THE BONGO BEAT BART ART MARGINAL THINKING DEPT.
Bongo Comics has outsourced yet another job that could have gone to a hard-working American cartoonist to some Mexican immigrant named Sergio Aragones. [The Beat]
Bongo Comics has outsourced yet another job that could have gone to a hard-working American cartoonist to some Mexican immigrant named Sergio Aragones. [The Beat]
Labels: BART ART, THE BONGO BEAT
posted 8/22/2009 | permalink
Bongo Comics Turns A Blind Eye To Copyright Infringement!!!
THE BONGO BEAT
Lawyers for 20th Century Fox take copyright infringement of The Simpsons very seriously. During the early 1990s, lawyers were sent to vendors who sold bootleg Bart Simpson t-shirts. In the late 1990s, many Simpsons sites received cease & desist orders for the grave crime of hosting framegrabs. More recently, Fox lawyers managed to take down a series of Simpsons video parodies featuring OJ Simpson. Even creator Matt Groening, who has a collection of bootleg Simpsons merchandise, personally dispatches lawyers from time to time - see the Bunnyhop incident.
Ben Jones, an artist in the art collective Paper Rad, has recieved many acclaims for his work; Paper Rad's avant-garde comics often appear in hip indie comics anthologies such as The Best American Comics and Kramer's Ergot. Following the massive Kramer's Ergot 7, of which Groening was a fellow contributor, Jones was asked to contribute to the upcoming Treehouse of Horror comic book. According to a 2003 Comics Reporter profile, this would not be his first Simpsons comic:
Yet, despite such egregious acts of copyright infringement, Jones and Paper Rad do not appear to have been punished for their actions. As far as I can tell from a Google search, the art collective has never received a cease & desist letter from Fox's attorneys. In fact, with his contribution to Simpsons Comics, Jones appears to have been rewarded for his copyright infringement!!! He is being endorsed, at least implicitly, by Bongo Comics, Groening, and Fox, who are apparently turning a blind eye to his wholesale appropriation of their copyrights. Is Jones receiving preferential treatment simply for being a celebrity? Is this really the message Bongo Comics wants to be sending to infringers?
Lawyers for 20th Century Fox take copyright infringement of The Simpsons very seriously. During the early 1990s, lawyers were sent to vendors who sold bootleg Bart Simpson t-shirts. In the late 1990s, many Simpsons sites received cease & desist orders for the grave crime of hosting framegrabs. More recently, Fox lawyers managed to take down a series of Simpsons video parodies featuring OJ Simpson. Even creator Matt Groening, who has a collection of bootleg Simpsons merchandise, personally dispatches lawyers from time to time - see the Bunnyhop incident.
Ben Jones, an artist in the art collective Paper Rad, has recieved many acclaims for his work; Paper Rad's avant-garde comics often appear in hip indie comics anthologies such as The Best American Comics and Kramer's Ergot. Following the massive Kramer's Ergot 7, of which Groening was a fellow contributor, Jones was asked to contribute to the upcoming Treehouse of Horror comic book. According to a 2003 Comics Reporter profile, this would not be his first Simpsons comic:
Effective as illustration, Ben Jones' comics demand reading. As noted by several of his fellow cartoonists, on no planet should a comic about Simpsons characters Homer and Moe taking a walk, getting high and skinny dipping ("Ho and Mo") work on any level for a single second, let alone be funny and affecting and a touch profound. In the Alfe stories, Jones' most frequent recurring feature and among the first comics the artist tried to sell through Million Year Picnic, Jones uses a sizable, extremely odd cast to pay tribute to simple pleasures and the way kindness and patience act as buttresses against life's intolerable cruelties. Jones is to the idea of friendship what the cartoonist Jack Jackson is to Texas history, its primary comics chronicler.Additionally, The Simpsons is a recurring motif in Paper Rad's ouvre, as evidenced by their website.
Yet, despite such egregious acts of copyright infringement, Jones and Paper Rad do not appear to have been punished for their actions. As far as I can tell from a Google search, the art collective has never received a cease & desist letter from Fox's attorneys. In fact, with his contribution to Simpsons Comics, Jones appears to have been rewarded for his copyright infringement!!! He is being endorsed, at least implicitly, by Bongo Comics, Groening, and Fox, who are apparently turning a blind eye to his wholesale appropriation of their copyrights. Is Jones receiving preferential treatment simply for being a celebrity? Is this really the message Bongo Comics wants to be sending to infringers?
Labels: BART ART, THE BONGO BEAT
posted 8/18/2009 | permalink
New York Times Art Critic Really Likes Simpsons Stamps
BART ART
New York Times senior art critic Roberta Smith wrote a blog post describing her fascination with the recently released Simpsons postage stamps:
The Simpson palette has always seemed as radical and subversive as the show's social commentary and close in artifice to that of innovative colorists like Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman and Matthew Barney. Five amped-up hues suffice: egg-yolk yellow, magenta, Marge-Simpson's-hair blue, darkened chartreuse and lavender, plus important bits of white (mainly eyes and teeth) and touches of red. Subtle distinctions of tonality are made. Homer's yellow head is seen against a slightly darker yellow background. Marge's hair is slightly darker than the blue behind Bart. Red defines only Homer's tongue, Maggie's pacifier, Marge's beads and the smidgeon of Bart's T-shirt.Don't have a Nauman! [Arts Beat]
Third, less is more. The "Simpsons" gestalt is boiled down to its essence and so is stampness. The images are stripped of detail except for the letters USA and the number 44 (cents, the new first class). No fussy engraved textures, no identifying names. This allows color to take over and the faces to pop out. Like a Richard Serra sculpture, only smaller and a whole lot cheaper, the stamps prove the adage that scale has nothing to do with size. They strike David-like blows against the Goliaths of American visual illiteracy.
Labels: BART ART
posted 7/01/2009 | permalink
New Simpsons Stamps To Briefly Forestall Death of Post Office
SPRINGFIELD SHOPPER
A set of five Matt Groening-designed Simpsons postage stamps, suitable for sending anthrax or tea bags to elected officials, will be on sale from the U.S. Postal Service starting May 7th. [AV Club]
A set of five Matt Groening-designed Simpsons postage stamps, suitable for sending anthrax or tea bags to elected officials, will be on sale from the U.S. Postal Service starting May 7th. [AV Club]
Labels: BART ART, SPRINGFIELD SHOPPER
posted 4/12/2009 | permalink
Simpsons Movie Delays Caused By Cartoon Characters Stealing Film Reels
BART ART
posted 14 January 2006 source la times
A pretty generic update on the upcoming movie, with some mildly entertaining new tidbits - the producers seem to advise walking in with low expectations, Groening doesn't know off-hand how many spikes of hair Bart has, director David Silverman wants it to be as wide as possible. But the real highlight of this article is this delightful Silverman drawing of Homer and Bart being chased by Silverman, Groening, Al Jean and James L. Brooks.
posted 14 January 2006 source la times
A pretty generic update on the upcoming movie, with some mildly entertaining new tidbits - the producers seem to advise walking in with low expectations, Groening doesn't know off-hand how many spikes of hair Bart has, director David Silverman wants it to be as wide as possible. But the real highlight of this article is this delightful Silverman drawing of Homer and Bart being chased by Silverman, Groening, Al Jean and James L. Brooks.
Labels: BART ART
posted 1/14/2007 | permalink
