Posts from the “Crave” Category

Cate Dingley: EZY Riders

Posted on July 9, 2016

Photo: Imperials MC Bike Blessing. Brooklyn, 2015. ©Cate Dingley.

You ever been walking down the street in New York when a crew of bikers pulls up. You hear them coming because they roll deep AF, and when you look it’s like you’ve gone to glory and everywhere is love. Out in the boroughs is where you will find them, the Steel Horses Motorcycle Club (740 E 98th St, Brooklyn), and Black Falcons Motorcycle Club (523 Bruckner Boulevard, Bronx).

This Sunday, July 10, 2016, the Steel Horses MC will be hosting their annual bike blessing, drawing thousands of local riders for a classic Brooklyn Block Party. This year, American photographer Cate Dingley (b. 1989) presents Ezy Riders, an outdoor installation featuring large-format black and white prints taken over the past two years, capturing the riders, their lives, and the culture in full swing. The prints will be wheatpasted to exterior walls at both locations, and like all good street art, it will be up until the weather wears it away. Cate Dingley speaks with Crave about her work.

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Photo: Choice, President of Black Falcons MC, Black Falcons Trophy Party. Bronx, 2016. ©Cate Dingley.

Categories: Art, Bronx, Brooklyn, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Hurvin Anderson: Dub Versions

Posted on July 9, 2016

Artwork: Hurvin Anderson, Is It Ok To Be Black (2016). Courtesy of the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery, London.

James Baldwin observed, “Artists are here to disturb the peace,” and we are blessed for this. Were it not for artists, we might not stop and simply pause, taken in an experience so visceral it goes beyond words. But then, yes, the urge to translate often comes, and so we give voice to it.

Is It Okay To Be Black? is the title of British artist Hurvin Anderson’s work. It’s a beautiful image of a wall at the barbershop. Floating on a sea of turquoise we see images of Marcus, Martin, and Malcolm, even a young Ali in there, all images pinned to the wall above the tonics, brushes, and lotions lining the counter. It’s a perfect image of a place that more than a few black men the world over know so very well.

So then that question, it’s not for folks who sit in the chair, but for the outsiders looking in. For folks who wouldn’t know who Marcus is, even after I say “Garvey.” Cause if you know, then there’s no question to ask. But if you don’t, you might wonder, Why are people so hateful? Is it guilt, shame—or something else? In the United States, the answer to these questions is a matter of life and death. Every day we are reminded by what happens when complacency prevails.

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Categories: Crave, Exhibitions, Painting

Women and the Civil Rights Movement

Posted on July 8, 2016

Photo: Declan Haun (American, 1937−1994) Picketing the Courthouse, Monroe, North Carolina, August 26, 1961 Gelatin silver print (photograph) Museum purchase, in memory of Alice R. and Sol B. Frank, and with funds provided by Patricia L. Raymond, M.D.

“Have you ever been hurt and the place tries to heal a bit, and you just pull the scar off of it over and over again,” Rosa Parks asked decades ago, reminding us that the fight for Civil Rights cuts through the flesh, down to the bone, and into the very marrow of the United States of America.

Rosa Parks’s words are all too prescient this week, all too knowing of the agonies faced by citizens at the hands of the state, as the extrajudicial executions continue day after day after day. The horror of the killings is further compounded by their intimacy. Consider the murder of Philando Castile, livestreamed by his girlfriend Diamond Lavish Reynolds; in maintaining her composure and her calm in the face of a panicked officer of the law who killed without warning or provocation, Reynolds not only saved the life of her daughter and herself, but she risked everything to broadcast evidence of the crime to the world.

Reynolds’s actions remind us that although black women are rarely given the credit they deserve by the media, the history books, or core curriculum—they have always been at the heart of the movement for truth and justice. In tribute, the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, presents Women and the Civil Rights Movement, on view now through October 30, 2016.

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

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

Unruly Bodies: Dismantling Larry Clark’s Tulsa

Posted on June 13, 2016

Larry Clark, Untitled, 1963, from the series “Tulsa,” 1963-71. © Larry Clark; Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York.

In 1971, America photographer Larry Clark published Tulsa with Lustrum Press, owned by Ralph Gibson, sparking a wave of controversy across the nation. The book, which features fifty black and white photographs taken by Clark in 1963, 1968, and 1971, reveal the dark side of American youth culture in the heartland of America. Drugs, sex, and guns were front and center, as much the subject of the book as the people themselves with Clark a participant, rather than a voyeur. He brought a new level of authenticity to his work, and in doing so Tulsa changed the very nature of documentary photography itself.

Forty-five years after the book’s release, a new exhibition of photographs adds a new layer of perspectives to the story of this work in Unruly Bodies: Dismantling Larry Clark’s Tulsa at the California Museum of Photography UCR ARTSblock, Riverside, now through January 28, 2017. Curated by graduate students from the History of Art and the Public History Program, Unruly Bodies speaks to the new generation reflecting on the past, reflecting on Clark’s watershed moment in contemporary photography, pairing his work alongside that of Danny Lyon, Bill Eppridge, and W. Eugene Smith to critical effect.

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