Futura 2000 biography examples
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Short Profile
Name: Leonard Hilton McGurr
DOB: 17 November 1955
Place of birth: New York City, New York, United States
Occupation: Artist
Futura's new retrospective, Futura2000: Breaking Out opens at at UB Center for the Arts and UB Anderson Gallery on 23 September 2023 until 11 February 2024.
Futura, is it true you that despite the fact that you spent decades as a graffiti artist in New York City, you’ve never been arrested?
I was never arrested! I’ve been stopped before, but I didn't go to jail. My experiences of painting trains were very stealth, I took every measure to be careful to not get caught. But you have to remember, this was a time of very little security, no cameras… I loved to investigate construction sites, you know, there was a lot of development happening around New York in the sixties and seventies when I grew up, and those were places that were very accessible after hours! No security at all! So as a kid, I used to ride those elevators and jump rooftops… And then the subway opened up for me. New York was my park, this was my playground. Some kids grow up having that rural Midwestern experience, but for me, I knew the city very well.
Were you ever scared?
Sure, but I was attracted to these dangerous things! I grew up as an only child, and I always
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As recalled by André Chastel in his 1974 essay Signature et signe, from the Renaissance to the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, signature had become a constant element in paintings. Nevertheless, it has almost always played an accessory and rather standardized role in the composition of the work: signatures were born to affirm and certify the painter’s individuality and authoriality, and they usually add nothing to the artwork’s subject, nor to its aesthetic balance, although in some cases they ended up becoming iconic – think of artists like Monet, the Futurists or Duchamp, among others. In such sense, the emergence of gra ti writing represents a curious short-circuit in the history of art, for it innovated the function of the signature in the economy of the artwork: no longer an accessory element to the content, signature became the actual subject of the work. In other words: signature is the work. Accidentally introduced by gra ti writing, such an identity between signature and artwork is as curious as unprecedented. During his first years as a writer, FUTURA 2000 was no exception to this strict rule, and from 1971 to 1974, right before joining the Navy, he essentially produced “signature works”: tags, throws, street pieces on walls and trains. But how can we define a si
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Legendary Graffiti Chief Futura Takes Us Curb to His Beginnings let fall Reflective Gratitude
Words bypass Marcus Barnes
Photography by 13THWITNESS
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