Posts from the “1960s” Category

James Baldwin: The Fire Next Time

Posted on August 2, 2017

Photo: James Baldwin joined the fight for equality in the South. Mostly, he offered a passionate voice for justice and a plea for a nation’s salvation. In Mississippi in 1963, he visited the NAACP’s Medgar Evers, who was slain later that June, following President Kennedy’s landmark televised address on civil rights. This photo was recently discovered in the photographer’s contact sheets. © 2017 Steve Schapiro.

James Baldwin penned fire to purify truth and liberate it from the lies that have clouded United States history ever since Thomas Jefferson wrote The Declaration of Independence. With every sentence, Baldwin burned away the toxic stench of injustice, oppression, and pathology that so many cling to until their dying day.

One of Baldwin’s greatest works is The Fire Next Time, a collection of two essays originally published by The New Yorker and subsequently published by Dial Press in 1963 in book form. The essays, “My Dungeon Shook — Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of Emancipation,” and “Down At The Cross — Letter from a Region of My Mind” address the issues facing African Americans during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, as they faced down the horrors of the past and present each and every single day.

Now, Taschen introduces James Baldwin. The Fire Next Time, a collector’s edition of 1,963 copies reprinted in a letterpress edition with more than 100 photographs taken by Steve Schapiro while he was on assignment for LIFE magazine. Schapiro was on the frontlines of the movement as it marched across the South facing down the system of apartheid under Jim Crow.

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Categories: 1960s, Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Photography

The Jim Henson Exhibition

Posted on July 31, 2017

Jim Henson and Kermit the Frog in 1978 on the set of THE MUPPET MOVIE. Photo courtesy of The Jim Henson Company/MoMI. Kermit the Frog © Disney/Muppets.

My very first crush was on Animal, the wild-eyed drummer for Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem, the house band on The Muppet Show. I might have been somewhere around three or four, and Animal was the most relatable guy I had ever seen. He spoke no words and was a creature of pure id. That he was a rock star added to his allure, as his flying mane and choke chain.

You might think to yourself, perhaps this is a bit extreme for a children’s television show. But that’s the joy of The Muppet Show—it spoke to people of all ages at the same time, reaching different audiences without offending anyone. Jim Henson, the mastermind who created the show, skillfully weaved subversive humor into the classic vaudeville format, and then added the perfect twist: all the characters were puppets, and yet they were drawn from life.

Kermit the Frog, the soulful leader, was inspired by jazz trumpeter Kermit Ruffins; his girlfriend Miss Piggy was the perfect incarnation of the chauvinist pig, whose appearance during the 1970s exemplified the good, the bad, ad the ugly sides of the gender wars that had been raging for years. Fozzie the Bear was a classic Yiddish comedian who played the Borscht Belt and was woefully out of sync with the times yet as lovable as any wacky uncle at Thanksgiving dinner.

Children might miss all of the cultural clues and still appreciate The Muppets for the sheer joy that a madcap troupe of performers promises. Plus there’s a slight twinge of utopian ideal at play: no matter what walk of life you come from, you are welcome here, so long as you put your heart and soul above all.

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

Karlheinz Weinberger: Swiss Rebels

Posted on July 27, 2017

Photo: © Swiss Rebels by Karlheinz Weinberger, published by Steidl, Steidl.de

“My life started on Friday events and ended on Monday mornings,” Swiss photographer Karlheinz Weinberger (1921-2006) said in 2000, on the occasion of his first major exhibition at the Museum of Design Zurich. This was the time when he could leave the daily grind behind, forgetting about his work as a warehouse manager at a factory day in and out from 1955 through 1986. It was on the weekends when he picked up his camera and came into himself.

His business card said it all: “My favorite hobbies: the individual portrait and The Extraordinary. Always reachable by telephone after 7 PM.” He refused to photograph people who did not pique his interest, throwing them the ultimate curve with lines like, “It’s easy to snap the shutter, but I’m so busy you’ll have to wait for maybe three to six months to get the photo.”

It takes nerve—and nerve is where Weinberger excelled. He dedicated himself to the raw sexuality of rebels, construction workers, athletes, and Sicilian youths, as well as men who regularly came to his home, undressed, and gave the camera a show.

As an outsider working in a milieu he created exclusively for his own pleasure and delight, Weinberger amassed a body of work is much a portrait of the artist as the subjects he photographed. Weinberger’s love of the human form was not limited to the bare flesh; he captured the raw sensuality in the very spirit of youth, fully dressed and perfectly coiffed, striking an exquisite balance between teenage lust and campy poseurdom.

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Crave, Fashion, Photography

Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power

Posted on July 26, 2017

On June 16, 1966, Stokely Carmichael stood before a crowd of 3,000 in a park in Greenwood, Mississippi, who had gathered to march in place of James Meredith, who had been wounded during his solitary “Walk Against Fear” in an effort to integrate the University of Mississippi.

Carmichael, who had been arrested after setting up camp, took to the stage with fire in his gut. “We’ve been saying ‘Freedom’ for six years,” the newly appointed chairman of the SNCC announced, “What we are going to start saying now is ‘Black Power!’”

With those words, Carmichael did more than change the paradigm for Civil Rights, he transformed the language of race itself. Up until that time, Americans had been using the word “Negro,” taken from the Spanish slave trade. It’s linguistic resemblance to the “N” word was all-too evident; the Spanish word for “Black” that was commonly used had been corrupted by English speakers and infested with pathological hatred, fear, and rage.

Carmichael embraced the word “Black” while simultaneously making the case that “Negro” was the oppressor’s term of diminution and disrespect. Malcolm X, who had had been killed a year earlier, was also a proponent for the word “Black.” By the decade’s end, Ebony was using it exclusively, helping to guide the group towards a self-chosen identity that the rest of the nation came to use.

Why does this matter? Because we think in words; the very terms we use to describe the world, and the connotations they hold, inform our beliefs and perceptions, whether we realize it or not. “Black Power” began in the very naming of the act. It was a means of transforming identity from one that was given to that which was claimed.

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Artwork: Betye Saar, Rainbow Mojo, 1972. Paul Michael diMeglio, New York.

Artwork: Emma Amos, Eva the Babysitter, 1973. Courtesy of the artist and Ryan Lee Gallery, NY.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Painting, Photography

Dennis Hopper: The Lost Album

Posted on July 19, 2017

Photo: Dennis Hopper, Selma, Alabama (Full Employment), 1965, Gelatin silver print mounted on cardboard, 6 2/5 x 9 4/5 inches. Courtesy of The Hopper Art Trust and Kohn Gallery.

Dennis Hopper (1949-2010) is best known to the world as an actor and director whose films sharpened the cutting edge, whether appearing in Rebel Without a Cause (1954), Easy Rider (1969), or Blue Velvet (1986). Hopper didn’t play by the rules that Hollywood wrote, and quickly earned the reputation of being “difficult.” Finding himself ostracized by a studio system that loved to sell rebellion but couldn’t tolerate it within its own ranks, Hopper turned to photography.

His first wife Brooke Howard gave him a Nikon, and he began documenting the world in which he lived—and he lived hard. He attended the March on Washington in 1963, the Selma to Montgomery March in 1955, hanging out with outlaw biker gangs, art stars, musicians, and actors. He created the cover art for the Ike & Tina Turner classic “River Deep – Mountain High,” released in 1966, and was described as an up-and-coming photographer by Terry Sothern in Better Homes and Gardens (of all places).

“But I tell you the truth,” Luke wrote (4:24). “No prophet is accepted in his hometown.” And so it was for Hopper, who showed his work around the globe, that his first major photography retrospective in Los Angeles only occurred after his death. Yet this is where our story begins, for it was at the exhibition preview at the Museum of Contemporary Art that Julian Schnabel introduced Petra Gilroy Hertz, author of his book of Polaroids, to Hopper’s daughter, Marin.

In an interview with The Telegraph in 2012, Marin indicated she did not feel the museum had done Hopper justice. She decided to partner with the Hopper family to create another exhibition and was invited to the family home in Venice Beach. It was here, in the garage, when luck struck and an additional five boxes containing 429 prints that Hopper had exhibited at the Fort Worth Museum in 1970, were rediscovered.

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Photo: Dennis Hopper, Ike and Tina Turner, 1965, Gelatin silver print mounted on cardboard, 6 2/5 x 9 4/5 inches. Courtesy of The Hopper Art Trust and Kohn Gallery.

Categories: 1960s, Art, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Danny Lyon at Galerie Edwynn Houk

Posted on July 4, 2017

Photo: Danny Lyon. From Lindsey’s room, Louisville, 1966. ©Danny Lyon/Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York.

Brooklyn native Danny Lyon came of age in the 1960s as the nation underwent radical upheavals that have defined the era in which we live. As the Civil Rights Movement came to the fore, Lyon headed south to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1962 at the age of 20. His time with SNCC put him on the frontlines of the movement, where he was able to document the horrific reality the fight against government-sanctioned apartheid.

“It was my good fortune to stumble into the story early,” Lyon told The Guardian in 2012. “Being in SNCC politicized me. Having said that, I wasn’t black and I was free. My agenda was photography and books, and what is now called media.”

Lyon is one of the first photographers to practice New Journalism, to embed himself within the cultures he was documenting in order to tell the story from the inside. At the same time, the camera defined his role: he was a journalist using photography to question the practices of the government, the media, and society as a whole.

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Categories: 1960s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Elaine Mayes: Summer of Love

Posted on June 7, 2017

Photo: Elaine Mayes, Rebel, 25, Golden Gate Park, 1968, vintage gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 inches.

In the summer of 1967, some 100,000 people descended upon the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco to come together as one. Inspired by the Beat Generation of the 1950s who had taken to North Beach, a new wave of nonconformists embraced the counterculture vibes of the times, embracing the ethos of the hippie movement, first espoused by Timothy Leary earlier that year at the Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park with the words, “Turn on, tune in, drop out.”

The Summer of Love, as it came to be known, as a natural extension of the Human Be-In, which embraced the principle of “sex, drug, and rock and roll.” In the face of violence and destruction that raged overseas in the Vietnam War and here at home with the Civil Rights Movement, the hippies sought to take a stand against the system through the message of peace and love.

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Categories: 1960s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Irving Penn: Centennial

Posted on May 30, 2017

Photo: Irving Penn, American, Plainfield, New Jersey, 1917–2009, New York. Three Asaro Mud Men, New Guinea, 1970, printed 1976 Platinum-palladium print. Image: 20 1/8 x 19 1/2 in. (51.1 x 49.6 cm.) Sheet: 24 15/16 x 22 1/16 in. (63.3 x 56 cm.) Mount: 26 1/16 x 22 1/16 in. (66.2 x 56 cm.) Overall: 26 1/16 x 22 1/16 in. (66.2 x 56 cm.) Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation IP .154

“Photography is just the present stage of man’s visual history,” Irving Penn (1917-2009) sagely observed, recognizing the infinite possibilities of the human animal to create technology that would advance our ability to document, represent, and re-envision the world. As a master of the form, Penn understood that the only thing that limits us is imagination.

For seven decades he worked, becoming a master of studio photography with the ability to craft pictures of anything he wished. Here was a man who could transform his very first commission for Jell-o pudding into a resounding success, even though, as Penn realized, it was, “a abstract nothing, it’s just a blob of ectoplasm.”

Yet with that formless glob of goop crafted in a laboratory, Penn was able to entice consumers to buy and serve the product en masse. It’s precisely this ability to transcend the particulars that made Penn a master of whatever form he chose to shoot, be in portraits, fashion, still life, food, nudes, or flowers. He understood that the photograph was an invitation to engage, to gaze upon the world without actually having to interact with it.

Through the safety of distance in time and space, Penn asked us to look at the complex and extraordinary beauty of existence in its many forms, whether Miles Davis’ hand, the Asaro Mud Men of New Guinea, or the curious silhouettes of Japanese designer Issey Miyake.

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Irving Penn, American, Plainfield, New Jersey, 1917–2009, New York. Two Miyake Warriors, New York. June 3, 1998, printed January-February, 1999. Platinum-palladium print. Image: 21 x 19 5/8 in. (53.4 x 49.8 cm.) Sheet: 23 1/4 x 21 9/16 in. (59 x 54.7 cm.) Mount: 23 1/4 x 21 9/16 in. (59 x 54.7 cm.) Overall: 23 1/4 x 21 9/16 in. (59 x 54.7 cm.) Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation IP .166

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot, Photography

Art/Africa: A Nouvel Atelier

Posted on May 25, 2017

Artwork: Kudzanai Chiurai. Revelations V. 145 x 200 cm. 2011. © Kudzanai Chiurai © Courtesy de l’artiste et Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris et Marian Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg.

In recent years, the arts of Africa have taken the world stage by storm as the diverse peoples and cultures of the continent offer a distinctive vantage point and approach to creativity that is as singular as it is breathtaking. In celebration of the diverse arts of the land, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, presents Art/Africa, le nouvel atelier, a series of three exhibitions currently on view now through August 28, 2017.

Art/Africa looks at the response of artists to the movements of the past fifty years, as independence from imperialist powers restored self-determination and freedom to the peoples whose homelands had been occupied by foreign invaders for centuries. The works look at the responses to colonialism, apartheid, issues of gender, family, and identity, and activism.

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

Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends

Posted on May 17, 2017

Artwork: Robert Rauschenberg. Poster for ROCI Cuba (Museo Nacional site), 1988. All offset lithograph, ranging from 34 1/2 in. (87.6 cm) to 38 3/8 in. (97.5 cm) high and from 23 3/4 (60.3 cm) to 24 1/4 in. (61.6 cm) wide), ROCI Cuba: silk-screen and offset lithograph on foil paper. Printer: Universal Limited Art Editions, West Islip, New York. Edition: unnumbered. Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York. © 2017 Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

Born Milton Ernest Rauschenberg in Port Arthur, Texas, in 1925, Rauschenberg adopted the name “Bob.” But word has it that the art world, so enamored with his revolutionary approach and groundbreaking aesthetic, refused to address him so casually and simply re-named him “Robert.”

This anecdote perfectly encapsulates the chasm between Rauschenberg’s work and how it was received. The artist, sometimes called a “Neo Dadaist,” was inherently subversive. He observed, “Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in the gap between the two.)”

This gap was one first illuminated in the work of Marcel Duchamp, who introduced a urinal to the art world and called it “Fountain,” literally taking the piss out of the self-important bourgeois notions of art. In 1961, Rauschenberg made his move when he was invited to submit a portrait of Iris Clert, that was to be included in an exhibition at her Paris gallery. In a truly unbothered move, he sent a telegram stating, “This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so.”

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Artwork: Robert Rauschenberg. Overdrive. 1963. Oil and silkscreen ink on canvas. 84 x 60 inches. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Promised gift of Glenn and Eva Dubin © 2017 Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

Artwork: Rauschenberg in his Pearl Street studio, New York, March 1958. Works, left to right: Charlene (1954), Untitled (c. 1954), and a partial rear view of the second state of Monogram (1955–59, second state 1956–58). Photographer: Dan Budnik. Courtesy Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, New York. © Dan Budnik, all rights reserved

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

Alice Neel: Uptown

Posted on May 16, 2017

Artwork: Building in Harlem, c. 1945. Oil on canvas. © The Estate of Alice Neel. Courtesy David Zwirner Books and Victoria Miro.

Artwork: The Black Boys, 1967. Oil on canvas. The Tia Collection. © The Estate of Alice Neel. Courtesy David Zwirner Books and Victoria Miro.

Alice Neel’s New York is disappearing—but it is not yet gone. It lives in the spirit and the souls of those who persevere against all odds. Like the artist herself, the New York she once loved was made up of people who triumphed over tragedy, trauma, and loss. Perhaps her personal struggles imbued her with a profound empathy to those she painted with exquisite sensitivity and feeling, capturing the depths of their humanity.

This month, Alice Neel, Uptown (David Zwirner Books/Victoria Miro), a new book authored by Pulitzer Prize winning critic Hilton Als, looks at the portraits the artist made while living in Spanish Harlem and the Upper West Side throughout the twentieth century. The book is published in conjunction with an exhibition of the work opening at Victoria Miro Gallery, London, on May 18 after debuting earlier this year to critical acclaim at David Zwirner in New York.

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Artwork: The Spanish Family, 1943. Oil on canvas. © The Estate of Alice Neel. Courtesy David Zwirner Books and Victoria Miro.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Painting