Decoupage Deerhead Debacle

by Rainey Knudson June 21, 2008

San Antonio artist Ethan Moore writes: "Jennifer Khoshbin, is ripping off my art… I have been exhibiting this body of work in Texas and across the United States since 2003…Yes, I have been flooded with emails from galleries and collectors all asking ‘whats going on?’ and ‘am I collaborating with her?’ In this instance Rainey, its not just about a cornered market but an out right crime." Ethan, sounds like you’ve been hit with the sincerest form of flattery there is…just think, all the greats have been copied for years. How many wannabe Rauschenbergs/Bourgeoises/Gurskys/Richters do you see in almost every MFA show?? A: TONS. 

Or, maybe, Khoshbin wasn’t aware of your art — sometimes a deerhead is just a deerhead.

12 comments

12 comments

spoke9 February 20, 2008 - 07:04

A glass tower?!? Glass towers get the gas-face for energy efficiency. And windows are enemies of good gallery space. And, to top it off, the building in the rendering is U-G-L-Y.
AMOA must be stuck in the 80s.

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spoke9 February 20, 2008 - 07:09

Ironic that the announcement came on the same day that art handlers Surround Art announced they will be building and moving into a LEEDs silver-certified campus in NYC. First of its kind in the U.S..
Some art organizations look towards the future, others are stuck in Texas.

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Ivan L February 20, 2008 - 07:29

Yeah that sketch isn’t the best. It looks to me like the late 50s! Like something out of Futurama (the GM propaganda, not the animated series). But I’ll wait for a better sketch to make up my mind. From what I see on their website, Pelli Clarke Pelli (http://www.cesar-pelli.com/flash.cfm) might build something interesting…

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gmc February 20, 2008 - 09:42

I like what i see so far. Fred Clark is an outstanding architect and very smart. He is a UT grad and appreciates Austin. Windows don’t have to be the enemy of good gallery space and a glass wall does not always mean a window. Glass is a smart sustainable material that is an intelligent choice. What do you want, Austin stone? Compare the cost of this museum with others going up. It is a being done on a reasonable (although any building is expensive these days) budget. These sorts of uninformed criticisms are stuck in the past.

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b.s. February 20, 2008 - 10:51

don’t hold your breath for the ‘ol supporting area artists thing.

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b.s. February 20, 2008 - 11:20

“Also planned on the property is Museum Tower, a 30-story office building that will be the first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-certified office project in downtown Austin.”

i think that is what this pic above is.

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salvo cheque February 21, 2008 - 08:58

“AMOA will have the space to support area artists more than once every 3 years.”

I would like to hear you expand on how a museum can and should support area artists. Maybe on the messageboards or a new post.

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LionTigerBear February 21, 2008 - 09:09

From the overhead view, I think the lower building in the foreground is the museum and the tower sits behind it. This image makes it look like the tower is sitting on top of a lower, wider structure.

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Ivan L February 21, 2008 - 10:56

That’s a great idea. I’ll get a message board thread started.

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pmaury June 24, 2008 - 17:52

I collaborated with Jennifer Khoshbin on the recent show at 1906 Gallery in San Antonio. No one “ripped off” Ethan Moore’s special deer head aesthetic, I can assure you of that. We had neither seen nor heard of Moore’s work until he announced himself by complaining of idea theft. It’s kind of silly, as everyone realizes, since this design move has been so widely circulated over the past five years or so. It’s in the public domain, so to speak, trite really. The New York Times did an article on it, fronting a photo of deer heads in a trash can. Much more interesting and inexplicable is this: the show at 1906 Gallery includes one single sollitary deer head. This one deer head appears amidst twenty-two other objects, including drawings on paper, short original texts, carved books, and a live performance piece featuring a typist wearing a chicken mask. The show was not about deer heads. It was about animals, distorted popular folk tales, and the strange human place between them. I do not understand how this fixation on the deer head arose, but in any case our show at 1906 Gallery has nothing to do with the “deer head debacle.”

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bert November 5, 2008 - 22:53

Hi. For Ethan Moore or anybody interested in this old post. I can show you dated slides from 1994 of my own deerhead art (even learned taxidermy just to make’m) so I suggest Mr Moore should get over himself.

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