I noticed that people are using the word “throwback” in place of the pejorative “copy.” Well, here’s an issue of Milk magazine from Hong Kong, with Jan Lamb (Lamdog [giggle like a school girl]) on the cover, with a throwback? throwing back? uhh… to the prolific Chinese artist Yue Minjun (click the name for my previous post on him). I don’t know how saturated (mainlaind) Chinese art is in Hong Kong but that’s pretty interesting. It’s interesting because it seemed, when I was working there, that Hong Kong has an affinity to avoid cultural influences from mainland PRC.
By the way, I stole this picture off of Kevin’s blog (from Hypebeast). For those of you unfamiliar w/ the magazine. Milk is a youth magazine that’s maybe 2 US dollars. Even though Hong Kong is a tiny place, the publications business is extremely competitive. It’s not like in the US where you go to Barnes and Noble and buy one of those (Art/Lifestyle/Men’s Interest) magazines for 5 - 10 dollars. In Hong Kong, something like this would be a weekly publication for 2 US dollars or less. Sometimes it’ll include a cheap little gift, like a thing of magnets or stickers or a lanyard, etc. Okay, enough boring publications talk.
Yeah, I’m one of those that uses throwback or vintage instead of copy, but most of the time copy or rip-off is the best word to use.
Magnets and stickers…sounds like a coloring book.
Well, the classy and pretentious word to use would be homage.