Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Thursday, February 20, 2020
"SUBWAY graffiti making a comeback"
Dig It!
I have yet to see a full car piece myself in more than 30+ years
Saturday, February 23, 2019
Saturday, February 2, 2019
The Idealist - In My Eyes 25 Years
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Monday, November 19, 2018
School of Life Monday:
What Comes After Religion
The debate between believers and atheists usually goes nowhere. The real issue is: what should fill the gaps created by the end of widespread belief? What should fill the God-shaped hole?
Monday, June 4, 2018
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
New Interview with WE EAT ART podcast
We talk to Glen E. Friedman about photographing skaters, punks and rappers, how to photograph character, the point of wide-angle lenses, working together with the subject to get the perfect picture, how he decided to stop photographing guns, collaborating, mythmaking, politics, and contemporary art. Plus Ice T as art-director, the Beastie Boys learning from Glen, photographs of Jay Adams 40 years apart, King T's wraparound shotgun cover, Shepard Fairey as collaborator, Noam Chomsky and Pussy Riot posing for photos and more.
Saturday, March 17, 2018
Skateboarding, not surfing,
Should be California's official state sport
from the Los Angeles Times:
thx Neftali Williams
In case you missed the headlines, Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi of Torrance has introduced a bill to make surfing the official sport of California. Muratuschi, a member of the Assembly's informal "surf caucus," announced the proposal at a news conference in Hermosa Beach last month, while standing next to a statue of the 1960s surfer Tim Kelly and wearing a Hawaiian shirt. "Nothing represents the California dream better than surfing," he said.
That depends on how you define the California dream, of course. Were he to take a state poll, Muratsuchi would certainly discover that far more Californians skateboard than surf. This is one of many reasons why skateboarding, not surfing, should be California's state sport.
Let's start with the obvious: Surfing as we know it is from Hawaii. The sport has Polynesian roots, and modern surf culture grew up alongside the resorts of Waikiki. That's why surfing is already the official sport of that state.
In fact, it was Hawaiians who brought surfing to California. The first people on record to surf in North America, back in the 1880s, were Hawaiian princes: Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana'ole, David Kawananakoa and Edward Keliiahonui. They fashioned boards out of redwoods and put on a demonstration in Santa Cruz. The pastime was further promoted in California in the early 20th century by two more Hawaiians, George Freeth and Duke Kahanamoku, who traveled around the state and proselytized about the pleasures of wave riding.
Skateboarding, by contrast, is native to California. The sport was born sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s when bored surfers, smarting from flat or otherwise bad wave conditions, screwed roller skate wheels onto wood planks so that they could go "sidewalk surfing."
But there are other virtues to making skateboarding, not surfing, the state sport. Skateboarding is more egalitarian. While surfing can easily cost a newcomer $1,000 in gear, a basic skate set-up can be had for around $100. This difference in cost is one reason why the Surfrider Foundation reported in 2011 that the average household income for surfers was $75,000, while most "core participants" in skateboarding come from households where the median income is between $25,000 and $49,999, according to data from the International Assn. of Skateboard Companies.
Skateboarding is more geographically accessible. To surf, not only do you have to be at the beach, you have to be at a beach with a particular combination of wind and tide conditions. To skate, all you need is a smooth concrete surface.
Because it is both cheaper and easier to do, skating is significantly more widespread than surfing. According to the Sports and Fitness Industry Assn., there are about 1.7 million surfers, windsurfers and sailboarders in the United States, and even that figure is thought to be inflated by tourism. There are 6.2 million skaters across the country, according to the IASC.
It's especially popular in Los Angeles. Nearly 1 out of every 10 children between the ages of 6 and 17 in L.A. County knows how to skate, according to a survey by the LA84 Foundation. And 70% of them are nonwhite.
Thanks in part to the Tony Hawk Foundation, which has helped open 544 skate parks in the U.S., there are now skate parks in Watts, San Pedro, Canoga Park, Long Beach and Compton, among other places. The Kelly Slater Wave Company's artificial wave pool in Lemoore may have boosters dreaming of surf contests in landlocked locations around the world, but the sport will have a lot of catching up to do.
There's no question that California has played an important role in the history of surfing. Californians helped surfboards evolve from heavy, canoe-like planks to the thin chips of today. We invented the wetsuit, created a multi-billion-dollar surfing industry, and developed the modern science of wave forecasting, opening the door for big-wave riding. Some of the best surfers in the world, including Kelly Slater and Keala Kennelly, have made California home. And we surely have the edge when it comes to surfing lore, from Butch Van Artsdalen and the hellraisers of Windansea to Miki Dora and the pranksters of Malibu.
But we didn't invent it.
Both surfing and skating will make their Olympic debuts in Tokyo in 2020, before the Games come to L.A. in 2024. Summer surf here is patchy at best, so the conditions could embarrass. Skate ramps and half pipes are consistent.
Assembly Bill 1782 is already winding its way through the Legislature, but it's not too late to reconsider. California should be proud of its truly indigenous pastime.
Dennis Romero is a writer and reporter in Los Angeles.
thx Neftali Williams
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
Fugazi Returns... Through Opera?
from Pitchfork:
by Andy Beta Contributor
Last November, Washington Post pop critic Chris Richards posted a photo from a Washington Wizards telecast, featuring former Fugazi and Rites of Spring member Guy Picciotto taking in the game. Soon after, another indelible image of Picciotto on a basketball court circulated online, of the guitarist and vocalist performing at an early Fugazi show, dangling upside down from the basket, shirtless and screaming. It was a searing reminder that Fugazi’s vitality has seldom been matched. For nearly 20 years, they were an inspirational force in the underground—as kinetic as a severed power line, night in and night out.
“They're still the greatest rock band I've ever seen live, as electrifying as your imagination will allow,” recently said Richards, whose post-hardcore band Q and Not U was signed to Dischord Records, co-owned by Fugazi and Minor Threat frontman Ian MacKaye. “Fugazi taught me how intense live music could be, and how that intensity can help bind a community.” After the band’s sixth album, 2001’s The Argument, and its subsequent tour, Fugazi went on indefinite hiatus in 2003. Every so often there are rumors of a reunion (and even an April Fool’s Day joke), but the band has never played live again. In 2011, they offered a consolation of sorts: an 800-show live archive spanning from 1988 to 2003 and containing over 1,500 hours of music, uploaded to Dischord’s site.
When Brooklyn-based experimental theater group Object Collection announced It’s All True, a so-called “opera-in-suspension” based on that archive, fans, music sites, an even the band were flummoxed. “I was really left-footed by it–I couldn’t read the tonality at all,” Picciotto said recently, via email. “It seemed kind of arch at first, though I was hugely relieved that it wasn’t some kind of hagiographic take on the whole thing.” It’s All True premiered in Norway in 2016, was staged in London last year, and now makes its U.S. premiere at New York’s venerated experimental theater home, La Mama, where it runs from February 8th through the 25th.
Before the idea of “Waiting Room,” “Glue Man” and “Reclamation” being strung together into a cringeworthy storyline about two Gen-X lovers crosses your mind, none of Fugazi’s songs actually appear in It’s All True, meaning that the band thankfully won’t be having its Mamma Mia! or American Idiot moment. Instead, Object Collection’s composer Travis Just and writer/director Kara Feely pulled their material solely from stage banter, feedback, guitar re-stringing, and confrontations between Picciotto, MacKaye, and their audiences—a bewildering mix of incidental and interstitial moments that suggest every performance is in a perpetual state of collapse. How fitting for a troupe that most recently presented a hardcore take on the Russian Revolution (and the legendary Sergei Eisenstein film about it) with cheap&easy OCTOBER.
“Our work is non-narrative and there's already 1,000 versions of ‘Reclamation’ available for everybody to listen to, so what's the point of us doing that?” Just said. “We're not gonna tell the story of the band, either. As a composer, I've always loved uncontrollable feedback and drums that sound like they've been thrown down a flight of stairs. That's kind of my thing.”
Even after Fugazi granted usage rights (they are selective, generally allowing student films and non-profits but not most corporate and industry requests), they still didn’t think anything would come of the project. “Frankly, I didn’t fully understand what they were going to do with the material, and I also wasn’t 100 percent convinced it would ever happen,” Picciotto said. But after the premiere, the band saw video footage and couldn’t quite believe the end results. “We all started exchanging emails of the ‘what-the-fuck’ variety,” Picciotto added. “But the more we watched it, the more it started to grow on us. I think the willful perversity of the undertaking really appealed to us—the literal notation-scoring of the incidental music by Travis, all the crazy quilting of the stage speech by Kara.” Picciotto even admitted that no single member of Fugazi actually made it through the entirety of their own live archive, a process he called “pretty fucking grueling.”
“They maybe weren't expecting us to go as deep as we did, but when you're working with an archive, you kind of have to go through everything,” Just said, though the process did start to have adverse effects on him. “It was brutal, I won't lie. I was having weird dreams that I was in the band or just some disembodied head.”
In the years since Fugazi went on hiatus, their legacy has grown, though the band’s convictions have become at times distorted. “It drives me insane how people talk about them today,” Richards said. “‘Fugazi? Weren’t they that straight-edge band who hated dancing and liked to scold their audience?’” Yes, the band held to convictions about keeping shows cheap (often $5-$7), all ages, and safe. If the mosh pits grew hostile toward women and younger kids, MacKaye would immediately bring things to a halt. Rather than regard it as nagging and hectoring a paying audience, such pauses and verbal sparring were ultimately about fostering inclusivity in the scene. As a 16-year-old living in central Texas, Fugazi coming to play in my town felt seismic: an all too-rare event that didn’t involve going to a bar, needing a chaperone, or borrowing money from my parents. Even more mind-boggling is that I can revisit that exact show.
Although neither Just nor Feely ever saw the band play live, Fugazi’s dedication to a DIY ethos—their willingness to book the tours, rent the PA, and cart their own gear—spoke to the theater group. “Being involved in performance, it's all about the live show for us,” Feely said. “There was just such a huge amount of activity going on around [Fugazi] shows, whether they were playing a benefit concert, or there was a rally going on that they were playing in front of, or even just how they conducted themselves live and what they expected of the audience.”
On Thursday night, It’s All True made its U.S. premiere, every bit as confounding as the video clips hinted at. Propelled by a din scored and conducted by Just for the Dither Guitar Quartet, bookended by drummers Shayna Dunkelman and Clara Warnaar, the noise accompanied four actors as they thrashed and shouted on a simple stage of armchairs, folding chairs, metal tables, and stacks of cardboard, moving seemingly at random. It was gestural yet resistant to a through-line, the music similarly disjointed: tunings, drum rolls, amp buzz and, at one point in the performance, amplified sipping from water bottles. “Surprisingly, the incidental music triggered weird ‘feelings’ for me,” Picciotto said. “Stuff I heard a million times–certain time-killing drum fills or tuning patterns–and it was weird how resonant that felt.”
Although much of this stage banter was first uttered by Fugazi in the ’90s, as the band railed against Exxon, Mobil, Bush 41, and the “television miniseries Desert Storm,” there are passages highlighted in It’s All True that become eerily resonant in the present moment: lines about police violence, gun deaths, the unchecked growth of for-profit prisons, affordable healthcare, “male lame asses,” and even a diatribe on “shitholes,” all woven into the din. The opera starts to reflect the mass confusion that is palpable in 2018, wherein we’re in need of action yet flailing over how exactly to act.
“I always hated the whole question of, ‘Does politics have a place in music?’” Picciotto said. “It’s moronic. We are all in politics all the time, and the play reminded me of how much that was foregrounded at the shows—we were all in it. And we’re still all in it. It’s a combination of that depressing feeling of ‘fuck, this shit AGAIN?’ with the more resilient, combative ‘FUCK this shit, again!’”
Amid the jumble of feedback and shouted lines, something resembling that heartening relief of being in the crowd at an underground show or a protest march emerges: the paradoxical realization that while no one person can make a difference, a difference can nevertheless be made. It’s All True explicitly addresses that near the end, taking a line from the band and shouting it anew: “You look around and go, ‘I’m not alone!’”
Tuesday, December 19, 2017
Interview with Al Jaffee at 95 years old
Podcast from WE EAT ART
As a kid of the 60's and 70's Mad magazine was a huge influence to me as well as entertainment.
Al Jaffee was one of it's masterminds, I found this interview really enjoyable and you probably will too.
In fact I just did an interview with these guys at WE EAT ART based on their dedication to the art they love. Give them a listen, and look out for my interview coming in the near future.
Al Jaffee has quite literaly been making cartoons longer than any artist in history. Unfortunately for everyone involved, he works at Mad Magazine.
Saturday, November 11, 2017
When A 60-something Feminist Artist [Beat Down]
Overgrown [Wannabe] Skaters
I make it clear over the years that the brand discussed in this article is on my shit list. In fact no one is allowed to come into one of my exhibitions if they are wearing anything with the name on their person or board. Nor will I photograph anyone no matter how talented if they are supporting this bullshit brand. They have stolen from me and other artists and friends. They are the antithesis of cool, they are SHIT.
from The CUT
I Think About This a Lot:
When a 60-Something Feminist Artist Dragged Overgrown Skaters
By Kat Stoeffel
The best insult I’ve ever heard came out of one of the most trivial news stories I’ve ever followed.
The story involves the cult skatewear line Supreme, in the years before it was fashion-relevant, back when it was just an expensive hobby for rich teens and cool dads.
Important historical context: Before Supreme partnered with Louis Vuitton, it ripped them off. In 2000, Louis Vuitton sent Supreme a cease-and-desist letter when their trademark showed up on skateboards. So did other entities whose logos Supreme used on hoodies and jackets, such as the NHL and the NCAA.
These days, Supreme doesn’t steal, it collaborates. But intellectual property theft is in its DNA. The white Futura on a red box logo is “inspired” by 72-year-old artist Barbara Kruger, who uses an identical text treatment to collage anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian maxims over 1950s advertising-style black-and-white photographs.
In May of 2013 — decades after Supreme started slinging T-shirts with a bootleg Kruger logo — Kruger made her opinion of Supreme known. The circumstances of this event involve in-group drama that is tedious to recount — an ouroboros of cringe. But the outcome was one of the sickest burns since “virgin who can’t drive,” so bear with me.
A rival clothing company run by young women was selling hypebeast parody items, beanies that said “Supreme Bitch” and the like. Supreme tolerated Supreme Bitch until they tried to trademark “Supreme Bitch,” at which point Supreme sued the makers of* Supreme Bitch for $10 million for stealing the logo Supreme stole from another woman. The whole thing made me want to look away. Thank god I didn’t, because Foster Kamer, an editor for Complex at the time, had the good sense to ask Kruger (the Ur-bitch?) for a comment.
Kruger’s response was a blank email with a Microsoft Word document attached, file name “fools.doc.” What fools.doc contained gave me the words to understand the Supreme v. Supreme Bitch feud. It also gave me the tools to analyze the many inconsequential imbroglios that would follow.
“What a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers,” Kruger wrote. “I make my work about this kind of sadly foolish farce. I’m waiting for all of them to sue me for copyright infringement.”
I think about fools.doc about once a week. The absence of digital niceties in Kruger’s statement sends a chill of awe down my spine. My own file names have since become tributes to its evocative brevity (bummer$$.xls, doneforever.pdf).
But mostly, I think about “what a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers,” because it is a perfect insult. Kruger didn’t call Supreme thieves or Supreme Bitch opportunists and, in her amusement and restraint, did more damage than the most hyperbolic flame war. Engaging with petty drama is a way of validating it. WARCOTUJ dismisses an entire situation without even bothering to differentiate the players.
Husband’s tribute to curvy wife sparks backlash?
Animal shelter slams Lena Dunham’s abused dog farewell post?
Ted Cruz staffer faves porn tweet?
You don’t need an opinion, all you need are eight words: “What a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers.” Repeat and keep scrolling.
WARCOTUJ is equally useful in one’s personal life. I think of it when a minor workplace conflict devolves into reply-all hell (“just jumping in here … ”) or when a party I wasn’t invited to turns into an Instagram photo shoot. I thought it of myself one recent Saturday morning, when I waited in line (in 90-degree heat with no cover) for an indie, luxury-candle sample sale.
On a deeper level, I love WARCOTUJ because it’s a feminist critique of Supreme. Supreme’s use of logos isn’t an earnest, Adbusters-style commentary or a clever fashion world send-up à la Comme des Fuckdown. Call it a ripoff, an homage, or a collaboration, Supreme’s style of straight-up appropriation is evasive. It’s a way of signifying something without actually coming out and saying anything.
Supreme relies on obscurity to retain an aura of cool — sending hypebeasts racing to prove they “get” its references. Kruger’s popularity, meanwhile, is a function of her legibility. Lines like “I shop therefore I am” and “Your body is a battleground” transform the appropriation of familiar images from a commentary for the benefit of other art-world insiders into something accessibly meaningful and politically powerful.
Kruger’s quotability feels inextricable from her being a woman artist. At least, it doesn’t strike me as a coincidence that so many prominent female artists — Kruger, Jenny Holzer, Tracey Emin — use text in their art. Or that after a female celebrity turns 50, she becomes a beacon of DGAF candor. If you can’t count on being heard, you can’t risk being misunderstood.
I don’t want to jinx it, but it does suddenly feel like they’re being heard. Holzer’s “Abuse of power comes as no surprise” has become a rallying cry in the art world’s reckoning with its own Weinsteins. Kruger, meanwhile, is headlining the performance-art fair Performa 17, and her pieces all seem designed to mimic Supreme. In addition to a Kruger “takeover” of a Lower East Side skatepark and a Kruger Soho pop-up shop (billed as a performance) with around-the-block lines and strict item limits, the MTA is releasing a limited-edition line of MetroCards printed with her provocative questions — a better version of a stunt Supreme pulled earlier this year.
So you can find me at one of the four subway stops said to have Kruger cards, waiting in line with all the other fangirls, trying all the machines, messing up your commute. You know what to do. Say to yourself — what a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers — and walk on by.
SUPREME: WE FOLD SHIRTS WELL
THIEVES OF CULTURE, MAKING SUCKERS OUT OF ANYONE WHO WEARS THEIR PRODUCT OR COVETS THE BRAND: SUCKERS
also from ARTSY : I Went to Barbara Kruger’s First-Ever Performance—and Left with a Skateboard
Sunday, October 29, 2017
HIJACKING CAPITALISM ONE ADVERT AT A TIME
from Dangerous Minds
I suppose some may say, “It’s not big. It’s not clever.” But still, it is quite amusing. Artist provocateur Hogre is waging a war against capitalism, consumerism, right-wing politics, and religion one advert at a time.
Hogre illegally takes over large billboards and bus stop advertising displays across London and reinvents them with subversive messages. Santa Claus is no longer celebrating Christmas with a Coke but preparing to start the revolution with a fiery Molotov cocktail. Neighborhood Watch is really Neighborhood Snitch. And car companies are shitting all over the world because “Why worry about Global Warming? We all die anyway!”
Originally from Italy, Hogre’s been making his presence known for about ten years with his clever, amusing stencils and inventive acts of vandalism. It’s all jolly good fun and thought-provoking to boot but I do wonder if such well-intended artistic anarchy is more likely to result in Hogre’s work being curated in an art gallery than awakening the “sheeple” from their addiction to consumerism. But I suppose one can hope.
See more of the mighty Hogre’s art here.
Monday, September 25, 2017
Friday, August 18, 2017
Sunday, June 25, 2017
Modern art was CIA 'weapon'
from the INDEPENDENT
Revealed: how the spy agency used unwitting artists such as Pollock and de Kooning in a cultural Cold War
By Frances Stonor Saunders
Revealed: how the spy agency used unwitting artists such as Pollock and de Kooning in a cultural Cold War
By Frances Stonor Saunders
For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.
The connection is improbable. This was a period, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the great majority of Americans disliked or even despised modern art - President Truman summed up the popular view when he said: "If that's art, then I'm a Hottentot." As for the artists themselves, many were ex- communists barely acceptable in the America of the McCarthyite era, and certainly not the sort of people normally likely to receive US government backing.
Why did the CIA support them? Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US. Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete.
The existence of this policy, rumoured and disputed for many years, has now been confirmed for the first time by former CIA officials. Unknown to the artists, the new American art was secretly promoted under a policy known as the "long leash" - arrangements similar in some ways to the indirect CIA backing of the journal Encounter, edited by Stephen Spender.
The decision to include culture and art in the US Cold War arsenal was taken as soon as the CIA was founded in 1947. Dismayed at the appeal communism still had for many intellectuals and artists in the West, the new agency set up a division, the Propaganda Assets Inventory, which at its peak could influence more than 800 newspapers, magazines and public information organisations. They joked that it was like a Wurlitzer jukebox: when the CIA pushed a button it could hear whatever tune it wanted playing across the world.
The next key step came in 1950, when the International Organisations Division (IOD) was set up under Tom Braden. It was this office which subsidised the animated version of George Orwell's Animal Farm, which sponsored American jazz artists, opera recitals, the Boston Symphony Orchestra's international touring programme. Its agents were placed in the film industry, in publishing houses, even as travel writers for the celebrated Fodor guides. And, we now know, it promoted America's anarchic avant-garde movement, Abstract Expressionism.
Initially, more open attempts were made to support the new American art. In 1947 the State Department organised and paid for a touring international exhibition entitled "Advancing American Art", with the aim of rebutting Soviet suggestions that America was a cultural desert. But the show caused outrage at home, prompting Truman to make his Hottentot remark and one bitter congressman to declare: "I am just a dumb American who pays taxes for this kind of trash." The tour had to be cancelled.
The US government now faced a dilemma. This philistinism, combined with Joseph McCarthy's hysterical denunciations of all that was avant-garde or unorthodox, was deeply embarrassing. It discredited the idea that America was a sophisticated, culturally rich democracy. It also prevented the US government from consolidating the shift in cultural supremacy from Paris to New York since the 1930s. To resolve this dilemma, the CIA was brought in.
The connection is not quite as odd as it might appear. At this time the new agency, staffed mainly by Yale and Harvard graduates, many of whom collected art and wrote novels in their spare time, was a haven of liberalism when compared with a political world dominated by McCarthy or with J Edgar Hoover's FBI. If any official institution was in a position to celebrate the collection of Leninists, Trotskyites and heavy drinkers that made up the New York School, it was the CIA.
Until now there has been no first-hand evidence to prove that this connection was made, but for the first time a former case officer, Donald Jameson, has broken the silence. Yes, he says, the agency saw Abstract Expressionism as an opportunity, and yes, it ran with it.
"Regarding Abstract Expressionism, I'd love to be able to say that the CIA invented it just to see what happens in New York and downtown SoHo tomorrow!" he joked. "But I think that what we did really was to recognise the difference. It was recognised that Abstract Expression- ism was the kind of art that made Socialist Realism look even more stylised and more rigid and confined than it was. And that relationship was exploited in some of the exhibitions.
"In a way our understanding was helped because Moscow in those days was very vicious in its denunciation of any kind of non-conformity to its own very rigid patterns. And so one could quite adequately and accurately reason that anything they criticised that much and that heavy- handedly was worth support one way or another."
To pursue its underground interest in America's lefty avant-garde, the CIA had to be sure its patronage could not be discovered. "Matters of this sort could only have been done at two or three removes," Mr Jameson explained, "so that there wouldn't be any question of having to clear Jackson Pollock, for example, or do anything that would involve these people in the organisation. And it couldn't have been any closer, because most of them were people who had very little respect for the government, in particular, and certainly none for the CIA. If you had to use people who considered themselves one way or another to be closer to Moscow than to Washington, well, so much the better perhaps."
This was the "long leash". The centrepiece of the CIA campaign became the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a vast jamboree of intellectuals, writers, historians, poets, and artists which was set up with CIA funds in 1950 and run by a CIA agent. It was the beach-head from which culture could be defended against the attacks of Moscow and its "fellow travellers" in the West. At its height, it had offices in 35 countries and published more than two dozen magazines, including Encounter.
The Congress for Cultural Freedom also gave the CIA the ideal front to promote its covert interest in Abstract Expressionism. It would be the official sponsor of touring exhibitions; its magazines would provide useful platforms for critics favourable to the new American painting; and no one, the artists included, would be any the wiser.
This organisation put together several exhibitions of Abstract Expressionism during the 1950s. One of the most significant, "The New American Painting", visited every big European city in 1958-59. Other influential shows included "Modern Art in the United States" (1955) and "Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century" (1952).
Because Abstract Expressionism was expensive to move around and exhibit, millionaires and museums were called into play. Pre-eminent among these was Nelson Rockefeller, whose mother had co-founded the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As president of what he called "Mummy's museum", Rockefeller was one of the biggest backers of Abstract Expressionism (which he called "free enterprise painting"). His museum was contracted to the Congress for Cultural Freedom to organise and curate most of its important art shows.
The museum was also linked to the CIA by several other bridges. William Paley, the president of CBS broadcasting and a founding father of the CIA, sat on the members' board of the museum's International Programme. John Hay Whitney, who had served in the agency's wartime predecessor, the OSS, was its chairman. And Tom Braden, first chief of the CIA's International Organisations Division, was executive secretary of the museum in 1949.
Now in his eighties, Mr Braden lives in Woodbridge, Virginia, in a house packed with Abstract Expressionist works and guarded by enormous Alsatians. He explained the purpose of the IOD.
"We wanted to unite all the people who were writers, who were musicians, who were artists, to demonstrate that the West and the United States was devoted to freedom of expression and to intellectual achievement, without any rigid barriers as to what you must write, and what you must say, and what you must do, and what you must paint, which was what was going on in the Soviet Union. I think it was the most important division that the agency had, and I think that it played an enormous role in the Cold War."
He confirmed that his division had acted secretly because of the public hostility to the avant-garde: "It was very difficult to get Congress to go along with some of the things we wanted to do - send art abroad, send symphonies abroad, publish magazines abroad. That's one of the reasons it had to be done covertly. It had to be a secret. In order to encourage openness we had to be secret."
If this meant playing pope to this century's Michelangelos, well, all the better: "It takes a pope or somebody with a lot of money to recognise art and to support it," Mr Braden said. "And after many centuries people say, 'Oh look! the Sistine Chapel, the most beautiful creation on Earth!' It's a problem that civilisation has faced ever since the first artist and the first millionaire or pope who supported him. And yet if it hadn't been for the multi-millionaires or the popes, we wouldn't have had the art."
Would Abstract Expressionism have been the dominant art movement of the post-war years without this patronage? The answer is probably yes. Equally, it would be wrong to suggest that when you look at an Abstract Expressionist painting you are being duped by the CIA.
But look where this art ended up: in the marble halls of banks, in airports, in city halls, boardrooms and great galleries. For the Cold Warriors who promoted them, these paintings were a logo, a signature for their culture and system which they wanted to display everywhere that counted. They succeeded.
* The full story of the CIA and modern art is told in 'Hidden Hands' on Channel 4 next Sunday at 8pm. The first programme in the series is screened tonight. Frances Stonor Saunders is writing a book on the cultural Cold War.
Covert Operation
In 1958 the touring exhibition "The New American Painting", including works by Pollock, de Kooning, Motherwell and others, was on show in Paris. The Tate Gallery was keen to have it next, but could not afford to bring it over. Late in the day, an American millionaire and art lover, Julius Fleischmann, stepped in with the cash and the show was brought to London.
The money that Fleischmann provided, however, was not his but the CIA's. It came through a body called the Farfield Foundation, of which Fleischmann was president, but far from being a millionaire's charitable arm, the foundation was a secret conduit for CIA funds.
So, unknown to the Tate, the public or the artists, the exhibition was transferred to London at American taxpayers' expense to serve subtle Cold War propaganda purposes. A former CIA man, Tom Braden, described how such conduits as the Farfield Foundation were set up. "We would go to somebody in New York who was a well-known rich person and we would say, 'We want to set up a foundation.' We would tell him what we were trying to do and pledge him to secrecy, and he would say, 'Of course I'll do it,' and then you would publish a letterhead and his name would be on it and there would be a foundation. It was really a pretty simple device."
Julius Fleischmann was well placed for such a role. He sat on the board of the International Programme of the Museum of Modern Art in New York - as did several powerful figures close to the CIA.
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
The Story of a painting that fought fascism
from the BBC:
Opening during the Spanish Civil War, the 1937 Paris Exhibition allowed artists to speak out against brutality. Fiona Macdonald looks at a moment when paintings became propaganda.
Opening during the Spanish Civil War, the 1937 Paris Exhibition allowed artists to speak out against brutality. Fiona Macdonald looks at a moment when paintings became propaganda.
By Fiona Macdonald
On 26 April 1937, Nazi German and Italian bombers attacked the Basque city of Guernica. Over the course of three hours, they destroyed three-quarters of the ancient town, killing and wounding hundreds. The raid was “unparalleled in military history”, according to reports at the time – and it inspired one of the most famous anti-war paintings in history. A new exhibition staged in London by Barcelona’s Mayoral Gallery honours a group of artists who responded to the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War.
These artists were brought together by the 1937 Paris Exhibition, which opened less than a month after the bombing and just 10 months after the Civil War began. The Exhibition is usually remembered for the competing bluster of two nations: Germany, with its monumental granite tower topped with a giant eagle and swastika, and the Soviet Union, whose marble-clad structure was capped by an even bigger statue of two figures clutching a hammer and a sickle. Yet it also played host to a humbler project that has outlasted either monolith. Mayoral’s exhibition commemorates the 80th anniversary of the Spanish pavilion, seen by the Second Spanish Republic as a way of revealing General Franco’s cruelty to the rest of the world against a backdrop of rising authoritarianism.
Its ambitions were far removed from Nazi and Soviet architectural one-upmanship. As Europe moved towards war, the situation in Spain took on significance around the world. It became a battleground for the forces of Fascism and Communism and inspired new works from some of the greatest artists of the time. Pablo Picasso, Julio González, Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Alberto Sánchez, and José Gutiérrez Solan were all shown in the Spanish pavilion.
Picasso was commissioned to create a mural for the pavilion, and had started on a series of anti-Nationalist images called Dream and Lie of Franco earlier in 1937. After reading reports of the attack on Guernica by Franco’s allies, he began work on a painting that would come to symbolise the wider fight against Fascism. According to the art historian Fernando Martín Martín, “For the first time in the contemporary history of war, a town and its civilian population had been annihilated both as a scare tactic and a way of testing the war machine.” He says this was the “instant Picasso knew what would be the subject of his mural for the pavilion.”
His painting, Guernica, is not on display at Mayoral (it is exhibited at Madrid’s Reina Sofía Museum) – but there are insights into its creation, including photographs taken by Picasso’s girlfriend at the time, Dora Maar. The mural took him just over a month to complete. While painting, to combat rumours that he supported the Nationalists, Picasso issued a statement: “In the panel on which I am working, which I shall call Guernica, and in all my recent works of art, I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death”.
Political canvas
The artists creating pieces for the pavilion were explicit in their aims. Mayoral’s exhibition curator Juan Manuel Bonet says that “all the major works at the pavilion were fruits of a commission. The special thing about this commission was that it was not intended to be a political commission; the artists took it upon themselves to react in such a way.”
It was a new outlook for some of them, says Bonet. “Before 1936, neither Picasso nor Miró were very political; but the Spanish Civil War changed this.” According to him, 1937’s Dream and Lie of Franco by Picasso and Aidez l’Espagne (Help Spain) by Miró are the artists’ first overtly political works. “Later on in their careers, Picasso joined the French Communist Party in 1944 and Miró continued to be very active against Franco’s regime into and during the 1960s and ‘70s.”
The American sculptor Alexander Calder’s contribution to the pavilion was also a piece of propaganda. A supporter of the Republican cause and great friend of Miró, Calder was initially refused permission to create an artwork because he wasn’t Spanish, but the organisers relented after a marble fountain from Spain had to be repurposed. It was filled with mercury that was poured through a series of sculptures created by Calder until it reached a mobile labelled ‘Almadén’.
The word resonated with Republicans. It was the name of a stronghold that held out against an offensive by Franco’s troops in March 1937, famous for its deposits of mercury, an element valued for its use in manufacturing weapons. Calder’s piece, The Mercury Fountain, doubled as a symbol for Republican resistance. “Nothing in the pavilion was free from intention,” writes Martín.
The exhibition has been put together with Joan Punyet Miró, historian and grandson of Joan. It includes a reconstruction of his grandfather’s El Segador (The Reaper) – a mural painted onto construction material in situ which was then lost or destroyed after the pavilion was dismantled. Showing a Catalan peasant with a huge misshapen head, it was a cry of outrage at the events in Spain. “Of course I intended it as a protest,” said Miró. “The Catalan peasant is a symbol of the strong, the independent, the resistant.”
Pop-up propaganda
Both The Reaper and Guernica were created as propaganda, in the manner of Soviet agitprop – “ephemeral art based on propaganda and agitation for a political cause aimed at stirring up the masses”, writes Joan Punyet Miró, arguing that the murals “looked like huge political propaganda posters”. The poet José Bergamín commented that “Guernica was not a picture but graffiti, though graffiti done by a genius”.
Painted on poor quality canvas, Guernica could easily have been destroyed as well. According to Punyet Miró, “Neither of them chose a tough, hard-wearing support, for they knew in advance that these were ephemeral works, designed to cause an impact and then disappear along with the pavilion… Guernica was spared the same fate as Miró’s mural because Picasso was asked to send it to London and later to the United States”.
As it turned out, the pavilion was only the beginning. Guernica toured around the UK in 1938, says Bonet. “Picasso later entrusted the painting to MoMA in New York, as it was his wish that the painting not return to Spain until democracy had been returned to the country. This was symbolically very important.”
Through a dark lens
Guernica took on a wider meaning in the years that followed. “It speaks about the Spanish Civil War, and the destiny of civilians in it, as well as the bombs that killed so many people in this Basque city,” says Bonet. “It also remarks on all wars.” The French writer Michel Leiris was moved to say of it: “On a black and white canvas that depicts ancient tragedy… Picasso also writes our letter of doom: all that we love is going to be lost.”
Yet there was hope in it too. Amid shrieking figures and corpses, Picasso left a beacon, according to Martín. “At the top, stretching out from a window, a woman with an oil lamp seems to want to illuminate the encroaching panic and darkness.”
Guernica tapped into an earlier tradition, echoing Goya’s works commemorating resistance to the Napoleonic invasion of Spain. According to curators at the Reina Sofía, “The grotesque vision that Goya brought to his political critique was not lost on artists as a powerful tool for crafting their own views of the present.” Picasso admired Goya’s “dark lens on Spain’s complex political and religious traditions”.
“Picasso, Miró, Calder and González taught us that sometimes major moments such as the Spanish Civil War force us to take sides,” says gallery director Jordi Mayoral. “The works created by these artists for the pavilion are still part of the Spanish collective memory; they represented a major turning point in the Civil War and the country’s struggle between democracy and fascism”.
Picasso himself summed up his decision, remarking in 1937: “I have always believed and still believe that artists who live and work with spiritual values cannot and should not remain indifferent to a conflict in which the highest values of humanity and civilisation are at stake.”
Tuesday, April 11, 2017
Friday, December 9, 2016
Post Election Subway Therapy
(video)
I went to the Union Square subway station late thursday evening to finish a roll of film I started, making photos with Tony Alva last month. I wanted to finish the roll by making pictures of the mosaic of "post-it" notes on some of the walls expressing peoples frustration and other things regarding the 2016 Presidential election.
Afterwords I borrowed a friends iPhone and made this clip and some still images too.
these words below from: www.subwaytherapy.com
Channeling the Fire
Right now, people are overflowing with fire. That fire can do amazing things, but we need to make sure we are directing it so it can have the best effect. Sometimes we are burning so hot we end up burning our friends, our family, and bridges we will need to work together as a world community in the future. Don't talk at each other. Talk with each other.
Follow the project on Instagram and Facebook @subwaytherapy!
When people are overflowing with emotion, help channel their energy into something good.
Subway Therapy is about making people smile, laugh, and feel less stress. I believe people grow and learn through dynamic conversation.
For the last several years I imagined going outside with a table and chairs to talk to people. I don't know why, but it was always something I wanted to do. What got me thinking in this specific direction was the concept of absolution. How do people feel better when they feel bad? There are so many people walking around with extra emotional weight. I am very lucky to have family and friends that help me process events that happen in my life, but what if someone doesn't have a family to turn to or friends to support them? What if they don't have a community to be a part of, or access to therapy? This is a complicated problem with no clear solution.
Nine months ago, I sat with a book people could write their secrets in, and I had a little sign that said Secret Keeper. More often than not, people would just talk to me instead of writing something down. It got pretty common to hear, "I feel so much better! This is great... like therapy." I heard it enough that it stuck and six months ago, Subway Therapy was born. Lately, the project has evolved and I have been using sticky notes to give people an opportunity to transform their stress into something beautiful.
Keep in mind, I am not a licensed therapist. I am not a therapist of any kind. I have no obligation to keep what I hear confidential. I cannot provide professional advice, but I like to listen and when asked I give personal advice from my experience.
I look forward to our conversation,
Matthew "Levee" Chavez
(VIDEO CLIP - GEF)
Afterwords I borrowed a friends iPhone and made this clip and some still images too.
SUBWAY THERAPY from Burning Flags Press on Vimeo.
these words below from: www.subwaytherapy.com
Channeling the Fire
Right now, people are overflowing with fire. That fire can do amazing things, but we need to make sure we are directing it so it can have the best effect. Sometimes we are burning so hot we end up burning our friends, our family, and bridges we will need to work together as a world community in the future. Don't talk at each other. Talk with each other.
Follow the project on Instagram and Facebook @subwaytherapy!
When people are overflowing with emotion, help channel their energy into something good.
Subway Therapy is about making people smile, laugh, and feel less stress. I believe people grow and learn through dynamic conversation.
For the last several years I imagined going outside with a table and chairs to talk to people. I don't know why, but it was always something I wanted to do. What got me thinking in this specific direction was the concept of absolution. How do people feel better when they feel bad? There are so many people walking around with extra emotional weight. I am very lucky to have family and friends that help me process events that happen in my life, but what if someone doesn't have a family to turn to or friends to support them? What if they don't have a community to be a part of, or access to therapy? This is a complicated problem with no clear solution.
Nine months ago, I sat with a book people could write their secrets in, and I had a little sign that said Secret Keeper. More often than not, people would just talk to me instead of writing something down. It got pretty common to hear, "I feel so much better! This is great... like therapy." I heard it enough that it stuck and six months ago, Subway Therapy was born. Lately, the project has evolved and I have been using sticky notes to give people an opportunity to transform their stress into something beautiful.
Keep in mind, I am not a licensed therapist. I am not a therapist of any kind. I have no obligation to keep what I hear confidential. I cannot provide professional advice, but I like to listen and when asked I give personal advice from my experience.
I look forward to our conversation,
Matthew "Levee" Chavez
(VIDEO CLIP - GEF)
Monday, November 14, 2016
My new collaboration with Shepard Fairey and ICE-T
Releases tomorrow morning.
from Shepard Fairey at OBEY Giant:
Considering the outcome of Tuesday’s election, I want to lead off this Ice-T post with a fitting intro from his “The Iceberg / Freedom of Speech… Just Watch What You Say” album (featuring Jello Biafra below).
Ice-T has been making social commentary for 3 decades… here’s a little history on my connection to his music.
I first heard Ice-T in 1988 around the same time I had also just picked up Public Enemy’s “Yo Bum Rush the Show” album based on the Thrasher magazine description of Public Enemy as “the new punk rock.” I’d say that the punk rock description applies to Ice-T, who is credited by many as the godfather of Gangster Rap (though Ice-T gives proper respects to Schoolly D). The first Ice-T record I heard was Power which had only come out a few days before. The album opens with a hilarious skit in which a scuffle over Ice’s new Power album results in a gunshot wound and ensuing deliberation over whether to call the paramedics or listen to the new album… you can guess which way it goes. The album opens with the song “Power”which has the opening lyrics:
“I’m livin’ large as possible, posse unstoppableStyle topical, vividly opticalListen, you’ll see ’em sometimes I’ll be ’emCops, critics and punks, never ever wanta see me in POWERWell, that’s too bad, Apocalypse Now I’m back and I’m madWe’re comin’, you’re runnin’ cold and cunningIce T on the mic, Top-Gunning”Well, that opening line really stuck with me and ended up being the inspiration for the use of the word “posse” in my “Andre the Giant has a Posse” sticker a few months later. “Power” is my favorite Ice-T album, but he has several excellent albums including “Rhyme Pays,” “Iceberg: Freedom of Speech,” and “OG, Original Gangster.” Three out of four of those records have cover photographs by Glen E. Friedman. Glen and I both think that Ice-T is a very important figure in the golden era of hip hop who deserves to be celebrated for his contribution and exposed to a younger generation, so we collaborated on this image, which is based on an out take photo session from the “Power” era. If you only know Ice-T for his TV roles, do yourself a favor and check out the albums I mentioned. By the way, Jay-Z’s “99 Problems” lifts its chorus from an Ice-T song of the same name from 1993. Like I said, the guy is O.G.
Both prints are signed by me, Glen E. Friedman, and Ice-T. – Shepard
There is no doubt about it, Ice-T is a California legend. From a street hustler and thief, who took his moniker from none other than “Iceberg Slim,” this dude emerged as one of the most heavily West Coast inspired rappers of all time. When we worked together on his first three album covers and multiple singles, it was always a great collaboration of style, character, and purpose. Ice is a storyteller extraordinaire, a hustler on every respectable level. A true friend and as loyal as they come to those close to him. Respect due to this real icon and player, for telling his stories and sharing the culture in the way only he can. O.G. – Glen E. Friedman
Ice-T OG Red. 18 by 24 inches. Screen Print. Signed by Shepard Fairey, Glen E. Friedman, and Ice-T. Edition of 300. $70. Release Date: Tuesday, November 15 at 10AM (PST) on ObeyGiant.com in Store under Prints.
Ice-T OG Blue. 18 inches by 24 inches. Screen Print. Signed by Shepard Fairey, Glen E. Friedman, and Ice-T. Editions of 300. $70. Release Date: Tuesday, November 15 at 10AM PST on ObeyGiant.com in Store under Prints.
Wednesday, November 2, 2016
Skaters and musicians drawings from my personal collection
Over the last weekend I posted these three drawings on my Instagram including drawings by Wes Humpston, Chuck Dukowski and Chuck D. of Public Enemy, with some back stories... I thought you might like them.
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