Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent. Basquiat first achieved fame as part of SAMO, an informal graffiti duo who wrote enigmatic epigrams in the cultural hotbed of the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the late 1970s, where hip hop and street art cultures coalesced. By the 1980s, his neo-expressionist paintings were being exhibited in galleries and museums internationally; the Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective of his art in 1992. Basquiat's art focused on "suggestive dichotomies", such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, inner versus outer experience, he appropriated poetry and painting, married text and image, abstraction and historical information mixed with contemporary critique. Basquiat used social commentary in his paintings as a "springboard to deeper truths about the individual", as well as attacks on power structures and systems of racism, while his poetics were acutely political and direct in their criticism of colonialism and support for class struggle.
He died of a heroin overdose at his art studio at the age of 27. On May 18, 2017, at a Sotheby's auction, a 1982 painting by Basquiat depicting a black skull with red and black rivulets set a new record high for any American artist at auction, selling for $110.5 million. Basquiat's art has inspired many in the hip hop music community such as Jay-Z. Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in Brooklyn, New York, on December 22, 1960, shortly after the death of his elder brother, Max, he was the second of four children of Gérard Basquiat. He had two younger sisters: Lisane, born in 1964, Jeanine, born in 1967, his father, Gérard Basquiat, was born in Port-au-Prince and his mother, Matilde Basquiat, of Puerto Rican descent, was born in Brooklyn, New York. Matilde instilled a love for art in her young son by taking him to art museums in Manhattan and enrolling him as a junior member of the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Basquiat was a precocious child who learned how to read and write by the age of four and was a gifted artist.
His teachers, including artist Jose Machado, noticed his artistic abilities, his mother encouraged her son's artistic talent. By the age of 11, Basquiat was fluent in French and English. In 1967, Basquiat started attending. There he met his friend Marc Prozzo. Basquiat became an avid reader of Spanish and English texts and a more than competent athlete, competing in track events. In September 1968, at the age of seven, Basquiat was hit by a car while playing in the street, his arm was broken and he suffered several internal injuries. While he was recuperating from his injuries, his mother brought him the Gray's Anatomy book to keep him occupied; this book would prove to be influential in his future artistic outlook. His parents separated that year and he and his sisters were raised by their father; the family resided in Boerum Hill, for five years moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1974, where Basquiat studied at Saint John's School in Condado. After two years, they returned to New York City; when he was 13, his mother was committed to a mental institution and thereafter spent her life in and out of institutions.
At 15, Basquiat ran away from home. He slept on park benches in Tompkins Square Park, was arrested and returned to the care of his father within a week. Basquiat dropped out of Edward R. Murrow High School in the 10th grade at the age of 17 and attended City-As-School, an alternative high school in Manhattan, home to many artistic students who failed at conventional schooling, his father banished him from the household for dropping out of high school and Basquiat stayed with friends in Brooklyn. He supported himself by selling T-shirts and homemade post cards. Basquiat transitioned from being homeless and unemployed to selling a single painting for up to $25,000 in a matter of several years. In 1976, Basquiat and his friend Al Diaz began spray painting graffiti on buildings in Lower Manhattan, working under the pseudonym SAMO; the designs featured inscribed messages such as "Plush safe he think.. SAMO" and "SAMO as an escape clause". In 1978, Basquiat worked for the Unique Clothing Warehouse in their art department at 718 Broadway in NoHo, at night he began "SAMO," painting his original graffiti art on neighborhood buildings.
Unique's founder Harvey Russack discovered Basquiat painting a building one night, they became friends, he offered him a day job. On December 11, 1978, The Village Voice published an article about the graffiti; when Basquiat and Diaz ended their friendship, The SAMO project ended with the epitaph "SAMO IS DEAD", inscribed on the walls of SoHo buildings in 1979. In 1979, Basquiat appeared on the live public-access television show TV Party hosted by Glenn O'Brien, the two started a friendship. Basquiat made regular appearances on the show over the next few years; that same year, Basquiat formed the noise rock band Test Pattern –, renamed Gray – which played at Arleen Schloss's open space, "Wednesdays at A's", where in October 1979 Basquiat showed, among others, his SAMO color Xerox work. Gray consisted of Shannon Dawson, Michael Holman, Nick Taylor, Wayne Clifford and Vincent Gallo, the band performed at nightclubs such as Max's Kansas City, CBGB, Hurrah and the Mudd Club. In 1980, Basquiat starred in O'Brien's independent film Downtown 81 titled New York Beat.
That same year, Basquiat met Andy Warhol at a restaurant. Basquiat p
Wild Style
Wild Style is an American 1983 hip hop film produced by Charlie Ahearn. Released theatrically in September 1982 by First Run Features and re-released for home video by Rhino Home Video, it is regarded as the first hip hop motion picture; the film included seminal figures within the given period, such as Fab Five Freddy, Lee Quiñones, Lady Pink, The Rock Steady Crew, The Cold Crush Brothers, Queen Lisa Lee of Zulu Nation, Grandmaster Flash and Zephyr. The protagonist "Zoro" is played by New York graffiti artist "Lee" George Quiñones. 2012 marked the 30th anniversary of the film. Producers proposed a 2013 Blu-ray edition that would include additional features. An early version of the Wild Style logo appeared in 1981 when Charlie Ahearn hired graffiti writer Dondi to paint the'window down' subway car piece that appears in the film; the Dondi piece was the inspiration for the animated title sequence designed by the artist and animated by Joey Ahlbum in 1982. The Wild Style mural was painted by Zephyr and Sharp in 1983.
Charlie Ahearn and Fab 5 Freddy began working on the film on late 1981. The approach was a hybrid of a narrative musical and documentary, having the real hip hop pioneers play themselves in a loosely scripted story shot in the South Bronx, the Lower East Side and MTA subway yards. Wild Style takes place in 1981 in New York and centers around graffiti artists and his encounters with an uptown journalist named, Virginia. More so than its story, the film is notable for featuring several prominent figures from early hip hop culture such as Busy Bee Starski, Fab Five Freddy, The Cold Crush Brothers and Grandmaster Flash. Throughout the movie there are scenes depicting activities common in the early days of hip hop; these include MCing, graffiti and b-boying. The film demonstrates the interconnections between music and art in the development of hip hop culture. Review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 88% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 17 reviews. A review from The Guardian noted that despite the low production values,'nothing else comes close to capturing the atmosphere of the early days of hip-hop and spraycan art...'
The film has received a large cult following over the years after its initial release. Regarded hip hop albums such as Illmatic by Nas, Midnight Marauders by A Tribe Called Quest, Black Sunday by Cypress Hill, Resurrection by Common, Big Shots by Charizma, Operation: Doomsday by MF Doom, Check Your Head by Beastie Boys, Beat Konducta by Madlib, Jay Stay Paid by J Dilla and Quality Control by Jurassic 5 have used samples from the film. In 2007, the VH1 Hip Hop Honors paid tribute to Wild Style in recognition of its influence upon the culture; the film was voted as one of the top ten rock and roll films of all time by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The film has been exhibited as part of a 1980s art retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the original soundtrack consists of 17 tracks recorded by various artists included in the film. The album has been described by Allmusic as "one of the key records of early 1980s hip-hop". Style Wars Beat Street Wild Style on IMDb Wild Style Wild Style: Times Online movie review New York Times Review Soundtrack The Hip Hop History of Wild Style Wild Style related samples on WhoSampled
The Clash
The Clash were an English rock band formed in London in 1976 as a key player in the original wave of British punk rock. They have contributed to the post-punk and new wave movements that emerged in the wake of punk and employed elements of a variety of genres including reggae, funk and rockabilly. For most of their recording career, the Clash consisted of lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Joe Strummer, lead guitarist and lead vocalist Mick Jones, bassist Paul Simonon, drummer Nicky "Topper" Headon. Headon left the group in 1982, internal friction led to Jones' departure the following year; the group continued with new members, but disbanded in early 1986. The Clash achieved commercial success in the United Kingdom with the release of their self-titled debut album, The Clash, in 1977, their third album, London Calling, released in the UK in December 1979, earned them popularity in the United States when it was released there the following month. It was declared the best album of the 1980s a decade by Rolling Stone.
In 1982, they reached new heights of success with the release of Combat Rock, which spawned the US top 10 hit "Rock the Casbah", helping the album to achieve a 2× Platinum certification there. Their final album, Cut the Crap, was released in 1985; the Clash's politicized lyrics, musical experimentation, rebellious attitude had a far-reaching influence on rock, alternative rock in particular. They became referred to as "The Only Band That Matters" a promotional slogan introduced by the group's record label, CBS. In January 2003, shortly after the death of Joe Strummer, the band—including original drummer Terry Chimes—were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked the Clash number 28 on its list of the 100 greatest artists of all time. Before the Clash's founding, the band's future members were active in different parts of the London music scene. John Graham Mellor sang and played rhythm guitar in the pub rock act The 101ers, which formed in 1974. By the time the Clash came together two years he had abandoned his original stage name, "Woody" Mellor, in favour of "Joe Strummer", a reference to his rudimentary strumming skills on the ukulele as a busker in the London Underground.
Mick Jones played guitar in protopunk band London SS, which rehearsed for much of 1975 without playing a live show and recording only a single demo. London SS were managed by Bernard Rhodes, a sometime associate of impresario Malcolm McLaren and a friend of the members of the McLaren-managed band, the Sex Pistols. Jones and his bandmates became friendly with Sex Pistols Glen Matlock and Steve Jones, who would assist them as they tried out potential new members. Among those who auditioned for London SS without making the cut were Paul Simonon, who tried out as a vocalist, drummer Terry Chimes. Nicky Headon drummed with the band for a week quit. After London SS broke up in early 1976, Rhodes continued as Jones's manager. In February, Jones saw the Sex Pistols perform for the first time: "You knew straight away, it, this was what it was going to be like from now on, it was a new scene, new values -- so different from. A bit dangerous." At the instigation of Rhodes, Jones contacted Simonon in March, suggesting he learn an instrument so he could join the new band Jones was organising.
Soon Jones, Simonon on bass, Keith Levene on guitar and "whoever we could find to play the drums" were rehearsing. Chimes got the job, although he soon quit; the band was still searching for a lead singer. Chimes recalls one Billy Watts handling the duties for a time. Rhodes had his eye with whom he made exploratory contact. Jones and Levene were impressed as well. Strummer, for his part, was primed to make the switch. In April, he had taken in the opening act for one of his band's gigs—the Sex Pistols. Strummer explained:I knew something was up, so I went out in the crowd, sparse, and I saw the future—with a snotty handkerchief—right in front of me. It was clear. Pub rock was, "Hello, you bunch of drunks, I'm gonna play these boogies and I hope you like them." The Pistols came out that Tuesday evening and their attitude was, "Here's our tunes, we couldn't give a flying fuck whether you like them or not. In fact, we're gonna play them if you fucking hate them."On 30 May and Levene met surreptitiously with Strummer after a 101'ers gig.
Strummer was invited to meet up at the band's rehearsal location on Davis Road. After Strummer turned up, Levene grabbed his guitar, stood several inches away from Strummer, looked him in the eye and began playing "Keys to Your Heart", one of Strummer's own tunes. Rhodes gave him 48 hours to decide whether he wanted to join the new band that would "rival the Pistols." Within 24 hours, Strummer agreed. Simonon remarked, "Once we had Joe on board it all started to come together." Strummer introduced the band to his old school friend Pablo LaBritain, who sat in on drums during Strummer's first few rehearsals with the group. LaBritain's stint with the band did not last long, Terry Chimes—whom Jones referred to as "one of the best drummers" in their circle—became the band's regular drummer. In Westway to the World, Jones says, "I don't think Terry was hired or anything, he had just been playing with us." Chimes did not take to Strummer at first: "He was like twenty-two or twenty-three or something that seemed'old' to me then.
And he had these retro clothes and this croaky voice". Simonon came up with the band's name after they had dubbed themselves the Weak Heartd
Rockit (song)
"Rockit" is a composition recorded by jazz pianist Herbie Hancock and produced by Bill Laswell. Hancock released it as a single from his 1983 album Future Shock; the selection was composed by Hancock, producer Laswell, synthesizer/drum machine programmer Michael Beinhorn. The track was a big hit in 1983–1984, driven by its deejay scratch style, performed by D. ST, its eye-catching music video created by Godley & Creme, put in high rotation on MTV. "Rockit" won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Instrumental Performance in 1983, it won five MTV Video Awards in 1984. The song was constructed and composed in 1982 during the recording process at various studios, first at BC Studios in the Gowanus area of Brooklyn RPM studios in Manhattan's Village Herbie's home studio in West Hollywood, at Eldorado studio in Hollywood, Los Angeles; the production trio of Material were based at BC Studios, recording underground club music for Celluloid Records. Hancock's 25-year-old manager, Tony Meilandt, approached Laswell to write a new song for Hancock, whose career needed a boost.
To gauge this potential new direction for his career, Hancock accompanied Laswell to hear a set of popular club deejays including Afrika Bambaataa and D. ST spin at Roxy NYC in front of an enthusiastic crowd. Warily eyeing the crowd which to him looked like a riot, Hancock needed more convincing by Meilandt before he contracted with Laswell's team to deliver two tracks. Meilandt said "Herbie was much ready" to try a new kind of sound. At BC Studios, Beinhorn used a new Oberheim DMX drum machine to lay down a basic beat, Laswell brought in Daniel Ponce to augment this with Afro-Cuban batá drums. Ponce played the three drums one at a time during three recording passes, to make it sound like three drummers invoking a Santería spirit. Grand Mixer D. ST came to the studio with two deejay friends from his group Infinity Rappers to scratch for the track, bringing his own vinyl but allowing Laswell to choose a Celluloid Records single as the foundation, "Change the Beat" by Fab Five Freddy, recorded in the same studio.
D. ST found an interesting portion of the 12-inch vinyl near the end – the voice of manager Roger Trilling saying "Ahhh! This stuff is fresh" through the studio's vocoder – and he scratched through that section. Trilling had been playing with the vocoder in the studio, mocking Elektra Records executive Bruce Lundvall, in the habit of sitting back in his chair and declaring a song "fresh" if he liked it, without knowing that the word fresh was current in hip-hop subculture; this moment was captured on tape, Laswell worked it into the conclusion of "Change the Beat". The 2-inch 16-track master tape containing rhythm parts and scratching needed to be transferred to 24-track 2-inch in order for Hancock to work with it at his home studio. Laswell and Bisi took the tape to RPM Studios in Greenwich Village, but instead of transferring the format, they added some extra sounds a stab of guitar taken from a Led Zeppelin song on the album Coda. Using the repeat hold function of a Lexicon Prime Time digital delay, they attempted to capture a Led Zeppelin snare drum sound, but a moment of inattention resulted in the guitar stab, which Laswell found better suited his purpose.
Hancock first heard the work-in-progress in West Hollywood at his home studio, a former guest house in back of his main residence. Hancock determined. Hancock and Beinhorn composed one on the spot by humming out loud to each other. Hancock recorded his ideas on three different synthesizers, performing on them one at a time; when Hancock suggested performing some vocoder vocal scat and Beinhorn said they could instead sample lyrics from a hit song the line "Rock it, don't stop it" from "Planet Rock", at that time a hit for Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force. This lyric sample gave the song the title of "Rockit". A final recording session was convened at Eldorado Studios located at Hollywood and Vine, Los Angeles. To round out the turntablist sounds, D. ST flew out from New York along with his colleague Grandmaster Caz. Session engineer Dave Jerden remarked to Beinhorn that Hancock appeared hopeful about the song, but that he did not realize what he had. After the brief 90-minute session, the New York contingent went to a local stereo shop to pass the time before their flight home.
Carrying a cassette tape of the final mix, they listened to "Rockit" on some loudspeakers at the shop, attracting the attention of kids from the neighborhood who were amazed and curious. Judging their reaction, Laswell told D. ST, "That's a hit record." Herbie Hancock – synthesizers, composition Bill Laswell – samples, composition Michael Beinhorn – Oberheim DMX synth drums, composition Daniel Ponce – batá drums D. ST – main turntables Mr. C of the Infinity Rappers – additional turntables Boo-Ski of the Infinity Rappers – additional turntables Martin Bisi – engineering at BC Studio and RPM Studios Grandmaster Caz – additional turntables Dave Jerden – engineering at Eldorado Studios The music video, directed by the duo of Kevin Godley and Lol Creme and featuring robot-like movable sculptures dancing and walking in time to the music in a "virtual house" in London, garnered five MTV Video Music Awards in 1984, including Best Concept Video and Best Special Effects. Hancock himself appears, plays keyboard, only as an image on a television receiver, smashed on the pavement outside the front door of the house at the end of the video.
"Rockit" was performed at the 1985 Grammy Awards Ceremony in Los Angeles, California, in the famous synthesizer jam w
Henry Chalfant
Henry Chalfant is an American photographer and videographer most notable for his work on graffiti and hip hop culture. One of Chalfant's prints is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Chalfant is graduate of Stanford University. Starting out as a sculptor in New York City in the 1970s, Chalfant turned to photography and film to do an in-depth study of hip-hop culture and graffiti art. One of the foremost authorities on New York subway art, other aspects of urban youth culture, his photographs record hundreds of ephemeral, original art works that have long since vanished, his photographs have appeared in exhibitions of graffiti art from its early appearances in New York/New Wave at P. S.1 Contemporary Art Center to retrospectives such as Art in the Streets at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and City as Canvas: Graffiti Art From the Martin Wong Collection at the Museum of the City of New York, in addition to galleries and museums in the United States and Asia.
In 1983, Chalfant co-produced the PBS documentary Style Wars, the seminal documentary about graffiti and hip hop culture. Among Chalfant's other films are Flyin' Cut Sleeves, a documentary about Bronx street gang leaders in the 1970s and Visit Palestine: Ten Days on the West Bank, based on his visit to the occupied territories in 2000, his 2006 documentary From Mambo to Hip Hop: A South Bronx Tale chronicles two generations who grew up on the same blocks of the Bronx, NY, using rhythm as their form of rebellion—for the older generation of the 1950s it was the rhythms of Cuba. The film was featured in the Latino Public Broadcasting series Voces in 2006-2007, won an Alma Award for Best Documentary, he has co-authored an account of New York graffiti art, Subway Art, a sequel on the art form's worldwide diffusion, Spraycan Art. Chalfant has stated his influences are varied: "In college my mentor was Charles Rowan Beye, the Greek scholar. I didn't have a mentor for my art work, but I was influenced by great sculptors I admired like David Smith and Eduardo Chillida.
For visual anthropology, I was influenced by the ethnographic filmmaker, Jean Rouch." Chalfant continues to preserve and archive past work, make documentary films, mentor other filmmakers' work through Public Art Films, a non-profit organization "dedicated to producing films and videos about grassroots cultural expressions." On June 29, 2012, Chalfant released Henry Chalfant's Big Subway Archive as a 200-page book. Produced by Chalfant and Max Hergenrother, it is the first volume of a multi-volume archive comprising his entire collection of subway graffiti photographs; the archive series was renamed Henry Chalfant's Graffiti Archive: New York City's Subway Art and Artists in 2013. The e-books are published by Sleeping Dog Films, which archives the photographer's over 800 photos of New York City Subway graffiti; each book in the series concentrates on a particular group or groups of graffiti artists, with an introduction by Chalfant giving background on the time and place in which the artists worked.
These passages contain non-subway-car photos of the artists or their neighborhoods as well as video interviews with the featured artists. The pictures of the subway cars are multiple photos overlapped to show the entire length of the subway car at a direct ninety degree angle; the first three volumes of the series have been released. Volume 1, CYA and TVS published June 29, 2012. Volume 2, Rolling Thunder Writers and Soul Artists, published December 7, 2012. Volume 3, TC5 featuring Blade, published July 1, 2013; the series sheds new light on some historical graffiti feuds such as Seen TC5 versus Seen UA. A-Dieci Gallery, Padua 14 Sculptors Gallery, New York Sculptors Guild, Lever House, New York Three Rivers Arts Festival, Pittsburgh O. I. A. Battery Park, New York 55 Mercer Gallery, New York New York/New Wave P. S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York Sculptors Guild Bronx Botanical Garden, New York Elaine Benson Gallery Bridgehampton, New York The Comic Art Show Whitney Downtown, New York Content, a Contemporary Focus 1974-1984 Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.
C. Since the Harlem Renaissance: 50 Years of Afro-American Art Bucknell University, Lewisburg Hip Hop: A Cultural Expression Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland Art of the American Century Part ll Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Urban Mythologies Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York Hip Hop Museum of Pop Culture, Seattle Born in the Streets Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, Paris Art in the Streets Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Moving Murals City Lore Gallery, New York City as Canvas: Graffiti Art From the Martin Wong Collection Museum of the City of New York 1980 Eric Firestone Loft, New York Art Is Not A Crime 1977-1987 CEART Fuenlabrada, MadridChalfant's solo exhibitions include Maharishi, London, he married actress Kathleen Chalfant in 1966. They have two children: David Chalfant, a record producer and bass player for the folk-rock band The Nields.
Lower East Side
The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan located between the Bowery and the East River, Canal Street and Houston Street. Traditionally an immigrant, working class neighborhood, it began rapid gentrification in the mid-2000s, prompting the National Trust for Historic Preservation to place the neighborhood on their list of America's Most Endangered Places; the Lower East Side is part of Manhattan Community District 3 and its primary ZIP Code is 10002. It is patrolled by the 7th Precinct of the New York City Police Department; the Lower East Side is bounded by the Bowery to the west, East Houston Street to the north, the FDR Drive to the east and Canal Street to the south. The western boundary below Grand Street veers east off of the Bowery to Essex Street; the neighborhood is bordered in the south and west by Chinatown – which extends north to Grand Street, in the west by Nolita and in the north by the East Village.
The "Lower East Side" referred to the area alongside the East River from about the Manhattan Bridge and Canal Street up to 14th Street, bounded on the west by Broadway. It included areas known today as East Village, Alphabet City, Bowery, Little Italy, NoLIta. Parts of the East Village are still known as Loisaida, a Latino pronunciation of "Lower East Side". Politically, the neighborhood is located in 12th congressional districts, it is in 74th district. As was all of Manhattan Island, the area now known as the Lower East Side was occupied by members of the Lenape tribe, who were organized in bands which moved from place to place according to the seasons, fishing on the rivers in the summer, moving inland in the fall and winter to gather crops and hunt for food, their main trail took the route of Broadway. One encampment in the Lower East Side area, near Corlears Hook was called Naghtogack; the population of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam was located below the current Fulton Street, while north of it were a number of small plantations and large farms called bouwerij at the time.
Around these farms were a number of enclaves of free or "half-free" Africans, which served as a buffer between the Dutch and the Native Americans. One of the largest of these was located along the modern Bowery between Prince Street and Astor Place; these black farmers were some of the earliest settlers of the area. During the 17th century, there was an overall consolidation of the boweries and farms into larger parcels, much of the Lower East side was part of the Delancy farm. James Delancey's pre-Revolutionary farm east of post road leading from the city survives in the names Delancey Street and Orchard Street. On the modern map of Manhattan, the Delancey farm is represented in the grid of streets from Division Street north to Houston Street. In response to the pressures of a growing city, Delancey began to survey streets in the southern part of the "West Farm" in the 1760s. A spacious projected Delancey Square—intended to cover the area within today's Eldridge, Essex and Broome Streets—was eliminated when the loyalist Delancey family's property was confiscated after the American Revolution.
The city Commissioners of Forfeiture eliminated the aristocratic planned square for a grid, effacing Delancey's vision of a New York laid out like the West End of London. The point of land on the East River now called Corlears Hook was called Corlaers Hook under Dutch and British rule, Crown Point during British occupation in the Revolution, it was named after the schoolmaster Jacobus van Corlaer, who settled on this "plantation" that in 1638 was called by a Europeanized version of its Lenape name, Nechtans or Nechtanc. Corlaer sold the plantation to Wilhelmus Hendrickse Beekman, founder of the Beekman family of New York. On February 25, 1643, volunteers from the New Amsterdam colony killed thirty Wiechquaesgecks at their encampment at Corlears Hook, as part of Kieft's War, in retaliation for ongoing conflicts between the colonists and the natives of the area, including their unwillingness to pay tribute, their refusal to turn over the killer of a colonist; the projection into the East River that retained Corlaer's name was an important landmark for navigators for 300 years.
On older maps and documents it is spelled Corlaers Hook, but since the early 19th century the spelling has been anglicized to Corlears. The rough unplanned settlement that developed at Corlaer's Hook under the British occupation of New York during the Revolution was separated from the densely populated city by rough hills of glacial till: "this region lay beyond the city proper, from which it was separated by high and rough hills", observers recalled in 1843; as early as 1816, Corlears Hook was notorious for streetwalkers, "a resort for the lewd and abandoned of both sexes", in 1821 its "streets abounding every night with preconcerted groups of thieves and prostitutes" were noted by the "Christian Herald". In the course of the 19th century they came to be called hookers. In the summer of cholera in New York, 1832, a two-storey wooden workshop was commandeered to serve as a makeshift cholera hospital. In 1833, Corlear's Hook was the location of some of the first tenements built in New York C
Keith Haring
Keith Allen Haring was an American artist whose pop art and graffiti-like work grew out of the New York City street culture of the 1980s. Haring's work grew to popularity from his spontaneous drawings in New York City subways – chalk outlines of figures and other sylized images--on blank black advertising-space backgrounds. After public recognition he created larger scale works such as colorful murals, many of them commissioned, his imagery has "become a recognized visual language". His work addressed political and societal themes – homosexuality and AIDS – through his own iconography. Keith Haring was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on May 4, 1958, he was raised in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, by his mother, Joan Haring, father, Allen Haring, an engineer and amateur cartoonist. His family attended the United Church of God, he had three younger sisters, Kay and Kristen. He became interested in art at a young age, spending time with his father producing creative drawings, his early influences included Walt Disney cartoons, Dr. Seuss, Charles Schulz, the Looney Tunes characters in The Bugs Bunny Show.
In his early teenage years, Haring was involved with the Jesus Movement. He hitchhiked across the country, while selling T-shirts that he made featuring the Grateful Dead and anti-Nixon shirts, he studied commercial art from 1976 to 1978 at Pittsburgh's Ivy School of Professional Art, but lost interest. He was inspired to focus on his own art after reading The Art Spirit by Robert Henri; this influenced his decison to leave Pittsburgh's Ivy School of Professional Art after two semesters. Haring had a maintenance job at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and was able to explore the art of Jean Dubuffet, Jackson Pollock, Mark Tobey, he was influenced around this time by a 1977 retrospective of Pierre Alechinsky's work and by a lecture that the sculptor Christo gave in 1978. From Alechinsky's work, he felt encouraged to create large images that featured writing and characters. From Christo, Haring was introduced to ways of incorporating the public into his art, his first important one-man exhibition was in Pittsburgh at the Center for the Arts in 1978.
Haring moved to New York in 1978 to study painting at the School of Visual Arts. He worked as a busboy during this time at the nightclub, Danceteria, he studied semiotics with Bill Beckley, as well as exploring the possibilities of video and performance art. Profoundly influenced at this time by the writings of William Burroughs, he was inspired to experiment with the cross-referencing and interconnection of images. Haring first received public attention with his graffiti art in subways where he created white chalk drawings on a black, unused advertisement backboard in the stations, he considered the subways to be his "laboratory", a place where he could experiment and create his artwork and saw the black advertisement paper as a free space and “the perfect place to draw”. Starting in 1980, he organized exhibitions at Club 57, a gallery which hosted performances and exhibitions from emerging artists, which were filmed by the photographer Tseng Kwong Chi. Around this time, "The Radiant Baby", a crawling infant with emitting rays of light, became his most recognized symbol.
He used it as his tag to sign his work while a subway artist. His bold lines, vivid colors, active figures carry strong messages of life and unity, and including other symbols such as a barking dog, a flying saucer, large hearts and figures with televisions for heads. He drew animals and human faces for the first time; that same year, he photocopied and pasted provocative collages made from cut-up and recombined New York Post headlines around the city. In 1981, he sketched his first chalk drawings on black paper and painted plastic and found objects. Haring would buy materials from hardware stores such as tarpaulin or muslin. Haring would work on any medium that could provide a proper context for his work and/or could hold the marks. Due to this, his works spread and Haring became much more recognizable. By 1982, Haring had established friendships with fellow emerging artists Futura 2000, Kenny Scharf, Yoko Ono, Boy George, Roy Lichtenstein and Jean-Michel Basquiat, he created more than 50 public works between 1989 in dozens of cities around the world.
He used lines of energy to emphasize kinetic movement and euphoric spirit. One of his early works, “Untitled”, in 1982 depicts two figures with a radiant heart-love motif, which critics have interpreted as a boldness in homosexual love and a significant cultural statement, his "Crack is Wack" mural, created in 1986, is visible from New York's FDR Drive. This mural is an example of Haring’s use of consciousness raising rather than consumerism, “Crack is Wack” rather than “Coke is it”. In 1989, he criticized the avoidance of social issues such as AIDS through a piece called "Rebel with Many Causes" that revolves around a theme of "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil". |Keith Haring 1986 original/thumb/Keith Haring at work in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam]] Throughout the 1980’s Haring made art for a variety of sources and discotheques, such as the Palladium in Manhattan, MTV set decorations, a backdrop for a 1985 hunger-relief concert in Philadelphia, walls on the Lower East Side and props for various dance works.
His works included murals for the Musee d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux, the Children’s hospital in Washington and the Necker Children’s hospital in Paris. Haring had an undeniable sexual quality to much of his work. Much of his work includes sexual allusions that evolved into more social activism, using this more sexual images to advocate for safe-sex and AIDS awar
