The Recognize! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture exhibit recently opened up at the National Portrait Gallery in the Smithsonian. The joint runs until Oct. 26th,2008 and features solid pieces that capture all aspects of Hip Hop from painting to poerty to film to graffiti. It’s a must see so get your ass to the Smithsonian ASAP to witness this…it’s at Eighth and F Streets, NW, Washington D.C., (above the Gallery Place–Chinatown Metrorail station -red, yellow, and green lines). Its open 11:30 a.m.–7:00 p.m. daily….and guess what, it’s FREE! Check out some clips from the exhibit after the jump…
**They’re also showing Wild Style! plus a convo with Charlie Ahearn the films creator this sunday Feb.24th @ 2pm in the McEvoy Auditorium. It’s free and open to the public, get there early tho, it’s first come first served.
**if you can’t make it to D.C. by October….check out the book Born in the Bronx: A Visual Record of the Early Days of Hip Hop by Johan Kugelberg with a forward from Afrika Bambaataa and commentary from the wonderful Jeff Chang (author of Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop…another classic) ***
Photography of Mz. Badu and the X-ecutioners done by David Scheinbaum who since 2000 has shot more than a hundred hip hop performers, both in concert and backstage…Scheinbaum’s portraits are a celebration of hip hop and serve to demonstrate that the negative stereotypes regarding hip hop represent only a small part of its larger significance.
Classic painting of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five done by Kehinde Wiley…. Value, in all its meanings, has always played a role in culture. Unlike its precursors—classical, jazz, rock—which have since been canonized and given an art-historical time frame and construct, hip hop continues to be seen merely as entertainment; a cultural hindrance. This series of Wiley’s portraits speaks specifically to that juxtaposition and the retooling of importance and to whom and when it is deemed
“Recognize” nicely done by Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp, who have been taggin together since 2000…..We’ve been writing graffiti for over fifteen years: it’s a lifestyle, an addiction, a dysfunctional marriage of secrecy and fame, for better and for worse. Some see it as an insatiable appetite for destruction, but through this abstracted topography we find our creative vision and achieve our self-expression.
