Articles by Anya Firestone
Anya Firestone is an art theorist and leading expert on the strategy and history of art x brand collaborations. Bringing a unique intellectual lens to critique contemporary collaborations, Firestone uses her expertise in philosophy, cultural studies, and art history to explain how brands are changing art history as we know it.
Firestone’s below selection of works have been published by Highsnobiety Magazine, GOAT/Greatest, and Abrams.
UNDER THE INFLUENCE:
Art in the Age of Brand Collaborations
While artists can produce almost anything in the name of “creative license”, brands must jump through licensing hoops to legally reproduce art on their products. Using an art theoretical lens, I approach this question: if a brand appropriates art without breaking a law, can they still break a legacy?
Highsnobiety Magazine | Issue 19 F/W | 2019
LOOK MOMA! NO HANDS:
The Irony of the Artist’s Assistant
In today’s material world where
hired helpers make high-art reach higher-prices, how might we understand the value of a “work” of art upon learning that its namesake’s creator might not have even worked on it during the creative process? When it comes to defining the responsibilities between the artist and his assistants, where do we, quite literally, draw the line?
Highsnobiety Magazine | Issue 15 F/W| 2017
DAMAGED GOODS:
The Draw of the {High-Brand x Street Artist}
Collaboration
As graffiti tags mark up handbags and ball-gowns, the liaison between luxury labels and street artists marks a critical shift in both fashion and art history. Firestone uses an art-theoretical lens to analyze how a runaway on the runway may paradoxically resurrect, or else bury alive, the heritage of both high and low cultures.
Highsnobiety Magazine | Issue 14 | S/S 2016
DECK THE WALLS:
The Rise of the {Skateboard x Artist} Collaboration
As street culture and high art magnetize towards one another exponentially, the [skateboard × art] collaboration signifies their acute meeting point in the 21st century. Firestone takes an in-depth cultural studies approach to rethink what the resulting object stands for, on behalf of contemporary branding and
the future of art itself.
Highsnobiety Magazine | Issue 13 | F/W 2016
From High-Art to High-Tops:
The Impact of Brand x Art Collaborations
With artists’ names being dropped as often as (and with) sneaker drops, we cannot dismiss the phenomenon as an ephemeral hyper-trend, nor label it another Warholian revolution. For while we may hem and haw if we are convinced by the effects of these artsy collaborations in mainstream markets (Do they upgrade a brand? Do they undermine art?) Firestone explores why these liaisons, dangerous or otherwise, are not only influencing the retail world, but art history itself.
Highsnobiety Magazine | Issue 10 | S/S 2014
On Contemporary Artists
Michael De Feo: Flowers
Anya Firestone is a co-author of ‘Michael De Feo: Flowers’ by Abram’s Published. Firestone offers her art theoretical insight into the power of the artist’s contemporary series that use historical paintings to destroy, and then recuperate, the tradition of Pre-Raphaelite art.
Michael De Feo: Flowers | Abram’s Publishing | 2019
FIGURING ART OUT: Reginald Sylvester II
Anya Firestone visits the studio of artist Reginald Sylvester II “While looking back to the past, both art history’s and even his own, [Reggie} moves forward to create a provocative art of today. His aestheticization of issues concerning race, sexuality, or religion grace us like a contemporary oracle, met with an unprecedented level of self-awareness that most young creatives today lack.”
Highsnobiety Magazine | Issue 18 | S/S 2018