GAP / Whitney Museum of American Art

Art in the Park. Jim Shi. The Daily. 05.29.08.
excerpted text:

"The 13 tees designed by the likes of Kiki Smith, Marilyn Minter, Cai Guo-Qiang, Kenny Scharf and Glenn Ligon (plus Close and Koons) will be displayed in Bryant Park from today through June 4. Displayed with biographies, they will promote Gap Inc.'s ever-increasing affiliation with the arts through its Gap and Banana Republic brands while encouraging visitors to 'experience works of art among the trees.'"

1 2 3 4, art is at your Gap store

1 2 3 4, art is at your Gap store. The Star. By Stephen Marche, 05.24.08.
excerpted text:

"The Gap's new campaign is only a mainstream version of what Louis Vuitton has been doing for years, using artists as marketing devices. In 2005, LV hired Vanessa Beecroft to stage a performance art piece at the opening of a store on the Champs Elysée – she placed nude models on the shelves. The great Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has designed window displays for them. The most startling room in the new Takashi Murakami show in Brooklyn is the Louis Vuitton boutique right in the middle of the museum. It sells handbags he designed, drawing no distinction between his artworks and commercial products." 

"This is all cheeky and wonderful from the point of view of the corporation, but in what position does it leave the artist? It's not just that art has become suffused with money – a practice market for those who love markets so much they want to spend their recreation hours buying and selling. Art has always had to deal with commerce. The difference is that artists are now aspiring to be the CEOs of their work, as conceptualizers, organizers, synthesists, and packagers of other people's labour. Cai Guo-Qiang, the great Chinese gunpowder artist specializes in works that are so large they require teams to construct or perform. Damien Hirst conceived of a skull covered in diamonds, so he hired Bond St. jewellers to make one. Hirst gave the piece its name, For the Love of God, he set the price ($100 million) and he sold it on to a consortium. Conceiving and naming and selling are his jobs, not the business of fabrication. Beauty, like everything else, has been outsourced."

"In the realms of both luxury goods and art, the whole notion of the hand-made has become quaint, an old-fashioned notion like dressing for dinner or saving yourself for marriage. Murakami has argued that the idea of authenticity in art, and the lines it draws between art and design, original and fake, are Western constructs, destined to lose place in an increasingly globalized art world. That may well be true, but there are Western processes at work, as well, notably the triumph of consumer capitalism and the reduction of all things to cash value."

"There's a nearly perfect analogue to the current condition of art and commerce in one of the West's oldest myths, the story of Erisichthon from Ovid's Metamorphoses. As punishment for destroying a sacred grove of trees, Erisichthon is cursed by the gods with a terrible affliction: Famine is put in his belly. The more he eats the more he wants to eat. He begins to sell off all his possessions for food, including his daughter. Neptune has granted her the ability to change shapes at will. So Erisichthon sells her as a bull or a beautiful deer and she transforms back into herself and returns to her father to be sold again. She finds herself conjured into beauties in order to feed an insatiable hunger. Just so: The artist in his or her many varied transformations feeds the endless consumption which no glut can sate. No amount of diamond skulls or cherry-blossom handbags or Gap T-shirts will fill our inner, endless hunger for things and more things. Erisichthon can't save himself from his hunger, no matter how often he sells his daughter. In the end he eats his own guts. The myth doesn't say what happens to his daughter."

Gap Artist Editions / Whitney Museum of American Art

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GAP Artist Editions / Whitney Museum of American Art. Christopher Street & Seventh Avenue, New York. 

Gap Artist Editions / Whitney Museum of American Art

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GAP Artist Editions / Whitney Museum of American Art. 5th Avenue, New York.  

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Rirkrit Tiravanija.GAP Artist Editions.

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Marilyn Minter. GAP Artist Editions.

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Kerry James. GAP Artist Editions. 

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Glenn Ligon. GAP Artist Editions. 

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Cai Guo-Qiang.GAP Artist Editions.

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Sarah Sze. GAP Artist Editions. 

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Kiki Smith. GAP Artist Editions. 

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Barbara Kruger. GAP Artist Editions.  

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Chuck Close.GAP Artist Editions. 

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Kenny Scharf. GAP Artist Editions.

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GAP Artist Editions / Whitney Museum of American Art. Fifth Avenue, New York. 

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Jeff Koons.GAP Artist Editions.

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GAP Artist Editons / Whitney Museum of American Art. 5th Avenue, New York. 

Gap / Whitney Museum of American Art

Gap Artist Edition T-Shirts. Erin Weinger. Los Angeles Times. 05.11.08.
excerpted text:

"A design by Chuck Close features the artist's 2002 black-and-white rendering of composer Philip Glass. Others created new work for their T-shirt canvases. Neo-Geo artist Ashley Bickerton's square T-shirt sketch is in colors reminiscent of Skittles. Jeff Koons used a halftone printing pattern to make a deer's head. Rirkrit Tiravanija's ominous design reads, "The days of this society are numbered" in plain orange lettering." (Erin Weinger)

Gap Artist Editions / Whitney Museum of American Art

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GAP / Whitney Museum of American Art. Spring Street, New York. 

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GAP / Whitney Museum of American Art. Sixth Avenue and 45th Street, New York. 

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GAP / Museum of American Art. Seventh Avenue and 13th Street, New York. 

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GAP / Whitney Museum of American Art. 14th Street, New York. 

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GAP / Whitney Museum of American Art. Houston Street, New York. 

Whitney Museum / GAP

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GAP / Whitney Museum. 2008. 

Gap / Whitney Museum of American Art

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Gap Takes and Art-T Approach. By Marcy Medina. WWD. 05.02.08. 

excerpted text: 

"On May 13, the retailer will roll out its latest collaborative effort, Artist Editions T-Shirts, a limited edition collection of cotton Ts designed by contemporary artists Chuck Close, Jeff Koons, Marilyn Minter, Kiki Smith, Cai Guo-Qiang, Barbara Kruger, Ashley Bickerton, Kenny Scharf, Glenn Ligon, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Kerry James Marshall, Hanna Liden and Sarah Sze." (Marcy Medina)

"Gap partnered with the Whitney Museum of American Art and the nonprofit Art Production Fund to create the collection with the 13 past Whitney Biennial participants." (Marcy Medina)

"This continues to reinforce our desire to be culturally relevant." (Marka Hansen, Gap Brand North America President)

GAP / Whitney Museum of American Art

Art Tees.Colette Newsletter.www.colette.fr.04.25.08.

excerpted text:

"GAP and Whitney Museum of American Art present Gap Artist Edition, a serie of limited edition t-shirts, sold exclusively in France at colette, starting next May 23rd. These unique pieces are printed with a selection of artworks presented in previous Whitney Biennales. Some of the most powerful artists in contemporary arts are represented: Jeff Koons, Chuck Close, Kiki Smith, Marilyn Minter, Barbara Kruger, Glenn Ligon, Kenny Scharf et Kerry James Marshall."

Tom Ford on Jeff Koons.

Chuck Close. Interview by Charlie Rose. 


Kiki Smith. By Art:21. 

Barbara Kruger. By Art:21. 

Kenny Scharf. 

Kerry James Marshall. By Art: 21.