Posts from the “Art” Category

Show Me the Picture: The Story of Jim Marshall

Posted on November 14, 2019

Johnny Cash off the bus at Folsom State Prison, Folsom, California, 1968 Photography by Jim Marshall, taken from Jim Marshall: Show Me the Picture by Amelia Davis, published by Chronicle Books 2019

In March 1984, Michelle Margetts, a 19-year-old journalism student at San Francisco State University, met Jim Marshall (1936-2010) at a bar in downtown San Francisco, to interview him for a ‘Where Are They Now?’ assignment. Marshall, who had famously shot Johnny Cash flipping the bird during his historic 1969 performance at San Quentin State Prison and Jimi Hendrix burning his guitar at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, was, in the words of Annie Leibovitz, “the rock ‘n’ roll photographer”.

But Marshall, then 45, was down on his luck after being arrested on a gun bust in 1983 and doing work release to avoid prison time. “When I met him I found him hideous: a malevolent gnome,” Margetts recalls of the man who would become a short-term boyfriend and lifelong friend. Given the opportunity to talk, Marshall poured out his heart, revealing the deep vulnerabilities that lay beneath his gruff exterior. Then, just before it was to be published, Marshall sabotaged the entire thing and the story disappeared.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

Restaurant in Harlem, New York City, 1963 Photography by Jim Marshall, taken from Jim Marshall: Show Me the Picture by Amelia Davis, published by Chronicle Books 2019

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, AnOther Man, Art, Books, Music, Photography

The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture

Posted on November 14, 2019

J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere, Untitled (Suku Banana Onididi), from the series Hairstyles, 1974 (printed 2009). Courtesy of The Walther Collection and Galerie Magnin-A, Paris

S. J. Moodley, [Two women wearing Western attire], 1981. Courtesy of The Walther Collection

As European imperialists set forth to colonise the globe, they took everything they could – including images of indigenous peoples forced to pose for photographs against their will. They made, sold, and distributed images, often objectifying and fetishising the subjects. This is where our story begins.

A new exhibition, The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture, features more than 100 works drawn from The Walther Collection to trace the history of female agency in photographic form. Guest curated by Sandrine Collard, the show features works by Malick Sidibé, Seydou Keïta, David Goldblatt, J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere, Yto Barrada,Zanele Muholi, and Lebohang Kganye, exploring the role of women as both subject and photographer.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Nontsikelelo “Lolo” Veleko, Nonkululeko, from the series Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder, 2003. Courtesy of the artist and Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Africa, Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Photography, Women

Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi: Gymnasium

Posted on November 8, 2019

Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi, from the Gymnasium series, 2019.

When Simone Biles made history at the 2019 World Championships by becoming the most decorated gymnast of any gender, she single-handedly redefined one of the world’s most elite sports. As a Black woman in a traditionally white space, she surpassed all expectations, becoming an icon in the process.

For Johannesburg-based multimedia artist Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi, Biles’ success is a testament to Black power in the face of an establishment determined to undermine it. Earlier this summer Biles invented new skills and the Federation Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG), the sport’s governing body, penalized her for the groundbreaking performance. The FIG reduced the degree of Biles’ signature‘double double’ dismount (two twists, two flips) from the beam—out of concern, they claimed, about the safety of lesser gymnasts who might harm themselves while attempting it.

“That felt so personal,” Nkosi says. “Simone Biles is flying and they have to find ways to hem her in. It’s like so many moments in my own life. Throughout my artistic career, people would say things like, ‘Oh, you will never be William Kentridge.’” The ill-fitting comparison to a third-generation South African man of Lithuanian-Jewish heritage smacks of misogynoir and is just one of the various ways people have tried to undermine Nkosi’s extraordinary life. But now, with the success of her new seriesGymnasium, the artist is having her moment—just like Biles.

Read the Full Story at Document Journal

Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi, from the Gymnasium series, 2019.

Categories: Africa, Art, Document Journal, Painting, Women

Cammie Toloui: Five Dollars for Three Minutes

Posted on November 6, 2019

Cammie Toloui. Outside, 1992.

In the early 1970s, the Lusty Lady Theatre made its debut on Kearney Street in San Francisco, providing 16mm peep show films for a newly burgeoning pornography market. Recognizing the increasing demand, in 1983, the club began showcasing live nude dancers, known as the Lusties, which quickly became the primary focus of the 24-hour business.

From 11am to 2am, customers could pull up a stool, drop quarters into a slot, and watch a bevy of women perform for them on the main stage in a scene reminiscent of Madonna’s famed “Open Your Heart” video. Should patrons desire something more intimate, the Lusty Lady graciously obliged with the Private Pleasures booth. Here you could indulge in one-on-one shows—separated by a mere a sheet of glass—that started at $5 for three minutes, with add-ons for extras like a dildo show, role playing, or whatever peccadillo the client might request.

“Everything was whorehouse red: red velvet curtain, red carpet, and black painted walls. It was dark and smelled like cum. You could always hear the jukebox playing with songs chosen by the dancers,” says native San Franciscan Cammie Toloui, who worked at the Lusty Lady in the early ‘90s to pay her way through San Francisco State University, where she was studying photography.

Read the Full Story at Document Journal

Cammie Toloui. Private Pleasires, 1992.

Cammie Toloui. Time is Money, 1992.

Categories: 1990s, Art, Document Journal, Exhibitions, Photography

Rydel Cerezo: To Be From The Same Tree & Under the White Light

Posted on November 5, 2019

“Sunday Afternoon” Photography Rydel Cerezo

“Bakakeng, Detail” Photography Rydel Cerezo

Although the history of the humankind on the islands of the Philippines goes back more than 700,000 years, four centuries of Spanish and American colonisation have radically reshaped the mindset of modern life. For photographer Rydel Cerezo, now 22, the schisms that exist between the east and the west were further amplified when he emigrated from Baguio City to Canada at the age of 10 along with his parents and two siblings.

“Like most immigrant families, my parents wanted to move in hopes of beginning better lives,” Cerezo says. “My family was living comfortably but they recognised the Philippines was beginning to face rising unemployment rates. Sacrifices were and are continuingly be made, and like most immigrant families you don’t arrive securely middle class.”

As a queer child growing up in the Roman Catholic Church, Cerezo came to realise that, “the very thing that can bring you so much pain can yield so much joy at the same time – and that can come from both religion and family”. For the artist, photography has become a path to explore notions of love and intimacy, race and beauty, culture and history, sexuality and religion to investigate the complex interplay between identity and institutions as a means to begin healing intergenerational trauma.

Here, in never-before-published works from the series To Be From The Same Tree, which document his relationship with his partner and partner’s family, paired with photographs from Under The White Light made in the Philippines, Cerezo shares his experiences as a queer Filipino man navigating the idea family in the east and the west – and the surprising connections he has uncovered along the way.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

“Andreas and I” Photography Rydel Cerezo

“Legio Mariae” Photography Rydel Cerezo

Categories: Art, Dazed, Photography

Steven Arnold: Heavenly Bodies

Posted on November 5, 2019

Heal-a-zation Swathe a la Glob-Ba, silver gelatin print, 1985. The Steven Arnold Museum and Archives

Artist, photographer, filmmaker, and “queer mystic” Steven F. Arnold (1943–1994) is a quintessential icon of our times, a revolutionary figure whose ideas about gender fluidity, radical acceptance, and non-binary consciousness, first realised in the late 1960s, are just now becoming part of the cultural conversation.

Protégé of Salvador Dalí and shared encounters with Debbie Harry, Anjelica Huston, Antonio Lopez, and Joni Mitchell, Arnold seamlessly weaved celebrity, glamour, and camp theatricality with ancient ritual, two-spirit philosophy, and eastern art into a majestic Baroque-inspired tableaux that will be on view atFahey/Klein Gallery during Paris Photo next week.

“Steven was a prophet,” says Vishnu Dass, director of the Steven Arnold Museum and Archive and director of Steven Arnold: Heavenly Bodies, a documentary about the artist’s life which came out earlier this year. “He visually fused his interests in filmmaking, spiritual traditions, sexuality, and gender to present a new visual mythology crafted for the late 20th century.”

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

The Luxury of Solitude, silver gelatin print, 1984. The Steven Arnold Museum and Archives

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

Basquiat’s “Defacement”: The Untold Story

Posted on November 3, 2019

“The Death of Michael Stewart,” from 1983 © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat / Artestar

Hailing from Brooklyn, Black 25-year old artist Michael Stewart joined the emerging East Village art scene in 1983 when he leased his first studio in the Anderson Theater for $25 a month. In the early morning hours of September 15 of that year, Stewart and his buddy George Condo tried to get into a party at Keith Haring’s Broome Street loft before hitting up the Pyramid Club on Avenue A. Ready to head home, Stewart entered the L train station on First Avenue and 14th Street.

New York City Transit Police Officer John Kostick later testified under oath that he saw Stewart writing graffiti on the wall at 2:30 a.m. He claimed Stewart surrendered without resistance, but then attempted to run while handcuffed, tripped, and fell face first. Other witnesses testified to seeing Stewart brutally beaten, shouting “someone help me, someone help me!” before being hog-tied and thrown in a police van. Half an hour later, Stewart arrived at Bellevue Hospital comatose. He never regained consciousness and died on September 28. Two years later, an all-white jury acquitted the six NYPD officers charged in the killing of Michael Stewart.

Stewart’s death did not go unrecognized—then or now. In Basquiat’s “Defacement”: The Untold Story, guest curator Chaédria LaBouvier has organized a deeply moving exhibition that takes Jean-Michel Basquiat’s deeply personal and rarely exhibited painting made the week of Stewart’s death as its starting point, opening a conversation about police brutality that transcends the time in which the work was made.

We brought together a group of legendary graffiti writers and contemporaries of Basquiat and Stewart to reflect on surviving New York in the 1980s.

Read the Full Story at VICE

“Back of the Neck,” from 1983.© Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat / Artestar

Categories: 1980s, Art, Manhattan, Vice

Photographing Modern Witches

Posted on October 30, 2019

Shine (New York, NY),” 2017. © Frances F. Denny

Loved, revered, and feared — this is the way of the witch from time immemorial to our present day.

Although they may be any gender, witches have become emblematic of the feminine spirit, often vilified as handmaidens of the devil for refusing to kowtow to patriarchal constraints. While witches went underground to protect themselves from persecution, torture, and death, they have always been an integral part of society, immortalized in popular culture, literature, and art. Recently, many photographers have started reconsidering witches as a culturally charged muse, as the archetype embodies the spirit of the independent woman who wields power on her own terms — reclaiming the maligned and marginalized figure from the clutches of those who would sooner destroy her.

Read the Full Story at The Luupe

Takara, Black Spirituality Project © Felicita “Felli” Maynard

Categories: Art, Photography, The Luupe, Women

Hugh Holland: Silver. Skate. Seventies.

Posted on October 30, 2019

Silver Skater, Del Mar Racetrack in San Diego county, 1975 Photography by Hugh Holland, from Silver. Skate. Seventies. published by Chronicle Chroma 2019

In the summer of 1975, Hugh Holland noticed something – teenage boys on skateboards were cropping up all across Los Angeles. Holland, then in his early thirties, was fascinated by these daring young men, who surfed drainage ditches on new-fangled urethane wheels which allowed them to transform a novelty toy into a tool that combined artistry and athleticism.

Holland took up photography just as the skaters were inventing a brand new sport on the streets of Los Angeles. As fate would have it, a drought hit the city in 1976 and all the backyard pools were drained, beckoning this small band of innovative outcasts to transform the barren landscape into a creative laboratory for their newfound pastime.

Over a period of three years, Holland amassed thousands of images of the emerging scene, documenting the skaters and the atmosphere, crafting a vivid portrait of rebellious youth living their best lives under the Southern Californian sun. Now, in the new exhibition Silver. Skate. Seventies., and accompanying book published by Chronicle Books, Holland presents never-before-seen black and white photographs from his archive. Here, he reflects on the importance of DIY culture, sport and art, and the rewards of doing something you love.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

Night Pier Rider, Huntington Beach, 1975 Photography by Hugh Holland, from Silver. Skate. Seventies. published by Chronicle Chroma 2019

Solo Scott at Kenter Canyon Elementary in Brentwood, Los Angeles, 1976 Photography by Hugh Holland, from Silver. Skate. Seventies. published by Chronicle Chroma 2019

Categories: 1970s, AnOther Man, Art, Books, Photography

KK Ottesen: Activist – Portraits of Courage

Posted on October 28, 2019

Never let it be said that one person can’t change the world. That is the central tenet of KK Ottesen’s new book, Activist: Portraits of Courage(Chronicle Books). From Angela Davis, Tarana Burke and Gabrielle Giffords to Bernie Sanders, Edward Snowden, and Avram Finkelstein, Ottesen profiles 40 American activists who have dedicated their lives to the fight for human rights.

“They say leaders are born; I think they are made,” Dolores Huerta, labour leader and civil rights activist tells Ottesen in the book. “People choose to be activists, choose to be leaders. Anybody can do it, but you have to make the decision. And you have to sacrifice the most precious resource that you have, which is your time.”

Activism is not a one-time action, but a mindset – a commitment to the ongoing struggle against oppression, exploitation and injustice that has fired up mass global movements today from Hong Kong to Chile. “I think it’s important to realise that ‘there are no final victories,’ as Dr. Harry Edwards put it,” Ottesen says.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: Art, Books, Huck, Photography

Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism from the Jaques and Natasha Gelman Collection

Posted on October 24, 2019

Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Monkeys, 1943.

Diego Rivera, Landscape with Cacti, 1931.

In the early 1920s, a teenage Frida Kahlo met Diego Rivera while he was painting the mural ‘La Créación’ at the Escuela National Preparatoria, the oldest high school in Mexico. In his late 30s, Rivera was at the outset of a spectacular career, and was set to become one of the most prominent modern artists in the world.

“One day they asked me who I wanted to marry, and I said I would not marry,” Kahlo told Olga Campos in 1950. “But I did want to have a child by Diego Rivera.”

Though they never had any children, the couple married twice. Theirs was not an easy life, as Kahlo famously confirmed: “I have suffered two grave accidents in my life, one in which a streetcar knocked me down… The other accident is Diego.”

Yet for all their trials and tribulations, their legacy lives on, and is being celebrated in the new exhibition Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism from the Jaques and Natasha Gelman Collection. Featuring about 140 works, the exhibition explores their lives and love affair, while placing their contributions within the larger context of revolutionary Mexican art.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Diego Rivera, Portrait of Natasha Gelman, 1943.

Frida Kahlo, The Bride Who Becomes Frightened When She Sees Life Opened, 1943

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