Monday, July 29, 2013
BOSTON BOMBER & ROLLING STONE
With all the recent conversation about commercial art and controversial art I wanted to take a moment to talk about a graphic design piece that has caused a lot of uproar in the last couple of weeks. As you all are aware on April 15th of this year Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev set off 2 bombs near the finish of the Boston marathon killing 3 and injuring over 200 others. Suspect Tamerlan was killed while his younger brother Dzhokhar was arrested. Just a few months after these events Rolling Stone published a magazine with Dzhokhar on the cover. Needless to say people were outraged by an image that seemed to glorify a murderer, similar to how Harvey's Myra did in Great Britain. Its interesting to see that even though commercial artists work is suppose to sell to the masses that they can still offend much like fine artists. Click on the link below to see what Stephen Colbert has to say about it:-)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/18/colbert-rolling-stone-boston-bomber-cover-video_n_3618174.html
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Since I have never read Rolling Stone magazine, I have been thinking they only talks about music. They bring political stories all the time according to Wikipedia. I agree that the picture "glorifies" the bomber by portraying him as if he is a celebrity. I don't think they used the picture of the criminal for an artistic practice like Marcus Harvey did. It is rather mass media's common strategy to be outrageous and sensational (like Benetton's David Kirby ad) and artists like Marcus Harvey is being a copy cat to sell his work.
ReplyDeleteHey Justice, I posted about this cover on the post titled "Got You Covered". I think using a "glam" photo instead of the mugshot may have made people feel a certain way about the cover. However, the article was a very good read.
ReplyDeleteFrom a design perspective, it is a great layout. I can see the controversy. But I am like Colbert, Rolling Stone has been a "pushing the limit" magazine for years. Very edgy in it's approach to informing the public. To me I felt that Rolling Stone did exactly what design opportunist do; design to promote, provoke and persuade.
ReplyDeleteJustice (and Rosalyn),
ReplyDeleteI've been meaning to mention this in class. Remind me to do that.
John Alford