hipster NOT an artist

Reach out for some examples of well-known hipsters and you will end up with a list of accomplished artists who might be called icons of hipsterism and who definitely appeal to hipster taste -

in film Chloe Savigny



in music Karen O.



or Bjork



in painting Elizabeth Peyton



in art Andy Warhol



in fashion photography Terry Richardson



- but you won't call them hipsters as that would go against their particular achievements.
Almost by definition a real hipster isn't an artist. The hipster is the cultural figure, who understands consumers purchases within the familiar categories of mass consumption (but still not available to everyone; only to the hip consumer/rebel consumer) – the right vintage T-shirt, the right jeans, the right food, the right photograph – to be a form of art (subculturation of consumer capitalism). They might be called critics, re-mixers, curators or the copy-writers who follow the actual artists but they are never artists themselves. At best, it seems, that they are art students; people who aspire to create art (hangers-on, poseurs, rather than art makers).