Posts from the “1980s” Category

Roger Ballen: Ballenesque

Posted on December 8, 2017

When Roger Ballen graduated from high school in 1968, his parents gave him a Nikon FTn camera. It was flown over from Hong Kong by a friend and lost in customs for several weeks before it finally arrived. The day that Ballen received it, he headed to the outskirts of Sing Sing prison to take photographs, a prescient moment to launch a journey in photography like no other before or since.

His name alone conjures up curious and disturbing visions of an uncanny world, one that recalls the spaces of the dreamscape, theaters of the unconscious. Here reality is a construction, but it is also something else: it is the space where our minds are released from rational sensibilities. To describe the work as unnerving would be polite. It is as though the non-linear spaces of the mind are given full flight.

“A shadow runs through my work,” Ballen observes in the magnificent new book, Ballenesque: A Retrospective (Thames & Hudson). “The shadow spreads, grows deeper as I move on, grow older. The shadow is no longer indistinguishable from the person they call Roger. I track my shadow (life) through these images.”

Ballenesque provides a road map through this life, bringing us along the trail that the shadow has traveled over the past five decades. One of his most telling photographs was taken at the very start, a photograph of a dead cat lying on a street in New York. Made in 1970, it has all the hallmarks of what is to come: the strange un-reality of this dead creature, a line that suggested the presence of the entry to a netherworld, an a car driving into the distance, into the great beyond.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Africa, Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Photography

Club 57: Film, Performance, and Art in the East Village, 1978–1983

Posted on December 6, 2017

Artwork: Kenny Scharf (American, born 1958). Having Fun. 1979. Acrylic on canvas. Collection Bruno Testore Schmidt, courtesy the artist and Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles

By 1978, the East Village art scene was coming into its own, and a new movement began to take hold in the basement of New York’s Holy Cross Polish National Church at 57 St. Marks Place. Club 57, as it was known, was home to a group of young artists including Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, Fred Brathwaite aka Fab 5 Freddy, Klaus Nomi, Tseng Kwong Chi, Joey Arias, John Sex, and Marcus Leatherdale – all of whom were redefining art and photography, fashion and design, film and video, performance and theatre.

The no-budget venue and social club broke all the rules, transforming the ways in which we experience art to the present day. In celebration, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, presents Club 57: Film, Performance, and Art in the East Village, 1978–1983, a major exhibition and catalogue organised by Ron Magliozzi, Curator and Sophie Cavoulacos, Assistant Curator, Department of Film, with guest curator Ann Magnuson.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Artwork: John Sex (American, 1956–1990). Amazon Temptation, 1980. Silkscreen. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Department of Film Special Collections

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Huck, Manhattan, Painting, Photography

Depeche Mode: Monument

Posted on December 5, 2017

Photo: Depeche Mode: Monument. Courtesy of Akashic Book

In 1980, a four young men hailing from the British town of Basildon decided to start a band. They named it ‘Composition of Sound’, a very formal way of describing one of the defining factors of their 37-year career, and quickly adopted, ‘Depeche Mode’ (translation: ‘Fashion News’) after spotting it on the cover of a French magazine.

Their music, like their name, was cutting edge. Coming into their own just as synthesiser music was making waves, Depeche Mode received offers from major labels but decided to sign with Mute Records, a London-based independent that was emerging as the sound of the times. Daniel Miller, the label’s founder, started Mute in 1978 to release his own one-man electro-punk project The Normal, and the label subsequently signed a roster of artists that approached synth music with a DIY punk attitude.

By the mid-80s, Depeche Mode had become an international phenomenon, and one of the places their music made the most impact was with the youth living inside the Eastern bloc. Although their records had been banned by official channels, some Western radio and TV still reached fans, and Depeche Mode became musical heroes for a new generation.

As a teenager growing up in East Germany, Dennis Burmeister was slowly becoming the band’s number one fan, after having a lightbulb moment listening to “Pipeline” on the radio around 1983 or 84, then seeing a video for “A Question of Time” in 86. He began amassing a collection that would grow to more than 10,000 pieces – the most extensive archive of Depeche Mode memorabilia in the world.

Burmeister got started by swapping tapes with friends before he was finally able to buy hard copies after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Over the years, his role began to grow as he recognised the importance of being not only a collector but a historian. By the early 00s, he had become a consummate insider, working as webmaster of the Toast Hawaii label, founded by Depeche Mode member Andy Fletcher.

In 2008, Burmerister met Sacha Lewis, a fellow Depeche Mode historian who was working on a documentary film. They quickly hit it off and saw the perfect opportunity to pool their talents and resources into creating a book, Depeche Mode: Monument. Featuring more than one thousand objects from Burmeister’s archive, Monument is a detailed chronology of the band who – after 100 million album sales – still show no sign of stopping. Burmeister and Lewis told us what it takes to build a monument to the band.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Photo: Depeche Mode: Monument. Courtesy of Akashic Book

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Dazed, Music

A Brief History of Thierry Mugler’s High-Voltage Fashion

Posted on November 13, 2017

Photo: Courtesy of Manfred Thierry Mugler on Instagram

The legendary house of Thierry Mugler occupies the space between fashion and myth, manned by a designer so visionary that no less than Beyoncé, David Bowie and Lady Gaga have called upon him to create couture so haute your body temperature rises just looking at pictures of it. In celebration of his iconoclastic career, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts has announced plans for Thierry Mugler: Creatures of Haute Couture, slated to open in February 2019. It will be the first solo exhibition of the designer’s work.

For over two decades, Mugler was a reigning force in fashion, an enfant terrible who defied bourgeois sensibilities with his spectacular looks and magnificent, sometimes almost hour-long runway shows. “I have always been fascinated by the most beautiful animal on the Earth: the human being,” Mugler revealed on the occasion of the exhibition’s announcement. That fascination led him to create clothes which transformed the wearers into futuristic femme fatales, whose superpowers were seduction and self-assurance.

Still, chances are you haven’t heard a whole lot from the designer lately. In 2003, Clarins, the parent company that purchased the brand in 1997, shuttered the house after huge losses (it would later reopen under Nicola Formichetti, followed by David Koma, who currently creates its collections). Mugler himself completely disappeared from public view, reemerging four years later as Manfred – virtually unrecognisable having embraced bodybuilding and transformed himself into a 240-pound figure rivalling a Tom of Finland sketch. He told the New York Times in 2010 that he did not want to be recognised, explaining, “You don’t want to be reminded that you did this or you did that. It is disturbing.”

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Photo: Courtesy of Manfred Thierry Mugler on Instagram

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Dazed, Fashion

Albert Watson: KAOS

Posted on November 9, 2017

Photo: Road to Nowhere, Las Vegas, 2001 Edition 10 (72 x 42). Photography Albert Watson

Back in 1973, Scottish photographer Albert Watson got the call: Harper’s Bazaar wanted him to photograph the “Master of Suspense” for their holiday issue. The story was titled “Alfred Hitchcock cooks his own goose” and the assignment called for Watson to photograph the portly Brit presenting roast fowl on a serving dish. But Watson demurred and brought his own vision to bear – directing the legendary filmmaker in a series of photos depicting Hitchcock clasping an uncooked goose by the neck and throttling it with morbid elegance.

The photographs were pitch perfect and the world took note, launching Watson into the stratosphere of contemporary photography across every genre: portraiture, fashion, music, celebrity, still life, landscape, architecture, advertising, and fine art. Whether shooting Michael Jackson, Naomi Campbell, or Prince, King Tut’s artefacts, a Las Vegas dominatrix, or inmates at Angola State Prison – Watson deftly combines innovative thinking with a mastery of technique, making his work a visual symphony of rhythm, compositional harmony, and tonal melodies.

In celebration of his illustrious career, Taschen presents KAOS, an XXL collector’s edition of 1,200 signed and numbered copies that come in a clamshell box covered in faux chimpanzee fur – because, why not? Selections from the book are currently on view in an eponymous exhibition at Taschen Gallery, Los Angeles.

Watson’s ingenious approach, which includes a double exposure of Mick Jagger and a cheetah, and Michael Jackson dancing broken down into single frames, has set him apart from his contemporaries. With nearly 100 Vogue covers to his credit, Watson is still going strong at 75. What’s more, he prints all his photographs himself in his Tribeca studio. It is rare to see the hand of the artist in the photograph, but Watson understands that the process continues long after the shutter clicks. He speaks about how to master the art of photography.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Photo: Sade, London, 1992. Photography Albert Watson

Photo: Tupac Shakur, New York City, 1991. Photography Albert Watson

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

Gail Thacker: Between the Sun & the Moon

Posted on November 3, 2017

Photo: Self portrait 1995. Photography Gail Thacker.

In the late 1970s, Gail Thacker studied painting at Boston School of the Museum of Fine Arts, alongside Mark Morrisroe, Pat Hearn, George Condo, Jack Pierson, and Tabboo! The golden haze of the hippie movement had faded away and in its place punk became the call of the day. The DIY ethos enabled artists to create life and work on their own terms, forgoing the established trends in search of freedom and truth.

After graduating in 1981, Thacker headed south, living in the suburbs so that she could easily commute into New York. Though the art world was experiencing a vital renaissance as the downtown scene brought fresh life to the art world, the dark specter of Aids devastated a new generation of youth coming of age.

Morrisroe’s illness became a turning point in her life. When he became gravely ill, he gave Thacker a box with hundreds of sheets of Polaroid 665 film and asked her to use it. She incorporated the Polaroids into her practice, using them as a means to record the world in which she lived – but her photograph was not meant to merely document the world as it was. It became a means to reveal the alchemical properties of life itself.

Through the great fortune of a mistake, Thacker discovered that the negatives could be manipulated through the unintended but inevitable experience of decay. She adapted her process to explore the balance between creation (life) and destruction (death) in art, transforming her work into a metaphor for existence itself: the risk and reward cycle of possibility – loss or win.

Using herself and friends as subjects, Thacker has created works that evoke the unconventional spirit of Old New York – where life itself could become a work of art. Each work Thacker creates is a singular moment that embodies the ephemeral and the eternal in equal part. The photograph, as object, is as fragile and resilient as life itself: marked, torn, taped, collaged, and altered by the passage of time.

Thacker’s work has been gathered for Between the Sun & the Moon, opening today at Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York, and running through December 22. A book of the same name will be published by QCC Art Gallery Press. Thacker speaks with us about how to navigate the porous boundaries between life and art.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Photo: Sarah & Katrina 2007. Photography Gail Thacker

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

City as Canvas: Graffiti Art from the Martin Wong Collection

Posted on October 27, 2017

The Death of Graffiti by LADY PINK, 1982, acrylic on masonite, 19×22.” Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.

DUMP KOCH painted by Spin, photograph by Martha Cooper, 1982.

It began in the stacks. Sean Corcoran, Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Museum of the City of New York, came across a collection of black books Martin Wong had donated to the Museum in 1994, just five years before he would die from AIDS in San Francisco. The black books were the site of sketches and drawings, works on paper that were passed from head to head, giving writers a look at what their contemporaries were doing with marker in hand and giving them a space to contribute to the conversation.

In total, Martin Wong (1946-1999) donated 55 black books and more than 300 mixed media paintings on canvas, cardboard, paper, and plywood. The work Wong collected includes early permutations of designs that would later appear on trains and buildings throughout New York City. And though those paintings are long gone, their legacy lives on.

Opening February 4 at the Museum of the City of New York, City as Canvas: Graffiti Art from the Martin Wong Collection presents 105 works by legendary writers DAZE. DONDI, FUTURA 200, Keith Haring, LADY PINK, LEE, and SHARP among others, alongside historical photographs by Charlie Ahearn, Henry Chalfant, Martha Cooper, Jon Naar, and Jack Stewart. Paired together, the paintings, drawings, and photographs take us back to a time and a place that, though not far away at all, no longer exists in our daily lives.

It is the photographs that create the context, a context that may be difficult to imagine for those who did not live it. Trains were bombed with spray paint and marker both inside and out, as masterpieces ran the entire length of whole cars and tags decorating the interiors. This was the era of an artistic impulse made manifest as by any means necessary, of going down to the yards after dark or walking through live and dead tunnels to paint. This period in New York City history marks the creation of a style and a culture that has swept the world with anti-authoritarian delight. It was here in these black books and paintings that a new world was born, and it is here in these photographs that this world remains forever more.

Graffiti Kids, photograph by Jon Naar, 1973. ©Jon Naar

Redbird (Stay High 149) photograph by Jon Naar, 1973. ©Jon Naar

Corcoran observes, “We decided to show the Martin Wong Collection because we thought it had real cultural significance to New York’s story over the last thirty, forty years. Graffiti was such an omnipresent part of life in New York. It was loved and hated, there was no in between. Whatever you thought of it, theirs is not doubt it had an affect on the culture in general. Style writing as it is known today was born in New York and became a worldwide phenomenon.”

Accompanying the exhibition is a catalogue of the same name, published by Skira Rizzoli with the Museum of the City of New York, featuring essays by Charle Ahearn, Carlo McCormick, Sacha Jenkins, Lee Quiñones, Chris “Daze” Ellis, Aaron “Sharp” Goodstone, and Sean Corcoran. The essays create a context for Wong’s obsession for the art, an obsession that adds intimacy and understanding to his need to collect, to document, to preserve. Twenty years ago, Wong knew, intuitively, that neither he nor the graffiti of the era would be with us today. And it is in this way that “City as Canvas” is more than an exhibition of art, but it stands as a monument to an era that has come and has gone. And era that is preserved forevermore in the photographs that show what had come of these preparations for masterpieces that once dotted the subway lines and crowned Kings.

For those who once witnessed the world that lives in these photographs, City as Canvas is like a teleportation device into the past. The raw, live energy of the letterform set against a backdrop of freedom at an cost beings us back to that old school D.I.Y. vibe of the 1970s and 80s New York. And for those who missed it, the Museum exists, as a place of honor and veneration to the legacy we as New Yorkers carry forth.

First Published in L’Oeil de la Photographie
March 20, 2014

Howard the Duck Handball Court photograph by Charlie Ahearn. Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.

Lion’s Den Handball Court photograph by Charlie Ahearn. Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.

Martin Wong, photograph by Peter Bellamy, 1985.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Graffiti, Photography

I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish

Posted on October 19, 2017

Invariably a day will come where I put “How Soon Is Now” and get into my feelings. The highs, the lows, the fighting the air blows, I’m absolutely consumed with a maudlin mania that overcomes and nestles me in its clasp. One time is never enough. Play it again, Sam.

And – I’m not even a Smith’s fan. Coming up, I found them morose. But as time goes by, I can’t front. Where so many other bands faded away, The Smiths and Morrissey live on. In celebration, These Days, Los Angeles, presents, I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish: The Smiths & Morrissey Collection, now on view through October 22. The exhibition takes you back to the days when poster art was errythann.

The exhibition features a selection of vintage, 40 x 60 inch duotone posters made between 1985 and 1995 originally displayed in the UK and around Europe in train stations and record stores (Remember those? I’m sayinn). From the start, lead singer and co-songwriter Morrissey ran the show when it came to the band’s artwork, working alongside Rough Trade art coordinator Jo Slee.

At a time when everything was neon colors and punch pop graphics, Morrissey opted out and when vintage. Coming of age during the Pictures Generation, appropriation was de rigeur. Rather than take use of the band Morrissey chose images like Cecil Beaton’s famed photo of Truman Capote mid-jump, just as his career was taking off and the world was his oyster. It was evocative, if not provocative in part, a comment on popular culture and the spaces between high and low art. Stephen Zeigler of These Days shares his reflections on the power of the band here with us.

What was the inspiration for the show?

Stephen Zeigler: To be honest it was quite unplanned and came about very happenstance.

Do go on…

Stephen Zeigler: A good friend of ours is a huge fan of both The Smiths and Morrissey. He is a compulsive collector of all sorts of band merchandise (not just Smiths/Moz) and came to a point where he needed to downsize some of his collections. When he told us he would be selling off the Smiths and Morrissey posters, we thought it would be a great opportunity for the rabid Los Angeles Smiths/Moz community to be able to view the collection in it’s entirety before it was pieced out.

Everything is for sale and been selling quite well. We have had buyers from across the country purchase pieces. We even had an awesome couple drive over 400 miles from Oakland to see the exhibition and purchase a piece.

The Smiths are the perfect definition of a cult band. How would you describe their appeal?

Stephen Zeigler: Wow, that’s such a tough question and something I have been thinking about a lot during the shows run. I don’t think it can really be stated definitively but I think that Morrissey’s lyrics are intensely personal and yet the melancholy, anger, and emotions are universal and can mean something different to everyone.

I think for the average listener who grew up in the 1980s their music was always present and brings people back to certain points in their lives, and for the devoted super fans it’s deeply personal. I have spoken to visitors who tell me that Morrissey and The Smiths saved their lives, showed them another life besides gangbanging, or they were going through a rough time in their lives (even to the point of suicide) when they heard a song or lyric that showed them they weren’t alone in their emotions.

I love how music has the power to reach people who are on the brink. I’m very intrigued by the fact they continue to be so popular now, as so few groups from that era have such a prominent presence in the culture today. Why is it about their work that makes their appeal transcend time?

Stephen Zeigler: I think The Smiths are one of those unique bands, like The Clash, The Jam, The Specials, or Public Enemy who come from a specific era and time but are able to speak to an audience who may not have even been born yet when the band was together.

Specifically to The Smiths it was really a perfect storm of Morrissey’s voice and lyrics and Johnny Marr’s innovative guitar playing.

Morrissey said, the artwork needed to “take images that were the opposite of glamour and to pump enough heart and desire into them to show ordinariness as an instrument of power—or, possibly, glamour.” Could you expand on how these images do just this?

Stephen Zeigler: The Smiths have always been sort of down played in their appearance. Coming from working class Manchester where pretentiousness can get you an ass beating, the band embraced the common, hence the name “The Smiths.” With the artwork, they took images from many common looking British elements and personalities and the act of repurposing them as record covers or blowing them up as huge stage backdrops, in itself gives the images an importance never before imagined.

I’ve always loved the visuals they used for their campaigns. Could you speak of what the works have in common and how it defines their aesthetic?

Stephen Zeigler: Morrissey selected still images from little known or remembered mid-century films and photos of authors and artists that influenced him. The images were then stripped down and taken out of their original context to become a visual poetry of their own.

All photos courtesy of Stephen Zeigler, These Days.

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Exhibitions

Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting

Posted on October 19, 2017

Artwork: Eye Body, Transformative Actions For The Camera, 1963. Courtesy of Carolee Schneemann

You may remember Lady Gaga’s meat dress as something of a scene – but it doesn’t hold a candle to Meat Joy, the Carolee Schneemann happening from 1964 that inspired it. Where Gaga took an existing idea and transformed it into a publicity stunt, Schneemann invented something that had never been seen or done – and it nearly cost her life.

Picture a group of young men and women clad in their undergarments experiencing the pleasures of the flesh: of the carcasses of fish and chicken, along with sausages, touching their bare skin. Imagine being in the same room as they gathered on the floor to engage in an experience of sensuality the likes of which had never been realised before. Envision a man in the audience becoming so enraged he leaped from his seat, dragging Schneemann off to the side, and beginning to strangle her.

This happened during the Paris edition and went on until two bourgeois women jumped from their seats and fought off the attacker until he stopped. Then Schneemann got back into the happening and continued on with the knowledge that her explorations could unleash a cataclysmic storm. But Schneemann is an unstoppable force – she is freedom incarnate. Uninhibited and unafraid, she has been challenging the patriarchy by virtue of being true to herself.

Born in 1939 to a country doctor and a farm wife, Schneemann grew up close to nature, embracing the life and death cycle of the earth. When her father refused to support her decision to go to college, she won a full scholarship to study painting at Bard College, in New York, which she attended until she was expelled on the grounds of “moral turpitude.” Where others might have given up, Schneemann persevered, creating a body of work so singular and so challenging that to this day she has no equal in the field.

Her pioneering investigations into the female body, sexuality, and gender have tapped into archaic visual traditions and wrestled with social taboos, transforming Schneemann into a vessel of transgression and subversion in search of truth. In celebration, MoMA P.S. 1, New York, presents Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting (October 22, 2017- March 11, 2018), the first comprehensive retrospective spanning her prolific six-decade career.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Prestel has released a catalogue of the same name, while the Artists Institute has published Carolee’s Issue 02, which illustrates the ways in which other artists, advertisers, and pop culture figures have drawn heavily from her work. Schneemann speaks with us about Meat Joy as well as her career as “both image and image maker.”

Read the Story at Dazed

Artwork: Meat Joy 1964, chromogenic color print. Photo by Al Giese. From performance at Judson Church, November 16-18, 1964 New York. Courtesy of C. Schneemann and P.P.O.W, New York

Artwork: Nude on Tracks,1962-1977. Courtesy of Carolee Schneemann.

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

Jonas Mekas: A Dance with Fred Astaire

Posted on October 4, 2017

Jonas MekasPhotography John Lennon. Photo courtesy of Anthology Editions

At 94-years-old, Jonas Mekas is undergoing a literary renaissance. The esteemed filmmaker, poet, and artist is publishing five books of work, most notably A Dance with Fred Astaire (Anthology Editions), a visual autobiography comprised of anecdotes and drawn from Mekas’ life after his arrival in New York in 1949.

Born in Lithuania in 1922, Mekas was a teen when the Russian Army invaded his homeland. As he and his brother, Adolfas, attempted to flee in 1944, they were captured and forced to spend eight months in Elmshorn, a Nazi labour camp. When the war ended, they became Displaced Persons living in refugee camps, until finally able to emigrate to America, settling in Brooklyn.

Once in town, Mekas planted new roots, from which the tree of life has grown firm, with many branches bearing countless fruits. At his deepest core, is a love for cinema, its revolutionary forms, and a profound respect for the avant-garde. Together with his brother, Mekas launched Film Culture magazine, which ran from 1954 to 1996. His commitment to community went far and wide, enabling him to serve a need and fill a void.

Mekas became the first film critic for the Village Voice, founded the Film-Makers’ Cooperative and the Film-Makers’ Cinematheque, which has since evolved into Anthology Film Archives, located in the heart of the East Village. Along the way, he met and collaborated with some of the greatest figures of the times, from Andy Warhol to Salvador Dalí, John Lennon to Jacqueline Onassis.

As you weave your way through his work, the words of Plato reveal themselves time and again: “Necessity is the mother of invention.” His is a singular life unlike any other, one filled with passion, determination, and innovation. His stories inspire, enlighten, and entertain with equal parts charm, courage, and originality. Mekas takes us on a stroll down memory lane, sharing the knowledge and wisdom garnered from a lifetime dedicated to art.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Photo: Courtesy of Anthology Editions

Photo: Courtesy of Anthology Editions

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Dazed, Manhattan

Jane Friedman: How to Find Artists That Can Change the World

Posted on October 3, 2017

Photo: Mark Sink, Grace Jones, ca 1988

Artwork: Arturo Vega, “Supermarket Sign(Steak Sale)”, 1973. Acrylic on canvas 48 x 72 x 1 1/2 inches

Located in the heart of New York’s East Village, Howl! Happening was established in memory of artist Arturo Vega, who designed the iconic Ramones logo. Vega, a Mexican national, fled his native land in 1968 when the government rounded up 148 of the country’s most notable artists and intellectuals, putting their lives at risk. Vega fled to New York where he had prominent connections, like Jane Friedman – the woman made rock’n’roll journalism a legitimate business.

New York native Jane Friedman grew up on Broadway, as her father handled public relations for legendary shows along the Great White Way. Friedman followed in her father’s footsteps, and along the way, she realised her talents would be best served by supporting the greatest artists of the time. She went on to craft a new lane in the media, representing artists like Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa, as well as doing PR for the famed musical Hair. She was also Patti Smith’s manager throughout her career.

Friedman has been a behind-the-scenes fixture in downtown New York, working with artists and musicians to ensure their success and legacy. When Vega, one of her dearest friends died in 2013, Friedman set up Howl! Arts, a non-profit organisation that preserves the culture of the East Village and the Lower East Side in a rapidly gentrifying city that has effectively erased so much of the New York’s fabled past.

Taking its name from Allen Ginsberg’s famed 1955 poem, Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project is the cornerstone of the organisation. A gallery, performance space, and archive located around the corner from where CBGBs once stood, Howl! Happening has been home to a series of phenomenal shows including exhibitions by Patricia Field, Lydia Lunch, Taboo!, PUNK Magazine’s 40th Anniversary, and The East Village Eye – as well as on-going events and performances that showcase the very best of the community, which continues to thrive despite the exponential explosion in the cost of living.

This month, Howl! presents Love Among the Ruins: 56 Bleecker Gallery Street and the late 80s New York, a group exhibition that looks back at the famed East Village gallery and performance space that served as a vital intersection of music, fashion, art, and nightlife during one of the most vital and devastating period of New York history. Featuring works by nearly 100 artists including David LaChapelle, Nan Goldin, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Dondi White, Stephen Sprouse, and George Condo, to name just a few, the exhibition is on view through October 7, 2017.

Friedman speaks with us about what it takes to cultivate a community of artists that can change the world, while staying true to your roots, and shares images from the ongoing show.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Straight to Hell flyer

Photo: Mark Sink, Keith Haring, ca 1988

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