Posts from the “1970s” Category

Ming Smith: Evidence

Posted on June 9, 2021

*Ming Smith. Grace Jones, Studio 54 (New York), 1970s.*

Throughout her five-decade career, Ming Smith has broken through boundaries she has faced as a Black American artist coming of age during the Civil Rights Movement. Born in Detroit, raised in Columbus, Ohio, and educated at Howard University in Washington D.C., Smith moved to New York in the 1970s to work as a model alongside pioneers including Grace Jones, Toukie Smith, and Bethann Hardison.

“I didn’t call myself a photographer, but I was constantly shooting,” the artist said in Ming Smith: An Aperture Monograph. “I was just a young person in New York trying to find my way, and I had to support myself, so I took a job as a model.”

While on a go-see, Smith heard Kamoinge members Louis Draper and Anthony Barboza discussing photography. She showed Draper her work and he invited Smith to become the first woman to join the legendary photography collective. “That was a major awakening,” Smith said.

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Ming Smith. Self-Portrait as Josephine (New York), 1986.*

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Photography

In the Gallery with: Brian Clamp

Posted on June 4, 2021

*© Peter Berlin, “Self Portrait as Urban Cowboy, “ c. 1970s, Hand-painted vintage gelatin silver print.*

The year 2000 marked a turning point for New York-based gallerist Brian Clamp. After turning 30 and receiving his MA in Critical Studies in Modern Art from Columbia University, he had reached a crossroads. “I had been working as director of Owen Gallery on the Upper East Side, and wanted to get more involved with contemporary art, photography, and working with living artists,” says Clamp. “I decided to take the plunge and start my own gallery, not fully realising what I was getting into.”

That fall, he opened ClampArt, and worked as a private dealer from his West 27th Street loft. An avid practitioner of photography, Clamp also spent time at The Camera Club of New York (now known as Baxter St), getting to know a number of photographers whose work he admired. Through these relationships, Clamp developed the foundations for the gallery program.

In early 2003, Clamp signed a lease for a commercial space on West 25th Street, just as Chelsea was becoming the center of the downtown art world. “I was able to get a ground floor space in Chelsea for my first gallery without any backing,” he says.

Read the Full Story at British Journal of Photography

*© The Estate of Peter Hujar, “Scrumbly Koldewyn and Tom Nieze, The Cockettes,” 1971, Vintage gelatin silver print, Courtesy Peter Hujar Archive.*

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, British Journal of Photography, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Photography

Joel Meyerowitz: Wild Flowers

Posted on May 28, 2021

Bronx-born photographer Joel Meyerowitz is no stranger to risk. At the age of 24, he put it all on the line when he quit his job at a New York-based advertising company to become a photographer after watching Robert Frank at a photoshoot. “I didn’t know who he was, what he stood for, or anything about photography,” Meyerowitz, now 83, recalled of that fateful day in 1962.

“I stood behind him so I could watch the way he was handling the different subjects. I could see it over his shoulder this little action was unfolding. He barely spoke to the preteen girls in front of the camera, he just grunted or made little body gestures. Each time their actions seemed to peak into something that had a fragmentary image of beauty I heard the click of his Leica.”

After the shoot, Meyerowitz went back on the street, and began to see extraordinary moments reveal themselves among the mundane. He remembers, “I walked through New York City, from 23rd Street to 53rd Street, just looking at everything. I had so many minor epiphanies along the way that by the time I got to the office I was filled with of desire to be on the street taking photographs. When I got upstairs, my boss asked me how it went and I said it was, ‘Fantastic, the shoot was great but I’m quitting on Friday. I have to become a photographer.’”

Joel Meyerowitz describes the scene in vivid detail, the way his boss stood silently with a small cigar clenched between his teeth, a little trickle of smoke going up and making his eye wink. “He was appraising me,” Meyerowitz says. “He was an artist himself so he understood that some transformative thing had happened to me. Then he loaned me his camera and out I went on Friday into the world.”

Read the Full Story at Blind

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Blind, Books, Photography

Remembering Tom of Finland Through Stories of Those Who Knew Him

Posted on May 19, 2021

*Tom of Finland, Untitled, c.1973, Tom of Finland Permanent Collection*

Those who had the pleasure of meeting Tom of Finland (born Touko Valio Laaksonen, 1920–1991) may have expected to encounter a walking, talking version of his drawings. Instead, they would have been greeter by a gentle soul, whose Finnish upbringing made him a quiet and reserved individual, who would easily slip into the fantasy world of his homoerotic drawings for hours at a time.

“If you know Finns, and most people don’t, they can be quite quiet,” says Durk Dehner, president of the Tom of Finland Foundation. “When I first went to Finland, Tom set up a cocktail party for me at his apartment. His friends started coming while he was arranging cocktails and preparing hors d’oeuvres. We were all sitting in the living room and nobody was saying a word. I was so uncomfortable, I went into the kitchen and said, ‘When are they going to start talking?’ He said, ‘Give them one more drink and they will,’ and that was the case. Of course six hours later I went into the kitchen and said, ‘When are they going to go home?’ That’s Finns in a nutshell.”

Although Tom was unassuming, he was confident and determined to create works of art that would empower and inspire gay men at a time when homosexuality – and very the depiction of it – was criminalised, stigmatised, and misrepresented. Tom’s groundbreaking drawings of bikers and leathermen, which he made from photographs now on view in the new exhibition Tom of Finland: The Darkroom, revolutionised the portrayal of gay men forevermore. “He wanted his history to be in his art,” Dehnrer says. And so it was – but still many wish to know, what was Tom of Finland really like? Here his friends, lovers, and models reminisce on the man behind the myth.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Tom of Finland, Untitled (Aarno), 1976, Tom of Finland Permanent Collection

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, AnOther, Art, Exhibitions, Photography

Common Practice: Basketball & Contemporary Art

Posted on May 19, 2021

*Lew Alcindor, basketball player, by Richard Avedon, New York, 1963*

“Basketball is a universal language, much like art is. There are other sports that are likely more popular, but none are as influential as basketball from a cultural standpoint,” says artist and filmmaker John Dennis. “It transcends barriers in music, fashion, art, and pop culture, and also draws attention to pressing issues in the social and political arena.”

Growing up in the suburbs of New York City, Dennis saw an artificial division drawn between athlete and artist, one that failed to reflect the common ground they shared: a dedicated commitment to practice across all disciplines. Whether shooting in the gym, painting in the studio, or printing in the darkroom, athletes and artists must show up every day to transform their talents, skills, and passion into a successful career and lasting legacy.

As an avid basketball player, Dennis sought new ways to connect with the game and explore the intersections between sport and art. He teamed up with artist Carlos Rolón and Project Backboard founder Dan Peterson to create the new book Common Practice: Basketball & Contemporary Art (Skira). Featuring the work of 250 artists including Richard Avedon, Salvador Dalí, Keith Haring, Barkley Hendricks, JR, KAWS, Alex Prager, Lorna Simpson, Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei, the book presents an inclusive look at the iconography of basketball through a modern lens.

Read the Full Story at Huck

*The Basketball Game by Ron Tarver, 1993*

*Firemen put out blaze while youths play basketball by Paul Hosefros for The New York Times, 1975*

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Huck

Mel Odom: Gard Stuff

Posted on May 10, 2021

Growing up in Mayberry, North Carolina, in the 1950s and 60s, artist Mel Odom would sneak out of his room after his parents went to sleep, turn the TV down low, and watch old movies late into the night. Mesmerised by the sleek yet sensuous art deco aesthetic that defined old Hollywood glamour, Odom revelled in the cool sexuality that smoldered under the glimmering surface of these films.

Intuitively he brought this sensibility to his work as an illustrator, a passion that took root when he was just three or four years old. Born to a mailman and a housewife living in a small town, Odom found solace in drawing his own world. “As an adult I realised whenever there was something traumatic going on in the family or in my life, drawing where was where I would go to exhibit some sense of control,” he tells AnOther. “I would go to my room and draw for hours. My parents understood it was something that meant a great deal to me, so I had lessons from the time I was seven years old.”

After receiving his first commission in third or fourth grade to draw 36 place cards for a school event, Odom understood he could make money doing what he loved. It’s a passion that he’s pursued throughout his life, one that he reflects back on in the new two-part exhibition, Mel Odom: Hard Stuff, now on view online and at the Tom of Finland Store in Los Angeles. For the exhibition, Odom brings together 100 drawings made between 1975 and 2019 that showcase his wholly original approach to illustration.

Read the Full Story at Blind

Categories: 1970s, AnOther, Art, Exhibitions

Gary Green: Rebels & Dandys

Posted on May 6, 2021

American photographer Gary Green first picked up the camera as a youth coming of age in suburban Long Island during the late 1960s. “My parents thought it was another thing I’d give up like the saxophone and other hobbies that languished after a year or two,” he recalls. But, to his parent’s surprise, his interest in photography steadily grew into a career.

In the summer of 1976, Green moved to New York to work for a commercial photographer in midtown Manhattan. “New York was cheap, dirty, and dangerous in the best way. There was art to be seen, music to be heard, and artists making work everywhere,” he says.

Camera in hand, Green quickly hit the burgeoning punk scene at Max’s Kansas City and CBGB, photographing bands like the New York Dolls, Blondie, and the Ramones, as well as the people on the scene like Andy Warhol. In the new exhibition, Rebels & Dandys, which features a selection of work from his recent book When Midnight Comes Around (Stanley/Barker), Green looks back at this pivotal era in music history.

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Gary Green. Girls with fake guns, Peppermint Lounge, c.1980.*

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Huck, Manhattan, Music, Photography

Andy Grundberg: How Photography Became Contemporary Art

Posted on May 6, 2021

*Jan Groover, Untitled, 1978 © Estate of Jan Groover*

From its very outset, photography occupied a curious place within the world of art, its mechanical nature offering a new way of seeing and recording, while simultaneously confounding the status quo at every turn. Its deceptive simplicity, margin for error, and ability to reproduce a single image infinite times challenged all that traditionalists held sacred about the singular work of art. Although photographers long sought for their work to be recognized — and valued — as art, it would be nearly 150 years before the establishment acknowledged it as such. Unsurprisingly it took artists themselves to show functionaries as much.

As a photography critic at The New York Times from 1981-1991, Andy Grundbergplayed a pivotal role in the elevation of photography within the art world. He arrived in New York in August of 1971 with youthful dreams of being a poet. He got a job working in Soho just as the neighborhood was transitioning from a manufacturing center to an artists’ outpost, working as a day laborer to help transform huge industrial buildings transformed into lofts. At the time, the New York art world was firmly entrenched on 57th Street, just a stone’s throw from Sutton Place, but by the end of the decade, the downtown scene would rise to prominence.

Photography, with its ability to do what no other medium could, played first a functional then a formal role in the contemporary art scene. In the new book How Photography Became Contemporary Art (Yale University Press), Grundberg pens the perfect mix of history and memoir that chronicles the mediums transformation in the 1970s and ‘80s. Offering a first-person account from the frontlines, Grundberg explores the radical artists and movements that shook up the scene and reflects on the medium’s relationship with feminism and artists of color.

Read the Full Story at Blind

Edward Ruscha, Phillips 66, Flagstaff, Arizona, 1962. From the book Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1963. © Ed Ruscha

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Blind, Books, Photography

Meryl Meisler: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

Posted on April 30, 2021

*Fast Dancing at the COYOTE Hookers Masquerade Ball NY, NY February 1977 © Meryl Meisler*

As a Baby Boomer coming of age in Massapequa, Long Island, in the 1950s and 1960s,Meryl Meisler enjoyed the picture perfect suburban American childhood. Her days were filled with Girl Scout meetings, piano lessons, twirling practice, and ballet class; on weekends, her family would take trips to New York City to catch a Broadway show. Glamour and theatricality filled her youth, setting the stage for things to come when she moved to Manhattan during the summer of 1975, after receiving her MA in Art from the University of Madison in Wisconsin.

Twenty-three of age, Meisler arrived in New York just as it was reaching the peak of decadence. The financial collapse of the city (as a result of the explosion in public spending), combined with the Sexual Revolution, the Gay Pride, and Women’s Liberation Movements to create the perfect storm: a playground for a new generation coming of age that could afford to work, live, and party in New York.

Meisler sublet a room from her cousin Elaine on the Upper West Side, in Manhattan. “I fell right in,” she remembers. “I was freelancing as an illustrator, making sporadic money, and photographing. I set up a darkroom in the laundry room and that was that. I loved meeting different kinds of people from different backgrounds. My cousins had a gallery in East Harlem that brought together poets, artists, and musicians of all ages. Elaine’s older sister, Barbara, was friends with journalist Betty Friedan and all the famous feminists of the day. I was going to parties with movers and groovers, then out dancing at a Latin club. I felt at home. Whoever I was, this was where I belonged.”

Read the Full Story at Blind

*The DJ Booth at 4AM Studio 54, NY, NY, August 1977 © Meryl Meisler*

*Opening The Mirrored Door on Opening Night (With Judi Jupiter), La Farfalle, New York, New York, juin 1978 © Meryl Meisler*

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

Tom of Finland: The Darkroom

Posted on April 29, 2021

*Tom of Finland, Untitled (Gavin), 1987, Tom of Finland Permanent Collection ©1987-2021 Tom of Finland Foundation*

Wars, for all their horrors, have been known to foster a sense of brotherhood among the men who fight in them. This was certainly the case with Tom of Finland – born Touko Laaksonen (1920–1991) – who was conscripted to serve in the Finnish Army during World War II and rose to become a lieutenant, beloved by his platoon for treating them with kindness and respect. The son of a country choral master, Tom seized the opportunity to strengthen the bond between his men and created the first men’s choir in the Finnish Army.

“They had a lot of time sitting around waiting for the Russians to attack them so Tom taught all of the men in his platoon how to sing,” says Durk Dehner, president and co-founder of the Tom of Finland Foundation. “He could take on initiatives that came out of his own inspiration and yet he had this sensibility of not having to stand out and be noticed.”

Flying under the radar, quite literally, Tom established a cottage industry selling drawings through his mail-order business, while also working a day job at an advertising firm. What few people know is the role photography played in Tom’s artistic process. Now, the new exhibition Tom of Finland: The Darkroom, opening April 30 at Fotografiska New York, brings together photographic portraits the artist used as reference images for his legendary and hugely influential drawings. Organised in conjunction with Tom’s 101st birthday on May 8, the exhibition explores this little-known aspect of the artist’s work, which was confined to his home studio and darkroom so as to protect him from persecution, prosecution, and imprisonment.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

*Tom of Finland, Untitled, c.1986, Tom of Finland Permanent Collection © 1986-2021 Tom of Finland Foundation*

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, AnOther, Art, Exhibitions, Photography

Judi Hampton: Eyes on the Prize

Posted on April 21, 2021

Pictured in front of the Omaha, Neb. Central Police Station June 27, 1969, just after their release from questioning, are Black Panthers, left to right: Robert Cecil, Robert Griffo, Frank Peate, Gary House, and William Peak. (AP Photo)

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” William Faulkner famously wrote in the 1951 novel Requiem for a Nun, about the vicious cycle of trauma that lies deep in the heart of America. It is a truth that plays out more frequently than we may know.

Following the April 11 police shooting of 20-year-old Daunte Wright at a traffic stop, George Floyd’s girlfriend Courteney Ross revealed to the pressthat she had taught Wright while he was a student at Edison High School. The horrific convergence echoes that of Iberia Hampton, mother of slain Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, who babysat for Emmett Till before the 14-year-old boy was brutally murdered in 1955.

The stories of Emmett Till and Fred Hampton are just two of the stories featured in Eyes on the Prize, a landmark 1987 documentary TV series chronicling about Civil Rights Movement, which is now streaming free for a limited time.

Read the Full Story at Huck

27 Mar 1969, Dallas, Texas, USA — Original caption: Heavyweight champion Cassius Clay playfully spars with an unidentified Negro boy after Clay learned that he has won a delay in his 4/11 draft call. Clay’s Louisville draft board announced that his records are being transferred to Houston, Clay’s new home, and then Houston will set a new date for his draft call. Clay is in Dallas visiting local Black Muslim leaders. — Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS

*Eve Arnold. Malcolm X at a Black Muslim rally, USA. District of Columbia. Town of Washington D.C. 1961.*

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Exhibitions, Huck