Hasta La Ideas

While browsing through a magazine yesterday, we read something about director Morgan Spurlock‘s new documentary, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. While the film itself sounds interesting, a tongue-in-cheek look into product placement, what stopped us was seeing the outfit the Super Size Me director was wearing to help promote the film at Sundance. A suit, otherwise indistinguishable from any other except for its wide assortment of sewn-on, embroidered corporate logos. Clever and well-made for promotional attention, certainly (here he is in an interview showing off his logo-adorned jacket), but it also seemed entirely similar to work made in the late-90s by the duo The Art Guys in their very successful and widely-seen project, SUITS: The Clothes Make the Man. In collaboration with designer Todd Oldham, the two wore black suits with sewn-on embroidered corporate logos for a full year as they traveled throughout the United States. To us, it seems, Spurlock’s new promotional suit isn’t just similar to The Art Guys’ project, it’s an exact copy.

We got in touch with the artists who told us, “in our opinion, there is no doubt that Spurlock has plagiarized our idea” and that they “find it unbelievable that this is just a coincidence,” considering the amount of attention their project received internationally (their suits are currently in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston). Furthermore, they bring to light a number of other coincidences, like their appearance on CBS News Sunday Morning and Spurlock’s recent appearance on CBS News, which they feel, when placed together, sound incredibly similar (“If one watches closely, much of the conversation is almost word for word. Compare the sections of our ad pitches with his. Coincidental?”). The Art Guys arrive at a point of contention larger than in the copying of the suit itself, but point to Spurlock’s film as a whole as perhaps the larger issue of plagiarism. Here’s from The Art Guys:

In his promo on his website and on YouTube, he talks about having an archivist for the project. Any cursory search on Google would turn up the SUITS project. Again, with all the media attention the SUITS generated, both printed and electronic, including CNN, CBS News Sunday Morning , and given the fact that there’s even a book about it available on Amazon, we find it beyond belief that he did not just steal our idea. Additionally, there was a documentary about the SUITS made by Zenfilm in Houston, that covered all of the issues that Spurlock claims to in his movie including the saturation of marketing and product placement – everything! Here’s a link to a segment of that documentary.

In the CBS Sunday Morning interview and in the SUITS book, we credit various inspirations for the SUITS including race car drivers, to the extent of making efforts to have ourselves photographed with them. We acknowledge and credit our inspirations.

…Spurlock talks about making real money on this thing, on the order of millions. We wonder if the companies who have invested in this would appreciate this “coincidence.” Or maybe the companies associated with Spurlock don’t care as long as their brand gets out there. We have yet to decide what we will do about this.

Regardless, we think it’s nasty business. The Art Guys have made work about media and marketing in many different ways over the years. It’s one of the major themes that we deal with. We’ve even done work covering the topic of appropriation. But at least we’ve given it all serious thought and given credit where credit is due.

We have attempted to contact Morgan Spurlock through his website, but as of this posting, neither he nor a representative have replied.

Update: While the story made the rounds today, Spurlock quickly responded, repeatedly issuing a statement across a number of sites that picked it up (including a response to us on Twitter), reading in part, “This accusation is preposterous. I never even heard of these guys until today, and all of their claims are baseless.”

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If you’re not in or around Chicago at the moment, you’ve likely heard about the mayoral election happening here later this month. It’s the first time in decades that Richard M. Daley hasn’t been a shoe-in (simply because he’s decided not to run this year) and it’s clearly the second or third most exciting to happen in Chicago politics in recent days (Obama ranks up top, with this and the ousting of Governor Blagojevich rankling for second place). And while Rahm Emanuel looks to be the shoe-in successor, the race isn’t over until it’s over. Surveys and interviews filled out by the candidates have been printed or posted for months, covering everything from crime to education. However, the one we were unaware that we’d be most looking forward to has been released: the Landmark Illinois‘ Historic Preservation Survey (pdf). Questions range from “What is your favorite modern building in Chicago?” (Carol Moseley Braun scores points for answer Rafael Vinoly‘s Booth School of Business building, William Walls loses them for his pick of the hard-to-love McCormick Place) to the more specific/political, “Do you support the use of Tax Increment Financing (TIF), in existing TIF districts, to assist with the rehabilitation of historic buildings?” It’s an interesting peek into the not-often voice opinions of the candidates (except for Gery Chico, who didn’t answer), and makes it difficult to pick a favorite based solely on the answers to this one survey.

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Ready your digital listening devices, design fans, because Design Matters is back! For its spring 2011 season, the delightful n’ insightful podcasting pioneer Debbie Millman (who, when not chatting up creative types, presides over AIGA and the design division of Sterling Brands and chairs the Master of Professional Studies Branding Department at the School of Visual Arts in New York) has rounded up the usual stellar group of interview subjects, including designer and SpotCo veteran Gail Anderson, Pentagram’s newest partner Eddie Opara, fashion journalist and MObama style chronicler Kate Betts, Adbusters founder Kalle Lasn, and writer Dominique Browning, the former editor-in-chief of House & Garden. The new season kicks off tomorrow at 2 p.m. Eastern and features a tête-à-tête with cultural trendspotter Rob Walker, who writes the “Consumed” column for The New York Times. And if you detect a certain buzz of excitement in tomorrow’s broadcast, it’s probably just the crowd of enraptured students. Having amassed an audience of approximately 200,000 listeners, Design Matters has moved from its original home in the Empire State Building to The Branding Studio at SVA, where it is recorded in front of a student audience.

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We’re still recovering a bit from the record-setting blizzard we got here over the last couple of days, which certainly didn’t help us get over this flu going around, so this writer is going to start gently this morning. Slate‘s resident architecture critic, Witold Rybczynski, has decided to weigh in on the way architects speak to one another, using lots of highfalutin, five dollar words, in an essay he’s entitled, “A Discourse on Emerging Tectonic Visualization and the Effects of Materiality on Praxis” or as the subheading says, “…an essay on the ridiculous way architects talk.” It’s a fun piece, quickly running through the history of American architecture speak, ranging from the days when “fenestration” meant “window,” to the modernist period when less-was-more, to our current state, which Rybczynski believes is just as jargon-heavy as ever, thanks to universities teaching architecture “as a theoretical discipline.” He provides a very funny, short translation guide for the words currently in large circulation, which should come in handy the next time you run into somewhere wearing a black turtle neck and eyeglasses that are much cooler than yours.

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Remember those heady days of the late ’08s and early ’09s when there was lots of talk about Michelle Obama‘s wardrobe, from how it was going to revolutionize the fashion world to all the speculation over what she would wear at the next big event? Granted, over the past couple of years there’s been gallons of ink used to talk about the First Lady’s fashion sense, but it seems like as the politics went negative, so did some of the press, from the Curse of Michelle which struck both Maria Pinto and Kai Millas‘ now-shuttered lines, and some talk here and there when Mrs. Obama hadn’t selected a piece of clothing by cultural one group over another. This might all change next week, however, with the release of author Kate Betts‘ book Everyday Icon: Michelle Obama and the Power of Style. The book, penned by current contributing editor at Time and former editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar, reportedly spends its 256 pages digging in to the First Lady-as-fashionista, not just talking about her wardrobe choices, but what implications those decisions have had across the fashion industry and the culture and politics as a whole. While Booklist‘s early review is a mixed bag as to its overall quality as a read, they’re likely correct when saying that it’s “bound to be asked for by many readers.” Will be interesting to see what sort of boosting effect it has on First Lady fashion reporting.

A promo video of Kate Betts talking about her book after the jump.

continued…

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