Posts from the “1980s” Category

Word on the Street: The History of Globe Poster

Posted on March 25, 2017

Artwork: © Globe Poster. Courtesy of Roger Gastman.

For more than eighty years, you could see Globe Poster standing tall, hanging out on street corners, posted up on telephone palls, or chilling ‘round the way inside the union halls. They were bright, bold, fabulous affairs that understood that one must demand attention if you want to be seen and heard in this noisy world.

Using DayGlo colors and big black letters etched out of wood type and letter press, if Globe Poster a theme song it would be Nas, talking about “Made You Look.” Because they had to—they needed t let you know the 2Pac, Luke, Snoop Doggy Dogg and That Dog Pound were performing at the Miami Arena on Saturday, August 24. Better get your tickets now, before they sell out, because trust and believe and event like this only comes once in a lifetime.

Globe Poster knew what the people wanted and they delivered the goods. Established in Philadelphia in 1929, Globe Poster promoted everything from carnivals to concerts up and down the East Coast. Like so many in old Hollywood, they started out in vaudeville, moving their way up to burlesque and film, then finally hitting their stride and finding their groove with R&B acts during the 1960s.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Artwork: © Globe Poster. Courtesy of Roger Gastman.

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

Game Show Legend and Alleged CIA Assassin Chuck Barris Dies at 87

Posted on March 24, 2017

Pour one out for Chuck Barris, game show genius and alleged CIA assassin, who died of natural causes on Tuesday, March 21, at his home in Palisades, New York, at the age of 87.

Best known as the creator and host of The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, and The Gong Show, in 1982, Barris stunned the world with the publication of his memoir Confessions of a Dangerous Mind: An Unauthorized Autobiography, in which he claimed to be a former CIA agent and assassin. In 2002, the book was adapted into a feature film of the same name, directed by George Clooney and starring Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore, Julia Roberts, and Clooney. The CIA adamantly denied Barris’ employment, calling the whole thing “ridiculous.”

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s

#FridayReads: David Bowie’s Favorite Books

Posted on March 24, 2017

In the August 1998 issue of Vanity Fair, David Bowie took the famous Proust Questionnaire. The first question asked was the most telling: “What is your idea of perfect happiness?” to which Bowie answered, “Reading.”

In celebration of Bowie the bibliophile, Open Culture put together a list of the artist’s top 100 books. The list is as diverse as it is revealing; perhaps there is no better way to get inside the mind of a person than through their library. Crave spotlights ten Bowie faves that make for great Friday Reads.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

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

Raymond Pettibon: A Pen of All Work

Posted on March 20, 2017

No title (This feeling is), 2011. Pen and ink on paper, 37 1/4 x 49 1/2 in (94.6 x 125.7 cm). Aishti Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon. Photography courtesy the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

No Title (Fight for freedom!), 1981. Pen and ink on paper, 11 x 8 ½ in (27.9 x 21.6 cm). Private collection. Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

“I don’t make art with grandiose delusions. I do know there are limits to what art is capable of. That makes it all the more appealing to me. And I can do as I will whenever I choose,” American artist Raymond Pettibon has said, revealing the essence of the continuous appeal of his work. A populist without pretense who came up in the West Coast punk scene, Pettibon honed the D.I.Y. ethos of the era into a fine art career.

Now, in celebration of his phenomenal body of work, the New Museum, New York, presents Raymond Pettibon: A Pen of All Work, the first major museum retrospective of his work, currently on view through April 9, 2017. The exhibition takes America to task for its truths, providing a perspective that is equal parts poignant, witty, and subversive.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

No Title (Lieutenant! There’s our), 2008. Pen, ink, and gouache on paper, 22 1/4 x 30 in (57.2 x 76.2 cm). Aishti Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon. Photography courtesy the artist and Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

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

Digging in the Crates for the Best “Art Record Covers” Ever Made

Posted on March 14, 2017

art: Takashi Murakami / music: Kanye West / record: Graduation / year: 2007 / label: Roc-A-Fella Records / format: Album 2×12 ̋, CD / artwork: Digital compositing

Once upon a time, just a couple of decades ago, new albums used to be released on vinyl, which was carefully stored inside 12 x 12 inch record sleeves. In the days before video killed the radio star, all you’d have available was what you held in your hands. You’d pop the record on the turntable, drop the needle and then sit back, gazing upon the album cover searching for some sort of understanding.

There was something profound about the simplicity of it all, the single image becoming an icon all its own. Sight and sound complemented each other, like yin and yang, striking the perfect balance of substance and style. Then, everything began to change. The record gave way to the CD and the image scaled down tremendously. But that was nothing compared to the current lay of the land, where the album cover appears as a thumbnail image in the upper half of our smart phone.

If you missed it, c’est la vie. Times change, invariably. But if you miss it, and you want that good thing back, Taschen has just released Art Record Covers, a 448-page compendium of the finest collaborations between musicians and artists. Edited by Francesco Spampinato and Julius Wiedemann, the book is perfectly sized at 12 x 12 inches, capturing and recreating the visual impact each image once possessed.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

art: Andy Warhol / music: The Velvet Underground and Nico / record: The Velvet Underground and Nico / year: 1967 / label: Verve Records / format: Album 12 ̋ / artwork: Screen print / special: Vinyl released with three variations of front cover with banana sticker to peel off

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

The Rivington School: 80s New York Underground

Posted on March 9, 2017

Photo: The Rivington Garden as monument signalled the victorious end of art in the Lower East Side, 1987. Photo by Andre Laredo. ©2016 Black Dog Publishing Limited, the artist and authors. All rights reserved.

Back in the 1970s, the Lower East Side of New York City had been devastated by the government policy of “benign neglect,” which denied basic services to the community. Fires had destroyed buildings reducing them to rubble leaving vacant lots in their wake, while other buildings were abandoned and reclaimed by squatters, creating a new community born out of resilience and necessity.

By the 1980s, a subculture was finding its way through acts of outlaw art. “Cowboy” Ray Kelly, founder of the No Se No Social Club, cultivated a space where patrons could express themselves in any way they wished. It was a space unlike any other in the city that combined the performance art with bar life to spectacular effect.

From this world, the Rivington School came forth, an outdoor guerilla art gallery located across the street from No Se No, on the corner of Rivington and Forsyth Streets. The Rivington Sculpture Garden, which opened in 1985, began as a memorial to Geronimo, a homeless Puerto Rican man who died that year. It quickly developed into a space for exhibitions, concerts, performances, and festivals, taking the D.I.Y. approach to making art. Anyone could do anything they liked and they did, effectively sharpening the cutting-edge.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

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

Ricky Flores: The South Bronx c. 1980

Posted on March 9, 2017

Photo: © Ricky Flores

Photo: © Ricky Flores

The South Bronx became infamous during Game 2 of the 1977 World Series, when newscaster Howard Cosell noticed a nearby abandoned school engulfed in flames and not a fire truck in sight, uttering his legendary phrase, “There it is, ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning.”

The Bronx had been burning throughout the 70s, in a massive series of fires set by arsonists working on behalf of landlords who knew they could collect more money from insurance fraud than they could from rent. From 1970 to 1980, more than 97 per cent of seven census tracts in the South Bronx had been lost to fire and abandonment, turning the once majestic neighborhood into blocks of rubble resembling a war zone. Yet, through it all, the people of the Bronx persevered.

The era was ruled by the do-it-yourself ethos, because under a governmental policy of “benign neglect” (systemic racism that denied basic services to Black and Latinx neighborhoods), it was understood if you didn’t do it, no one would. Hip hop was born out of the fires, the poverty, and the despair, as a new generation of youth invented a brand new art form using nothing but pure ingenuity.

South Bronx native Ricky Flores began taking photographs as a high school senior in high school in 1980, shooting pictures of his friends and his neighborhood. His photographs capture the South Bronx as it was, a place filled with beauty amidst the rubble. He began studying with Mel Rosenthal, one of the most renowned photographers of the South Bronx, and realized he had a responsibility to document his community as an insider.

While outsiders, working for the mainstream media or Hollywood, would come in and create an image of the Bronx as the worst borough in New York City, Flores photographed the community as he knew them to be: a warm, creative, dynamic, resilient, and strong. Flores gives Dazed an inside look at growing up in the South Bronx.

Read the Full Story at Dazed Digital

Photo: © Ricky Flores

Photo: © Ricky Flores

Categories: 1980s, Art, Bronx, Dazed, Music, Photography

“Criminal Minded” Celebrates Its 30th Anniversary

Posted on March 3, 2017

Ever since Remy Ma released “ShETHER” last week, Hip-Hop fans everywhere have gotten a taste for beef. One rap’s oldest forms, the battle raps is a fight to the finish where only the strongest survive. It’s long been a staple for the MC, who started taking out all comers to earn street cred and notoriety. Before anyone was laying down tracks on wax, MCs earned their stripes on stage in front of a live audience.

Then the game changed and artists started getting record deals. Their rhymes were preserved and distributed to the public at large. Battling took Hip Hop to new heights as the answer record, as it was called then, kept fans hype. By the mid-80s, it was a regular trend, with answer records flying back and forth. It was always personal, putting the dozens to a beat, turning the dozens into a musical art.

It wasn’t political—until Boogie Down Productions (BDP) arrived on the scene, changing the rap game forever with the March 3, 1987, release of Criminal Minded, their debut album. Comprised of KRS-One, Scott La Rock, and Ced-Gee, BDP came out with both barrel blazing, firing off rounds at Queens natives MC Shan and the Juice Crew with “South Bronx” and “The Bridge is Over.”

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: 1980s, Bronx, Crave, Music

Jeffrey Henson Scales: House

Posted on March 1, 2017

Photo: House’s Barber Shop series, 1987-1992, by Jeffrey Henson Scales.

Located just half a block from the legendary home of bebop, Minton’s Playhouse, House’s Barber Shop did business inside a plate-glass storefront in Harlem, New York, for nearly 70 years. Luminaries such as Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, Lee Morgan and Max Roach would come to House’s for a fresh cut before a show. Word had it that Malcolm X, whose mosque was on Lenox Avenue and West 116th Street, would frequent the spot. House’s served everyone from musicians, artists and scientists, to bus drivers, postal workers and scoundrels for the better part of the 20th century.

Founder Jesse House set up shop on Seventh Avenue and West 118th Street when he returned to the neighborhood after serving as a GI during World War II. When he retired, his son, David, kept the shop going until David’s own retirement in 2004. David died a year ago, but before he died, he learned that House’s Barber Shop would be preserved for future generations in a book of photographs.

The book, simply titled House (SPQR Editions), presents the work of Jeffrey Henson Scales, currently the photography editor of The New York Times Sunday Review. His pictures, shot between 1986 and 1992, provide a front-row view of life inside the barbershop. With jazz music wafting through the room, we enter a world where men of all ages share their lives while getting a shape-up, a fade, or even a conk.

Read the Full Story at The Undefeated

Photo: House’s Barber Shop series, 1987-1992, by Jeffrey Henson Scales.

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Manhattan, Photography, The Undefeated

Jim Jocoy: Order of Appearance

Posted on February 20, 2017

Photo: Jim Jocoy, Woman Reclining on Car, 1977, courtesy of Casemore Kirkby Gallery, San Francisco.

When punk hit San Francisco in the late 70s, it spawned a vibrant underground movement that embraced the Do-It-Yourself ethos of the era. Local bands like the Mutants, the Avengers, the Germs, the Sleepers, and the Cramps made their way on the scene alongside bigger bands from New York, London, and Los Angeles, attracting a fresh crop of rebels, artists, and creatures of the night.

Jim Jocoy was a student at UC Santa Cruz when punk came to town. He dropped out of school, got a job at a copy store, and hit the clubs at night with camera in hand. From 1977 to 1980, he created a body of work that was only shown twice at the time: once at San Francisco State University and later at William S. Burroughs’s 70th birthday party. His photos were kept in deep storage for decades until Thurston Moore brought the work to the public eye with the publication of We’re Desperate (powerHouse Books, 2002), a celebration of the style of the times.

Fifteen years later, Jocoy returns with his second book, Order of Appearance (TBW Books), a sumptuous monograph featuring 44 never-before-seen photos. The book unfolds as a film would, with kids getting ready then heading out, hitting the sweat-drenched clubs and stumbling through after hours until they’re back on the street and the sun comes up.

Ahead of the book release, we speak to Jocoy about his memories of the scene.

Read the Interview at Dazed Digital

Photo: Jim Jocoy, Guy Passed Out, 1979, courtesy of Casemore Kirkby Gallery, San Francisco.

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

The David Hockney Takeover!

Posted on February 16, 2017

Artwork: David Hockney, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) 1971 Private Collection© David Hockney. Courtesy of Tate Britain.

Has there ever been a painter of modern life as celebrated as David Hockney? The British artist, who celebrates his 80th birthday this July, is being fêted with the largest retrospective of his career at the Tate Britain and a flurry of fabulous new art books celebrating his incredible body of work.

While a student at the Royal College of Art in London, Hockney was included in the 1963 exhibition Young Contemporaries, which signaled the arrival of British Pop art. A year later, he moved to Los Angeles, where he lived for four years, creating his seminal painting, A Bigger Splash (1967), which has been knocked off with reckless abandon.

Over a period of six decades, Hockney has transformed the nature of picture making through his relentless questioning of conventions, always seeking to go deeper to connect with art’s very essence. The exhibition at the Tate, simply titled David Hockney, starts with the Love paintings, early work made in 1960 and ’61, in which he subverted the macho language of abstract expressionism and subverted it into a vehicle to express homoerotic ideas and experiences.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Artwork: David Hockney. English 1937–. The group XI, 7-11 July 2014. acrylic on canvas. 122.0 x 183.0 cm. Collection of the artist. © David Hockney. Photo Credit: Richard Schmidt. rom David Hockney: Current (Thames & Hudson, May 2017).

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