Posts from the “Crave” Category

Danny Lyon: Journey

Posted on September 27, 2016

Photo: Danny Lyon, Mary, Santa Marta, Colombia, 1972, Gelatin silver enlargement print © Danny Lyon. Courtesy of the artist and Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York and Zurich

“Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding,” Plato wrote in The Republic circa 380 B.C.

Empathy is both an emotional response, as well as a cognitive one. We can both feel what another experiences, as well as perceive it through rational thought. To be empathetic is a challenge some refuse to accept, but for those willing to open themselves, it is a two-fold process. First there is simply the ability to understand that which is not our own, and to refrain from manipulations that would adulterate its truth. Once we are able to do this, the next step comes: to share this truth in a responsible way, one that allows us to use our personal gifts in the service of the cause, while maintaining integrity and authenticity above all.

American photographer and filmmaker Danny Lyon (b. 1942) understand this, and has dedicated his life to the pursuit of truth. Working in the style of New Journalism, in which the photographer fully immersed himself in the milieu in which he worked, Lyon uses emotional and cognitive empathy to delve beyond the surface of the world and capture something much deeper and far more profound, something so visceral it goes beyond words and cuts straight to the soul.

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Photo: Danny Lyon, The Haitian Women, Port Au Prince, 1986, Gelatin silver enlargement print © Danny Lyon. Courtesy of the artist and Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York and Zurich

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

A People’s Journey Across American Finally Arrives on the Washington Mall

Posted on September 24, 2016

Created by: Arthur Rothstein, published by Hyperion Press Ltd. Girl at Gee’s Bend, Alabama 1937; printed 1981, silver and photographic gelatin on photographic paper H x W (Image): 8 15/16 x 12 in. (22.7 x 30.5 cm) H x W (Image and Sheet): 10 7/8 x 14 in. (27.6 x 35.6 cm) Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture (NMAAHC) holds its grand opening today—just one week after Terence Crutcher, 40, was extrajudicially killed by Tulsa Police Officer Betty Shelby. The father of four, who was on his way home from community college when his car broke down, was unarmed and had his hands in his air when Shelby fired the fatal shot without warning. Then, just four days later, Keith Lamont Scott, 43, was shot dead by Charlotte Police Officer Brentley Vinson while waiting for his son to be dropped off after school by the bus, sparking the on-going Charlotte Uprising, which has left a second man dead.

The tragedy is that Crutcher’s story is not unique; it is the very foundation upon which the United States was built. The men who wrote, “All men are created equal” are the same ones who determined African Americans only amounted to 3/5ths of a person. It has been said that, “The more things change, the more they remain the same,” and with every police killing, we are reminded of this—just as we are reminded that the United States government was found guilty of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a 1999 trial, which the mainstream media did not cover at the time.

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Brotherhood Records, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Funeral Services, 1968 vinyl , ink on cardboard H x W (2011.17.37a disc): 12 × 12 in. (30.5 × 30.5 cm) H x W (2011.17.37b album jacket): 12 3/8 × 12 3/8 in. (31.4 × 31.4 cm). Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Elmer J. Whiting, III.

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

It’s All True: The East Village Eye Show

Posted on September 19, 2016

Artwork: May 1979. Courtesy of The East Village Eye/Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project.

Picture It: The East Village, May 1979. A new scene is emerging within the burned-out buildings and abandoned lots. It had been a decade since Daniel Patrick Moynihan urged then-President Richard Nixon to adopt the devastating policy of “benign neglect,” effectively cutting off major cities from federal, state, and local services in response to the race riots of the 1960s. At the same time, the Nixon White House initiated a phony war on drugs, as the cover story for flooding African-American and Latino neighborhoods with heroin.

Yet, despite the United States’ government’s best efforts to destroy its own citizens, like the phoenix they rose from the ashes and gave birth to the greatest cultural movements of the late twentieth century. Up in the Bronx, Hip Hop was born. Over in Washington Heights, graffiti took hold. And down in the East Village, punk rock emerged. It’s very telling that when people were pushed to the edge, they came back stronger than ever before.

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Artwork: June 1980 Courtesy of The East Village Eye/Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan

See the World with “Hamburger Eyes”

Posted on September 17, 2016

Photo: © Nick Sethi

The Hamburger Eyes crew has been on the scene since 2001, when it launched their first issue of 30 xeroxed pamphlets. Over the years, the zine has become on the illest photography magazines in the world, combining the documentary approach of National Geographic and LIFE magazines with the relentless intensity of a graffiti writer bombing the scene.

Dedicated to the pictorial history of both unseen and iconic moments of everyday life, every issue of Hamburger Eyes illustrates its motto perfectly, capturing “The Continuing Story of Life on Earth” to a T. Printed in black and white, and designed with the photographs running full bleed, every page is fresh, crisp, and clean.

Over the years, Hamburger Eyes has expanded to take on publishing photograph books, zines, and magazines, with more than 100 titles to date in its catalog. It includes works by the core members of the collective including Ray Potes, David Potes, Stefan Simikich, Brian David Stevens, Jason Roberts Dobrin, Ted Pushinsky, David Uzzardi, Michael Jang, and Uri Korn. The titles alone are enough to draw the eye, whether Slag Hag (John Oliver Hodges) or Sweat Stains (Mark Murrmann), you might just wonder, “What’s inside?”

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Categories: Art, Crave, Photography

Wall Writers: Graffiti in its Innocence

Posted on September 16, 2016

Photo: CORNBREAD declares he has retired, 1971. Photo used with permission of Philadelphia Inquirer, ©2014

Picture it: New York and Philadelphia, the late 1960s. A curious phenomenon takes hold as names begin to appear on the street, written on the walls. In the beginning, it’s just a couple of names, written over and over again. It’s a mystery, these names. Who are they and what do they mean? It doesn’t quite register with the general population but it hits home with kids. It’s fame of a most unusual kind. The fame of being known for what you do long before anyone knows who you are.

It slowly begins to grip the imagination of a few who are dedicated, and from these humble beginnings, a cultural revolution begins. Graffiti is one of the most basic human impulses. As soon as children know how to write their names, they’re keen to leave their mark. This offends many who find it indecorous, such is their longing to conform to other people’s rules. But then there are those who refuse to conform and insist on living on their own terms.

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UGA canvas featuring STITCH 1-n-ROCKY 184, circa 1973. Photo courtesy of Rocky 184.

ROCKY 184 and STITCH 1, circa 1972. Courtesy of ROCKY 184.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Brooklyn, Crave, Graffiti, Manhattan

Len Speier: Nearly Everybody

Posted on September 15, 2016

Photo: Nearly Everybody, vintage gelatin silver print. © Len Speier, courtesy Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York.

“Lucky Man Speier,” they call him, and this is true. At the tender age of 88, native New Yorker Len Mitchell Speier is receiving his due with his first solo exhibition of photographs, Nearly Everybody, currently on view at Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York, now through October 29, 2016. Drawn from an archive that spans six decades, the show features 48 vintage photographs made in New York and Europe between the 1960s and ‘80s.

As with many things in his life, Nearly Everybody came about through the fortunes of fate. Following the success of her recent exhibition Bacalaitos & Fireworks at the gallery, Speier asked photographer Arlene Gottfried if she could introduce him to Daniel Cooney; Gottfried said it was okay to use her name so Speier did just that.

Cooney remembers, “The call came out of the blue. After we spoke, I Googled and not much popped up. I went up to visit him at his apartment and that was it. It was an amazing moment.”

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Photo: Fight Racism, White Street, NYC, 1969, vintage gelatin silver print. © Len Speier, courtesy Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York.

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

Godlis: History is Made at Night

Posted on September 14, 2016

Photo: The Ramones, CBBG, 1977. ©Godlis, courtesy of agnès b. galerie, New York.

“There are no secrets that time does not reveal,” Jean Racine wrote. With the benefit of hindsight, it has become evident that punks are true embodiment of the counterculture movement. They never sold out and they never said die. They just keep on keeping on, D.I.Y.

Photographer David Godlis arrived on the New York scene in 1976, camera in hand, carrying as much film as he could reasonably hold in the pockets of his black jeans without looking indiscreet. He usually shot without a flash, using the techniques of masters like Brassai, who had famously photographed Paris at night forty years prior and inspired Godlis’s masterful eye.

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Photo: Richard Hell, Bowery, 1977. ©Godlis, courtesy of agnès b. galerie, New York.

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Crave, Manhattan, Music, Photography

Marking the Infinite

Posted on September 13, 2016

Artwork: WINTJIYA NAPALTJARRI Women’s Ceremonies at Watanuma, 2007 Acrylic on Belgian linen 72 1/20 x 60 6/25 in.

After they began colonizing the continent in 1788, the British coined the term “Aboriginal Australia” to collectively describe all native peoples of the land. The Constitution of Australia, in its original form in 1901, makes references to the peoples twice, both times as a means to disregard them. These references were removed in 1967, but the damage had already been done.

DNA studies in 2011 prove that Aborigines emigrated to Australia directly from Africa up to 75,000 years ago. More than 400 distinct peoples have been identified, distinguished by their languages. Despite the British disregard, the peoples already had names, as well as arts, traditions, and cultures so deep that, despite two centuries of genocidal regime, they would not be erased.

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Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Painting

Rashid Johnson: Fly Away

Posted on September 12, 2016

Artwork: Rashid Johnson, Untitled Escape Collage (2016). © The artist. All images © The artist. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth.

The sounds of a piano drift eloquently through the room, enveloping you in a soaring, intense crescendo of freedom hard won, the freedom to pursue not happiness, but joy. To African American artist Rashid Johnson, the distinction is necessary. “Joy is something so many of us understand. It is John Coltrane’s ‘Love Supreme,’” Johnson observes before adding with casual insouciance, “The steaks at the strip house are really good.”

Johnson is leading a tour through Fly Away, a new exhibition of his work at Hauser & Wirth, New York, currently on view through October 22, 2016. Five years in the making, the monumental exhibition fills four rooms, each evoking its own breathtaking way of relating to our world.

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nstallation view of “Rashid Johnson: Fly Away” at Hauser & Wirth, 2016. © Rashid Johnson. Photo by Martin Parsekain, courtesy of Hauser & Wirth.

Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan

Pedro Paricio: Dreams

Posted on September 12, 2016

Artwork: PROMISED LAND, 2015. Acrylic on Linen, 81 x 116 cm, Pedro Paricio, Halcyon Gallery

We all dream, whether we are awake or asleep. Sometimes, without consciousness we simply slip away into another state, into a world of fantasy, desire, and fear. It is a world of imagination, where the only limits are that which we impose upon ourselves. But sometimes we cannot impose limits, so powerful is the drive to dream in our selves. And sometimes we abandon our dreams, but our dreams never abandon us; they simply lurk in the deepest recesses of our being, ready to reveal them selves when they can no longer hide.

Spanish artist Pedro Paricio understands this and he calls to them, allowing them to inhabit his waking life and be drawn from a palette of paint. Over the past two years, they drew him out, transforming his canvases into evocative scenes layered with meaning and depth. His new series of work began to manifest itself as Paricio’s work began to transform from the inner reaches of his Shaman series to something even more metaphorical.

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Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Painting

Slava Mogtun: Lost Boys: From Russia With Love

Posted on September 8, 2016

Exiled for “malicious hooliganism with exceptional cynicism and extreme insolence” at the age of 21, Slava Mogutin was the last political dissident from the former Soviet Union. As an openly gay man living under a repressive regime, he was outspoken and unrepentant, calling out the hypocrisy and corruption of the government publicly. In 1994, Mogutin attempted to register officially the first same-sex marriage in Russia with his then-partner, American artist Robert Filippini. The attempt made headlines around the world, but only further fueled his persecution by the authorities. Forced to flee his country in 1995, he came to the United States and quickly blazed a trail as one of the most important contemporary artists of our time.

Ten years ago, Mogutin released his first monograph, Lost Boys (powerHouse Books), a powerful and provocative collection of portraits and landscapes taken in his native Russia. Intuitively combining porn, kink, and fashion into a seamless blend of intense sensuality and fearless sexuality, Mogutin’s work has helped to redefine the depiction of masculinity worldwide.

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Categories: Art, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography