Surprised he doesn't have his own thread here (although I did find a Shepard Fairey thread that derailed into talk about his Tokion figure) I'm sure most of us grew up following his artwork and maybe a few people here own some artwork or have some stories from around SF to share?

Strangely enough by going to a Barry McGee show it kicked off the japanese vinyl chapter in my collection. I flew to SF from Australia a few years ago to go to his retrospective show at BAM/PFA and during that week in SF I visited Super7 a few times and bought my first piece which was a blank Burger Buns.. flew out of town with some vinyl, a stack of UNIQLO clothing (the pop up shops were packed with Eric Elms shirts) and a sketchbook with Twist and Amaze pieces in there! Ended up in NY and finally got to see his and Margaret Kilgallen's toys in person at Toy Tokyo.

Has anybody heard much lately.. I haven't heard about any shows for a while now, maybe not in the past 12 months? There's always something new in his shows to look at, can't wait to see what's next.

Surprised? He's not really relevant here and until now, the board dodged a bullet... But that means nothing because there are endless, benign posts of (so-called) artists in these here pages that aren't relevant either. But I digress...

I believe he is one of the art directors at RVCA clothing. I agree he is one of the artist I love and would love to see more of his newer works. I believe he has made a vinyl toy and the head pops off exposing a marker.

Yup, he's not really part of this crowd and there are other boards that will give him and others of that era the discussion. Here I feel it will end up getting detailed somehow. It always does.

That docu, beautiful losers, about that whole group of artists was ok. I remember some of it, but overall I remember being more impressed by the ladies in the collective than the dudes, McGee being the most boring one.

In the good old days this used to be a Japanese Toy Forum!

Now it's all just white noise!

Racist

Never heard of him. Did a Google search and not too intrigued, to be honest. A lot of his work looks like the big mess of a quilt I had hanging on my wall as a kid.

Then you get it

Barry McGee ( TWIST ) is a LEGEND! His screw bombs, characters, stickers, bottles, streaks on trains, ect..

This.

If you aren't familiar with his artwork here's a little video that Art 21 put together from the BAM show.

Not everyone needs to tell their story to the world.

I remember seeing Twist pieces all over SF. It was pretty awesome along with Reminisce's horses. I was on the bus one day with a classmate and all of a sudden he goes "Oh shit...that's Twist!!" pointing at a guy in a suit, riding a bicycle. There were a lot of cool things going on in SF in the early 90's to 2000 and seeing pieces by Twist, Reminisce, and I think Kaws as well as others, was really great.

I like Barry McGee! I have a few t-shirts (3D Indian head) etc. Those faces he did on the glass bottles are great (but way too expensive for me).

Ooohh yeah I remember those shirts, I think I ordered some years ago from Giant Robot.. they were Japanese sizing and by the time they arrived over here and I saw how they fit it was too late to order proper sizes. Great shirts though.. I picked up the 3D head and one of the heavily rendered ballpoint pen head cluster designs. It's a shame that RVCA has dumped a lot of the artist shirts they were doing - think the designs changed a bit when Billabong took over.

What's the story with Reminisce gatchabert?? I remember seeing glimpses of those horses over the years, and at the time the technique was really similar to Barry's screws.. Was there any connection there?

Giant Robot (2) I believe, they exhibited Barry and some of those bottles a long while back. I think at the time they were selling for a few hundred bucks. I absolutely love the art world. It completely embodies the mythological idea of the wild wild West. Arbitrary pricing and utter mayhem. It's right up there with the sleaziness of the music business, entertainment industry and porn.

Not sure if it's true but the story was that he purchased those bottles from bums on the street before painting them. I have a buddy who has a few of his pieces but FWIW I was much more into Margaret Kilgallen when it comes to the O.G. SF Mission/Lowbrow stuff. A shame she's no longer with us.

Definitely a true story.. heard it directly from a guy who used to work at SFMOMA. At the time Barry was commissioned to paint a huge wall (or skirting around a long fence) around the YBCA if I can remember correctly? He bought a lot of bottles from homeless who were setup around the area at that time, and a lot of the faces are rough portraits of the people he bought from.

I never asked around if there was a connection. I should have asked around but at the time, and even today to some extent, it doesn't really matter to me who did what. I just enjoyed the art...and every morning I'd be taking the bus to get to BART (8am woodworking class on the other side of the Bay. I was definitely awake when I got to the shop), I'd look out the window to see those pieces. Both Twist and Reminisce went to the same schools so they were probably feeding off each other, artistically since there is some overlap between the years they were at SFAI. I was at CCA (used to be CCAC) at the time.

Barry McGee is cool IMO.

I collected the Neo Graffiti Project Figures by Tokion (not my photo) before I entered Japanese toys and that was hard to complete.
Tokion was a Japanese magazine focused on art, fashion, music etc.



I really appreciate their quality and character. Would be hard to let them go among others.

I also liked "Beautiful Losers" and McGee's late wife Margaret Kilgallen's work.

I really regret not picking up a pair of Ray Fong Adidas years ago

Would you wear them or just let them sit and collect dust in your closet...

Never would have guessed the classic middle parting is this popular among hobos!

If I'm not mistaken, the hipster movement was started in the Bay area...