Posts from the “Manhattan” Category

Eddie Palmieri: Harlem River Drive

Posted on December 15, 2016

Eddie Palmieri poses for a portrait during the filming of RBMA Presents The Note: Eddie Palmieri, at Red Bull Studios in New York, NY, USA on 22 March, 2016.

“Genius has a way of validating itself with time” observes Felipe Luciano as he reflects on Harlem River Drive, the seminal 1971 Latin-jazz-funk album by Eddie Palmieri in an episode of The Note, a new docuseries now available at Red Bull TV. You can watch the full episode at the end of the article, as well.

Palmieri, who celebrates his 80th birthday today, is one of the greatest American musicians of our time. Hailing from the South Bronx by way of Spanish Harlem, Palmieri is a first-generation Nuyorican who made his way, along with his brother Charlie, through the New York City public schools where he was exposed to jazz music. He first played Carnegie Hall at the age of 11, which portended well for the boy who would go on to become a pianist, bandleader, musicians, and composer who helped to shape the sound and style of Latin and jazz music over the course of seven decades.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: 1970s, Bronx, Crave, Latin America, Manhattan, Music

Toyo Tsuchiya: Invisible Underground

Posted on December 12, 2016

Photo: © Toyo Tsuchiya. From the series No Se No 99 Nights, 1983.

Picture It: New York City, summer of 1983. For 99 nights in a row, at a little spot called No Se No (Spanish for “I don’t know nothing”) down on the Lower East Side hosted a cabaret unlike anything that would ever see the light of day. It was strictly underground, for those in the know, a raw artistic explosion of anything goes.

On any given night, you could have wandered in only to discover Warhol Superstar Jackie Curtis performing Ripping Off Layers to Find Roots, the one-act play James Dean wrote for his audition at The Actors Studio. Another night you stumble upon Yugoslavian artist Dragan Ilic with power tools duct-taped to his biceps and back, furiously hammering pencils into the bar. Still another night could see girls from around the way jump on the bar and dance to Michael Jackson ‘cause Thriller was everything back in the days.

99 Nights, as the performance art festival was known, was a pure, unbridled New York phenomenon featuring a melange of song and dance, poetry and beyond. It was unlike anything the city had ever seen before—or since—and were it not for the photographs of Japanese artist Toyo Tsuchiya, most of us would have missed it entirely. Tsuchiya was there nearly every night, camera in hand, documenting the scene with casual insouciance. His photographs are simple straightforward affairs that embrace the edge wholeheartedly, never gawking or gaping but rather making the extraordinary and amazing a regular part of life.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Photo: © Toyo Tsuchiya. From the series No Se No 99 Nights, 1983.

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

Legendary DJ and Club Innovator David Mancuso Dies at 72

Posted on November 15, 2016

Photo: American nightclub owner David Mancuso, owner of the Loft disco on Prince Street in SoHo, meets with the SoHo Artists’ Association to discuss their complaints, New York, New York, October 14, 1974. (Photo by Allan Tannenbaum/Getty Images)

With every passing, 2016 solidifies its place as one of the greatest times of transition in recent memory. Most recently, legendary New York City DJ and club innovator David Mancuso (October 20, 1944-November 14, 2016) died. His death marks the end of an era in many respects, reminding us that downtown New York has long ceased to be the hub of innovation and creativity.

Mancuso pioneered the “private party” at his home at 647 Broadway at Bleecker Street. Back then, the neighborhood was filled with raw, desolate space that was once the site of a bustling industrial companies. Into the void, artists came, willing to live and work in spaces that were not zoned for residential use nor up to code. The Do-It-Yourself of ethos of the time was taking shape, as visionaries worked with what they had, and in doing so, created an entirely new world.

Mancuso took up residence in 1965, throwing about half a dozen rent parties over the next five years. On February 14, 1970, he hosted an invitation-only party called “Love Saves the Day,” which he marks as the official beginning of The Loft, by which the space would later be known.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Crave, Manhattan, Music

Dawoud Bey: Harlem Redux

Posted on November 15, 2016

A Couple Walking, Harlem, 2015. © Dawoud Bey, Courtesy of Stephen Daiter Gallery

Harlem. The name speaks for itself, eliciting images of African-American life in its many-splendored forms throughout the twentieth century. Harlem came into vogue as the Great Migration sent thousands of southern black folk up north beginning in 1905. By the 1920s, the neighborhood became a focal point for artists from all walks of life, giving birth to the legendary Harlem Renaissance.

Harlem, which had originally been developed in the nineteenth century as an exclusive suburb for the white upper class, was home to stately homes, grand avenues, and places like the Polo Grounds and the Harlem Opera House. With this backdrop, a new culture came forth, one that celebrated African Americans and Afro Caribbean arts and history.

But with the Great Depression and the deindustrialization of New York City after World War II, Harlem fell victim to de facto segregation practices like red lining, which denied services like banking, insurance, healthcare, mortgages, credit cards, and retail to the black community. Adding to this, there was an influx of drugs in a war waged by the Nixon White House designed to corrupt and criminalize African American communities.

By the 1970s, Harlem, like much of New York’s black and Latino communities, had been decimated, left as a shell of its former glory. Yet at the same time, it was a strong, committed community, one built by Mom and Pop businesses going back decades. This was the Harlem that photographer Queens-native Dawoud Bey (b. 1953) documented for his first completed project, Harlem USA, made between 1975-1979.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan

Empire: An Arturo Vega Retrospective

Posted on November 10, 2016

Artwork: Arturo Vega, Empire, 1989 Acrylic and Silkscreen on Canvas. 80 1/4 x 132 1/4 x 1 1/2 inches, Individual panels: 80 1/4 x 20 1/4 and 80 1/4 x 30 1/4 and 80 1/4 x 31 1/4 and 80 1/4 x 25 1/4

Arturo Vega: you may not know his name but you assuredly know his work, as the Ramones logo is one of the most replicated images on earth. The mastermind behind it all was a tireless workhorse who toured with the band for more than two decades and nearly 2,263 live shows as the art and lighting director. And when he wasn’t on tour he could be found in his loft at 6 East 2nd Street at Bowery in the East Village, producing artwork of his own, or on the scene, out supporting fledgling artists with advice, a place to work, or straight up purchasing their pieces to put money in their pocket.

Vega, who died in 2013 at the age of 65, hailed from Chihuahua, Mexico, where he was an artist and activist until the 1968, when he fled the country after being arrested en masse with 148 of the country’s most notable artists, poets, and intellectuals including filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky. With the government carrying out disappearances, torture, and extralegal executions, Vega fled to New York, which he had already visited a few times, establishing a network with prominent figures including music publicist Jane Friedman.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Photo by Miss Rosen

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Painting

Liz Deschenes / Sol LeWitt

Posted on October 17, 2016

LIZ DESCHENES, Untitled (LeWitt) #6–14, 2016, Photogram, 122 1/2 x 122 7/8 x 1 3/4 inches

“Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach,” Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) famously wrote as the first of 35 “Sentences on Conceptual Art,” published in 1969. It’s the perfect way to introduce his understanding of the work that artists create that manifests the Idea in physical space.

By forgoing the impulse towards linear thought, we lean more heavily on our sensory, perceptual, and emotional reactions. In doing so, we can be liberated from the tyranny of linear thought, its presumption of supreme validity, and its insistence on a singular way of comprehending the world. By abandoning the rational, we open ourselves to new experiences that can take us beyond the limitations of the “known.” It is in this fresh, uninhibited space we may come to discover new, uncharted depths of the soul.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

SOL LEWITT, On the Walls of the Lower East Side, 1979 [detail], Color photographs mounted on board, 18 1/8 x 15 inches (46 x 38.1 cm) 73 pages; 1 page at 15 7/8 x 15 inches

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

The True Story of “The Central Park Five’

Posted on October 13, 2016

6a0120a69a468c970c01b7c7bf03af970b-pi-e1476377029150

The Central Park jogger case was a horrific crime made all the more worse by a heinous miscarriage of justice that put five innocent teenage boys in jail for a crime they did not commit. The scars these men bear were ripped open once again on Friday, October 14, when Donald Trump told CNN that he believes the Central Park Five, as they are known, are guilty despite DNA evidence and a confession that exonerated them in 2002.

Yesterday, in an interview with The Washington Post, Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park Five, spoke out against Trump’s latest attack: “When I heard Trump’s latest proclamation, it was like the worst feeling in the world. I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. Since I was 15, my life has never been my own. I had no control over what happened to me. Being in the spotlight makes me wary and self-conscious again. I am overwhelmed with a nagging fear that an overzealous Trump supporter might take matters into his or her hands.”

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Crave, Manhattan

Walter Robinson: A Retrospective

Posted on September 28, 2016

Artwork: Picture Perfect Kill, Acrylic on canvas 2012, Mima and César Reyes Collection, Puerto Rico

American artist Walter Robinson (b. 1950) moved to Manhattan in 1968 to study art history and psychology at Columbia University, and quickly became a fixture on the art scene. He wrote for Art in America, co-published Art-Rite, was arts editor of The East Village Eye, and editor of artnet, as well as a prolific painter in his own right.

In celebration of his work, curator Barry Blinderman has organized Walter Robinson: A Retrospective, the inaugural exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch, New York, currently on view through October 22, 2016, which is accompanied by a monograph published by the University Galleries at Illinois State University. Featuring 714 paintings made between 1979-2014, Robinson’s work explores the relentless America desire to commodify everything. Blinderman speaks with Crave about Robinson’s work.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Painting

It’s All True: The East Village Eye Show

Posted on September 19, 2016

Artwork: May 1979. Courtesy of The East Village Eye/Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project.

Picture It: The East Village, May 1979. A new scene is emerging within the burned-out buildings and abandoned lots. It had been a decade since Daniel Patrick Moynihan urged then-President Richard Nixon to adopt the devastating policy of “benign neglect,” effectively cutting off major cities from federal, state, and local services in response to the race riots of the 1960s. At the same time, the Nixon White House initiated a phony war on drugs, as the cover story for flooding African-American and Latino neighborhoods with heroin.

Yet, despite the United States’ government’s best efforts to destroy its own citizens, like the phoenix they rose from the ashes and gave birth to the greatest cultural movements of the late twentieth century. Up in the Bronx, Hip Hop was born. Over in Washington Heights, graffiti took hold. And down in the East Village, punk rock emerged. It’s very telling that when people were pushed to the edge, they came back stronger than ever before.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Artwork: June 1980 Courtesy of The East Village Eye/Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project.

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

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

Len Speier: Nearly Everybody

Posted on September 15, 2016

Photo: Nearly Everybody, vintage gelatin silver print. © Len Speier, courtesy Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York.

“Lucky Man Speier,” they call him, and this is true. At the tender age of 88, native New Yorker Len Mitchell Speier is receiving his due with his first solo exhibition of photographs, Nearly Everybody, currently on view at Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York, now through October 29, 2016. Drawn from an archive that spans six decades, the show features 48 vintage photographs made in New York and Europe between the 1960s and ‘80s.

As with many things in his life, Nearly Everybody came about through the fortunes of fate. Following the success of her recent exhibition Bacalaitos & Fireworks at the gallery, Speier asked photographer Arlene Gottfried if she could introduce him to Daniel Cooney; Gottfried said it was okay to use her name so Speier did just that.

Cooney remembers, “The call came out of the blue. After we spoke, I Googled and not much popped up. I went up to visit him at his apartment and that was it. It was an amazing moment.”

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Photo: Fight Racism, White Street, NYC, 1969, vintage gelatin silver print. © Len Speier, courtesy Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York.

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