Jason Andrew is the curator and archivist for the Estate of Jack Tworkov and was the mastermind behind the recent retrospective of Jack Tworkov’s work. A prominent figure in the Bushwick art scene, Jason Andrew is also the founding director of Norte Maar, which encourages, promotes, and supports collaborations in the arts.
Artist and writer Sharon Butler corresponded with Andrew about Jack Tworkov’s contribution to New York’s art scene in the 1940s, 50s and 60s.
This movement of art in- and outside has been of interest to me since I regularly began following street art about a year ago. The contexts in which the work can be seen often varies dramatically, and these environmental shifts raise a number of questions: does the work itself change as it traverses public and private domains? If so, how? And what does this translation mean for our understanding of the work? A few months ago, I crisscrossed Brooklyn and Manhattan to investigate street art’s translation from the street to a gallery setting.
Depending on how a street artist uses the street they may have something to lose by moving into a gallery space. Peru Ana Ana Peru, which is composed of two artists, use the street primarily as a way of making their striking and fantastical images even more so. We are struck by a colorful image or by a traditional picture frame on a signpost. We wonder what they’re doing there, so we investigate. But a closer inspection is unhelpful: An old portrait with the face scratched out? What does “Peru Ana Ana Peru” even mean?
A few weeks ago Art Review announced the Top 100 power brokers in the art world but we thought they missed the real story. So Hyperallergic has released its own list of the people who have never received their moment in the sun.
We present the Top 20 Most Powerless People in the Art World!
On Sunday, many New Yorkers were probably trying to figure out who whitewashed and pimped out some of the city’s boring billboards. If you liked what you saw then let me introduce you to the man behind the renegade campaign, known as New York Street Advertising Takeover (NYSAT), his name is Jordan Seiler and he wants to return public space to the people.
Hypermedia columnist Artie Vierkant interviews artists Daniel Keller and Nik Kosmas, who are more commonly known as AIDS-3D. Their work deals with a multitude of issues at the intersection of art, technology and society and they frequently employ cultural ephemera from the Internet rendered in aestheticized and irreverent ways.
Their work has been exhibited at The New Museum, PPOW, The X Initiative, Gentili Apri Berlin, Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, X Biennial de Lyon, and on the Internet. They recently contributed an essay, “Hubris/Nemesis/Whatever” for Art Fag City’s IMG MGMT series.
My husband was walking down Bedford Avenue on Wednesday, and he spotted someone pasting up posters on a wall which is almost always dominated by a giant Shepard Fairey poster, so frequently in fact that it might as well be his permanent ad space. It was lunchtime and no one stopped or cared. Knowing my love of street art, and what can sometimes be inane details, he quickly snapped a pic with his camera phone and emailed it to me with the message, “Someone covering up fairey [sic].”
What at first glance appeared to be a run of the mill “sniping” (i.e. illegal posting of corporate advertising), turned out to be a new street art campaign, iBlanket, though the artist prefers the term public art. The brain child of Bushwick artist Ann Oren, iBlanket riffs off the ubiquitous Apple “i” genre and turns our attention to the problems of homelessness just as the temperatures have started to plummet.
Much has been written about the traveling exhibition The Americans, but here’s a recap: Swiss photographer Robert Frank won a Guggenheim fellowship and drove around the United States in 1955-56 taking pictures. His book The Americans, with a forward by Jack Kerouac, was published in 1959, and met with acclaim and controversy. Some people didn’t like the America that Frank saw. On the 50th anniversary of the book’s publication, the entire series has been shown at several U.S. venues, and is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
From images of a funeral in South Carolina to a wedding chapel in Reno, Frank revealed a nation that looked burdened, anxious, and lost.
When a gaggle of Meriden teenagers got together in the early 80’s to form Napalm Death, they weren’t thinking of completely restructuring the DNA of the Song. They weren’t thinking about inventing a new Metal genre, Grindcore. They weren’t thinking about garnering the lifelong support of John Peel. They weren’t thinking about any of these things. They were just bored with the music they were hearing. They wanted to make something faster than Punk. They wanted to kill it, the latest tired beast. Turned out the beast was already out of breath, but that didn’t mean it didn’t need a good clubbing. Overkill never hurt anyone.
Hypermedia: Critical Issues in Contemporary Media Art is a column written by artist Artie Vierkant for Hyperallergic. Each article discusses an existing or emerging theme in practices at the intersection of electronic media and the arts, drawing from the contemporary and the historic, the pervasive and the obscure.
The Internet has bred a certain degree of cultural democratization — citizen journalism, revolts aided by the use of Twitter, the rise to fame of Soul’ja Boy, etc. The same is true to a degree in art, but for the most part older methods of working stay cribbed in older methods of distribution.
I joined Hyperallergic editor and fellow street art enthusiast, Hrag Vartanian, to discuss the recent film by the Antagonist Art Movement titled “This is Berlin Not New York.” The very indie film is directed by Ethan H. Minsker and follows the adventures of the New York-based art group as they travel to Berlin to participate in an exhibition and explore one of the world’s hot spots of contemporary art.
An edited transcript of our conversation is below but make up your own mind this Saturday night (Oct. 17) as the film is being screened at Anthology Film Archives during the Royal Flush Festival.
In an age of DIY transformations, Etsy domination and artisanal homemade chocolates sold at hip flea markets, is CRAFT still a dirty word? Brooklynite Amy Shaw reflects on her years of experience in the field and thinks about the world of craft in general.
When I was growing up amidst potters, carpenters, artists and furniture makers in 1970/80s New Hampshire, the highlight of my summer was always the craft fairs my Mom organized. Running around with friends through the apple orchard, admiring the baskets and chairs and vases artisans displayed on their tables under the trees, feasting on handmade lollipops and bread and strawberry rhubarb pie — this was the essence of the good life to my young self, and I saved up money all summer to buy handmade stuffed animals and hand-printed stationary. This love stayed with me through college, where sections on the decorative arts were my favorite topic in art history classes. (Wherever that word went is another question.)
This free event includes a panel with artists Mary Miss, Ned Smyth, and R.M. Fischer following the premiere of documentary shorts on their work. January 10, 2024, at 6:30pm.
