Posts from the “Crave” Category

World Press Photo 17

Posted on April 21, 2017

Photo: © Jonathan Bachman, Reuters. Title: Taking A Stand In Baton Rouge

“Post-truth,” which was chosen as Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year for 2016, is the very thing tried to define: “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Propaganda by any other name would simply be…more of the same.

Perhaps the word appeals to those whose held fast to their illusions of some great Fourth Estate, able to disregard the consistent expression of disinformation and bias because it wasn’t directed at them. Oh, but how the tables have turned, and new words are created to disguise the new fictions from the old. Certainly there is an objectivity—but who perceives it, and by what means? And who, with the power to report, would dare deny their own inherent subjectivities? Wouldn’t we be far better served without such claims?

Truth be told, ambiguity is discomforting. So much that one needs to consider; no simple answers here. But as F. Scott Fitzgerald understood, “”The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

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Categories: Books, Crave, Photography

Enter the Fantastical Realm of Photographer Karen Knorr

Posted on April 17, 2017

Photo: Love at First Sight, Palazinna Cinese, 2016. 48 x 60 inches. Edition of 5. © Karen Knorr

On Saturday, as April the Giraffe gave birth to a male giraffe at Animal Adventure Park in Harpursville, New York. An estimated 1.25 million people watched the miracle of life unfold on livestream, Tweeting up a storm, seemingly oblivious to the fact that this poor creature will be separated from April once he is weaned. Unable to live in the wild, the baby giraffe is destined to live his entire life in captivity and kept on display as fodder for the insatiable human appetite to consume the natural world.

The birth comes at a time when the Giraffe Conservation Foundation has warned that the giraffe population has plummeted more than 40% over the past three decades, placing it on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s “Red List,” with the threat of extinction looming on the horizon.

Giraffes are but one of the countless creatures being brought to the brink of death, whether hunted down by poachers or dealing with the tragic loss of natural habitats. At the same time, animals are continuously kidnapped and forced into captivity, forced to live in unnatural conditions until the day they die, their only purpose to serve as sources of “entertainment” for an unempathetic populace.

The disjunction between nature and culture is so vast that people take pleasure and pride in casting animals in manmade scenarios taken to narcissistic heights. German photographer Karen Knorr understands this, and has created a body of work that both critiques this perversion, while simultaneously playing it up.

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Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

“Black Mirror” Explores Our Dystopian World

Posted on April 17, 2017

Artwork: Claudia Parducci WHERE TO RUN, 2007, Pencil, watercolor on paper 22×30 inches

We have reached a time when science fiction appears as fact, as prescient warning of the perils of human nature and its love for technology. “Just because we can does not mean we should” is the underlying moral of this realm of fantastical thought.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge,” Albert Einstein hypothesized. “For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.” But, of course, this was the man who signed his name to shore up political support for the Manhattan Project.

Einstein’s belief is tellingly flawed. Evolution happens naturally; it does not need imagination to occur. “Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters,” the painter Francisco Goya understood. Perhaps what is missing from the conversation is a discussion of reason itself.

One can logically proceed from an irrational premise—as so much technology does. The idea that technology is an “improvement” is presumptuous at best, and stems from acute cognitive dissonance. The underlying ethos of science fiction is to see into the future with the knowledge that the more things change, they more they remain the same.

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Artwork: Cole M. James, Manchego, Compiled visual experiences captured between 2011-2016 2min 36 sec 2016

Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions

Hiba Schahbaz: Self Portraits

Posted on April 13, 2017

Hiba Schahbaz, Self Portrait as Grand Odalisque (after Ingres), 2016. Tea, watercolor, and ink on indian paper 60 x 83 in.

Growing up in a family of artists in modern Pakistan, Hiba Schahbaz intuitively picked up a brush and began to paint. As she entered her pre-teen years, she became interested in painting the female nude, as her art began to explore more mature themes that reflected her own physical, emotional, and spiritual growth from child to adolescent.

But in the conservative Muslim country, it was impossible to find a woman willing to pose so Schahbaz did what any enterprising visionary would do: she used herself as the subject of her work. At the same time, Schahbaz was well aware of the prohibitions against her work. “There was a stigma attached to painting myself nude,” she told Crave. So to avoid being identified, she painted her body, but not her face.

“It was bad enough that all there were all these nudes. I’m sure people were aware that it was a self-portrait but if I put in my face, it would be very troublesome to my family,” she recalls. “It was a survival tactic. You paint what you need to paint but not get into too much trouble and make sure everyone is safe.”

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Hiba Schahbaz, Self-Portrait as Eve (after Dürer), 2016. Tea, watercolor, ink, poster paint on twinrocker 88 x 39 in

Hiba Schahbaz, Self Portrait as Sleeping Venus (after Giorgione) , 2017. Tea, watercolour, ink and poster paint on Twinrocker 48 x 99 in

Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Painting, Women

Rest in Peace Charlie Murphy (1959-2017)

Posted on April 12, 2017

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ – NOVEMBER 14: Charlie Murphy performs at The Stress Factory Comedy Club on November 14, 2014 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. (Photo by Bobby Bank/WireImage)

Charlie Murphy died today from leukemia. He was just 57 years old. As Eddie Murphy’s older brother, Charlie Murphy was privy to the shenanigans of the demi-monde during the 1980s, and he ain’t forget a thing. The actor and comedian, who made his silver screen debut in Harlem Nights (1989), became a household name when he began making appearances on Chapelle’s Show, starring in the legendary skits, “Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories.”

It simply must be said: “Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories” changed lives. His sketches about the behind-the-scenes antics of Rick James and Prince inspired countless quotables that have become classics today. Murphy’s deadpan delivery set against a green backdrop, his voice unwavering as he recounts misadventures run amok, created a brilliant foil to Dave Chapelle’s glorious characterizations.

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Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Brooklyn, Crave

Bruce Gilden: Go

Posted on April 12, 2017

JAPAN. Asakusa. 1998. Two members of the Yakuza, Japan’s mafia. The Yakuza’s 23 gangs are Japan’s top corporate earners. They model themselves on American gangster fashion from the 1950s. © Bruce Gilden.

Daido Moriyama, Kikiuji Kawada, and Eikoh Hosoe: these are just a few of the Japanese photographers born in the 1930s, mere children when the United States dropped two nuclear bombs on their country. Growing up in the shadows of war, these men took to photography to mediate this brave new world. Caught between the strong traditions of the past, the vestiges of trauma and carnage, and the push towards modernization that had begun under the Meiji period, each of these artists pictured Japan as it had never been seen before—a raw, radical place of free thought that comes from the avant garde.

In 1974, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, presented New Japanese Photography, the first major survey of work outside the island nation. Curated by John Szarkowski and Shoji Yamagishi, the exhibition presented 187 photographs made between 1940 and 1973 by 15 photographers that traced the evolution of Japanese life through the war to the then-present day.

Brooklyn-native Bruce Gilden went to see the show. The hours he spent as a child looking out of the second-story window of his home, watching the local toughs so their thing shaped his attraction to the characters he would come to photograph. In 1968, while studying sociology at Penn State, he saw Michelangelo Antonini’s film Blow-Up. The die was cast, so to speak.

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JAPAN. Tokyo. Kaeda. Business man at lunchtime outside JR station. 1996. © Bruce Gilden.

Categories: 1990s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Japan, Photography

Gary Simmons: Recapturing Memories of the Black Ark

Posted on April 12, 2017

Photo: Dubblestandart and Lee “Scratch” Perry at Popfest 2015; Karlsplatz in Vienna, Austria. Photo by Manfred Werner – Tsui. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The Black Ark. The name alone evokes memories of yesterday, of the spirit of the 1970s when originality and innovation was at the heart of music and culture. In 1973, reggae and dub producer Lee “Scratch: Perry built the Black Ark behind his family’s home in the Washington Gardens section of Kingston, Jamaica.

As with the D.I.Y. spirit of the times, the Black Ark made due with what was available—providing the genius is in the mind and not in the equipment. Perry understood the nature of recorded music existed in harmony between man and machine. In order to create “the living African heartbeat,” he once buried microphones at the base of a palm tree, then thumped on the grounds to create a mystical bass drum effect.

It was not the rudimentary set up or the dated equipment that gave the Black Ark its sound, but the wisdom of Perry to incorporate life into the creation of his art. He would later songs with subtle effects that spoke to his truth, the sounds of broken glass, crying babies, falling rain, and cow noises simulated by Watty Burnett.

“I see the studio must be like a living thing, a life itself. The machine must be live and intelligent. Then I put my mind into the machine and the machine perform reality. Invisible thought waves – you put them into the machine by sending them through the controls and the knobs or you jack it into the jack panel. The jack panel is the brain itself, so you got to patch up the brain and make the brain a living man, that the brain can take what you sending into it and live,” Perry told Roy Ascott for the book Art, Technology, Consciousness: Mind @ Large (Intellect, 2000).

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Recapturing Memories of the Black Ark. Installation view, Prospect 3, New Orleans, 2014.

Categories: 1970s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Music

Peter Hujar: Speed of Life

Posted on April 10, 2017

Peter Hujar, David Wojnarowcz Reclining (2), 1981; from Peter Hujar: Speed of Life (Aperture, 2017)

The Man. The Myth. The Mystery. Photographer Peter Hujar (1934-1987) was a fixture in the downtown New York scene during the 1970s and ‘80s, creating a seminal body of work that was quietly captivating. He was a fixture in the East Village, where he lived and worked, when it was a magnet for bohemian artists, writers, performers, musicians, and iconoclasts. Back in the days, the neighborhood was rough and raw, in a perpetual state of poverty that bred the avant-garde.

Perhaps the most telling word in the neighborhood was the word “village”—it was truly a community of friends, families, comrades who were constantly in the mix. Much of New York had been abandoned throughout the decade, leaving the bold and the daring with the run of the place. There was overlap and interplay between the arts as personalities mingled freely in an ongoing dialogue of the times.

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Peter Hujar, Mural at Piers, 1983; from Peter Hujar: Speed of Life (Aperture, 2017)

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Crave, Photography

Motown: The Sound of Young America

Posted on April 10, 2017

Photo; Florence Ballard, Mary Wilson and Diana Ross in London’s Manchester Square, outside the headquarters of EMI Records, in October 1964. Courtesy of EMI Group Archive Trust

Motown: The sound of young America, coming straight out of Motor City/Detroit was the perfect blend of soul and pop. It was the home of legends from Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, and Stevie Wonder to the Jackson 5, the Supremes, and Diana Ross. And it was all the brainchild of Berry Gordy, Jr., a local songwriter who quickly realized that producing records and owning the publishing was the best way to make bank.

After launching Tamla and Motown labels, Gordy purchased the property that would become the legendary Hitsville U.S.A., in 1959. The multi-purpose building served as a recording studio, administrative offices, tape library, control room, and living quarters for Gordy in those early formative years. He put several family members in key roles, and made Smoke Robinson VP. Then, on April 14, 1960, Berry Gordy, Jr. incorporated the Motown Record Corporation, and that same year the company had its first number 1 R&B hit, the Miracles, “Shop Around.”

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Photo: Seen at a Detroit nightclub in 1964 are, from L to R, Levi Stubbs of The Four Tops, Motown songwriter/producer Ivy Jo Hunter, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, with musicians Dan Turner on sax and James Jamerson on bass. Private Collection.

Photo: With The Supremes, Berry Gordy hails members of the Motown house band, at left, and his Holland/Dozier/Holland hitmakers, in December 1965. LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division [LC-L901A- 65-26- 16-VVV, no. 10]

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

Downtown Legend, Writer & Renegade Glenn O’Brien Dies at 70

Posted on April 7, 2017

Photo: Glenn O’Brien. Photo by Robin Marchant/Getty Images.

“Andy Warhol died 30 years ago today. I remember thinking “who’s opinion will I care about now?” and I still don’t know. I hope to become more like him every day. He was and always will be my (dear) boss,” Glenn O’Brien wrote six weeks ago in what would prove to be his final Instagram post. He died today at the age of 70.

Writer. Editor. Renegade. Glenn O’Brien might be best known as “The Style Guy” at GQ magazine, but to those who lived and loved below 14th Street, he will always be so much more than that.

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Categories: Art, Books, Crave, Manhattan

#AiWeiwei at the Museum of Contemporary Photography

Posted on April 7, 2017

Photo: Ai Weiwei, Study of Perspective, 1995-2011, White House, Washington D.C., USA, 1995, color photograph.

“Art is not an end but a beginning,” Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei observes, giving voice to the visual world that, at its very best best, sparks new ideas, experiences, emotions, and above all—dialogue. Art is a firestarter. It provides new perspectives and fresh ways of seeing the world, transcending the limitations of time, space, language, and borders. Art is not content with the status quo; it will upend all expectation in search of the unknown.

This has been Ai Weiwei’s journey his entire life—a process that began when his father, Ai Qing, was determined to be an enemy of the state for speaking out against the government in 1957. The family was exiled to a labor camp in the remote province of Xinjang when Ai Weiwei was just one year old, and his earliest years were spent bearing witness to the consequences of speaking truth to power. Rather than cower in the face of state-sponsored oppression, the experience emboldened Ai Weiwei, who has since committed his life and his practice to speaking out against the abuses of the government.

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