Posts from the “Art” Category

Danny Lyon: Message to the Future

Posted on July 7, 2016

Artwork: Danny Lyon, “Tesca, Cartagena, Colombia,” 1966. Cibachrome, printed 2008. Image 25.7 × 25.7 cm (10 1/8 × 10 1/8 in.). Collection of the artist.

Danny Lyon does it like nobody else. Born in Brooklyn in 1942, he transformed photography into one of the most astounding arts of documentary possibilities. A self-described “dissenter in my own country,” Lyon took to the edges of American life to document the country from the inside out, removing the veils of appearance politics to reveal the truth about this country in black and white like no one before—or since.

A self-taught photographer, filmmaker, and writer, Lyon’s work exemplifies the best aspects of New Journalism. Forsaking the industry’s so-called “objectivity” in favor of using the media as a means to an ends greater than the story itself. Whether on the front lines of the Civil Rights movement or behind the bars of the Texas State Penitentiary, Lyon used photography to bear witness to causes, movements, and historical moments that were happening in the here and now.

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Mel Rosenthal: In the South Bronx of America

Posted on June 23, 2016

Photo: The daily domino game in front of the Social Club. 1976-1982. Gelatin silver print. Museum of the City of New York, Gift of Roberta Perrymapp, 2013.12.28. © Mel Rosenthal.

Politicians leave a paper trail by which we can reflect on the historic record as it was put into play by policy decisions that are criminal minded. In 1970, New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan took a proposal to the Nixon White House that he described as “benign neglect.” Moynihan advocated for the government to withdraw from dealing with the systemic issues plaguing the African American community, and in doing so, services were suspended in neighborhoods where they needed it most. In its place Moynihan advocated for increased surveillance and “studies,” much like the nonsense he was pedaling here.

But this being Tricky Dick Nixon, the message was warmly received, ushering in more than a decade of psychopathic patriarchy—which included the blind eye turned as landlords hired arsonists to burn down buildings in order to collect the insurance money, leaving neighborhoods in ruins. A war was being waged in plain sight, but there was nothing that could be done until the land was ravished completely. Between 1970 and 1980, 44 census tracts in the Bronx lost more than half of their buildings to fire and abandonment, with seven tracts losing a staggering 97%.

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Life carries on in the War Zone. 1975-1981. Gelatin silver print. Museum of the City of New York, Gift of Roberta Perrymapp, 2013.12.1

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Bronx, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Bruce Davidson: Magnum Legacy

Posted on June 20, 2016

Photo: Bruce Davidson USA. New York City. 1980. Subway. ©Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos, courtesy of Prestel.

“When I was a kid, I played baseball and you heard the sound the bat made when it really connected with the ball; you knew you had a great hit. It’s the same with photography: sometimes you hear that click of the shutter and you know you’ve caught something really special,” observes American photographer Bruce Davidson (b. 1933).

Davidson, a member of Magnum Photos since 1958, authored some of the most seminal monographs of the twentieth century including Brooklyn Gang, East 100 Street, and Subway. He is now the subject of a new book, Bruce Davidson: Magnum Legacy by Vicki Goldberg (Prestel), which explores the photographer’s life work in photography. Davidson speaks with Crave about his work and about the magic of photography that kept him hooked in a career that spans six decades.

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Brooklyn, Crave, Manhattan, Photography

Antonio López: Future Funk Fashion

Posted on June 17, 2016

Artwork: Antonio Lopez, Carol Labrie, NYC, 1969, Marker and color overlay, 18” x 24”, Courtesy of the Estate of Antonio Lopez & Juan Ramos.

Antonio López is a Nuyorican legend. Born in Utado, Puerto Rico in 1943, he was just two years old when he began to sketch dresses from fabric his mother had given him. At the age of seven, his family moved to New York City, Spanish Harlem to be exact. Back in the days, the neighborhood was riddled with gangs as brilliantly depicted in Piri Thomas’s memoir, Down These Mean Streets. To keep her son off the streets, López’s mother, a seamstress, asked him to draw flowers for her embroideries. He also helped his father, a mannequin maker, to apply make-up an stitch wigs on to figures.

Such home training portended beautifully, as López earned a scholarship to the prestigious Traphagen School of Fashion, which provided Saturday programming for children. From there he went on to attend the High School of Art and Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology. While at F.IT., he began an internship at Women’s Wear Daily, which lead to a position on staff. He left school, and that’s when everything began.

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Antonio Lopez, Dream Girls, American Vogue, 1977, Pencil & watercolor, 18” x 24”, Courtesy Estate of Antonio Lopez & Juan Ramos.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Latin America, Manhattan

Who I Am: Rediscovered Portraits from Apartheid South Africa

Posted on June 16, 2016

Photo: S. J. Moodley, [Boy with sunglasses in a chair], ca. 1978. Courtesy The Walther Collection.

South African photographer Singarum “Kitty” Jeevaruthnam Moodley was born into an Indian family in the province now known as KwaZulu-Natal in 1922. At the age of 35, he left his job working as a machinist in a shoe factory to establish Kitty’s Studio, a family-run photographic studio in the mid-sized city of Pietermaritzburg, which he ran for three decades, until his death in 1987.

After his death, many of the studio’s negatives were purchased by the Campbell Collections in Durban, now part of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Those deemed incompatible with the historical collection were culled from the archive and some 1,400 negatives were ultimately acquired by Columbia University professor Dr. Steven C. Dubin—and thus a legacy has been cultivated and preserved.

Dr. Dubin has co-organized a new exhibition of work, Who I Am: Rediscovered Portraits from Apartheid South Africa, now on view at The Walther Collection Project Space, New York, through September 3, 2016. The portraits were taken between 1972 and 1984, offering a new look at the history of South Africa. A passionate community activist and fervent opponent of apartheid, Kitty’s photographs speak to the love and high regard he held for his fellow wo/man.

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S. J. Moodley, [Three men dancing in a line], 1975
Read more at http://www.craveonline.com/art/996071-secret-histories-real-south-africa-seen-man-called-kitty#TEp93rt5prHJ3TQa.99. Courtesy The Walther Collection.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Africa, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Kareem Black: Roots

Posted on June 15, 2016

Photo: Michael James Shaw as Marcellus and Marcellus Anika Noni Rose as Kizzy. ©Kareem Black.

Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family was first published nearly forty years ago, on August 17, 1976. Weighing in at 704 ages, the book was a heavyweight moment in publishing, a triumph of American literature in the late twentieth century. Roots tells the story of Kunta Kinte, an African boy sold into slavery and brought to the United States in the 18th century, tracing the family’s lineage all the way to Haley himself. The story is a masterful work of reportage, one that earned Haley a Pulitzer Prize in 1977.

That year, ABC TV staged a landmark event. From January 23–30, it aired a twelve-hour mini series over eight consecutive nights. The nation was spellbound and followed the show to the very end. One hundred million people tuned in for the finale. That’s right. 100 MILLION—almost half the country! To this day, the finale of Roots holds the distinction of being third highest rated episode of any kind in television history. Never had American television taken on African American history like this. With a cast that included LeVar Burton, John Amos, Ben Vereen, Louis Gosset, Jr., Leslie Uggams, and Vic Morrow, Roots took a docudrama approach to filming, creating a singular style the influenced later productions. Winning 9 of its 37 Emmy Awards nominations, Roots set the bar for great television.

Forty years later, Roots has returned, with a remake that aired May 30–June 2, 2016, on History, A&E, and Lifetime. Starring Malachi Kirby, Forest Whitaker, Anna Paquin, Lawrence Fishburne, Jonathan Rhys Myers, Anika Noni Rose, and T.I., the remake 8.5 million people on the opening night, the biggest draw for a cable miniseries in three years. The remake dropped characters added to the 1977 series that were not in the book, like Ed Asner’s Captain Davies, the savior of white guilt, while adding layers of realism to the depictions of African tribes, life on plantations, and life for black soldiers in the Union army.

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Categories: Art, Crave, Photography

Cornelia Parker: Transitional Object (PsychoBarn)

Posted on June 14, 2016

Cornelia Parker: Transitional Object (PsychoBarn)

“We all go a little mad…sometimes,” Norman Bates observed in the Alfred Hitchcock classic Psycho (1960). It was an eerily calm, self-aware moment from a man who staged life. Once the façade had fallen, there was nothing left. It was all a shell game, nothing more, nothing less—as madness proves, more often than not, unsustainable.

But there was a time before things fell apart, and a place where it all began. Turner Prize-nominated British artist Cornelia Parker (b. 1956) explores this space in an incredible site-specific work commissioned for The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden. Fashioned in the form of the Bates family home crossed with the classic red barn of American architecture, with a tip of the cap to the great painter Edward Hopper, Parker presents The Roof Garden Commission: Cornelia Parker, Transitional Object (PsychoBarn)

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Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions

Neil Leifer: Relentless

Posted on June 6, 2016

Photo: Photo: Neil Leifer (United States, b. 1942). Muhammad Ali reacts after his first round knockout of Sonny Liston during the 1965 World Heavyweight Title fight at St. Dominic’s Arena in Lewiston, Maine, May 25, 1965.

It was one of the most controversial fights in boxing history: Muhammad Ali vs. Sonny Liston, for the 1965 title of WBC Heavyweight Champion. It was a hotly anticipated rematch, one made all the more fervent by recent history. Just a year earlier, Cassius Clay beat Liston and taken the title with a technical knockout. Two days later, Clay publicly announced he was a member of the Nation of Islam and adopted the name Cassius X before taking the name that would make him one of the most famous men on earth on March 6, 1964.

When the rematch came along, it was more than a boxing match. It was an epic vision of self-liberation. By aligning himself with the practices and politics of the NOI, Ali was vilified. Perhaps that’s why the only thing they could do was deny the facts. Two minutes and twelve seconds. That’s all it took. Midway through the first round, Liston through a left and Ali countered with a right, an “anchor punch” he learned from actor Stepin Fechit, of all folks. Liston went down on his back, rolled over, tried to rise, and fell back again. It was a wrap for Sonny. But you couldn’t tell his fans nothin’. They called it “Phantom Punch Fight” and yelled, “Fix!” sounding like a 1960’s version of Donald Trump.

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Kwame Brathwaite: Black is Beautiful

Posted on June 2, 2016

Photo: Untitled (Sikolo with Carolee Prince Designs). 1968, printed 2016Chromogenic print (C-print), matted and framed 11.25 x 11.25 in, 28.575 x 28.575 cm (image). ©Kwame Brathwaite Photo Credit: Ruben Diaz Courtesy of Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles.

“There shall be no solution to this race problem until you, yourselves, strike the blow for liberty,” Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) advised, reminding us that the power lies within. A political leader, publisher, writer, and orator, Garvey understood that words could change the world. “The pen is mightier than the sword, but the tongue is mightier than them both put together,” he rightfully observed.

Garvey’s ideas inspired generations to embrace a Pan-African perspective of the world, invoking the spirit of the Black Power movement decades in advance. The seeds he planted took hold after his death, finding their way on to the global stage in full glory.

Photographer Kwame Brathwaite was born in Brooklyn in 1938, to a politically active family hailing from Barbados. Together he and his brother Elombe Brath, now deceased, joined the African Nationalist Pioneer Movement (ANPM) in the late 1950s. By 1961, they created the South-West Africa Relief Committee in the South Bronx to support the fight for independence in Southern Africa. At the same time, the brothers were producing jazz concerts at legendary locales including Club 845 in the Bronx and Small’s Paradise in Harlem. Brathwaite began photographing the concerts, promoting them, and organizing cultural activities like art shows and African dance performances in tandem, dedicating himself to serving the cause.

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Photo: Untitled (Nomsa with Earrings). 1964, printed 2016Selenium tone silver gelatin print, matted and framed 15 x 15 in., 38.1 x 38.1 cm (image). ©Kwame Brathwaite Photo Credit: Ruben Diaz Courtesy of Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Attitude: Portraits by Mary Ellen Mark, 1964–2015

Posted on May 31, 2016

Photo: Gloria and Raja, Great Gemini Circus, Perintalmanna, India, 1989. ©May Ellen Mark, courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery.

“I’m most interested in finding the strangeness and irony in reality. That’s my forte,” American photographer Mary Ellen Mark (1940–2015) observed, very much aware of the gift she brought to the world. Her passion for the camera and the way in which it captured the curious sides of life can be seen in her life’s work. For five decades, Mark was a singular figure in the medium, producing a series of work that speaks to her love for humanity in its infinite forms.

Attitude: Portraits by Mary Ellen Mark, 1964–2015, now on view at Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, through June 18, 2016, presents nearly 40 works from the artist’s singular archive. Melissa Harris, editor-at-large at Aperture Foundation, curated the show, selection works from Mark’s famous series, each of them sparkling with life and revealing an intense curiosity about the nature of our days and nights.

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Photography

James Ellroy: LAPD ’53

Posted on May 27, 2016

In 1853, just three years after it was incorporated, Los Angeles found itself at a crossroads. The city was reputed to have the highest murder rate nationwide, as the California Gold Rush brought cutthroats to town. Desperate to turn the tide, the first specific Los Angeles police force was founded and staffed with volunteers, who in turn earned a reputation for indulging in violence, gambling, and vice. A century later, the LAPD had become notorious for widespread corruption, racism, and brutality. This is where our story begins.

James Ellroy, the undisputed master of modern crime noir, has joined forces with and Glynn Martin, executive director for Los Angles Police Museum to create LAPD ’53 (Abrams) a devastating portrait of the era through. The book features 80 duotone photographs, sprinkled throughout the book, showing the particulars of the grim and ghastly tales Ellroy narrates. Imagine the underbelly of Hollywood Babylon, if it were illustrated by Weegee and you get the spirit of LAPD ’53.

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Categories: Art