Posts from the “AnOther” Category

Harvey Stein: Artists Observed

Posted on July 19, 2018

Tom Wesselmann © Harvey Stein

After moving to New York in the late 1960s to attend Columbia Graduate School of Business, Harvey Stein grew disenchanted with the corporate world and decided to pursue a career in photography. Entranced by the various art scenes in Soho, the East Village, Midtown, and the Upper East Side, Stein began to develop relationships with various artists, and decided to embark upon a project to learn about how they lived and created, and what inspired them to work, in order to see what lessons he could discern for his own burgeoning practice.

Between 1980 and 1985, Stein made the rounds, photographing and interviewing more than 165 New York artists for his project, Artists Observed, which was published the following year by Abrams. Featuring Christo, John Cage, Lee Krasner, Alex Katz, Ellsworth Kelly, Louise Bourgeois, Tom Wesselmann, James Rosenquist, and Marisol, Artists Observed is filled with bon mots from some of the most luminous artists of the era. Here, Stein shares his memories of these iconic encounters, along with the wisdom those artists offered him for the book.

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Keith Haring, 1982 © Harvey Stein

Categories: 1980s, AnOther, Art, Photography

Amy Arbus: Tub Pictures

Posted on July 12, 2018

Photo: From the series, Tub Pictures © Amy Arbus, courtesy of The Schoolhouse Gallery

In 1992, Amy Arbus took a masterclass with Richard Avedon at the International Center of Photography in New York and embarked on a project that would forever change her relationship to the medium. She took a single roll of black and white self-portraits in a bathtub, where she began to confront and consider the death of her mother Diane Arbus, who committed suicide in one on July 26, 1971.

Then 38 years old, it had been 21 years since her mother’s death, and Arbus set about revisiting a scene she had never witnessed herself. The result was an intense series of eight photographs, which will be on view in Tub Pictures at The Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown, MA, from next week until August 8, 2018. We caught up with Arbus to discuss this powerful body of work, and the ways in which it transformed her life.

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Photo: From the series, Tub Pictures © Amy Arbus, courtesy of The Schoolhouse Gallery

Categories: 1990s, AnOther, Art, Photography, Women

This is No Dream: Making Rosemary’s Baby

Posted on June 13, 2018

Mia Farrow. Photography by Bob Willoughby © MPTV Images / Reel Art Press

In 1968, film director Roman Polanski brought Rosemary’s Baby to life and forever changed the way we imagine horror films. In a genre best known for its gruesome and grisly tropes, Rosemary’s Baby made the realm of the supernatural all too plausible in a delectable mixture of the mystical and the mundane.

The exquisitely cinematic film, which moves at a dreamlike pace, takes place inside New York’s stately Dakota building on 72nd Street and Central Park South, where a coven of witches decides to impregnate a young Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) with the child of Satan. Rosemary’s Baby is meticulously crafted so that every moment slowly unfolds in an exquisite tension that denies release until a denouement so quiet you realise there is no escape.

Yet, despite – or perhaps because of – the aesthetic perfection of Polanski’s work, the film production was a horror story all its own, one that is meticulously recounted in This Is No Dream: Making Rosemary’s Baby by James Munn (Reel Art Press). Set for release on June 12, the 50th anniversary of the legendary film, the book takes behind the scenes and on to the set, where drama was ever present.

“There was never a dull moment,” set photographer Bob Willoughby observes, as his photos help to convey the dark undercurrents at work. Although Polanski was riding high, at the height of his stardom while making this film, his countless scheduling delays put his job in jeopardy. At the same time, actor John Cassavetes, who co-starred as Guy Woodhouse, was ready to fight Polanski over creative differences.

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Categories: 1960s, AnOther, Books, Photography

Jocelyn Lee: The Appearance of Things

Posted on April 23, 2018

Dark Matter 8, decomposing Dahlia, 2017.

Barberry and Joyce, 2016. © Jocelyn Lee

For American photographer Jocelyn Lee, the most exquisite depths of beauty can be found within the fundamental vulnerability of life itself. Here, within the strength and fragility of the physical world, Lee looks at the subjects of sexuality, family, aging and death to express the transitory feelings of joy and melancholia that are inherent to the ephemeral nature of existence.

In The Appearance of Things, the artist’s first UK solo show at Huxley-Parlour Gallery, Lee uses portraiture, landscape and still life to explore the tactile qualities of the living world, juxtaposing foliage, fabric and flesh to capture the transitory beauty of a moment that arrives as quickly as it disappears. Here, Lee discusses how the cycle of birth, blossoming and death can be a source of glory, power and strength.

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Dark Matter 13, Sinking Rose, 2017. © Jocelyn Lee

Categories: AnOther, Art, Exhibitions, Photography, Women

Milton Glaser: Posters

Posted on March 19, 2018

Now 89, Milton Glaser is one of the foremost graphic designers in the United States, best known for his iconic series “I love NY”. Throughout his illustrious career, which includes solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and the Pompidou Centre among others, Glaser has elevated graphic design to an artform all its own.

And yet, of course, it’s not an art at all. “Design is one activity, art is another, and they have different objectives,” he explains from his office in New York. “Design is purposeful and intends to accomplish a goal, which is premeditated and defined at the beginning [whereas] what art does is guide you towards avoiding premeditation. It illuminates what is real and what is not real.”

Yet in the hands of a master, there is interplay between the commercial aims of design and the illuminative possibilities of art, and this can readily be seen in Glaser’s posters, of which he has made more than 450 since 1965. In celebration, Abrams will release Milton Glaser Posters on March 27, an incredible compendium of poster art at its best. Here Glaser shares insights into five of his favourite works.

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

Matthew Rolston: Hollywood Royale

Posted on March 1, 2018

Cybill Shepherd, Reclining, Los Angeles, 1986Matthew Rolston © MRPI, Courtesy Fahey/Klein Los Angeles

Anitta, Flower Gown, The Surreal Thing, Series, New York, 1987Matthew Rolston © MRPI, Courtesy Fahey/Klein Los Angeles

The magical grandeur of Hollywood glamour first came into vogue when Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich fled their native Germany in the 1930s and brought the aesthetics of the Weimar Republic stateside. Together they made six films at Paramount Studios, and introduced an innovative look using the spotlight on the face to create a luminous mask that stood in sharp contrast to the dark shadows it cast, emulating the aesthetic of 1920s Berlin.

By the early 1960s, the look had run its course and faded away, until Andy Warhol and Helmut Newton resurrected it in the late 1970s. Los Angeles native Matthew Rolston got his start at this time, shooting for Interview before rising to the heights of celebrity photography as a new Golden Age of Hollywood photography took shape. Working for Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Esquire, Rolston embraced the aesthetics of George Hurrell and Irving Penn, creating timeless portraits of the era’s greatest icons from Prince, Michael Jackson, and Madonna to Christian Lacroix, Yohji Yamamoto, and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

In celebration, Hollywood Royale: Out of the School of Los Angeles opens tomorrow at Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, in conjunction with the recent publication of a magnificent monograph by the same name from teNeues featuring works made between 1977 and 1993. Here, Rolston speaks with us about the timeless allure of the glamour photo.

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Don Johnson, Polo Clothes, Miami, 1986Matthew Rolston © MRPI, Courtesy Fahey/Klein Los Angeles

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

Valérie Belin at Huxley-Parlour

Posted on February 21, 2018

The Stranger, from the series All Star, 2016. © Valérie Belin, courtesy Huxley-Parlour Gallery

We revel in the splendour of surfaces, rarely delving below them and often mistaking the appearance of things for their inner truth. With an unmistakable understanding of the pleasures of sight, French photographer Valérie Belin gives us what we want while simultaneously examining the intersections between identity and artifice with a luxurious exploration of the feminine in her large-scale artworks.

Belin’s gift lies in her ability to make us question the nature of our desires. Taking the notion of gender as a construct to the logical extreme, she photographs mannequins and models alike in a manner that simultaneously embraces and deconstructs our stereotypes.

“What I am trying to express in my work is related to my status as a woman, in a humble way. It doesn’t have a militant aesthetic nor a political discourse,” Belin says. She does just this in her eponymous exhibition, opening February 21 at Huxley-Parlour, London, which features 15 works from the series Transsexuals, Mannequins, Brides, Super Models, All Star, and Painted Ladies, made between 2001 and 2017. Here, Belin speaks about the power of images to shape our beliefs about what “female” means.

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Categories: AnOther, Art, Photography, Women

Kwame Brathwaite: Black is Beautiful

Posted on January 22, 2018

Untitled (Naturally ’68 photo shoot in the Apollo Theater featuring Grandassa models and founding AJASS members Kwame Brathwaite, Frank Adu, Elombe Brath, and Ernest Baxter 1968, printed 2016. Photography by Kwame Brathwaite, Image courtesy the artist and Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles.

Untitled (Sikolo with Carolee Prince Designs) 1968, printed 2017. Photography by Kwame Brathwaite, Image courtesy the artist and Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles.

On the evening of January 28, 1962, a massive crowd gathered outside Harlem’s Purple Manor, eager to gain entrance to Naturally 62 – the landmark event that introduced the ‘Black is Beautiful’ movement to the world.

The brainchild of photographer Kwame Brathwaite (born in 1938) and his older brother Elombe Brath (now deceased), Naturally 62 presented Blackness in its natural state through a powerful combination of fashion, music, and politics. The brothers, who were born in Brooklyn to a politically active family, had embraced Marcus Garvey’s Back-to-Africa movement and co-founded the African Jazz-Art Society and Studios (AJASS), a collective of artists, writers, musicians, dancers, and fashion designers. “Our mission was to reach the folks so that they could see their own work,” Brathwaite reveals. “It was a time when people were trying to organize and improve the community, to get themselves in order so that they would not be the low man on the totem pole.”

The brothers worked on two fronts, supporting the African independence movement while embracing Black business at home, producing jazz concerts at legendary locales including Club 845 in the Bronx and Small’s Paradise in Harlem. But it was a local beauty contest that gave the brothers the inspiration for Naturally 62. A year earlier, while attending the annual Marcus Garvey Day Celebration, they watched ‘The Miss Natural Standard of Beauty Contest’, wherein models came to the stage without make-up, their hair free from heat press.

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Untitled (Self Portrait) 1964, printed 2017. Photography by Kwame Brathwaite, Image courtesy the artist and Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles.

Categories: 1960s, Africa, AnOther, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Fashion, Manhattan, Photography

Alex Prager at Lehmann Maupin Hong Kong

Posted on January 18, 2018

Shopping Plaza 1, 2015. Courtesy Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

Applause, 2016. Courtesy Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

Everyday life is filled with fleeting moments of grandeur, when the mundane suddenly becomes majestic and you feel the overwhelming glory of being alive. American photographer and filmmaker Alex Prager understands this perfectly. “I can see drama in everything, the comedy and the tragedy, even where there is none,” Prager reveals. “My interest is with the emotional and psychological components in a frame. The technical, the narrative, and the process – all of that is secondary to the mood. This is what makes art timeless for me.”

The Los-Angeles based artist got her start after seeing a William Eggleston exhibition at the turn of the millennium. “When I first discovered photography I looked at the great street photographers and tried to make pictures like them,” Prager explains. “I’m still obsessed with street photography and it finds its way into everything I make.”

But Prager strayed from the documentary path, preferring to create staged photographs that embrace the cinematic elements of the medium. Imbuing each image with a theatricality that is at once visceral and spiritual, Prager finds the balance between fiction and fact by grounding her practice in truth.

This winter, Prager will be showing a selection of her signature photographs and films, along with her first exhibited sculpture at Lehmann Maupin Hong Kong. Here, we speak about the influence of life in Los Angeles, the freedom of the staged photograph, the porous boundary between reality and imagination, and magic of playing with perception.

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Hawkins Street, 2017. Courtesy Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

Categories: AnOther, Art, Exhibitions, Photography