Jean-Michel Basquiat
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Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.
~Jean-Luc Godard
Posts from the “Painting” Category
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Throughout 70s and 80s the Times Square was a haven for XXX theaters, go-go girls, pimps, whore houses, rent boys, hustlers, thieves, dealers, and lowlifes on the make. Police and city authorities had declared the area as DMZ for crime and sex. The 1977 debut of Show World across 42nd Street from the Port Authority Bus Terminal was the high-water mark for Times Square’s Era of Errors. It had class.
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Successive mayors attempted to purify Times Square without success, for the Mafia-owned establishments were protected by the First Amendment. Finally in 1995 Rudy Giuliani enacted adult zoning laws to end the magnificent wickedness and the following year every XXX theaters and porno shops closed on a rainy afternoon with the moving crews loading salacious merchandise into trucks, as the tearful affectionados of sleaze chanted on the sidewalk, “Fuck Rudy G.”
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All along the Minnesota Strip pimps in fur coats hijacked teenage runaways straight off a bus from the Midwest and slick hustlers struck cowboy poses on the street corners, while dope-hungry muggers trailed unsuspecting hicks down dark streets. The action should have tapered off Christmas Eve, except the players on the Strip were dedicated to acting naughty and not the least bit nice. Tonight was no exception.
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The glowing marquees and flashing neon billboards camouflaged the lurking danger of Times Square. On the sidewalk two young boys were rummaged through a fallen man’s pockets. No one interfered with the robbery and few people made eye contact, unless they loved trouble.
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A brutish bouncer stopped a young blonde girl before the go-go lounge, then she produced an ID and danced a seductive Watusi as an audition. The doorman waved the teenager inside the Dollhouse, as Times Square swallowed another runaway faster than a starving shark.
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The Dollhouse’s DJ segued from RING MY BELL to BROWN SUGAR and on stage the naked redhead cupped her breasts before a middle-aged man. The plaid-suited businessman was bald and overweight, but the $20 in his hand transformed him to Robert Redford, as he slipped the crisp bill beneath teenager’s G-string.
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Times Square’s best pinball wizards gathered around the ‘KISS’, as the champ bumped the machine with his groin and they nodded each time the scoreboard tocked another free game. The champ was on a roll, then the arcade’s front door opened for a frigid draft and a deathly thin player commented, “Damn, one of them Minnesota girls has come in from the cold.”
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The go-go girl hooked her arm inside the punk’s elbow. He wasn’t her type, but a woman on her own was a walking target on the Strip and even after 2am Times Square wasn’t ready to call it a night.
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Men crowded into a theater featuring the hit XXX film BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR and a pimp strutted across Broadway with two teens in skimpy silks. After midnight on 42nd Street everyone was working overtime.
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Artwork by Jane Dickson
Text by Peter Nolan Smith,
from THE LAST DAYS OF BABYLON
Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton, Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Portia aka Madame Blade, Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
T-kid 170, Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Eric Haze, Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Mare 139, Leo, and Eric Haze, Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Leo, Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Indie 184 + Cope 2, Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Marty Cooper + Mark Seliger, Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Daze + Co., Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Henry Chalfant + Portia Ogburn, Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Sharp, Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton, Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Grandmaster Caz, Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Martha Cooper, Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Miss Rosen + Miss Outlaw, Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Grandmaster Caz, Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Yes Yes Y’all, Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Indie 184 + Charlie Ahearn, Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
Photograph © Jianai Jenny Chen
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CHRIS PAPE AKA FREEDOM: DOWN BY LAW
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Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton
August 14–September 26, 2010
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Chris Pape (aka Freedom) is an American painter and graffiti artist. Pape started tagging subway tunnels and subway cars in 1974 as “Gen II” before adopting the tag “Freedom”. He was a witness and a participant to the 20-year run of the New York subway graffiti movement.
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He began writing as Gen II in 1974 and finished his career on the trains in 1983 with the tag Freedom.
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Pape is best known for his numerous paintings in the eponymous Freedom Tunnel, an Amtrak tunnel running underneath Manhattan’s Riverside Park. Prominent paintings in the Freedom Tunnel attributed to Pape include his “self-portrait” featuring a male torso with a spray-can head and “There’s No Way Like the American Way” (aka “The Coca-Cola Mural”), a parody of Coca-Cola advertising and tribute to the evicted homeless of the tunnel. Another theme of Freedom’s work is black and silver recreations of classical art, including a reinterpretation of the Venus de Milo and a full train car recreation of the iconic hands from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.
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Pape will be exhibiting a self portrait from the Freedom Tunnel in “Down by Law” at the Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton, opening on August 14, 2010. He has graciously agreed to speak about his work here.
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New York in the 1970s and 1980s was a city bursting with originality, innovation, and experimentation. Please talk about how you see the relationship between your early work as an artist and the environment in which it took hold.
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The great cities of the 20th century are Paris in the 20s, Berlin in the 30s, and New York in the 70s; and I guarantee you, there will never be another city like New York in the 70s. The gay rights movement, the feminist movement, punk rock, hip hop, graffiti, the blackout, Son of Sam, tabloid journalism, street gangs (in 1977 it became fashionable for gang members to walk through the streets with golf clubs), the blackout, Saturday Night Fever — Saturday Night Live — it all came out of New York!
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If there were one particular moment that defined my later work it would have to be in the 1960s. In 1965, at the age of five, my parents wouldn’t let me leave the block alone. I was allowed to go “subway fishing”, this meant laying atop a subway grating and swinging a string with gum affixed to it until it hovered over a lost coin or some other treasure and hoisting them up. These were long summer days that seemed to go on endlessly. I pulled up Indian head pennies, buffalo nickels, matchbooks, a baseball card, and other bits of junk that somehow stayed in the back of my brain until the early 80s.
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In 1980 I was already a graffiti writer doing letters on the sides of trains, I quickly found out that I could paint realistic images with spraypaint and looked for a place to do it. There was a freight train tunnel in Riverside Park where trains still ran, the gratings formed 15-foot high canvasses of light against the walls, and in those beams of light I repainted the images of my youth including a baseball card. In 1986 the homeless moved in and became known as the “Mole People”, I stopped painting and documented their lives for three years. I finished my mural work in 1995. I tell the story because I can’t think of any other city in America where something like that could’ve happened. That was New York back in the day.
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It has recently been suggested to me that the term “graffiti” is marginalizing, and loaded with negative connotations. How do you feel about the use of the word in general, as well as application to your work as an artist?
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The graffiti word is offensive, but it was the only word to describe the early stages of the movement. In 1974 the word “graffiti artist” was coined in the New York Times—that seems like a happy marriage. I don’t lose any sleep over this stuff.
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As a working artist over the past three decades, you have seen first hand how the art world—from galleries and dealers to museums and collectors—responds and reacts to contemporary American art. What are your thoughts on the differences (and similarities, if applicable) between the US, European, and Asian markets?
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I think the art world as a whole views the works of artists as commodities. Let’s not forget the lessons of the 1980s when graffiti canvases were sold for huge amounts right up until the stock market crash. Things do seem a lot more liberal in Europe where graffiti artists from New York are celebrated and have been for years.
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Who are your artistic inspirations, and how have they influenced your ideas, aesthetics, and actions through the course of your career?
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Hopper is my favorite painter, I think he tapped into the American psyche more then any other painter of the last century, but I don’t think he inspires me. I’ve bitten generously from Warhol, Oldenburg and Rosenquist, you can see the Rosenquist influence in the “Buy American” painting. Warhol and Oldenburg are there on a more spiritual level.
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Self Portrait in The Freedom Tunnel, Artwork © Chris Pape
Self Portrait inspired by The Freedom Tunnel, Artwork © Chris Pape
For “Down by Law” you will be exhibiting your self portrait from the Freedom Tunnel. Please talk about the importance of this piece, and the context in which it was created.
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The self portrait for the show was originally painted in the tunnel in 1984. At the time it wasn’t THE FREEDOM TUNNEL, it was just me doing my thing, which allowed me to fail a lot. This painting didn’t really fit in with the themes I had established, but it seemed to work and was published in a number of books. It’s a self portrait. The jacket was given to me by my parents in 1976, I left home in ’77 and lived in the jacket, quite literally. The spraycan head is an old graffiti device that seemed to describe my life at the time.
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There has been a wide array of artists to emerge from the early graffiti movement. How have your earlier experiences influenced you ideas about art, and in what direction would you like to go?
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When I left the tunnel in 1995 I was a little bit dazed. I was stuck as a painter, although I continued my visual journalism work. I did my new paintings large, and then small, in color, with a sable brush – it seemed as though nothing worked. Of course the answer was that it couldn’t work. The paintings in the tunnel are just that, there in a tunnel. In the same way that if you buy a subway graffiti artist’s work it’s best to buy an entire subway car or it loses context. I think that’s a battle that all graffiti writers that started on trains have had. I’m not saying I’ve fully overcome it but I’ve come close.
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At the end of May, Jane Dickson and I took a bus from Baltimore to New York, which is the perfect highway journey for a tete-a-tete on topics about everything from art and ideas to happiness and success. It was on this ride that she told me about her new work, “The Architecture of Distraction”, inspired by a trip to Las Vegas. Being fascinated with forms of distraction, I wanted to take this opportunity to chat with Jane about her new paintings and where they are taking her.
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Artwork © Jane Dickson
I love the title, “The Architecture of Distraction” as it implies an intention that goes beyond the more congenial term, “entertainment.” Please talk about what has attracted you to the idea of distraction and the forms in which it manifests in American life.
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I’m struggling daily to focus, to think my own thoughts clearly without interruptions and to follow through on those ideas. Yet I reject being a recluse because I’m as seduced as anyone by the overwhelming energy of the city, my brilliant friends, the internet… I’m driven to distraction by my desire to keep up with more than is humanly possible.
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I’ve been thinking about how this attraction/seduction/distraction paradox is structural to our hyper-commercialized culture. Our attention is hijacked every few seconds by systems designed by the best minds money can buy. Like everyone else, I’m struggling with the internet’s huge new layers of virtual info/distractions.
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You know, every time I sit down to write an email I find an hour has gone by, I’ve signed petitions to save whales, seen strange videos, read about art projects in Greenland and I’ve forgotten to do that one email I went online for in the first place. This is not news but it’s an ever-increasing challenge to find strategies to cope with. I understand the world by painting my dillemas so my current question is how to visualize distraction.
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Your new project focuses on Las Vegas, which is distraction on the largest possible scale. What is it about Las Vegas that you find in turns compelling and challenging in the desire to represent it visually ?
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I was at loose ends last year and a friend invited me to Vegas. Entering that seemingly endless maze of disorienting patterns and shapes, flashing lights and crazy music, what Rem Koolhaas called the Synthetic Reality of Fantastic Technology, I realized I had entered the 3-D precursor to the internet’s labyrinth of temptations. I took hundreds of pictures, many of people at slot machines. When I got home and looked at them I realized what interested me was the architecture and the way it swallows everyone. Slot machines look like computer terminals. We get away from work and then are riveted by these screens, losing money, thinking we’re having fun.
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You mentioned that you are also working on paintings of an amusement park ride in Vienna, and that this work recalls a project you did 25 years ago. What is it like to work on a similar subject through the lens of “distraction” ?
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Most of my work has focused on prefab entertainment zones since my first paintings of Times Square. One of my first jobs was working there as a computer billboard animator on weekend nights. I wandered around wondering why everyone, including me, wanted to be in a place that was so raw. I began to paint it from every angle I could, trying to capture the edges of it’s attractive/repulsiveness, when I was pregnant and couldn’t stand the smell of Times Square I moved on to Demolition Derbies, street fairs, …..asking, why this? Why does this signify fun? What does this have to tell me about myself, my culture, the world ?
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When I embrace a new subject it feels electric, like new love, totally fascinating. Eventually I get to know it too well and I’m done. With carnivals I’m revisiting an old subject from a fresh perspective. I’m a different person than I was when I first painted it. I see things I didn’t register before. Early on, besides glorying in the artificiality of the lights, I focused mostly on alienated individuals. Now I’m entranced by the geometric meta-structures that determine the scope of the “freedom” each ride offers. I’m observing about the architectural structures as framework for, creation of, limitation to, and distraction from desires and choices, reflecting the larger invisible structures, natural, political and economic that are reshaping my world every day.
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Artwork © Jane Dickson
I love how you had said about the Vienna work that the paintings were like potato chips, and that you couldn’t do just one. Please talk about the difference between this vibe and the more challenging aspects of the Las Vegas project.
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A lot of art making is a long hard slog into the unknown. “How the hell do I treat this? What do I put it on? What paint do I use? How thick, how big, how many…?” This is a process of trial and error requiring enormous faith to engage the biggest question; “Is this project really worth doing at all?”
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But sometimes there are moments of grace when I feel fluent with the subject and the materials and the work just flies. It feels like the push-ups are over and now I can dance. When the work is really flowing I feel like I’m gorging myself on colors and marks. “just one more…just one more…” I don’t want to stop.
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( I always imagine I’m eating colors.)
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With Las Vegas I’m still exploring, everything is in question. With amusement park rides I’m at home even if these paintings are on smooth square panels which I’ve never used before. That’s an important point. As an artist I can’t stay long in the familiar zone or I begin to fall asleep creatively. The architecture of these rides is exciting right now because I beat my head against the wall all last year exploring them with the wrong materials and it just felt dead. Now I know the subject well, I’ve finally found a congruent approach technically and it’s beginning to sing.
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Lastly I have to confess that whatever subject I am focusing on can begin to feel like a job. I start to push myself, make mental demands and commitments, get hyper-critical of the work in progress…..So the distraction of a side project feels like play. I haven’t promised it to anyone. I don’t have expectations for it. It can surprise me. Sometimes I switch which project is my main one in my head to trick myself into lightening the burden of expectations I’ve put on it. The one I don’t care about is always easiest.
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Artwork © Jane Dickson
Do you have your own favorite distractions, and in what form do they take?
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Right now reading, swimming, hip hop and indie music events, crossword puzzles, facebook and “Mad Men.”
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I was first introduced to Jennifer Uman by way of Brian Coleman, who asked me, “Who is your favorite writer? Who is your favorite musician?” Giving this some thought, I decided on Raymond Chandler and Miles Davis. Flash forward a couple of weeks, and I am at WFMU, doing “Coffee Break for Heroes and Villians” with Janette Beckman. Our host was none other than Noah Uman, Jen’s husband, who, after the show, told me he had a gift for me from Jen… I opened a small envelope to discover two petite portraits of my favorite artists, and was charmed by their casually groovy attitudes.
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Artwork © Jennifer Uman
Artwork © Jennifer Uman
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I emailed Jen about a week ago, and we just started talking .. and talking .. and talking. She sent me a link to her Flickr page, which contained, amongst other things, a series called “Photo Booth,” which I immediately adored, and, about which I wanted to learn more. Jennifer graciously to chat about her work with me.
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Please talk about how you got started painting.
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Jennifer Uman: I found a box of poster paint and a paintbrush in my apartment about seven years ago. I sat down and painted a small picture on scrap paper. It was a portrait of Willie Nelson. It came out horrible, but I loved it because it came from the most pure part of myself and making it was the best feeling.
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So I began painting. Living in a predominately Hindustani/Pakistani neighborhood their culture, music, and traditions inspired and influenced me a lot….they still do. My life was chaos at the time so I fled into this space where I was painting every person I saw. That evolved into painting memories and places, historic figures I learned about in 4th grade and everything else inside my head.
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It’s funny because most of my friends went to art school. I never even thought this was a possibility for me because I never painted before. I’ve still never taken an art class and I know nothing about technique but it works for me and it’s still the best feeling ever.
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Please talk about the Photo Booth project. What was the inspiration for this series?
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I love flaws.
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Teeth, hair, toes, broken car doors, a crooked nose.
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I wanted to make a series that could capture these flaws in a distinct environment. Also I liked the idea of taking creating one piece using 100 small works rather than how I have done previous series made up of four or five large works.
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I have two photo booth photos above my desk. They were screaming for me to recognize that sometimes the best ideas are born from the things right in front of you. Truly!
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What do you think it is that is so compelling about photo booths? Is it the instantaneousness of the images, the fact that they are shot in a series, the privacy behind the curtain, etc ?
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I love the old photo booth photos. one little photograph can mark history and a sense of the era. That is what compels me to them. and of course… that instantaneous moment! it’s in these moments all of who we are comes out. The defects, insecurities, the ego, but captured in in an image.
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From the Photo Booth series, Artwork © Jennifer Uman
How did you come up with your subjects? Are they based on people you know, photos you have seen, or purely drawn from your imagination?
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Most of the subjects come from experiences. Of course there are photos and films that inspire me or that I have stolen from and made my own but mostly my ideas come from being alive. For this series it is great because I can create whatever scenario I want and see it through in a form that will help me to complete this puzzle.
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I think my best ideas come when I follow a thought from beginning to end. For example, I was walking through a park and there was a drum circle. It was annoying BUT it triggered my memory of the the toy bongos my grandfather gave me when I was little. It was from this memory that turned into an idea of painting a man with a mustache and holding the bongos and that is how the man with the bongos ended up in the series.
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I recently watched the Kurwisawa film “Stray Dog.” In the commentary I learned that this was the first film to use slow or classical music set to a fight scene. In some way I relate to this idea for this series. Perhaps people don’t think of a woman wearing a hijab in a photo booth, or something as simple of a girl eating a donut in a photo booth. Why does she even have a donut in a photo booth? Each character has their own story but together its a totally different idea.
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Have you done any of your subjects in a series of 4, or are they just individual shots—a best of if you will?
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I originally planned to do a series of ten strips of photo booth panels. I like to paint in series form but for this project I felt rather than putting my strength into repeating the same person/people I could develop different people and scenarios. I have a huge appreciation for small keepsakes, objects, and pocket sized sentimentality so I made each painting the exact same size of an actual photo booth photo.
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Hmm….so perhaps each individual shot it’s own best of. I never thought of this before. i like it.
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From the Photo Booth series, Artwork © Jennifer Uman
What is your ultimate goal for this project ?
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Great question. I would love to make them into posters, notebooks, book covers, a book of stories, flip books, wallpaper, playing cards, everything! Also base or contribute to a group show around a similar idea. Ultimately this project has helped me grow and hopefully people will find something new every time they look at this series.
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I read about the importance of taking pictures of the things you will forget. I am a horrible photographer so I’m trying to apply this to my painting. It has always been the small moments are the most important for me.
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From the Photo Booth series, Artwork © Jennifer Uman
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“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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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. ”
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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.”