KATHERINE MCMAHON
Habitat is a weekly series that visits with artists in their workspaces.
This week’s studio: Fab 5 Freddy; Hamilton Heights, New York. “Hell no, honey!” Fab 5 Freddy responded when I asked him if downtown Manhattan is still full of the creative people it was home to in the 1980s, when he was a 20-something young man painting subway cars. “The sad thing going on in this town, which David Byrne wrote about a few years ago, is that real estate speculators have gotten so slick,” he said. “Our whole thing back then was predicated on affordable rent, which is why we ended up in certain parts of town.” (And why he now lives uptown.)
Fab 5 Freddy emerged in late 1970s New York, creating bridges between the graffiti scene, the art world, and the punk movement. He broke into the mainstream in Blondie’s “Rapture” music video and made regular appearances on Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party before going on to host Yo! MTV Raps.
But though he is perhaps best known for his time in the music world, Freddy said that he never considered himself a musician. “I’m an artist first and foremost,” he said. “I work in film and television just like a lot of other working artists. Because my name is Fab 5 Freddy, many people think of me as a music person. I made a song and a soundtrack 30 years ago, that’s the music that I’ve done.” (He produced the soundtrack for Charlie Ahearn’s 1983 graffiti-world film Wild Style, and his track “Change the Beat” is credited by the BBC as the most sampled song of all time.) “If I was pressed to define it, I’d say I was ‘playing with sound,’ ” he said. “It was organic and spontaneous in development. Nobody was thinking about the money and grandeur that artists get now.”
He said that he pitched the idea for Wild Style to Ahearn when the two met at “The Time Square Art Show” in 1980, the storied DIY art exhibition that was housed in an abandoned old massage parlor. “I had the idea of making Wild Style as a way of showing that there was a link between elements which weren’t linked prior,” he said, referring to the Bronx graffiti-writing scene and the downtown art and film community. “The cult film status it received is incredible, but it’s nowhere near what we expected. We were just happy to get the movie made.”
In the slideshow below, Freddy provides anecdotes about his workspace and process, some of which will appear in his memoir, which he’s currently writing.
ALL PHOTOS: KATHERINE MCMAHON
01
"Graffiti as art or an act of vandalism depends on how you look at the denotative definition. Graffiti is pretty much an act of vandalism. Graffiti as an art is about the individual. Someone might write 'F U' on your car and leaves that as an act of vandalism. However, if that person says, 'I'm a conceptual artist,' and writes 'F U' on cars, I suppose that becomes another space."
"Just a few of my books and catalogues. A recent show I loved was 'One Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series,' which was at MoMA. I see films at MoMA sometimes too."
"I listen to a lot of jazz, hip-hop, reggae. Just an array of great music." CDs are scattered on a nearby table and a remix of Kanye West's "Spaceship" plays in the background.
"This is from Ai Weiwei's New York Photography: 1983–1993. I was flipping through and thought, 'Hey, I know that guy!' That's Rudolph, he ran a place called Danceteria, which was a major hotspot in the '80s that we would go to. He was beaten by cops, and Ai Weiwei was there to document it. I never knew Ai Weiwei back then, but we had a bunch of mutual connections."
"I work in acrylic and enamels. This is just how my assistant likes to arrange my paints."
Rhinestones and wax–tipped paintbrush handles for applying them.
"This is an homage to Bruce Lee I did with a Chinese artist. This is called Kung Fu Wild Style. We had a pop-up show in Hong Kong, Shanghai, then New York."
"Blank City was a documentary about the underground film scene in New York, which was Amos Poe, Jim Jarmusch, Beth B, to name a few. It was pre-cable, pre-internet. That's how I met Patti Astor, this glamorous, buxom bombshell. Charlie was sort of associated with that scene, hence I was in the film."
"This blue piece is part of my 'Abstract Remix' series. I come up with names for pieces only after their completely done," he said as he constructed a canvas from wooden planks.