Invest now, says Shia LaBouef.
Pharrow Stevens, creating under the name PeauxDoodles, is a 25 year-old from Haiku, Maui who likes to surf, eat snowcones and collect shells (maybe). He is also one of the hottest up and coming artists in the world. His works, bright and often ridiculous, adorn many young actors’/musicians’ walls in Hollywood and many club promoters’ ceilings in Miami Beach. Shia LaBeouf was recently overheard telling Miles Teller “…invest in fucking Pharrow. He is the new Basquiat and the old Warhol. He is the fucking NOW and LATER.”
But thankfully for us he really likes to surf and so BeachGrit was loaned an original artwork depicting the state of the modern day professional scene.
Here we see Taj Burrows carrying Kelly Slater carrying Gabby Medina. I like it because it feels that these are the faces that should be carved on our Mt. Rushmore at this very moment. Taj represents perpetual youth better than anyone. Kelly is, of course, Kelly and Gabs is the outer band of the Brazilian Storm.
Pharrow says his goal is to, “Start an animation studio on Maui with a bunch of other artists.” And his favorite surfer is, “Mason Ho. I love the video he made at Ala Moana bowls with the Don Julian song.”
His work is fresh and brilliant but not all agree. Art critic Robert Hughes wrote, before he died:
“Pharrow’s career appeals to a cluster of toxic vulgarities. First, to the racist idea of the Hawaiian as naif or as rhythmic innocent, and to the idea of the Hawaiian artist as ‘instinctual,’ outside ‘mainstream’ culture, and therefore not to be judged by it: a wild pet for the recently cultivated white. Second, to a fetish about the infallible freshness of youth, blooming amid the discos of the Haiku scene. Third, to an obsession with novelty—the husk of what used to be called the avant-garde, now only serving the need for new ephemeral models each year to stoke the market- Fourth, to the slide of art criticism into promotion, and of art into fashion. Fifth, to the jrt-investment mania, which abolished the time for reflection on a ‘hot’ artist’s actual merits; never were critics and collectors more scared of missing the bus than in the early ‘2008s. And sixtb, to tbe audience’s goggling appetite for self-destructive talent (Pollock, Hendrix, Montgomery Clift). All this gunk rolled into a sticky ball around Pharrow’s tiny talent and produced a reputation.”
Such venom is a sure sign of great things to come.
