RICHARD HAMBLETON | Shadowman

Miliken Gallery, New York
Renos Xippas, Paris
Acquired from the above

Colour: Please refer to the online catalogue for the correct illustration. The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although the blue tones are slightly cooler on the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Close inspection reveals some faint rub marks in intermittent places to both vertical edges. Further close inspection reveals some fine hairline cracks in isolated places throughout, most noteably in places to the white pigment. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
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In the early 1980s, hundreds of startling black painted silhouettes appeared mysteriously on buildings on the Lower East Side. The spectral, life-size, menacing figures lurked, skulked, and leapt through the underworld of the city. Richard Hambleton first came to public attention by painting faux crime-scene outlines of bodies on pavement adding red paint for dramatic effect. However, the artist is most well-known for his Shadowman series – figures in various modes of action painted on walls and buildings through New York city. “I painted the town black,” Hambleton told People magazine in 1984 (Richard Hambleton cited in: ‘Richard Hambleton, ‘Shadowman’ of the 80s Art Scene, Dies at 65’, The New York Times, 13 November 2017, online). Although Hambleton’s art was etched on New York’s built environment, he soon transferred his Shadowman motifs to canvas. In the present work Pollock-esque drips and splashes create a palpable energy as a cacophony of line ignites from the dancing figure. An expressionistic investigation into the body, the artist’s practice is defined by the movement of anonymous figures; figures which espouse an ethereal presence. Delineated with lashings of white paint, Shadowman displays an inverted reading of the series in which a white figure appears to be running through a water. For Hambleton, these figures “could represent watchmen or danger or the shadows of a human body after a nuclear holocaust or even my own shadow” (Ibid). There is certainly an ingrained darkness deep within the series; a darkness that alludes to the physical and psychological struggles battled by the artist throughout his life.

Emerging as part of the 80s New York downtown scene alongside fellow street artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, Hambleton exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 1984 and 1985, and at the Venice Biennale in 1984 and 1988, where he painted ‘Shadowmen’ across Venice. A subsequent tour of Europe brought his figures to the streets of Paris, Rome, and London. He also travelled to Berlin to paint seventeen life-size ‘Shadowmen’ on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall, returning a year later to paint more on the western side. Shadowman stands as a symbol of a moment in time, an instantly recognizable figure that will forever permeate our psyche.