Posts tagged “Andy Warhol”

Exhibit | Warhol by the Book

Posted on February 17, 2016

Artwork: Andy Warhol (1928–1987). “So Sweet,” 1950s, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. © 2015 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

“I just do art because I’m ugly and there’s nothing else for me to do,” Andy Warhol said. His dedication to the creation of beauty in both the glamorous and the commonplace forever changed the course of art, culture, and communication. He worked in both commercial and fine arts, always able to build a bridge between these two worlds and he used the book as a vehicle throughout his career. In celebration of his works, the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, presents Warhol by the Book, a four-decade retrospective on view now through May 5, 2016.

Featuring more than 130 objects dating back to his student days, the exhibition includes the only surviving project from the 1940s. It also features a remarkable collection of drawings, screen prints, photographs, self-published books, children’s books, photography books, text-based books, unique books, archival material; and his much-sought-after dust jacket designs. To call Warhol prolific would be an understatement. He simply was a one-man factory who aptly advised, “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

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

Marcia Resnick: Punks, Poets & Provocateurs

Posted on November 23, 2015

John Belushi, photo by Marcia Resnick

Marcia Resnick was there, at the center of it all, in a burst of light and flame that set New York on edge with a new movement in art, music, literature and film. Her new book Punks, Poets & Provocateurs: New York City Bad Boys, 1977-1982 with text by Victor Bockris (Insight Editions) features photographs of the enfants terribles of the time, people like Johnny Thunders, James Brown, William S. Burroughs, John Waters, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, men who did it their way like my man Frank Sinatra said. Marcia Resnick shares her thoughts and her photos in a conversation here.

I love how you speak about creation of Re-visions as a way to demystify your past. Would you say the same is true of Punks, Poets & Provocateurs, or was the creation of the book driven by something else you wanted to explore about life?

Marcia Resnick: In Re-visions I was confronting myself as the subject which I understood least and most wanted to understand. The next subject in line for such consideration was the male species, specifically my relationship to men, especially my attraction to “Bad Boys.”

I like to think a portrait of the artist is always their subject: who they choose, the energy the two create, the frames they select—all of this is a story about the photographer themselves. When looking through Punks, Poets & Provocateurs I see a multi-faceted gem as filtered through the lens of the masculinity at a specific time and place. As a woman looking at men, what do you find most compelling about them? Is it something you see in yourself, something you aspire towards, or a mix of the two?

Definitely a mix of the two. As I said in the book “Bad Boys can be at once formidable and endearing. Being ‘bad’ also makes people attractive, especially to the opposite sex.” I think most people are intrigued by danger regardless of what their sex is. Living on the edge is dangerous and Punk Rock was the new alternative music. The writers and provocateurs I photographed also went against the grain, making considerable innovations in their respective artistic endeavors.

The Bad Boy archetype is an American ideal: the rebel driven by profound individualism—and maybe something else. In some ways it sums up the ethos of punk: fuck the system D.I.Y. style. Looking back, I’m a little shocked by how it doesn’t seem that long ago but it seems so very far away. What would you say made the era you were photographing so ripe for rebellion?

In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s people could afford to live in NYC. Everyone was challenging what was expected of them because the counterculture was still ripe. Rock musicians and artists alike were graduating from art schools. Painters were making films. Writers were doing performance art. Sculptors were doing installations. Artists were acting in films, making music and generally collaborating with each other. People were also more sexually unconstrained. This climate ended when Aids and the atmosphere of paranoia began to stymie the nightlife.

Punks, Poets & Provocateurs is an incredible compendium of the scene, very potent and resonant with a sense of energy that has, in some ways, all but disappeared. Looking back at your photographs, what mist resonates with you after all these years? What do you see in your photographs that you can only see now, with the benefit of hindsight?

I realize how fortunate I was to experience NYC and life in general when I did. Though I embrace the extraordinary technological advances that have come in time, people today communicate through electronic media. Back then, the world seemed smaller, everyone knew who their friends were and people actually got together to talk and exchange ideas.

Divine, photo by Marcia Resnick

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Manhattan, Photography

Warhol & Mapplethorpe: Guise & Dolls

Posted on November 11, 2015

Photo: Andy Warhol, Camouflage Self- Portrait , 1986. Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen on canvas, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Conn. The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, with a partial gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., 1994.12.1. © 2014 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Artwork Andy Warhol, Camouflage Self- Portrait , 1986. Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen on canvas, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Conn. The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, with a partial gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., 1994.12.1. © 2014 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Photo: Robert Mapplethorpe, Brian Ridley and Lyle Heeter, 1979. Gelatin silver print, The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, N.Y. © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.

New York City in the 1970s and ‘80s was a deliciously decadent time and place where art, gender, and sexuality came together in a miasma of creative energies. As the gay rights movement ushered in a new era, a new sense of expression took hold as gender became an area ripe for exploration. The ideas of masculine, feminine, and androgynous began to capture the imagination of visual and performing artists. Musicians lead the way, as crossdressing came out of the closet and groups like the New York Dolls took advantage of it’s curious effect on their female fans. It was an era of gender fluidity and sexual freedom which held to a deep abiding sense of “anything goes” as bath houses and clubs like Plato’s Retreat flourished in the city.

Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe were two of the most significant artists in New York at this time. As portrait artists, both engaged with gender, identity, sexuality, beauty, performance, and disguise in their lives and their work, revealing the intricacies and nuances of the many-splendored personalities that populated the city then. Each artist focused on their subjects as a means to discovering their truth in a complex series of questions that directly and comfortably challenge the viewer.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Andy Warhol, Ladies and Gentlemen, 1975. Acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution Dia Center for the Arts, 2002.4.22. © 2014 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Painting, Photography

Christopher Makos: White Trash Uncut

Posted on July 30, 2015

Debbie Harry. Photo by Christopher Makos

New York, 1977. It began with a book, a paperback with black and white photographs of the punk scene. The book was titled White Trash and it featured the boldest of the boldface names: Patti Smith, Richard Hell, Debbie Harry, Halston, Andy Warhol, Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Divine, and John Waters. Add to that a splash of Man Ray, Tennessee Williams, and Marilyn Chambers, and you’ve nailed it. White Trash, Christopher Makos’ photography book, is the place where pop meets pulp, perfectly defining the D.I.Y. ethos of the times. The book has become a seminal volume of the times and now sells for upwards of $500.

However, the original edition is a paperback, and paperbacks are not designed to last. They’re disposable (like, say, white trash). And if you crack the spine too wide, the entire thing might fall apart in your hands. We are fortunate, then, that Glitterati Incorporated has released a revised and expanded edition in hardcover.

White Trash Uncut, Makos’ updated monograph, is a lavish affair. This tall, slim volume features the photographs uncropped (unlike the 1977 edition). It also features a selection of never-before-published photographs of Grace Jones, among others. Included throughout the book is the use of silver, making the pages come alive. Everything about the book is luxurious, and in that way it becomes a statement of the times. Punk has passed; that New York is long gone. But what lives in its place are photographs, memories, and stories.

Read the Full Story at CRAVE ONLINE

David Croland and Grace Jones wearing a Le Jardin shirt. New York. Photo by Chrostopher Makos

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

Andy Warhol: The Complete Commissioned Record Covers 1949-1987

Posted on July 1, 2015

Melodic Magic, Vol 1, 1953. All images © 2015 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

The album cover is an icon of the past, of an age when vinyl was something to be collected. The 12 x 12 inch surface was a canvas ripe for exploration, the square format offering infinite interpretations. The album cover, such as it was, provided a space for the artist to put us in the mood, to seduce us with images, words, ideas. It offered a space for contemplation, as the record spun round, creating a delicious interplay between audio and visual experience of the work. As a result, album covers, in certain cases, have become icons themselves.

ndy Warhol designed his first record cover in 1949; clearly he sensed the value of the medium, for he launched his career phoning record companies and soliciting them. Over the years, until his death in 1987, he created more than fifty covers which are presented beautifully in Andy Warhol: The Complete Commissioned Record Covers 1949-1987, Catalogue Raisonné, 2nd Edition by Paul Maréchal (Prestel). Produced at nearly actual size, with photographs of the original works, along with entries detailing the story of each album, this catalogue is a compendium of sumptuous delight.

Warhol’s gift for blurring the lines between high and low art and be felt in each and every illustration he created. His best known works, the covers of The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967) and the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers (1971), appear alongside lesser known works such as Monk featuring Thelonious Monk with Sonny Rollins and Frank Foster (1954) Giant Size $1.57 Each, released in conjunction with the exhibition The Popular Image at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art (1963). Taken together as a group, we can follow the thread of Warhol’s transformation from illustrator to artist, his visual vocabulary becoming more exact and extreme as his ideas take hold.

Read the Full Story at CRAVE ONLINE

Monk, 1954. All images © 2015 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

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

Escape the Cage

Posted on May 3, 2015

Butterfly (Andy Warhol)

Genius is eternal patience.
~Michelangelo

Categories: Art

Nat Finkelstein: Where the Underground Met the Underworld

Posted on October 1, 2013

Edie Sedgwick & Nat Finkelstein © Stephen Shore

A cat like Nat Finkelstein had nine lives before he died in 2009. A photographer, journalist, world traveler, animal smuggler, gun runner, drug dealer, ex-convict, revolutionary, and only God (and Nat) knows what else. Born in 1933 in Coney Island, Finkelstein studied with Alexey Brodovich at Brooklyn College before joining Pix and Black Star agencies before leaving the United States in 1969 to escape the Feds.

Possessed with blessings and curses in equal measure, Nat was drawn to the underground—and the underworld. As his memoirs recollect, “I am an anarchist and believe in the overthrow of Capitalism. I am studied and trained. I know that revolutionary victories are achieved through preparation, organization, stealth, and subterfuge, followed by violence only when victory is assured. I also believe in Lenin’s dictum that the problem with the bourgeois revolutionary is that the bourgeois revolutionary always believes that the STAGE of revolution in which they are participating is The Revolution. This accounts for my antipathy to certain insurrectionists (Hoffman, Ginsberg, et al) of the late 60s and early 70s.”

Never a follower, Nat set his own path, with New York City as his base of operations. His iconoclastic disposition landed him at Andy Warhol’s Factory in 1964 while on assignment from Black Star. With unfettered access to the creation of art, film, and Superstars, his documentation of the earliest years of the Factory reveal a scene that has influenced New York’s downtown identity ever since. The glamour of Hollywood with the grittiness of New York conspired to create Pop Art as a way of life.

In his superb book, Andy Warhol: The Factory Years, 1964-1967, Nat recalled, “Andy Warhol’s greatest work of art was Andy Warhol. Other artists first make their art and then celebrity comes from it. Andy reversed this. For me the Factory was a place of sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, for some of the others it was: from ferment comes art.

“Andy’s strategy was organized like an air-raid though radar-protected territory. He would drop these showers of silver foil out of the plane to deflect the radar. Behind this screen of smoke and mirrors, there was Andy at work. That was the real function of the entourage. It was a way to get the attention away from Andy, while he hid behind them, doing his number. The entourage was there to distract the attention, to titillate and amuse the public, while Andy was doing his very serious work. Andy was a very hard-working artist, a working man. He hid this very carefully, creating the myth that his products just kinda appeared. I’m probably one of the very few photographers who actually has pictures of Andy with his hands on a paintbrush and the paintbrush touching the painting. He didn’t want to get paint on his hands. So like any great artist, he had an atelier. He manipulated people to do things for him. It was a very studied casual act, ‘Hey, you do it.’ While he was working, he also had others work for him… Well, what else is a Factory? It was a brilliant scam.”

Older than everyone (except Warhol), Nat was a macho from Brooklyn, the straight guy in a sea of Superstars and Pop Art, with a camera, a sharp tongue, and no time for most men. He called the Velvet Underground, “The Psychopath’s Rolling Stones.” Lou Reed’s response? “The three worst people in the world are Nat Finkelstein and two speed dealers.”

At a time when drugs became part of America’s identity, Nat knew the score, always able to access the counterculture’s inner core. In his memoirs, he recounts, “The C.I.A utilized psychomemetics in the MK-ULTRA Project, a secret experiment in mind control, AKA ‘Brain Washing,’ often on unwitting subjects, several of whom would kill themselves. Time-Life publicized and popularized LSD in a stream of articles and pretty (although bogus) pictures. And then, in 1964, the mainstream media appointed an academic mercenary, ex-West Point, ex-Harvard Professor Timothy Leary as their ‘New World’ poster child. Leary—sponsored, financed and supported by a group of old wealth American industrialists—peddled ‘The Psychedelic Experience’ from a 4,000-acre estate in Millbrook, New York. Buttressed by the intellectual cachet of Aldous Huxley, plus the financial backing of the Mellon family and the CIA, Timothy Leary founded an organization called IFIF (International Foundation for Internal Freedom) and recruited a coterie of academics with a mystical bent, who forgot that after Brave New World came 1984.”

Nat was invited to Millbrook, and the meeting with Leary was less than successful. For even a drug dealer as successful as Finkelstein was leery of the relationship between the government, the media, the figureheads that brought LSD and amphetamines into American popular culture. He eventually retreated to his home in upset New York, where journalist Al Aronowitz (who introduced the Beatles to Bob Dylan in 1964) described him as, “Nat Finkelstein, Kokaine King of Woodstock.” Nat reigned supreme for a moment or two, and then, as is the case in the underworld, the cover blew.

In 1969, his lawyer called him to New York and revealed a document from the FBI that stated:

A NOTICE

WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
HEREBY EMPOWER YOU TO BRING BACK THE BODY
OF
NATHAN LOUIS FINKELSTEIN
CLASSIFIED ARMED AND DANGEROUS
NONSUICIDAL

In fear for his life, Nat Finkelstein left the United States. He traveled the Silk Route in the 1970s, appearing in the most unlikely places, eventually sentenced to four years in prison in France for possession of hashish. Nat’s memoirs revealed, “While in prison, I petitioned the United States government, the CIA, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration, under the Freedom of Information Act. Both the FBI and the CIA to this day have refused to release my records. However, the DEA records stated that in 1973, while I was still a fugitive, all charges against me were dismissed upon judicial review by a Judge Hector (Lopez or Gomez), with an extreme castigation of the Federal government for illegal actions against me. However, the government not only did not inform myself, my family, my in-laws, or my attorney that these charges were dropped, but forced me to live the life of a fugitive until 1978. Further, my agencies, my publishers, my family, et cetera, had been informed that if they were to publish any work done by me, prior to this dismissal, that they would be arrested for aiding and abetting a fugitive. My voice had been effectively silenced.”

When Nat returned to America in 1982, a free citizen, he inquired to Black Star agency and Life magazine about the whereabouts of his negatives. He notes in his memoirs, “Previously, Howard Chapnick of Black Star had told my ex-wife Jill that a woman purporting to be my wife, with a supposed letter from me, had come to the agency demanding that all my negatives be turned over to her. The only thing remaining of my work, aside from my Warhol series, were four or five prints which were made during various assignments.”

While many photographs remain lost, other come to light. In 1995, a collection of 170 color transparencies from The Factory was discovered to be misfiled under the wrong name at a London photo agency. Among the images are Warhol eating pizza, John Cale dozing off, Nico reading the paper, Edie Sedwick applying lipstick—the intimate moments Nat shared through the years.

His time at The Factory was but a chapter in one of those rare lives that crisscross the world at length, as photographs continue to emerge from the recesses of the earth. Photographs shot on August 8, 1965 at a civil rights protest in Washington D.C. came forth from the archives of Life magazine in 2004. As Nat recalled in an essay for The Blacklisted Journalist, there were members of, “The DuBois Society, CORE (Congress Of Racial Equality), SNCC (Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee). Fresh from voter registration drives in Mississippi, militants from Newark and Harlem were joining up with kids from Y.A.W.F. (Youth Against War and Fascism). White middle class kids and black militants coming together in an uneasy alliance. Together with the various Pacifist societies, as well as the followers of Martin Luther King, who previously had eschewed the anti war movement, they joined to form an Assembly of Unrepresented People, determined to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right of free assembly in order to petition their government and declare the war in Vietnam to be a racist war.”

Then things got ugly. As Nat wrote, “The first people to be accosted and intimidated by the police were the Afro-Americans. During the march, an apparently late Nazi threw some of his own paint, and was also roughed up by the police. However, he was not arrested. At this point, the police forces were led and instructed by a non-uniformed, unidentified man, who apparently commanded the police to be rough. In fact, you can see this man in the pictures. Who he was, no one may ever know. As you can see from the photographs, the other photographers stayed at a short distance from this action, whereas I was fully involved, as you can see one picture, to the point of being punched in the stomach by a policeman during the melee, even though I was wearing official press credentials identifying me as a photographer from Life magazine. I did my job recording the information before me; the brutality, the obvious concentration on people of color, the fingernails crunching nerve endings, the faces squeezed, the glee of the oppressors, the courage of the kids.

“As you’ll notice from these photographs, there were no “long-haired freaks?: no Abbie Hoffman, no Jerry Rubin, no Allen Ginsberg. No pot, no gratuitous violence on the part of the protestors. This came later. It is my firm belief this was done by the so-called capitalist “Free Press.” The mainstream media that appointed theatrical clowns such as Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsberg, and Timothy Leary, as representative of the antiwar movement. When actually, the antiwar movement consisted of the students and the ordinary American working class.”

Throughout his years on this earth, Nat was a champion for the underdog, defying the corrupt system through his art, words, and actions. His actions—while not always legal—held to another ethic; that integrity means holding firm in a raging storm. A typhoon like Nat Finkelstein may have left this earth, but his legacy is a life that challenged and ran counter to the hypocrisy of the world.

Originally published in
Le Journal de la Photographie
18 March 2011

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Photography

Dustin Pittman: Cast of Characters

Posted on May 12, 2010

Halston, 1979, Photograph © Dustin Pittman

I first met Dustin Pittman when curing an exhibition about New York City in the 1970s. The depth of his archive was so profound, I felt like I traveled back in time. Since then, Dustin has been shooting New York’s never-ending parade of characters unlike anyone else in the world today. Dustin graciously agreed to do an interview showcasing his old and new school CAST OF CHARACTERS.

WoW! Your perspective on New York nightlife is truly your own and makes me think “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” Does this ring true or false to you?

Dustin Pittman: I think that it definitely rings true. As a photographer I am always looking to fill my frame and capture new and fresh thoughts and concepts from my subjects. It doesn’t matter if I stood in the middle of the dance floor at Studio 54, or Paradise Garage in 1978 or backstage shooting fashion in 1976 or working with International designers in their atelier or the Boom Boom Room at the Standard in 2010. I’m always searching, looking, always ready, on guard to capture the moment. I have been photographing people for over 40 years. In the studio. On the streets. Way Uptown. Way Downtown. New York, Paris, London, Milan, Tokyo, Europe, Africa, India, Middle East, the entire World. Day for Night. Night for Day.

I love the way people look. It is their individual “look” and they “own it”. They are influenced by their history, their customs, their beliefs. You can’t take that away from them. They are who they are. The way they “carry” themselves. Their body language. The way they stand. Their heads, necks, arms, backs, shoulders, torsos, legs, feet and, of course, their FACES AND EXPRESSIONS. I love people for that. That’s the difference between the 70’s and now. There were no cell phones, no laptops, facebook or twitter. People connected with other people in “real people time”. They didn’t need to have their guard up all the time. They never anticipated the “snap of the shutter”. They just went about their business. People being People. Individuals being Individuals

Now with all the blogs, vlogs and instant street photography people are ready for you. They are waiting for you. They are strategically dressed and screaming “take my picture”. But, having said. That is the way it is. I accept it. It is not the 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s, 1990’s, etc, the time is now. I honor that. We may glamorize the past, but we honor our present. I honor that in people. New technology has ushered in new ideas and tools. People are more willing to explore themselves. They know who they are. They know their culture. I AM A HUGE FAN OF THAT.

Now I have the opportunity to shoot with traditional cameras as well as the latest digital cameras with HD Video output. More technology, more opportunities. Old School and New School as one.

Looking through your work, I was overwhelmed by the abundance of style. Everyone you photograph uses their face and body as a canvas. What are your thoughts on such personal expression?

DP: My style of photographing has always been the “Polaroid School of Photography” SPONTANEITY. I have always been in the “cinema-verite mode. What does that mean. I leave people alone. I let them “be”. I let them interact . I want them to show me their beautiful hearts and souls. I love their life. Past and Present. I don’t want to destroy that precious “moment”. I let them perform. I got that from Andy Warhol.

In the early days we used to go out to dinners, events and parties together with our cameras always “cocked”. I got it from shooting videos of the Warhol Superstars back in the 70’s. I got it from the countless thousands of Fashion Designers, Actors, musicians, and street people that I have photographed throughout my career. I got it from John Fairchild, the head of W. We traveled the around the world photographing inside the fashion ateliers together. I got it from Anna Wintour. I got it from Gloria Swanson. I got it from Andre Leon Talley. I got it from Carrie Donovan. We would travel Paris, Milan, London and New York together. I got it from Toni Goodman, Vogue’s Creative Director and I got it from the Masters of Street and Portrait Photography way back in the 60’s and 70’s. Photographers like William Eggelston, Robert Frank, William Klein, Eugene Smith, Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, Diane Arbus, Helen Levitt, Elliott Erwitt, Danny Lyons, Garry Winogrand, Bill Cunningham, Robert Mapplethorpe Todd Popageorge, and many more.

We would work the streets and rooms together all night long and into the next day, and then into the night. There was no sleep for me during those years. Sleep. Who needed it. As long as my cameras were loaded and there was enough film in my pockets, that was my “fix”. My light is always on. When I photograph my subjects I look, think and compose before I snap my shutter. I never “ponce”.. I love to respect the moment, always letting it unfold. I let it happen. Never do I go into the frame and ask my subjects to pose or to “look this way” or stand this way. That is a different photograph. That is a photograph for the “studio”. Or, dare I say the word, the “poparazzi” photographers, who I am not a fan of.

Mudd Club, 1978, Photograph © Dustin Pittman

Who is your ideal subject?

DP: My ideal subjects are the “untouched people on the streets of the world”. People are People and I love them for just being Who They Are. People are my “Celebration of Life”. Young or Old, To photograph youth, from birth to death at any age. ROCKS.

When did you move to New York and what was the city like back then? How was it being a photographer, getting access to celebrities of all kinds?

DP: I moved to New York in 1968 and I was considered “street cool”. What a time it was. Right on the cusp of exploring “free expression” in the arts. Liberation and Hedonism were my themes. Film, photography, dance, performance art, theatre, music, fashion, poetry, etc was flourishing. It was a renaissance again. My renaissance. I spent 3 weeks photographing the happenings and lifesyle at the Woodstock festival before it even started. The 70’s and 80’s was a great time for photographing. Max’s Kansas City, Mudd Club, CBGB’s. I photographed the first Gay Pride parade in Greenwich Village in 1970 and the 1st Woman’s Rights parade in the early 70’s.

I was the very first fashion photographer photographing backstage fashion in the 70’s. It was just myself, the designers, hair and makeup and the models. Now there are thousands backstage and thousands trying to get into the tents. In the 70’s and 80’s, I used to gather bunches of people and we used to spent the rest of the entire night and into the day shooting short films, movies and photographs. It was that easy. Access to people was easier. You could do what you wanted. You didn’t have to give up your photographic rights in order to capture a person, scene or event.

Having been on the scene for three decades, how would you best define the essence of New York’s nightlife?

DP: I feel that New York nightlife is and always will be the driving force behind discovering and creating new ideas and trends. What propels that is the driving creative energy nightlife sucks in and out of you. Say what you want about “hanging out” at night, but one can always find something special to document happening somewhere. In the 70’s and 80’s, it was unthinkable to leave Manhattan for a party, show or event. Now the big advantage is that New York nightlife has expanded to the boroughs. Williamsburg, the Bronx, Greenpoint, Bushwick, Gowanas, Richmond Hill, Long Island City. Artists are always looking for cheap workable space for their studios, galleries and performance events and these areas fit the bill. Having said that, because of this change, it has given us more opportunities. Anything and Everything is possible.

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www.dustinpittman.com
www.poparchives.com

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Fashion, Manhattan, Photography

Pedro Paricio: The Canary Paradise

Posted on October 8, 2009

“I don’t usually speak about things that are true and important to me very often,” reveals Pedro Paricio. “When I was younger, I talked about myself all the time until I discovered that people prefer to speak about themselves. It was then that I stopped speaking and started listening. It is much better this way. ”
Born January 16, 1982 in the Canary Islands, an archipelago of seven islands of volcanic origin in the Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of Africa, Paricio was raised in La Orotava, a little village in the valley on the island of Tenerife (home to El Teide, the highest mountain in Spain). Though its 35,000 inhabitants may seem small by metropolitan standards, it is one of the largest villages on the island. While technology has provided a means for advancement, daily life is deeply rooted in the local traditions of the past, particularly those from the Venezuelan C culture. “I always say we are closer to Venezuelathan we are to the rest of Spain,” Paricio observes. “I don’t think of myself as Spanish. I always think of myself as a Canarian.”

For Paricio, life in the Canary Islands is without stress. A tropical paradise, La Orotava offered mountains, beaches, surfing, good food, beautiful people, and relaxation. Less expensive than Barcelona, one does not need to earn a lot of money to live well. On the flipside, La Orotava offers little contemporary culture. “There are always a group of people trying to make new music and art, but there is little or no support from the public,” Paricio explains. “Those in my generation who want to experiment must leave the island and travel to Spain or Europe in order to do so.” After beginning his art studies at the College of Fine Arts in Tenerife, Paricio left the island to study art in Salamanca, an ancient city built during the Roman Empire in the center of Spain. He finished his studies at the University of Barcelona with a degree in Fine Arts in 2006.

To support himself as an artist, Paricio has done countless jobs which include delivering pizza, working in a restaurant kitchen, waiting tables at a luxury restaurant, dressing up as a clown for children’s birthday parties, entertaining for Havana Club (the Cuban rum), working in a bookstore, working as a gamekeeper, unloading trucks, assisting photographers, being a curator, journalist, art editor, and advertising salesman… amongst many other things.

As an artist, Paricio has worked in sculpture, video, and performance but, as he notes, “With painting I am totally free. I only need a white surface, paint, and a brush. I don’t need big tools or much money, only my mind and my time. Painting is our oldest art (you may remember out ancestors painting in caves). It is part of our DNA code.” Describing his work as “ Abstract Street/Pop Art,” Paricio appropriates cultural references to title his paintings, linking his paintings directly to our shared cultural history. For example, he takes Tian Zhuangzhuang’s film, “Dao Ma Zei” and translates it into “El Ladron de Caballos” for one work. “I love this film,” Paricio explains, “so I put this title to my painting. You can say that I am a thief of names. I create paintings, not names.”

An admirer of 20th century masters Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paricio also studies the works of Spanish legends Velazquez and Goya. “I want to mix street art with traditional art to show the power of abstract art. I want to combine the ideas of Clement Greenberg with the style of Keith Haring. I love critical theory and art theory so much I had considered becoming a curator rather than a painter. But I need to create, to explain something, and my paintings are the vehicle for that. I love the freedom of abstraction and I love the power of materials and color. But I do not believe abstract art is a new world; it is a world inside the world in which it was born and provides a new vision of the world in which we are all living. It is freedom from the structure of the mind and of the computerized world. We are caught in a system and live together in a comfortable world where we want easy culture. We want only to make beautiful and funny things. But I want to think and develop my mind, to free it from its confines. I want to open the secret door. ”

Paricio describes his painting as the search for a hidden truth beneath the obvious reality we share, a truth to which conventional means will not provide us access. Consider his metaphor of an acid trip: “If you have tested it, you know that the world can change, not just in your eyes but in your mind. When you are on a trip, a car is a car, but you know that it means more than the superficial definition. You realize its symbolism, it’s meaning to both the individual and the masses. You know that it means more than you will ever understand and you accept that. And when the trip is finished, the world is not the same place it was when you left.”

Categories: Africa, Art, Exhibitions, Painting

My Man, Nat Finkelstein 1933–2009, May He Rest in Peace

Posted on October 7, 2009

Lemme tell you about my man Nat Finkelstein the kinkiest kid Brooklyn has ever seen. I met him in 2000, he called the office one day to talk with the bosses about his new book for Fall, a Warhol book about the Factory’s earliest days, when the original King of Pop still made his own paintings. Days of desultory decadence that Nat cuts to shreds in his book, The Factory Years, which is now out of print. He signed my book: Heed the cry of the mutant “I need others like me”.

Indeed.

Born in Coney Island, Brooklyn in 1933, Nat Finkelstein was a graduate of Stuyvesant High School and attended Brooklyn College. He blew me away when he dropped this gem on me: homeboy studied photography and design under Alexey Brodovitch, the legendary art director of Harper’s Bazaar. What was this crazy BK boy up to anyway ? How did he connect with Warhol ?

Turns out Nat worked as a photojournalist for the PIX and Black Star photo agencies. In 1964, he got an assignment to enter Andy Warhol’s Factory as a journalist. He didn’t leave for three years. Not until he left his mark, with the first photos of the Velvet Underground, who he called “The Psychopath’s Rolling Stones,” then with shots of Edie Sedgwick, and then finally for being the dude who introduced Valerie Solanis to Andy Warhol. A big mark indeed.

Finkelstein abruptly retired from photography in 1969, when a federal warrant was issued for his arrest, due to the incendiary nature of his civil rights activity. He left the United States, and lived as a fugitive for fifteen years, following the Silk Road through the Middle East. I’ve read some of the stories: Morocco in the late 60s, Kandahar in 71; the sort of things you’d never believe, except Nat had proof. He had his photos.

Eventually, all charges against Finkelstein were dismissed, and he returned to New York City in 1982, resuming his photographic career in galleries worldwide. While best known for his images of Warhol’s Factory, Finkelstein’s documented stories as wide ranging as civil rights protests for Life Magazine in the 1960s to the “club kid” scene of the 1990s. His monographs include The Andy Warhol Index (with Warhol, 1968), Girlfriends (1991), Merry Monsters (1993), Andy Warhol: The Factory Years (2000) and Edie Factory Girl (2006).

Flickr

Finkelstein’s photographs are in the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; The Victoria & Albert Museum, London; The Ludwig Museum, Cologne; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and the Smithsonian Institute, National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC, among many other public and private collections. His work can be seen in upcoming exhibitions, including “Who Shot Rock” at the Brooklyn Museum this Fall, and a retrospective at Idea Generation, London in December 2009.

Nat Finkelstein passed peacefully at his home in Upstate New York on Friday October 2, 2009. He was 76. Rest in Peace, Nat. You were a true original. A rebel and a renegade, an artist and a ladies man, a brilliant thinker, a crazed Tasmanian devil, and one of the funniest, most on-point people I have ever had the pleasure to know. And I am so glad you had the good sense to marry Elizabeth, as she will carry the torch and torch the flag. Whatever it takes to make things happen.

Artnet

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Photography

Maripol Shot Madonna

Posted on August 13, 2009

Maripol – Madonna

Maripol’s work as an art director and designer has influenced popular movements in music, fashion, and art since the early 1980s. She was the founder of Maripolitan Popular Objects Ltd., a fashion accessories company that also designed merchandising for Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” tour. Maripol has art directed films by Marcus Nispel and Abel Ferrara; and music videos for Cher, D’Angelo, Elton John, and Luther Vandross. Her clients also include Kodak, L’Oreal, Panasonic, and Peugeot. Maripol’s work has been exhibited at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Deitch Projects, the Robert Miller Gallery, New York; Musée Maillol, Paris. Maripol has produced films including Downtown 81, which she also art directed, Just an American Boy by Amos Poe, and Face addicts by Edo Bertoglio. She has been published in The New York Times Magazine, WWD, ELLE, i-D, V Magazine, Anthem, Black Book, Nylon, Trace, InStyle, Time Out New York, and The Village Voice, Kurv among countless others. Maripol’s books include Maripolarama (powerHouse Books, 2008) New York Beat: The Making of Downtown 81 (Petit Grand, 2001) and Mes Polas: 1977–90s (Art Random,1990). Maripol lives between Paris and New York with her teenage son Lino.

Maripol discusses her work, Madonna, Danceteria, NYC, 1982, selected for publication in Who Shot Rock & Roll by Gail Buckland (Knopf, October 2009, $40).

Tell me about how you came to be carrying around your Polaroid camera at parties? I ask as the Polaroid is (and was) something so special; before digital technology it was the instant photo; and even now it is so much more—it preserves the photograph as an object (and not just an image/scan). What was it about the Polaroid that had you spending crazy $$ on film in order to get these photos, and how did people react when you asked to shoot them?

Maripol: I carried my camera everywhere indeed and I still have it; its the brown leather clad SX70s. I took it to Studio 54, to Mudd Club, at Fiorucci , on weekends to Montauk, in bed (ha-ha). It’s true it was kind of expensive (like a dollar, a shot) but there was no waste; I used paint, scratch, or cut up the bad results. I knew all of my subjects and the intimacy of the Polaroid did not threaten them. One time I asked David Bowie If I could snap and he said, “No, no darling,” so I respected it!

Downtown NYC in the early 80s is my dream era; post-punk style meeting old-school glamour—and you (in my opinion) were the catalyst for so much of the look. You are a designer, stylist, photographer, artist, model, the IT GIRL of the time. How were you able to fuse your vision with the personalities of the period?

Thanks, I am honored. I think I worked with my instincts getting to dig up materials for objects, and worked when a live model with an idea could have the most impact. It was sort of a sixth sense!

How did you connect to Madonna? What was it about her personality that connected with your own, and what was the inspiration for her revolutionary look—the rubber bracelets, lace hair ties, lingerie and leggings, etc.?

Madonna came to me with Martin B. to help with her style for her first album. In a few words, I would say she was fresh, smart, sexy, active, and just perfect. I thought, “What about a girl named Madonna wearing my crosses on her ears, blasphemous enough and punk.” The rest was like having a Marilyn Monroe in my hands; the 80s were like the 50s; it was all about symbols. She signed the album cover, “For the most perverted mother that I ever had.”

I remember when Madonna came out big on her second album, and all of a sudden everyone was rocking her look. I remember the “Like a Virgin” video when she was dancing on the gondola and the “Borderline” video where she kicked the lamppost with her lime green pumps—hah! I wasn’t even in love with the music, but the outfits—divine! How did it feel to see a legion of women—from little girls to grandmas, suddenly rocking variations on your designs?

There was a Madonna look-alike contest at Macy’s and 100 girls came. Andy Warhol and I were judges and we had a lot of fun. It was surreal but kind of sad at the same time that they could not have their own personalities. That was the power of MTV! But think of it: it happened before with the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Sonny and Cher… It even happened to me. My biggest influence when I was young was David Bowie, his Ziggy Stardust looks, his music, so I went to London when I was 16th and bought green platform boots above the knees which I wore with hot pants, when I returned to my Catholic boarding school they asked me to change—just like Madonna!

Categories: 1980s, Art, Books, Brooklyn, Exhibitions, Fashion, Manhattan, Music, Photography