Posts from the “Crave” Category

Beauté Congo – 1926-2015 – Congo Kitoko

Posted on September 1, 2015

JP Mika, Kiese na kiese, 2014, Oil and acrylic on fabric, 168.5 x 119 cm, Pas-Chaudoir Collection, Belgique
© JP Mika/Photo © Antoine de Roux

Since 1987, André Magnin, chief curator at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris, has had a passion for the Congo which stirred his soul to travel the country and experience the people and their arts firsthand. In response to his thirty-year journey, he has organized Beauté Congo – 1926-2015 – Congo Kitoko, a survey of paintings, photographs, sculpture, comics, music, and films now on view at Fondation Cartier, Paris, through November 15, 2015.

Organized chronologically, the exhibition begins in the 1920s, at the birth of modern painting in the Congo, when the nation was still a colony of Belgium. Having just survived the genocidal regime of King Leopold II, under which 10 million Congolese lost their lives, the art of this era had been in the shadows. Magnin obsessively search for work, drawing together pieces that reveal the way of life in the village, the natural world, the dreams and legends of the times.

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Djilatendo, Sans titre, c. 1930, Gouache and ink on paper, 24.5 x 18 cm, Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, Tervuren, HO.0.1.3371
© Djilatendo/Photo © MRAC Tervuren

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

Scott Nichols Gallery: It’s Only Rock and Roll

Posted on August 26, 2015

Photo: Baron Wolman, Jimmy Hendrix with Guitar, 1968

Photo: Andy Freeberg, BB King at Montreux, 1980

The late, great B.B. King observed, “Playing the guitar is like telling the truth—you never have to worry about repeating the same [lie] if you told the truth. You don’t have to pretend, or cover up. If someone asks you again, you don’t have to think about it or worry about it because there it is. It’s you.”

King lived his life in this truth and gave this truth to the world. He who had said, “I never use that word, retire,” continued to play live performances until just months before his death, earlier this year, at 89 years old. King, one of the greatest blues musicians of our times, showing us that music is not just in your blood, it is in your soul. He understood the power of music to bring people together, to reach them in a way that nothing else could. He sagely advised, “You only live but once, and when your died your done, so let the good times roll,” and he set those words to song.

We feel his joy, long after he is gone, not just in his music but in the photographs taken of him throughout the years. “I want to connect my guitar to human emotions,” King said, and we are reminded of the power of his intention when gazing upon Andy Freeberg’s photograph of BB King at Montreux, 1980, which is currently on view in the group show It’s Only Rock and Roll, on view at Scott Nichols Gallery, San Francisco, now through September 16, 2015.

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

Gordon Parks: Ali

Posted on August 24, 2015

Gordon Parks, “Untitled”. London, England, 1966. Photo © The Gordon Parks Foundation, courtesy of Arthur Roger Gallery.

In September 1966, LIFE magazine published, “The Redemption of a Champion,” by Gordon Parks, a profile of Muhammad Ali, who had recently changed his name to embody his newly adopted Islamic faith. An exhibition of photographs from the LIFE essay are currently on view in “Gordon Parks: Ali” at Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans, through September 9, 2015.

For most in the United States, Ali’s move to Islam came as a shock. The public knew Cassius Clay as the Undisputed Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World, who was as quick with his wit as he was with his gloves. They were soon to find out that as Muhammad Ali, the champ was a highly politicized leader intent on speaking truth to power, at whatever cost would come.

By joining the Nation of Islam, aligning himself with Malcolm X, and speaking out against the Vietnam War, Ali stood independent of the popular opinion of the day. Resisting the draft, Ali said, “Those Vietcongs are not attacking me. All I know is that they are considered Asiatic black people, and I don’t have no fight with black people.” Many Caucasian Americans were incensed by Ali’s stance, most evidently those in power, who would go on to strip the champ of his title and his passport, deny him a boxing license in every state, and sentence him to prison for refusing to be conscripted. Ali took the case all the way to the US Supreme Court, who, in 1970, overturned his conviction in an unanimous 8-0 ruling, with Thurgood Marshall abstaining.

But the days of reckoning were yet to come. In retrospect, 1966 looks like a more innocent time. Though controversial, Ali was still the champ. In an effort to turn the tides of public opinion in his favor, LIFE assigned Parks to cover Ali, and show a more intimate side of the man who would not back down. Parks, one of the masters of the medium, was the perfect match for Ali.

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

The Lost Tribes of Tierra Del Fuego: Selk’nam, Yamana, Kawésqar

Posted on August 21, 2015

Ulen is a clown-like male spirit, whose role is to entertain the audience of the Hain. © Anthropos Institute, Sankt Augustin, Germany.

Tierra del Fuego, Spanish for “Land of Fire” is an archipelago located off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across from the Strait of Magellan. The nomadic tribes native to the islands, including the Selk’nam, Yamana, and Kawésqar, have lived there for more than 10,000 years, creating cultures and ways of life that have all but disappeared, due to both the endemic infectious diseases carried by Westerners, as well as by the militias paid by Europeans to erase the native population on well-organized human hunts.

It was not uncommon for white men to kidnap tribal natives and bring them to the capitals of Europe (including Paris, Berlin, and Zurich), where they were exhibited in zoos and parks, as well as held in universities to be studied. No less than Charles Darwin described his first meeting with the native Fuegians as being “without exception the most curious and interesting spectacle I ever beheld: I could not have believed how wide the difference between savage and civilized man: it is greater than between wild and domesticated animal, in as much as in man there is a greater power of improvement.”

Such extraordinary hubris seems pathological of the race that declared for itself the “white man’s burden” of “civilizing” native populations by employing their long-held foreign policies of genocide, pestilence, and psychological warfare. We are deeply fortunate that Martin Gusinde, a German priest and ethnologist, took an entirely different approach. In 1919, Gusinde was sent as a missionary to Tierra del Fuego, with the aim to convert the natives to Christianity. Instead, the opposite took place: Gusinde was one of the first Westerners to be initiated into the sacred rites of the native people.

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Categories: Art, Books, Crave, Photography

The Summer of ’68: Photographing the Black Panthers

Posted on August 12, 2015

“Black Panther demonstration, Alameda Co. Court House, Oakland,
CA, during Huey Newton’s trial,” Pirkle Jones; 1968.

It’s been nearly half a century since FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover vilified the Black Panther Party as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States.” His fear of the Constitution being upheld and justice being served lead Hoover to enact one of the most counterrevolutionary movements of the twentieth century: COINTELPRO.

Directives under COINTELPRO required FBI agents to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, neutralize or otherwise eliminate” the activities of movements and leaders associated with Civil Rights. Think of the times. It was the summer of 1968. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated on the balcony only months before. The government was on a killing spree, and they aimed their sites on the Black Panther Party.

Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, students at Merritt College in Oakland, founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in 1966. Since its inception, the BPP’s core practice was armed citizen patrols to monitor the behavior of police officers and to challenge police brutality in Oakland, California. The BPP employed legal means to challenge the police, and the result was a counterrevolutionary operation sponsored by the government that resulted in deaths and arrests, eventually dismantling the BPP’s national reach by 1972.

It was during the summer of 1968 that Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones, a husband and wife photography team, decided to photograph the BPP. The idea to photograph the Panthers was originally Baruch’s. She proposed her idea of an exhibition expressing “the feeling of the people” to Jack McGregor, then director of the de Young Museum in San Francisco. McGregor agreed, and the de Young Museum would host the first exhibition of the work in December of that year, to record crowds. The show would later travel across the country. The public was ripe and ready for positive and empowering images of the black power movement.

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“Plate glass window of the Black Panther Party National Headquarters, the morning it was shattered by the bullets of two Oakland policemen, September 10, 1968”, Pirkle Jones; 1968.

Categories: 1960s, Art, Crave, Photography

Rodriguez Calero: Urban Martyrs and Latter-Day Santos

Posted on August 7, 2015

Rodríguez Calero, “The Apparition”, 1999, 36 x 24.

“Creation never gets easier, it is a constant struggle,” artist Rodriguez Calero observes. It is an intense undertaking, this desire to transform what exists in the mind’s eye into physical form. Working in collage, Calero creates a world all its own, a world that is at once anointed with spirits and ethereal energies that radiate from her work. Each image becomes an icon, inspiring devotion and creating a state of bliss that is wondrously soothing in its intensity. When taken individually, each is a work holds the power to draw you into its spell; when taken together, the cumulative effect is transformative.

“Urban Martyrs and Latter-Day Santos,” the first museum survey of Calero’s work, opens at El Museo del Barrio, New York, and runs through October 17, 2015. Calero’s original technique is called “acrollage,” a technique of layering glazes of luminous colors with rice and other kinds of paper. The blending of fermenting surfaces and stenciled patterns attains lustrous color and texture. Guest-curated by Alejandro Anreus, the installation includes 29 large acrollage canvases, 19 smaller collages, 13 fotacrolés (altered photography) on canvas board, and 3 works of mixed media on paper.

Born in Puerto Rico and raised in New York, Calero draws on the rich traditions of her background to create a visual landscape that combines surrealist collage, Catholic iconography, medieval religious painting, hip hop, and street culture. The result is rich tapestry that evokes a lush and magical world that beckons from beyond the veil. Calero’s layered glazes are like a spider’s web, at once soft and whimsical, yet strong and intricate. Her work is sensitive and complex, quiet yet vibrant and deep, resonant as a clarion bell that gently tolls in the breeze.

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Rodríguez Calero, “Urban Hood II”, 2014, 48 x 72.

Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Painting

Christopher Makos: White Trash Uncut

Posted on July 30, 2015

Debbie Harry. Photo by Christopher Makos

New York, 1977. It began with a book, a paperback with black and white photographs of the punk scene. The book was titled White Trash and it featured the boldest of the boldface names: Patti Smith, Richard Hell, Debbie Harry, Halston, Andy Warhol, Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Divine, and John Waters. Add to that a splash of Man Ray, Tennessee Williams, and Marilyn Chambers, and you’ve nailed it. White Trash, Christopher Makos’ photography book, is the place where pop meets pulp, perfectly defining the D.I.Y. ethos of the times. The book has become a seminal volume of the times and now sells for upwards of $500.

However, the original edition is a paperback, and paperbacks are not designed to last. They’re disposable (like, say, white trash). And if you crack the spine too wide, the entire thing might fall apart in your hands. We are fortunate, then, that Glitterati Incorporated has released a revised and expanded edition in hardcover.

White Trash Uncut, Makos’ updated monograph, is a lavish affair. This tall, slim volume features the photographs uncropped (unlike the 1977 edition). It also features a selection of never-before-published photographs of Grace Jones, among others. Included throughout the book is the use of silver, making the pages come alive. Everything about the book is luxurious, and in that way it becomes a statement of the times. Punk has passed; that New York is long gone. But what lives in its place are photographs, memories, and stories.

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David Croland and Grace Jones wearing a Le Jardin shirt. New York. Photo by Chrostopher Makos

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

Danny Clinch: Still Moving

Posted on July 17, 2015

Photograph: Bruce Springsteen, 2007 (©Danny Clinch).

“Still is still moving to me,” Willie Nelson said, a beautiful sentiment befitting the photograph itself. A fraction of a second frozen in time, forevermore, is the ephemeral made eternal. This is a kind of magic, something more than art. It is an artifact, a document, witness to history as it unfolds. The photograph must stand the test of time; it must endure so that it can speak to future generations.

Music photography is a beautiful paradox: the silence is deafening, yet enveloping. That which is sound is now purely visual, distilled in a single moment that delivers all the highs and lows, all the rhythm and blues, as the crowd goes wild and we becomes one. It is this intensity that the photographer seeks, this moment when we are lost and found that we are truly present.

Danny Clinch is a master of the form, seamlessly moving on and off stage with his instrument, the camera guiding his way. More than 200 of his seminal photographs are collected in Still Moving (Abrams Books), along with an essay by Bruce Springsteen, who explains, “When Danny Clinch and I clicked as photographer/subject, it was because somewhere deep inside we had he same points of reference—the same songs and movies dancing in our heads. With each click of the shutter he was scrolling through my record collection, referencing my influences, searching for the same magic. I could feel he’d been mesmerized by the same images of our heroes that made me want to be a musician and that made me, during our shoots, tilt my head down a little (like Elvis), or move to the left into a half shadow (like Dylan) or out into light (like, like…?).”

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Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Crave, Music, Photography

Andy Warhol: The Complete Commissioned Record Covers 1949-1987

Posted on July 1, 2015

Melodic Magic, Vol 1, 1953. All images © 2015 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

The album cover is an icon of the past, of an age when vinyl was something to be collected. The 12 x 12 inch surface was a canvas ripe for exploration, the square format offering infinite interpretations. The album cover, such as it was, provided a space for the artist to put us in the mood, to seduce us with images, words, ideas. It offered a space for contemplation, as the record spun round, creating a delicious interplay between audio and visual experience of the work. As a result, album covers, in certain cases, have become icons themselves.

ndy Warhol designed his first record cover in 1949; clearly he sensed the value of the medium, for he launched his career phoning record companies and soliciting them. Over the years, until his death in 1987, he created more than fifty covers which are presented beautifully in Andy Warhol: The Complete Commissioned Record Covers 1949-1987, Catalogue Raisonné, 2nd Edition by Paul Maréchal (Prestel). Produced at nearly actual size, with photographs of the original works, along with entries detailing the story of each album, this catalogue is a compendium of sumptuous delight.

Warhol’s gift for blurring the lines between high and low art and be felt in each and every illustration he created. His best known works, the covers of The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967) and the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers (1971), appear alongside lesser known works such as Monk featuring Thelonious Monk with Sonny Rollins and Frank Foster (1954) Giant Size $1.57 Each, released in conjunction with the exhibition The Popular Image at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art (1963). Taken together as a group, we can follow the thread of Warhol’s transformation from illustrator to artist, his visual vocabulary becoming more exact and extreme as his ideas take hold.

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Monk, 1954. All images © 2015 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Crave, Manhattan, Music

Fresh Dressed: Directed by Sacha Jenkins

Posted on June 29, 2015

CNN Films: Fresh Dressed- Classic street style; Brooklyn New York, circa 1986.
Photograph by Jamel Shabazz

“Being fresh is more important than having money. I only wanted money so I could be fresh,” Kanye West says with the utmost conviction. Dressed in all white, Kanye is sitting in on the deck of a beach house, somewhere where the skies are blue and the water is clean, and drops bon mots like this for the camera. Yeezy is just one of the many moguls, masterminds, and pioneers in Sacha Jenkins’ documentary film, Fresh Dressed, which premiered at the SVA Theater, New York, on June 18 and releases nationwide on June 26, 2015.

The theater was a who’s who of legends who created the form of Hip Hop that took the world by storm. As KRS-One said, “Rap is something you do. Hip Hop is something you live.” This way of being was very much in evidence in the crowd, filled with the artists, musicians, and designers who have defined Hip Hop style. It was a veritable who’s who of fashion visionaries including Dapper Dan, Karl Kani, Mark Ecko, April Walker, Shirt King Phade, and Jorge Fabel Pabon, among others, people who revolutionized the look, feel, and availability of mainstream apparel as well as couture pieces.

Nasir Jones, executive producer of the film, was sitting in the audience as Sacha Jenkins took the stage before the screening began to welcome the audience and say a few words. Wearing a Public School shorts-suit, bow tie, and plaid shirt with red kicks, Jenkins was handed the mic and asked, “You know my first question, right? Is Queens in the house?” The call was answered enthusiastically by the audience. Jenkins did roll call, then he broke it down, introducing Nas by saying, “He went to the same shitty junior high school as I did…The guidance counselors told me the best way to make it in life was vocational jobs. None had any expectations of us.”

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CNN Films: Fresh Dressed- The jean jacket was graffiti art’s first canvas. B boys on the street, Brooklyn circa 1983
Photograph by Jamel Shabazz

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Bronx, Brooklyn, Crave, Fashion, Manhattan, Music, Photography

The Way We Wore: Black Style Then

Posted on June 19, 2015

1978, Newark, New Jersey. Douglas Says.

Style is a statement of individuality, of identity, and of pride. Style is the great art of living manifest by our desire to beautify, to adorn, and to express a great inner being in tangible form. Style most readily finds itself expressed through fashion, hair, and makeup, though it is also evident in the very act of documenting one’s self. To have style is to give unto the world, to share it not only in the present tense but to capture it for future generations to enjoy.

In The Way We Wore: Black Style Then (Glitterati Incorporated), Michael McCollom chronicles African-Americans fashion from the 1940s through today. Featuring snapshots of over 150 black men and women’s most unforgettable “style moments”, The Way We Wore includes personal photographs taken from the author’s own family and circle of friends, a circle of 100 fashion insiders, outsiders, and beautiful people that includes Oprah Winfrey, James Baldwin, Carmen de Lavallade, Iman, Naomi Campbell, Tyra Banks, Tracy Reese, Patrick Kelly, Kimora Lee, Bobby Short, Bethann Hardison, Tookie Smith, and Portia LaBeija, among others.

The late, great Geoffrey Holder eloquently observes in the book’s foreword, “One should not enter a room and expect ambiance; one should enter a room and become it. Those that grace the pages of The Way We Wore took that concept and ran with it. Through the reader will witness the evolution—and, in some cases, the faux pas—of fashion and design, it is in the personal flair that an individual bestows to each outfit that creates the look…. Like a yearbook, you will come back to this work again and again. Though you may not know the people personally, you will recognize them. Michael has carefully chosen pictures and people that exhibit the historical framework of African-American influence on fashion, design, and culture.”

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1978, Newark, New Jersey. Linwood Allen, Designer.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Crave, Fashion, Manhattan, Music, Photography