[Editor's note: While your editors take the day off, Flavorwire will be counting down some of our most popular features of 2011 so far. This post originally ran on April 10th. Enjoy your Memorial Day!] This week, New York Magazine ran a series of fairly great articles documenting apartment living in New York City. One of these in particular, entitled ‘The Perpetual Garret: Where the starving artists slept’ caught our eye for its rare peek into the homes of some of our favorite artists. Inspired, here we’ve put together some of our favorites from the NY Mag article as well as some of our other favorite artists’ lairs from around the world (and the internet), the whole collection running the gamut from the tiny and cramped to the ridiculously messy to the spacious and modern. Click through to see how the other half lives.
The boldly simple, instantly recognizable art of Keith Haring has always been a natural fit for fashion. But sometimes it feels like those appropriations have cheapened, rather than paid tribute to, his work. (See, for example, Uniqlo’s line of Haring T-shirts.) We’re much more excited about shoe designer Nicholas Kirkwood’s new collection of heels, in collaboration with the Keith Haring Foundation. Inspired by a viewing of the documentary The Universe of Keith Haring, Kirkwood has created a stunning line of brightly colored, crystal-encrusted, and surprisingly shaped shoes decorated with Haring’s characters and motifs. There’s even a bedazzled, pink-wheeled pair of knee-high roller skates. Check out some photos of our favorites after the jump, then visit the great UK blog Style Bubble for more images, a video about the project, and a some more information about the collection.
From a strange, sexy, mechanical shrine that occupied Marcel Duchamp for the last two decades of his life to Vincent van Gogh’s and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s disputed paintings — final works of famous artists are always something of a curiosity. What were their near-death obsessions? What was that artist’s last artistic hurrah? From a loving tribute to Stalin to the act of dying itself, find the controversial, surprising and affirming end chapter pieces from art history’s heroes in our gallery.
When art, tech, and crowdsourcing come together, magical things can happen. At that intersection is Street Art View, a project that collects and maps images of street art collected around the world on Google Street View. A collaboration between Red Bull and the Brazilian ad agency Loducca, it includes photos from around the world; although a large plurality come from Brazil, the U.S. and Europe are also well-represented. You can search SAV for a specific location or artist (a limited list including Banksy, Blu, Keith Haring, and a few others), browse in a particular region, or add and tag an image from your neighborhood. As long as the entries are kept reasonably up to date, SAV could double as a great tool for planning your next street art-appreciation outing. Check out a few of our favorite pieces after the jump.
We don’t blame our pals at Buzzfeed for saying Nicki Minaj looks like a Juggalo on the cover of V. We can definitely see the resemblance. But, despite Juggalos’ ubiquity these days, we were actually reminded of a whole lot of other face-painted cultural touchstones. After the jump, five other characters the cover brought to mind.
There’s something about the unmitigated joy in Keith Haring’s pop art that always puts a smile on our face; his letter to Michael, an aspiring young artist/fan who had written to him asking for some career advice, has the same effect. “Whatever you do, the only secret is to believe in it and satisfy yourself,” Haring writes. “Don’t do it for anyone else.” How warm fuzzy inducing is that? Plus, we’re in love with his custom letterhead. Click through to check out it out.
Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami danced down Broadway yesterday in a furry flower costume atop a small float decorated with jellyfish eyes and skulls as his signature anime characters, Kaikai and Kiki, hovered overhead in the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Earlier this week, the artist told the New York Times the characters “represent the aesthetic philosophy behind my work. They are cute yet fearsome modern and yet connected to the past. They embody eccentric beauty.”
Documenting artists, snowboarders, musicians, and skateboarders, photographer and filmmaker Ari Marcopoulos takes a lively, anthropological approach to art.
Starting out in NYC’s downtown art and music scene, Marcopoulos got insider shots of Warhol, Haring, and Basquiat, as well as LL Cool J and the Beastie Boys. Discovering skateboard culture, he captured the dynamism of that world, before heading west to turn his lens on the developing snowboard scene and his own growing family.
Best of friends during their lifetimes, artist Keith Haring and photographer Tseng Kwong Chi are currently being commemorated in two New York exhibitions. Keith Haring 20th Anniversary, which runs through April 10 at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, offers a wide array of Haring’s energetic paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, while the exhibition Tseng Kwong Chi at Paul Kasmin Gallery, on view through March 27, presents the photographer’s 1983 collaboration with Haring and choreographer Bill T. Jones. Haring painted Jones’ naked body with his signature motifs and Tseng photographed Jones in a variety of lively poses.
Taken together, these shows, which honor these artists 20 years after their untimely deaths, capture the vitality of the ‘80s NYC art scene through the work of two of its most talented contributors.
As Andy Warhol famously declared, “Good business is the best art.” Taking Warhol and his maxim as its point of departure, Pop Life: Art in a Material World presents a selection of international artists who have followed in his footsteps. Organized by London’s Tate Modern and co-curated by Artforum editor-at-large Jack Bankowsky, François Pinault Collection curator Alison Gingeras, and Tate Modern curator Catherine Wood, Pop Life explores the relationship between art, commerce, and celebrity in the post-Pop era.
