Carlo McCormick

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Carlo McCormick

Carlo McCormick is an American culture critic and curator living in New York City. [1] He is the author of numerous books, [2] monographs and catalogues on contemporary art and artists. [3]

Contents

Pedagogic and art writing activities

McCormick was Senior Editor of Paper . [4]

He lectures and teaches extensively at universities and colleges around the United States on popular culture and art. His writing has appeared in Effects : Magazine for New Art Theory, Aperture, Art in America, Art News, Artforum, [5] Camera Austria, High Times, Spin, Tokion, Vice and other magazines.

He appears in an on-camera interview in the 2017 documentary film Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat by Sara Driver that contains extensive coverage of Colab, The Real Estate Show , The Times Square Show and ABC No Rio.

The Downtown Show: the New York Art Scene from 1974 to 1984

McCormick was guest curator of the exhibition The Downtown Show: the New York Art Scene from 1974 to 1984 (in consultation with Lynn Gumpert, and Marvin J. Taylor) that was held at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery and Fales Library from January 10 until April 1, 2006. [6] The exhibition examined the rich cross-section of artists and activities that coexisted and often overlapped in Lower Manhattan between 1974 and 1984. Emerging out of the deflated optimism of the Summer of Love (and energized by the enactment of the loft laws that made it legal for artists to live in downtown New York's industrial spaces) the Downtown no wave scene attracted painters, sculptors, photographers, musicians, performance art, filmmakers, and writers who could afford the then-low rent lofts and Lower East Side tenement apartments.

The Downtown Show: the New York Art Scene from 1974 to 1984 show traveled to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (May 20 to September 3, 2006) and the Austin Museum of Art, in Austin, Texas (November 18, 2006, to January 28, 2007). It was chosen as first place winner by the International Association of Art Critics/USA (AICA USA) for best thematic show in New York City in 2005-2006.

Other curatorial activities

In 1985, McCormick curated the Tellus #8 USA/Germany issue of Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine . [7] McCormick has also curated art shows for the Bronx Museum of Art, the Queens Museum of Art and the Woodstock Center for Photography, and collaborated with The Museum of Sex on their exhibition Punk Lust: Raw Provocation 1971-1985, featuring visuals chronicling the emergence of punk subculture and punk music. [8] [9]

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Mitch Corber is a New York City neo-Beat poet, an eccentric performance artist, and no wave videographer known for his rapid whimsically comical montage and collage style. He has been associated with Collaborative Projects, Inc., participated in Public Arts International/Free Speech and The Times Square Show, and is creator-director of cable TV long-running weekly series Poetry Thin Air in New York City and its on-line poetry/video archive. He has worked closely with ABC No Rio, Colab TV and the MWF Video Club and his audio art have been published on Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine three times. He is a recipient of a NY Foundation for the Arts Fellowship grant (1987) in the field of emerging artforms.

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<i>The Times Square Show</i>

The Times Square Show was an influential collaborative, self-curated, and self-generated art exhibition held by New York artists' group Colab in Times Square in a shuttered massage parlor at 201 W. 41st and 7th Avenue during the entire month of June in 1980. The Times Square Show was largely inspired by the more radical Colab show The Real Estate Show, but unlike it, was open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in what was then a Times Square full of porno theaters, peep shows, and red light establishments. In addition to experimental painting and sculpture, the exhibition incorporated music, fashion, and an ambitious program of performance and video. For many artists the exhibition served as a forum for the exchange of ideas, a testing-ground for social-directed figurative work in progress, and a catalyst for exploring new political-artistic directions.

References

  1. Hager, Steve. Art After Midnight: The East Village Scene. St. Matins Press, 1986. p. 146
  2. "" Carlo McCormick on Amazon Accessed 24 July 2020
  3. "Carlo McCormick". Taschen. Accessed 7 April 2017
  4. "Carlo McCormick and Jeffrey Deitch discuss the art world at Apex art" accessed 15 May 2017
  5. Charlene Spretnak, The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art : Art History Reconsidered, 1800 to the Present, Palgrave Macmillan, (2014) p. 135
  6. https://greyartgallery.nyu.edu/exhibition/the-downtown-show-011006-040106/
  7. Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine : Tellus #8 - USA/Germany archived at Ubuweb.
  8. PUNK LUST: RAW PROVOCATION 1971-1985
  9. Carlo McCormick picks the 10 pieces that cemented the radical legacy of a game-changing art scene

Further reading