“For me, the city is not a blank canvas. It is an image; a film that contains sociological and psychological elements. My urban work adds to and becomes part of that image… the blank canvas is in the studio I give it definition, I work within its perimeters, I paint the complete picture…”
Richard Hambleton participated in his first European solo exhibition since 1985, at the Armani Teatro in Milan, Via Bergognone 59. The show opened in February 2010 with a brilliant event attended by many personalities. Roberta Armani, Giorgio Armani, Andy Valmorbida, Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, Clive Owen, Lapo Elkann, Mario Testino, Carine Roitfeld, Tatiana Santo Domingo, Eugenie & Stavros Niarchos, Bianca Brandolini, Eva Riccobono, Matteo Ceccarini, Francesca Versace, Margherita Missioni, Julia Restoin Roitfeld, Matilde Borromeo were there among photographers and selected guests and journalists.
The exhibition was curated by Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld and Andy Valmorbida. Roitfeld’s art dealer, Feedback Ltd. works with emerging talent, giving them the opportunity to sell their art. The show was at Armani Teatro, Via Bergognone 59 (near Porta Genova station).
It was a great event. The place is exposed concrete, massive spaces made surprisingly warm by clever lighting. It is eminently suitable for an exhibition of this type, dramatic and often large works. Servers circulated with delicious finger food laid out on black trays, including bright white towels and towels (black, of course). The photographers present were quite discreet and the event had an atmosphere of assured and discreet luxury.
Richard Hambleton, born in Vancouver, Canada, in 1954, is one of the three great street artists of American Expressionism, along with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. He was the first to make his mark in the world of serious art. He today he is the only survivor, and this cannot be attributed to a calm lifestyle. He was as self-destructive as anyone in that volatile generation, but he was able, in addition to surviving, to keep working and gradually evolve into his style. Marcia Resnick said of Hambleton, “His life of him was so awash in blood. He was shooting up all the time. He was a disorderly drug addict. There was no hiding it with him.” At the time Hambleton was making small square paintings, on canvas glued to wooden blocks, covered with gold leaf and overlaid with patterns in deep red. His own blood.
From 1976 to 1979, Hambleton’s “Mass Murder” installations were placed on the streets of more than 15 cities. They reproduced the chalked body outlines and blood spatters of violent crimes. (Some of these have been added to the streets of Milan in the vicinity of the gallery.) “With Mass Murder something had happened. Someone was killed on the sidewalk,” he says. “But with Shadow’s work, you’d walk around the corner and see someone at a door. There was someone there. He was very direct. Like Richard Serra in a way. He was very direct and immediate.” In the early 1980s, he began the “Shadowman” series, dark, splattered monochrome paintings: silhouettes painted on walls in New York and elsewhere. His Shadowmen accompanied him when he toured Asia and Europe in the mid-1980s. When he returned to the US in the 1990s, he began another style of work, “The Fine Paintings.” These are really this, particularly in comparison to his previous work, because he uses silver and gold leaf to create a luminous background, over which he superimposes glazes of pure color with a resinous transparency.
Hambleton himself has said, “My fine paintings are not landscapes, seascapes, or rainscapes, they are escapes.” That was a difficult time for him. His gigantic collection of works by Haring and Basquiat – acquired in exchange with his own works – was sold due to failure to make payments to a storage company. He spent a stint homeless and transferred his survival instincts to the streets.
Today, Richard Hambleton continues to work in the neighborhood where he has lived for more than 30 years.