Posts from the “Graffiti” Category

Dave Schubert: Photos from the Underground

Posted on August 11, 2017

Photo: © Dave Schubert

Photo: © Dave Schubert

When Dave Schubert was six years old, his father gave him a camera – and he hasn’t put it down since. As the son of a military man and an English mod, Schubert was drawn to anti-authoritarian subcultures. He started writing graffiti after watching The Warriors and skipping school to head up to New York, where he photographed the underground skate scene at the banks by City Hall.

He started shooting for Slap magazine and realised that doing commercial work made him lose his natural instincts. In the 90s, he moved out to San Francisco to go to school and returned to the art of street photography. In the 20 years since he’s been out west, he’s seen the city transform. Once upon a time, there were gun battles right outside his door; today, Silicon Valley computer nerds rock Star Wars t-shirts at the bar.

“I’m only staying here out of spite,” Schubert laughs. “I really want to go somewhere and get my own Unabomber cabin, not be around anyone, and make prints all day long.”

That day may come but until then, Schubert shoots and scores, living as an artist on his own terms. His photographs capture the essence of rebellion, the freedom to create and destroy, the pleasures of sex, drugs, and art, and the spirit of “never say die.” He speaks with us about the pictures he’s made – and the ones that got away.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Photo: © Dave Schubert

Photo: © Dave Schubert

Categories: 1990s, Dazed, Graffiti, Photography

Martha Cooper at Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

Posted on May 16, 2017

Photo: Japanese girl with tattoo, Tokyo, 1970. © Martha Cooper.

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

Photo: Christopher Sawyer breaking, Upper West Side, NYC, 1983. © Martha Cooper.

Photo: Woman with white pants on 180th Street platform, Bronx, NYC, 1980. © Martha Cooper.

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

Most Influential Artists of the Last 20 Years

Posted on May 2, 2017

Photo: Kusama’s Peep Show or Endless Love Show, 1966. Hexagonal mirrored room and electric lights. Installed at Castellane Gallery, New York, 1966. No longer extant. Courtesy of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

“This idea of art for art’s sake is a hoax,” no less than Pablo Picasso observed, recognizing the bourgeois mentality that drove narcissistic self-indulgence into the creative process was merely fraud.

Indeed, art does not exist for itself; the greatest works are those that transform understanding into wisdom while revealing the truth of the times as not only a matter of the moment but of the underlying human condition. The best art is always one step ahead of where we find ourselves, predicting the future by bringing it to our attention today In celebration of the most influential artists of the last 20 years, Crave has compiled a list of men and women from all walks of life who work in a wide array of mediums, speaking truth to power.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: Art, Books, Brooklyn, Crave, Exhibitions, Graffiti, Japan, Painting, Photography

Wall Writers: Graffiti in Its Innocence Exhibition

Posted on April 26, 2017

Photo: COCO 144, 1974. Photo by Michael Lawrence. Courtesy Roger Gastman.

Graffiti is a basic human impulse. From the oldest known cave paintings, going back 40,000 years in the Maros region of Indonesia to a toddler in 2017 who has discovered the magic of crayons and walls, the desire to leave a mark speaks to a fundamental tool of communication. The visual and the verbal commingle and merge in its purest form, continuing to speak for the person who may since be long gone.

Graffiti, in its contemporary form, found its footing in New York and Philadelphia during the Summer of Love as the idea of writing on the wall transformed from a primitive impulse to craft an anonymous message took shape as an increasingly stylized representation of a specific personage. As it did so, it became more than act of rebellion; it became a form of art, a flourish of a handstyle that was as unique as a signature and as bold as an autograph.

The earliest practitioners of the form have been left largely to the underground, to the myths of history or fallen into the cracks of the past. As pioneers and innovators, their work could be rudimentary, as it was more invested in discovery than perfection. It wouldn’t be until the second generation came along with its top-to-bottom whole train car masterpieces that many sat up and took notice. But the first generation certainly made waves, inspiring newspaper and magazine stories, books, and later collaborations and films. But quick as they came up, they disappeared, moving on with their lives as they aged out, from boys to men.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Photo: Photograph by Jon Naar, 1973. Courtesy Roger Gastman.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Art, Crave, Graffiti, Manhattan, Photography

Ryan McGinley: The Kids Were Alright

Posted on April 24, 2017

Photo: “Red Mirror”, 1999. Courtesy Ryan McGinley and team (gallery, inc.) © Ryan McGinley.

On a chilly night back in February 2003, Ryan McGinley: The Kids Are Alright opened at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Ryan McGinley, then just 25-years-old, was the youngest artist to have a solo show in the museum’s seven decades on Madison Avenue.

I’m not entirely sure the Whitney knew what to expect, as the denizens of downtown piled into the tiny gallery. I overheard a security guard say, “Excuse me, ma’am. Do not lean against the art,” to blonde in a faux-fur coat with slurry eyes. Moments later a security guard said, The blonde shoved on, disappearing into the throngs that jostled their way in and out of the exhibition. The lurid, glamorous and grizzled characters in McGinley’s photographs were there in the flesh, celebrating the artist’s quicksilver rise to the top. In a period of just five years, McGinley documented the luminous tail of the bohemian comet that swept New York throughout the second half of the twentieth century.

McGinley hung with a squadron of graffiti writers, artists, and personalities that made their own rules – and what remains of those days and nights are the photos. Some 1,600 pictures made between 1998 and 2003, most never-before-seen, have just been released in the new book, The Kids Were Alright, (Rizzoli) to time with an exhibition of the same name now at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver through August 17, 2017.

The documentary-style photographs and Polaroids are raw, sexy images of intense intimacy. Whether partying, having sex, or just hanging out, McGinley’s photos present a portrait of his generation at their most uninhibited peak. McGinley spoke with Dazed about coming of age in True York.

Read the Full Story at Dazed Digital

Photo: “Fireworks”, 2002. Courtesy Ryan McGinley and team (gallery, inc.) © Ryan McGinley.

Categories: 1990s, Art, Books, Dazed, Exhibitions, Graffiti, Manhattan, Photography

Art is Not a Crime: The Most High-Profile Street Art Arrests in the USA

Posted on March 27, 2017

Artwork: Jean-Michel Basquiat. Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart), 1983.

Art is not a crime—but that doesn’t stop police departments and D.A. offices nationwide from pursuing the capture, arrest, and prosecution of graffiti writers and street artists to make a political point. Crave has compiled a list of some of the most high-profile street art and graffiti arrests in the United States.

Read the Full story at Crave Online

Categories: 1980s, Art, Crave, Graffiti, Manhattan

TAKI 183, Elusive NY Graffiti Legend, Comes Out of Retirement

Posted on March 21, 2017

Photo: TAKI 183 gets up in house paint. Wall also features EVA 62, HELLAFIED SISTERS 184 and more. Circa 1971. Photo by Andrea Nelli.

On July 21, 1971, The New York Times ran a story titled “TAKI 183 Spawns Pen Pals,” in which journalist Mark Perigut interviewed a 17-year-old high school graduate who wrote the name TAKI 183 up and down the streets of New York City. With marker in hand, he got up everywhere from lampposts to trains, airports to train stations.

The story makes note of a call-and-response effect, where the appearance of TAKI 183 created a chain effect. Suddenly names like BARBARA 62, EEL 159, and LEO 136 could be seen sharing the walls, as well as find their own spots. Perigut immediately takes note of the cost required to remove graffiti, estimating $300,000 worth of damages ($1.8M today). He confronts TAKI about the cost, TAKI is nonplussed, observing, “I work, I pay taxes too and it doesn’t harm anybody.”

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

TAKI 183 tag on canvas board, 20″ x 24″, spray paint on canvas board. 2016. ©TAKI 183

Categories: 1970s, Art, Crave, Graffiti, Manhattan

Flint Gennari: The Faces Behind New York Graffiti in the 70s

Posted on March 3, 2017

Photo: Courtesy of Flint Gennari

Picture it: Brooklyn, 1965. Dyslexic and hard-of-hearing, young Roberto Gennari didn’t fit in anywhere and performed poorly at school. A sensitive child, he began to withdraw into his own world, finding pleasure in photography. But it was a fourth-grade social studies class that changed his fate. During a lesson about World War II, the teacher began talking about “Kilroy Was Here,” the doodle made famous by American soldiers that started popping up around the world for years.

Gennari was hooked. He likened the idea of writing his name on the walls to advertising. He cites Madison Avenue logos and slogans as his primary reference, as well as the work of artist Peter Max, who made his name the centrepieces of his public artworks for the New York City transit system.

Inspired by the world around him, Gennari began writing cheeky phrases like For Those Who Dare, For Ladies Only, Bad but Not Evil, and The Time Will Come then signing them as “FLINT.” A decade later, his exploits would inspire his high-school classmate Al Diaz, who went on to create SAMO© with Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1977, after FLINT was out of the game.

In 1970, Gennari borrowed his father’s camera and began photographing New York’s graffiti scene, capturing a culture (destined to take over the world) in its infancy. Gennari, whose photographs span 1970–77, speaks with Dazed about growing up in the first generation of New York City’s graffiti scene.

Read the Full Story at Dazed Digital

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Art, Brooklyn, Dazed, Graffiti, Photography

Art Basel in Miami Beach | Highlights

Posted on December 7, 2016

Artwork: Derrick Adams, Floater No. 2, 2016, Acrylic paint and collage on paper, 55 × 55 in., courtesy of Rhona Hoffman Gallery.

Top 6 Highlights at Art Basel in Miami Beach

So much art, so little time, it seems every time you think you’ve made the rounds, a mystery aisle pops up out of nowhere. Crave went the distance and combed the fair for some of the best work at Art Basel in Miami Beach.

Make a splash without saying a word with American artist Derrick Adams as he dives into a pool of color, light, and pleasure with his Floater series on view at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, featuring a delightful cast of African-Americans enjoying a dip in the water. The paintings are bright, bold images of a world without care, mesmerizing meditations on the necessity of rest, relaxation, and self-care.

Read more the Full Story at Crave Online

José Parlá, Roots. Young Arts, Miami, Photo by Kari Herrin.

José Parlá: Roots

“My grandfather, pilot Agustin Parlá once said to my father; ‘Son, find your place in History’ and my father said the same to me. And my old friend Don Busweiler once said, ‘Without roots the tree won’t grow.’ This has always stuck with me and remained present in the process of my work over the years.” reveals Cuban-American artist José Parlá (n. 1973).

Now based in Brooklyn, the Miami Beach native comes home for José Parlá: Roots, currently on view at the Jewel Box at the National YoungArts Foundation, Miami, through December 15, 2016. Presented by Rolls-Royce Motor Cars in partnership with the Savannah College of Art and Design, Roots finds returning to the city where he spent his formative years in the underground art scene of the 1980s and ‘90s, where he embraced graffiti.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Artwork: Martin Wong, Untitled (portrait of boxer with roses) c. 1984. Acrylic on canvas, 30 inch diameter. Copyright Martin Wong, Courtesy P.P.O.W.

Martin Wong at P.P.O.W.

Martin Wong (1946-1999) moved to New York City in 1978 at the age of 22, settling in on the Lower East Side. The son of Chinese immigrants, Wong was born in Portland and raised in San Francisco, where he first delved into the world of art as set designer for the Angels of Light, an offshoot of The Cockettes. When he arrived in New York, he moved into the Meyer Hotel on Stanton Street, where he lived for three years, doing repair work to the dilapidated hotel and working as a night watchman. In 1981, he moved to a six-story walk-up on Ridge Street populated by heroin dealers and their clients. In total, Wong stayed in New York for 16 years, moving back to San Francisco to live with his mother after being diagnosed with AIDS in 1994.

Wong’s time in New York was dedicated exclusively to painting, where he captured scenes on the Lower East Side that evoked the beautiful, casual, fleeting temporality of life itself. Set amid the desolate, desperate crumbling tenements that had been abandoned and left to disrepair in a city that had all but been destroyed by the government’s policy of “benign neglect” that denied minority neighborhoods basic services, Wong discovered the spirit and the soul of the people shining through.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Artwork: Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Cast of Characters), 2016. Digital print on vinyl, 60 × 120 in. Courtesy of Sprüth Magers.

Art in the Age of Anxiety and Rage

Emotion is one of the strongest forces on earth, capable of rendering people paragons of power or utterly vulnerable to external influences outside of their control. If 2016 has taught us anything, it is the ability to manipulate the masses by preying upon their weaknesses and shoring up support through fear and rage.

Unfailingly art speaks a thousand words without ever making a sound, reaching the innermost recesses of our being through sight alone. In this way, it can communicate to us—and for us—when words fail to articulate the sense that we’re going to Hell in a handbasket. Crave spotlights a selection of works at Art Basel in Miami Beach that give voice to the shadows that have seemingly come to life.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Artwork: Titus Kaphar (American, b. 1976), Front Page, 2012. Oil on newspaper on canvas, 85½ x 57½ x 2½ inches. Courtesy of the artist and GMAF. Photography by John Lam. © Titus Kaphar

Titus Kaphar: The Vesper Project

Fact and fiction seamlessly merge in Titus Kaphar: The Vesper Project, currently on view at the Lowe Museum of Art at the University of Miami, now through December 23, 2016—reminding us of the ways in which mythology shapes our sense of the past, present, and future. For this exhibition Kaphar (b. 1967) has draws upon the Vespers, a fictional family living in nineteenth-century New England who “passed” as white despite the fact that their mixed-race heritage designated them black in the eyes of the law.

The story begins when a man named Benjamin Vesper experienced a psychotic break while looking at a painting by Kaphar on view at the Yale art Gallery and attacked one of the figures in the painting. He was admitted to the Connecticut Valley Hospital, where began to reveal details about himself and his family’s troubled history to both his therapist and, in private correspondence with Kaphar.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Wynwood Doors, artwork by Tati.

Not for Sale: A Legacy of Graffiti & Street Art in Wynwood

Although art has always been a tool of the ruling class to elevate and reinforce its status and the bourgeois who hope to join the ranks, it is not exclusively this. There is a place where art is for the people, by the people. That place is the Wynwood District. Centered around the construction of Wynwood Walls, an outdoor museum to graffiti and street art that is free and open to the public, the neighborhood is home to block after block of public art.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Liu Junqi, Bodhisattva Holding a Lotus Bud. (Mogao Cave 220,. Early Tang Dynasty). Mineral pigment on paper. 33 x 22 inches

Huayan Art: A Silk Road Legacy

The oldest surviving Chinese silk in the West was discovered in Egypt, and dated to 1070 BC. However, as silk degrades rapidly, it cannot be known just how far back the trade between ancient kingdoms goes. But it is known that throughout the course of history, the East and West were in regular dialogue with expeditions traveling to and fro across the Silk Road, bringing together the peoples of Europe, the Middle East, East Africa, India, China, and Java. As kingdoms rose and fell, control changed hands but what always remained was the desire to do business.

The Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, also known as the Thousand Buddha Grottoes, is an oasis strategically located at the crossroads of the Silk Road in the Gansu province of Northwest China. First dug out in 336 AD as a place for Buddhist meditation and worship, the caves contain some of the finest examples of Buddhist art made over a period of 1,000 years, 45,000 square meters of wall paintings, rock cut sculpture, paintings, printed images, textiles, and manuscripts

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Photo: Glenn Kaino, Invisible Man, 2016, aluminum and concrete, 381 x 178 x 178 cm, courtesy of Kavi Gupta. Photo by Miss Rosen.

This is “Ground Control” to Collins Park

“It was the height of the space race in 1969, when David Bowie’s legendary Major Tom took his protein pills and put his helmet on. But even the world’s most advanced technology could not protect him from our human vulnerability,” Nicholas Baume, Director and Chief Curator of Public Art Fund, New York, writes in the curator’s statements for Ground Control, the Public sector of Art Basel in Miami Beach.

He continues, “The idea of ‘Ground Control’ struck me as apt this year, the year that Bowie himself departed our physical orbit for good, leaving his myth and music to ensure. The relationship between technological progress and human subjectivity continues to be an animating concern for artists, but our fascination with outer space has largely been replaced by an exploration on virtual space.”

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Graffiti, Painting

Wall Writers: Graffiti in its Innocence

Posted on September 16, 2016

Photo: CORNBREAD declares he has retired, 1971. Photo used with permission of Philadelphia Inquirer, ©2014

Picture it: New York and Philadelphia, the late 1960s. A curious phenomenon takes hold as names begin to appear on the street, written on the walls. In the beginning, it’s just a couple of names, written over and over again. It’s a mystery, these names. Who are they and what do they mean? It doesn’t quite register with the general population but it hits home with kids. It’s fame of a most unusual kind. The fame of being known for what you do long before anyone knows who you are.

It slowly begins to grip the imagination of a few who are dedicated, and from these humble beginnings, a cultural revolution begins. Graffiti is one of the most basic human impulses. As soon as children know how to write their names, they’re keen to leave their mark. This offends many who find it indecorous, such is their longing to conform to other people’s rules. But then there are those who refuse to conform and insist on living on their own terms.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

UGA canvas featuring STITCH 1-n-ROCKY 184, circa 1973. Photo courtesy of Rocky 184.

ROCKY 184 and STITCH 1, circa 1972. Courtesy of ROCKY 184.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Brooklyn, Crave, Graffiti, Manhattan

Martha Cooper & Henry Chalfant: Subway Art

Posted on August 29, 2016

Photo: “Midg” with yellow school bus, 1982. © Martha Cooper

During the early 1970s, graffiti made it way to the trains of New York, spreading across the city like a virus and capturing the imagination of a new generation of artists in every borough. Sneaking into the yards and walking through the tunnels in the dead of night, graffiti writers were on a mission like no one had seen before—or has seen since. Fame. Recognition. Renown. In the city that never sleeps, Kings were crowned.

But as quick as it came, it disappeared. Were it not for the photographs, there would be nothing left. Fortunately writers and artists share that same compulsion to document and to collect. As fate would have it, Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant had both been documenting the same scene at the same time from distinctive vantage points.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Bronx, Brooklyn, Crave, Graffiti, Manhattan, Painting, Photography