Hammons
Ghetto superstar
Afro-American artist David Hammons was born in 1943 in Illinois. His arrival in New York in the 1970s revolutionized American art and culture because his work touches on themes of poverty, discrimination and social and racial inequality. His art takes inspiration from and develops in the street. Once, for example, he decided to sell snowballs on a boardwalk, and another time, he urinated over an enormous work by the important artist, Richard Serra. With his provocative performances, Hammons proclaims himself as disobedient to the art system…and he doesn’t care. It’s like he’s saying: ‘there are other problems’. Like other artists, he sees the art market as the death of art, and follows the motto ‘work a lot to exhibit little’. When a friend advised him to exhibit his works, Hammons replied: ‘I have no intention of doing it in a white gallery’. Cynical? Introverted? Marginalised? On the contrary: David Hammons is considered one of the most important figures in contemporary art, and an important example for many younger artists.
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Ghetto superstar
Afro-American artist David Hammons was born in 1943 in Illinois. His arrival in New York in the 1970s revolutionized American art and culture because his work touches on themes of poverty, discrimination and social and racial inequality. His art takes inspiration from and develops in the street. Once, for example, he decided to sell snowballs on a boardwalk, and another time, he urinated over an enormous work by the important artist, Richard Serra. With his provocative performances, Hammons proclaims himself as disobedient to the art system…and he doesn’t care. It’s like he’s saying: ‘there are other problems’. Like other artists, he sees the art market as the death of art, and follows the motto ‘work a lot to exhibit little’. When a friend advised him to exhibit his works, Hammons replied: ‘I have no intention of doing it in a white gallery’. Cynical? Introverted? Marginalised? On the contrary: David Hammons is considered one of the most important figures in contemporary art, and an important example for many younger artists.
