, New York-born, Brooklyn-based designer, landscape architect, performance and installation artist.-Education:...

, James Rosenquist
James Rosenquist
James Rosenquist is an American artist and one of the protagonists in the pop-art movement.-Background and education:...

, Sylvia Sleigh
Sylvia Sleigh
Sylvia Sleigh was a Welsh-born naturalised American realist painter...

, Georgina Starr
Georgina Starr
Georgina Starr is an English artist and one of the Young British Artists notable for her "pop style installations and films." Her major works have been described as "large-scale installations combining video and sculpture" to create emotional stories about lost or fragile phenomena.-Life and...

, Patrick Brill
Patrick Brill
Patrick Brill, better known by his pseudonym Bob and Roberta Smith is a British contemporary artist.-Life and work:Brill graduated from University of Reading, Brill was awarded a scholarship at The British School at Rome while still an undergraduate...

, William T. Wiley
William T. Wiley
William T. Wiley is a contemporary American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, film, performance, and pinball. At least some of Wiley's work has been referred to as Funk art....

, Norman Carlberg
Norman Carlberg
Norman Carlberg is an American sculptor and printmaker. He is noted as an exemplar of the modular constructivist style....

, Bo Bartlett
Bo Bartlett
Bo Bartlett is an American realist painter currently residing on Vashon Island in Washington State.-Life:...

, Janet Biggs
Janet Biggs
Janet Biggs is an American video artist, photographer and performance artist living in New York City.Biggs' video works often include images of individuals engaged in obsessive and extreme activities. She has worked with miners underground, champion wrestlers, speed-obsessed bikers, synchronized...

, Pat Lipsky
Pat Lipsky
Pat Lipsky is an American painter associated with Lyrical Abstraction, Color Field Painting, and Geometric abstraction.-Education:Lipsky grew up in New York City...

, Sarah Maple
Sarah Maple
-Biography:Maple was born in 1985 to a Muslim mother and Christian raised father, and was raised as a Muslim. She studied Fine Art at Kingston University.In 2007 she won the "4 New Sensations" competition, run by Channel 4 in conjunction with the Saatchi Gallery...

 and Aleksandra Mir
Aleksandra Mir
-Life and work:She studied Communications at Schillerska/Gothenburg University in Gothenburg , Media Arts at the School of Visual Arts in New York , and Cultural Anthropology at The Graduate Faculty, The New School for Social Research in New York...

, artists associated with the underground art scene, Alex Grey
Alex Grey
Alex Grey is an American artist specializing in spiritual and psychedelic art that is sometimes associated with the New Age movement. Grey is a Vajrayana practitioner. His body of work spans a variety of forms including performance art, process art, installation art, sculpture, visionary art, and...

, Blaine Fontana
Blaine Fontana
-Biography:Fontana was born in Seattle, Washington and raised on Bainbridge Island. He began his interest in art at a young age. During his teens he commuted to two High Schools in order to study graphic design, photography, sculpture and life drawing...

, Chet Zar
Chet Zar
Chet Zar is an American artist notable for his dark visual art, make-up effects, and digital animation. He is most widely known for his work with Tool's music and live videos. He is the stepson of American fantasy artist James Zar.-Life:Zar was born in San Pedro, California...

, Mark Ryden
Mark Ryden
-Early life:Ryden is the son of Barbara and Keith Ryden, born in Medford, Oregon but raised in Southern California. He has two sisters and two brothers, one a fellow artist named Keyth Ryden....

, Laurie Lipton, David Stoupakis
David Stoupakis
David Michael Stoupakis is a New York based surrealist/gothic artist. He is primarily a painter; he has also done artwork for Korn's album See You on the Other Side and Haloburn's debut album...

 and Sas Christian, and members of alternative contemporary art movements, Defastenism
Defastenism
Defastenism is a Remodernist art movement founded in Dublin in 2004. The Defastenists are also known as The Defastenist Party. Artists who have participated in it include Gary Farrelly, Padraic E...

 and Stuckism
Stuckism
Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art...

.

The Stuckism
Stuckism
Stuckism is an international art movement founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art...

 web site said:
Brian Sherwin is the senior editor on the myartspace site, with a widespread reputation for his extensive and non-partisan interview series with over 400 artists. This is unique in its scope in contemporary art writing, encompassing world famous names such as James Rosenquist, as well as relatively unknown artists whom he considers of worth. In total it constitutes an invaluable record of contemporary art, as seen through the words of its practitioners.


Sherwin’s "Art Space Talk" series of interviews involves his conversations with representatives from the business side of the art world. He has interviewed several editors and publishers from the mainstream art community. Including, Amir Fallah (“Beautiful/Decay Magazine”), Steven Zevitas (New American Paintings), Mark Staff Brandl
Mark Staff Brandl
Mark Staff Brandl is an American-born artist, art historian and art critic now living primarily in Switzerland.-History:...

 (Art in America
Art in America
Art in America is an illustrated monthly, international magazine concentrating on the contemporary art world, including profiles of artists and genres, updates about art movements, show reviews and event schedules. It is designed for collectors, artists, dealers, art professionals and other...

) and David Lee
David Lee (art critic)
David Lee is an outspoken, English, contemporary, art critic—condemning conceptual art in general and the Turner Prize in particular...

 (Art Review, The Jackdaw). His typical questions involve topics such as the state of the art world
Art world
The art world is composed of all the people involved in the production, commission, preservation, promotion, criticism, and sale of art. Howard S. Becker describes it as "the network of people whose cooperative activity, organized via their joint knowledge of conventional means of doing things,...

, the validity of contemporary art fairs, and other topics related to the professional art world when interviewing art magazine editors, publishers, curators, and art critics.

Sherwin’s interviews and articles explore the academic community. He often asks interviewees about their art school
Art school
Art school is a general term for any educational institution with a primary focus on the visual arts, especially illustration, painting, photography, sculpture, and graphic design. The term applies to institutions with elementary, secondary, post-secondary or undergraduate, or graduate or...

 backgrounds, influential instructors that they have had, and suggestions for current art students. His interviews were mentioned in the May 16 and July 19, 2008 editions of the San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute is a school of higher education in contemporary art with the main campus in the Russian Hill district of San Francisco, California. Its graduate center is in the Dogpatch neighborhood. The private, non-profit institution is accredited by WASC and is a member of the...

 newsletter “SFAI/INFORM“ which is archived SFAI website. His interviews with SFAI alumni Seth Lower and Christian Schumann included topics focused on the SFAI program and advice for future students. Sherwin’s interview with Schumann was also featured on the Juxtapoz website.

Sherwin is also an artist. He lives in Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

, USA, and campaigns for more prominence for art.

Notable Discourse

In 2007, Sherwin interviewed Kirsten Anderson, who owns the Roq la Rue Gallery, Seattle. Anderson is the author of Pop Surrealism: The Rise of Underground Art. In her interview with Sherwin she discussed the relationship between Street art
Street art
Street art is any art developed in public spaces — that is, "in the streets" — though the term usually refers to unsanctioned art, as opposed to government sponsored initiatives...

, Pop surrealism and Lowbrow
Lowbrow
Lowbrow may refer to:*Lowbrow, relating to, or suitable for a person with little taste or intellectual interest* Lowbrow , describes an underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles, California, area in the late 1970s...

, as well as the growth of Juxtapoz
Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine
Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine is a magazine created in 1994 by a group of artists and collectors including Robert Williams, Fausto Vitello, C.R. Stecyk III , Greg Escalante, and Eric Swenson to both help define and celebrate urban alternative and underground contemporary art. It was edited from...

magazine, which she thought had "morphed itself into a street art magazine.". The exchange between Sherwin and Anderson has been referenced on several online communities and forums.

In 2009, Sherwin interviewed Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales is an American Internet entrepreneur best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Wikia company....

 for myartspace
Myartspace
Myartspace is a social network for artists. As of 2008 the site hosts over 500,000 images of contemporary art and contains a large collection of interviews with emerging artists.-Art competitions and exhibits:...

 Art Space Talk shortly after the Wikipedia Art controversy involving artists Scott Kildall
Scott Kildall
Scott Kildall is an American conceptual artist working with new technologies in a variety of media including video art, prints, sculpture and performance art. Kildall works broadly with virtual worlds, networked art and speculative technologies. His work centers on repurposing technology and...

 and Nathaniel Stern
Nathaniel Stern
Nathaniel Stern is an interdisciplinary artist who works in a variety of media, including interactive art, public art interventions, installation, video art, net.art and printmaking...

. The interview focused on what passes for notability in respect to visual artist bios on Wikipedia among other things. In the course of the interview Sherwin questioned Wales about widespread allegations that Wikipedia has failed to offer adequate art coverage. Wales stressed that he feels that coverage of the arts on Wikipedia needs to be improved and admitted that there are “gaps in coverage”. He told Sherwin about some of the difficulties that arise when establishing notability and stated, “We're able to find "notability" in lots of different places and for lots of different reasons.”

When Sherwin pressed Wales about his interpretation of what makes a visual artist notable by Wikipedia standards Wales replied that there are “no easy answers”. Wales later stated that he agreed with art critic Jerry Saltz
Jerry Saltz
Jerry Saltz is an American art critic. Since 2006, he has been senior art critic and a columnist for New York magazine. Formerly the senior art critic for The Village Voice, Saltz has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism three times. He was the sole advisor for the 1995 Whitney...

 that some Wikipedia artist entries are “bogus” while others are the “best“. Wales informed Sherwin that his greatest hope is that Wikipedia “in some small ways” can help the public to appreciate art and art education. In the course of the interview Wales suggested that the art community should welcome the Wikipedia community stating that the Wikipedia project will help “bring art to everyone in a way that will drive interest in sustaining and protecting art in the long run.”

In 2011, Sherwin interviewed art critic
Art critic
An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...

 Mat Gleason of Coagula Art Journal
Coagula Art Journal
Coagula Art Journal was founded in 1992 by Mat Gleason as a freely distributed contemporary art magazine. Since its inception, the publication remains free as a PDF download, however readers may still obtain a hard copy via "print on demand"....

 for Faso.com's FineArtViews blog. Sherwin described Gleason as being a “bare-knuckled art critic”. The interview between Sherwin and Gleason focused on contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...

 criticism and the role of art blog
Art blog
An art blog is a common type of blog that comments on art. More recently, as with other types of blogs, some art blogs have taken on 'web 2.0' social networking features...

’s in present day art criticism among other issues. Gleason suggested to Sherwin that art blogs and the development of new media have become a “blow” to traditional print art magazines. Gleason and Sherwin also discussed how art bloggers form a “pack mentality” based on region and perceived significance.

Publications and Blogs

Sherwin is a reviewer and a contributing writer for Hi Fructose Magazine. Sherwin’s articles for "Hi Fructose" document topics involving the underground and counter culture art scene. His articles include a review of Insect Lab, a series of controversial cybernetic sculptures by Mike Libby
Mike Libby
Mike Libby is a contemporary American artist who created the Insect Lab. Within this lab, he combines genuine insects and mechanical or electronical components, in order to create cybernetic sculptures.-Formation:...

 that involve insects and mechanics. Sherwin also covered the Kokeshi Project, a series of shows organized by Christina Conway, that involve Kokeshi
Kokeshi
, are Japanese dolls, originally from northern Japan. They are handmade from wood, have a simple trunk and an enlarged head with a few thin, painted lines to define the face. The body has a floral design painted in red, black, and sometimes yellow, and covered with a layer of wax. One...

 figurines painted by 74 artists representing 13 countries. In the article Sherwin pinned the name “Culture Kokeshi” when describing the international and contemporary appeal of the figurines displayed in the Kokeshi Project compared to the territorial roots of traditional Kokeshi designs.

Several of Sherwin's interviews and articles have been featured content on the "Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine" website. This includes his interviews with Christian Schumann
Christian Schumann
born on January 14, 1983 in Freiburg .From early on he was trained as a pianist then completed his studies in conducting and composition at the in Weimar, Germany and simultaneously was influenced by various mentors like Peter Eötvös, Pierre Boulez, Vladimir Jurowski, George Hurst, Gustavo...

, Anthony Lister
Anthony Lister
Anthony Lister is an Australian-born painter and Installation artist. He has had solo exhibitions across Australia, United States, Europe and UK. He is notable within the Lowbrow and has been featured on Juxtapoz.com and FecalFace.com and WoosterCollective.com...

, and Alex Grey
Alex Grey
Alex Grey is an American artist specializing in spiritual and psychedelic art that is sometimes associated with the New Age movement. Grey is a Vajrayana practitioner. His body of work spans a variety of forms including performance art, process art, installation art, sculpture, visionary art, and...

. He has also been a guest interviewer and referenced on underground art sites the beinArt Surreal Artist Collective, and Underground Art Union Sherwin's interview with Michael Craig-Martin
Michael Craig-Martin
Michael Craig-Martin RA is a contemporary conceptual artist and painter. He is noted for his fostering of the Young British Artists, many of whom he taught, and for his conceptual artwork, An Oak Tree...

 was cited at length in a Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank AG is a global financial service company with its headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany. It employs more than 100,000 people in over 70 countries, and has a large presence in Europe, the Americas, Asia Pacific and the emerging markets...

 Art Mag feature about the artist.

Criticism

Sherwin has been critical of the world renowned street artist Shepard Fairey
Shepard Fairey
Frank Shepard Fairey is an American contemporary graphic designer, and illustrator who emerged from the skateboarding scene. He first became known for his "André the Giant Has a Posse" sticker campaign, in which he appropriated images from the comedic supermarket tabloid Weekly World News. His...

 due to copyright infringement
Copyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...

 allegations involving Fairey’s Obama posters and Obey
André the Giant Has a Posse
Andre the Giant Has a Posse is a street art and viral marketing campaign based on a design by Shepard Fairey created in 1989 in Providence, Rhode Island. Distributed by the skater community, the stickers featuring an image of André the Giant began showing up in many cities across the U.S.A...

 clothing line. Sherwin has defended the criticism of Mark Vallen
Mark Vallen
Mark Vallen is an American activist with Chicano and other issues, curator, figurative realist painter, and blogger, who runs the Art for a Change web site; he founded The Black Moon web site for Japanese culture.-Life and work:...

, an artist who claims that Shepard Fairey’s career has been based on plagiarism
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...

 and appropriation
Appropriation
Appropriation is the act of taking possession of or assigning purpose to properties or ideas. The word appropriation was first used by a Russian theorist named Bakhtin to describe a holistic language theory. The Russian word for appropriation is prisvoenie, which directly translated means ‘to make...

 without attribution. Sherwin’s criticism of Shepard Fairey has been cited on the Boston Globe website and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is a daily morning broadsheet printed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. It is the primary newspaper in Milwaukee, the largest newspaper in Wisconsin and is distributed widely throughout the state...

 website. Sherwin's criticism of Shepard Fairey has appeared on Maynard Institute for Journalism Education articles. Nick Rizzuto on the Conservative Punk
Conservative Punk
Conservative Punk was a website that promoted conservative views in the punk subculture. It was created by Nick Rizzuto, an employee of a New York City rock radio station, partially in response to the left-liberal group Punkvoter . The Conservative Punk website received significant press coverage...

 web site said that Sherwin "makes a pretty good case".

Sherwin has also been critical of Joy Garnett
Joy Garnett
Joy Garnett is an artist based in New York. She is married to visual artist Bill Jones. Garnett's paintings, based variously on news photographs, scientific imagery and military documents she gathers from the Internet, examine the apocalyptic-sublime at the intersections of media, politics and...

, Richard Prince
Richard Prince
Richard Prince is an American painter and photographer. Prince began appropriating photographs in 1975...

 and other artists known for copyright infringement, or allegations of copyright infringement
Copyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...

, who support free culture
Free Culture
Free Culture may refer to:* Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig* Free culture movement, a social movement for free culture...

 and limited copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...

 protection. Sherwin has shown support to Brad Holland (artist)
Brad Holland (artist)
Bradford Wayne Holland is an American illustrator, best known for his work for Playboy and Penthouse magazines.-Biography:...

, co-founder of The Illustrators Partnership of America, who advocates the preservation of creative copyrights on intellectual property. Sherwin has also allowed limited copyright supporters, such as Alex Curtis of Public Knowledge
Public Knowledge
Public Knowledge is a non-profit Washington, D.C.-based public interest group that is involved in intellectual property law, competition, and choice in the digital marketplace, and an open standards/end-to-end internet....

 to offer their view on the subject.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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