Posts from the “Art” Category

Haus of Us

Posted on December 9, 2019

Sam Nixon. Darius wears pinstriped waistcoat and trousers Alexander McQueen, jewellery worn on right hand Acchitto, Alexis Bittar, Cano, jewellery worn on left hand Castlecliff, Luiny, The Great Frog. Wayne wears jumpsuit and shirt Gucci, gold and pearl necklace Kenneth Jay Lane, silver necklace The Great Frog, rings Acchitto, bowtie belt Marvin Desroc, frilled gloves Wing + Weft. Anthony wears sequinned tuxedo jacket and suit trousers Givenchy, all jewellery worn his ownPhotography Sam Nixon, Styling Alison Marie Isbell

Founded on the trailblazing legacy of New York’s legendary ballroom scene,Haus of Us is a radical new vogueing house for the city’s youth. Named after the iconic House of LaBeija – immortalised in the seminal queer film Paris is Burning – Haus of Us is as much about community as it is about competition, with an emphasis on the new generation, not yet old enough for 21+ events. Co-founder Darius ‘Zenith LaBeija’ Case feels particularly strongly about this point. “There’s a younger community being overlooked,” he says. “I want to create a platform where people of all ages can attend mini-balls, major major balls and parties.”

Here, members of the radical new family discuss why unity is the foundation of a succesful house and why “You never walk alone at a ball”.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

*Sam Nixon. Demargo wears embellished vest top Collina Strada, cotton trousers Moschino, earrings Luiny, loafer shoes GucciPhotography Sam Nixon, Styling Alison Marie Isbell*

Categories: Art

Vincent Desailly: The Trap

Posted on December 5, 2019

*Vincent Desailly, from The Trap (Hatje Cantz)*

The line between hip hop and hustling has been blurry for years, the drug game affording countless rappers not only vivid stories, but the money to finance studio time and equipment – and yet it wasn’t until the advent of trap music that the line seemed to vanish all together. Taking its name from the place where deals are made, trap music is a distinctly Southern subgenre with its own unique style and sound.

Hauntingly atmospheric, its signature deep 808 kick drums, rapid hi-hats, symphonic instruments, and distorted vocals create a druggish, ruggish vibe which has made trap an industry powerhouse over the past decade. Although it has influenced other genres of music as well as the culture at large, with everything from trap yoga to trap brunch appealing to the “bad and boujee” crowd, trap itself remains a deeply hermetic realm closed to outsiders.

“What we were making wasn’t radio-ready and definitely not destined for the charts,” Gucci Mane wrote in hisautobiography. “When I think about the trap I think about something raw. Something that hasn’t been diluted. Something with no polish on it. Music that sounds as grimy as the world that it came out of.”

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

Categories: Art

Shannon Taggart: Séance

Posted on December 4, 2019

*Shannon Taggart. Table-tipping workshop with mediums Reverend Jane and Chris Howarth. Erie, Pennsylvania, 2014.*

On March 31, 1848, two teen girls, Kate and Margaret Fox, reported hearing “rappings” inside their Hydesville, NY, home. They believed they made contact with a spirit of a murdered peddler whose body was later found in the house. The Fox sisters quickly became a sensation among their radical Quaker friends, and were soon given a platform to share their experiences at a time when it was still taboo for women to exercise their First Amendment right to speak before an assembly. As fate would have it, on July 19 of the same year, the first women’s rights convention was being held just a few miles away at Seneca Falls. Word has it that “raps” also knocked the very table where Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote the Declaration of Sentiments.

While newspapers largely ignored the work of early suffragettes, they voraciously covered the new sensation of women publicly sharing their experiences of communion with the dead. These conditions created the perfect storm for the birth of Spiritualism, which provided Americans and Europeans a Western version of ancestor worship. Spiritualism, the belief that the dead exist as non-corporeal spirits and that we have the power to communicate with them, caught on like wildfire during the Civil War, as women lost their husbands, brothers, and children on the battlefield.

Appealing to middle and upper classes, Spiritualism quickly became a seminal force, influencing 19th century art, science, technology, entertainment, politics, and social reform. Few know that President Abraham Lincoln once held séances with senators and cabinet members in the White House or that Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for President of the United States, was also a medium. Nobel laureates Pierre and Marie Currie table-tipped while William Butler Yeats used automatic writing in his poetry. But perhaps most fascinating is the convergence of Spiritualism and the Women’s Movement in the town of Lily Dale, New York.

Read the Full Story at Document Journal

The medium Stanisława P: emission and resorption of an ectoplasmic substance through the mouth (under netting). Albert von Schrenck-Notzing, 1913. Courtesy of the Photographic Collections of the Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene, Freiburg I’m Breisgau.

Categories: Art

Hunter Reynolds: Drag to Dervish

Posted on November 29, 2019

*The Banquet, 1992 Courtesy of Hunter Reynolds*

After receiving his BFA from Otis-Parsons Art Institute in Los Angeles in 1984, Hunter Reynolds moved across the country to New York’s East Village. He settled into new digs on Eighth Street, sharing a flat with Aldo Hernandez, a DJ at the Pyramid Club and a fixture on the downtown underground scene that catapulted a new generation of politically-conscious drag performers like RuPaul, Lady Bunny, and Lypsinka into the spotlight.

Inspired by their radical aesthetics, Reynolds instinctively knew that he wanted to take drag out of this context and explore it in his own way. “I started by removing my beard and putting make up on to transform into a feminine look. But not totally drag. I wanted to show my chest hair – [the] third gender is what I called it,” Reynolds tells Another Man on a break from installing Drag to Dervish, a retrospective exhibition chronicling the life of his alter ego, Patina du Prey.

Reynolds’ journey into gender-bending began in 1989 when he partnered with photographer Michael Wakefield for a private performance documenting the transformation process on film. “Three days later I got the pictures back and realised, ‘Oh my God!’” Reynolds remembers. “I confronted myself with my own identity. I threw them into a drawer and didn’t look at them for several months.”

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

Categories: Art

T.C. Cannon: At the Edge of America

Posted on November 26, 2019

*T.C. Cannon. Self portrait in the studio, 1975. Reproduced by permission of the Estate of T.C. Cannon. © 2017 Estate of T.C. Cannon.*

Born in Lawton, Oklahoma, Caddo and Kiowa artist Tommy Wayne “T.C.” Cannon (1948-1978) was given the name Pai-doung-a-day — Kiowa for, “One Who Stands in the Sun.” In his brief, wondrous life, Cannon radiated beauty, love, and truth at the height of the American Indian Movement, becoming one of the foremost contemporary Native American artists before dying in a car accident at the tender age of 31.

As a multi-disciplinary artist, music was Cannon’s muse, inspiring him to create scenes of Native life that defy the hegemony of American imperialism and continue to resonate decades after his death. With a recent exhibition, T.C. Cannon: At the Edge of America, having presented the artist’s life’s work, we celebrate the visionary who boldly reclaimed images of Native Americans from pop-culture stereotypes, refashioning them as vibrant revolutionary figures perfectly attuned to the zeitgeist.

Read the Full Story at Jacques Marie Mage

Categories: Art

Peter Berlin: Icon, Artist, Photosexual

Posted on November 22, 2019

As Armin Hagen Freiherr von Hoyningen-Huene gazed into the camera, he began to fall in love with the image he created of himself: the legendary ‘70s icon Peter Berlin. The quintessential libertine in the decade between free love, gay liberation, and the advent of AIDS, Berlin embodied the very essence of sex itself. With his trademark blonde pageboy haircut that fell into his come-hither eyes, Berlin barely covered his exquisitely chiseled physique with skintight clothes that hugged every bulge, inviting all to partake in the pleasures of the flesh.

“My pictures are truthful; there is no fakery. They were made under the best circumstances and the image became a powerful thing,” Berlin tells Document Journal from his home in San Francisco in advance of the publication of the new book, Peter Berlin: Icon, Artist, Photosexual. “The book is just like everything else in my life: it came from the outside. I completely live separated from the world. I always was doing my thing. I have a great time with my mind. I think about Peter Berlin. Why did I do what I did?”

Read the Full Story at Document Journal

Categories: Art

Mitch Epstein: Sunshine Hotel

Posted on November 21, 2019

*Mitch Epstein. West Side Highway, New York 1977.*

The year was 1969, and America was ablaze, fired up by protests against the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, women’s liberation, and Stonewall. Photographer Mitch Epstein, then just 16 years old, began to use his camera to confront the complex cultural psychology of the country he called home.

Over the next 50 years, he would amass an archive of work that stands alone as single images, works beautifully as photo essays, and reveals the country’s complexities, contradictions and conflicts.

In his masterful new book, Sunshine Hotel (Steidl), Epstein weaves a mesmerising tapestry of American life that speaks powerfully of who and where we are now. The 175 photographs in the book, sequenced by editor Andrew Roth, raise questions while simultaneously revealing the nuances of the national character.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: Art

Dennis Hopper: In Dreams

Posted on November 20, 2019

*David Hemmings (with Lips), 1961–67 Photography by Dennis Hopper, from In Dreams*

Dennis Hopper was only 19 when his friend and Rebel Without a Cause co-star James Dean died in 1955. Deeply affected by this loss, the young actor became insolent, refusing to play by Hollywood’s rules, and was soon blacklisted from the industry.

But Hopper didn’t need to be on the silver screen to express himself; he soon found solace in photography, using the camera to engage with the world. Eschewing a careerist approach, Hopper made photographs to hone his eye, finding pleasure in the act of looking at the world as it unfolded in ways big and small throughout the 1960s.

In the new book, Dennis Hopper: In Dreams, editor Michael Schmelling presents more than 100 photographs, most never published before, that present Hopper’s evolution as an artist. Working across genres including documentary, fashion, music, fine art, and abstract photography, Hopper’s work provides poignant insight into his daily life between 1961 and 1967.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

*Peter Fonda and Robert Walker Jr. (with peacock), 1965 Photography by Dennis Hopper, from In Dreams*

Categories: Art

Julian Rodriguez: Shot in Soho

Posted on November 20, 2019

Historically, Soho was always the centre of bohemian life in London – a neighbourhood notorious for drinking, fashion, cabaret, music, and the sex industry.

Since the 17th century, when entrepreneurs and craftspeople first arrived to set up shop, this square mile of the English capital operated as a space where Chinese, Italian, Jewish, Hungarian, Bengali and LGBTQ communities could mingle freely. It was a place for freedom and expression, unlike anywhere else in the city.

But over the years, Soho, like most of London, has been hit by sweeping gentrification. With Crossrail – the new underground line being built on its borders – scheduled for completion in Autumn 2020, things are likely to only get worse. Today, Soho’s countercultural spots are a few final frontiers, as opposed to the norm.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: Art

Gaechter+Clahsen: Fünf Finger Föhn Frisur

Posted on November 20, 2019

Long before the Internet made nearly everything instantly accessible, beauty salons used photography to advertise and promote the styles of the day. Part headshot, part beauty photo, these photographs fell squarely into the realm of commercial photography.

Utilizing studio lighting and a basic backdrop, women became mannequins in the truest sense of the word. Here they modeled hairdos, their faces made up with “natural cosmetics” and their shoulders bare — nothing to distract the viewer from the focus: hair, hair, hair!

The photographs often hung in windows until they discolored from exposure to the sun, or were framed and hung indoors where they could be protected. Customers often tore them from magazines and brought them in to suggest the look they wanted to go for, then brought them home and carefully them to mirrors so that they could painstakingly achieve this look on their own.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

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

Janette Beckman: Beat Positive

Posted on November 15, 2019

Group portrait of various hip hop and rapping artists, from left (bottom row): Tony ‘Master T’ Young, Big Drew, and K Rock. Sitting upon Big Drew’s shoulders is MC Lyte, 1990. New York. (Photo by Janette Beckman/Getty Images) Photos Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery

When Janette Beckman learned the “New York Scratch and Rap Revue,” the first Hip Hop showcase in the UK was headed to London, she immediately offered to shoot it for Melody Maker. The year was 1982, and the culture was as fresh as the crease down the front of a pair of Lee jeans. The concert proved to be a turning point in Beckman’s life.

“Everyone was on stage together at the same time: Afrika Bambaataa was on the turntables. Fab 5 Freddy was on the mic, DONDI and FUTURE were making a mural. The Rock Steady Crew was breakdancing. The Double Dutch girls did their thing,” Beckman says.

“It was a Renaissance moment for me. I was used to people in leather jackets thrashing it out on stage and here were these people making art, music, poetry, and dance in this wild, crazy, creative thing.”

Read the Full Story at The Luupe

The Ultramagnetic MCs pose outside on a New York city street, 1989. (Photo by Janette Beckman/Getty Images) Photos Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Music, Photography, The Luupe