Photo: House of Dior (French, founded 1947). John Galliano (British, born Gibraltar 1960). evening ensembLe, autumn/winter 2005–6 haute couture. White silk tulle, embroidered white silk and metal thread
Following on from Monday night’s annual Met Gala, Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination opens to the public at The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters in New York today. The largest exhibition in the museum’s history, the exhibition brings together two hundred years of costume and fashion in a monumental endeavour that spans 25 galleries and two buildings. And here, as if you needed any more encouragement, are five reasons to visit.
Back in 1978, while living in Oakland, photographer Ryan Weideman saw Midnight Express, a nerve-wracking film that tells the true story of Billy Hayes – a young American who, after being caught smuggling hashish, escapes from a Turkish jail and lives to tell the tale.
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“I thought, ‘If this guy can go through that, I am ready for New York!” Weideman says with a laugh.
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1970s Manhattan was an outlaw town riddled with violence and crime. It became a magnet for fearless spirits who lived life on their own terms. Although Weideman had taken visual cues from film noir throughout his life, it was the work of photographers William Klein, Diane Arbus, Joel Meyerowitz and Robert Frank that made him aware that something spectacular was happening in New York.
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.
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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.
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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.
During an era of rebels and revolutionaries, Cuban-born artist Ana Mendieta (1948–1985) was a singular figure carving her own path, fearlessly speaking truth to power about subjects like campus rape and domestic violence at a time when these conversations were still taboo.
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Hailing from a prominent political family in Havana, Mendieta and her older sister Raquelin were sent to America in 1961 after Fidel Castro came to power. At just 12 and 14 years old, the sisters were on their own until their mother and younger brother arrived in the US five years later. Their father, who was jailed for 18 years in the wake of the Bay of Pigs revolt, was finally reunited with his family in 1979.
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Through her art, Mendieta transformed fear, pain, and rage into powerful and provocative meditations on gender, identity, assault, death, place, and belonging. Using her body as a vessel of flesh, bone, and blood, she immersed herself in performance art, body art, and land art to create raw, visceral work that channeled the rituals of her native land and questioned society’s treatment of women.
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But Mendieta’s groundbreaking career came to a sudden and violent end when she died falling from the 34th floor of her New York apartment at the age of 36. The circumstances of her death are still shrouded in controversy. Her husband, the sculptor Carl Andre, was charged with Mendieta’s murder, but he was ultimately acquitted on the grounds of reasonable doubt.
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Because much of Mendieta’s work was ephemeral, her process and the documentation of her art was as significant as the final work itself. It is these photographs and films that remain, reminding the world of her brief but powerful career. During Mendieta’s life, she produced more than 200 works, selections of which are currently on view in Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985 at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and Covered in Time and History: The Films of Ana Mendieta at Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin.
Jonathan Lyndon Chase. “56nd street” (2018). Acrylic, spray paint, rhinestone, oil stick, glitter on canvas 60h x 72w in. Courtesy of the artist and Company Gallery
Imagine the love child of Missy Elliott and Romare Bearden, raised by Ren & Stimpy, and embracing the intimacies of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room … and you can begin to grasp the intricate complexities and exquisite nuances of African-American artist Jonathan Lyndon Chase.
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Hailing from Philadelphia, Chase creates powerful images of queer black men that transform the very nature of representation. Disassembling the construction of gender, race, and sexuality by re-imagining the picture plane as a body unto itself, Chase creates a new visual language to experience the raw, visceral energy of life itself.
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In Quiet Storm, a new exhibition of work currently on view at Company Gallery, New York, through May 6, Chase strikes like lightning, dazzling us with a series of works that break down all barriers in the name of freedom and self-actualisation. His interdisciplinary practice, combining painting, drawing, sculpture, and collage, remind us that the medium is the message – and it is within our power to shape the narrative to reflect the extraordinary possibilities that exist inside of our truth.
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Here, Chase speaks with us about the ways in which art can become a space for healing, expression, and self-actualisation.
Jonathan Lyndon Chase. “combing my hair” (2017). Acrylic, oil stick, rhinestone, glitter, canon printer collage, marker, graphite on cotton sheet 30h x 30w in. Courtesy of the artist and Company Gallery.
Malick Sidibé (1935–2016) was a master of the form, a singular visionary whose photographs tell the story of the liberation, self-determination, beauty, dignity, and pride of his native Mali in the heart of West Africa.
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Born in the village of Soloba when Mali was still a colony of France, Sidibé hailed from a family of herders who worked the land. His natural propensity for art made him the first member of his family to attend school: the Institut National des Arts de Bamako, in the nation’s capital in 1952.
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In 1955, be began an apprenticeship with photographer Gérard Guillat-Guignard; he opened Studio Malick in 1958. His timing could not have been more fortuitous for Sidibé and Mali were coming into their very own at the same time. As a member of the Mali Federation, which included Sengal and the French Sudan, the nations achieved independence from France on June 20, 1060, after a period of negotiations. On September 22, Mali left the Federation and was on its own.
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The spirit of freedom is evident throughout Sidibé’s work. Honing in on the youth culture of the times, he captured the joyous energy of the first generation of liberated Malians on the beach, in the clubs, at sporting events, and in his studio. In every photograph he created he found the heart and the soul of his people and the result was nothing short of beautiful.
Punk rock might not exist if it hadn’t been for Danny Fields. Born in Queens, the legendary music magnate spent the 60s in the East Village, hanging with the likes of Andy Warhol and his superstars. He championed bands like the Velvet Underground while working as a radio host for WFMU, did publicity for the Doors and the Stooges, and by the 70s, was writing a hugely influential column for the Soho Weekly News. Fields is also the guy who discovered the Ramones.
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In 1975, the band begged Fields to hear them play at CBGB, and he was instantly enamored. The Ramones wanted Fields to write about them—but he did them one better and became their manager. He spent the next five years brokering record deals, arranging the band’s first video shoot, and booking their first tours, including a trip to England to play alongside the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and the Damned.
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But five years in, craving superstardom, the Ramones fired Fields and hired Phil Spector, the manager who notoriously pointed a gun at Johnny Ramone and demanded he play a riff repeatedly. But during his brief tenure, Fields meticulously documented the band’s rise, amassing an incredible archive of photos from the band’s early days. In 2016, Fields released a collection of them as a rare limited edition photo book. But now, My Ramones (Reel Art Press) is being republished and getting a wide release.
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VICE tracked Fields down recently to chat about what it was like managing the Ramones in their wildest years.
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.
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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.
Keyezua, “Fortia” (2017). Giclée print on Hanhemühle paper 52 1/2h x 78 3/4w. Courtesy of Keyezua.
Grief is one of the most profound emotions we may experience in life, forcing us to reckon with a loss so powerful it can take years, even decades, to fully process. We may become consumed by feelings of denial, anger, bargaining, and depression in waves so strong it feels like they may never end – until our commitment to healing forces us to pull ourselves through, and we wash upon the shore of acceptance, battered, and bruised.
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But the story does not end there, for although grief has gone, something equal and opposite arises in its place: gratitude. Such is the power of love in its deepest sense, for it is love that allows us to change the way we think about and see the world – and ourselves.
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When Angolan-Dutch artist Keyezua lost her father as a young girl, her life was forever changed. Her father, suffering from diabetes, had both his legs amputated before he died. Growing up without a father, Keyezua began to question the disempowering beliefs that were damaging the image of her father that she held close to her heart. In Angola, it has been said that a man without legs is no longer a man – but Keyezua knew this to be false and set about to speak truth to power through the creation of art.
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In her new series, Fortia, which is included in the group exhibition Refraction: New Photography of African and Its Diaspora at Steven Kasher Gallery, New York (April 19 – June 2, 2018), Keyezua transforms the way we look at and think about the physical disability. Each photograph features a black woman in a red dress wearing a mask designed and created by a group of six Angolan men who, like Keyezua’s father, no longer had legs.
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Fortia, which is Latin for “strength” tells Keyezua’s story through a series of work that shares her experience in pieces titled “My Mother’s Womb,” “This is Not His Funeral, This is Life!” “Sailing Back to Africa as a Dutch Woman,” and “Womanhood – Sex, Love and Betrayal.” For Keyezua, the creation of art is a revolutionary act, a ritual for therapeutic self-expression that simultaneously changes the way we look at and think about disability.
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Below, Keyezua takes us through her journey to show how love can become a catalyst to empower, restore, and heal ourselves – and the world.
On April 20, 2011, two months into the Libyan Civil War, British photojournalist Tim Hetherington was on the front lines with rebel forces at Misrata when tragedy struck. Gaddafi forces blasted his group, killing photographer Chris Hondros and gravely wounding photographer Guy Martin. Hetherington was wounded by shrapnel and survived the attack, only to die later from excessive blood loss.
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Hetherington abhorred violence, but he took it upon himself to explore the subject of war on the front lines, alongside soldiers in Liberia, Afghanistan, and Libya. While embedded in Afghanistan on assignment for Vanity Fair (for which he won the 2007 World Press Photo of the Year), Hetherington came to understand war as a function of male sexuality.
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Hetherington had an epiphany, thanks to a photograph he called “The Garden of Eden,” which showed American soldiers picnicking in the country. He believed a primal yearning for conflict and the threat of imminent death allowed men the opportunity to openly express love for one another without doubt, fear, or judgment. He thought true depictions of masculinity couldn’t be found in heroic, dramatic, or otherwise artistic representations of war. It lay in casual snapshots of soldiers in their most intimate and vulnerable moments.
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Stephen Mayes was Hetherington’s longtime friend and colleague; he’s now the the Executive Director of the Tim Hetherington Trust. To commemorate the seventh anniversary of his death, VICE spoke with Mayes about how Hetherington changed the way we think about war. He also talked about his final conversation with Hetherington, in which the photographer shared how his time on the front lines changed his life.
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.
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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.
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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.
