Art & Influence in NYC

The Beautiful Person’s Lea Seydoux has popped up everywhere from American Apparel ads to Vogue shoots. But most recognizably in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. Unfortunately Owen Wilson doesn’t meet Seydoux until the last scene, it would have been funny to see her interact with Allen’s character, who channeled much of his very NY sense of humor. 

All biases aside, Paris is great, but New York in my opinion seems more open to all types of diversity (unfortunately Paris J’Taime is much better than New York I love You). It is debatable today to say which city is actually the center of art, but at one point it was definitely Paris. Much of which had to do with the fact that Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas had their home there which hosted and inspired many artists like Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne and Renoir. 

archaeovisualnyc:

Keith Haring’s Headline Posters

This was probably one of my favorite parts of the exhibit, popes and presidents are fun to make fun of. Also a lot like some of the stuff you blog from subway stations here in Brooklyn. 

Pop art, which drew influence from advertising, news and culture, can be described as a visual representation of mass consumption. Richard Hamilton was one of the first artists to introduce pop art in England in the late 50s with his collage “Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?” Pop art was a reaction to the dominant and rather mundane consumer culture of the late 50s and early 60s. Andy Warhol’s famous “Campbell’s Tomato Juice Box” and “Brillo Soap Box” sculptures are typical examples of consumer culture infiltrating art culture as opposed to art exclusively for the elite. His works were produced in his Factory in NYC and many are displayed at the MoMA. 

Tepango’s elaborate shrines reminded me of the shrines lining the brick walls of Caracas, a Venezuelan restaurant in the east Village. They include retablos, or Latin American devotional paintings derived from traditional Catholic church art, small religious figurines, plants and other trinkets. It is also common that the shrines have water or money to symbolize health and good fortune.  

The first Dada manifesto was written by author, poet and leading Dada artist Hugo Ball. Dadaism was a new anti-art movement, a way for artists who were disillusioned by WWI to be playful, creative and poke fun at authority. Although New York City was a refuge for writers and artists from WWI, they were unorganized and didn’t issue manifestoes as many of the European Dadaists did. One of my favorite artists with loose ties to Dadaism is Man Ray. He met Marcel Duchamp in New York where they often congregated with other Dadaists in Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery.  

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dada_Manifesto_(1916,_Hugo_Ball)

“What would NYC be without graffiti? In my opinion, it would be boring and slightly more difficult to visualize. Going back to our connotation, denotation conversation, I connote graffiti upon thinking about the city. What makes it different than so many other cities, is that a lot of the artists are known individuals who have shaped the city over the years. Although sometimes it may not seem like it, all graffiti is a form of art. Although some of it seems unnecessary, its part of what makes NY a unique urban utopia, as cheesy as it sounds. 
Archaeovisualnyc:
“Nevertheless, in the eyes of the law, the capitalist owns visual space. In the subways, Hollywood owns most of the poster space. On the streets, individual building owners own the exteriors of their buildings. The government owns the sidewalks, street signs, construction sites, etc. This does not mean that these spaces are sacrosanct, though. As Banksy suggests, we do not need permission to craft our own visual space, it is already our right to do so. And luckily for us, the materials needed to do so are cheap: spray-paint, stickers, x-acto blades, and the like… It often happens now that the Capitalist rules of visual space get bent, but then again, no one ever agreed to them in the first place.”

An Archaeology of NYC Visual Culture: Rivera, Rockefeller, and the Capitalist Limitations on Visual Space

In 1936 a group of young, idealistic photographers (most first generation Jewish Americans) formed an organization in Manhattan called The Photo League. Their solidarity centered on the expressive power of documentary photography and on a progressive alliance in the 30’s of socialist ideas and art. They rejected the prevailing style of modernism to engage the gritty realities of daily life, exploring the city street by street. The photographers explored the tumultuous period that spanned the New Deal reforms after the Depression, World War II and the Cold War. The photographs, showing now at the Jewish Museum, are divided into separate projects such as “The Harlem Document,” “The War Years,” and “The Red Scare.” The United States Attorney General blacklisted the Photo League in 1947, calling them “totalitarian, fascist, communist and subversive.” Members faced loss of work, investigation and imprisonment despite their efforts to write a letter to repudiate this misinterpretation of their purposes. The league’s loose association with the Radical Left continued being exploited, showing this conservative climate of post-WWII America. The Photo League was officially closed in 1951 and is rarely credited for its pivotal role in redefining the documentary photograph. 

This reminds me, New York is amazing.