Posts from the “1970s” Category

Charlie Ahearn Ft. Grand Wizzard Theodore: Scratch Ecstasy

Posted on June 1, 2017

Photo: Charlie Ahearn, DJ AJ 2 from the series Scratch Ecstasy, 1980. © the artist and courtesy P.P.O.W.

Hip Hop came of age inside the cinderblock walls of the Ecstasy Garage Disco in the Boogie Down Bronx. By 1980, it was the place to be as the flyest DJs and MCs honed their skills among their peers. In tribute, filmmaker Charlie Ahearn has teamed up with Grand Wizzard Theodore, inventor of the scratch, to recreate their weekly slide show as the centerpiece of Ahearn’s exhibition Scratch Ecstasy, currently on view at P.P.O.W. Gallery. Miss Rosen, who worked with Ahearn on his 2007 book, Wild Style: The Sampler, speaks with Ahearn and Theodore about the interplay between sight and sound in the development of Hip-Hop culture during its formative years.

Read the Full Story at Aperture Online

Photo: Charlie Ahearn, Scratch DJ from the series Scratch Ecstasy, 1980. © the artist and courtesy P.P.O.W.

Photo: Charlie Ahearn, Funky Four in their Bronx neighborhood from the series Scratch Ecstasy, 1980. © the artist and courtesy P.P.O.W.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Aperture, Art, Bronx, Exhibitions, Music, 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.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

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

Larry Sultan: Here and Home

Posted on May 26, 2017

Photo: Larry Sultan, Business Page, from the series Pictures From Home, 1985; chromogenic print. © Estate of Larry Sultan. Photos courtesy Casemore Kirkeby and Estate of Larry Sultan.

Home is a state of mind as much as it is a place. For some it can be a four-letter word of the very worst kind—or it can be synonymous with love. Home can be so many things, all of them deeply personal.

For photographer Larry Sultan (1946-2009), home was where he created work, lush images of suburban California that are as American as Hostess cupcakes. There’s something delightfully unnatural about it all, something that comforts us with soothing visions of a naïve faith in the possibilities of the contrived. Here, the element of control reveals itself, that deeply seductive belief that we run this.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Photo: Larry Sultan, Practicing Golf Swing, from the series Pictures from Home, 1986; chromogenic print. © Estate of Larry Sultan. Photos courtesy Casemore Kirkeby and Estate of Larry Sultan.

Photo: Larry Sultan, My Mother Posing for Me, from the series Pictures From Home, 1984; chromogenic print. © Estate of Larry Sultan. Photos courtesy Casemore Kirkeby and Estate of Larry Sultan.

Categories: 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.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Artwork: Moké. Skol Primus. 177 x 131 cm. 1991. © Moké © Courtesy CAAC – The Pigozzi Collection.

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.”

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

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

Stephen Shore: Selected Works, 1973-1981

Posted on May 17, 2017

Photo: Stephen Shore, Ginger Shore, West Palm Beach, Florida, November 14, 1977. © Stephen Shore, courtesy 303 Gallery, New York.

In 1982, Aperture published Uncommon Places by Stephen Shore, a collection of large-format color photographs exploring the American vernacular landscape from an entirely new point of view—one that embraced the ethos of mid-century populism. It offered a fresh take on modernism, embracing the spectacle of the mundane, the glorious humdrum of the nation under soaring blue skies and wide open terrain. It enlivened the eye and the mind to a sense of the sheer magnificence of that which we see everyday though we may never really look.

Uncommon Places, which has since been expanded and reissued several times over the past 35 years, has influenced a generation of photographers to look at the landscape where they are. In the past five years Shore has returned to his archive to delve more deeply within the works that he produced during the period from 1973 to 1981. He then brought the unseen works to Aperture, who invited an international group of 15 photographers, curators, authors, and cultural figures including Wes Anderson, Francine Prose, Ed Ruscha, Taryn Simon, and Lynne Tillman to select ten images each to create a series of portfolios collected in the new book Stephen Shore: Selected Works, 1971-1981.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Photo: Stephen Shore, East Fifth Street and Main Street, Fort Worth, Texas, June 17, 1976. © Stephen Shore, courtesy 303 Gallery, New York.

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

Martha Cooper at Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

Posted on May 16, 2017

Photo: Japanese girl with tattoo, Tokyo, 1970. © Martha Cooper.

Photographer Martha Cooper has always lived life on her own term. After graduating high school at 16 and Grinnell College at 19, the Baltimore-native decided to see the world so she joined the Peace Corps and traveled to Thailand, where she taught English for a spell. Then she hopped on a motorcycle and hightailed it from Bangkok to London, taking all along the way.

She received a diploma in anthropology from Oxford, which speaks to her truest sensibilities: her passion for documenting the creative fruits of the human experience. In her hands, the camera is not merely a tool to create an image for aesthetic pleasure, it does something more; it bears witness to a time and place that is inherently ephemeral: street art and culture, which is inherently urban folk art.

In 1970, Cooper found herself walking along a street in Tokyo when she spotted a man in a crowd. On his back was a Japanese tattoo, with figures drawn in the style of a woodblock print. Entranced, Cooper followed him until he disappeared, then began asking her friend about tattoos—a touchy subject. Tattooing had been outlawed in 1872, then legalized again in 1948, then quickly became a status symbol for the yakuza and the Japanese underworld. But Cooper is not one to give up when she has her sights set, and so she pursued her quest to completion: entrance to the studio of Horibun I, a tattoo master.

It is here, in his studio that Cooper made the photographs that comprise the earliest work in the exhibition Martha Cooper, currently on view at Steven Kasher Gallery, New York, through June 3, 2017.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Photo: Christopher Sawyer breaking, Upper West Side, NYC, 1983. © Martha Cooper.

Photo: Woman with white pants on 180th Street platform, Bronx, NYC, 1980. © Martha Cooper.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Bronx, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot, Graffiti, Manhattan, Photography

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.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

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

John Ingham: Spirit of 76

Posted on May 12, 2017

Photo: The Damned opened 1977 at the Hope & Anchor, a pub in Islington with a history of live bands. Comfortably holding about 100 people, there were double that number crammed in. Sweat was running down the walls. 2 January 1977. Photography John Ingham.

A dark cloud swept across England in the mid-1970s, washing away the buoyant optimism of Swinging London. The bright promise turned bleak, as the recession pushed more and more people into unemployment. Couple this with strikes, power cuts, and IRA bombs, and the only fitting response was to burn the whole thing down.

More than music and style, punk was an attitude. It gave no fucks as it seized the moment and made its way out of the art schools and on to the world stage in 1976. Journalist John Ingham, who was writing for Sounds, conducted the first interview with the Sex Pistols and got hooked on the raw energy, soul, and nerve. He began covering the scene, which accelerated rapidly as punk ignited a movement across the U.K.

New bands like the Clash, the Damned, and Subway Sect began to appear – but no one was photographing them until Ingham picked up a camera. His photographs, which include the very first color pictures of punk, have been collected for the very first time in Spirit of 76: London Punk Eyewitness (Anthology Editions). Ingham reflects on what it was like to be in the front row of a wildfire.

Read the Full Story at Dazed Digital

Friends and countrymen at the Sex Pistols, Notre Dame de France, 15 Nov 1976. Viv Albertine Siouxsie Sioux smoking cigarette, Steve Severin, Kenny Morris, Sarah Hall, one of the two ladies who came with John to the first interview in April. Photography John Ingham

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Dazed, Music

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