David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards curate “Quiet as It’s Kept”
Write poetry.
That is our best-recommended strategy to experience the Whitney Biennial. The stanza, the spaces, the rhythms, the waves. They all coalesce in the black space and the white space. And one need not keep this quiet.
The country has been in an ongoing grinding recession since 2008, heading toward depression. Institutions steadily attacked; the wealth steadily stolen. You can see the US here, in these installations, videos, paintings, sculptures, and photography.
Even when you don’t look, you see stressed-out workers balancing on a highwire, the frayed net below. The emptiness of consumerism, the backwash from decades of wars, the contemplation of chaos. Here is history and here is the future, quiet as it’s kept.
The Whitney Biennial is now 90 – an institution, possibly. Discussed, reviled, admired; this one often is stunning. Collaborative curators David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards have chosen quality in these 63 artists, have endeavored to know their collection of artists and can shake the viewer. Brooding, raw, slick, contemporary displacement is displayed. Frayed. Portrayed.
“In a democratic society, a person’s job is a basic tool for civil and economic progress,” says Italian street artist Biancoshock. “What progress can there be if the world’s jobs do not produce emancipation, growth, and gratification?”
His repurposing of heavy blocks of concrete as delivery boxes here is called “Heavy Meal.” He says his point is to highlight the unrecognized burdens that delivery people of today are carrying thanks to sophisticated software. He describes situations of ever-higher pressure, lower wages, and an overall feeling of precariousness.
Increasingly across Europe and the developed world, he says, “food-delivery riders are dictated to by algorithms that extend the control and distribution functions – to become inaccessible, authoritarian and categorical.”
“The algorithm imposes a path, rhythms, distances to be bridged (those between the rider and the consumer) and other unbridgeable ones (those between the rider and the management of the company that produces the algorithm and the goods to be delivered).”
These huge traffic blockers make idea canvasses for the installation artist, who adopts the logos of well-known European food-delivery brands and slightly alters them for artistic effect. To see the growing number of protests against these companies by employees, you see that more sophisticated technology is lowering the standard of living for many of us.
“The need to survive in this system transforms young people, students, and the unemployed into ‘new generation slaves,’” says the artist.
Many street artists around the world are creating new artworks on the street in solidarity with the Ukrainians. MrKas sent us his emotional appeal from Portugal where he painted this new one modeled after a boy who was caught amidst the attacks. He also had the pleasure of meeting his mom Elza Uskas since she and her son escaped the bombs in their home city. Ms. Uskas gave him permission to share her words here;
“We fled from home, in grief, in fear, from those who remained. Borders are open. We travel through beautiful cities, and meet kind people… but my heart is broken, I want to hug my family and friends. I want them to sleep peacefully instead of hiding in the basements from the missile attacks. Our life will never be the same again. And our children will never forget the sound of the siren roar that they will dream of at night …”
“It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States,” Jackson said in a speech outside the White House.
“But, we’ve made it. We’ve made it, all of us,” Jackson said.
We’ll be looking for her face to pop up on the street soon!
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: City Kitty, Chris RWK, Adam Fujita, Icy and Sot, Clint Mario, Gane, Irak, RX Skulls, Smells, Bublegum, Acroe, Bertstit, and Eric John Eigner, Lawrence Weiner.
Scholarship about the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat since his death in 1988 has been extensive. With dozens of books written, world-class museums have organized exhibitions about his work, including the Brooklyn Museum, the Barbican in London, the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, the MFA in Boston, and the MCA in Denver. Substantial catalogs were also offered with most of the shows, analyzing his work from different curatorial viewpoints. At least a couple of documentaries from 2010 and 2017 have presented audiences with stories of his meteoric career from his early days to superstardom, fame, and record-breaking prices for his work.
Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure offers a new perspective on the artist, his life, and his work...This New York City exhibition endeavors to complete the story in a decidedly familial way. Curated by his two sisters, Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux, with help from his stepmother, Nora Fitzpatrick, the artist is repositioned as a son, brother, uncle, and friend. An emotional exhibition that feels intimate even though more than 200 artworks are on display, King Pleasure posits that there may be more to Jean-Michel than you previously knew.
A shining jewel unveiled at the apex of the New York spring art season, the new show reaffirms the strength of the artists’ personal syntax and his distinctive ability to encode and innovate on streets and canvasses the DNA of American culture and history for his time and ours. The sisters and stepmother firmly assert Jean-Michel’s legacy, and simultaneously they gift fans and admirers one more musical, visual, poetic composition from a departed friend.
Because of the nature of late 20th-century art-collecting, so many of Basquiat’s works are now only in private hands, unavailable to see. Here is an eclectic collection of fully realized works and sketches in his trademark style. The show feels well-rounded and accessible – akin to a visit to a friend’s home studio to see their latest works in progress and their developing ideas.
Ghanaian-British architect and exhibition designer Sir David Adjaye creates an unpretentious, open, and inviting series of spaces to consider the multi-sensory internal adventures of a young artist enthralled with possibilities that life may offer. The winding exhibition greets you in waves of illustrations, texts, canvasses, works on paper, paintings, family stories, sketchbooks, journals, artifacts, musical interludes, concise video interviews, projections, ephemera, arched porticos, subtly detailed environments in warmly authentic textures. Without clutter or fussy filigree, it also does not retreat to the clinical white box; instead, the varied collection achieves a cohesion that is authentic.
Basquiat was discovering and defining himself in an acutely racist US society that was in the process of merging and separating and reconfiguring, often painfully so. The contradictions of traversing street culture, middle-class economics, Haitian, Puerto Rican, African, and European roots were not new to him in our city – but he could not necessarily resolve them. Seeing his writings and paintings one may say that some of his clarity came from creating, an internal process of synthesis that he recorded externally in paint and pencil. Perhaps as a response to the thousand cuts that systemic racism inflicts and white people’s resistance to facing it, the show speaks to a still-ill society designed not to be safe or honest to black and brown men. Whether the racism he grapples with is historical or contemporary, can one doubt that Basquiat was deeply hurt by it? Textural references in what critic Carlo McCormick calls his “scattered poetics” illustrate the shock of sudden racism and class that rapidly veers to the next topic, possibly the nature of his daily existence.
Personal testimony by his sisters reminiscing on a video speaks to the stinging pain of racist words used against the family when all the siblings were children and how they witnessed his recoiling reaction. Even as you reflect upon his familiar names of musical and sports heroes popping up – Charlie Parker, Nat “King” Cole, Billy Eckstein, Grace Jones, and various Heavyweight Champs, it occurs to you that this young man was modeling himself after his heroes, as young people do. If there were few poets, intellectuals, or masters of industry referenced, perhaps that is the result of a system that primarily prized black men who were athletic or entertaining.
Writing of the Narrative
With King Pleasure, the family of the artist takes hold of the narrative and makes it personal, inviting you to see by recreating his family living spaces and his art studio. Each is filled with actual personal objects, family photographs, furniture, vinyl record albums, books, and ephemera. There is a natural tendency for us to view a person, a persona, and a creative life through our lenses of references – and much of the Basquiat hype that developed during his halcyon rise in the 1980s was formed by media and the cult of celebrity. From today forward those narratives will be broadened and more fully realized – at once providing context, answering questions and altering, even contesting, previously held perceptions. Without doubt, these will help us better appreciate the artworks and his practice.
At the opening Lisane Basquiat shared that their stepmother Nora Fitzpatrick told the sisters a couple of years ago that all these works had “been sitting in a vault for 30 something years”, and that was long enough. “They needed to be seen and shared with the world,” said Ms. Basquiat. This is possibly the most exciting aspect of the show – never seen before works, numbering about 200, anchor the collection, indicative of his prodigious output during his decade or so as a fine artist.
Works on canvas are sometimes stretched on found wood frames, others are wood canvasses. One may indeed be the last one he worked on. Seeing the collection is like discovering old friends you didn’t know about. Or maybe it is like receiving a letter from an old friend, a breath of fresh air that brightens the heart – and reinforces the beauty of the person and their significance in your life. Taken as one, this is bold, assured, and determined presentation of his work that never overshadows it by a family that respects Jean-Michel. Reassuringly, this newly unveiled collection affirms that his work is just as relevant to today’s culture as it was during his brief career and time on earth, having the courage to speak his piece.
With our social and economic progress so incremental and uneven, ever unjust, one can imagine that Basquiat might have been exhausted today in his 60s. As a cultural omnivore who took inspiration from everything around him, he may also have been buoyed by today’s beauty, encouraged by people’s determination to progress, and inspired by the still-bubbling sense of humor of his sisters, nieces, and nephews. Many of them attended the celebratory opening of the exhibition Thursday night at the Starrett-Lehigh. Their energy and tenderness toward one another and their grandmother were easily seen, with pleasure.
Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure, presented by the family of Jean-Michel Basquiat is currently open to the general public. Click HERE for tickets, schedule, and directions.
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: 1. Chris Pape: The Freedom Tunnel via VICE 2. SOFLES: The Humble Rollerdoor 3. Stargazing Mojave/Joshua Tree National Park 4. Angel and Z Podcast Interview NECKFACE 5. Tripl Stays True to the Name
BSA Special Feature: Chris Pape: The Freedom Tunnel
All time Top 10 stories in NYC graffiti lore will invariably name-check the “Freedom Tunnel,” so called in the 1980s because of its most famous writer, Chris “Freedom” Pape. You may not know where it is located, but you know that it is cavernous, that the sun is filtered into it from grates above like jolts of raw power, and that it is also home to many New Yorkers who are off the grid. That’s just one of the many ironies of calling this “Freedom Tunnel.”
One of the revelations of this intimate interview is that Freedom is rational in his rather laissez-faire approach to people and painting, preferring his own counsel and leaving others to theirs without judgment. These could be the gifts of later life on display – certainly rarely heard sentiments from your average vandal. He says he chose the tunnels as a strategy to avoid the withering criticism that he heard other writers had of train pieces while reviewing passing cars. An illustration painter, his time-intensive works based on more classical fine art works and techniques were unusual on the graffiti scene, perhaps presaging the coming Street Art movement.
SOFLES: The Humble Rollerdoor
With his customary ease and can-control panache, SOFLES is aided here by sophisticated variations in pacing, focus, gaze of the camera. Drop in a few visual glitches and slights of hand – all against a non-background audio that sounds like pouring rain, and he takes us somewhere else again, again.
Stargazing Mojave/Joshua Tree National Park
Is life magic? Are there holes in your dreams into which birds can drop into? Is the earth in movement at all times, always dancing? Yes, it is.
Angel and Z Podcast Interview NECKFACE
It doesn’t get better than this. Interview with a writing/fine art legend in a fleabag hotel. Who knows what kind of wisdom he’s about to lay on you.
We have brought you many images and artists from here since The Djerbahood Project began a decade or so ago – with the French Galerie Itinerrance organizers inviting street artists of various styles and influences to this Mediterranean island to transform the public environment, and of course to stoke interest in their artwork. Erriadh is literally an open air gallery, with over a hundred works filling this two-thousand year old village. Today we bring you new installations of works by Shepard Fairey, whose graphic geometries and pop colorways contrast sharply with the sun-drenched walls and small streets.
Never Again Gallery: Ukrainian artists reinterpreted posters from the Second World War
Every generation pats itself on the back, secure in knowing that it is way too savvy to be manipulated by propaganda, even smirking at the simplicity of those who fell for it the last time. Artists may have a better picture of that reality. Or not.
The “Never Again Gallery” project is an online effort by Ukrainian artists that examines the similarities between the visual campaigns that persuaded people about WWII events and the messaging we see daily today regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Left: Lawrence Beall Smith. USA, 1942. Right: WAONE Interesni Kaszi. Ukraine, 2022. (photos courtesy of Never Again Gallery)
Perhaps likening the NATO states to the World War II Allies, the project returns to the “hundreds of emotional posters” in cities across Europe and the US advocating for support. With new interpretations of eerily similar sentiments, visitors are encouraged to download PDFs of new posters, which, like the old ones, offer “calls-to-action, instructions, and motivation.”
The project’s messages get muddled; such is the fog of war, you may say. The similarities to the past – and these reinterpretations of compelling images and slogans – may cause viewers to question the motivations of those at war now or those who encourage it. But no one doubts how powerful these artworks can be.
Left: William Little. Great Britain, 1941. Right: Varvara Perekrest. Ukraine, 2022. (photos courtesy of Never Again Gallery)
This generation of artists and creatives use Facebook ads, Instagram graphics, and TikTok videos as much as earlier illustrators used posters and print ads to get the point across. One wonders if time passing always assures that artists who lend their creative talents feel pride for having helped their side, or if sometimes there is regret as well, or instead.
Projects like this one from the “Never Again Gallery” remind us that when it comes to propaganda and war, “Never Again” lasts only approximately as long as our memories do.
Left: Saalburg Allen Russel. USA, 1942. Right: Oleksandr Grekhov. Ukraine, 2022. (photos courtesy of Never Again Gallery)
20 Ukrainian artists attributed to the project:
Tetiana Yakunova, Oleksandra Kovaliova, Anton Logov, Anna Sarvira, Maria OZ, Varvara Perekrest, WAONE Interesni Kazki, Oleksandr Grekhov, Anton Abo, Alina Kropachova, WE BAD, Masha Foya, PLVNV, Mari Kinovich, Alina Zamanova, Bravebirdie, Sestry Feldman, Yulia Vus, Alex Derega, and Marie Hermasheva.
Click HERE to see the whole collection of images and posters, including the original and current versions, and to download and print the posters free of charge.
Then – WWII & Now – Ukraine. (photos courtesy of the Never Again Gallery)Then – WWII & Now – Ukraine. (photos courtesy of the Never Again Gallery)Then – WWII & Now – Ukraine. (photos courtesy of the Never Again Gallery)Then – WWII & Now – Ukraine. (photos courtesy of the Never Again Gallery)Then – WWII & Now – Ukraine. (photos courtesy of the Never Again Gallery)Philli. France, 1942 (photo courtesy of Never Again Gallery)Anton Logov. Ukraine, 2022 (photo courtesy Never Again Gallery)Betsy Graves. USA, 1943. (photo courtesy of Never Again Gallery)Masha Foya. Ukraine, 2022 (photo courtesy Never Again Gallery)
Click HERE to see the whole collection, including the original and current versions, and to download and print the posters free of charge.
We don’t usually talk about Amazon and now we mention them twice in one week; Just this Sunday we told you about Amazon employees who have voted to form a union for the first time in New York City to demand higher wages and better working conditions. Today we bring you news about a street artist/muralist named Addison Karl, whose work we have published a number of times in the past, and his recent residency in Seattle at Amazon’s brand-new Bellevue campus.
Addison says he began in printmaking before graduating to large private and public commissions painting contemporary murals. Now he draws upon his traditional Chickasaw and Choctaw roots and methods of creating to develop his sculpture techniques. Selected as one of five artists from across the Pacific Northwest as an Amazon Artist in Residence last year, Addison says the stories that people tell each other and themselves lay at the root of his 10 new sculptures created during that time.
“During my 10 weeks we managed to create a series of new work that all correlates,” he says. “My goal with the residency was to use my time to create 10 new sculptures that would then be transferred into the casting process, rather than be the final material of bronze, iron, or glass.”
He says the experience was not just about creating, it was also about forging new relationships and self-education. “As much time as I’m putting into the creation of my work, equal time is being spent learning, reading, and hearing stories, culture, and history that help guide my work.”
A huge Thank You to the community of the Amazon Artist in Residence Program – and for letting it get weird to create magic in the studio.
Thank you very much, Tim D., Caitlin O., Jeffery H., Kate B., Jens B., Miles T., Paco M., Christine P., Nidhi S., James H., Dana P., Jenny P., and Amanda K.
Story of Stories – Art Video:
Based on a Laguna Pueblo Story from Leslie Silko ‘The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative’ Written by Thomas King Retold by Addison
Regarding the video:
A storytelling art video was created during Amazon Artist in Residence Program 2022.
Graff, street art, and skate worlds have always overlapped and when it comes to gear and fashion, the street influences all of them. Now it’s a vernacular.
We like to look at new products; actually a growing ocean of art products that have proliferated faster than US weapons across the globe. As skate decks have metamorphosed into canvasses, it’s entertaining to see this new collection sort capturing and synthesizing trends from the last 10 years on the street as well.
We thought it would be some tasty Monday eye candy for you.
Mr. Pee. “Bain de Jouvence”. Urbaneez. “Street Boards”. (photo courtesy of Urbaneez)Tonce. “Lifestyle”. Urbaneez. “Street Boards”. (photo courtesy of Urbaneez)Gum. “Gum Over”. Urbaneez. “Street Boards”. (photo courtesy of Urbaneez)Snyder. “Slide Around”. Urbaneez. “Street Boards”. (photo courtesy of Urbaneez)CRBZ. “Blue Adrenalin”. Urbaneez. “Street Boards”. (photo courtesy of Urbaneez)Loodz. “Vestige”. Urbaneez. “Street Boards”. (photo courtesy of Urbaneez)Tona. “Spacy Space”. Urbaneez. “Street Boards”. (photo courtesy of Urbaneez)Homek. “Sunrise”. Urbaneez. “Street Boards”. (photo courtesy of Urbaneez)Erell. “sp1 – sb”. Urbaneez. “Street Boards”. (photo courtesy of Urbaneez)Gomad. “The girl in the purple-red rose”. Urbaneez. “Street Boards”. (photo courtesy of Urbaneez)Remy Uno. “Unbored”. Urbaneez. “Street Boards”. (photo courtesy of Urbaneez)
Click HERE for more details and to enjoy the full collection of boards
“Ramadan Kareem” to everyone celebrating it this month. Also in April the Jews will be celebrating Passover and the Christians will be celebrating Easter and the Hindus are celebrating Chaitra Navratri. New York has the most diverse assembly of amazing and beautiful neighbors and we are all richer as a result.
In Hollywood and elsewhere people are celebrating/mourning the events surrounding Will Smith. In street art style, his infamous act shows up on a wall this week already (below).
It’s been cold in NYC this week! Fingers are cold, noses are cold, and migrating geese are humming the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go”. The Cyclone at Luna Park in Coney Island, opened yesterday and assures New Yorkers that Spring is already here even if you don’t feel it yet.
We’re excited to see the new exhibition Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure opens here this week. Congratulations to his family for bringing this enormous undertaking to fruition, especially Jean-Michel’s sisters Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux and his stepmother Nora Fitzpatrick.
Also, don’t sleep on the Whitney Biennial, opening Wednesday! Curators David Breslin and Adrienne Edwards say they have had a guiding principle; “It’s got to be buck wild.” That’s enough for us. Hopefully, some people will be buck naked at the show. A special shout-out to Biennial artist Jane Dixon. Her paintings and photographs of New York in the 80s captured its electricity and unpolished promise – during the time when she lived with filmmaker Charlie Ahearn in an apartment overlooking the tawdry excitement of Times Square. She say the city was, “burning, broke, and dangerous.”
Gentle people, start your stopwatch! Let’s see how long it takes for news items and pundits to begin likening our new Staten Island Amazon warehouse union workers to terrorists.
We’ve allowed companies to become richer than nations, so you can imagine what resources they can summon; the most comprehensive campaign to malign, discredit, impugn the character of workers, and thugs to intimidate them. This is the biggest victory for organized labor in a generation, born in a time of unprecedented income disparity across the city and country. Most citizens would be pleased if corporate behemoths simply paid their fair share of taxes.
The street is still one of the best exhibition spaces, never to be recreated fully.
Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring: AJ LaVilla, Clown Soldier, Little Ricky, Sticker Maul, Michael Alan, Dragon76, Diva Dogla, CP Won, Savior El Mundo, Acro, Jennifer Pod is Dead, and Masnah.
Located in one of France’s youngest and poorest regions, the city of Roubaix also is called home by a mix of immigrant populations from the global south who integrated into a vastly different culture than the one from which they came. Street Artist YZ has made women from these cultures the center stage of her large wheat-pasted portraits for about a decade, and we have published her campaigns of solid pillars of their communities several times.
YZ. Urbain.Es. La Condition Publique. Roubaix, France (photo courtesy of the artist)
In recognition of her participation in the women-centered exhibition URBAIN.ES here, curated by Magda Danysz, YZ says she conducted interviews of her subjects from Kabul, Vietnam, Tunisia, Cameron, and the Ivory Coast before creating their large-scale portraits. She says she considers her work as that of a documentarian. She says it’s a complex mix of conforming to the new culture and desiring to honor the traditions and habits of the old one. What has she learned, aside from the immigrant stereotypes of Roubaix that outsiders sometimes have about them?
“This is of particular importance when questioning identity issues in a country where the insistence on integration often prioritizes the cultural ‘smoothing’ over cultural identity,” she says.
YZ. Urbain.Es. La Condition Publique. Roubaix, France (photo courtesy of the artist)
Here are a few selections from YZ’s installations from her ongoing project “Empress,” which “explores the cultural diversity of different communities throughout the world, questioning ideas of consumerism and conformity.”
Click HERE to read our previous article about this exhibition.
YZ. Urbain.Es. La Condition Publique. Roubaix, France (photo courtesy of the artist)YZ. Urbain.Es. La Condition Publique. Roubaix, France (photo courtesy of the artist)YZ. Urbain.Es. La Condition Publique. Roubaix, France (photo courtesy of the artist)
BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY
