36 days - 5
I was struggling at first to come up with a style relating to the number 5, prior to today I had considered les conquer, the small, turn of the 20th-century art movement but I could find enough interesting information on it and decided it was too similar to the era of cubism from yesterday.
I stumbled upon Fab 5 Freddy, the most famous member of the 1980s New York graffiti group the fabulous 5.
"Fred Brathwaite (born August 31, 1959), a.k.a Fab 5 Freddy, is an American visual artist, filmmaker, and hip hop, pioneer. In the late 1970s, Freddy became a member of the Brooklyn-based graffiti group the Fabulous 5, known for painting the entire side of New York City Subway cars. Along with other Fabulous 5 member Lee Quiñones, under his direction, they began to shift from street graffiti to transition into the art world and in 1979 they both exhibited in a prestigious gallery in Rome Italy, Galleria LaMedusa. In 1980, he painted a subway train with cartoon-style depictions of giant Campbell's Soup cans, after Andy Warhol. He was the bridge between the New York uptown graffiti and early rap scene and the downtown art and punk music scenes. "I was bringing the whole music, hip-hop, art, break dancing, and urban cultural thing to the downtown table," he said."
I stumbled upon Fab 5 Freddy, the most famous member of the 1980s New York graffiti group the fabulous 5.
"Fred Brathwaite (born August 31, 1959), a.k.a Fab 5 Freddy, is an American visual artist, filmmaker, and hip hop, pioneer. In the late 1970s, Freddy became a member of the Brooklyn-based graffiti group the Fabulous 5, known for painting the entire side of New York City Subway cars. Along with other Fabulous 5 member Lee Quiñones, under his direction, they began to shift from street graffiti to transition into the art world and in 1979 they both exhibited in a prestigious gallery in Rome Italy, Galleria LaMedusa. In 1980, he painted a subway train with cartoon-style depictions of giant Campbell's Soup cans, after Andy Warhol. He was the bridge between the New York uptown graffiti and early rap scene and the downtown art and punk music scenes. "I was bringing the whole music, hip-hop, art, break dancing, and urban cultural thing to the downtown table," he said."
Closely associated with his contemporaries Warhol, Keith Harring and J M Basquiat, Fab 5 Freddy is a legend of his era in the worlds of art, graffiti and music. The idea of attempting to emulate the work of this icon from my favourite era of New York history was too good to avoid. After conducting extensive research into the No Wave scene of the late 70s this was another opportunity to jump back into the scene from a slightly different angle.
I started research by watching a series of recent interviews with Freddy as well as gaining as much insight into his specific hand style as possible and viewing the art he has produced in more recent times. Also finding multiple films he has featured in that give a good snapshot of the visual culture of the time including Downtown 81 with JMB and Wild Style which was part of the inspiration for the colour pallet.
I began to sketch 5s that I felt were an appropriate amalgamation of my style, Freddy's style and general graffiti etiquette. Attempting to add a drop shadow and line extensions were appropriate. I also vectorised a could of ideas just to see what would work best on screen.
I vectorised the strongest 5 and at first, added a blue fill designed to represent the blue within the New York flag. Another finalising touch was to a background inspired by the repetitive soup cans or trains used by Freddy as a canvas for his art today. The background played on the quote from research that claimed "He was the bridge between the New York uptown graffiti and early rap scene and the downtown art and punk music scenes" so I made a pattern out of the RUN DMC logo (a hip-hop group from that era uptown New York and the similarly coloured Talking Heads logo that represented the post-punk of the era emanating from downtown. I even checked to see if it was possible Fab Freddy would have listened to these two bands and sure enough, there were reports from the time of Basquiat being seen at Talking heads concerts. The fill of the 5 adapted into a white to yellow gradient inspired by the Wild Style logo. A third tile included background of Warhols Campbells soup as a nod to pop art and Warhol.
Caption:
"5 is for Fab Five Freddie - a tribute to the artist and hip hop pioneer. Originally a member of Brooklyn graffiti group the ‘Fabulous 5’, he has been described as the bridge between the uptown New York graffiti and rap scene and the downtown art and punk scenes of the 80s alongside contemporaries Basquiat, Warhol and Keith Haring."
I tagged Freddy in the post and incredibly he commented, which was a real boost for me to get some recognition from a true cultural legend.
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