Posts from the “1970s” Category

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

Con Cariño: Artists Inspired by Lowriders

Posted on May 25, 2016

Photo: Meridel Rubenstein. The Medina Family, Bad Company, ’68 Chevy Impala, Chimayó, New Mexico. 1980. Chromogenic print. Courtesy of the artist. © Meridel Rubenstein.

Santa Fe Mayor Javier Gonzales has declared 2016 “Lowrider Summer” with Sunday, May 22 the first official Lowrider Day, kicking off a series of exhibitions and events citywide including Con Cariño: Artists Inspired by Lowriders, on view at the New Mexico Museum of Art, now through October 10, 2016.

Featuring more than fifty works from the 1970s to the present, Con Cariño features photographs, paintings, sculptures, and videos from contemporary New Mexico artists including Lawrence Baca and Ron Rodriguez, Justin Favela, El Moisés, Meridel Rubenstein, Rose B. Simpson, Luis Tapia, and Don Usner, among others.

The beauty of the lowrider lies in the love for the automobile and the ability to customize it to become the ultimate personal driving experience. The first lowriders appeared in Los Angeles during the 1940s and ‘50s, as post-war prosperity swept through Los Angeles, finding itself in pockets of Mexican-American neighborhoods. The kids had style, and they had finesse. And they were going to cruise as low and slow as they could get.

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

Christopher Makos: Portraits of An Era

Posted on May 21, 2016

Photo: Portraits of An Era, Polaroid Collage #1 (1975–1984), ©Christopher Makos, courtesy of Makos Studio, New York and Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles.

Back in the early 1970s, Polaroid introduced the SX-70, a revolution in photography. Here was the medium at the height of modernity. Into a camera that snapped open and shut, film cartridges were inserted. Then the camera was aimed: point, click, and shoot—and a square-format image came sliding out. The film developed there, right before your eyes. People couldn’t hold back, they started shaking the print to make the image come in faster.

Suddenly, a revolution was born. It was a party in a camera. It was instant gratification. And the colors—the colors were out of this world. They had nuance and depth, adding a certain touch and creating an instant patina of nostalgia, yet forever au courant.

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

Henry Horenstein: Tales from the 70s

Posted on May 18, 2016

Photo: “Chammie in Wool,” Newton, MA, 1974, Vintage gelatin silver print. © Henry Horenstein, Courtesy of ClampArt, New York City.

Photographer Henry Horenstein remembers the 1970s well: “When we were in our early 20s, we didn’t have that much to do. I’d go out, drink beers with friends, I had girlfriends (or tried to get them), and I had a dog. I had a personal life. I don’t have that anymore. Life is too busy.”

A student of Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and Minor White, Horenstein has been making photographs since the early 1970s. He observes, “Over the years I’ve photographed many different types of subjects, even animals and the human form. But I’ve always returned to my roots as a documentary photographer. More than anything, I like a good story. And I try to tell one in a direct way, with humor and a punch line, if possible.”

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

Arlene Gottfried: Bacalaitos & Fireworks

Posted on March 21, 2016

Photo: Puerto Rican Day Parade. ©Arlene Gottfried, courtesy of Daniel Cooney Fine Art.

Arlene Gottfried is a New York original. Hailing from Brooklyn, Ms. Gottfried moved from Coney Island to Crown Heights when she was just ten years old, living in the area during the 1960s, as white flight and Civil Rights changed the face of the neighborhood. In the 1970s, Gottfried lived in the Village while studying photography at F.I.T. After her father had died, the family moved to the Lower East Side. Back then, it was a Puerto Rican neighborhood, rich in traditions native to the island, which, when combined with local influence, produced its very own style: Nuyorican.

Nuyorican is rhythms, horns, strings, and winds—or it is simply spoken word filling the air. Best exemplified by Miguel Piñero’s Nuyorican Poet’s Café, it is a state of mind in the place to be. Nuyorican is a street vendor selling fried codfish fritters and fireworks on July 4, announcing his wares as he made his way up and down the street shouting: “Bacalaitos y Fireworks!”

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Communion. ©Arlene Gottfried, courtesy of Daniel Cooney Fine Art.

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

Chris “Daze” Ellis: The City is My Muse

Posted on February 18, 2016

Chris “Daze” Ellis, The Odyssey, 2015, Oil and spray paint on canvas, Courtesy of the Artist

The New York City of Chris “Daze” Ellis’s world is a beautiful, hypnotic siren singing the softest of lullabies or just as quickly drop a beat and rhyme on top of it. She’s demanding, but she gives as good as she gets. She’s the queen befitting a king, and has found herself the subject of Chris “Daze” Ellis: The City is My Muse, on view at the Museum of New York, NY, now through May 1, 2016. Ellis observes, “This exhibition is a testament to my love affair with New York as my muse. It is an endless source of subject matter and an inspiration for many years. A muse is someone or something that captures your attention and imagination in a way that presents endless possibilities. New York is like that for me.”

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Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Bronx, Brooklyn, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Painting

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

Anton Perich: Secret Histories

Posted on February 15, 2016

Photo: ©Anton Perich. Jerry Hall, 1979, ink on paper, 3X4 feet.

Artist. Editor. Revolutionary. Anton Perich has been exploring the boundaries of art and culture since the late 1960s, when he lived in Paris. Upon arriving in New York City in 1970, Perich charted his own path that included, among many things, the invention of an electric photography machine in 1977–87. The work was truly ahead of its time, as the mechanization of the work of art had not yet been embraced by the world. Perich speaks with Crave about ingenious invention, one which prefigured the very era in which we live.

What was the inspiration for electric photography?

Anton Perich: The inspiration was TV. The old-fashion cathode tube. I didn’t grow up with television in former Yugoslavia. I watched some in Paris where I was in the late ‘60s. It was magic, French TV with sensual overtones, with sexual undertones. In the ‘70s, before building the painting machine, I did lots of photography and video. I really loved the video image, and I wanted to paint and create photography with electricity. I realized then that the future of image would be electric and not chemical. Immediately after completion of the machine I produced some very large photographs with the machine. About 5×6 feet, ink on paper. Looking at them today, they definitely told the future of the electric image. They look like they were made with Photoshop today, and not 35 years ago.

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