Posts from the “1960s” Category

Unruly Bodies: Dismantling Larry Clark’s Tulsa

Posted on June 13, 2016

Larry Clark, Untitled, 1963, from the series “Tulsa,” 1963-71. © Larry Clark; Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York.

In 1971, America photographer Larry Clark published Tulsa with Lustrum Press, owned by Ralph Gibson, sparking a wave of controversy across the nation. The book, which features fifty black and white photographs taken by Clark in 1963, 1968, and 1971, reveal the dark side of American youth culture in the heartland of America. Drugs, sex, and guns were front and center, as much the subject of the book as the people themselves with Clark a participant, rather than a voyeur. He brought a new level of authenticity to his work, and in doing so Tulsa changed the very nature of documentary photography itself.

Forty-five years after the book’s release, a new exhibition of photographs adds a new layer of perspectives to the story of this work in Unruly Bodies: Dismantling Larry Clark’s Tulsa at the California Museum of Photography UCR ARTSblock, Riverside, now through January 28, 2017. Curated by graduate students from the History of Art and the Public History Program, Unruly Bodies speaks to the new generation reflecting on the past, reflecting on Clark’s watershed moment in contemporary photography, pairing his work alongside that of Danny Lyon, Bill Eppridge, and W. Eugene Smith to critical effect.

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Neil Leifer: Relentless

Posted on June 6, 2016

Photo: Photo: Neil Leifer (United States, b. 1942). Muhammad Ali reacts after his first round knockout of Sonny Liston during the 1965 World Heavyweight Title fight at St. Dominic’s Arena in Lewiston, Maine, May 25, 1965.

It was one of the most controversial fights in boxing history: Muhammad Ali vs. Sonny Liston, for the 1965 title of WBC Heavyweight Champion. It was a hotly anticipated rematch, one made all the more fervent by recent history. Just a year earlier, Cassius Clay beat Liston and taken the title with a technical knockout. Two days later, Clay publicly announced he was a member of the Nation of Islam and adopted the name Cassius X before taking the name that would make him one of the most famous men on earth on March 6, 1964.

When the rematch came along, it was more than a boxing match. It was an epic vision of self-liberation. By aligning himself with the practices and politics of the NOI, Ali was vilified. Perhaps that’s why the only thing they could do was deny the facts. Two minutes and twelve seconds. That’s all it took. Midway through the first round, Liston through a left and Ali countered with a right, an “anchor punch” he learned from actor Stepin Fechit, of all folks. Liston went down on his back, rolled over, tried to rise, and fell back again. It was a wrap for Sonny. But you couldn’t tell his fans nothin’. They called it “Phantom Punch Fight” and yelled, “Fix!” sounding like a 1960’s version of Donald Trump.

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

Kwame Brathwaite: Black is Beautiful

Posted on June 2, 2016

Photo: Untitled (Sikolo with Carolee Prince Designs). 1968, printed 2016Chromogenic print (C-print), matted and framed 11.25 x 11.25 in, 28.575 x 28.575 cm (image). ©Kwame Brathwaite Photo Credit: Ruben Diaz Courtesy of Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles.

“There shall be no solution to this race problem until you, yourselves, strike the blow for liberty,” Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) advised, reminding us that the power lies within. A political leader, publisher, writer, and orator, Garvey understood that words could change the world. “The pen is mightier than the sword, but the tongue is mightier than them both put together,” he rightfully observed.

Garvey’s ideas inspired generations to embrace a Pan-African perspective of the world, invoking the spirit of the Black Power movement decades in advance. The seeds he planted took hold after his death, finding their way on to the global stage in full glory.

Photographer Kwame Brathwaite was born in Brooklyn in 1938, to a politically active family hailing from Barbados. Together he and his brother Elombe Brath, now deceased, joined the African Nationalist Pioneer Movement (ANPM) in the late 1950s. By 1961, they created the South-West Africa Relief Committee in the South Bronx to support the fight for independence in Southern Africa. At the same time, the brothers were producing jazz concerts at legendary locales including Club 845 in the Bronx and Small’s Paradise in Harlem. Brathwaite began photographing the concerts, promoting them, and organizing cultural activities like art shows and African dance performances in tandem, dedicating himself to serving the cause.

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Photo: Untitled (Nomsa with Earrings). 1964, printed 2016Selenium tone silver gelatin print, matted and framed 15 x 15 in., 38.1 x 38.1 cm (image). ©Kwame Brathwaite Photo Credit: Ruben Diaz Courtesy of Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles.

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

Attitude: Portraits by Mary Ellen Mark, 1964–2015

Posted on May 31, 2016

Photo: Gloria and Raja, Great Gemini Circus, Perintalmanna, India, 1989. ©May Ellen Mark, courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery.

“I’m most interested in finding the strangeness and irony in reality. That’s my forte,” American photographer Mary Ellen Mark (1940–2015) observed, very much aware of the gift she brought to the world. Her passion for the camera and the way in which it captured the curious sides of life can be seen in her life’s work. For five decades, Mark was a singular figure in the medium, producing a series of work that speaks to her love for humanity in its infinite forms.

Attitude: Portraits by Mary Ellen Mark, 1964–2015, now on view at Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, through June 18, 2016, presents nearly 40 works from the artist’s singular archive. Melissa Harris, editor-at-large at Aperture Foundation, curated the show, selection works from Mark’s famous series, each of them sparkling with life and revealing an intense curiosity about the nature of our days and nights.

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

Builder Levy: Appalachia USA

Posted on February 22, 2016

Photo: Builder Levy. Sisters, Osage, Scotts Run, Monongalia, West Virginia, 1970. Gold-toned gelatin silver print.

Appalachia that stretches across the eastern United States, running from New York down to northern Mississippi. The former hunting grounds of the Cherokee and other indigenous groups, Appalachia became home to colonists seeking to escape oppressive British rule. Later, it was marked by the routes and hideouts of slaves escaping on the Underground Railroad. Growing into a center of abolitionism, more than a quarter million southern mountaineers joined the Union army during the Civil War.

But it was after the war that things began to change, as Appalachia was recognized as a distinctive cultural region in the late nineteenth century. Large-scale logging and coal mining firms brought industry to the region, taking advantage of the abundant natural resources of the land. Miners were recruited from southern prison conscript labor, local subsistence farms, African American communities in the south, and even towns and villages throughout Europe.

Despite the profits made by the mining and logging companies, the people of Appalachia have long struggled with poverty, as health care and educational facilities failed to meet the communities’ needs. At the same time, the region became a source of enduring myths and distortions about its inhabitants. As the media began focusing on sensationalized stories like moonshining and clan feuding, Appalachia became seen as America’s white ghetto, home to an uneducated and violent underclass.

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

Exhibit | Warhol by the Book

Posted on February 17, 2016

Artwork: Andy Warhol (1928–1987). “So Sweet,” 1950s, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. © 2015 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

“I just do art because I’m ugly and there’s nothing else for me to do,” Andy Warhol said. His dedication to the creation of beauty in both the glamorous and the commonplace forever changed the course of art, culture, and communication. He worked in both commercial and fine arts, always able to build a bridge between these two worlds and he used the book as a vehicle throughout his career. In celebration of his works, the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, presents Warhol by the Book, a four-decade retrospective on view now through May 5, 2016.

Featuring more than 130 objects dating back to his student days, the exhibition includes the only surviving project from the 1940s. It also features a remarkable collection of drawings, screen prints, photographs, self-published books, children’s books, photography books, text-based books, unique books, archival material; and his much-sought-after dust jacket designs. To call Warhol prolific would be an understatement. He simply was a one-man factory who aptly advised, “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”

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

Timeless: The Photographs of Kamoinge

Posted on February 9, 2016

Boy on a Swing. New York, 1976. Beuford Smith.

In 1963, the Kamoinge Workshop produced their first portfolio of photographs taken by members who made up the group. The portfolio included a statement that read: “The Kamoinge Workshop represents fifteen black photographers whose creative objectives reflect a concern for truth about the world, about society and about themselves.” Accompanying that were the words of member Louis Draper, who elegantly wrote: “Hot breath steaming from black tenements, frustrated window panes reflecting the eyes of the sun, breathing musical songs of the living.”

A collective was born. The word Kamoinge is derived from the Gikuyu language of Kenya. Translated literally, it means “a group of people acting together.” This spirit of camaraderie and family suffused the development of the group, which included Roy DeCarava, Anthony Barboza, Louis Draper, and Shawn Walker. Early meetings were held in DeCarava’s midtown Manhattan loft. The following year, they rented a gallery in Harlem on Strivers Row, where they held meetings and hosted exhibitions. When the gallery closed, they moved the meetings to other members’ homes in the city, keeping their bonds intact throughout the years.

In 2004, founding member Anthony Barboza was selected President, and set out a course to create a photography book showcasing the group’s legacy. Together with fellow member Herb Robinson, Barboza has edited Timeless: The Photographs of Kamoinge (Schiffer). Featuring more than 280 photographs taken over fifty years, Timeless is an extraordinary collection of work that reminds us that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

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Photo: Bridge on the Beach. Nassau, Bahamas, 2007. June DeLairre Truesdale.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Bronx, Brooklyn, Crave, Manhattan, Photography

This Light of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement

Posted on January 18, 2016

Photo: Matt Herron, Selma–Montgomery March, Alabama, 1965: Rev. Martin Luther King leads singing marchers toward Montgomery.

In 1857, Frederick Douglass observed, “This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

A century later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. brought these words to life with the Civil Rights Movement. He made A demand and, with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a measure of the demand was met. But it was not met without retaliation, and ultimately Dr. King would pay with his life, a life that the government who had him killed now honors with a Federal holiday.

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Photo: Maria Varela, near Canton, Mississippi, 1966: A hand-drawn black panther indicates a change of movement symbolism as young men joined the Meredith March in response to the call for Black Power.

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

Ishiuchi Miyako: Postwar Shadows

Posted on December 21, 2015

Photo: Creator(s): Ishiuchi Miyako (Japanese, born 1947) Title/Date: Yokosuka Story #73, 1977 Culture: Japanese Medium: Gelatin silver print Dimensions: Image: 43.7 x 53.7 cm (17 3/16 x 21 1/8 in.) Sheet: 45.4 x 55.7 cm (17 7/8 x 21 15/16 in.) Accession No. 2009.96.3 Copyright: © Ishiuchi Miyako Object Credit: The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

This year marked the seventieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed over 129,000 people and decimated the country of Japan. Although nearly half the people died on the first day, the other half clung to life in desperate shape, only to die from the effect of the burns, radiation sickness, and other injuries compounded by illness and malnutrition. The only use of nuclear weapons for warfare in history, the bombings destroyed primarily civilian populations.

In the decades that followed, the bombings continued to have effect on subsequent generations born into the post-nuclear landscape. Self-taught photographer Ishiuchi Miyako was born two years after the war and stunned the Japanese photography establishment in the late 1970s with grainy, haunting, black-and-white images of Yokosuka—the city where Miyako spent her childhood and where the United States established an important naval base in 1945.

Working prodigiously over the next forty years, Miyako has created an incredible body of work that has been collected for “Ishiuchi Miyako: Postwar Shadows”, now on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, through February 21, 2016, and is published in a book by the same name.

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Photo: Creator(s): Ishiuchi Miyako (Japanese, born 1947) Title/Date: Yokosuka Story #58, 1976 – 1977 Culture: Japanese Medium: Gelatin silver print Dimensions: Image: 45.5 x 55.8 cm (17 15/16 x 21 15/16 in.) Framed: 54.4 × 65.7 × 4.5 cm (21 7/16 × 25 7/8 × 1 ¾ in.) Accession No. EX.2015.7.76 Copyright: © Ishiuchi Miyako Object Credit: collection of Yokohama Museum of Art Repro Credit: Photo © Yokohama Museum of Art

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

Art Basel Miami Beach 2015 Edition

Posted on December 11, 2015

art_basel_miami_2015_lapostferia

Check Out
Art Basel Miami Beach 2015
Coverage at Crave Online

A few highlights from the week include:

Incas wallpaper panel, 1818, Joseph Dufour et Compagnie (founded Mâcon, France, 1801–23), manufacturer, Block-printed on handmade paper, Courtesy of Carolle Thibaut-Pomerantz

“Philodendron: From Pan-Latin Exotic to American Modern”
Wolfsonia-Florida International University

© Lorna Simpson. Direct Gaze, 2014 (detail)

Top 5 Highlights at
Art Basel Miami Beach

Amarillismo by Wilson Diaz

Wilson Diaz: Amarillismo
at Instituto de Vision at Art Basel

© James Rieck. Flared Bell Bottoms, 2015.

Top 5 Highlights at
PULSE Contemporary Art Fair

Guy Richards Smit: Mountain of Skulls
Charlie James Gallery at PULSE

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

Glenn Ligon: A People on the Cover

Posted on October 19, 2015

Lorrie Davis with Rachel Gallagher, Letting Down My Hair: Two Years with the Love Rock Tribe – From Dawning to Downing of Aquarius. Published by Arthur Fields Books, New York, 1973.

While doing a residency at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, artist Glenn Ligon began collaborating with the Givens Collection of African American Literature at the University of Minnesota. Without a clear plan for the partnership, Ligon began wandering the stacks, perusing their holdings, and looking at books he randomly pulled off the shelves. As he did so he discovered the project he would create, the telling of the history of black people in the United States as represented on the covers of books. The result is an intimate white paperback quietly titled A People on the Cover (Ridinghouse).

The book begins with an introduction by Ligon, in which he recounts a brief history of his readings from 1960-1978. He begins with the formative memory of the day a white man came to his South Bronx home, going door-to-door trying to sell the Encyclopaedia Britannica in the housing projects. Ligon’s mother, who worked as a nurse’s aide at a psychiatric hospital, purchased that set of books that was the equivalent of almost an entire month’s rent, believing that education was the best way to get her children out of the hood.

Ligon, who was subsequently transferred to a private school, remembers the way that books became status symbols of white culture, and reinforced their ideals, and found himself in a precarious position of being a young teenage boy living in two worlds. In his earlier years, he recounts an interest in the pretenses of white culture, but grew out of that pose on his first trip to the Eighth Street Bookshop in Greenwich Village. He spotted James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time in the store window, and became transfixed by the red, black, and orange cover of the book. As Ligon writes, “I felt, in that moment, that in those four words on the cover, I had found myself.”

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