The Art of Bart Revisited
If there’s ever a gauge of something’s success in popular culture, it’s the prevalence of fan fiction. Often derided by the publishing industry, fan fiction still has it’s uses. It always people to indulge their imaginations, letting them have an outlet for the appreciation of the franchise in question. For the most part, this has visibly been the case with Harry Potter, Star Trek, and Star Wars. Before the ascension of the internet, fans often only had fanzines as their creative outlet, but now, with the relative ease and cheapness of the internet, people have plenty of avenues, when it comes to wrestling creatively with another person’s intellectual property.
This may not be, altogether, a bad thing. In some cases, artistic variations on pop culture have been fully supported. This, at least, was the case with the D.I.Y. Qee Project: BART. This has been a traveling gallery exhibit that has showcased people’s wild variations on Bart Simpson. Basically, prospective artists were given a blank, white Bart figure and told to do whatever their heart desires. Groening not only approved of this, but the traveling show also features his very own entry. And the results have been wild, to say the least.
The following YouTube video shows not only the artistic results, but an actually gallery show of the D.I.Y. Qee Project: BART. Groening makes an appearance, and a few of the artists talk about their experiences. The video itself is broken into two parts. The first overlays camera footage with the distinctive theme music. The second is a news feature.
August 22nd, 2008 at 2:23 am
[...] all, the characters have been tapped to sell French cars after all. Or, even a bit of creep into the art scene. Still, even with interesting characters, the show would be nothing without good [...]