Posts from the “1980s” Category

Most Scandalous Art Shows of All Time

Posted on April 27, 2017

Gran Fury for ACT UP

The best art upends expectations and social mores, challenging the status quo by transgressing the boundaries of polite society. Because, let’s face it, truth isn’t kind to those who lie to themselves. But like the sun and the moon, the truth will always out.

Great art is a vessel for truth, allowing artists to speak freely without ever uttering a word. The immediacy of sight and the way it work on the brain allows it to change the way we perceive the world by upending the power of words to articulate and explain. “Seeing is believing” as the old proverb goes, and with that in mind, artists can change your mind without giving you a chance to argue. In celebration of the power of art, Crave has compiled a list of the most scandalous art shows of all time.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

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

Jamel Shabazz: Crossing 125th

Posted on April 26, 2017

Photo: Style and Finesse, 2010. Digital chromogenic print, 16 × 20 in. Courtesy the artist. © Jamel Shabazz

Harlem is the heart and soul of New York, the epicenter of African-American life, culture, history, and hustle. At the turn of the twentieth-century, this vast tract of land in upper Manhattan quickly became the destination for black folks leaving the South en masse during the Great Migration. Here, folks created a town within a city entirely its own, dominating the wide boulevards and stately homes with a style and approach to life that combined the very best of the North and the South.

It was during this first wave that the Harlem Renaissance was born, giving rise to a flourishing movement of a wide array of arts from literature, poetry, and drama to music, dance, and theater. Visual artists also took root, creating images that bespoke not just the times but also the rich and textured history of African-American life as seen through the eyes of the people.

Among the great artists of the era was James Van DerZee, one of the premier photographers of the twentieth century. During the 1920 and ‘30s, he crafted a compelling pictures of Harlem’s emerging middle class that employed the elements of traditional Victorian portraiture—but took them to new heights but connecting with the spirit of his subjects and bringing out their glamorous inner light. Van DerZee’s photographs came to define Harlem in a way that few other photographers ever could, and in doing so, he influenced generations to come—including the great Jamel Shabazz.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Photo: Double Exposure, 1990. Digital chromogenic print, 16 × 20 in. Courtesy the artist. © Jamel Shabazz.

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

Art Pioneer Carolee Schneemann Looks Back at 50 Years of Work

Posted on April 21, 2017

Photo: Still from performance of “Up to and Including Her Limits” (June 1976). Photo: Henrick Gaard

Artist. Feminist. Revolutionary. Carolee Schneemann, now 77 years old, has been traversing the sacred spaces of female sexuality and gender in the name of truth, liberation, and freedom from the patriarchy for more than half a century. Raised on a farm in rural Pennsylvania, Schneemann learned not to fear viscera, injury, or death. Instead, she embraced the creative and destructive forces of Mother Nature and fused them into work that challenged every assumption about women in the art world.

A multidisciplinary artist, Schneemann has created groundbreaking paintings, photographs, performance-art pieces, and installations that expose deep female secrets, pleasures, fears, and taboos. Using her body as a starting point, Schneemann also challenges cultural norms that discourage female artists from using their own nude bodies as the subjects of their work. Most memorably, in her landmark piece, Interior Scroll (1975), Schneemann stood on a table, assumed “action poses,” then slowly extracted and read from a scroll tucked neatly inside her vagina.

Her work shocked the establishment, but over the past 50 years, it has also become the foundation upon which generations of artists and pop-culture figures stand. From Matthew Barney to Lady Gaga, Schneemann’s influence is vast, yet she remains a solitary figure in the world of art, constantly reinventing her methodologies to examine the beauty and horrors of life in equal measure. On the cusp of her first United States retrospective, “Kinetic Painting,” at MoMA PS1 (running from October 22, 2017 to February 1, 2018), Schneemann spoke with BUST about her iconoclastic life in art.

Read the Full Story at BUST Magazine

Photo: Still from performance of “Eye Body: 36 Transformative Actions for Camera” (1963), photo: Erró

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Women

Jamel Shabazz: Sights in the City

Posted on April 18, 2017

Photo: Courtesy of Jamel Shabazz / Jamel Shabazz: Sights in the City, New York Street Photographs

When Jamel Shabazz took up photography back in the 1980s, he gave voice to a new generation of young black men who were redefining the look of street-level New York City with their colorful Kangol caps, Adidas shell-toe sneakers, and graphic Cazal glasses. A former corrections officer, Shabazz would wander neighborhoods like Harlem, Brownsville, and the Lower East Side with his camera, approaching strangers who caught his eye, engaging them in conversation, and concluding with a portrait.

For Shabazz, style is more than self-expression; it is an act of resistance, a refusal to be invisible, erased, or diminished. The strength of that vision can be traced throughout his new book, Sights in the City: New York Street Photographs (Damiani), selections of which will be on view at United Photo Industries in Brooklyn, starting May 4. Shabazz, who has worn custom-tailored clothing for 30 years, is just as sharp as his subjects. From his gold-rimmed glasses and butter-leather coats to his two-piece suits and cashmere sweaters, Shabazz has a commanding presence that is counterbalanced by a genuine and gracious smile. Here, the Brooklyn-born photographer reflects on the personal memories that shaped his idea of street style in the city.

Read the Full Story at Vogue Online

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Brooklyn, Fashion, Photography, Vogue

Rest in Peace Charlie Murphy (1959-2017)

Posted on April 12, 2017

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ – NOVEMBER 14: Charlie Murphy performs at The Stress Factory Comedy Club on November 14, 2014 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. (Photo by Bobby Bank/WireImage)

Charlie Murphy died today from leukemia. He was just 57 years old. As Eddie Murphy’s older brother, Charlie Murphy was privy to the shenanigans of the demi-monde during the 1980s, and he ain’t forget a thing. The actor and comedian, who made his silver screen debut in Harlem Nights (1989), became a household name when he began making appearances on Chapelle’s Show, starring in the legendary skits, “Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories.”

It simply must be said: “Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories” changed lives. His sketches about the behind-the-scenes antics of Rick James and Prince inspired countless quotables that have become classics today. Murphy’s deadpan delivery set against a green backdrop, his voice unwavering as he recounts misadventures run amok, created a brilliant foil to Dave Chapelle’s glorious characterizations.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Brooklyn, Crave

Peter Hujar: Speed of Life

Posted on April 10, 2017

Peter Hujar, David Wojnarowcz Reclining (2), 1981; from Peter Hujar: Speed of Life (Aperture, 2017)

The Man. The Myth. The Mystery. Photographer Peter Hujar (1934-1987) was a fixture in the downtown New York scene during the 1970s and ‘80s, creating a seminal body of work that was quietly captivating. He was a fixture in the East Village, where he lived and worked, when it was a magnet for bohemian artists, writers, performers, musicians, and iconoclasts. Back in the days, the neighborhood was rough and raw, in a perpetual state of poverty that bred the avant-garde.

Perhaps the most telling word in the neighborhood was the word “village”—it was truly a community of friends, families, comrades who were constantly in the mix. Much of New York had been abandoned throughout the decade, leaving the bold and the daring with the run of the place. There was overlap and interplay between the arts as personalities mingled freely in an ongoing dialogue of the times.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Peter Hujar, Mural at Piers, 1983; from Peter Hujar: Speed of Life (Aperture, 2017)

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

Motown: The Sound of Young America

Posted on April 10, 2017

Photo; Florence Ballard, Mary Wilson and Diana Ross in London’s Manchester Square, outside the headquarters of EMI Records, in October 1964. Courtesy of EMI Group Archive Trust

Motown: The sound of young America, coming straight out of Motor City/Detroit was the perfect blend of soul and pop. It was the home of legends from Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, and Stevie Wonder to the Jackson 5, the Supremes, and Diana Ross. And it was all the brainchild of Berry Gordy, Jr., a local songwriter who quickly realized that producing records and owning the publishing was the best way to make bank.

After launching Tamla and Motown labels, Gordy purchased the property that would become the legendary Hitsville U.S.A., in 1959. The multi-purpose building served as a recording studio, administrative offices, tape library, control room, and living quarters for Gordy in those early formative years. He put several family members in key roles, and made Smoke Robinson VP. Then, on April 14, 1960, Berry Gordy, Jr. incorporated the Motown Record Corporation, and that same year the company had its first number 1 R&B hit, the Miracles, “Shop Around.”

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Photo: Seen at a Detroit nightclub in 1964 are, from L to R, Levi Stubbs of The Four Tops, Motown songwriter/producer Ivy Jo Hunter, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, with musicians Dan Turner on sax and James Jamerson on bass. Private Collection.

Photo: With The Supremes, Berry Gordy hails members of the Motown house band, at left, and his Holland/Dozier/Holland hitmakers, in December 1965. LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division [LC-L901A- 65-26- 16-VVV, no. 10]

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Books, Crave, Music, Photography

#AiWeiwei at the Museum of Contemporary Photography

Posted on April 7, 2017

Photo: Ai Weiwei, Study of Perspective, 1995-2011, White House, Washington D.C., USA, 1995, color photograph.

“Art is not an end but a beginning,” Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei observes, giving voice to the visual world that, at its very best best, sparks new ideas, experiences, emotions, and above all—dialogue. Art is a firestarter. It provides new perspectives and fresh ways of seeing the world, transcending the limitations of time, space, language, and borders. Art is not content with the status quo; it will upend all expectation in search of the unknown.

This has been Ai Weiwei’s journey his entire life—a process that began when his father, Ai Qing, was determined to be an enemy of the state for speaking out against the government in 1957. The family was exiled to a labor camp in the remote province of Xinjang when Ai Weiwei was just one year old, and his earliest years were spent bearing witness to the consequences of speaking truth to power. Rather than cower in the face of state-sponsored oppression, the experience emboldened Ai Weiwei, who has since committed his life and his practice to speaking out against the abuses of the government.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

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

Moshe Brakha: L.A. Babe

Posted on March 31, 2017

Photo: Moshe Brakha, Club Zero One, 1985.

“I’m a very passionate guy. I’ve always been passionate about photography. I started in 1970 and I’m still doing it,” Moshe Brakha reveals. “Day in and day out: you have to be committed and crazy in love with it.

That love and passion appears on every page of L.A. Babe: The Real Women of Los Angeles 1975-1988 (Rizzoli New York), his phenomenal first book that showcases the sexy, stylish beauty of the era. Brakha’s crisp black and whites and luxurious color photographs transport you back to an era that was equal parts sensual and glamorous—and all the way loose.

Born in Israel, Brakha enlisted as a sailor in the Navy and arrived on the shores of Los Angeles in 1969 at the height of the countercultural movement. From Easy Rider to Midnight Cowboy, the spirit of radical freedom filled the Southern California air. Sex, drugs, and rock & roll were everywhere. At night, Brakha took his camera and hit the nightclubs and bars just as the punk scene took hold, finding himself in the company of beautiful women who became the perfect subject for his photographs.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Photo: Moshe Brakha, Downtown Studio / 7th & Rampart, 1978.

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

Oh So Pretty: Punk in Print 1976-80

Posted on March 30, 2017

Poster For Blondie’s 12-Inch singles ‘Denis’, ‘Contact in Red Square’ and ‘Kung Fu Girls’, February 1978, 42.5 x 30.4 cm, 16¾ x 12 in. Courtesy of The Mott Collection

Poster for The Slits’ album ‘Cut’, September 1979, 50.8 x 75.5 cm, 20 x 29¾ in. Courtesy of The Mott Collection

Forty years ago, a revolution took shape and stormed the shores of the U.K. Punk had arrived—and it could not, would not, refused to be denied. It took everything the nation held dear and turned it upside down, then dropped it on its head, with the aim to break it open and find freedom. Gone were the polite niceties, the veneer the nation upheld while the empire crumbled. Punks knew there was nothing nice—or civilized—about it all. No pretense could cloak the truth about the subjugation of the world.

As the U.K. struggled to rebuild, a new generation came forth calling out the fraud, the perpetrators, and the imposters. The took shots at the establishment from the outside, embracing their place as upstarts, rebels, and anarchists. From nothing came something—one of the greatest cultural movements of all time: the ethos of Do-It-Yourself that fueled their drive. From music and fashion to art and design, D.I.Y. became the a force of liberty, equality, and modernity. It produced some of the most iconoclastic images of the time, which are beautifully showcased in the new book Oh So Pretty: Punk in Print 1976-80 by Toby Mott (Phaidon).

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Bored Stiff #1, C. Terry et al., Tyneside Free Press, July 1977, [dims unknown]. Courtesy of The Mott Collection

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

Art is Not a Crime: The Most High-Profile Street Art Arrests in the USA

Posted on March 27, 2017

Artwork: Jean-Michel Basquiat. Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart), 1983.

Art is not a crime—but that doesn’t stop police departments and D.A. offices nationwide from pursuing the capture, arrest, and prosecution of graffiti writers and street artists to make a political point. Crave has compiled a list of some of the most high-profile street art and graffiti arrests in the United States.

Read the Full story at Crave Online

Categories: 1980s, Art, Crave, Graffiti, Manhattan