Posts by Miss Rosen

The Making of a Fugitive

Posted on October 3, 2016

Artwork: Dennis Adams, Patricia Hearst – A thru Z, 1979/90. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, gift of Howard and Donna Stone. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago.

On August 7, 1970, Jonathan Jackson, a 17-year-old African-American high school student brought three guns into the Marin County Hall of Justice during the trial of San Quentin inmate James McClain. Jackson, McClain, and Black Panther party inmates Ruchell Magee and William A. Christmas took Superior Court Harold Haley, Deputy D.A. Garry Thomas, and thee female jurors hostage. The group exited the courthouse and attempted to flee in a van. The police opened fire, starting a shootout that left Jackson, Haley, McClain, and Christmas dead.

It soon came to light that that Jackson’s guns had been purchased two days prior to the incident by Angela Davis, then an assistant professor In the philosophy department at UCLA. The state of California considers “all persons concerned in the commission of a crime, whether they directly commit the act constituting the offense…principals in any crime committed,” and charged Davis with “aggravated kidnapping and first degree murder in the death of Judge Harold Haley.” *

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions

The Largest Prison Strike in US History is a Call to Action Against Slavery

Posted on September 30, 2016

Image: The joint resolution proposing the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified December 6, 1865, and abolished slavery, except as punishment for a crime. National Archives

What is happening in the United States prisons?

On September 9, 2016, more than 24,000 inmates from at least 29 prisons in 12 states staged the largest coordinated work strike in United States history to mark the 45th anniversary of the violent uprising at Attica prison.

Despite the fact that it is illegal to organize prison strikes, it continues to this day. This past weekend, a group of guards at William C. Holman Correctional Institute in Atmore, Alabama, joined the strike in solidarity with the prisoners.

How did the strike begin?

A group of inmates at Holman, organized as the Free Alabama Movement (F.A.M.), organized the Nationwide Prison Workstrikes, Boycotts and International Protests in solidarity with ongoing strikes at Florida, South Carolina, and Texas as a call to action against slavery in America.

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Categories: Crave

Walter Robinson: A Retrospective

Posted on September 28, 2016

Artwork: Picture Perfect Kill, Acrylic on canvas 2012, Mima and César Reyes Collection, Puerto Rico

American artist Walter Robinson (b. 1950) moved to Manhattan in 1968 to study art history and psychology at Columbia University, and quickly became a fixture on the art scene. He wrote for Art in America, co-published Art-Rite, was arts editor of The East Village Eye, and editor of artnet, as well as a prolific painter in his own right.

In celebration of his work, curator Barry Blinderman has organized Walter Robinson: A Retrospective, the inaugural exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch, New York, currently on view through October 22, 2016, which is accompanied by a monograph published by the University Galleries at Illinois State University. Featuring 714 paintings made between 1979-2014, Robinson’s work explores the relentless America desire to commodify everything. Blinderman speaks with Crave about Robinson’s work.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Painting

Danny Lyon: Journey

Posted on September 27, 2016

Photo: Danny Lyon, Mary, Santa Marta, Colombia, 1972, Gelatin silver enlargement print © Danny Lyon. Courtesy of the artist and Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York and Zurich

“Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding,” Plato wrote in The Republic circa 380 B.C.

Empathy is both an emotional response, as well as a cognitive one. We can both feel what another experiences, as well as perceive it through rational thought. To be empathetic is a challenge some refuse to accept, but for those willing to open themselves, it is a two-fold process. First there is simply the ability to understand that which is not our own, and to refrain from manipulations that would adulterate its truth. Once we are able to do this, the next step comes: to share this truth in a responsible way, one that allows us to use our personal gifts in the service of the cause, while maintaining integrity and authenticity above all.

American photographer and filmmaker Danny Lyon (b. 1942) understand this, and has dedicated his life to the pursuit of truth. Working in the style of New Journalism, in which the photographer fully immersed himself in the milieu in which he worked, Lyon uses emotional and cognitive empathy to delve beyond the surface of the world and capture something much deeper and far more profound, something so visceral it goes beyond words and cuts straight to the soul.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Photo: Danny Lyon, The Haitian Women, Port Au Prince, 1986, Gelatin silver enlargement print © Danny Lyon. Courtesy of the artist and Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York and Zurich

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

A People’s Journey Across American Finally Arrives on the Washington Mall

Posted on September 24, 2016

Created by: Arthur Rothstein, published by Hyperion Press Ltd. Girl at Gee’s Bend, Alabama 1937; printed 1981, silver and photographic gelatin on photographic paper H x W (Image): 8 15/16 x 12 in. (22.7 x 30.5 cm) H x W (Image and Sheet): 10 7/8 x 14 in. (27.6 x 35.6 cm) Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture (NMAAHC) holds its grand opening today—just one week after Terence Crutcher, 40, was extrajudicially killed by Tulsa Police Officer Betty Shelby. The father of four, who was on his way home from community college when his car broke down, was unarmed and had his hands in his air when Shelby fired the fatal shot without warning. Then, just four days later, Keith Lamont Scott, 43, was shot dead by Charlotte Police Officer Brentley Vinson while waiting for his son to be dropped off after school by the bus, sparking the on-going Charlotte Uprising, which has left a second man dead.

The tragedy is that Crutcher’s story is not unique; it is the very foundation upon which the United States was built. The men who wrote, “All men are created equal” are the same ones who determined African Americans only amounted to 3/5ths of a person. It has been said that, “The more things change, the more they remain the same,” and with every police killing, we are reminded of this—just as we are reminded that the United States government was found guilty of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a 1999 trial, which the mainstream media did not cover at the time.

Read more the Full Story at Crave Online

Brotherhood Records, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Funeral Services, 1968 vinyl , ink on cardboard H x W (2011.17.37a disc): 12 × 12 in. (30.5 × 30.5 cm) H x W (2011.17.37b album jacket): 12 3/8 × 12 3/8 in. (31.4 × 31.4 cm). Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Elmer J. Whiting, III.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions

Silence = Death

Posted on September 23, 2016

Rest in Peace Terence Crutcher

Van Gogh said, “Art is to console those who are broken by life,” so I keep looking and reading and writing and—nope. I remember how it turned out for Vincent, art couldn’t save him from the pain. And that was his personal tragedy, he had to gun himself down.

I understand that, deeply, but at least he had agency, and that’s no small thing. I’m trying not to look at the lynchings the government keeps releasing. Reading the words is all I can bear ’cause I get it. This country been on one since Columbus first stepped foot, bringing a European agenda to a land that was not his to claim.

I get how there would be no United States if not for slavery and genocide, and I get how there is no United States without these today. I see where we are, and where we’re heading, and how we’re getting there—and it’s not just the Klan rising again. It’s the disinformation, the cognitive dissonance, the silence: these are acts of complicity.

Dr. King knew it, back in April 1963. He wrote a letter from a Birmingham jail to Christian and Jewish clergymen, recognizing this:

“I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.'”

Justice is never convenient for those who have blood on their hands, just as Truth is never comfortable for those who are complicit in the lie.

Rest in Peace Keith Lamont Scott

Categories: Art

It’s All True: The East Village Eye Show

Posted on September 19, 2016

Artwork: May 1979. Courtesy of The East Village Eye/Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project.

Picture It: The East Village, May 1979. A new scene is emerging within the burned-out buildings and abandoned lots. It had been a decade since Daniel Patrick Moynihan urged then-President Richard Nixon to adopt the devastating policy of “benign neglect,” effectively cutting off major cities from federal, state, and local services in response to the race riots of the 1960s. At the same time, the Nixon White House initiated a phony war on drugs, as the cover story for flooding African-American and Latino neighborhoods with heroin.

Yet, despite the United States’ government’s best efforts to destroy its own citizens, like the phoenix they rose from the ashes and gave birth to the greatest cultural movements of the late twentieth century. Up in the Bronx, Hip Hop was born. Over in Washington Heights, graffiti took hold. And down in the East Village, punk rock emerged. It’s very telling that when people were pushed to the edge, they came back stronger than ever before.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Artwork: June 1980 Courtesy of The East Village Eye/Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan

NY Art Book Fair: Best of the Zines

Posted on September 17, 2016

Photo: RE/Search

“Freedom of the Press, if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticize and oppose,” George Orwell observed. Orwell was entirely too prescient, or perhaps he was a man of his times, entirely too aware of the way in which fascism shaped and conformed minds to a status quo that understood most people will believe they things they are told if it serves their ego to do so.

Freedom of the press goes hand in hand with freedom of speech, though it can travel further and have greater impact in that it can be revisited time and again. Thus, the freedom to self publish is one of the greatest acts we may undertake for it ensures authorship will not be compromised for any reason. Zines, one of the most inexpensive and quickest ways to self publish, date back to the American Revolution, when patriots such as Thomas Paine self-published Common Sense.

Zines arose as a movement unto their own in the 1970s, when the punk scene took up the mantle. With the advent of new technology such as photocopiers and Polaroids, the ability to self-publish cheap and quick was a new phenomenon. Zines cause on quickly and they went far, emerging today as one of the most beloved underground mediums.

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Photo: Research and Destroy

Categories: Art

See the World with “Hamburger Eyes”

Posted on September 17, 2016

The Hamburger Eyes crew has been on the scene since 2001, when it launched their first issue of 30 xeroxed pamphlets. Over the years, the zine has become on the illest photography magazines in the world, combining the documentary approach of National Geographic and LIFE magazines with the relentless intensity of a graffiti writer bombing the scene.

Dedicated to the pictorial history of both unseen and iconic moments of everyday life, every issue of Hamburger Eyes illustrates its motto perfectly, capturing “The Continuing Story of Life on Earth” to a T. Printed in black and white, and designed with the photographs running full bleed, every page is fresh, crisp, and clean.

Over the years, Hamburger Eyes has expanded to take on publishing photograph books, zines, and magazines, with more than 100 titles to date in its catalog. It includes works by the core members of the collective including Ray Potes, David Potes, Stefan Simikich, Brian David Stevens, Jason Roberts Dobrin, Ted Pushinsky, David Uzzardi, Michael Jang, and Uri Korn. The titles alone are enough to draw the eye, whether Slag Hag (John Oliver Hodges) or Sweat Stains (Mark Murrmann), you might just wonder, “What’s inside?”

Read more the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: Art, Crave, Photography

Wall Writers: Graffiti in its Innocence

Posted on September 16, 2016

Photo: CORNBREAD declares he has retired, 1971. Photo used with permission of Philadelphia Inquirer, ©2014

Picture it: New York and Philadelphia, the late 1960s. A curious phenomenon takes hold as names begin to appear on the street, written on the walls. In the beginning, it’s just a couple of names, written over and over again. It’s a mystery, these names. Who are they and what do they mean? It doesn’t quite register with the general population but it hits home with kids. It’s fame of a most unusual kind. The fame of being known for what you do long before anyone knows who you are.

It slowly begins to grip the imagination of a few who are dedicated, and from these humble beginnings, a cultural revolution begins. Graffiti is one of the most basic human impulses. As soon as children know how to write their names, they’re keen to leave their mark. This offends many who find it indecorous, such is their longing to conform to other people’s rules. But then there are those who refuse to conform and insist on living on their own terms.

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UGA canvas featuring STITCH 1-n-ROCKY 184, circa 1973. Photo courtesy of Rocky 184.

ROCKY 184 and STITCH 1, circa 1972. Courtesy of ROCKY 184.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Brooklyn, Crave, Graffiti, Manhattan

Len Speier: Nearly Everybody

Posted on September 15, 2016

Photo: Nearly Everybody, vintage gelatin silver print. © Len Speier, courtesy Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York.

“Lucky Man Speier,” they call him, and this is true. At the tender age of 88, native New Yorker Len Mitchell Speier is receiving his due with his first solo exhibition of photographs, Nearly Everybody, currently on view at Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York, now through October 29, 2016. Drawn from an archive that spans six decades, the show features 48 vintage photographs made in New York and Europe between the 1960s and ‘80s.

As with many things in his life, Nearly Everybody came about through the fortunes of fate. Following the success of her recent exhibition Bacalaitos & Fireworks at the gallery, Speier asked photographer Arlene Gottfried if she could introduce him to Daniel Cooney; Gottfried said it was okay to use her name so Speier did just that.

Cooney remembers, “The call came out of the blue. After we spoke, I Googled and not much popped up. I went up to visit him at his apartment and that was it. It was an amazing moment.”

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Photo: Fight Racism, White Street, NYC, 1969, vintage gelatin silver print. © Len Speier, courtesy Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Photography