Jim Radakovich

Last updated

Jim Radakovich
Peepers.jpg
Peepers, Acrylic on Canvas , 16" x 20", 1984
Born
NationalityAmerican
Education Maryland Institute College of Art
Known for Painting, Sculpture
Movement East Village
Family Anka Radakovich (sister)

Jim Radakovich is an American sculptor and painter living and working in New York City. He was a key figure in the East Village art scene in New York from 1982 to 1987 often showing together both Neo-Surrealist paintings and totem-like sculpture. He frequently exhibited with other artists who emerged at the time, including Kiki Smith, David Wojnarowicz, George Condo, Rick Prol, Peter Schuyff, Mark Kostabi and Marilyn Minter. [1]

Contents

Early life

Radakovich was born in Illinois, the son of a corporate executive and an opera singer. His sister is the writer Anka Radakovich. He grew up in Ohio and finished high school in Maryland. After graduating from the Maryland Institute, College of Art with a BFA, he moved to New York City.

Work

Radakovich's style is a combination of Appropriation, Neo-Expressionism and Neo-Surrealism. In his paintings, he uses cryptic relationships, sexual scenarios and psychologically charged tableaux. His Surrealistic atmospheres, cartoon like drawing and appropriated Modigliani-like heads are painted in a linear but expressionist technique. The paintings are frontal and highly colored often evoking the space of Indian miniatures. The sculptural works often incorporate totem structures that stack body parts and biomorphic elements. Although inspired by primitive cultural forms, the totems are modern urban signposts containing the dramas of city life. Disrupted narratives beg the viewer to unravel the tale that is set before them. His paintings are filled with urban dramas where the participants struggle with the problems of modern life, often with comical results. The figures in his work are posed in psychologically ambiguous terms. The elongated heads are Icons of humans in a mechanized society grappling with the questions of desire and nature.

Radakovich's work has entered the collections of many prominent American tastemakers including fashion designer Todd Oldham, Ford Model's owner Katie Ford and hotelier Andre Balazs. [2]

Career

1980s

As the East Village art scene gained momentum in 1982, numerous group shows lead to his first one-person show at Kamikaze in Chelsea in 1983. He came to prominence by exhibiting, in the East Village, both paintings and sculpture at shows at Sensory Evolution [3] in 1984 [4] and again in 1985.

Radakovich and his contemporaries were first documented in Arts Magazine in September 1985. Written by critic Robert Pincus-Witten and photographed by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders for Arts Magazine, "The New Irascibles" an essay and portfolio of photographs was based on the celebrated photograph "The Irascibles" of the Abstract-Expressionist Group taken by Nina Leen in 1951. It was meant as a historical overview and photographic record to preserve the participants of a short-lived scene in Manhattan where entrepreneurial artists and dealers opened their own galleries during the period between 1982 and 1987. After that time, most of these galleries and artists were absorbed into the Soho art world eager for new talent and they ultimately ushered in the explosion of the 80's art market boom. [5] [6]

Solo shows at Bridgewater/Lustberg in 1986 and 1987 were followed by B-Side Gallery in 1986 [7] and St. Marks Gallery in 1987. [8]

1990s

An important survey of work from 1984 to 1991 was exhibited at the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts in 1991.[ citation needed ] Radakovich had one person shows at the Takahashi Gallery in 1993 in Nagoya Japan, John McAdams Gallery 1995 in Chicago and Mat Thornton Gallery 1998 in Washington D.C.

2000 and after

After a one-person show in 2001 at the Sarah Denning Gallery in Chelsea, Radakovich continued to exhibit in groups shows in New York.

An update of the East Village Art scene was included in the November 1999 issue of Art Forum. The historical significance of this group of artists was established by "East Village USA" at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City in December 2004 [9] and satellite shows at the B-Side Gallery's "East Village ASU" and the Hal Bromm Gallery's "Vintage East Village" in January 2005 in which Radakovich's work was exhibited. [10]

Exhibitions

In September 2011 Radakovich was exhibited at The Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences in Charleston, West Virginia, as part of their permanent collection, [11] called “Preserving a Legacy: 25 Years of Collecting”. [12]

The group show, “Crossing Houston” at the Smart Clothes Gallery on the Lower East Side in New York City, featured Radakovich in a survey of important artists from the East Village scene. September 11 to Oct. 11, 2012. [13]

Radakovich recently participated in December 2012 at the Overture | Miami pavilion with the Sensory Evolution Gallery as part of the Art | Basel Miami Beach contemporary art fair. [14]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Malcolm Morley</span> English painter

Malcolm A. Morley was a British-American visual artist and painter. He was known as an artist who pioneered in various styles, working as a photorealist and an expressionist, among many other genres.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nick Zedd</span> American filmmaker and writer (1958–2022)

Nick Zedd was an American filmmaker, author, and painter based in Mexico City. He coined the term Cinema of Transgression in 1985 to describe a loose-knit group of like-minded filmmakers and artists using shock value and black humor in their work. These filmmakers and artistic collaborators included Richard Kern, Tessa Hughes Freeland, Lung Leg, Kembra Pfahler, and Lydia Lunch. Under numerous pen names, Zedd edited and wrote the Underground Film Bulletin (1984–1990) which publicized the work of these filmmakers. The Cinema of Transgression was explored in Jack Sargeant's book Deathtripping.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ad Reinhardt</span> American painter and printmaker

Adolph Dietrich Friedrich Reinhardt was an abstract painter active in New York for more than three decades. He was a member of the American Abstract Artists (AAA) and part of the movement centered on the Betty Parsons Gallery that became known as abstract expressionism. He was also a member of The Club, the meeting place for the New York School abstract expressionist artists during the 1940s and 1950s. He wrote and lectured extensively on art and was a major influence on conceptual art, minimal art and monochrome painting. Most famous for his "black" or "ultimate" paintings, he claimed to be painting the "last paintings" that anyone can paint. He believed in a philosophy of art he called Art-as-Art and used his writing and satirical cartoons to advocate for abstract art and against what he described as "the disreputable practices of artists-as-artists".

In the arts, maximalism, a reaction against minimalism, is an aesthetic of excess. The philosophy can be summarized as "more is more", contrasting with the minimalist motto "less is more".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zephyr (artist)</span>

ZEPHYR, born Andrew Witten, is a graffiti artist, lecturer and author from New York City. He began writing graffiti in 1975 using the name "Zephyr" in 1977. He is considered a graffiti "elder", who along with Futura 2000, Blade, PHASE 2, CASH, Lady Pink and TAKI 183 invented styles and standards which are still in use.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timothy Greenfield-Sanders</span> American filmmaker and photographer (born 1952)

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders is an American documentary filmmaker and portrait photographer based in New York City. The majority of his work is shot in large format.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Kostabi</span> American artist and composer (born 1960)

Kalev Mark Kostabi is an American artist and composer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theodoros Stamos</span> Greek-American artist (1922–1997)

Theodoros Stamos was a Greek-American painter. He is one of the youngest painters of the original group of abstract expressionist painters, which included Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko. His later years were negatively affected by his involvement with the Rothko case.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judy Rifka</span> American artist

Judy Rifka is an American artist active since the 1970s as a painter and video artist. She works heavily in New York City's Tribeca and Lower East Side and has associated with movements coming out of the area in the 1970s and 1980s such as Colab and the East Village, Manhattan art scene.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hedda Sterne</span> Romanian-American artist (1910–2011)

Hedda Sterne was a Romanian-born American artist who was an active member of the New York School of painters. Her work is often associated with Abstract Expressionism and Surrealism. She was also the only woman to appear in the famous photograph of abstract expressionist artists dubbed "The Irascibles", although the group included other women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Lawson (artist)</span> Scottish artist

Thomas Lawson is an artist, writer, editor, and from 1991 to 2022 was the Dean of the School of Art & Design at California Institute for the Arts. He emerged as a central figure in ideological debates at the turn of the 1980s about the viability of painting through critical essays, such as "Last Exit: Painting" (1981). He has been described as "an embedded correspondent [and] polemical editorialist" who articulated an oppositional, progressive position for representational painting from within an increasingly reactionary art and media environment. Artforum called his approach to the medium "one of the most cogent and controversial" in the 80s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ted Stamm</span> American artist (1944–1984)

Ted Stamm (1944-1984) was an American minimalist and conceptualist artist.

Frank Bernarducci is a New York City art dealer and curator. He is currently the owner of Bernarducci Gallery, located at 525 West 25th Street in New York, NY. Bernarducci began exhibiting Graffiti art in the 1980s in the East Village while being the director of Frank Bernarducci Gallery. Bernarducci continues to curate exhibitions featuring emerging and seasoned artists. His gallery is known for exhibiting realist and Photorealist art.

Robert Pincus-Witten was an American art critic, curator and art historian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hedy Klineman</span> American painter

Hedy Klineman is a German-born American painter living in New York City. She has been painting for over 40 years and is known for portraits of New York celebrities and colorful works based on Asian Buddha’s and deities created with silkscreen on canvas done in a manner influenced by her friend Andy Warhol. Her paintings have been shown at Tibet House US, Patterson Museum of Contemporary Art and The New England Museum of Contemporary Art.

Nancy Dwyer is an American contemporary artist whose works include paintings, works on paper, public art, word sculpture and furniture art. Her work has been exhibited widely at venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, the New Museum in New York and many others. Her work was included in the 2009 exhibition “The Pictures Generation” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, alongside the work of her peers and contemporaries, including Cindy Sherman and Robert Longo, with whom she cofounded Hallwalls in Buffalo, New York in 1974, as well as work by Barbara Kruger, Richard Prince, John Baldessari, Louise Lawler and Sherrie Levine, among others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gerald Hayes (artist)</span> American painter

Gerry Hayes is an American painter who in addition to his paintings, has created installation sculpture and conceptual ideas documented in photography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Boccia</span> American painter and poet

Edward Eugene Boccia (1921–2012) was an American painter and poet who lived and worked in St. Louis, Missouri and served as a university professor in the School of Fine Arts, Washington University in St. Louis. Boccia's work consisted mostly of large scale paintings in Neo-Expressionist style, and reflect an interest in religion and its role in the modern world. His primary format was the multi-panel painting.

Boston Expressionism is an arts movement marked by emotional directness, dark humor, social and spiritual themes, and a tendency toward figuration strong enough that Boston Figurative Expressionism is sometimes used as an alternate term to distinguish it from abstract expressionism, with which it overlapped.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Craig Coleman (artist)</span>

Craig Coleman was an American artist.

References

Notes

  1. New York's East Village art scene (VHS tape, 1985). [WorldCat.org]. OCLC   035257367 . Retrieved May 26, 2012.
  2. "Jim Radakovich New Work" (Press release). Mio Leonardi. March 13, 1987.
  3. Stover, Laren (October–November 1984). "Stretching Fashion's Outer Limits". Sportswear International. No. 20 (Oct/Nov): 172. Retrieved June 1, 2012. Jim Radakovich
  4. Flash art. G. Politi. 1984. Retrieved May 27, 2012.
  5. "Arts Magazine - East Village ancient history". Scribd.com. November 28, 2008. Retrieved May 26, 2012.
  6. Thomas, Walter (December 1, 1988). "Paint It Black". In Fashion. 4 (Dec): 124, 125. Retrieved June 1, 2012.
  7. New York Media, LLC (April 21, 1986). "New York Magazine". New York. New York Media, LLC: 116–. ISSN   0028-7369 . Retrieved May 27, 2012.
  8. New York Media, LLC (April 6, 1987). "New York Magazine". New York. New York Media, LLC: 113–. ISSN   0028-7369 . Retrieved May 28, 2012.
  9. "East Village USA :: NewMuseum.org". Archived from the original on October 28, 2011. Retrieved October 27, 2011.
  10. "Vintage East Village - Hal Bromm Gallery". ArtCat. April 29, 2005. Retrieved May 26, 2012.
  11. "1988 Acquisitions". Archived from the original on December 24, 2010. Retrieved June 1, 2012.
  12. Busse, Sara (September 10, 2011). "Clay exhibit showcases 25 years of collecting - Life - The Charleston Gazette - West Virginia News and Sports". Wvgazette.com. Retrieved May 26, 2012.
  13. Crossing Hudson artslant.com [ dead link ]
  14. Galleries overturemiami.com [ dead link ]

Bibliography