Posts from the “AnOther Man” Category

Fabio Sgroi: Palermo 1984-1986, Early Works

Posted on June 18, 2018

Picture it: Sicily, 1984. A young man named Fabio Sgroi is coming of age in Palermo, while a mafia war rages around him. The city is dark and desolate, but Sgroi and his friends find solace in the town’s nascent punk scene that – at this time at least – is strictly underground.

Over the next two years, Sgroi documents the punks, anarchists, surly drunkards, and melancholy monsters who gather regularly in Politeama Square or in each other’s homes, playing music and plotting schemes. Theirs is a teen rebellion filled with adolescent angst, the final chapter of a life of sex, drugs, and rock and roll; the last moment before the realities of adulthood begin to set in.

With the publication of Palermo 1984-1986, Early Works (Yard Press), Sgroi’s second book, we are transported to this Palermo – “an apotheosis of anarchy, where anomaly is normalcy,” as Francesco De Grandi describes it in the afterword. Ahead of the book’s release this Friday, Sgroi tells us more about this moment in subcultural history and the unique nature of Palermo punk.

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Categories: 1980s, AnOther Man, Art, Books, Music, Photography

Remembrances of Studio 54

Posted on June 13, 2018

Pat Cleveland and Andre Leon Talley. Photo: Copyright Dustin Pittman

Glitz, glam, and glory – Studio 54 had it all. The epicenter of the New York disco scene in the 1970s, the infamous nightclub was a symbol of hedonism – a potent brew of celebrity, sex, drugs, and decadence.

In 1977, co-owners Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell, two friends from Brooklyn, converted an old CBS television studio into a magical space where Hollywood stars, fashion designers, performers, socialites, artists, models, and street legends would dance the night away.

For 33 months, Studio 54 made headlines for its outrageous stunts, becoming the stuff of legend until it all came crashing down when Schrager and Rubell were arrested for tax evasion and ended up serving 13 months in prison. In 1989, Rubell died from complications due to AIDS, while Schrager turned his life around, becoming one of the most significant hoteliers of our time. After being pardoned by President Barack Obama in January 2017, Schrager broke his 40-year silence, finally telling the true story of Studio 54.

On Friday (June 15), Studio 54, the first documentary about the famed nightclub will officially release. In celebration of this film, we spoke to its director Matt Tyrnauer and a host of Studio 54 insiders, who share their memories of the endless nights spent partying, rubbing shoulders with everyone from Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and Diana Ross to Michael Jackson, David Bowie, and Karl Lagerfeld.

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Palmoa Picasso. Photo: Copyright Dustin Pittman

Categories: 1970s, AnOther Man, Art, Fashion, Manhattan, Music, Photography

Lorna Simpson: Collages

Posted on June 5, 2018

Earth & Sky #30, 2016. By Lorna Simpson, From Lorna Simpson Collages, Chronicle Books 2018.

It is a point of beauty, pride, power, and politicisation, but black hair has also long been a target for racial bias and discrimination. On May 16, the United States supreme court refused to hear the case of Chastity Jones, an African-American woman whose job offer from Catastrophe Management Solutions (CMS) in Alabama was rescinded when she refused to shear off her locs. CMS maintained that this traditional black hairstyle, which holds spiritual significance for some who wear it, was not in compliance with the company’s policy.

The supreme court effectively denied Jones and others who wear locs protection under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlaws any form of discrimination based on race, religion, sex, or national origin. The court’s rebuff ensures that employers and schools can continue to deny black men and women access on the basis of their hair – be it worn in dreads, afros, or any design that is not “in compliance” with racially determined standards of appearance.

While the court sidesteps responsibility to its citizens, African-American artist Lorna Simpson restores pride and power to the people. Born in 1960, Simpson came of age as the flames of the Black Power and Pan-African movements blazed bright, the images of “Black is Beautiful,” which embraced black hair and African features, became an integral part of her aesthetic sensibility.

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For Rose, 2013. By Lorna Simpson, From Lorna Simpson Collages, Chronicle Books 2018.

Categories: AnOther Man, Art, Books

Remembering Interview Magazine

Posted on May 29, 2018

Diana Ross on the cover of Interview magazine. Artwork Richard F. Bernstein

Debbie Harry on the cover of Interview magazine. Artwork Richard F. Bernstein

Last week, nearly 50 years after it first launched, Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine announced that it was ceasing publication. The large format periodical, which began as a ‘Monthly Film Journal’ in an effort to entice Hollywood to bankroll and distribute Warhol’s films, evolved over a period of five decades to become ‘The Crystal Ball of Pop’, chronicling the downtown scene.

Interview was the ultimate Warholian project, giving readers insider access to the pop cultural elite through a compelling blend of glamour photography and celebrity-on-celebrity conversations that sprawled decadently across the oversize pages of the magazine. From 1972 to the late 80s, Richard F. Bernstein gave it a stamp of distinction with his exquisitely rendered portraits of everyone from Grace Jones, David Bowie, and Diana Ross to Debbie Harry, Michael Jackson, and Bob Marley, among many others.

Under the auspices of editors like Bob Colacello, Ingrid Sischy, and Glenn O’Brien, Interview constantly reinvented itself, striking the perfect balance between art and celebrity, just like Warhol himself. Here, a handful of editors and contributors share their memories of working alongside Andy, Glenn, and Ingrid over the years.

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Grace Jones on the cover of Interview magazine. Artwork Richard F. Bernstein

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, AnOther Man, Art, Manhattan

Olivier Mossett: Wheels

Posted on May 25, 2018

Taken from Wheels by Olivier Mosset © Olivier Mosset, courtesy of Edition Patrick Frey

50 years ago, France was marked by a period of student uprisings known today as ‘May 68’. For nearly two months, millions of people joined in a series of occupations, demonstrations, and general strikes nationwide that brought the country to a halt. The protests ignited an artistic movement that embraced the independent spirit of radicals, rebels, and renegades.

Swiss artist Olivier Mosset was living in Paris at the time and became close with group of bikers who maintained an outlaw lifestyle. When he bought his first motorcycle, a US Army surplus Harley Davidson, he helped start a motorcycle club, a phenomenon wholly unknown in Europe at the time.

Mosset’s studio on the Rue de Lappe doubled up as a hub of radical painting, a garage and a clubhouse for the Marxist-influenced bikers. As a painter, Mosset created monochromatic, geometric abstractions that conceptually reduced the image to its formal roots – and yet he couldn’t deny the allure of the motorcycle. Throughout his career, Mosset found inspiration in its mechanical form, pairing his paintings with sculptural readymades in the mid-90s.

On June 8, Edition Patrick Frey will release Wheels, a retrospective of Mosset’s motorcycle work. Here Mosset looks back on enduring appeal of these icons of outlaw style.

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Taken from Wheels by Olivier Mosset © Olivier Mosset, courtesy of Edition Patrick Frey

Categories: 1960s, AnOther Man, Art, Books

Sons of An Illustrious Father: The AnOther Man Interview

Posted on May 24, 2018

Photo: Sons of an Illustrious Father, clockwise from left: Lilah Larson, Josh Aubin and Ezra MillerPhotography Michael J Fox, Styling Melissa Levy

Inside Lincoln Station, a coffee bar a couple of blocks away from the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Sons of an Illustrious Father have assembled to discuss their new LP, Deus Sex Machina: Or, Moving Slowly Beyond Nikola Tesla, which releases June 1 on their own label in conjunction with Believe.

Now entering their tenth year, the close-knit trio of Lilah Larson, Josh Aubin and Ezra Miller seamlessly flow in conversation as in song, picking up each others sentences and trading quips about their aspirational Muppets.

For the record, Aubin, who wears glasses and sports a full beard, solemnly decrees, “I am Kermit. Kermit is me.” Miller, who is effortlessly chic in a long black coat, “was born in Animal, with a rising in Miss Piggy,” while Larson, who has short hair with a glorious swoop in front, claims Gonzo, “the queer Muppet, obviously.”

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Categories: AnOther Man, Music

Marc H. Miller: Punk Art, the Exhibition

Posted on May 15, 2018

Ruth Marten installing at the Punk Art Show

Portrait of Victor Bockris by Marcia Resnick, from her series ‘Bad Boys’

Today marks the 40th anniversary of Punk Art, the first exhibition to showcase the visual artists of a revolutionary new scene. Co-curated by Marc H. Miller and Bettie Ringma, the seminal 1978 show featured a stellar line up of talents from the burgeoning New York scene.

From Blondie’s Chris Stein, Suicide’s Alan Vega, and Ramones’ art director Arturo Vega to photographers Roberta Bayley, Marcia Resnick, and Jimmy DeSana, filmmaker Amos Poe and tattoo artist Ruth Marten, Miller and Ringma invited some of the most innovative and original artists of the time to install their work at Washington Project for the Arts in Washington, DC, an alternative arts space run by Alice Denney, who conceptualised it in the same vein as PS1.

“A whole new generation were making themselves felt and replacing the earlier generation that had emerged in the 60s. We realised that if things were going to happen, we were going to have to do it ourselves and it made perfect sense to say, ‘Okay, we can get a whole new art movement going.’ Feminist art was the model: it was more about an idea and an attitude than a specific style,” Miller explains.

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X Magazine (published by COLAB)

Categories: 1970s, AnOther Man, Art, Exhibitions

Silvia Prada: Tom of Finland

Posted on May 10, 2018

Tom of Finland, Reference Pages, Mixed Media Collage on Paper, 1966-1990. Courtesy of Tom of Finland Foundation

Growing up in a family-owned hair salon during the 1980s, Spanish artist Silvia Prada spent her formative years gazing upon countless images of male beauty and style, and developed a taste for gay pop icons. When she read an article on Tom of Finland in Interview magazine, Prada felt a profound kinship and liberation through the twin engines of sensuality and self-expression.

For Prada, Tom was a seminal force in shaping her aesthetic sensibilities and artistic processes. Joakim Andreasson, Prada’s good friend and creative director of the Tom of Finland Store, knew of her obsession and arranged an introduction to the Tom of Finland Foundation. From there, a beautiful collaboration began and has culminated in TOM, an online exhibition of new drawings and collages inspired by the archive, accompanied by a book of the same name from Capricious Publishing.

Here, Prada reflects on the universality of Tom’s work, and arts ability to speak to people of all genders and sexualities from all walks of life.

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Silvia Prada, Untitled, Graphite on Paper, 2017Courtesy of Silvia Prada

Categories: AnOther Man, Art

Rammellzee: Racing for Thunder

Posted on May 2, 2018

RAMMΣLLZΣΣ. Photography Keetja Allard

Hailing from the outer limits of New York City and maybe even the earth itself, Rammellzee (1960-2010) arrived on the downtown scene aged 19, fully realised, like Athena springing from the head of Zeus, clad in armour, ready to take on all comers.

A singular figure in the early years of graffiti and hip hop who stood apart in a world filled with charismatic talents and revolutionary pioneers, Rammellzee introduced his philosophies of Gothic Futurism and Ikonoklast Panzerism in his artwork and performances. He donned characters and costumes as extensions of himself, comfortably shrouding himself in mysticism, mythology, and legends.

Did he go to jail in the 70s for robbing a bank? The world may never know – but now a new exhibition titled RAMMΣLLZΣΣ: Racing for Thunder tells the story of the elusive artist through those who knew him best. Organised by Red Bull Arts New York Chief Curator Max Wolf and cultural critic Carlo McCormick, the artist’s largest survey to date presents an inclusive selection of work from the icon throughout his three-decade career along with oral histories told by those who knew him best. Here, friends and colleagues share memories of Rammellzee, the man behind the mask.

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RAMMΣLLZΣΣ. Photography Brian Williams

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, AnOther Man, Art, Exhibitions, Graffiti, Manhattan, Music, Painting

TOM House: The Work and Life of Tom of Finland

Posted on April 19, 2018

Tom of Finland, Untitled (Portrait of Durk Dehner), 1984. Courtesy of the Tom of Finland Foundation

Even from a young age, Touko Laaksonen (aka Tom of Finland) was having erotic fantasies of grown men in his neighborhood. “I had a very strong fetish for some reason for leather and boots and all of it was combined with masculine professions and image,” Laaksonen said during a guest lecture at CalArts in 1988.

Mike Kelley had invited the Finnish artist to speak about the groundbreaking work he had done living in a nation where homosexuality was illegal until 1971 and laws forbidding the “promotion” of same-sex love were in effect until 1999 – eight years after his death.

Tom of Finland’s distinctive blend of beauty and lust inspired a generation of queer image-makers to openly embrace their identities in their lives and in their work. In honor of his vital legacy, Tom of Finland Foundation, Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, and Graeme Flegenheimer present TOM House: The Work and Life of Tom of Finland, a new exhibition that recreates his home in Echo Park, Los Angeles, where he spent his final years, showcasing works throughout his career alongside artists he inspired over the years.

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Tom of Finland, Untitled (Portrait of Pekka), 1975. Courtesy of the Tom of Finland Foundation

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, AnOther Man, Art, Exhibitions

Do Angels Need Haircuts? Early Poems by Lou Reed

Posted on April 17, 2018

Lou Reed. Copyright Moe Tucker.

In August 1970, when he was 28 years old, Lou Reed quit The Velvet Underground and moved back into his parents’ home in Long Island, where he stayed for the better part of a year in seclusion to write poetry. He vowed never to play rock and roll again and focused on writing verse which eventually found its way into the pages of Rolling Stone, in addition to smaller poetry zines like The Harvard Advocate, The World, Fusion, The Unmuzzled Ox, and Cold Spring Journal.

“I’m a poet,” Reed publicly declared on March 10, 1971, as he took to the stage of the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, New York. Standing before the likes Allen Ginsberg and Ted Berrigan, who smiled in support, Reed recited a selection of new poems along with the lyrics by The Velvet Underground.

Six months later, Reed began recording his self-titled debut solo album produced by David Bowie and arranged by Mick Ronson. But his time away from the limelight was not in vain for it had solidified Reed’s gift for penning lyrical verse that lived on the page – and sometime later in song.

In 1974, Reed compiled All the Pretty People, a book of poetry that was never published. It is only now that his verse has been unearthed, collected, and released in Do Angels Need Haircuts? Early Poems by Lou Reed (Anthology Editions, May 1). The book includes 7” record of the 1971 live reading along with a foreword by Anne Waldman, an afterword by Laurie Anderson, archival notes by Don Fleming, and photographs by Mick Rock.

Here, Fleming provides a five-point guide to the poetry of this music icon.

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Lou Reed. Photography Andrew Cifranic

Categories: 1970s, AnOther Man, Books, Music, Poetry