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Barry McGee
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Barry McGee is a painter and graffiti artist. He is also known by monikers such as Ray Fong, Lydia Fong, Bernon Vernon, P.Kin, Ray Virgil, Twist and further variations of Twist, such as Twister, Twisty, Twisto and others.

Life and career

McGee graduated from El Camino High School
El Camino High School (South San Francisco)
El Camino High School is a four-year American public high school located in South San Francisco, California, directly adjacent to the South San Francisco BART Station...

 in South San Francisco
South San Francisco, California
South San Francisco is a city in San Mateo County, California, United States, located on the San Francisco Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area...

, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. He later graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute is a school of higher education in contemporary art with the main campus in the Russian Hill district of San Francisco, California. Its graduate center is in the Dogpatch neighborhood. The private, non-profit institution is accredited by WASC and is a member of the...

 in 1991 with a concentration in painting and printmaking.

McGee rose out of the Mission School
Mission School
The Mission School is an art movement of the 1990s and 2000s, centered in the Mission District of San Francisco, California.-History and characteristics:...

 art movement and graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....

 boom in the San Francisco Bay Area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...

 during the early nineties
1990s
File:1990s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: The Hubble Space Telescope floats in space after it was taken up in 1990; American F-16s and F-15s fly over burning oil fields and the USA Lexie in Operation Desert Storm, also known as the 1991 Gulf War; The signing of the Oslo Accords on...

. His work draws heavily from a pessimistic view of the urban
Urban culture
Urban culture is the culture of towns and cities. In the United States, Urban culture may also sometimes be used as a euphemistic reference to contemporary African American culture.- African American culture :...

 experience, which he describes as, "urban ills, overstimulations, frustrations, addictions & trying to maintain a level head under the constant bombardment of advertising".

McGee's paintings are very iconic, with central figures dominating abstracted backgrounds of drips, patterns and color fields. He has also painted portraits of street characters on their own empty bottles of liquor, painted flattened spray cans picked up at train yards and painted wrecked vehicles for art shows.

McGee has had numerous shows in many kinds of galleries and was also an artist in residence at inner-city McClymonds High School
McClymonds High School
McClymonds High School is a public high school in the West Oakland neighborhood of Oakland, California, USA.In addition to being the third oldest high school in Oakland, it is the larger of the two high schools in West Oakland , and the only high school in West Oakland operated by the Oakland...

 in Oakland, California
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...

 in the early 1990s.

He was married to the artist Margaret Kilgallen
Margaret Kilgallen
Margaret Leisha Kilgallen was a San Francisco Bay Area artist. Though a contemporary artist, her work showed a strong influence from folk art. She was considered a central figure in the Bay Area Mission School art movement....

, who died of cancer in 2001. The couple has a daughter named Asha.

The market value of his work rose considerably after 2001 as a result of his being included in the Venice Biennale and other major exhibitions. As a result, much of his San Francisco street art
Street art
Street art is any art developed in public spaces — that is, "in the streets" — though the term usually refers to unsanctioned art, as opposed to government sponsored initiatives...

 has been scavenged or stolen.

Exhibition of his work

Barry McGee "the Buddy System" exhibits at Deitch in NY. March 20, 1999 — April 24, 1999 http://www.deitch.com/projects/sub.php?projId=104

Barry McGee "HOSS" exhibits at Rice Gallery in Houston,Texas. From September 16 through October 24, 1999 http://www.ricegallery.org/new/exhibition/hoss.html

McGee's work was included in the 2001 Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...

. http://www.villagevoice.com/art/0126,levin,25887,13.html

Barry McGee exhibits at Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco, CA - View Examples of Artwork

Barry McGee solo exhibition at Rose Art Museum in Waltham, MA. Apr 29 - Jul 25, 2004. http://my.brandeis.edu/news/item?news_item_id=102596

Barry McGee LOFT installation at Roberts & Tilton Gallery Los Angeles, CA. Dec.2, 2006-Feb 3, 2007. http://www.robertsandtilton.com

Barry McGee solo exhibits at Watari-um Museum in Tokyo, Japan Jun 2nd -Sept 30, 2007. http://www.watarium.co.jp/exhibition/0706_mcgee_en.html

Barry McGee solo exhibits at BALTIC Centre in UK. January 21 -April 27, 2008. http://www.balticmill.com/whatsOn/future/ExhibitionDetail.php?exhibID=93

Barry McGee and Clare Rojas exhibition "The Big Sad" at Riverside Art Museum, Riverside, CA. Mar 30 - May 17, 2008. http://www.riversideartmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/?id=23

2008 Life on Mars, the 2008 Carnegie International http://blog.cmoa.org/CI08/2008/02/barry-mcgee.php

Barry McGee solo exhibition at Ratio 3 in San Francisco, CA. September 5 - October 18, 2008. http://ratio3.org/exhibitions/2008/moment-reflection-new-work-lydia-fong

2009-2010 Biennale de Lyon, France http://www.biennaledelyon.com/contemporaryart2009/video/pictures-gallery.html

Barry McGee and HuskMitNavn exhibition "The Last Night" at A.L.I.C.E. gallery in Brussels, Belgium. March 25 - April 28, 2010.[12]

Influence

McGee was highly influential on the urban art scene that followed in his wake. He popularized use of paint drips in urban-influenced graphic design
Graphic design
Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...

, as well as the gallery
Art gallery
An art gallery or art museum is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art.Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection...

 display technique of clustering paintings. These clustered compositions of pictures are based on similar installations he saw in Catholic churches whilst working in Brazil. He also was an early participant in the practice of painting directly on gallery walls, imitating the intrusive nature of graffiti. His use of chisel tip markers has heavily influenced sticker art and graffiti in general, which can be clearly seen in works produced by artists like sure, faust, and mecro.
McGee learned his later lowbrow style form the late Margaret Kilgallen, but was taught graffiti in 1989 by SR-1, the founder of the THR graffiti crew, of which Barry was the second member.

Controversy

McGee was involved in a controversy regarding the Adidas
Adidas
Adidas AG is a German sports apparel manufacturer and parent company of the Adidas Group, which consists of the Reebok sportswear company, TaylorMade-Adidas golf company , and Rockport...

 Y1 HUF, a shoe for which he provided the artwork. This gave rise to a protest campaign by some Asian-Americans who claimed that the picture on the shoe's tongue depicts a racist stereotype
Stereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...

. McGee responded to the controversy in a March 2006 press release.http://poplicks.com/2006/04/adidas-responds-finally.html He stated that the drawing was a portrait of himself as an eight-year-old child. Barry McGee is half Chinese
Han Chinese
Han Chinese are an ethnic group native to China and are the largest single ethnic group in the world.Han Chinese constitute about 92% of the population of the People's Republic of China , 98% of the population of the Republic of China , 78% of the population of Singapore, and about 20% of the...

.

In 2004, as part of an exhibit, McGee spray-painted "Smash the State" on the walls of San Francisco Supervisor Matt Gonzalez'
Matt Gonzalez
Matthew Edward Gonzalez is an American politician, lawyer, and activist prominent in San Francisco politics. He currently serves as chief attorney in the San Francisco Public Defender's office....

 City Hall office (City Hall is a registered national landmark)." Gonzalez told the press that he knew his office would be repainted for the next occupant.

Quotes

  • "The more I learned about the art world, the more my interest in what was going on outside of it increased, I didn't have any desire to bring graffiti inside the school's walls or anything."

  • "Compelling art to me is a name carved into a tree. Sometimes a rock soaring through a plate of glass can be the most beautiful, compelling work of art I have ever seen."

See also

  • Beautiful Losers (film)
    Beautiful Losers (film)
    Beautiful Losers is a 2008 documentary feature film by director Aaron Rose and co-directed by Joshua Leonard. It was produced by Sidetrack Films in association with BlackLake Productions, and stars several artists including Harmony Korine, writer of independent cult films Kids and Gummo.It...

  • Mission School
    Mission School
    The Mission School is an art movement of the 1990s and 2000s, centered in the Mission District of San Francisco, California.-History and characteristics:...

  • Lowbrow (art movement)
    Lowbrow (art movement)
    Lowbrow, or lowbrow art, describes an underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles, California, area in the late 1970s. Lowbrow is a widespread populist art movement with origins in the underground comix world, punk music, hot-rod street culture, and other subcultures. It is also...

  • Piece by Piece (documentary)
    Piece by Piece (documentary)
    Piece By Piece is a documentary film directed by Nic Hill. The film documents San Francisco's graffiti culture from the early 1980s to 2004. It is narrated by San Francisco graffiti artist Senor One, better known as Renos...


Further reading

  • Barry McGee. 2002. Barry McGee: The Buddy System. ISBN 0-9648530-3-5
  • Barry McGee, Germano Celant, Prada. 2003. Barry McGee. ISBN 88-87029-21-0
  • Aaron Rose and Christian Strike (editors). 2004. Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture. ISBN 1-891024-74-4

arrestedmotion.com/.../interview-sr-1-founder-and-president-of-thr-crew/

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
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