Posts from the “Exhibitions” Category

Elaine Mayes: Summer of Love

Posted on June 7, 2017

Photo: Elaine Mayes, Rebel, 25, Golden Gate Park, 1968, vintage gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 inches.

In the summer of 1967, some 100,000 people descended upon the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco to come together as one. Inspired by the Beat Generation of the 1950s who had taken to North Beach, a new wave of nonconformists embraced the counterculture vibes of the times, embracing the ethos of the hippie movement, first espoused by Timothy Leary earlier that year at the Human Be-In at Golden Gate Park with the words, “Turn on, tune in, drop out.”

The Summer of Love, as it came to be known, as a natural extension of the Human Be-In, which embraced the principle of “sex, drug, and rock and roll.” In the face of violence and destruction that raged overseas in the Vietnam War and here at home with the Civil Rights Movement, the hippies sought to take a stand against the system through the message of peace and love.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

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

Kehinde Wiley: Trickster

Posted on June 6, 2017

Artwork: “Portrait of Rashid Johnson and Sanford Biggers, The Ambassadors”, 2017 oil on canvas painting: 120 5/16 x 85 5/8 inches (305.6 x 217.5 cm) framed: 131 5/16 x 96 11/16 x 4 ½ inches (333.5 x 245.6 x 11.4 cm). © Kehinde Wiley, courtesy Sean Kelly, New York

The Trickster exists in different cultures around the globe: the wily shapeshifter with the power to transform the way we see the world. As an archetype, The Trickster can be found in any walk of life where people must operate according to more than one set of rules, moving seamlessly between the appearance of things and the underlying truth.

Artists know this realm well for they are consigned to delve deep below the surface and manifest what they find. Yet their discoveries are not necessarily in line with the status quo; more often than not, they will upset polite society and upend respectability politics by speaking truth to power – quite literally.

In the United States, African Americans know this well. Throughout the course of the nation’s history, they have been forced to deal with systemic oppression and abuse in a culture filled with double speak that began with the words “All men are created equal,” penned in the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson, a man who kept his own children as slaves until his death.

Throughout his career, artist Kehinde Wiley has moved smoothly between spheres of influence, using the canon of Western art as a tool of subversion, celebration, and recognition for those who have long been excluded from the narrative. “History is written by the victors,” Winston Churchill said, reminding us that now is the time to reclaim that which belongs to us.

In Trickster, a new exhibition of work currently on view at Sean Kelly, Gallery, through June 17, 2017, New York, Wiley honors his contemporaries who walk his same path, creating a series of portraits of extraordinary black artists including Derrick Adams, Sanford Biggers, Nick Cave, Rashid Johnson, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, Yinka Shonibare, Mickalene Thomas, Hank Willis Thomas, Carrie Mae Weems, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

Using Francisco Goya’s infamous Black Paintings as the departure point, Wiley puts blackness front and centre, operating on several levels simultaneously. Below, he speaks to us about this work, revealing the power and courage it takes to go beyond the known.

Read the Full Story at Dazed Digital

Artwork: Kehinde Wiley, “Portrait of Wangechi Mutu, Mamiwata” © Kehinde Wiley, courtesy Sean Kelly, New York

Artwork: “Portrait of Nick Cave, Nadezhda Polovtseva”, 2017 oil on canvas painting: 120 5/16 x 81 ¾ inches (305.6 x 207.6 cm) framed: 131 5/16 x 92 ¾ x 4 ½ inches (333.5 x 235.6 x 11.4 cm). © Kehinde Wiley, courtesy Sean Kelly, New York

Categories: Art, Dazed, Exhibitions, Painting

Inbox: Charles Atlas: The Illusion of Democracy

Posted on June 3, 2017

Artwork: Inbox: Charles Atlas, courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Groundbreaking filmmaker and video artist Charles Atlas (American, b.1949) has established himself at the forefront of the avant-garde over the past 40 years by collaborating with luminaries across the disciplines of visual art, dance, music, theater, and television.

He arrived in New York via St. Louis, MI, in 1970 at the age of 20, with dreams of becoming a filmmaker working during a period that gave birth to some of the cinema’s greatest revolutionaries. He got a job working with the legendary Merce Cunningham Dance Company, first as assistant stage manager and then becoming a lighting designer.

By 1974, he was the company’s filmmaker-in-residence, acquiring a Super 8 movie camera and setting out to create unedited filmic works. Soon Atlas and Cunningham began to create “media-dance,” a partnership between the camera and the performer where they move together for a series of dance performances designed specifically for film—absorbing many of the lessons that Marcel Duchamp introduced earlier in the century.

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Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions

Charlie Ahearn Ft. Grand Wizzard Theodore: Scratch Ecstasy

Posted on June 1, 2017

Photo: Charlie Ahearn, DJ AJ 2 from the series Scratch Ecstasy, 1980. © the artist and courtesy P.P.O.W.

Hip Hop came of age inside the cinderblock walls of the Ecstasy Garage Disco in the Boogie Down Bronx. By 1980, it was the place to be as the flyest DJs and MCs honed their skills among their peers. In tribute, filmmaker Charlie Ahearn has teamed up with Grand Wizzard Theodore, inventor of the scratch, to recreate their weekly slide show as the centerpiece of Ahearn’s exhibition Scratch Ecstasy, currently on view at P.P.O.W. Gallery. Miss Rosen, who worked with Ahearn on his 2007 book, Wild Style: The Sampler, speaks with Ahearn and Theodore about the interplay between sight and sound in the development of Hip-Hop culture during its formative years.

Read the Full Story at Aperture Online

Photo: Charlie Ahearn, Scratch DJ from the series Scratch Ecstasy, 1980. © the artist and courtesy P.P.O.W.

Photo: Charlie Ahearn, Funky Four in their Bronx neighborhood from the series Scratch Ecstasy, 1980. © the artist and courtesy P.P.O.W.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Aperture, Art, Bronx, Exhibitions, Music, Photography

Irving Penn: Centennial

Posted on May 30, 2017

Photo: Irving Penn, American, Plainfield, New Jersey, 1917–2009, New York. Three Asaro Mud Men, New Guinea, 1970, printed 1976 Platinum-palladium print. Image: 20 1/8 x 19 1/2 in. (51.1 x 49.6 cm.) Sheet: 24 15/16 x 22 1/16 in. (63.3 x 56 cm.) Mount: 26 1/16 x 22 1/16 in. (66.2 x 56 cm.) Overall: 26 1/16 x 22 1/16 in. (66.2 x 56 cm.) Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation IP .154

“Photography is just the present stage of man’s visual history,” Irving Penn (1917-2009) sagely observed, recognizing the infinite possibilities of the human animal to create technology that would advance our ability to document, represent, and re-envision the world. As a master of the form, Penn understood that the only thing that limits us is imagination.

For seven decades he worked, becoming a master of studio photography with the ability to craft pictures of anything he wished. Here was a man who could transform his very first commission for Jell-o pudding into a resounding success, even though, as Penn realized, it was, “a abstract nothing, it’s just a blob of ectoplasm.”

Yet with that formless glob of goop crafted in a laboratory, Penn was able to entice consumers to buy and serve the product en masse. It’s precisely this ability to transcend the particulars that made Penn a master of whatever form he chose to shoot, be in portraits, fashion, still life, food, nudes, or flowers. He understood that the photograph was an invitation to engage, to gaze upon the world without actually having to interact with it.

Through the safety of distance in time and space, Penn asked us to look at the complex and extraordinary beauty of existence in its many forms, whether Miles Davis’ hand, the Asaro Mud Men of New Guinea, or the curious silhouettes of Japanese designer Issey Miyake.

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Irving Penn, American, Plainfield, New Jersey, 1917–2009, New York. Two Miyake Warriors, New York. June 3, 1998, printed January-February, 1999. Platinum-palladium print. Image: 21 x 19 5/8 in. (53.4 x 49.8 cm.) Sheet: 23 1/4 x 21 9/16 in. (59 x 54.7 cm.) Mount: 23 1/4 x 21 9/16 in. (59 x 54.7 cm.) Overall: 23 1/4 x 21 9/16 in. (59 x 54.7 cm.) Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation IP .166

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot, Photography

Larry Sultan: Here and Home

Posted on May 26, 2017

Photo: Larry Sultan, Business Page, from the series Pictures From Home, 1985; chromogenic print. © Estate of Larry Sultan. Photos courtesy Casemore Kirkeby and Estate of Larry Sultan.

Home is a state of mind as much as it is a place. For some it can be a four-letter word of the very worst kind—or it can be synonymous with love. Home can be so many things, all of them deeply personal.

For photographer Larry Sultan (1946-2009), home was where he created work, lush images of suburban California that are as American as Hostess cupcakes. There’s something delightfully unnatural about it all, something that comforts us with soothing visions of a naïve faith in the possibilities of the contrived. Here, the element of control reveals itself, that deeply seductive belief that we run this.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Photo: Larry Sultan, Practicing Golf Swing, from the series Pictures from Home, 1986; chromogenic print. © Estate of Larry Sultan. Photos courtesy Casemore Kirkeby and Estate of Larry Sultan.

Photo: Larry Sultan, My Mother Posing for Me, from the series Pictures From Home, 1984; chromogenic print. © Estate of Larry Sultan. Photos courtesy Casemore Kirkeby and Estate of Larry Sultan.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot, Photography

Art/Africa: A Nouvel Atelier

Posted on May 25, 2017

Artwork: Kudzanai Chiurai. Revelations V. 145 x 200 cm. 2011. © Kudzanai Chiurai © Courtesy de l’artiste et Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris et Marian Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg.

In recent years, the arts of Africa have taken the world stage by storm as the diverse peoples and cultures of the continent offer a distinctive vantage point and approach to creativity that is as singular as it is breathtaking. In celebration of the diverse arts of the land, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, presents Art/Africa, le nouvel atelier, a series of three exhibitions currently on view now through August 28, 2017.

Art/Africa looks at the response of artists to the movements of the past fifty years, as independence from imperialist powers restored self-determination and freedom to the peoples whose homelands had been occupied by foreign invaders for centuries. The works look at the responses to colonialism, apartheid, issues of gender, family, and identity, and activism.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Artwork: Moké. Skol Primus. 177 x 131 cm. 1991. © Moké © Courtesy CAAC – The Pigozzi Collection.

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

Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends

Posted on May 17, 2017

Artwork: Robert Rauschenberg. Poster for ROCI Cuba (Museo Nacional site), 1988. All offset lithograph, ranging from 34 1/2 in. (87.6 cm) to 38 3/8 in. (97.5 cm) high and from 23 3/4 (60.3 cm) to 24 1/4 in. (61.6 cm) wide), ROCI Cuba: silk-screen and offset lithograph on foil paper. Printer: Universal Limited Art Editions, West Islip, New York. Edition: unnumbered. Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York. © 2017 Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

Born Milton Ernest Rauschenberg in Port Arthur, Texas, in 1925, Rauschenberg adopted the name “Bob.” But word has it that the art world, so enamored with his revolutionary approach and groundbreaking aesthetic, refused to address him so casually and simply re-named him “Robert.”

This anecdote perfectly encapsulates the chasm between Rauschenberg’s work and how it was received. The artist, sometimes called a “Neo Dadaist,” was inherently subversive. He observed, “Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in the gap between the two.)”

This gap was one first illuminated in the work of Marcel Duchamp, who introduced a urinal to the art world and called it “Fountain,” literally taking the piss out of the self-important bourgeois notions of art. In 1961, Rauschenberg made his move when he was invited to submit a portrait of Iris Clert, that was to be included in an exhibition at her Paris gallery. In a truly unbothered move, he sent a telegram stating, “This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so.”

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Artwork: Robert Rauschenberg. Overdrive. 1963. Oil and silkscreen ink on canvas. 84 x 60 inches. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Promised gift of Glenn and Eva Dubin © 2017 Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

Artwork: Rauschenberg in his Pearl Street studio, New York, March 1958. Works, left to right: Charlene (1954), Untitled (c. 1954), and a partial rear view of the second state of Monogram (1955–59, second state 1956–58). Photographer: Dan Budnik. Courtesy Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, New York. © Dan Budnik, all rights reserved

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

Martha Cooper at Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

Posted on May 16, 2017

Photographer Martha Cooper has always lived life on her own term. After graduating high school at 16 and Grinnell College at 19, the Baltimore-native decided to see the world so she joined the Peace Corps and traveled to Thailand, where she taught English for a spell. Then she hopped on a motorcycle and hightailed it from Bangkok to London, taking all along the way.

She received a diploma in anthropology from Oxford, which speaks to her truest sensibilities: her passion for documenting the creative fruits of the human experience. In her hands, the camera is not merely a tool to create an image for aesthetic pleasure, it does something more; it bears witness to a time and place that is inherently ephemeral: street art and culture, which is inherently urban folk art.

In 1970, Cooper found herself walking along a street in Tokyo when she spotted a man in a crowd. On his back was a Japanese tattoo, with figures drawn in the style of a woodblock print. Entranced, Cooper followed him until he disappeared, then began asking her friend about tattoos—a touchy subject. Tattooing had been outlawed in 1872, then legalized again in 1948, then quickly became a status symbol for the yakuza and the Japanese underworld. But Cooper is not one to give up when she has her sights set, and so she pursued her quest to completion: entrance to the studio of Horibun I, a tattoo master.

It is here, in his studio that Cooper made the photographs that comprise the earliest work in the exhibition Martha Cooper, currently on view at Steven Kasher Gallery, New York, through June 3, 2017.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Bronx, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot, Graffiti, Manhattan, Photography

Alice Neel: Uptown

Posted on May 16, 2017

Artwork: Building in Harlem, c. 1945. Oil on canvas. © The Estate of Alice Neel. Courtesy David Zwirner Books and Victoria Miro.

Artwork: The Black Boys, 1967. Oil on canvas. The Tia Collection. © The Estate of Alice Neel. Courtesy David Zwirner Books and Victoria Miro.

Alice Neel’s New York is disappearing—but it is not yet gone. It lives in the spirit and the souls of those who persevere against all odds. Like the artist herself, the New York she once loved was made up of people who triumphed over tragedy, trauma, and loss. Perhaps her personal struggles imbued her with a profound empathy to those she painted with exquisite sensitivity and feeling, capturing the depths of their humanity.

This month, Alice Neel, Uptown (David Zwirner Books/Victoria Miro), a new book authored by Pulitzer Prize winning critic Hilton Als, looks at the portraits the artist made while living in Spanish Harlem and the Upper West Side throughout the twentieth century. The book is published in conjunction with an exhibition of the work opening at Victoria Miro Gallery, London, on May 18 after debuting earlier this year to critical acclaim at David Zwirner in New York.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Artwork: The Spanish Family, 1943. Oil on canvas. © The Estate of Alice Neel. Courtesy David Zwirner Books and Victoria Miro.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Painting

Robin Schartz: Like Us

Posted on May 12, 2017

Photo: Robin Schwartz, Charlie, 1988, Chimpanzee, female, 5 years old, Copyright Robin Schwartz.

Last month, The New Indian Express recently reported the capture of a young girl who had been living with a troop of monkeys in the jungles of Katrraniyaghat, India. The world press went wild for the story of a feral child, with visions of Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli dancing in their prose.

“She behaves like an ape and screams loudly if doctors try to reach out to her,” says Dr. DK Singh, chief medical superintendent, Bahraich District Hospital, told the newspaper, adding that she walks, eats, and sits like monkeys.

But the fantastical tale was short-lived as The Washington Post soon reported that the girl had been abandoned a mere hours or days before being recovered. It has been suggested her parents left her near an outpost, forsaking an unwanted daughter in a society that prized sons.

Invariably, what occurred speaks to a distinctly human trait: a complete lack of interest in viable offspring, discarded and left for death because the gender has been so degraded by the society in which it exists. What’s telling is that this aspect of the story was disregarded in favor of playing up unfounded rumors of interspecies relationships.

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