This weekend (thanks to a recommendation from David Glenn of the Chronicle of Higher Education), I checked out the exhibition “Illegal Art,” which will be in D.C. through early June and in San Francisco this July. The art is “illegal” because it appropriates copyrighted or trademarked imagery as source material. In actuality, I think all of the works there fall in the category of “fair use,” though several of the artists have received cease-and-desist nastygrams. The alphabet above is taken from the first letters of stylized brand-names… you probably recognize quite a lot of them, which is the artist’s point. My favorite piece was a video montage in which network news anchors have lines from old B-movies dubbed over their lines, with lips altered to sync properly. The sound clips are perfectly matched with their facial expressions, and the effect is hilarious. Catch it if you can.