Posts from the “1990s” Category

Yayoi Kusama: In Infinity

Posted on October 31, 2016

© Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/ Singapore; Victoria Miro Gallery, London; David Zwirner, New York, © Yayoi Kusama.

“I, Kusama, am the modern Alice in Wonderland,’ Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama declares. At the age of 87, Kusama is one of the most famous living artists on earth, becoming known the world over for her mindblowing installations of the infinite.

With the polka dot as the basis for her work, Kusama has taken the most finite form and rendered it limitless. She explains, “A polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm. Round, soft, colourful, senseless and unknowing. Polka-dots can’t stay alone; like the communicative life of people, two or three polka-dots become movement… Polka-dots are a way to infinity.”

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

Edward Burtynsky: Essential Elements

Posted on October 30, 2016

Photo: Thjorsà River #1, Southern Region, Iceland, 2012. © Edward Burtynsky 2016. Courtesy Flowers Gallery, London / Metivier Gallery, Toronto

We have entered the Anthopocene Era, marked by the turning point when human activities began to make a significant global impact on the Earth’s geology and ecosystems. Many place the starting point with the Industrial Revolution, when mass production became the norm, and the machine rose to prominence as evidence of humankind’s ability to dominate nature—without thought or concern to the long term.

We’ve been riding this train for two centuries, quick to ignore evidence to the contrary, lest it cause us any intellectual or physical discomfort. The human impact on the planet is marginalized or excused while the changes to climate are carefully swept under the rug. The increase in extinctions and the decline in biodiversity go unremarked.

As Alduous Huxley observed in Vanity Fair in 1928, “”The colossal material expansion of recent years is destined, in all probability, to be a temporary and transient phenomenon. We are rich because we are living on our capital. The coal, the oil, the phosphates which we are so recklessly using can never be replaced. When the supplies are exhausted, men will have to do without…. It will be felt as a superlative catastrophe.”

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

Azucar! The Life of Celia Cruz Comes to Netflix in an Epic Series

Posted on October 20, 2016

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The Queen of Salsa, the incomparable Celia Cruz (1925-2003) is now the subject of Celia, an epic television series now airing on Netflix showcasing the Cuban singer’s incredible life. Featuring 80 episodes, each 45 minutes in length, the series, which originally aired in 2015 in Colombia on RCN Television and in the United States on Telemundo, tells the story of Cruz’s rise to fame in Spanish, with English subtitles.

Celia stars Puerto Rican actress and Miami Beach resident Jeimy Osorio as the legendary entertainer with fellow Boricua actor Modesto Lacén cast as her husband, Pedro Knight. Directed by Victor Mallarino and Liliana Bocanegra, and scripted by Andrés Salgado, Celia tells the story of the singer’s rise to fame, beginning in pre-revolution Havana, when Salsa music was a white man’s game.

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Crave, Latin America, Music

The True Story of “The Central Park Five’

Posted on October 13, 2016

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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.”

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Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Crave, Manhattan

Ava DuVernay: 13TH

Posted on October 10, 2016

Image: Courtesy of Netflix

“The bottom line is, if you’re white in America, you have no idea what it’s like to be black,” Newt Gingrich declares in 13TH, the new documentary by Ava DuVernay now screening on Netflix. Titled after the Thirteenth Amendment, which legalizes slavery in the case of incarceration, the film exposes the way in which African Americans have been systematically criminalized in order to create and feed the prison industrial complex.

The film’s release comes at a pivotal time in U.S. history, as we are witnessing the rebirth of a new Civil Rights Movement to counter the abuses of power by the police, courts, prisons, and corporations under the 13th Amendment. While the media besieges the nation with images of lynchings sanctioned by the state, which simultaneously activate PTSD in their intended victims and thrill the bloodlust of the predators, we are inundated with the media’s fixation on Donald Trump’s calls to return to a time in our history before Civil Rights existed at all.

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

In the Tower: Barbara Kruger

Posted on October 5, 2016

Artwork: Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Know nothing, Believe anything, Forget everything), 1987/2014 screenprint on vinyl overall: 274.32 x 342.05 cm (108 x 134 11/16 in.) National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of the Collectors Committee, Sharon and John D. Rockefeller IV, Howard and Roberta Ahmanson, Denise and Andrew Saul, Lenore S. and Bernard A. Greenberg Fund, Agnes Gund, and Michelle Smith © Barbara Kruger

You have seen it a million times in your minds eye: across a black-and-white photograph, a red bar runs. Against the red, words are written in white Futura Bold typeface. It is the work of American artist Barbara Kruger (b. 1945), so iconic no less than Supreme used it as inspiration for their logo, perhaps unironically referencing her famed 1987 work that called out consumer culture with the words, “I shop therefore I am.”

Three decades ago, Kruger brought us to the edge. We looked into the abyss and saw ourselves staring back at us, with a queasy smile of recognition. Fast forward to 2016, where many people proudly see themselves as brands. They take selfies and layer those photographs with words, unwittingly incorporating the very aphorisms Kruger has been speaking throughout her career. It’s a bit like the snake eating its tail and it becomes clear: progress is simply forward motion in time. Revolution is when the circle spins 360 degrees, returning to its starting point. We’ve been here before, haven’t we?

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

The Making of a Fugitive

Posted on October 3, 2016

Artwork: Dennis Adams, Patricia Hearst – A thru Z, 1979/90. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, gift of Howard and Donna Stone. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago.

On August 7, 1970, Jonathan Jackson, a 17-year-old African-American high school student brought three guns into the Marin County Hall of Justice during the trial of San Quentin inmate James McClain. Jackson, McClain, and Black Panther party inmates Ruchell Magee and William A. Christmas took Superior Court Harold Haley, Deputy D.A. Garry Thomas, and thee female jurors hostage. The group exited the courthouse and attempted to flee in a van. The police opened fire, starting a shootout that left Jackson, Haley, McClain, and Christmas dead.

It soon came to light that that Jackson’s guns had been purchased two days prior to the incident by Angela Davis, then an assistant professor In the philosophy department at UCLA. The state of California considers “all persons concerned in the commission of a crime, whether they directly commit the act constituting the offense…principals in any crime committed,” and charged Davis with “aggravated kidnapping and first degree murder in the death of Judge Harold Haley.” *

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

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.

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

Danny Lyon: Journey

Posted on September 27, 2016

Photo: Danny Lyon, Mary, Santa Marta, Colombia, 1972, Gelatin silver enlargement print © Danny Lyon. Courtesy of the artist and Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York and Zurich

“Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding,” Plato wrote in The Republic circa 380 B.C.

Empathy is both an emotional response, as well as a cognitive one. We can both feel what another experiences, as well as perceive it through rational thought. To be empathetic is a challenge some refuse to accept, but for those willing to open themselves, it is a two-fold process. First there is simply the ability to understand that which is not our own, and to refrain from manipulations that would adulterate its truth. Once we are able to do this, the next step comes: to share this truth in a responsible way, one that allows us to use our personal gifts in the service of the cause, while maintaining integrity and authenticity above all.

American photographer and filmmaker Danny Lyon (b. 1942) understand this, and has dedicated his life to the pursuit of truth. Working in the style of New Journalism, in which the photographer fully immersed himself in the milieu in which he worked, Lyon uses emotional and cognitive empathy to delve beyond the surface of the world and capture something much deeper and far more profound, something so visceral it goes beyond words and cuts straight to the soul.

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Photo: Danny Lyon, The Haitian Women, Port Au Prince, 1986, Gelatin silver enlargement print © Danny Lyon. Courtesy of the artist and Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York and Zurich

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

A People’s Journey Across American Finally Arrives on the Washington Mall

Posted on September 24, 2016

Created by: Arthur Rothstein, published by Hyperion Press Ltd. Girl at Gee’s Bend, Alabama 1937; printed 1981, silver and photographic gelatin on photographic paper H x W (Image): 8 15/16 x 12 in. (22.7 x 30.5 cm) H x W (Image and Sheet): 10 7/8 x 14 in. (27.6 x 35.6 cm) Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture (NMAAHC) holds its grand opening today—just one week after Terence Crutcher, 40, was extrajudicially killed by Tulsa Police Officer Betty Shelby. The father of four, who was on his way home from community college when his car broke down, was unarmed and had his hands in his air when Shelby fired the fatal shot without warning. Then, just four days later, Keith Lamont Scott, 43, was shot dead by Charlotte Police Officer Brentley Vinson while waiting for his son to be dropped off after school by the bus, sparking the on-going Charlotte Uprising, which has left a second man dead.

The tragedy is that Crutcher’s story is not unique; it is the very foundation upon which the United States was built. The men who wrote, “All men are created equal” are the same ones who determined African Americans only amounted to 3/5ths of a person. It has been said that, “The more things change, the more they remain the same,” and with every police killing, we are reminded of this—just as we are reminded that the United States government was found guilty of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a 1999 trial, which the mainstream media did not cover at the time.

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Brotherhood Records, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Funeral Services, 1968 vinyl , ink on cardboard H x W (2011.17.37a disc): 12 × 12 in. (30.5 × 30.5 cm) H x W (2011.17.37b album jacket): 12 3/8 × 12 3/8 in. (31.4 × 31.4 cm). Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Elmer J. Whiting, III.

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

Fifty Years After

Posted on September 6, 2016

Photo: Mickalene Thomas Remember Me, 2006 c-print 49 1/2 x 59 x 1 3/4 inches (framed) Edition 4 of 5, with 2 APs.

The March on Washington took place on August 28, 1963, marking the twelfth anniversary of the murder of Emmett Till. Till was just 14 years old when he was lynched in Mississippi, an event so heinous that it became a pivotal catalyst for the next phase of the Civil Rights Movement.

In 1963, less than five years before he would be assassinated the United States government, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the top of Lincoln Memorial and delivered a speech, a speech so powerful that you can hear it in your mind’s ear as you read his words: “I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.”

But where have we come in decades since this speech? We live in an era where extrajudicial executions are a daily operation at the hands of police departments around the country. Where these brutal murders are brazenly broadcast on television with complete disregard—or perhaps intention—to involve a permanent state of PTSD in our countrymen and women. Where protests are called unpatriotic in as much as some in this country pledge allegiance to a flag that represents the politics of the Confederacy.

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