Kung Fu Wildstyle at the Smithsonian

[GeneChing]

Exploring kung fu culture
Kung Fu Wildstyle, an exhibition at the Smithsonian in Washington, showcases the extent of Bruce Lee’s influence on New York street culture
By RICHARD JAMES HAVIS APRIL 1, 2017 10:00 AM (UTC+8) 1822


Bruce Sextet, One Red, Fab 5 Freddy, 2012

Fans of hip hop music may be surprised to discover that kung fu movies had a big influence on the development of the genre in New York in the 1970s and early 1980s – and even influenced the wider street art scene.

“All the guys who were part of the original hip hop and graffiti scene used to watch kung fu movies,” says Tom Vick, the organiser of Kung Fu Wildstyle, an exhibition at the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington DC. “Admission prices for kung fu films were cheap, and they would watch them in cinemas in Times Square. The films had a lot of energy, and everyone got into them. Even some breakdancing moves were directly influenced by martial arts moves.”

The Smithsonian is presenting the Kung Fu Wildstyle exhibition – which originally showed in Hong Kong before travelling to Shanghai and New York – as part of a program surrounding the new National Museum of African American Art and Culture, which opened in Washington last September. “We’re doing a year-long celebration with the other Smithsonian institutions to welcome the new museum,” says Vick. “We thought this would be great way to make a connection between African American and Asian culture, because of the intertwined history of kung fu and early hip hop, and street art.”

The show features the artwork of Fab 5 Freddy (real name Fred Braithwaite), one of New York’s original graffiti artists, and MC Yan, a Hong Kong hip hop artist and graffiti artist. Freddy’s artwork depicts Bruce Lee, who was a major influence on the nascent hip hop culture of the 1970s. Yan merges the idea of graffiti with the style of Chinese painting. “Fab 5 Freddy’s idea was to take the principles of hip hop sampling and apply them to art,” says Vick. “There’s a repetition in the images, a kind of layering – it’s a kind of visual equivalent of hip hop in a painting. MC Yan does a similar thing. His paintings are multiple-panel assemblages made with magic markers and spray paint, so his work is connected to street-art materials.”


Suicide Kick, by MC Yan, 2012 Suicide Kick, by MC Yan, 2012

Freddy and Yan originally met over the internet and became friends due to an interest in art and hip hop, as well as a shared admiration for Bruce Lee. Freddy was intrigued by Yan’s interest in African American music. “Yan came out of an underground scene that was inspired by urban New York,” says Vick. “He restructured what he saw, and applied it to his own culture and the political scene in Hong Kong. Fab found it interesting, because Yan’s culture had originally influenced Fab himself. It had kind of come full circle.”

The major connector between the two cultures he adds, is Bruce Lee, an iconic figure in both Hong Kong and African American culture. “Lee became a symbol of oppressed people everywhere. They related to the way he fought back against authority in his films. He was certainly a cool martial arts guy, but he was more than that – he was a political figure. The hip hop community and graffiti artists responded to that, as those ideas are deeply embedded in hip hop and graffiti art.”


Triple Green Bruce Fab 5, Fab 5 Freddy, 2012 Triple Green Bruce Fab 5, Fab 5 Freddy, 2012

The Kung Fu Wildstyle exhibition also features an event with Shaolin Jazz, a DJ group that mixes a live soundtrack of hip hop, soul and funk to accompany classic kung fu movies. “This shows how the two cultures have evolved together over the years,” notes Vick.

Hip hop group Wu Tang Clan, who debuted in the 1990s, are an example of how the relationship between African American music and kung fu developed, he adds. “Wu Tang Clan based their whole mythos on the idea of brotherhood that they got from kung fu movies. The idea of clans that defend themselves, defend each other, and have codes of honour was directly lifted from kung fu movies. Martial arts was was not just a physical influence, it was a philosophical one, too.”

Honestly now, which 'fans of hip hop music may be surprised to discover that kung fu movies had a big influence on the development of the genre in New York'? Dumb hip hop fans who have no sense of hip hop history?

[GeneChing]

Two Art Exhibits Show The Hip-Hop, Kung Fu Connection
BY STAFF IN ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT ON APR 12, 2017 2:30 PM


MC Yan and Fab 5 Freddy (Courtesy of the Sackler)
By DCist contributor Elena Goukassian

What do hip-hop and kung fu have in common? That question may be answered by two new exhibitions at the Sackler and Hyphen DC, a new gallery in Ivy City. Both shows focus on the paintings of Fab 5 Freddy and MC Yan, two figures largely known for their work in music and graffiti.
New York’s Fab 5 Freddy (Fred Brathwaite) was a pioneer of hip-hop culture in the late 1970s. He was friends with people like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Lee Quiñones, and was name-checked in Blondie’s 1980 hit “Rapture.” It was Freddy who famously painted the giant Campbell’s soup cans (an homage to Andy Warhol) on a subway car. He was also the original host of “Yo! MTV Raps,” the first hip-hop music show on MTV, but he may be best known as the man behind the 1983 film, Wild Style, the first ever “hip-hop movie,” which showed the music, graffiti, dancing, and general culture of early New York hip-hop.
On the other side of the word, Hong Kong’s MC Yan (Chenguang Ren)—just a kid when Freddy was at his height—was first exposed to graffiti and hip-hop culture while at art school in France, and he was immediately hooked. Back home, he joined the influential Cantonese hip-hop group, LMF. These days, Yan plays music, makes art, and designs for brands like Nike. According to Hyphen DC’s bio, Yan may even have tagged the Great Wall of China and government buildings in Hong Kong.
Freddy and Yan first met through a mutual friend in 2012. After several Skype conversations, they realized just how much each had been influenced by the culture of the other—Freddy by kung fu movies in the ’70s and Yan by American hip-hop several years later. They both zoomed in on Bruce Lee as the epitome of that influence.
“I used to watch a lot of kung fu movies and realized what Bruce Lee really meant and what influence he had on the American urban culture,” Freddy told Hypebeast in a 2012 interview. “You could detect his influence in movies and music. Just take James Brown’s lyrics in ‘The Payback’: ‘I don’t know karate, but I know ka-razy’ or ‘Kung Fu Fighting.’ Kung fu’s influence went all the way up to the hip-hop culture. Fu-Schnickens and Wu-Tang Clan had a kung fu vibe early on in their careers.”
Meanwhile in Hong Kong, Yan noted that Bruce Lee was still a rather controversial figure, largely because of his politics and personal life.
The exhibit Kung Fu Wildstyle includes five paintings by each artist, and touring the world since 2012, Freddy and Yan incorporated aspects of each other’s cultures into works that can easily be read as unconventional portraits of Bruce Lee.
Freddy’s paintings almost exclusively use one of the most famous photos of Lee from Enter the Dragon—where he’s grimacing and flexing in preparation for a fight, with three red scratch marks on his chest. The bloody marks in Freddy’s paintings are bedazzled with rhinestones, with Lee (or multiple Lees) floating over a background collage of boomboxes, tags, and the now-defunct RR and RJ subway trains. In one painting, Freddy’s rhinestoned self-portrait appears in the middle of the canvas, flanked by a Bruce Lee in each corner.


MC Yan, Shaolin #3 (detail) Courtesy of Hyphen DC

Yan’s paintings go even further with the collage idea. Made up of small, square canvases, they’re assembled together tightly and slightly overlapping, kind of like the dense rooftops of Hong Kong. Painted on the canvas collage are sponge-paint-like images of Bruce Lee’s signature moves, but if you look closer, you’ll also see drawn outlines of traditional Chinese architecture.
Back in Ivy City, the two artists show off their most recent works. Freddy uses the same style of popping paintings off the wall with rhinestones for portraits of famous African Americans like Huey Newton, Jack Johnson (the boxer, not the singer), Bumpy Johnson (the Prohibition-era Harlem mob boss), and martial artist Jim Kelly, who co-starred with Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon.
Yan has also largely stuck with the same style, although his rooftops at Hyphen are much more pointed, with a focus on the drawings of traditional Chinese architecture, and added surveillance cameras popping up in random places. It creates the illusion of jumping from roof to roof, always under the watchful eye of the Chinese government. As an added bonus, Yan tagged one of the gallery walls at the opening party with similar rooftops rounding the corner—although, apparently he only did it because his paintings got stuck in customs and were unable to make it in time for the gallery opening.
So what do hip-hop culture and kung fu have in common? As Fab 5 Freddy told the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 2012: “They share a rebellious nature—a flamboyant way of expression.”

Kung Fu Wildstyle runs through April 30 (daily, 10 am-5:30 pm) at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 1050 Independence Ave. SW.
Fab 5 Freddy & MC Yan: New Work 2017 runs through April 29 (Thursday-Saturday, 1-6 p.m,) at Hyphen DC, 1402 Okie St. NE.

Plus Fab 5 Freddy & MC Yan: New Work 2017. Tempted to split this into an indie thread...

[GeneChing]

Time to split the Kung Fu Wildstyle posts off into their own independent thread from the Bruce Lee Memorials. It is the Smithsonian, after all.

“KUNG FU WILDSTYLE” BRIDGES THE EAST AND THE WEST
“Kung Fu Wildstyle,” a new exhibition and event series, reveals the cross-cultural influence of classic action films on Hip Hop—and vice versa.
Miss Rosenby Apr 24th, 2017


Artwork: Boom Box Bruce (detail), 2012; Fab 5 Freddy (detail)

Back in the days, when the Broadway theaters along the Deuce had been reconfigured as movie houses, kung fu films reigned supreme. Born in Hong Kong as a backlash against the supernatural elements of traditional wuxia storytelling, Kung fu rejected the fantasy clichés and cheap effects in favor of the ancient stories of youxia, the knight-errants of a warrior’s quest.

By the 1970s, kung fu films reached their greatest heights as Hong Kong flowered in the midst of a major economic boom. With the 1971 release of Bruce Lee’s first feature-length film, Big Boss, Kung fu broke out of the regional market and reached international audiences. Lee’s anti-imperialist stance, which was grounded in the principles of the Tao, spoke not only to his native communities but also to the African-American audiences in the United States.



Kung fu captured the imagination of a new generation of Americans coming up in the wake of the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War. A new narrative was born, one that fit the times as the ethos of Do It Yourself became words to live by. The struggles of the hero, classic plotting, the wicked fights, the cartoonish villains, and the wonky dubbing all made for a fantastic film-going experience.

At a time where one could post up in a movie theater all day and night, watching films one after another with only having to pay admission once—catching the latest kung fu flicks became a popular form of entertainment back when there were only 5 or 6 television channels and no Internet.

Invariably, the strength of kung fu culture left an indelible impression on the emerging Hip Hop generation. While pop culture classics like “Kung Fu Fighting” hit the airwaves, the underground would emerge in just a few years with the global takeover of the Wu-Tang Clan.

In celebration, Kung Fu Wildstyle reflects on this classic period of pop culture, and the way it spawned a cross-cultural, multi-generational dialogue between the East and the West through the works of Hip-Hop impresario Fab 5 Freddy and MC Yan, the Godfather of Chinese Hip-Hop.

Currently on view at the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C., through April 30, 2017, Kung Fu Wildstyle looks at the influence of Bruce Lee and kung fu on 1970s New York street culture and Hip Hop—which, in turn, came full circle in the 1990s, inspiring a new generation of Hong Kong street culture.

In speaking with Hypebeast, Fab 5 Freddy described the similarities between the different worlds: “It is the attitude. If you think of the early development of the American pop culture, especially movies, then you have the idea of the Western as a genre with the good guy/bad guy theme, with the Native Americans being unfairly labeled as the bad ones. After the Western, the gangster movie genre arrived, which was highly popular in America as well. Then, all of a sudden, you have this brand new thing carrying the same the good guy/bad guy gene but put in a completely new world featuring these Chinese guys with the cool kung fu gear and these great fighting skills set within this amazing culture. Every kid wanted to emulate every move. It was a phenomenal thing. Its energy made me realize how and why it resonated to our culture.”

The exhibition has included a series of events that present art works, film, music, and performance together, showcasing the consistent intersections between the cultures over the past 40 years. From Enter the Dragon (1973) to Wild Style (1983) visitors have been able to reconnect with the independent spirit that launched a brand new culture to the world. On Thursday, April 27, the Smithsonian will host The LA Uprising 25 Years Later at the Oprah Winfrey Theater at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

"Kung Fu Wildstyle" exhibit at Arthur M. Sackler Gallery


Dan McCoy, 1936-, Photographer. 42nd Street, just west of Seventh Avenue, New York, 1970. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.


Big Boss movie poster.


Bruce Sextet, One Red, 2012, by Fab 5 Freddy.


Wild Style movie poster.


Boom Box Bruce, 2012. By Fab 5 Freddy.

Miss Rosen is a journalist covering art, photography, culture, and books. Her byline has appeared in L’Uomo Vogue, Vogue Online, Whitewall, The Undefeated, Dazed Digital, Jocks and Nerds, and L’Oeil de la Photographie. Follow her on Twitter @Miss_Rosen.
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[GeneChing]

Channel News Asia no less.

Kung Fu meets hip hop in The Smithsonian


Kung Fu Wildstyle on display at The Smithsonian's Museum of Asian Art's Arthur M Sackler Gallery. (Photo: Kate Fisher)
By Kate Fisher
28 Apr 2017 09:24PM (Updated: 28 Apr 2017 09:30PM)

WASHINGTON, DC: At first glance, East Asian art and African American street culture may not have much in common, but an exhibition in the United States capital proves they make for a good mash-up.

Called Kung Fu Wildstyle, the exhibition explores pop culture through contemporary street art, particularly focusing on the influence of Bruce Lee and Kung Fu on hip hop music.

It is not a typical collection for The Smithsonian’s Asian Art Museum, but curators said they wanted to host it to celebrate the opening of the newest Smithsonian - the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

New York’s Fab 5 Freddy, one of the forefathers of hip hop music, along with Hong Kong’s MC Yan, one of the first Chinese rappers and graffiti artists, have joined forces to exhibit their work and celebrate their love of music, art, film and Bruce Lee.


Fab 5 Freddy prepares his artwork ahead of the Kung Fu Wildstyle exhibition. (Photo: Kate Fisher)

“Bruce Lee was clearly just a standout,” said Fab 5 Freddy. “I kind of refer to him as like the Michael Jackson of the Kung Fu era. He was like the biggest star.”

“For me, he is a big philosopher. And in China, it seems (like it’s been) a very long time since we had a new philosopher,” added MC Yan. “More than 1,000 years!"


MC Yan unwraps his artwork ahead of the Kung Fu Wildstyle exhibition. (Photo: Kate Fisher)

Tom Vick, curator of film at the Smithsonian Freer Sackler Galleries of Asian Art, said the hip hop and street art communities are “all wrapped up together”. “It involves this kind of rebellion and that’s hip hop and street art - it all sort of functions together,” said Vick.

“And I think the movie Wild Style makes that clear,” he added, referring to a 1983 docudrama about the lives of youth in the South Bronx. “And I think that’s what influences people like MC Yan. It’s not just music, it’s not just art - it’s all one kind of culture that works together.”

For MC Yan it was also about rebellion, Vick explained: "He delights in being provocative and rebellious and so this one has a background of the Tibetan flag which basically, like his music, means it would be banned in China.


Suicide Kick by MC Yan features Bruce Lee in front of a design representing the Tibetan flag. (Photo: Kate Fisher)

“I think that is one of the things he took away from Bruce Lee. That rebellious spirit is what appeals to him I think.”

The exhibition began as a pop-up in a storefront in Hong Kong, but now finds itself on the walls of America’s most prestigious museum. The artists are hoping it can continue to tour the world.

The artwork will be on display at The Smithsonian's Museum of Asian Art's Arthur M Sackler Gallery until Apr 30.
Source: CNA/ek
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