RICHARD HAMBLETON
THE AMERICAN POP EXPRESSIONIST GODFATHER OF STREET ART
THE AMERICAN POP EXPRESSIONIST
RICHARD HAMBLETON GODFATHER OF STREET ART
Much of what has been written on Richard Hambleton has focused on the artist’s early “public art”. As a conceptual artist, Hambleton produced work using the urban canvas to evoke public reaction. He was reputed to be an elusive genius. The original Pop Expressionist, Hambleton’s unforgettable images have permeated our collective consciousness for over three decades now.
From 1976-1979 Hambleton’s “Mass Murder” installation was secretly placed onto streets in over 15 cities, in order to mimic the chalk-body outlines and blood splatered crime scenes of what appeared to be “victims”. Early on, when Hambleton’s works were freshly discovered in major cities, they ignited an anxiety-induced phenomenon as people were unaware of the identity of the artist. Graffiti had long
Times Square, NYC 1980 In 1980, 800 life-sized diazo prints of the artist respectably attired in Napoleonic pose, with a crazed sparkle in his eyes, like a stranger intruding on a sidewalk tete-a-tete with his menacing stare, were placed by Hambleton on urban walls in ten cities. From Street Art by Allen Schwartzman, 1985
been seen in public spaces. Hambleton, however, was not engaged in random acts, but serious art installations that prompted the general
In the 1990s, Hambleton conceived to evoke another emotion, this
public to observe and accept the fragility of being. The immediate
time from work he produced in his studio: ‘The Beautiful Paintings’.
impact of his work gave life to his form of popular expression: a
Contrasting starkly with his earlier work, abstract, colourful images
social experiment. In the early 1980’s, Richard Hambleton began
of beauty, with gold and silver leaf, appeared to represent seascapes,
his “Shadowman” series. Each of over 600 dark, ominous, shadowy
landscapes, or simply escape in general. His followers were awed by
figures were painted in an unexpected corner, alley, or side street.
Hambleton’s seemingly fluid transition to the sublime.
The powerful blackened “Shadowman” works became legendary guardians in a secret mission to disable the emotional stability of
Hambleton does not believe that social recognition is what defines a
our everyday lives: seen in New York City, London, France and Italy,
great artist, and therefore, despite and in spite of the fame that befell
as well as on the East and West sides of the Berlin Wall. Hambleton
many of his peers, he ignored it. He wanted his art to be interpreted
has said, “…what makes them exciting is the power of the viewer’s
with reaction. He was submerged in making important, lasting
imagination- that split second experience when you see the figures,
art, not in the critic’s opinion of him personally. Hambleton today
that matter.” Richard Hambleton was at the flashpoint of the
remains one of the only surviving members of that early cutting-
downtown New York art scene; one of the founding contributors of
edge downtown art movement. He continues to live and create in the
the burgeoning art community. Along with close friends Keith Haring
neighborhood to which he has laid claim for over 30 years.
& Jean Michel Basquiat, he created a sensation in the early 1980’s that remains relevant today. Hambleton’s army of shadow silhouettes
Richard Hambleton has had many exhibitions, both solo and group.
are potent reminders of the vulnerability and intensity of human life.
His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Check Point Charlie Museum and The Zellermeyer in Berlin, The Andy Warhol
Hambleton left the USA in the mid-80s, having been personally
Museum, Austin Museum of Art, Milwaukee Art Museum, New Museum
invited to make his mark in Europe and Asia. He was embraced and
of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum, The Queens Museum, and
celebrated along his travels. Hambleton’s “Shadow” series of night life
Harvard University. He was chosen for the Venice Biennale, twice.
continued internationally, raising awareness and the critical acclaim
Hambleton has been featured in ArtForum, Art in America, The
of the artist as “The Shadowman”.
International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, Architectural Digest, LIFE magazine and will be chronicled in the forthcoming
Back in the U.S, the core circle of artists was changing. Death came
book from Taschen- Trespass: A History of Uncommissioned Public
early to Warhol, Basquiat and Haring. Each artist had left behind their
Art. His latest series of shows - “Richard Hambleton - Retrospective”
signature style, while Hambleton survived, eluding death, to continue
- will travel across four continents, curated by Andy Valmorbida and
his path of creativity.
Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, in collaboration with Giorgio Armani.
Through the 80s Richard Hambleton had just been an artist I would
which he increasingly made his mark was one of steadily increasing
glimpse here and there downtown: a kind of well-known unknown.
prosperity and one in which being an artist was a serious career. The
Quite literally, a shadow-man. Then somebody - I no longer
self-destructive excesses which had been part of art world myth from
remember who - took me to Hambleton’s studio, a cavernous loft
Caravaggio through the Vie de Boheme to Jackson Pollock seemed
on Chrystie Street in that apparently ungentrifiable segment of the
suddenly out of date. Indeed “bohemianism” seemed a pretension. It
Lower East Side which a streetwise girl I knew called “Heroinburg.” I
was now a world in which a successful artist could expect to buy a
was astonished by the work he was doing, so jewel-like, so very off-
building, perhaps a castle, and to be profiled in up-scale magazines.
the-street. Or so I thought. It was the first of several visits. There was usually a cute, frail girl around. Did the place have two floors? Three?
Well, this pleasant paradigm didn’t fit Basquiat, God knows, nor even
Four? I no longer remember that either. I do remember the mounds
Keith Haring. But of The Three, Richard Hambleton, the sole survivor,
of … well, stuff. I also remember quite a large gathering – Banafsheh
was born under a peculiarly dark star. Its rays soon engulfed him so
Zand Zand, then with Threadwaxing Space, was there, as was Marcia
that, of his own compulsive volition, he did not so much disappear
Resnick, the terrific Punk photographer, and the critic Thomas
– at his most crabbed and cagey, Richard Hambleton never ever
McEvilley. Each time, Hambleton, weaving between articulacy and a
disappeared – as become an enigma, a rumour, a presence flickerng
halting shyness, had fresh, remarkable art on hand.
at the edge of vision. But – and this is the anomaly, actually the miracle – Richard Hambleton, unlike most other furious engines of
But then, all of a sudden, he was no longer on Chrystie Street. It was
their self-destruction, has not only kept on steadily working but
as if the shadows had swallowed Richard Hambleton up. Until now.
preserved his gift intact, continually finding new places to take it. “If I’ve got nothing else at least I’ve got my art,” he told me that evening
Street art, uncommissioned art, outlaw art, interventionist art have
in the ramshackle studio. “Which keeps me happy in a way. But it’s
been presences in the art world from the beginning of Modernism,
not a therapy process. It never has been. Just to be able to do it.”
but the history of today’s public art begins … well, where exactly? Perhaps with Christo, shoving up his Iron Curtain of oil-drums with
I asked if he thought about the future. I was thinking of the work – for
cyclonic energy in a Paris street in 1961? Or with the subversive
instance, the disappearance of the street work - but he misunderstood.
seductions of the Situationist slogans – “Beneath the paving stones,
Sometimes he speaks with a shy mumble, but sometimes with a clear
the beach” – scrawled in the same city in 1968? But it was the Wow!
articulacy. As now. “I don’t worry about my future,” he said firmly. I
factor of the graffiti writers of New York’s South Bronx– Norman
said I meant the future of the work. “Yeah! I do. I always have,” he said.
Mailer’s The Faith of Graffiti was published in 1973- that opened up
“That’s the only thing.” Okay. Back to the beginning. “This is the first
public art both as a media phenomenon and a rawly exciting arena.
piece of public art I ever did,” Hambleton said. We were in his second
Suddenly the streets seemed more available, the white cube galleries
studio – the entire building is a small warren of studios- and what
less impregnable. Stefan Eins, an artist from Vienna, started Fashion
we were looking at was a fragment of mirror. “Really?” I said. “Yeah!
Moda in the Bronx to channel the energies. Fred Brathwaite, aka
I stuck little mirrors up all over Vancouver. They were all about the
Fab Five Freddy, had tagged subway trains as a kid and saw the
same size. I was R. Dick Trace It. I had a pocket mirror. And I would
possibilities. “My painting a Soup Can train was a homage to Andy
say: Have you seen this face before?” Vancouver, Canada, was where
as well as a message that people doing these pieces were not all the
Hambleton grew up, where he went to art school. He speaks little of
scoundrels that we were painted. And from there I began to make
his family, except to mention that he hadn’t seen his mother for ten
moves and meet other artists,” he says. Artists from a non-graffiti
years, but one gathers that they were healthy, outdoorsy folk. In 1975,
background felt the current too. In 1977 the Conceptualist Sherrie
when when he was 21, he founded Pumps, a centre for alternative
Levine saw a multi-facetted diamond shape that Paul McMahon
arts, and in 1976 had his first solo show there. He moved to San
had made in his studio. “There should be one of those in the middle
Francisco later that year. These first R Dick Trace It pieces already
of every traffic intersection in SoHo,” she told him. So they got a
have the doubleness which is key to Hambleton’s work. The main art
stencil and some white paint and did just that. Christie Rupp painted
influences he cites are the painterly Ab Exes and the hard-core 70s’
rats, Dan Witz painted birds, Charles Simonds left small models of
Conceptualists. “I liked the idea of aliases, personas. Performance
buildings around, Daniel Buren painted one of his stripes outside
art. And video art. It made a reference to that,” he says. Indeed he up
Lawrence Weiner’s wall on Bleecker and Jenny Holzer pasted paper
a series of TV screen shaped silver stickers in venues like the Punk
strips, printed with aphorisms. But the art world is deft at sorting
holy-of-holies, CHGB. These combinations of aggressive thought
through such group manifestations as Cubism, the Ab Exes and Pop
processes and attractive materials – the tackiest chainstore pocket
and here it swiftly homed in on the three to watch.
mirror would have been a precious thing in the ancient world – is predictive of his mature art.“ I have a whole history of doing work on
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Richard Hambleton. Of
mirrors,” he said. Right now, for instance, he is attaching mirrors onto
the three, Hambleton was the first to get lift-off. The art world in
city walls. He gives these pieces the self-explanatory title: “Artholes”.
Hambleton is also making mirror pieces in the studio. The way he
from his Marlboro Man/ Rodeo series when I asked if there was any
recharges by moving between the studio and the street is another of
rodeo life in Canada? “Nothing! Nothing like that at all!” he said.“The
his dualisms. “I’ll do something in the street. Then I’ll do something in
cowboy was such an American hero. The white hat! I should have made
the studio,” he says. “And there’ll be a relationship between the two.
him into a shadow. Evil!” Evil. The word confronted me with another
It won’t be the exact same thing.” So it was when he made “Image
Richard Hambleton dualism, not street/studio, nor Conceptual/
Mass Murder” soon after his arrival in San Francisco. “I had friends
painterly, but deadlier, the way he contrives to make his high-energy
that laid down and I traced around them,” he says. Then he would
art while in the jaws of a horrendous addiction. This of itself would
splash red paint, indicating blood. “It seemed like I was a crazy guy
not give his career its folkloric resonance, though. because junkie
in the street. But that was totally orchestrated and organized. I had a
artists, writers, musicians are ten thousand a penny and tend to
studio. An exhausting process!” he says. “It took three days to paint
burn out quickly. It’s the way that Hambleton consistently produces,
San Francisco red and it made the front page of the San Francisco
continuing to work through thick and thin, and the way that – less
Examiner.” The paper ran a photograph with the caption: “No one
explicitly than William Burroughs but with similar resilience - he has
died here. This is the work of a sick jokester”. “So the media was part
found ways to turn these terrible drives into art.
of the work. That was an achievement.” He took “Mass Murder” on a crypto-tour of 15 cities in the US and Canada, then put up a show
Marcia Resnick, herself formerly a heavy user, and a friend of
in 1978 which revealed that the whole thing was an artwork and the
Hambleton, sets a vivid scene. “His life was so inundated in blood.
artist/jokester was himself.
Shooting up all the time. He was a messy junkie. There was no hiding it with him,” she says. She remembers being in a rehab and watching
Hambleton had been living on New York’s Lower East Side when he
him enter. “I saw him walking in with a suitcase that was painted
launched the “Shadowman” series. This was a breakthrough. “With
with gold leaf,” she says. “And two minutes later I saw him running.
Mass Murder something had happened. Someone was murdered
The suitcase was filled with little packages of heroin. And they
on the sidewalk,” he says. “But with the Shadow work, you walked
wouldn’t find it. Right? In a rehab.” All of which would just be black
around the corner and you saw somebody in a doorway. There was
comedy except for the work that Hambleton was then making. These
somebody there. It was very direct. Like Richard Serra, in a way. It was
were the pieces I saw in Chrystie Street: Small square canvases on
very in your face and very immediate.” There had been a sense in the
woodblocks, goldleafed, and overlaid with delicate abstract patterns
New York art world that there was an otherness about Hambleton,
in dark red. I learned later that Hambleton had painted them with
that he wasn’t playing by the ordinary rules. “Jean-Michel and Keith
his own blood. “I used to think like I’m a Conceptual painter, you
were always cool. The first time I met Keith he was sweeping the
know. I felt like I could paint anything,” he says. “When I did the
floor of Tony Shafrazi’s gallery. He knew exactly where to be,” says
Wave paintings, I had never painted a wave, an oceanscape before.
Walter Robinson, then a painter, now the editor of ArtNet Magazine.
I never studied landscape paintings. But I had this concept. I knew how to create Wave paintings. I romanticized it and did a 24 foot
Hambleton, being Pollock-difficult, if in a more cerebral way, had
Wave painting. And when I did that painting I thought that’s it!
made no attempt to align himself with cool. But “Shadowman”
I’ve done a great Wave painting. This is the way I was thinking at
propelled him to the fore. “Those nightmarish creatures were very
the time. This is great. So what shall I do next?” What he did, not
effective,” Robinson says. “And true to life.” How did Hambleton feel
next, but soon enough, was lose his loft on Chrystie. His life went
about other people putting their own tags over the Shadowmen?
into freefall. “My self esteem went down so low,” he said. His huge
“That’s nice! I appreciate the input and the interaction. I don’t want
collection of works by Haring and Basquiat – all trades for his own
them to look like art. The issue in the 70s was if it looked like art, it
pieces – had been liquidated when he failed to make payments to a
wasn’t. Carl Andre didn’t look like art. So if I put a shadow up there
storage unit. “I ended up being homeless. Just like that,” he said. “I
would be all these other tags around it or on it. It used my work. But
kept finding a space and I was evicted. I’ve been evicted from like
someone who is going to go out and vandalise every one of them I
six places. That totally messed me up. Even though I survived on
have a problem with.”
the street in the 90s. There are all these people on the streets of New York surviving. I got pretty good at it. “It was totally frustrating.
In 1984 Hambleton went to Europe three times. “I wanted to do
I kept wanting to get some security. A studio space. That’s what I
something special for 1984. So I went to about 24 cities. Every major
wanted to do. But, being homeless and stuff, I started existing by
city in Western Europe.” Warhol was taken by Hambleton. “Andy
giving head.” Hello, Richard? What? “Painting Shadow heads! It was
kept begging me to come up. He said, ‘Richard, I want to do your
kind of funny. The idea of focusing on a subject matter and doing it
portrait’. I never did” He paused and added “I don’t want any more
over and over and over again was something relatively new for me.
opportunities lost.”
But doing a hundred Shadow heads became fascinating, doing the same thing over and over and over again. The idea! And a lot of times
The nightmares were real. He was leafing through sheets of drawings
they don’t work.” He gestured at a “Shadow”. “I’ve maybe painted
“There was a part of it that was a personal evolution of my way of being,” Hambleton says. “And part of it was conceptual. The recipe is very simple in the sublime. You get beyond beauty. You noticed that piece of stainless steel downstairs? That mirrored stainless steel? The Beautiful Paintings are partly beautiful because of the materials I used. Like gold leaf.” And just what is the relationship between the Beautiful Paintings and the gold squares worked with his blood that I saw way back on Chrystie Street?
There was a long pause.
- Anthony Hayden-Guest
this canvas ten times. Over and over again.” It seemed the moment to bring up a notion of mine. Perhaps the most famously tormented artists actually need their torments, might perhaps even bring them on their own heads? I asked Hambleton whether the intensity of his
ARTIST OF SHADOWS SHEDS ‘LIGHT’ ON NIGHTLIFE. DAILY NEWS FEATURE, 1983
work might owe something to the intense circumstances – what Hambleton haltingly calls his “situation” - under which he had to make it. He slapped the idea down. “No! Not at all!” he said. “No! It’s been subsistence painting. It’s the opposite. When I get what I need the work is much better.” It was now Hambleton who proposed the notion of an inherent dualism. “I’m basically two people now. I’m doing these surface silhouettes and I’m doing Beautiful Paintings.”
The silhouettes being the Shadowmen. “Now I’m doing Standing Shadows. Indoors. I like the way they work indoors. I’m happy doing one after another after another. Each one is an individual. Each one is different.” Well, they weren’t all standing. I indicated a canvas bouncing with splattery energy. What was that? “That’s going to be a Jumping Shadow. Maybe it’s going to be a Painter Painting. But I’m trying not to be too graphic and to say too much.” The
Richard Hambleton doesn’t give any interviews. Up to now he has
“Beautiful Paintings” are just that, beautiful. Which is extraordinary
preferred to remain a phantom: not unlike the ubiquitous shadow
in itself because beauty is normally a by-product of the art-making
figures he has painted on walls, doorways and at vacant lots in every
process and artists who actually set out to make beautiful work
neighbourhood from Tribeca to the upper East Side.
usually create either decoration or kitsch. But Hambleton’s works are thrillingly beautiful. It can hardly be irrelevant that he began making
Hambleton lives and paints in a windowless sub-basement SoHo
these after the “Wave” paintings so it seems clear to me that it’s a
crypt, where water flutes steadily though exposed sewer pipes and
felt conflict between the ugliness of his circumstances and what he
a dank mist fills the air. Since January of last year, this underground
is putting on canvas that makes them the radiant things they are.
man has been stealing out into the night, turning the city into his
THE SAN FRANSISCO EXAMINER RAN A FRONT-PAGE PHOTO WITH A CAPTION THAT READ: “NO ONE DIED HERE. THIS IS THE WORK OF A SICK JOKESTER.” FINALLY, IN 1978 HE HELD AN EXHIBITION REVEALING HIMSELF AS THE “MURDERER.” canvas with a can of black paint, amusing some passersby, making
in a conservative suit across the walls of 33 cities. The psychotic/
others just a little nervous. “The figures are called ‘Nightlife,’” says
romantic piece- which had three titles, “I Only Have Eyes for You.”
the wire-haired Hambleton in a gentle, dampened voice, “because in
“Putting Yourself Up for Abuse” and “Spreading Yourself Thin” was
the dark they come alive. They create the illusion of people standing
done on blueprint paper designed to fade after three months. Today
against building. The day reveals them as paintings.”
the only remnants are white ghosts of an evaporated image.
The expression of each shadow character is tailored to fit the location.
With his September exhibition at the Milliken Gallery, Hambleton
On a large concrete wall, the figures may jump or dance. In dark
Identified himself as the author “Nightlife.” He feels, however, that
doorways, they may lurk in or guard dangerous corners. Because
while his street work has brought attention, it has handicapped his
his work “fits into” the city, Hambleton feels that it differs from
image as a serious painter. “people see my work in the gallery and
other familiar street icons like Keith Haring’s primitives or the avant
say: ‘Oh, I liked in on the street, but I’m not sure about it in the gallery.”
group’s squiggly, multicoloured rectangles. “Other artists put their
But it’s Totally different. In painting I work with colour, structure and
work on the city.” her says, “But what I paint on the walls is only part
composition. In the street there’s no progression. Once I’ve said what
of the picture. The city psychologically completes the rest. People
I want to do it’s done.”
experience my paintings. They aren’t simply exposed to them.” Could this mean that Richard Hambleton is finally emerging from the Hambleton first splashed the streets in his native San Francisco in
shadows?
1976 with a piece called “Image Mass Murder.” He traced the outline of his friends bodies on the pavement, then splashed the images
“ When critics point out the implications of my work it sounds okay.
with blood-red paint. He “terrorised” 15 American and Canadian
When I say it, it sounds like hype. So I don’t say too much- except to
cities with the piece, generating a good deal of edgy attention. Two
let a few people know what I’m doing.”
years later, he plastered 750 life-size photo images of himself dressed
RICHARD HAMBLETON: BIO BORN: JUNE 1954 VANCOUVER, CANADA
Richard Hambleton earned a Bachelor in Fine Arts from the Emily Carr School of Art in Vancouver, Canada. Hambleton was Founder and CoDirector of Pumps Center for Alternative Art, which was an art gallery, performance and video space in Vancouver. Hambleton went on to graduate from the San Francisco Institute of Art in San Francisco, CA. Courtesy of the LANGS DE WALL Gallery
“THESE ARTISTS WERE AMBITIOUS. THEY WERE USING THE STREET AS THE PLACE TO WORK OUT THEIR IDEAS BEFORE THEY TOOK ON THE GALLERIES. AND WHEN THEY DID, THEY CONQUERED.”
Text and Image sourced from: Jean-Michel Basquiat - GAGOSIAN NEW YORK Curated by Larry Gagosian 2014 publication
COINED THE GODFATHER OF STREET ART, BORN FROM THE SAME 80S STREET ART GROUP AS KEITH HARING AND JEAN- MICHEL BASQUIAT, HAMBLETON’S UNIQUENESS LIES IN THE FACT THAT HE HAS CONTINUED TO MAKE ART DESPITE THE LIFESTYLE AND TO PRODUCE WORKS THAT INSPIRED SOME OF THE WORLD’S MOST INFAMOUS STREET ARTISTS OF TODAY SUCH AS BANKSY. That generation of New York artists— Basquiat, Haring, Scharf, Lenny McGurr aka “Futura 2000,” and Richard Hambleton, as well as somewhat older artists like John Feckner—was certainly inspired by the graffiti scene, but what they were doing was more like unauthorized public art. It wasn’t simply about marking out territory, about individuals saying “I’m here” in a world of corporate signs, it was about making art for the great audience, the people on the streets, art that wasn’t a monument to a war hero, or an abstract sculpture funded by a bank, but post-pop popular art. It often had a message and a political dimension, like the May ’68 posters of Atelier Populaire, but first of all it was art. Richard Hambleton’s anthropomorphic black shadows were painted on walls along streets that were still dangerous, and they could throw a chill up the spine as you turned a corner. Keith Haring’s subway chalk drawings provided a non-commercial, populist form of delight for MTA riders.
Basquiat and Haring: A Hurried Generation By Glenn O’Brien CHRISTIE’S
Images courtesy of The Gagosian
“NOW A NEW SURGE OF INTEREST HAS GROWN AROUND GRAFFITI ART. LOVERS OF GRAFFITI ART MAY HAVE TO PAY MORE THAN $10,000 FOR A JEAN MICHEL BASQUIAT (WHO WAS CALLED SAMO IN HIS SUBWAY DAYS) OR $15,000 FOR A KEITH HARING OR A RICHARD HAMBLETON.”
“HAMBLETON CAN PAINT,” WROTE NEW YORK TIMES ART CRITIC MICHAEL BRENSON. “WHEN HE THROWS WHITE OR BLACK ON THE CANVAS, HIS WAVES BREAK, HIS RODEO RIDER BUCKS, A MAN SHOT SEEMS BLOWN APART.” - PEOPLE MAGAZINE
New York took to Hambleton like wildfire, his works have featured in over 50 articles, from his “Mass Murder” series to his shadow-men. Some of which are illustrated in the opposite image.
New York is not a picturesque city in any traditional sense. It is hectic and fast-paced. That compression extends into homes as well. Since most dwellings are small, life spills out into the streets; public areas become extensions of the home. New York street life of the truly homeless, as well as those who choose to “hang out”, imposes itself on the door stoops and sidewalks. Streets are like hallways connecting different interiors. In ghettos, especially (where young artists tend to live), street equals turf. New York is a city of extreme luxury and abject poverty, often separated only by the distance of a block.
GRAFFITI GROWS UP AND MOVES DOWNTOWN. In 1982 Hambleton painted more than 400 black silhouettes to lurk through the shadows of parking lots, gas stations, and vacant lots.
THE MAKING OF SHADOWMAN OSCAR NOMINATED FILM MAKER OREN JACOBY
A DOCUMENTARY FILM THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE GODFATHER OF STREET ART
Richard Hambleton Assorted “Shadowmen� works and sketches.
Hank O’Neal This page & next. Richard Hambleton - “Shadowman”, Lower East Side, New York City 1981-82. Chromogenic Print. Approximatley 40 x 60 inches
“MEMO TO BANKSY: YOU OWE RICHARD HAMBLETON A SMALL FORTUNE IN ROYALTIES.” PAPER MAGAZINE - MATTHEW SCHNEIER
RICHARD HAMBLETON THE ART SHOW THAT UPSTAGED FASHION WEEK
Photographed Andy Valmorbida and Vladimir Restion Roitfeld in collaboration with Giorgio Armani
Richard Hambleton Stop Sign, 1999 30 x30 inches 76.2 x 76.2 Acrylic sign
Richard Hambleton: A Retrospective presented by Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld and Andy Valmorbida, in collaboration with Giorgio Armani and Phillips de Pury & Company, opened last week in New York City to an all-star, international crowd of over 2000 celebrating the final stop of the international tour.
MILAN
LONDON
NEW YORK
MOSCOW
“I have long been a fan of Richard Hambleton. Richard’s work is of the streets, and for me stands as a reminder that art in all its forms is first and foremost driven by individual passion and creativity,” Mr Armani tells us.
Inspired by urban settings, Hambleton is known as the Godfather of Street Art and is renowned for influencing artists such as Banksy and Paris-based Blek le Rat. His earlier works can be seen at the MoMA and the Andy Warhol Museum in New York.
Richard Hambleton Kicker Gold Shadow, 1999 Black figure, silver/gold Background, Signed. 72 x 240 in, 182.9 x 609.6 cm
THE 17TH ANNUAL CINEMA AGAINST AIDS AMFAR BENEFIT SAW TWO RARE RICHARD HAMBLETON WORKS AUCTIONED TO REACH A COMBINED PRICE OF OVER $920,000. Curated by Andy Valmorbida and Vladimir Restoin-Roitfeld with support from the amfAR supporter Giorgio Armani. The exhibition featured over 30 of Hambleton’s works at the Hotel du Cap during May 2010.
“STREET ART ASIDE, HAMBLETON’S TALENT IS IN THE WAY HE ENGAGES WITH THE VIEWER. DESPITE THE ABSTRACT NATURE OF HIS ENERGETIC BRUSH STROKES, THE FORMS THEY CREATE ARE STARTLINGLY LIFE-LIKE AND ARRESTING. VENERABLY KNOWN AS THE ‘GODFATHER OF STREET ART’, HAMBLETON WAS LINING PUBLIC SPACES ACROSS AMERICA WITH HIS WORKS LONG BEFORE THE LIKES OF BANKSY AND SHEPHARD FAIREY.”
IMAGE MASS MURDER NEW, USED AND IMPROVED, 1987
A gaunt, elusive painter named Richard Hambleton tattoed the Urban landscape with a pair of outdoor multiple works, Image Mass Murder and Shadows. If Hambleton’s work can be classified as site-specific art, the sites they show us reveal the atmosphere that was enveloping American cities in the ’70’s. If was a time when people feared to leave their homes, anticipating mugging, rape, murder at every street corner. For Image Mass Murder, Hambleton drove, bused, and hitchhiked to cities across the country, tracing the fallen human form on urban sidewalks with white paint, the way the police do to mark the site of a murder. Hambleton did this entirely anonymously, without prior or subsequent announcement, and such anonymity only provokes mass-media coverage. After that success Hambleton began painting “shadows” in a painterly, even splattered manner on the walls of the buildings in major cities. If the sidewalk marking of Image Mass Murder elicited surprise and morbid curiosity, the eerie Shadows exploited people’d deeply felt anxieties about the city streets. Almost everyone who lived in New York at that time has a story to tell about the night they were scared witless when they turned a corner to see a Hambleton shadow in a parking lot or on a side street.
Hambleton emerged from the shadows with full-length photo-images of himself, affixed where the earlier shadows had or could have been painted, and with a touring show documenting Image Mass Murder. Now settled in New York, Hambleton has since moved his work indoors. “I’m dealing with feelings and human emotions,” he explained in reference to his outdoor work. There is no doubt that Hambleton succeeded by that criterion: the complaint of many was that the feelings it evoked were too strong.
Hambleton’s street work literally startled its viewers into a awareness of just how affected they were by the reality - and the expectation-of physical violence on city streets. - Peter Frank and Michael McKenzie, New, Used and Improved, Art for the 80’s, 1987, p.46-47.
Opposite Richard Hambleton Mass Murder Series San Franciso 1977
Above The life of Richard Hambleton CNN’s “The Evolution of an Artist” 2009
THE KINGPIN OF THAT SCENE THE STREET ART OF RICHARD HAMBLETON
“HE WAS THE KINGPIN OF THAT SCENE, MORE FAMOUS – AND VALUED MORE HIGHLY – THAN HIS NOW-VENERATED CONTEMPORARIES KEITH HARING AND JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT. IN THE LATE 1970S AND 1980S, HE PEOPLED THE PAVEMENTS AND WALLS OF AMERICA AND CANADA WITH HIS FAKE MURDER SCENES AND LURKING SHADOW MEN, SURPRISING,TERRORISING AND DELIGHTING PASSERS-BY WITH ARTISTIC INTERVENTIONS AND STREET STUNTS BEFORE BANKSY WAS EVEN OUT OF NAPPIES. COURTED BY ANDY WARHOL, WHO BEGGED TO PAINT HIS PORTRAIT, ONLY TO BE REFUSED POINT BLANK,PRAISED BY LIFE MAGAZINE, WHO PUT HIM ON THEIR COVER NOT ONCE, BUT TWICE.”
HORSE AND RIDER THE ALL AMERICAN MARLBORO MAN
MARLBORO CIGARETTE ADVERTISEMENTS FROM 1974. These classic American advertisements inspired Hambleton’s “Horse and Rider” paintings. The all-American hero reimagined as one of his renowned shadow figures.
Richard Hambleton Commissioned for Marlboro man silhouette 1982
HORSE AND RIDER SERIES
EAST VILLAGE GALLERIES; ART OF PROTEST ATTEMPTS TO SHOCK AND MOBILIZE By MICHAEL BRENSON Published: April 19, 1985
Richard Hambleton (Piezo Electric Gallery, 437 East Sixth Street): At first glance, the seascapes in Richard Hambleton’s new show seem to be a radical departure from the black, shadowy figures on the walls of New York City buildings for which the artist be best known. There is black in each of these paintings, but now it is largely confined to vertical stripes that divide the canvases like oversized Barnett Newman ‘’zips.’’
The largest painting is an almost Oriental seascape in which we find ourselves in the trough of a huge white wave. ‘’Treason,’’ the title of the painting, is one clue that all is not as romantic as it seems. The mushroom cloud in the left background is another. The paint itself seems to have a torrential, independent life.
In short, the looming violence in Hambleton’s earlier work is still present, but now it has taken almost an apocalyptic form. There are paintings of Marlboro men who look as if they have begun to dissolve. There are three paintings called ‘’Rainstorm,’’ in which raging water seems to be rushing toward us from within the canvas. In each of these paintings, sea and sky rage a bit more, until they seem on the point of swallowing everything.
In the end, the black stripes are less formal devices than magnets of death. Hambleton is another contemporary artist whose work seems intent on changing the way we look at the heroic abstract paintings of the 1950s and 60s. In his waterscapes, it is as if the color zones of Newman had suddenly opened up to show us not the harmony and infinity of nature but a world on the verge of chaos and destruction. (Through May 5.)
Above Richard Hambleton 2009 Varnish, tinted enamel and silver leaf on wood Signed and Dated on lower right and verso 203.2 X 76.2 cm
Above Richard Hambleton 2009 Varnish, tinted enamel and silver leaf on wood Signed and Dated on lower right and verso 205.7 X76.2 cm
Opposite Page Richard Hambleton Varnish, tinted enamel and silver leaf on wood Signed and dated on lower right and verso Information courtesy of Woodward Gallery
Above Richard Hambleton Cynthia, 2007 Varnish, tinted enamel and silver leaf on wood 18 x 17.75 inches; 45.7 x 182.2 cm Signed and dated on lower right and verso Courtesy of Woodwad Gallery
Above Richard Hambleton Cleopatra, 2008 Varnish, tinted enamel and silver leaf on wood 49 x 145 inches; 124.5 x 368.3cm Signed and dated on lower right and verso Courtesy of Woodwad Gallery
Above Richard Hambleton Lynette, 2006 Varnish, tinted enamel and silver leaf on wood 21.5 x 95 inches; 54.6 x 241.3cm Signed and dated on lower right and verso Courtesy of Woodward Gallery
RICHARD HAMBLETON
Hank O’Neal Image Limited Edition Prints