Tseng Kwong Chi

Tseng Kwong Chi, “Warhol at Table”, 1985, Digital Chromogenic Print

Photographer, performance artist and New York downtown personality, Tseng Kwong Chi was born in Hong Kong in 1950 and settled in the East Village of New York in 1979. He developed an artistic persona in the late 1970’s as a kind of Chinese dignitary or “Ambiguous Ambassador,” complete with the classic Mao Tse-Tung suit, dark eyeglasses and an identity tag stamped “SlutforArt”.

Traveling around the United States and the world, Tseng Kwong Chi posited himself amid stereotypical tourist sites, from the Eiffel Tower to Niagara Falls, from the Statue of Liberty to the Grand Canyon. He ricocheting between nature and culture to develop an extensive and now-famous series of 100 silver gelatin self-portraits, entitled the “Expeditionary Self-Portraits” or “East Meets West”. These prints possess wit and humor, as well as great formal beauty in their investigations of issues ranging from the nature of tourism, tourist photography, and cultural identity.

Tseng Kwong Chi soon met Keith Haring and other in the East Village scene who became central to his life and work. With best friends Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf and Ann Magnuson, Tseng became a much-touted documentarian and denizen of the spirited New York downtown scene. He was Keith Haring’s “official” photographer, creating an archive of over 40,000 images recording Keith Haring at work on public and gallery art, from his early subway drawings to his large scale commissions.

Tseng worked in black and white as well as in color, in both candid and formal portraits of Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, Peter Halley, McDermott & McGough, Francesco Clemente, among others of the 1980’s art scene. By the time of his death in 1990, at age 39, from an AIDS infection, Tseng Kwong Chi had evolved two major bodies of work. His photography is in many collections: San Francisco Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, New School in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, among others.

Reblogged with many thanks to http://snow1960.tumblr.com

Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol, “Querelle”, Silkscreen Series, 1982

Andy Warhol was commissioned by the German film director Rainer Fassbinder to design the poster for his filmed adaptation of Jean Genet’s novel, “Querelle”, which follows a young sailor’s sexual escapades in a French port. Warhol took a polaroid of two young men as a starting point for his silk-screen print, but idealized the young boy’s features and marked with a bright blue the other man’s tongue. The image’s sensuous character distills Genet’s erotic tale.

Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol, “Orangutan (FS II.299)”, 1983, Screenprint on Lenox Museum Board, 38 x 38 Inches, Editon of 150

Ugo Mulas

Ugo Mulas, “Andy Warhol at the first Factory”, East 47th Street, New York City, 1964

The Gallery Visitor

Photographyer Unknown, (Ginger Guy at the Gallery)

“Some people spend their entire lives thinking about one particular famous person. They pick one person who’s famous, and they dwell on him or her. They devote almost their entire consciousness to thinking about this person they’ve never even met, or maybe met once. If you ask any famous person about the kind of mail they get, you’ll find that almost every one of them has at least one person who’s obsessed with them and writes constantly. It feels so strange to think that someone is spending their whole time thinking about you.”

― Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol and a Quote

Andy Warhol, “$”, 1981, Acrylic and Silkscreen Ink on Canvas, 229×178 cm, Private Collection

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: ‘It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.’ “.

-Jim Jarmusch