Posts from the “1960s” Category

Larry Clark: White Trash

Posted on May 10, 2017

Artwork: Christopher Wool, “Untitled”, 1987 enamel on paper 18 3/4 x 14 3/4 inches – framed. © Christopher Wool; courtesy of the artist, and Luhring Augustine, New York.

“People are boring unless they’re extremists,” Jenny Holzer exhorts from a laundry list of aphorisms she made in 1978. Her words perfectly describe the spirit of artist, filmmaker, and writer Larry Clark – and his obsessive passion for collecting. Since his first girlfriend gave him a portrait she made of him in 1961, Clark has amassed a vast panoply of art, objects, and artifacts that he keeps piled up in his Tribeca loft, creating a warren of glorious stuff.

“You should enjoy yourself because you can’t change anything anyway,” Holzer notes on that same list, which is one of the many works in White Trash, an exhibition culled from Clark’s collection, now on view at Luhring Augustine, Brooklyn, through June 18. As you stroll through the show, you feel the pleasure, the pain, and the poignancy of the works that have called to Clark over the years.

From a high corner, Alberto Korda’s portrait of Che Guevara hangs, gazing above the scene, which includes an impressive array of paintings, prints, photographs, sculptures, film and music posters, skateboards, furniture, books, vintage pieces, and neon signs like a Jack Pierson sculpture that flashes the word “APPLAUSE.”

“Learn to trust your own eyes,” Holzer advises as you proceed through the show, taking in works by Helmut Newton, Andy Warhol, Richard Prince, Raymond Pettibon, Jack Pierson, Jeff Koons, Mark Gonzales, Max Blagg, and Ralph Gibson, to name just a few. White Trash becomes a visual memoir of Clark’s travels on earth – but it is the presence of his studio door, which stands perpendicular to the wall, feels the most intimate and sacred object in the entire show.

“Slipping into madness is valuable for the sake of passion,” Holzer concludes, and you can’t really argue that sentiment while standing in this room. There’s much to be said for letting desire lead the way. Clark speaks with Dazed about his unconditional love for collecting, and the power of living with art.

Read the Full Story at Dazed Digital

Bottom Artwork: Christy Rupp, “The Rat Patrol”, 1979. offset print 10 5/8 x 22 7/16 inches (framed). © Christy Rupp, courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York

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

More Than a Picture

Posted on May 8, 2017

Photograph by: James H. Karales Printed by: Rick Rhodes Photography & Imaging, LLC Subject of: Lewis “Big June” Marshall. Lewis “Big June” Marshall Carrying the U.S. Flag, Selma to Montgomery. March, March 21, 1965 (detail). H x W: 3356pixels × 4200pixels (3356pixels × 4200pixels). Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Monica Karales and the Estate of James Karales © Estate of James Karales.

Photograph: Created by: Roderick Terry. Subject of: Unidentified Man or Men. Printed by: Penn Camera Positive. Reflections, October 16, 1995, silver and photographic gelatin on photographic paper. H x W (Image): 10 5/8 x 13 11/16 in. (27 x 34.8 cm). H x W (Image and Sheet): 11 x 14 in. (27.9 x 35.6 cm). Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Roderick Terry © Roderick Terry.

A photograph is more than a picture—far more than mere art. Photography bears witness to an event as it unfolds, creating a document of the moment that becomes part of the historical record. It is equal parts memory and evidence. In many cases it is proof, as in the new standard bearer: “Pics or it didn’t happen.” In this way, the photograph can transform our understanding of life by speaking in all languages at the same time without ever saying a word.

Photography radically democratized the act of representation. Once the provenance of the wealthy elite and the power structure, the photograph liberated the picture plane from those who used it to support highly biased histories, mythologies, and narratives. Art in the age of mechanical reproduction enabled the image to be created at a much lower cost, be duplicated en masse, and distributed widely. It put the power of picture making in more people’s hands, and once freed from the strictures of the academy, the discipline flourished.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Photograph by: John Johnson Subject of: George W. Butcher. Subject of: Unidentified Man or Men Created by: Douglas R. Keister. Scan of George W. Butcher and friend wearing suits and leaning on canes 1919-1925; scanned 2012. H x W: 8112 pixels x 5772 pixels. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture © Douglas Keister.

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

Wall Writers: Graffiti in Its Innocence Exhibition

Posted on April 26, 2017

Photo: COCO 144, 1974. Photo by Michael Lawrence. Courtesy Roger Gastman.

Graffiti is a basic human impulse. From the oldest known cave paintings, going back 40,000 years in the Maros region of Indonesia to a toddler in 2017 who has discovered the magic of crayons and walls, the desire to leave a mark speaks to a fundamental tool of communication. The visual and the verbal commingle and merge in its purest form, continuing to speak for the person who may since be long gone.

Graffiti, in its contemporary form, found its footing in New York and Philadelphia during the Summer of Love as the idea of writing on the wall transformed from a primitive impulse to craft an anonymous message took shape as an increasingly stylized representation of a specific personage. As it did so, it became more than act of rebellion; it became a form of art, a flourish of a handstyle that was as unique as a signature and as bold as an autograph.

The earliest practitioners of the form have been left largely to the underground, to the myths of history or fallen into the cracks of the past. As pioneers and innovators, their work could be rudimentary, as it was more invested in discovery than perfection. It wouldn’t be until the second generation came along with its top-to-bottom whole train car masterpieces that many sat up and took notice. But the first generation certainly made waves, inspiring newspaper and magazine stories, books, and later collaborations and films. But quick as they came up, they disappeared, moving on with their lives as they aged out, from boys to men.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Photo: Photograph by Jon Naar, 1973. Courtesy Roger Gastman.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Art, Crave, Graffiti, Manhattan, Photography

Art Pioneer Carolee Schneemann Looks Back at 50 Years of Work

Posted on April 21, 2017

Photo: Still from performance of “Up to and Including Her Limits” (June 1976). Photo: Henrick Gaard

Artist. Feminist. Revolutionary. Carolee Schneemann, now 77 years old, has been traversing the sacred spaces of female sexuality and gender in the name of truth, liberation, and freedom from the patriarchy for more than half a century. Raised on a farm in rural Pennsylvania, Schneemann learned not to fear viscera, injury, or death. Instead, she embraced the creative and destructive forces of Mother Nature and fused them into work that challenged every assumption about women in the art world.

A multidisciplinary artist, Schneemann has created groundbreaking paintings, photographs, performance-art pieces, and installations that expose deep female secrets, pleasures, fears, and taboos. Using her body as a starting point, Schneemann also challenges cultural norms that discourage female artists from using their own nude bodies as the subjects of their work. Most memorably, in her landmark piece, Interior Scroll (1975), Schneemann stood on a table, assumed “action poses,” then slowly extracted and read from a scroll tucked neatly inside her vagina.

Her work shocked the establishment, but over the past 50 years, it has also become the foundation upon which generations of artists and pop-culture figures stand. From Matthew Barney to Lady Gaga, Schneemann’s influence is vast, yet she remains a solitary figure in the world of art, constantly reinventing her methodologies to examine the beauty and horrors of life in equal measure. On the cusp of her first United States retrospective, “Kinetic Painting,” at MoMA PS1 (running from October 22, 2017 to February 1, 2018), Schneemann spoke with BUST about her iconoclastic life in art.

Read the Full Story at BUST Magazine

Photo: Still from performance of “Eye Body: 36 Transformative Actions for Camera” (1963), photo: Erró

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Women

Larry Fink on Andy Warhol

Posted on April 20, 2017

Photo: Fashion Shoot, New York, 1966 © Larry Fink

In the early 1960s, the shadow of the post-war boom cast a dark shadow upon streets across the United States as the illusion of The American Dream was shattered by the truth of how it came to be.

Amid the fight for human rights, Andy Warhol emerged with a body of work that celebrated the most superficial mythologies of the time. By appropriating images of famous people and products, Warhol positioned himself as the champion of all that was American, fully embracing its anti-intellectual bent. With the establishment of The Factory, his quasi-bohemian Manhattan studio filled with self-titled Superstars, Warhol created an alternate universe to rival Hollywood while simultaneously infiltrating the posh art world.

In 1965, Warhol announced his retirement from painting in order to focus on filmmaking. With a coterie that included Edie Sedgwick, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, Ingrid Superstar, Susanna Campbell, and Gerard Malanga, the media could not get enough of these apolitical characters driven by a lust for fame and wealth.

At the same time, photographer Larry Fink was honing his skills, making pictures that embraced the proletariat and rebuked the haute-bourgeoisie. A self-described “revolutionary communist,” Fink worked as a journalist, creating images for the cause. In 1966, his friend Khadeja Mccall, who sold African prints on St. Mark’s Place, invited Fink to photograph a fashion shoot she was styling for a new publication titled The Eastside Review. The kicker was: the models were Warhol and his Superstars.

Fink took the assignment, adding his own twist. He brought Warhol and his coterie down to the streets of the Lower East Side, a working-class neighborhood infused with poverty – the very antithesis of Warhol’s Pop Art fantasies. The Eastside Review folded before the issue was published, and the photographs were shelved for fifty years, no further thought given to the work…until now.

Read the Full Story at Dazed Digital

Photo: Fashion Shoot, New York, 1966 © Larry Fink

Categories: 1960s, Art, Books, Dazed, Manhattan, Photography

Motown: The Sound of Young America

Posted on April 10, 2017

Photo; Florence Ballard, Mary Wilson and Diana Ross in London’s Manchester Square, outside the headquarters of EMI Records, in October 1964. Courtesy of EMI Group Archive Trust

Motown: The sound of young America, coming straight out of Motor City/Detroit was the perfect blend of soul and pop. It was the home of legends from Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, and Stevie Wonder to the Jackson 5, the Supremes, and Diana Ross. And it was all the brainchild of Berry Gordy, Jr., a local songwriter who quickly realized that producing records and owning the publishing was the best way to make bank.

After launching Tamla and Motown labels, Gordy purchased the property that would become the legendary Hitsville U.S.A., in 1959. The multi-purpose building served as a recording studio, administrative offices, tape library, control room, and living quarters for Gordy in those early formative years. He put several family members in key roles, and made Smoke Robinson VP. Then, on April 14, 1960, Berry Gordy, Jr. incorporated the Motown Record Corporation, and that same year the company had its first number 1 R&B hit, the Miracles, “Shop Around.”

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Photo: Seen at a Detroit nightclub in 1964 are, from L to R, Levi Stubbs of The Four Tops, Motown songwriter/producer Ivy Jo Hunter, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, with musicians Dan Turner on sax and James Jamerson on bass. Private Collection.

Photo: With The Supremes, Berry Gordy hails members of the Motown house band, at left, and his Holland/Dozier/Holland hitmakers, in December 1965. LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division [LC-L901A- 65-26- 16-VVV, no. 10]

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Books, Crave, Music, Photography

Word on the Street: The History of Globe Poster

Posted on March 25, 2017

Artwork: © Globe Poster. Courtesy of Roger Gastman.

For more than eighty years, you could see Globe Poster standing tall, hanging out on street corners, posted up on telephone palls, or chilling ‘round the way inside the union halls. They were bright, bold, fabulous affairs that understood that one must demand attention if you want to be seen and heard in this noisy world.

Using DayGlo colors and big black letters etched out of wood type and letter press, if Globe Poster a theme song it would be Nas, talking about “Made You Look.” Because they had to—they needed t let you know the 2Pac, Luke, Snoop Doggy Dogg and That Dog Pound were performing at the Miami Arena on Saturday, August 24. Better get your tickets now, before they sell out, because trust and believe and event like this only comes once in a lifetime.

Globe Poster knew what the people wanted and they delivered the goods. Established in Philadelphia in 1929, Globe Poster promoted everything from carnivals to concerts up and down the East Coast. Like so many in old Hollywood, they started out in vaudeville, moving their way up to burlesque and film, then finally hitting their stride and finding their groove with R&B acts during the 1960s.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

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

Game Show Legend and Alleged CIA Assassin Chuck Barris Dies at 87

Posted on March 24, 2017

Pour one out for Chuck Barris, game show genius and alleged CIA assassin, who died of natural causes on Tuesday, March 21, at his home in Palisades, New York, at the age of 87.

Best known as the creator and host of The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, and The Gong Show, in 1982, Barris stunned the world with the publication of his memoir Confessions of a Dangerous Mind: An Unauthorized Autobiography, in which he claimed to be a former CIA agent and assassin. In 2002, the book was adapted into a feature film of the same name, directed by George Clooney and starring Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore, Julia Roberts, and Clooney. The CIA adamantly denied Barris’ employment, calling the whole thing “ridiculous.”

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s

#FridayReads: David Bowie’s Favorite Books

Posted on March 24, 2017

In the August 1998 issue of Vanity Fair, David Bowie took the famous Proust Questionnaire. The first question asked was the most telling: “What is your idea of perfect happiness?” to which Bowie answered, “Reading.”

In celebration of Bowie the bibliophile, Open Culture put together a list of the artist’s top 100 books. The list is as diverse as it is revealing; perhaps there is no better way to get inside the mind of a person than through their library. Crave spotlights ten Bowie faves that make for great Friday Reads.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

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

Black in America: Louis Draper and Leonard Freed

Posted on March 16, 2017

Photo: Portrait, New York, c 1965. Louis Draper (American, 1935–2002). Gelatin silver print; 20.3 x 25.4 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. Richard W. Whitehill Art Purchase Endowment Fund, 2016.271. © Louis H. Draper Preservation Trust.

The photograph is more than a work of art: it is a piece of evidence, a document of fact, and an artifact of the past. It offers proof of what has transpired in time and space, for seeing is believing—and belief is faith. To shoot or not to shoot, that is the question, for what we focus our attention on grows in power and strength. To frame a story through just one perspective, or to never frame it at all, these acts have the power of changing the way people see the world.

Photographers Louis Draper (1935-2002) and Leonard Freed (1929-2006) understood this, each in their own way using the camera as a way to write history. Together they created fresh perspectives that were heretofore largely ignored in favor of the spreading of malicious lies, telling the truth about what it means to be Black in America.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Children in the Mirror, Johns Island, South Carolina, 1964. Leonard Freed (American, 1929–2006). Gelatin silver print; 23.8 x 29.8 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg, 2016.282. Image courtesy of Leonard Freed / Magnum Photos.

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

Digging in the Crates for the Best “Art Record Covers” Ever Made

Posted on March 14, 2017

art: Takashi Murakami / music: Kanye West / record: Graduation / year: 2007 / label: Roc-A-Fella Records / format: Album 2×12 ̋, CD / artwork: Digital compositing

Once upon a time, just a couple of decades ago, new albums used to be released on vinyl, which was carefully stored inside 12 x 12 inch record sleeves. In the days before video killed the radio star, all you’d have available was what you held in your hands. You’d pop the record on the turntable, drop the needle and then sit back, gazing upon the album cover searching for some sort of understanding.

There was something profound about the simplicity of it all, the single image becoming an icon all its own. Sight and sound complemented each other, like yin and yang, striking the perfect balance of substance and style. Then, everything began to change. The record gave way to the CD and the image scaled down tremendously. But that was nothing compared to the current lay of the land, where the album cover appears as a thumbnail image in the upper half of our smart phone.

If you missed it, c’est la vie. Times change, invariably. But if you miss it, and you want that good thing back, Taschen has just released Art Record Covers, a 448-page compendium of the finest collaborations between musicians and artists. Edited by Francesco Spampinato and Julius Wiedemann, the book is perfectly sized at 12 x 12 inches, capturing and recreating the visual impact each image once possessed.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

art: Andy Warhol / music: The Velvet Underground and Nico / record: The Velvet Underground and Nico / year: 1967 / label: Verve Records / format: Album 12 ̋ / artwork: Screen print / special: Vinyl released with three variations of front cover with banana sticker to peel off

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Crave, Music