Posts from the “Crave” Category

Eternal Youth

Posted on March 15, 2017

Photo: Larry Clark American, b. 1943 Untitled (KIDS) 1995 Chromogenic development print 16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8 cm) Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Gift from The Howard and Donna Stone Collection 2002.16.8 Photo: Michal Raz-Russo, © MCA Chicago

When Larry Clark released Kids in 1995, he set the silver screen ablaze with his vision of New York City youth as it tore itself apart through sex, drugs, and manipulation. He thrust a new cast of characters onto the world stage, taking us through a day in the life of a group of kids who embodied a combination of sexual precociousness and racial dysmorphia.

Kids was designed to wreak havoc and cause fright, playing with paranoid fears of HIV in a new generation of adolescents coming up just a few years after the disease had decimated a generation right before their eyes. In the ‘80s and ‘90s sex did not create life; it created a death sentence from which there was no recourse at that time. In light of this apocalyptic vibe, the film embodied fully embodied the nihilistic existentialist crisis of the times. Not surprisingly, not everyone in the cast survived. Two of the film’s biggest stars Justin Pierce and Harold Hunter would die young—while Chloe Sevigny and Rosario Dawson would go on to become Hollywood stars.

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

Digging in the Crates for the Best “Art Record Covers” Ever Made

Posted on March 14, 2017

art: Takashi Murakami / music: Kanye West / record: Graduation / year: 2007 / label: Roc-A-Fella Records / format: Album 2×12 ̋, CD / artwork: Digital compositing

Once upon a time, just a couple of decades ago, new albums used to be released on vinyl, which was carefully stored inside 12 x 12 inch record sleeves. In the days before video killed the radio star, all you’d have available was what you held in your hands. You’d pop the record on the turntable, drop the needle and then sit back, gazing upon the album cover searching for some sort of understanding.

There was something profound about the simplicity of it all, the single image becoming an icon all its own. Sight and sound complemented each other, like yin and yang, striking the perfect balance of substance and style. Then, everything began to change. The record gave way to the CD and the image scaled down tremendously. But that was nothing compared to the current lay of the land, where the album cover appears as a thumbnail image in the upper half of our smart phone.

If you missed it, c’est la vie. Times change, invariably. But if you miss it, and you want that good thing back, Taschen has just released Art Record Covers, a 448-page compendium of the finest collaborations between musicians and artists. Edited by Francesco Spampinato and Julius Wiedemann, the book is perfectly sized at 12 x 12 inches, capturing and recreating the visual impact each image once possessed.

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art: Andy Warhol / music: The Velvet Underground and Nico / record: The Velvet Underground and Nico / year: 1967 / label: Verve Records / format: Album 12 ̋ / artwork: Screen print / special: Vinyl released with three variations of front cover with banana sticker to peel off

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

Welcome to “The Walled Off Hotel”

Posted on March 10, 2017

Photo: Courtesy of The Walled Off Hotel

In the heart of Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, British artist Banksy introduces The Walled Off Hotel. Located in Occupied Palestine Territories, just 13 feet away from the controversial 30-foot concrete barrier wall erected by Israel, known among the Palestinian population as the Apartheid Wall, each of the ten rooms has what Banksy describes as “the worst view of any hotel in the world,” and receives just 25 minutes of sunlight as day.

The Walled Off Hotel, which officially opens to the public on Saturday, March 11, fuses the realms of art, politics, hospitality, and tourism, all under one roof. While the website asks for a $1,000 security deposit, the rooms themselves straddle the class divide. High rollers can enjoy the lavish presidential suite while the more budget-conscious can enjoy a stay in the bunk beds recovered from abandoned army barracks.

“Walls are hot right now, but I was into them long before Trump made it cool,” Banksy announced in a statement. The artist, who rose to fame and wealth as a street artist, has long used public walls as a space for political comment. He has previously painted scenes on the Palestinian side of the barrier wall, revealing his empathy for the people forced to live under apartheid.

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Photo: Courtesy of The Walled Off Hotel

Categories: Art, Crave

The Rivington School: 80s New York Underground

Posted on March 9, 2017

Photo: The Rivington Garden as monument signalled the victorious end of art in the Lower East Side, 1987. Photo by Andre Laredo. ©2016 Black Dog Publishing Limited, the artist and authors. All rights reserved.

Back in the 1970s, the Lower East Side of New York City had been devastated by the government policy of “benign neglect,” which denied basic services to the community. Fires had destroyed buildings reducing them to rubble leaving vacant lots in their wake, while other buildings were abandoned and reclaimed by squatters, creating a new community born out of resilience and necessity.

By the 1980s, a subculture was finding its way through acts of outlaw art. “Cowboy” Ray Kelly, founder of the No Se No Social Club, cultivated a space where patrons could express themselves in any way they wished. It was a space unlike any other in the city that combined the performance art with bar life to spectacular effect.

From this world, the Rivington School came forth, an outdoor guerilla art gallery located across the street from No Se No, on the corner of Rivington and Forsyth Streets. The Rivington Sculpture Garden, which opened in 1985, began as a memorial to Geronimo, a homeless Puerto Rican man who died that year. It quickly developed into a space for exhibitions, concerts, performances, and festivals, taking the D.I.Y. approach to making art. Anyone could do anything they liked and they did, effectively sharpening the cutting-edge.

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

Kerry James Marshall: Mastry Makes It’s Final Stop at MOCA LA

Posted on March 6, 2017

Artwork: Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (Painter), 2009, acrylic on PVC, 44 5/8 x 43 1/8 x 3 7/8 in., collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, gift of Katherine S. Schamberg by exchange, photo by Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

Kerry James Marshall: Mastry makes the final stop on its three-city tour at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, this March after debuting at the MCA Chicago and traveling to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Named the best exhibition of 2016 by The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, The Telegraph, Hyperallergic, and Crave, Mastry presents a 35-year retrospective of the work of Kerry James Marshall, one of the greatest living painters of our time.

Marshal’s life traces the course of American history over the second half of the twentieth century. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955, Marshall spent his earliest years deep in the heart of Dixie where Jim Crow laws were enforced with a vengeance. In 1963, his family moved to South Central Los Angeles, where the Watts riots would pop off just two years later.

While the Civil Rights and Black Power movements took hold of national consciousness, Marshall focused his talents of the depiction of African American identity, experience, and consciousness. As a young artist, Marshall committed himself to painting black figures exclusively, seeking to redress their absence from the canon of Western art. Deftly translating the unique space that Black America holds, Marshall is driven by passion to render what has been erased visible. In doing so, he sets the record straight, restoring to not only America but the to the world what had been taken from it.

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Artwork: Kerry James Marshall, Slow Dance, 1992-93, mixed media and acrylic on canvas, unframed: 75-1/4 x 74-1/4 in., lent by the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago; Purchase, Smart Family Foundation Fund for Contemporary Art, and Paul and Miriam Kirkley Fund for Acquisitions, photograph ©2015 courtesy of The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago

Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Painting

The Armory Show 2017

Posted on March 5, 2017

Martin Wong, Golden State MKT (storefront)_ 1974_16.25×20.25×1.25 (small). Courtesy of P.P.O.W.

The 2017 edition of The Armory Show was a tremendous success, a testament to the vision of returning director Benjamin Genocchio for his second year. Taking a fresh approach to a traditional, somewhat stale format, Genocchio too the proverbial bull by the horns this year, doing away with the contemporary/modern division that has come to define previous editions of the fair. With the addition of new windows to allow in more light, wider aisles, and more spacious booths, the new layout has an open, luxurious feeling that gives it a more leisurely feel.

With a number of galleries showing single-artist booths, the result was a cohesive presentation of the crème de la crème in the art world. The VIP preview was packed with collectors and celebrities, including Sofia Coppola, Anderson Cooper, John McEnroe, Larry Warsh, Don Rubell, and Marty Margulies, among many others.

Art fairs have become a global industry and they are watched assiduously as thermostats for both creativity and sales. Above all, art fairs are evidence of our times; what happens here helps to set the bar for trends in the market.

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“Head Chief and Young Mule Affair-Lame Deer, MT, September 13th 1890 (killing of Hugh Boyle)”, Cheyenne, ca. 1890-95, tanned elk hide, pigment, width: 59”, height: 47 ½”. Courtesy of Donald Ellis Gallery

Categories: 1970s, Crave, Exhibitions

“Criminal Minded” Celebrates Its 30th Anniversary

Posted on March 3, 2017

Ever since Remy Ma released “ShETHER” last week, Hip-Hop fans everywhere have gotten a taste for beef. One rap’s oldest forms, the battle raps is a fight to the finish where only the strongest survive. It’s long been a staple for the MC, who started taking out all comers to earn street cred and notoriety. Before anyone was laying down tracks on wax, MCs earned their stripes on stage in front of a live audience.

Then the game changed and artists started getting record deals. Their rhymes were preserved and distributed to the public at large. Battling took Hip Hop to new heights as the answer record, as it was called then, kept fans hype. By the mid-80s, it was a regular trend, with answer records flying back and forth. It was always personal, putting the dozens to a beat, turning the dozens into a musical art.

It wasn’t political—until Boogie Down Productions (BDP) arrived on the scene, changing the rap game forever with the March 3, 1987, release of Criminal Minded, their debut album. Comprised of KRS-One, Scott La Rock, and Ced-Gee, BDP came out with both barrel blazing, firing off rounds at Queens natives MC Shan and the Juice Crew with “South Bronx” and “The Bridge is Over.”

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Categories: 1980s, Bronx, Crave, Music

Muhammad Ali, LeRoy Neiman and The Art of Boxing

Posted on March 2, 2017

Artwork: LeRoy Neiman. Round 2, February 25, 1964. Mixed media and collage on paper.. Courtesy LeRoy Neiman Foundation

Muhammad Ali and LeRoy Neiman were a match made in heaven. When the two met here on earth, they changed the art of boxing forever. A new exhibition, Muhammad Ali, LeRoy Neiman, and the Art of Boxing, currently on view at the New-York Historical Society now through March 26, 2017, celebrates their winning combination.

LeRoy Neiman (1921–2012) began working as an illustrator for Playboy in 1954, just a year after the magazine launched, becoming a seminal contributor that gave the publication its look and feel outside of the seductive photographs. Neiman’s style, which could best be described as American Impressionism, was bold, rugged, and captivating, keeping painting and drawing fresh at a time when photography was replacing illustration in the print media.

Neiman regularly covered athletic events, and in 1964, he found himself at the World Heavyweight Championship between Sonny Liston, the title-holder, and Cassius Claw, the No. 1 Contender. In his seminal volume, LeRoy Neiman Sketchbook (powerHouse Books), Neiman writes, “The two black American prizefighters were about to play out their parts as only the times could have scripted them, a good guy and a bad fut. Only who was who?”

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Artwork: LeRoy Neiman. Round 2, February 25, 1964. Mixed media and collage on paper.. Courtesy LeRoy Neiman Foundation

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Painting

Hamburger Eyes Goes Monthly

Posted on February 23, 2017

“The number one thing going for me is the email. We get so many submissions. That’s the most fun part. I’m in constant contact with people from all around the world everyday. They’re sending me photos no one has ever seen before,” Ray Potes, the publisher of Hamburger Eyes, reveals. “I feel like I’m not putting them out fast enough.”

With this great wealth of content, Potes decided to make a change. After 16 years of putting out one of the greatest photography zines ever made, he switched it up, launching Hamburger Eyes as a monthly for 2017. The first two issues (No. 24 and No. 25) officially debut at Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair from February 23–26, 2017.

Still providing the high-quality selection and sequencing of classic and cutting-edge street photography that has established the zine as the spot for fresh street photographers to come off, the monthly editions are distilled to the purest essence of the form, each featuring five artists who are given twelve pages each. All the work is black and white, creating a timeless effect, reminding us that the beautiful, strange, surreal, and silly moments of life are for the ages.

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Categories: Art, Crave, Photography

Mission Impossible! Daring Thieves Nab £2 Million Worth of Rare Books in London

Posted on February 21, 2017

Photo: Unique edition of the Codex Atlanticus as it was in the 1600. The book is a box made by Pompeo Leoni to collect all the pages. Made by Mario Taddei in the 2007. courtesy Wikimedia Commons, illustration unrelated to the theft.

In a scene befitting no less than Mission Impossible, a gang stole more than £2 million worth of antiquarian books from a warehouse in west London in a daring heist earlier this month, according to a report from The Mail on Sunday.

The three thieves broke into the warehouse by climbing up to the roof, boring holes through the reinforced glass-fiber skylights, then rappelling down 40 feet of rope while avoiding setting off motion-sensor alarms. Once inside, they took more than 160 rare books that were being held at a warehouse near Heathrow airport en route to the United States for the 50th California International Antiquarian Book Fair.

Experts suggest the thieves spent hours at the warehouse, amassing a collection of titles of tremendous historical value. The thieves could be seen on CCTV headed straight for the six sealed metal trunks containing the books, prying four open, checking the books against stock lists, and discarding any unwanted titles.

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Categories: Books, Crave

75 Years After the Japanese Internment, “Only the Oaks Remain”

Posted on February 20, 2017

Photo: Tuna Canyon Detention Center, aerial view. Courtesy of the Merrill H. Scott family.

Sunday, February 19, marked the 75^th anniversary of the Japanese internment, whereby the United States government set up ten camps during World War II to inter some 120,000 innocent Japanese American citizens and legal residents in the wake of the attack on Pearly Harbor. Each and every one of these men, women, and children were held prisoner against their will, without being charged with a crime, given a fair trial, or convicted of breaking any law.

The government, acting under the orders of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, claimed such a blatant violation of the Constitution was a measure to protect “against espionage and sabotage.” The government determined the criterion included any person with who was 1/16 Japanese or more, or any orphaned infant with so much as “one drop of Japanese blood” could be imprisoned.

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Photo: Tuna Canyon Detention Center, bunk room. Courtesy of the Merrill H. Scott family.

Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Japan, Photography