Any kid who grew up in and around NYC during the late 70′s and early 80′s has to remember all those eerie black images of sandblasted shadow men all around Manhattan. Long before I even knew what the hell “art” was, I remember these images leaving an indelible mark on my imagination. Back in the day when I used to ride in my Dad’s taxi, he would point them out and tell me stories that the “Shadow Men” were images of what our bodies would look like if an atomic bomb were to go off. Implying that all that’d be left of us would be these ashed out black images all over the streets of Manhattan – YIKES!
For one reason or another I took notice of these images, and in thinking back I would have to say that those man-made shadows were some of the first images of street art I can remember seeing, processing and being engaged. These “shadow men” were the creation of downtown artist Richard Hambleton. After all these years I never did see what he looked like, or knew much about him. Then I came across this great little video done on him for CNN. Though he’s aged a bit, you can still see the sharp mischevious mind that created some of the most memorbale art the streets of NYC has ever known…
About Richard Hamleton:
Richard Hambleton (born June, 1954) is an artist-painter currently living and working in the Lower East Side of New York City. Richard Hambleton is the surviving member of a group who, together with Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, had great success coming out of the New York City art scene during the booming art market of the 1980′s. Much of Hambleton’s work is compared to graffiti art, however, Hambleton considers his work to be “public art”.
Richard Hambleton is most famous for his “Shadowman” paintings of the early 1980s. Each painting resembles a life-sized silhouetted image of some mysterious person, a “splashy shadow figure.” These “shadow paintings” were splashed and brushed with black paint on buildings and other structures across New York City. Locations were believed to be calculated for maximum impact upon unsuspecting pedestrians. Very often, a “Shadowman” could be found in a dark alley or lurking just around a street corner. Hambleton later expanded the scope of his project and painted these “shadowmen” in other cities, including Paris, London and Rome, and even on the Berlin Wall.
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