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The Newmile Associates are pleased to work alongside one of the best contemporary art galleries in London.
Woodbury House.
Based in the heart of Soho, London Woodbury House offers exclusive art pieces by many well known artists including Richard Hambleton and Schoony.
Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld and Andy Valmorbida in collaboration with Giorgio Armani present the exhibition "Richard Hambleton - New York"
RICHARD HAMBLETON
ARTIST WHO RULED 80S NEW YORK
In the early 1980s, a series of shadowy street paintings lifesize monsters and cowboys loomed large over the East Village. Anticipating the works of Banksy by more than a decade, the unsigned figures were created under cover of darkness on buildings and bridges. They weren’t mere graffiti, but painterly works reminiscent of Jackson Pollock. Downtown residents buzzed about who could be behind them.
The art world knew who it was: a soft-spoken Canadian often clad in a cravat and sunglasses named Richard Hambleton.
At downtown galleries, his mysterious figures fetched thousands of dollars more than work by his friends Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. He attended parties with beautiful women on his arm, and Andy Warhol begged him, in vain, to sit for a portrait.
Hambleton canvased Manhattan with some 450 shadow men and managed to get a few on the Berlin Wall, too. But by the 1990s, he was largely forgotten, living in a drug den on the Lower East Side. He was so poor that he would shoot himself up with heroin, then use the blood in his needle as paint. At some point, he lost half his nose. (He won’t discuss his health, but he has numerous ailments, including skin cancer.)
But lately, Hambleton, 64, has been emerging from his shadowy existence. Hip galleries have begun showing his work again. He’s recognized as the godfather of street art, and his influence can be seen in the works of painters such as Banksy, Blek le Rat and the Brooklyn duo FAILE. And a documentary about his life and work, “Shadowman,” will debut at the Tribeca Film Festival Friday.
HIS STORY
Hambleton studied painting in his hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia. In the 1970s, he gained notoriety when he used a public-art grant to paint faux crime scenes outlines of bodies with blood-red paint in 15 cities throughout the US and Canada.
He was so poor that he would shoot himself up with heroin, then use the blood in his needle as paint.“I really began to think I was murdering people,”
Hambleton said in the documentary. “Coming back to the hotel room covered in paint blood-red paint. I was told I would never get a grant again.”It was the first true street art.
“The city is not a blank canvas,” Hambleton told The Post. “It’s a living motion picture that I collaborate with.”In 1979, he moved to the East Village. His first night, he went to Club 57, where he befriended then-unknown street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.Not long after, he began painting his signature shadow men figures rendered in what looked like black tar on buildings in NYC’s seediest neighborhoods. Basquiat would draw masks or crowns on them.
Though Hambleton painted in the middle of the night, and never signed his name, the work attracted attention. He and his pals, Basquiat and Haring, quickly became the toast of the art world.
“Every night there would be seven openings,” Hambleton recalled in the documentary. He rubbed shoulders with rapper Fab 5 Freddy, Warhol and punk rocker Richard Hell. Hambleton was frequently photographed with a cigarette in his mouth and a gaggle of girls surrounding him.
After parties, the artist would take girls to Tompkins Square Park, where they would paint squirrels black and dodge police. He was also using drugs.By 1982, he had a successful studio, painting his shadowmen and cowboys, on canvas. His work was commanding $15,000; Basquiat’s fetched $10,000.
Hambleton took his street art to 24 cities in the US and Europe and showed at the 1984 Venice Biennale. Blek le Rat recalled spotting shadow men in Paris.
RICHARD HAMBLETON, ‘SHADOWMAN’ ARTIST WHO MESMERIZED NEW YORK’S DOWNTOWN SCENE, DIES AT 65
Richard Hambleton, the Canadian street artist that emerged in New York’s underground graffiti scene in the 1980s died on Sunday, Woodward Gallery confirmed. He was 65.
The enigmatic artist burst on the scene alongside a group of confidants and collaborators that included Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Kenny Scharf. Hambleton soon became known for his signature “shadowman” motif, a splotched, black, leering figure that appeared on the walls of buildings in downtown Manhattan.
“Richard was a conceptual artist and his art was to evoke a reaction,” Kristine Woodward of Woodward Gallery, which had once represented the artist told artnet News by phone. “In the 1980s he put his large black shadowy silhouette figures on city streets. It was like a repetitive visual icon of different shadowy figures and if you lived here at the time you became very familiar with them,” she said.
Just as Hambleton’s career took off he started using drugs, including heroin and crack. He relied on the drugs, particularly the heroin, to reach a mental state that he felt helped him depict the sublime. A long battle with addiction would plague him throughout his life.
As he progressed artistically, Hambleton explored different variants of his iconic “shadowman” using different media. The silhouettes appeared on paper, canvas, doors, and found objects; and the figures would engage in different actions: juming, standing, or dancing. “The figures were guardians of the night and they were offering a sense of security to people in the city,” Woodward said.
As time went on and his friends and collaborators, including Basquiat and Haring, died, Hambleton became increasingly weary of the art business and he began representing himself, deliberately slipping out of the limelight.
A recent documentary by Oscar-nominated director Oren Jacoby, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April, put Hambleton back in the spotlight and renewed interest in his life and work. It has resulted in numerous exhibitions, including his participation in “Club 57: Film, Performance and Art in the East Village, 1978-1983,” a survey exhibition opening today at the Museum of Modern Art that focuses on the downtown art scene in the late 1970s and early ’80s.
“Right up to his death he was painting,” Woodward said. “We’d never known anybody who lived to paint the way Richard did, he was just such a dedicated artist, it’s all he cared about, he was not a careerist, he just wanted to paint.”
SHADOWMAN TRAILER
DUE TO RELEASE 2018
SHADOWMAN
DIRECTED BY OREN JACOBY
Richard Hambleton June 23, 1952 – October 29, 2017 was a Canadian artist known for his work as a street artist. He was a surviving member of a group that emerged from the New York City art scene during the booming art market of the 1980s
Hambleton produced a variation of his shadow work, showing his "Shadowman" as a sort of "rodeo man", or rugged "Marlboro Man", often riding a bucking horse. This series was painted on canvas and other materials, where they could be displayed as works of art.
Due for release 2018
