Posts from the “Art” Category

Grace Before Jones: Camera, Disco, Studio

Posted on September 30, 2020

*Richard Bernstein, Grace Jones photographs for On Your Knees, 1979. Eric Boman courtesy of The Estate of Richard Bernstein*

Hailing from Jamaica, Grace Jones is a true iconoclast: a rebellious pioneer who set the worlds of music, fashion, and film ablaze with aesthetics that defied categorisation, appropriation, or co-option by industries that have long cannibalised marginalised communities.

In the new exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary, Grace Before Jones: Camera, Disco, Studio, curators Cédric Fauq and Olivia Aherne offer a multifaceted portrait of the renegade who turned the mainstream upside down with her refusal to be pigeonholed by any singular quality.

Featuring 100 works by some 50 artists including Anthony Barboza, Antonio Lopez, Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Jean-Paul Goode,Grace Before Jones is organized into 13 sections that explore her approaches to gender, sexuality, performance, race, and cybernetics throughout her career.

“The incredibly poignant thing about this exhibition is that everything she was doing in the 1970s, ‘80, and early ‘90s is still relevant today,” says Aherne. “It stills feel so fresh and experimental, even though Grace was thinking about things like Afrofuturism back in the ‘80s, at a time when these ideas were first being developed and hashed out.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Antonio Lopez, Personal Study, Angelo Colon, 1983 © The Estate of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos*

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Exhibitions, Fashion, Huck, Photography

Jeff Mermelstein: #nyc

Posted on September 25, 2020

*Jeff Mermelstein, from ‘#nyc,’ (MACK, 2020). Courtesy the artist and MACK.*

Over the past 40 years, Jeff Mermelstein has been documenting the streets of New York with his distinctive blend of humor, verve, and tenderness. His finely attuned ability to see and preserve the compelling yet nonsensical qualities of existence have made him what can be best described as an “anthropologist of the absurd.”

Mermelstein’s inimitable gift to discern the unlikely and unusual amidst the sea of humanity is the result of an impressive work ethic that borders on obsession. A humble man, he shies away from using the word “master” to describe his prowess with the 35mm camera honed over decades. Yet his command of the medium he loved was simply not enough. Although Mermelstein had resisted digital photography in 2011, he made the switch when New York magazine commissioned him to photograph Fashion Week in New York, Milan, and Paris.

In 2016, Mermelstein made the leap to cell phone photography and now works exclusively with the iPhone 8. “I’m looking at a Leica that’s right next to me and I haven’t touched it in four years,” he says from his Brooklyn home. “I’ll never say, ‘No, I’m not going back,’ but it’s definitely not calling me right now.”

Read the Full Story at Blind

Categories: Art, Blind, Manhattan, Photography

Remembering Keith Haring

Posted on September 24, 2020

*Unknown photographer, 1989 Courtesy of The LGBT Community Center National History Archive*

Just 31 years old at the time of his death, Keith Haring (1958–1990) was a small-town boy who took the big city by storm when he moved to New York in 1978 to study at the School of Visual Arts (SVA). He began frequenting Club 57, an experimental art space and nightclub in the East Village, and quickly became close friends with a new generation of groundbreaking young artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kenny Scharf, and Futura 2000.

In the early 80s, Haring made his name with some 40 “subway drawings”, introducing his soon-to-be iconic symbolic language to the world in a series of white chalk drawings on black matte paper that occupied unused advertising panels in New York City train stations. The public immediately fell in love with this early iteration of street art, which was often thematic in nature, offering holiday cheer as a treat. In 1982, Haring made his Soho gallery debut at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, and soon became the toast of the international art world – but at his heart Haring was a man of the people.

In 1986, Haring opened the Pop Shop, the ultimate retail space that offered affordable art in the form of T-shirts, toys, posters, and buttons. He was also devoted to art in the service of activism, collaborating with organisations and charities around the globe to raise money and awareness on issues as diverse as Aids, apartheid, and the crack epidemic. In 1988, Haring was diagnosed with Aids and less than two years later he was gone – yet the love of his work lives on, generation after generation.

On September 24, Sotheby’s will open Dear Keith: Works From the Personal Collection of Keith Haring, a dedicated online auction presenting over 140 works of art and objects gifted to, purchased by, and traded with Haring among his circle, by artists including Andy Warhol, George Condo, Rammellzee, Roy Lichtenstein, Scharf, and Basquiat. Full proceeds from the auction will benefit The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center of New York, an organization Haring proudly partnered with during his life. In advance of the auction, we speak with fellow artists and friends who share their encounters with Haring over the years.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled. Courtesy of Sotheby’s

Categories: 1980s, AnOther, Art, Exhibitions, Manhattan

Sunil Gupta x Nick Sethi in Conversation

Posted on September 24, 2020

*Courtesy the artist and Hales Gallery, Stephen Bulger Gallery and Vadehra Art Gallery © Sunil Gupta. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2020*

*Sunil Gupta, Untitled #9, 2010. From the series Sun City. Courtesy the artist and Hales Gallery, Stephen Bulger Gallery and Vadehra Art Gallery © Sunil Gupta. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2020*

Photographers Sunil Gupta and Nick Sethi use the camera as a compass on their journey through life, using it to create connections that allow them to explore the complex intersections of identity, family, race, migration, and sexuality in the East and the West. Transforming photography as a tool of liberation, their vivid portrait and documentary work fuses the personal and political into a mesmerising mélange of places and faces.

With the October 9 opening of From Here to Eternity. Sunil Gupta. A Retrospective and the publication of Lovers: Ten Years On (Stanley/Barker) coming on the heels of the landmarkexhibition and catalogue Masculinities: Liberation Through Photography, Gupta’s work is being widely celebrated in his adopted home of London, nearly 40 years after the Delhi-born, Montreal-raised artist emigrated to the UK. Gupta’s retrospective will showcase works from 16 series over the past 45 years that reveal how he has used photography as a form of activism to address his experiences as a gay Indian man living with HIV, while also exploring ethical questions of documentation and representation that helped bring abut the formation of Autograph – the Association of Black Photographers, an organisation devoted to fighting discrimination in the UK.

Sethi, a first-generation Indian-American, who is currently based in New York, also uses photography to connect and explore the space where empathy creates understanding beyond the spoken word. In 2018, he released Khichdi (Kitchari), his first major monograph that comprises a ten-year documentation of the changing face of India, to much acclaim. One of photography’s most exciting new voices, he has since undertaken commissions for Another Man, Dazed, Louis Vuitton and more.

Here, Gupta and Sethi discuss navigating the complexities of coming of age in adopted cultures, the role photography can play in examining social structures and communities, and the restorative power of returning to the motherland.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Categories: AnOther, Art, Photography

Styling: Black Expression, Rebellion, and Joy Through Fashion

Posted on September 22, 2020

*Margaret Rose Vendryes, Kwele Betty – Betty Davis, 2010*

Style is an expression of self that weaves together our aesthetic sensibilities with the time, place, and culture in which we live. But for Black Americans, style has long been more than a means of self-expression: It’s also been an essential way to survive systemic racism.

As Lewis Long, founder and owner of Long Gallery Harlem, told Artsy in a conversation, “Style, for Black people in America, began as a point of survival and liberty.”

Many Black Americans who escaped slavery created garments that typified the appearance of free men and women, giving them the ability to hide in plain sight as they built new lives from scratch. After the Civil War, style became a means to chart a new path in society at a time when segregation limited access and mobility. The Black church offered a safe space for the devout to show out every Sunday. “In spite of oppression in the broader society, Black people were leaders and were completely free to express themselves in a grand way,” Long said.

By 1920, Black American art, culture, and style reached new heights as the Harlem Renaissance brought a generation of artists and intellectuals to the world stage. In celebration of the Harlem Renaissance’s 100th anniversary, Long Gallery Harlem and Harlem-based curator Souleo have partnered with Nordstrom to create “Styling: Black Expression, Rebellion, and Joy Through Fashion,” a multi-venue exhibition that includes an installation at Nordstrom’s flagship New York store and an online viewing room with Artsy.

Read the Full Story at Artsy

*Yelaine Rodriguez, Afro-Sagrada Familia (Mawan Zahir Ajam), 2020.*

Categories: Art, Artsy, Painting, Photography

Ella Snyder x Collier Schorr

Posted on September 22, 2020

*“Jennifer (Head)”, 2002-2014 Photography by Collier Schorr, courtesy of 303 Gallery, New York*

For anyone with a marginalised identity, being absent in and erased from mainstream imagery can be painful. Each fighting for that visibility in their own ways are photographers Collier Schorr and Ella Snyder, whose work goes beyond the confines of cisheteronormativity to provide perspectives on gender and identity that have rarely been centred in the worlds of fashion and art.

Schorr, who got into photography when she recognised the need for a lesbian voice in the art world of 1980s New York, has blazed a decades-spanning trail, inspiring generations of young artists to be the change they wish to see in the world. Her images have created an established space for queer voices to speak truth to power through art.

Snyder, meanwhile, is a New York-based model, photographer, YouTuber – and long term superfan of Schorr’s. She is currently working on her first photography book, supported by a grant from the 2020 Dazed 100 Ideas Fund in partnership with Converse. The book focuses on the transgender community and her place within it – a process of restoring a vital connection lost after she began transitioning at the age of 11 and subsequently lived stealth. A decade later, Snyder openly embraces her full identity and uses her talents to create powerful connections within the trans community and the world writ large.

As part of her Dazed 100 takeover, Snyder speaks to Schorr for the first time – in a conversation that captures the innovative, nonconformist spirit that bridges Generations X and Z, the two discuss the ways in which photography can be used as a tool of liberation to reimagine a world where the full spectrum of selfhood can be celebrated.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

*Collier Schorr. Self portrait from ‘8 Women’*

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Dazed, Fashion, Photography, Women

Adger Cowans on the Spiritual Power of Photography

Posted on September 21, 2020

*Adger Cowans. Biggie Smalls, Brooklyn, New York, c. 1990s*

Photographer Adger Cowans, who turned 84-years-old earlier this month (September 19), was one of the few African American artists to work commercially during the mid-twentieth century. Before garnering widespread recognition for his experimental style of image-making, Cowans got his start assisting Gordon Parks – a groundbreaking figure in 20th-century photography – at Life magazine in the 1950s.

Cowans first reached out to Parks while he was pursuing a BFA in photography at Ohio State University. “I wrote Gordon a letter, and he wrote me back and told me to look him up when I got to New York,” explains Cowans. “That summer, I went to New York if Miles Davis was at the Vanguard or Thelonious Monk was at the Five Spot. One of those weekends, I called Gordon.”

“Gordon said (to me), ‘Get on the train and come and see me in White Plains.’ I got there and waited and I saw this powder blue Corvette; the top was down, all-white leather seats. I saw a guy smoking a pipe and he said, ‘Adger Cowans? Gordon Parks.’ I said, “I’m going to be a photographer! Oh boy, this is the deal!’”

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Adger Cowans. Gloria Lynne, Newport Jazz, 1961.*

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Art, Huck, Photography

Rhys Frampton: The Compton Cowboys

Posted on September 21, 2020

On August 8, 1988, N.W.A. released Straight Outta Compton, putting their beloved hometown on the map when they introduced the world to gangsta rap. Although they received virtually no radio airplay outside of Los Angeles, “Fuck Tha Police,” their rallying cry against police brutality, became a nationwide anthem.

That same year, resident Mayisha Akbar founded The Compton Jr. Posse to provide local youth with a positive alternative to street life. “Coming up in the ‘90s was a really crazy era,” says Randy Hook, Akbar’s nephew who remade his uncle’s riding club in 2017 as the Compton Cowboys, a group of ten local riders that he now leads. “We grew up in a chaotic time and the horses really shielded us from all of that.”

“Compton has always been community oriented, even though there’s been an image painted of us in the media that’s just a corrupt, ungodly place,” continues Hook. “Things have improved over the decades with drugs, gangs, crime and police brutality. Today Compton is beautiful.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: Art, Huck, Photography

A Golden Age of NYC Nightlife: Nightclub Ephemera from the 1980s

Posted on September 17, 2020

*Xenon, Everybody Hates Punk Tad Shaffer, Poster, 1978*

*Club 57 at Irving Plaza, Lee Scratch Perry, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Card, 1981*

In the mid-1960s, Max’s Kansas City became the mecca of New York’s avant-garde, attracting a mix of artists, writers, musicians, and underground stars who made the famed backroom into the ultimate nightlife destination.

By the 1970s, Max’s began hosting performances for glam rock and punk icons, setting the tone for a new breed of nightclub culture that brought together the worlds of art, music, fashion, literature, and film into a carnivalesque environment.

Before the advent of the internet, promoters spread the word by creating innovative flyers to advertise their one-night-only affairs. These eye-catching pieces of ephemera became an integral part of the event, with denizens eager to get on the mailing lists and have an instant “in” to that night’s coolest scene.

Artists like Antonio Lopez, Keith Haring, David LaChapelle, and Jenny Holzer would collaborate on these flyer designs. Produced and distributed en masse, they have become a record of New York’s downtown scene. Once given away free of charge, they are now valued as works of art.

Read the Full Story at Huck

*AREA, Grace Jones & Christian Jones, Folded Card, 1986*

*AREA, Antonio Lopez, A Celebration for Kevin, Folded Card, 1984*

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Fashion, Huck, Manhattan, Music

Excess is a Work of Art

Posted on September 14, 2020

New York is a phoenix: in death it is reborn. During the 1970s, after years of white flight, landlord-sponsored arson, and systemic government disinvestment cozily termed “benign neglect,” the city teetered along the edge of bankruptcy and nearly collapsed. Though naysayers cried, “New York is dead,” they were wrong. The city arose from the ashes in the 1980s, stronger than ever before.

In Ronald Reagan’s America, greed was good and gauche was chic as the lifestyles of the nouveau riche and famous set the art world ablaze. Art became the ultimate commodity, the status symbol that telegraphed not only a sense of worldly sophistication but business savvy among the emerging neoliberal elite. Investors flocked to the world’s only unregulated industry, transforming the art market into a luxury exchange.

All things considered it was the logical extension of Andy Warhol’s veneration of “the object” that fueled the creation of his distinctive brand of Pop Art. In creating an instantly recognizable iconography centering the mundane matters of everyday life, Warhol not only elevated the commonplace into the sacred realm of art but also transformed the artist into a brand. Like any heritage brand, Warhol understood the way to keep current was to mix it up with the youth — a mission that put him on the path to socialize and collaborate with Jean-Michel Basquiat, an artist fueled by an ambition and a savvy all his own—to infiltrate New York’s highly exclusionary art world.

Read the Full Story at Jacques Marie Mage

Categories: 1980s, Art, Critical Essays, Jacques Marie Mage

Adriana Parrilla: No Me Llamas ‘Trigueña’; Soy Negra (Don’t call me ‘Trigueña’; I Am Black)

Posted on September 14, 2020

A young man holds a newborn baby in Loíza, Puerto Rico. July 26, 2018. I was taught in school that the only place that there was a “real” black community was in the town of Loíza and that their only contribution to Puerto Rican society was only tied to our folklore, to the heritage of our traditional Afro-Caribbean music, Bomba and Plena. Subsequently, the image of the Afro-Puerto Rican community in Loiza was distant and distorted. From ‘No Me Llames Trigueña; Soy Negra’ (‘Don’t Call Me Trigueña; I’m Black’). © Adriana Parrilla

The Bronx Documentary Centre’s Third Annual Latin American Foto Festival (LAFF) brings together artists from across the Western Hemisphere, among them Adriana Parrilla, Luján Agusti, Adriana Loureiro Fernández, and Luisa Dörr.

For as long as Afro-Puerto Rican photographer Adriana Parrilla can remember, she was called “trigueña” – a word to describe someone who is light-skin Black or mixed-race to distinguish them from someone who was “Negro”, or explicitly Black.

“It was so common to hear this word that it was almost as if they were calling me by name. ‘Trigueña’ was always used by people as a euphemism, to make me feel better by not calling me ‘Black’ because that had a negative connotation. They only called me ‘Black’ when they intended to hurt me.”

For Parrilla, growing up, her relationship to her African heritage had been a mystery. “I had thousands of questions about my racial identity, but I never dared to seek some answers,” she says. “My identity was in limbo, a mixture of many elements that I preferred not to examine. Like many Puerto Ricans, I accepted my identity as ‘in-between’ but never as Black.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Three young men, c. 1950 © 2019 Leo Goldstein Photography Collection LLC*

Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Latin America, Photography