dan funderburgh
dan funderburgh was a big hit here in late august- and now he's having a show at servicio ejecutivo in williamsburg, brooklyn. "ciphers" is taking place right now and showcases a beautiful collection of dan's drawings. you can also read a funny interview with dan on servicio ejecutivo's site. click here for more information.
Labels: artwork, graphic design
posted by design*sponge @ 2.5.07
6 Comments:
So Beautiful! I so love the brown background, it just anchors the work perfectly.
this is a copy of traditional indian design. sorry not original at all - just a copycat.
anon
i love that people lobbing accusations never leave their names. so brave.
i think there's a difference between inspiration and straight out copying. i've definitely seen the hand image before but i think dan is riffing on traditional imagery and adding a modern spin.
if you've seen an image that is exactly the same as any of these please feel free to add it. i take accusations of copying very seriously and don't appreciate people saying "oh that's copied..." at the drop of a hat without even leaving their name.
if you feel strongly that it's a direct copy leave your name and a link to the copied image. otherwise it seems a little lame to just whine anonymously.
d*s
i <3 dan fundergod!
There is a certain quality (probably because of the intricacy) about Dan's work that reminds me of Marian Bantjes, a fantastic illustrator/digital artist from Vancouver. But her work has a more hand drawn feel to it.
I particularly like the concentric circles with all the different cutting tools. Very fun!
Like anonymous I was struck by the very close resemblance to Buddhist, Hindu and Jain symbols. I would not call it plagiarism, but to me it does not give off a sense of "original art"-though I am not certain if that is how they are meant to be portrayed. You can get a variety of images very close to these (except with the proper details) screened on to any number of fabrics anywhere you go in India. The thing is that he has a few details off in each.
The first one is a dharma chakra-claimed by Hindus, Jains and Buddhist (not surprising considering these faiths are all inter-related). The biggest difference I see here is that he imposed a lotus-ey shape in the middle instead of the spokes and the dharmachakra always has 8 spokes and his only has 6 (you'll pardon me, but your resolutions when I click each photo aren't big enough for me to look at the smaller illustrations and design). 8 for the 8-fold path in the proper symbol. The circle in the middle of the central circle is very similar to the chakra on the Indian flag, though.
Ultimately the dharmachakra can be illustrated in any number of ways in terms of the intricacy of the design but he has the whole thing off with the 6 spokes.
The knot I'm having more trouble with and that can rightly be called more interpretive. I'm guessing that's the endless knot of buddhism?
The third one, the hand, is a Jain symbol, but again, everything has been inverted. It is always shown as though the hand is being held up to designate "stop" (my mother is histrionically obsessive over how it is placed on the mandap, i.e. temple). Never sideways, like shown on the picture here. It goes to the central tenet of Jainism which is pacifism.
here is a link
http://altreligion.about.com/library/glossary/symbols/bldefsjainhand.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Jainism_logo.png
He's added mehndi (henna bridal) design all over it.
The last one is also a bit more difficult. I'm guessing it's surya (sun) which is usually represented by the fylot/swastika but that would have gotten him lynched. It's a bit impolitic to flip the original Hindu/Jain/Buddhist swastika on its side and illustrate around it on account of Hitler having done that first. Not exactly a chap you want to plagiarise.
So I don't know what to think, really. He definitely has enough details off on all of these that he's not knocking off the original symbols as anonymous claims, but it rather reminds me of tattooing a chinese symbol for "frog" on yourself or putting up a piece of calligraphy because you think it's "pretty" but it means something stupid or is just off.
I would not have cared if he took the actual symbol and illustrated it more beautifully-because he has added detailing to the chakra and ahimsa symbol that is absolutely gorgeous-and the new representation of surya is truly lovely (swastika is best put away permanently on account of what was done to it).
To me the details he left out are the best of those symbols-the particular placement of the hand means something-it's a tenet of an ancient philosophy. The 8 spokes of the chakra are crucial. This is just like...Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism watered down to meaningless fluff because you don't want to be accused of plagiarism. H/B/J really get knocked around in the media as being fluff hippie or crazy foreigner religions but they're all based on rather profound ideas and I wish, if he wanted to create and interpret the art to be more detailed, he could have respected the originals a bit better than he did.
Just my opinion.
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