Posts by Miss Rosen

Godlis: History is Made at Night

Posted on September 14, 2016

Photo: The Ramones, CBBG, 1977. ©Godlis, courtesy of agnès b. galerie, New York.

“There are no secrets that time does not reveal,” Jean Racine wrote. With the benefit of hindsight, it has become evident that punks are true embodiment of the counterculture movement. They never sold out and they never said die. They just keep on keeping on, D.I.Y.

Photographer David Godlis arrived on the New York scene in 1976, camera in hand, carrying as much film as he could reasonably hold in the pockets of his black jeans without looking indiscreet. He usually shot without a flash, using the techniques of masters like Brassai, who had famously photographed Paris at night forty years prior and inspired Godlis’s masterful eye.

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Photo: Richard Hell, Bowery, 1977. ©Godlis, courtesy of agnès b. galerie, New York.

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Crave, Manhattan, Music, Photography

Marking the Infinite

Posted on September 13, 2016

Artwork: WINTJIYA NAPALTJARRI Women’s Ceremonies at Watanuma, 2007 Acrylic on Belgian linen 72 1/20 x 60 6/25 in.

After they began colonizing the continent in 1788, the British coined the term “Aboriginal Australia” to collectively describe all native peoples of the land. The Constitution of Australia, in its original form in 1901, makes references to the peoples twice, both times as a means to disregard them. These references were removed in 1967, but the damage had already been done.

DNA studies in 2011 prove that Aborigines emigrated to Australia directly from Africa up to 75,000 years ago. More than 400 distinct peoples have been identified, distinguished by their languages. Despite the British disregard, the peoples already had names, as well as arts, traditions, and cultures so deep that, despite two centuries of genocidal regime, they would not be erased.

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Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Painting

Rashid Johnson: Fly Away

Posted on September 12, 2016

Artwork: Rashid Johnson, Untitled Escape Collage (2016). © The artist. All images © The artist. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth.

The sounds of a piano drift eloquently through the room, enveloping you in a soaring, intense crescendo of freedom hard won, the freedom to pursue not happiness, but joy. To African American artist Rashid Johnson, the distinction is necessary. “Joy is something so many of us understand. It is John Coltrane’s ‘Love Supreme,’” Johnson observes before adding with casual insouciance, “The steaks at the strip house are really good.”

Johnson is leading a tour through Fly Away, a new exhibition of his work at Hauser & Wirth, New York, currently on view through October 22, 2016. Five years in the making, the monumental exhibition fills four rooms, each evoking its own breathtaking way of relating to our world.

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nstallation view of “Rashid Johnson: Fly Away” at Hauser & Wirth, 2016. © Rashid Johnson. Photo by Martin Parsekain, courtesy of Hauser & Wirth.

Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan

Pedro Paricio: Dreams

Posted on September 12, 2016

Artwork: PROMISED LAND, 2015. Acrylic on Linen, 81 x 116 cm, Pedro Paricio, Halcyon Gallery

We all dream, whether we are awake or asleep. Sometimes, without consciousness we simply slip away into another state, into a world of fantasy, desire, and fear. It is a world of imagination, where the only limits are that which we impose upon ourselves. But sometimes we cannot impose limits, so powerful is the drive to dream in our selves. And sometimes we abandon our dreams, but our dreams never abandon us; they simply lurk in the deepest recesses of our being, ready to reveal them selves when they can no longer hide.

Spanish artist Pedro Paricio understands this and he calls to them, allowing them to inhabit his waking life and be drawn from a palette of paint. Over the past two years, they drew him out, transforming his canvases into evocative scenes layered with meaning and depth. His new series of work began to manifest itself as Paricio’s work began to transform from the inner reaches of his Shaman series to something even more metaphorical.

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Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Painting

In Any Other Way

Posted on September 11, 2016

Downtown Manhattan with World Trade Center towers, seen from “lover’s lane” in New Jersey, 1983 by Thomas Hoepker.

And I sometimes forget that not everyone heard the sound of engines rumbling low to the ground and then the sound of police sirens and fire engines racing down the street. Emergency, except this is New York, and it always is. And I sometimes forget that I didn’t hear it once, I heard it twice, those engines rumbling low over my head. And then the sound, an impact I had never heard until I heard it again, but I am inside and I am at my desk and I am answering emails and no one is in the office yet.

And I sometimes forget that not everyone was there when it happened. That they didn’t smell it for months coming out of the ground, throughout September and October wondering if it will ever stop because it feels like it is in your hair and in your skin and its not like anything you can describe because it doesn’t smell like anything you want to relive. And the smell lingers outside the house and outside the office and it’s much too close but it’s far away enough that I don’t have to breathe it in except when I can see those clouds that come out of the manholes. And then I hold my breath like a little kid sitting in a car that is driving by the cemetery. It is a long minute.

And though it has been eleven years I cannot go because it’s just too strange to act like it’s business as usual because there are some things that I don’t want to remember and I don’t want to forget. We did a book right after and raised money because it was the only thing we knew how to do and that felt like something, because you wanted to contribute. But I had to release myself so I gave away the book because I will not look at violence like it is art.

Only now it is odd. Because I peruse blogs for photos and I find these images of planes upon impact and buildings ablaze and people jumping and it has become an aesthetic to be consumed. It is but a photograph littered in between hundreds and thousands of photographs of teen angst and lust and drama and dreams.

And so it has become a photograph. And this makes me think. About what it is when reality becomes but a memory, a memento, a token of life lived compressed into two-dimensions. An image. A decorative thing. I wonder what happens when something is both sacred and profane, and its meaning changes as it intersects with those who will never know it in any other way.

Brooklyn, 2012

Categories: Manhattan, Photography

Slava Mogtun: Lost Boys: From Russia With Love

Posted on September 8, 2016

Photo © Slava Mogutin.

Exiled for “malicious hooliganism with exceptional cynicism and extreme insolence” at the age of 21, Slava Mogutin was the last political dissident from the former Soviet Union. As an openly gay man living under a repressive regime, he was outspoken and unrepentant, calling out the hypocrisy and corruption of the government publicly. In 1994, Mogutin attempted to register officially the first same-sex marriage in Russia with his then-partner, American artist Robert Filippini. The attempt made headlines around the world, but only further fueled his persecution by the authorities. Forced to flee his country in 1995, he came to the United States and quickly blazed a trail as one of the most important contemporary artists of our time.

Ten years ago, Mogutin released his first monograph, Lost Boys (powerHouse Books), a powerful and provocative collection of portraits and landscapes taken in his native Russia. Intuitively combining porn, kink, and fashion into a seamless blend of intense sensuality and fearless sexuality, Mogutin’s work has helped to redefine the depiction of masculinity worldwide.

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Categories: Art, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

5 Things You Need to Know About Standing Rock

Posted on September 7, 2016

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What is happening at Standing Rock Sioux reservation?

Peoples from more than 90 Native American tribes have gathered at Standing Rock Sioux reservation, North Dakota, to protest against the creation of a four-state oil pipeline that would run through their land. Tensions reached a crescendo on Saturday, September 3, 2016, when a private security firm maced and released trained dogs on the unarmed protesters.

What is the pipeline project?

The proposed Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is a 1,168-mile, $3.8 billion oil pipeline that would transport 470,000 barrels of crude oil a day from the state’s Bakken Formation to Illinois. There are conflicting reports as to whether the oil would be used in this country, or exported for sale.

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Categories: Art

Fifty Years After

Posted on September 6, 2016

Photo: Mickalene Thomas Remember Me, 2006 c-print 49 1/2 x 59 x 1 3/4 inches (framed) Edition 4 of 5, with 2 APs.

The March on Washington took place on August 28, 1963, marking the twelfth anniversary of the murder of Emmett Till. Till was just 14 years old when he was lynched in Mississippi, an event so heinous that it became a pivotal catalyst for the next phase of the Civil Rights Movement.

In 1963, less than five years before he would be assassinated the United States government, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the top of Lincoln Memorial and delivered a speech, a speech so powerful that you can hear it in your mind’s ear as you read his words: “I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.”

But where have we come in decades since this speech? We live in an era where extrajudicial executions are a daily operation at the hands of police departments around the country. Where these brutal murders are brazenly broadcast on television with complete disregard—or perhaps intention—to involve a permanent state of PTSD in our countrymen and women. Where protests are called unpatriotic in as much as some in this country pledge allegiance to a flag that represents the politics of the Confederacy.

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

Toty Ruggeri: Diamond Dogs

Posted on September 6, 2016

Photo: ©Toty Ruggeri, courtesy of Yard Press.

Picture it: Naples, Italy, 1984: the city had been unhinged by a massive earthquake that struck four years earlier, creating a massive divide between the rich and the poor. The government had allocated $20 of the $40 billion earmarked for reconstruction to create a new class of millionaires, while another $10 billion went into the pockets of the Camorra and the politicians on the take, giving the Mafia entrance into the construction industry. Only one quarter of the funds were used to reconstruction.

The results were to be expected. Naples, already plagued by the wars between Mafia gangs, a high rate of youth unemployment, ineffective local government, a decaying urban infrastructure, and a trashed public image, was caught in between chaos and despair, but from the darkness new hope emerged.

That hope took the form of Diamond Dogs, a subterranean getaway from all that was going wrong. From the years 1984 through 1989, Diamond Dogs where artists, musicians, writers, poets, actors, and directors could converge, fomenting a cultural rebirth of Naples in its time of greatest need. Photographer Toty Ruggeri was among the crowd with his camera in hand, capturing the scene as it unfolded.

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Categories: 1980s, Art, Books, Crave, Music, Photography

Hamidou Maiga

Posted on September 5, 2016

Contemporary African art has come to the fore, giving us exquisite insights into the intricacies, nuances, and aesthetics of the oldest peoples on earth. But Africa is not a country; it is a continent as rich and diverse as the DNA of the peoples, who possess the greatest variety in the world. Its arts reflect this in whatever form they may take, providing poetic and philosophical vantage points by which we may consider a wide array of experiences.

Photography has been an integral part of the aesthetic landscape since its inception in the nineteenth century. Throughout the twentieth-century we have seen portrait photographers such as Malick Sidibé amd Seydou Keita rise in prominence, such is the power of their work to capture the soul of Mali on silver gelatin paper.

Their success and influence has become a tremendous draw to other great portrait photographers working in other countries. MATE – Museo Mario Testino, Lima, Peru, is particularly attuned to the great photographers of our time. For the third edition of Maestros se la Fotografía, MATE presents Hamidou Maiga, on view now through October 2, 2016. The exhibition features a selection of 36 black-and-white photographs made by the 84 year-old artist made between 1962–1973.

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Africa, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Latin America, Photography

Paulette Tavormina: Seizing Beauty

Posted on September 5, 2016

Photo: Vanitas VI, Reliquary, After D.B., 2015, Digital pigment print, 1/7, 24 x 24 inches. © Paulette Tavormina, American, born in 1949, courtest of Snite Art Museum at the University of Notre Dame.

The still life is one of the most bourgeois genres of art. Embracing the conventional attitudes that equate materialism with success, the still life most commonly depicts commonplace objects from the man-made and natural worlds. In doing so, it takes objectification to the next level. Rather than turn a living being into an object, it invokes the reverse. Perhaps it might be perverse to fetishize an object to the point of giving it “life” through the application of modes of painting that are designed to seduce the eye, the heart, and the mind.

Although still lifes first appeared in ancient Greco-Roman art, they went dormant for well over 1,500 years before arising anew in the lowlands of Europe during the sixteenth century at the very time a new merchant class was coming to the fore. As this small but prosperous middle class began to assert it’s self, it found solace in contemplation of the world it knew best. The very idea of elevating the commonplace objects of life to the veneration of art, once reserved for the church and state, is bourgeois at its core.

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Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography