#NADA: SHOES ON THE COURT, LOTS OF TALKING, RIVER VIEWS & CRAZY COLOR

May 16, 2015

The NADA art fair (New Art Dealers Alliance) has a different vibe than the Frieze fair up the river on Randall’s Island. More experimental with emerging artists, a bit reflective of the nearby Lower East & Brooklyn galleries across the river. From lunch at the Whitney, I went over to “Basketball City“, literally a huge basketball arena, with Muna Tseng, the choreographer sister of the late photographer, Tseng Kwong Chi who has a career retrospective show at Grey Art Gallery at the moment… more on that in another post. We met up with artist Alan Belcher, in from Toronto, and local gal-about-town, gallerist Anna Kustera. I think we all did equal parts looking and talking in the nearly three hours walking around and around. As I didn’t really feel I had the stamina to do a real survey of the entire fair, I decided to use "naive/ color" as themes, as there was a lot of luscious pigment all over, especially in Eric Firestone‘s pop-y booth of Misaki Kawai‘s childlike work. Muna and I HAD to take advantage of our green and red pants –sorry, it couldn’t be avoided. And when we decided to take a break, the East River, Manhattan Bridge and New York skyline was another visual feast for the eyes. It’s all happening still, today and tomorrow. Find out more here. It's free, btw.

Artist Alan Belcher taking an art break with gallerist, Anna Kustera — Artist Alan Belcher taking an art break with gallerist, Anna Kustera

Me & Muna Tseng with Misaki Kawai's sculptural chair

Adjusting Alain Biltereyst’s small abstracts with style

Sorry, I don’t know the artist’s name… but I blame the gallery for not putting a label on the wall.

ART THE VOTE!

November 04, 2014

Here a bit of political art to inspire you on Election Day. I’m not gonna to tell you to get out and VOTE, you either will or you won’t. These artists –myself included– have used gallery wall space to get out their own messages. And as dysfunctional as our country seems sometimes, all you have to do is look around the globe to see that our democracy still beats a LOT of systems. The best way to make our voices heard? Nope. Not gonna say it…

Keith Haring in a Stephen Sprouse suit, 1984. Polaroid by Trey Speegle

KEITH HARING WOULD HAVE BEEN 56 TODAY

May 04, 2014

In June of 1980, I moved to New York. I met Keith Haring that summer at Danceteria, where he was a busboy at the time. He had just done a mural above the staircase there and in the coming months was beginning to make a name for himself because of his subway drawings, which seemed too be everywhere. He was nerdy, a bit awkward, funny, intense, and kinda sexy. We became friendly and had MANY friends in common. I took the Polariods below (which have never been seen before) at his birthday “Party Of Life” in ’84, where Madonna performed Like A Virgin on a bed. After his passing, Madonna dedicated the first night of her Blond Ambition Tour as a benefit concert in Keith’s memory, and donated all proceeds from ticket sales to AIDS charities. Keith would have been 56 today. He is still missed, but his good works continue on through The Keith Haring Foundation that, in addition to representing his work, supports educational opportunities for underprivileged children and finances AIDS research and patient care.

Keith was born in Reading, Pennsylvania on May 4, 1958 and was raised in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. He became interested in drawing and art at an early age and he later studied commercial art from 1976 to 1978 at Pittsburgh’s Ivy School of Professional Art but lost interest in it:

“I’d been convinced to go [to art school] by my parents and guidance counselor. They said that if I was going to seriously pursue being an artist, I should have some commercial-art background. I went to a commercial-art school, where I quickly realized that I didn’t want to be an illustrator or a graphic designer. The people I met who were doing it seemed really unhappy; they said that they were only doing it for a job while they did their own art on the side, but in reality that was never the case–their own art was lost. I quit the school.”

After this, he moved to New York in ’78 and enrolled in the School of Visual Arts (and met fellow students Kenny Scharf and Rodney Alan Greenblat) and majored in painting. He achieved his first major public attention, as I mentioned, with his subway drawings. These were documented by his friend, photographer Tseng Kwong Chi. Around this time, “The Radiant Baby” was born, and as they say – the rest is history. The graphic is of his plaque at The Legacy Project.

Trey Speegle, Party of Life, 1984, Polaroid collage

L to R, Angeleyne, Nina Hagen and Cassandra Peterson (Elvira)

ANDY WARHOL SHOT MY DIRTY T-SHIRT

January 07, 2014

In the mid 80s, while working at various magazines like Vogue,Vanity Fair and Paper, I designed and printed t-shirts for my company RePop. I’ve recently stumbled upon several vintage shots that feature those shirts. Straight To Hell: The Manhattan Review of Unnatural Actswas a little ‘zine edited by my friend Victor Weaver. I produced a show for STH at The Pyramid which each week featured many luminaries of the day; John Waters, Kenneth Anger, Quentin Crisp, Taylor Mead, Jackie Curtis, etc. I made a shirt to sell which has become sort of collectible.

Later, I did another show, Bad Boy, after Victor and I had a falling out. The title of the show came from an Eric Fischl painting that had I had just included in a layout at Vanity Fair. Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato would DJ those monthly parties at Danceteria which featured naked go-go dancers from the Times Square theater The Gaiety (where Madonna later shot scenes from her book Sex.) Anyway, those days are long gone but I love the fact that these shirts in a small way, immortalize that time.

Andy Warhol, Unidentified Man, gift of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

Tseng Kwong Chi photo of Keith Haring, Bad Boy, Bordeaux France, 1985