Do You Think Exhuming Leonardo's Corpse Is a Good Idea? originally appeared on About.com Art History on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 15:31:03.
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Many denizens of the scholarly art history crowd (if they even watch television) probably tune into Charlie Rose for late night entertainment. The rest of us have doubtless heard that NBC has stuck a fork into The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien after only seven months; it's done as of the Friday, January 22, 2010 taping.
For the past three weeks, the so-called Leno-O'Brien feud has (1) had a lot of comedic tongues wagging and (2) generated an enormous outpouring of popular support for O'Brien, his staff, his writers and the Tonight Show crew. And here is where I'd like to introduce you to Mike Mitchell, the artist who drew I'm With COCO, and whose Facebook page with the same title has over 607,000 fans as I type this. Mitchell does some interesting portraiture and illustration work in mixed-media/digital ... often sort of a mash-up of LowBrow, Steam Punk and old school video game art, combined with three cups of humor (my favorite: No Luck McGee), two tablespoons of pop culture references and a hefty dash of the macabre. Hard to describe, but you can see his gallery on Deviant Art for yourself.
Now, does I'm With COCO rank with Guernica or The Shootings of May Third, 1808 as powerful protest art? No, no one could make that claim with a straight face. It's worth noting, though, that a lot of great art was, is and will forever be generated out of protest and/or spontaneously, in reaction to some event. Five Internet dollars says that I'm With COCO will get its due in cultural sociology studies years from now but, in the meantime, it's always fun to meet a talented new (to me) artist like Mike Mitchell. Oh, and, for the record: I'm firmly in the pre-Gen X demographic that NBC seems to assume will tune in for Jay Leno's second stint as Tonight Show host. Please refer to the image above.
Mike Mitchell Is With COCO originally appeared on About.com Art History on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 15:33:05.











