The million dollar question

Last week I visited the Art Institute in Chicago, I came across some of the most beautiful paintings I have ever seen. They were a variety of paintings by Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali.



After reading Grazian’s theories about popular culture and what makes objects significantly more popular than others however, my perception of the paintings before taking those theories into consideration was completely different than what it was after I put that theory lens on.

Artists like these are legendary. Their works of art are sold for millions of dollars. A regular person may think that that’s due to the fact that they’re brilliant artists and they produce beautiful paintings. Thinking with a sociological mindset however, I know that that’s not true. A piece of art, any piece of art, is admitted into the pop-culture category based on its perceptions from the consumer. A work of art is considered an object of popular culture once it gets recognition, whether it was positive or negative.

A product is not the work of one person; these paintings are not just works of art from the artist. There's an entire production process that delivers these paintings from the artists canvas to our museums. There's a whole procedure that starts from the person buying that plain white piece, to the artists who paints, to his manager who sells it, to the producer that auctions it off to many different museums, and finally to the museum that displays it for us beautifully under the illuminating lights.

Why are these pieces of art considered magnificent million dollars works, while graffiti is considered vandalism? Graffiti can be beautifully genius sometimes. Who’s to say one is better than the other? Who defined one as professional and the other as amateur? One can put graffiti in a frame and call themselves artists. If only graffiti artists would go that production process.

Why is this considered vandalism?



While this is considered a million dollar piece of art?



What defines an objects status in society isn’t its quality, but its perception by the consumer. All art is a form of expression. They’re all equally culturally significant no matter how ridiculous or obscene one of them is thought to be. But when a certain producer wants to make a sale, they can change the objects image in the consumers’ minds. A splash of paint on a plain white canvas can be sold for ten million dollars, while a message about society or oppression expressed through graffiti is considered "garbage".

Hijabizing Graffiti

In this week's class, we discussed about cultural resistance and used Banksy's example to showcase cultural resistance. For this particular blog post, I will be analyzing the work of another graffiti artist, Princess Hijab, from the perspective of culture resistance.

So, who is Princess Hijab? Some refer her as the muslim sister version of Banksy while others claim her to be the founder of hijabism movement. Princess Hijab is an anonymous 20-year-old guerilla street artist based in Paris, who began her “noble cause” of attempting to hijabise advertisements in 2006. She does this by using spray paint and a black marker to cover women’s faces and bodies in ads, or by pasting “hijab” over models displayed in posters and billboards in the streets of Paris. However, it is unknown whether she wears a hijab or if she is even a Muslim.


Her profile page on Art Review states that, "Princess Hijab explores notions of space and possible types of representation, contrasting the normative representations of the public sphere with her personal iconoclastic approach […] She is known for her subversive work within the public space and for her “diy” and “grrl” attitude." She had initially started her work as a way of resisting the mainstream and sexist consumerist culture. In other words, the advertising culture is the dominant/ parent culture and the hijabized graffiti art is the subculture. Many people have also associated her art as way of expressing against the hijab ban in France. However, in one of her rare online interviews, she mentions," My work is nothing to do with the veil ban in France. I’ve repeatedly stated: No, that is not my message, neither in the form, nor in the content of my stuff. I started working in 2005 [before the ban was imposed] on top of that.The content of my art is more directly related to our archetypes, to the collective unconsciousness, our intimate reactions, to the closed space of the Metro and the street."







Cultural resistance comprises of 4 forms - content, form, interpretation and activity. The content of the message is aimed to attract people’s attention to what usually is unnoticeable For example, by drawing niqab on billboard models, Princess Hijab has attracted the world’s attention to the wall. Secondly, for this case, street art is the means (the medium) for culture resistance. According to her," Street art is how I build my universe, giving form to my imaginary representations. Paris - the city, the identities, fashion and society- it offers me nearly inexhaustible inspiration. It nourishes my urban expression". The interpretation part is related to the society and how they interpret the modern mainstream and consumerist culture. Activity refers to the art of graffiti, in this case, the black spray paint symbolizing the veil on poster models that attracts the attention towards those ads.





At the beginning, her art received negative reactions in the public. But now, however, Prince Hijab's guerrilla street art has gained widespread popularity and has been featured at several art exhibitions, including one in Norway recently.