John Ahearn | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1951 |
| Known for | Plaster casts |
| Notable work | South Bronx bronzes |
| Movement | |
John Ahearn (born 1951) is an American sculptor. He is best known for the public art and street art he made in South Bronx in the 1980s.
John Ahearn | |
|---|---|
| | |
| Born | 1951 |
| Known for | Plaster casts |
| Notable work | South Bronx bronzes |
| Movement | |
John Ahearn (born 1951) is an American sculptor. He is best known for the public art and street art he made in South Bronx in the 1980s.
Ahearn grew up in Binghamton, New York, with his twin brother Charlie Ahearn, who is a film director. John went to Cornell University where he discovered art. After trying painting, he started making life casts in 1979 while with Colab, a Manhattan artists’ collective. He made some live life casts at The Times Square Show in 1980. In the 1980s, while he participated in art world venues like Brooke Alexander Gallery and Colab, he also focused his art and life on The Bronx after going to the South Bronx and working on the sidewalk in front of Fashion Moda, casting whoever volunteered. He made two copies of every cast: one for himself and the other for the sitter/subject.
Ahearn has regularly worked with Rigoberto Torres. Torres first assisted Ahearn and then became his equal collaborator. After a decade of intense cooperation, they have been occasionally working together and sometimes alone. [1] [2] Between 1981 and 1985, Ahearn, together with Torres, created four sculptural murals for the sides of tenement buildings: We Are Family, Life on Dawson Street, Double Dutch, and Back to School. They depict everyday life in the neighborhood. [3] Ahearn and Torres's collaborations are included in museum collections across the United States. For instance, the artwork Double Dutch (1981/2010), previously cited, is featured in the holdings of Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida. [4]
Ahearn's 1991 survey of portraits of ordinary people was called South Bronx Hall of Fame. [5] In 2017, his recent casts were installed on walls on the Lower East Side. [6] He is represented by Alexander and Bonin Gallery in New York City.
John and Rigoberto have sculpture installed on the exterior walls of buildings throughout The Bronx. [7]
In 1989, Ahearn received the commission to make sculptures for the 44th Police Precinct in Bronx. He thought of Paseo de la Reforma, but instead of heroes, he decided to immortalize people he knew. Ahearn made bronze statues of three black people from his South Bronx neighborhood: Raymond and his pit bull, Daleesha and her roller skates, and Corey and his boom box and basketball. [11] The statues were installed in 1991. [12]
Faced with protests from black bureaucrats on one hand and black neighbors on the other, who believed that the subjects did not adequately represent the community, Ahearn removed the statues five days after their installation. The South Bronx bronzes inspired Jane Kramer to write a long essay in The New Yorker about Ahearn and others involved in the controversy, about art, race and society, [11] which she expanded into a book, Whose Art Is It?, in 1994. [13] The bronzes now stand in the Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens. [12]
Marc Quinn is a British contemporary visual artist whose work includes sculpture, installation, and painting. Quinn explores "what it is to be human in the world today" through subjects including the body, genetics, identity, environment, and the media. His work has used materials that vary widely, from blood, bread and flowers, to marble and stainless steel. Quinn has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Sir John Soane's Museum, the Tate Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Fondation Beyeler, Fondazione Prada, and South London Gallery. The artist was a notable member of the Young British Artists movement.
The year 2002 in art involves various significant events.
Tom Otterness is an American sculptor who is one of America's most prolific public artists. Otterness's works adorn parks, plazas, subway stations, libraries, courthouses and museums around the world, notably in New York City's Rockefeller Park in Battery Park City and Life Underground in the 14th Street – Eighth Avenue New York Subway station. He contributed a balloon to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. In 1994 he was elected as a member of the National Academy Museum.
George Segal was an American painter and sculptor associated with the pop art movement. He was presented with the United States National Medal of Arts in 1999.
Anna Vaughn Huntington was an American sculptor who was among New York City's most prominent sculptors in the early 20th century. At a time when very few women were successful artists, she had a thriving career. Hyatt Huntington exhibited often, traveled widely, received critical acclaim at home and abroad, and won multiple awards and commissions.
Colab is the commonly used abbreviation of the New York City artists' group Collaborative Projects, which was formed after a series of open meetings between artists of various disciplines.
Willie Cole is a contemporary American sculptor, printer, and conceptual and visual artist. His work uses contexts of postmodern eclecticism, and combines references and appropriation from African and African-American imagery. He also has used Dada’s readymades and Surrealism’s transformed objects, as well as icons of American pop culture or African and Asian masks.
Fashion 时髦 Moda МОДА, whose name comes from “fashion” in English, Chinese, Spanish and Russian, colloquially referred to as Fashion Moda, started as a cultural concept guided by the idea that art can be made by anyone, anywhere. Fashion Moda was an art space located in the South Bronx, New York founded by Stefan Eins in 1978. As a museum of science, art, invention, technology, and fantasy, it was an alternative art space that combined aspects of a community arts center and a worldwide progressive arts organization until its closing in 1993.
Tim Rollins was an American artist who together with the art collaborative K.O.S. formed the art-group Tim Rollins and K.O.S.
Rigoberto Torres is a sculptor who was born in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico and worked in New York City, before moving to Florida where he currently lives and works. Torres began working in a factory where religious figures were cast, producing religious statuary. He also considers himself to be a community based artist.
Richard Goldstein is an American journalist and writer. He wrote for The Village Voice from June 1966 until 2004, eventually becoming executive editor. He specializes in gay and lesbian issues, music, and counterculture topics.
George Washington is a statue by the French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon from the late 18th century. Based on a life mask and other measurements of George Washington taken by Houdon, it is considered one of the most accurate depictions of the subject. The original sculpture is located in the rotunda of the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond, Virginia, and it has been copied extensively, with one copy standing in the United States Capitol Rotunda.
T.A. Chapman Memorial is a public artwork by American artist Daniel Chester French. It is located at 2405 W. Forest Home Ave., in the Forest Home Cemetery Section 33 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. The bronze sculpture was cast in 1896. Its dimensions are 62 x 41 x 23 in. The concrete base it stands on is 13 ½ x 21 7/8 x 14 3/8 in.
Physical Energy is a bronze equestrian statue by the English artist George Frederic Watts. Watts was principally a painter, but also worked on sculptures from the 1870s. Physical Energy was first cast in 1902, two years before his death, and was intended to be Watts's memorial to "unknown worth". Watts said it was a symbol of "that restless physical impulse to seek the still unachieved in the domain of material things". The original plaster maquette is at the Watts Gallery, and there are four full-size bronze casts: one in London, one in Cape Town, one in Harare and one soon to be sited at Watts Gallery - Artists' Village in Compton, Surrey. Other smaller bronze casts were also made after Watts's death.
The year 2015 in art involves various significant events.
Jayson Keeling (1966-2022) was an artist who worked in photography, video, sculpture, and installation. Keeling's work challenges conventional norms surrounding sex, gender, race, and religion. Keeling often reconfigured popular iconography, to explore notions of masculinity, and cultural ritual.
Devon Rodriguez is a Puerto Rican/Honduran artist and painter from the South Bronx, New York City. He initially gained recognition for drawing a series of realistic portraits of other commuters on the New York City Subway system. In 2019, he was a finalist in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition for his portrait of sculptor John Ahearn. In 2020, he joined the video hosting platform TikTok and gained immediate success for quick-sketching strangers and capturing their reactions when they are shown the painting. He is now the most followed visual artist on the platform.
The Brooke Alexander Gallery is an art gallery in New York City founded in 1968 by Brooke and Carolyn Alexander in a storefront on East 68th Street. It is a member of The Art Dealers Association of America and the International Fine Print Dealers Association.
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.
The year 2023 in art involves various significant events.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
