For all of you guys that aren’t going to read the relatively long article, here’s a TL;DR
The artist in question is Devon Rodriguez, who you will more likely recognize if I say he is “the painter who draws people on the subway, from TikTok.”
He did a gallery, and this critic, Ben Davis, said that these types of subway portraits are nothing new. The portraits are good as far as realistic portraits go, but as an art critic, the portraits themselves are not very noteworthy. The videos of him making the portraits are what is noteworthy.
Devon Rodriguez didn’t like the review and pointed his fans at it. His fans didn’t actually read the review (nor did Devon). The fans really got stuck on the part where the critic said that you might not recognize the artist until he called him “the painter who draws people on the subway, from TikTok.”
On Saturday morning, I woke up to a tidal wave of anger from Rodriguez on Instagram, tagging me across scores of posts. Hundreds of his followers went on the attack, swarming my Instagram: “loser,” “hater,” “pathetic,” “jealous,” “your a dick,” and on and on and on. There were many creative variations on “kill yourself.” Others said they were going to get me fired, or said things like, “we are going to start a cancellation campaign against you.” A large number thought that defending Rodriguez meant calling me bald, ugly, fat, or whatever they thought could get under my skin. Most didn’t seem to have actually read my article. A contingent went after my wife. “Some women will do anything for money,” one commented. That one was funny, actually.
Meanwhile, Devon makes public posts saying, of the critic, “love will always outshine being a hater, I hope I taught you that today.”
The critic goes on to say that Devon Rodriguez’s videos are obviously faked, and posts the most obvious example he could find, where another TikToker dances on the London Underground for 30 minutes while he makes a sketch of her that clearly seems to be from a photo not taken at the time. The whole thing has multiple camera angles, and then she acts surprised when he reveals that he drew her.
He ends talking a lot about how problematic parasocial relationships can be. These are where a lot of people feel like they “know” a famous person, but he clearly doesn’t know them. And the celebrity ends up with a lot of people acting all wacky to defend him.
I always enjoyed these tiktoks, staged or not. But man this is a shitty attitude. Imagine taking it as an insult if someone identified you from your best known (and quite good) work.
Yikes. That’s pretty fucked up of this guy. That’s mild criticism that most artists will have to hear at some point. In the era of photography where hyper realism in hand drawn art is just a skill you can learn art requires more than hyper realism to be notable. That’s just the point of modern art. It’s not a secret, I’m in stem and can’t draw for shit and I know it
The full article is definitely worth a read. The author says that his original article was giving the artist praise, and also mentions that he probably got to where he was without having anyone criticise him.
I wish we could hold people who do stuff like this with their social media platform accountable and make it so whoever does this kind of stuff would get deplatformed immediately or something.
It’s gross that some people think it’s genuinely okay to practically sic their fans on people who just… don’t like what they do, or might disagree with something they said. The fact the TikTok person also said “love will always outshine being a hater, I hope I taught you that today” is a fucking disgusting and twisted line of thinking because he’s encouraging his fans to hate on the critic - where’s the “love” in that?
Just assume anyone who gets popular on social media platform for regularly doing something that seems unlikely is staging it. Or just assume they all stage everything.
Then there is no need to try and expose anyone because we already know they are entertainers who stage everything.
That’s what creeps me out about those animal rescue videos on YouTube. Like, one video of finding an emaciated kitten and nursing it back to health - cool. A whole channel full of these? Where the fuck are you “finding” all these poor animals?
I live in a city area next to the end of where it got developed, there are several “colonies” of abandoned cats nearby. My mom used to take care of them, we ended up with 16 cats at home just from “emaciated rescues” that we managed to bring back to health (not all made it) and didn’t manage to place somewhere else, about 20+ in a couple nearby colonies, some 40+ in some farther away ones… all the time working with a “capture, spay, release” program… and I got livid when she sent me a photo with 5 kittens in a box someone had left next to a dumpster, asking if she should take them home.
If you wanted kittens, I could find you so many kittens, that you wouldn’t have the time to make videos of all of them.
What you really should be asking though, is: what did they do with the grown up cats?
A well fed and cared for house cat, can live 10-15 years. Where did those YouTubers put all those kittens, for the next 10+ years?
I’m sorry, but… how does that relate to what I am saying?
I was talking about how we should hold these influencers accountable for doing shit like siccing fans on critics or publicly posting the location of a critic’s house on social media after doxxing said critic. Whether their content is real or not is an entirely different conversation - I’m talking about how these social media platforms should make this kind of behavior not okay and deplatform them for basically using their fanbase and/or fame to intimidate and threaten others.
An art critic took a critical eye to his art, there are some negatives pointed out but overall it’s a rather benign and positive review. This mob was unleashed because he dared to offer actual mainstream attention…
We should also hold their fans accountable for being mindless assholes. If some guy I watch on the internet tells me that he got a bad review, my first thought is not “I should send death threats to this reviewer”. Like, that’s not how a normal, semi well adjusted person behaves!
Seriously! Some content creators I like wrote books, I assume the books are going to be ok. They aren’t fiction writers idk what to tell you. Hell a friend of mine wrote a book and if critics deride it I’m going to just console her and keep recommending it to people who I think will appreciate it for what it is.
Tik Tokers pretend like the culture of building ethical parasocial relationships with your fanbase hasn’t already been established years ago by Youtuber and Twitch streamers. You never send your fans to harass others. That’s literally how you get banned from the platform.
I mean yes, any rationally minded individual would understand that sending your supporters after someone is a bad idea. Being kicked off the platform has nothing to do with it, it is wrong period.
I’m more convinced it has something to do with social media induced narcissism than anything else. When your role models are all vapid and self centered, why would you be any different? And when you’re a narcissist you will absolutely be so conceited as to think you’re too big to fail.
Add in a little stupidity and voila: you have someone like SSSniperwolf.
This was my first thought - that this was a calculated stunt. Talent builds intrigue, but rage gets clicks. This is sad to see as it is, but if this is a genuine reaction, it’s even sadder.
I would never want anything to do with this artist, whether this was a genuine bad reaction or malicious. Just sad.
Wow, what a cool artist, making 30 grand a day shilling fucking cheetos online drawing lame shit an AI could crank out in 2 seconds. Truly a revolutionary thinker that will be talked about for generations to come.
EDIT: Removed the quotes around ‘artist’ because they are, in fact, an artist, I just have no respect for their art.
This is why I have little respect for most of the art community. There are some exceptions that are just doing it for the love of the work and producing unique styles. But, mostly it’s just boring, overdone bullshit being sold for 500x what it’s worth, or artists sabotaging themselves to get ahead, or artists shitting on their own audience, or all three, or everything in-between.
As the industry has been growing increasing oversaturated for decades, centuries even, the toxic egos have been more and more pronounced. And I am definitely not surprised this guy got popular on the cesspool that is TikTok.
Isn’t this the dude who obviously makes staged videos? In his videos there is always an obvious cut when the camera pans from the subject in the subway to the drawing. No wonder all his fans are straight up morons
Huh, his art is technically fine, but I’ve seen photorealism done better (and really, it tends to be one of the most boring genres of art imo, because it’s usually more focused on accuracy than on any kind of meaning or feeling). I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about him if I ever came across his work, but now my impression is that he’s not particularly likeable in addition to being a pretty mediocre artist. Especially since the original review was very fair - maybe nicer than he deserved. That chicken hand was rough.
Being able to make a living through art in any way is tremendous success that most don’t achieve, but it seems based on his reaction, it still isn’t enough. One lukewarm review (not even a full-on pan) was enough to send him into a spiral of negativity. Definitely an instructive case study about the actual value of social media fame. Can’t make you confident in yourself.
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