by. BullaBolla
Mr. Doodles, whose name is Sam Cox, is a 23-year-old artist from England. He just draws doodles on white canvases with a black sharpie. He recently blew up on social media where his audience is based. I think people are fascinated by his work mainly because everything he draws is live, and he just doodles whatever comes to mind, and everything fits perfectly. it is interesting to watch him draw and its really satisfying.
A lot of his work are a way of performance. He has a YouTube channel, where he uploads videos of him doodling. This is also his way of marketing himself. The pieces he makes isn’t just exposed on social media. His work is also displayed in galleries, different street murals and holds exhibitions where he performs in front of a live audience.
Earlier this month he had his biggest exhibition ever, in Tokyo. The piece he did in Tokyo, stands out from his earlier work. First of all, this canvas was over 8 meters long and almost 5 meters wide. The canvas was colorful instead of plane white. He did a lot of special and different pieces on this exhibition. He doodled on a golden egg and other sculptures in front of a live audience.
When I look back at his work and think of how he started, I wouldn’t say his doodling was a specific artwork. He started drawing really young mostly out of boredom. When he got older, he started videotaping himself drawing and posted it online, where he later started to get attention from others. In comparison to other artist, he hasn’t had a goal and passion to actually become a professional artist. Artists in the art industries maybe has to work their whole life and work really hard to achieve their life dream. So, from my point of view neither him or his work would be categorist as art. But that has changed with time.
In our last seminar we talked about what makes an artist an artist, and a lot of the criteria match with Mr. Doodle. Just by looking at his work you can tell he uses a dissent amount of time to complete the artistic work. The art has become very popular among actors and individuals which then leads to a high economic income. Due to his resent blowup and popularity he is now recognized among the public. At this time, I think he is identifying himself as an artist due to how he started and what his passion was back then. But not all of the criteria match up. I know that he hasn’t studied art and then has a formal education. If he has a membership of an art organization or is officially recognized as an artist I don’t know.
But, based on some of these criteria, I may now define Mr. Doodle an artist, and his work as art. But to make it in the big art industry, he might have to work harder and longer over time.
References:
PowerPoint from seminar 2, slide 12
Making sense of art and design industries 