Posts from the “Exhibitions” Category

Hamidou Maiga

Posted on September 5, 2016

Photo: Untitled, 1973. © Hamidou Maiga, courtesy of Jack Bell Gallery.

Contemporary African art has come to the fore, giving us exquisite insights into the intricacies, nuances, and aesthetics of the oldest peoples on earth. But Africa is not a country; it is a continent as rich and diverse as the DNA of the peoples, who possess the greatest variety in the world. Its arts reflect this in whatever form they may take, providing poetic and philosophical vantage points by which we may consider a wide array of experiences.

Photography has been an integral part of the aesthetic landscape since its inception in the nineteenth century. Throughout the twentieth-century we have seen portrait photographers such as Malick Sidibé amd Seydou Keita rise in prominence, such is the power of their work to capture the soul of Mali on silver gelatin paper.

Their success and influence has become a tremendous draw to other great portrait photographers working in other countries. MATE – Museo Mario Testino, Lima, Peru, is particularly attuned to the great photographers of our time. For the third edition of Maestros se la Fotografía, MATE presents Hamidou Maiga, on view now through October 2, 2016. The exhibition features a selection of 36 black-and-white photographs made by the 84 year-old artist made between 1962–1973.

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Photo: Untitled, 1973. © Hamidou Maiga, courtesy of Jack Bell Gallery.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Africa, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Latin America, Photography

Paulette Tavormina: Seizing Beauty

Posted on September 5, 2016

Photo: Vanitas VI, Reliquary, After D.B., 2015, Digital pigment print, 1/7, 24 x 24 inches. © Paulette Tavormina, American, born in 1949, courtest of Snite Art Museum at the University of Notre Dame.

The still life is one of the most bourgeois genres of art. Embracing the conventional attitudes that equate materialism with success, the still life most commonly depicts commonplace objects from the man-made and natural worlds. In doing so, it takes objectification to the next level. Rather than turn a living being into an object, it invokes the reverse. Perhaps it might be perverse to fetishize an object to the point of giving it “life” through the application of modes of painting that are designed to seduce the eye, the heart, and the mind.

Although still lifes first appeared in ancient Greco-Roman art, they went dormant for well over 1,500 years before arising anew in the lowlands of Europe during the sixteenth century at the very time a new merchant class was coming to the fore. As this small but prosperous middle class began to assert it’s self, it found solace in contemplation of the world it knew best. The very idea of elevating the commonplace objects of life to the veneration of art, once reserved for the church and state, is bourgeois at its core.

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Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Art AIDS America

Posted on September 2, 2016

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There is something terrifying about the speed at which people forget a genocide that swept the globe and wiped away a generation. Perhaps it is the nature of trauma itself; once the emergency lets up, the mind just wants to forget. You want to move on, you want to breathe, you want to live—because so many no longer do and there’s no way to make sense of it. Why him? Why her? Why not me? These questions cannot be answered in the moment. We simply need to be.

In 1981, the public reports began to hit the United States. A new disease was ravaging immune systems, causing violent, early deaths—but what was it? The U.S. Centers for Disease Control did not have a name; they referred to it by the various manifestations the virus took in those grueling early days. The CDC thought they were clever in calling it “the 4H disease,” since the syndrome was most commonly observed in heroin users, male homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and Haitians. But that failed miserably. Not only was it stigmatizing already marginalized groups but it was steeped in ignorance.

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

Vision and Justice: The Art of Citizenship

Posted on August 29, 2016

Kara Walker, African/American, 1998. Linocut. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Margaret Fisher Fund, M24376. © Kara Walker, Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York. Photo: Harvard Art Museums, © President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Over 150 years ago, during the Civil War, the great American abolitionist Frederick Douglass gave a speech titled “Pictures and Progress,” which spoke to the ways in which images shaped our understanding of life. Douglass was speaking at a time when photography had just arrived, creating a type of immediacy comparable to the revolution of the Digital Age. With the advent of photography, the ability to capture moments from life and reproduce them en masse imbued this brand new medium with a superpower: the ability to become agents of justice.

Whereas art had been used as a tool of the upper class, photography leveled the playing field by becoming the first democratic art to find itself in the hands of the people. Anything and anyone could become a subject in its own right, including facts that had been hidden from plain sight. Images have the ability to convey meaning and understanding in ways that words never could, for “seeing is believing,” as the old saying goes. As it turns out, this applies to both first and secondhand experiences. Images have the ability to bear witness and speak truth to power, to right the wrongs of injustice and become a vehicle for change.

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Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott

Posted on August 25, 2016

Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006). Husband and Wife, Sunday Morning, Detroit, Michigan, 1950. Gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 in. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Gift of The Gordon Parks Foundation

The U.S. Army established Fort Scott in 1842, as they began crossing expanding the nation’s boundaries by expanding onto Native American territory. It was officially laid out as a town in 1857, during a period of violent unrest infamously known as “Bleeding Kansas.” Prior to the Kansas’s admission as a free state to the Union in 1861, abolitionist and pro-slavery factions violently fought for control. Throughout the Civil War, the conflict blazed, but the war settled things and Fort Scott became one of the premier cities on the American frontier in the years leading up to the turn of the twentieth century.

Although Kansas was always a free state, it was among 35 states in the nation to put Jim Crow laws on the books following the Civil War. Once again Kansas found itself at the center of national conflict, as its segregation laws focused on education, requiring separate schools for black students. It was not until 1954, with Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (Kansas) that the policy of “separate but equal” was declared unconstitutional.

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Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Kerry James Marshall: Mastry

Posted on August 24, 2016

Artwork: Kerry James Marshall, Untitled, 2009. Acrylic on PVC panel. 61 1/8 x 72 7/8 x 3 7/8 in. Yale University Art Gallery, Purchased with the Janet and Simeon Braguin Fund and a gift from Jacqueline L. Bradley, B.A. 1979.

Artist Kerry James Marshall’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. 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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Kerry James Marshall, Better Homes, Better Gardens, 1994. Denver Art Museum Collection: Funds from Polly and Mark Addison, the Alliance for Contemporary Art, Caroline Morgan, and Colorado Contemporary Collectors: Suzanne Farver, Linda and Ken Heller, Jan and Frederick Mayer, Beverly and Bernard Rosen, Annalee and Wagner Schorr, and anonymous donors. © Kerry James Marshall. Photo courtesy of the Denver Art Museum.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions

“Made You Look” at The Photographers’ Gallery

Posted on August 10, 2016

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Sartorial style and splendor is synonymous with black culture. No matter where you go on this earth, rest assured the men and women of African descent have are freshly dressed, so much so others are quick to knock it off, as though copying was not a cardinal sin. Such are the perils of creativity: not everyone can be an originator or a pioneer. But for those who are, one thing is clear. The attention never stops. The heads will turn, the jaws will drop, and the tongues with clack because invariably style dominates.

The Photographers’ Gallery, London, understands this and present Made You Look: Dandyism and Black Masculinity now through September 25, 2016. Curated by Ekow Eshun, the exhibition features works from taken from artists working around the world over the course of the past century, Starting with a rare series of outdoor studio prints made in 1904 from the Larry Dunstam Archive, thought to be taken in Senegal. Taken more than a century ago, the young men are nattily dressed in the latest European clothes, belying a love for the three-piece suit and accessories.

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

William Eggleston Portraits

Posted on August 10, 2016

Photo: Untitled, 1974 (Karen Chatham, left, with the artist’s cousin Lesa Aldridge, in Memphis, Tennessee) by William Eggleston, 1974 Wilson Centre for Photography

American photographer William Eggleston (b. 1939) is deeply attuned to the poetry of life, to the spaces in between the words that bridge mind, body, and soul. His photographs are alive with great swaths of color and mood, of atmosphere and feeling that goes beyond words. They are fragments spun in the web of time, captured by Eggleston with a precision that belies his mastery of the medium.

In celebration, the National Portrait Gallery, London, presents William Eggleston Portraits, the first comprehensive museum exhibition of his work, on view now through October 23, 2016. Showcasing over 100 works, the show features portraits of Eggleston’s friends, musicians, actors and rarely seen images of his family, revealing for the first time the identities of many of the sitters who had previously been anonymous.

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

Into the Groove: The Jazz Portraits of Herman Leonard

Posted on August 5, 2016

Photo: Duke Ellington by Herman Leonard. Gelatin silver print, 1958. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution © Herman Leonard Photography, LLC.

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit and laid to waste so many lives in the city of New Orleans. The home and studio of photographer Herman Leonard (1923–2010) was destroyed when the 17th Canal Levee broke near his home. The storm claimed 8,000 silver gelatin prints Leonard had made; fortunately, Herman’s crew had gathered the negatives and placed them in the care of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. But Leonard’s time in New Orleans had come to a close after nearly a quarter of a century on the local jazz and blues scene. Leonard relocated to Studio City, California, where he spent his final years re-establishing his business.

And what a business it was. Leonard recounted his early years in an interview with JazzWax, recalling, “I opened my first studio on Sullivan Street in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1948. I worked free-lance for magazines and spent my spare time at places like the Royal Roost and Birdland. I did this because I loved the music. I couldn’t wait to be with Lester Young at a club and hear him and photograph him playing his music. I hoped that on film I could preserve what I heard. It didn’t hurt that I got into the clubs for free. My photographs helped publicize the clubs, so owners let me in.”

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Photo: Billie Holiday by Herman Leonard. Gelatin silver print, 1949. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution © Herman Leonard Photography, LLC.
Read more at http://www.craveonline.com/art/1017217-jazz-king-photographs-herman-leonard-national-portrait-gallery#tz6wkDjUMWC5zHPO.99

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

London’s Burning: “PUNK” Returns to King’s Road

Posted on August 1, 2016

Photo: Steve Havoc, Siouxsie Sioux, ‘Debbie’, 1970s. © Ray Stevenson. Courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery.

Picture it: King’s Road, London. 1971. Malcolm McLaren starts a shop called Let It Rock, featuring clothes designed by his then-girlfriend, Vivienne Westwood. It was a period piece. The pink signage and “Odeon” wallpaper was designed to put you in the mood to purchase drape jackets, tight pants, and creepers. Needless to say it was here today, gone by 1973, when the show as renamed Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die, as the dynamic duo updated the look to early ‘60s rocker styles that came and went, until they found their truth living in the present tense: SEX.

It got your attention. Loud and clear. The word “SEX” was written in pink foam letters that ran four feet high above the door, the walls covered in graffiti from SCUM Manifesto and chickenwire. Inside was another world, all red carpeting and rubber curtains, fetish and bondage gear. It was just the sort of affront that McLaren enjoyed, while also being a proper honey trap. The shop became the spot for London’s Blight Young Things.

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

Books | Ridinghouse Presents Linder

Posted on July 30, 2016

Linder Against Interpretation, 2012 Duratrans on lightbox 168.8 x 125.8 cm | 66 1/2 x 49 1/2 ins Edition of 3 plus 1 AP

Linder Sterling makes some of the most extraordinary photomontages the world has ever seen, creating a delectable body of work exploring representations of female sexuality. Equal parts cheeky and chic, Linder puts the sexy back in soft focus centerfolds, while giggling all the way to the bank. By taking pre-existing soft-focus pornography and combining it with flora, fauna, food items (really anything of the sort that conveys the desire to acquire, to have and to hold), Linder reminds us that the image of women is very much a construction for consumption itself. What’s endlessly charming is the simple fact that Linder simultaneously indulges our consumption of this construction while simultaneously deconstructing it. In celebration of a career that spans four decades, the artist has released a sumptuous monograph with 270 pages of pure pleasure. Linder (Ridinghouse) features numerous series made throughout her career, along with a series of interviews that gives insight into mind behind the work.

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Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Exhibitions