#PantsWorthy: AGO: The Culture
Bring Your Entire Swagger To The Art Gallery of Ontario
Yo…
For this My Pal Sammy dispatch on the AGO’s splendid exhibition The Culture we gotta start on July 10, 2013 with Jay-Z.
Wait, first: do you know Marina Abramović? I do. She sucks.
She’s a conceptual and performance artist. Before Jay-Z—from March 14 to May 31, 2010 at the Museum of Modern Art—Marina was literally present at her MoMA retrospective: The Artist Is Present.
During the run of the exhibition, Abramović performed The Artist Is Present: a 736-hour and 30-minute static, silent piece, in which she sat immobile in the museum’s atrium while spectators were invited to take turns sitting opposite her.
People struggled with the silence. Strangers didn’t know what to do with their hands. It was a whole thing. (I saw this sucker live in New York City at the time and I was eh…whatever. I was present but didn’t think it was a present, you know what I mean?)
As Picasso said: “The enemy of great art is good taste.” (Perhaps the proper quote was taste is the enemy of creativity...Picasso said a lot of things pre-Twitter so the permanent record gets hazy).
Unlike me: director Mark Romanek was inspired by The Artist Is Present. He had the opposite feelings I have.
You know Romanek: he directed music videos like Are You Gonna Go My Way for Leonard Kravitz, Michael Jackson’s Scream and famously and impressively Johnny Cash’s Hurt. Still in the Top 5 Music Videos of all time.
Which brings us to the Jay-Z; which will eventually bring us to the AGO.
On Wednesday July 10, 2013 a still hyphenated Jay-Z showed up at the Pace Gallery in Chelsea to rap Picasso Baby for 6 hours. Yes, just the one song from his then current album Magna Carta... Holy Grail.
(There’s a supa pretty lass who works at the Pace...I can’t remember her name, now...though I suppose it’s important to recall the Art and not the Beauty.)
Anyways, the Jay-Z video slash event was a hip-hop Bat signal invitation for fans, friends and The Famous to join in the fun; the final crucial component to make successful performance art such as The Artist Is Present.
Jay’s 6 hours were reduced to an 11 minute polished cameo heavy clip collection video directed by Mark Romanek. Observe:
The video opens with Jay reflecting: “Concerts are pretty much performance art but the venues change.” Basically, Jay exchanged Madison Square Garden for the Pace Gallery.
In the video he adds: “When art started becoming a part of the galleries, it became a separation between culture. And even in hip-hop people were like art is too bourgeois.”
He sums up his artistic reflection with “That’s what’s really exciting for me, bringing the worlds back together.”
Which is exactly what the AGO will do starting on January 7, 2025. The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century has travelled from the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art to Toronto. (Currently it’s open to Exclusive Members and Annual Passholders. On January 7th it’s open to the public.)
“Immersing viewers in the world of hip-hop through contemporary art and fashion, The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century brings together contemporary artists, musicians, designers and stylists to tell the story of the art form and its global impact on visual culture.”
Exactly what Jay-Z was doing with Picasso Baby in 2013 just on a larger cultural scale. Over 10 years later from Picasso Baby…hip-hop is back in a classy art gallery:
On December 6, 2024 phenomenal photographer Henry VanderSpek (aka Culture Snap) and I visited the AGO for the opening night jam of The Culture.
And this is what we saw…
Fashion…streetwear from Dapper Dan to Too Black Guys from Toronto. Even though this exhibition was imported from America there are numerous Canadians touches and recognition of our local scenes.
Hip-hop’s periodic table of the elements has six foundational elements:
DJing (aural),
MCing (oral),
Beatboxing (vocal),
Breakdancing (physical),
Graffiti (visual) and
Fashion.
All of those foundational elements—the core of this vast and expanding universe—are littered throughout the AGO’s exhibition. Kinda:
“The Culture is organized around six themes: Language, Brand, Adornment, Tribute, Pose, and Ascension. Language explores hip-hop’s strategies of subversion. Brand highlights the icons born from hip-hop, and the seduction of success. Adornment challenges Eurocentric ideas of taste, while Tribute testifies to hip-hop's development of a visual canon. Pose celebrates how hip-hop speaks through the body. Ascension explores mortality, spirituality, and the transcendent. Endlessly inventive and multifaceted, hip-hop-and the art it inspires- will continue to dazzle and empower.”
Each physical section of The Culture is organized around one of those themes. Numerous videos shot in a playful National Geographic format showcasing rapping, DJing, breakdancing and in this case hair braiding and styling. (That photo displays hair braiding in Ghana.)
They smoothly immerse the viewer into that world. Especially if this is not your world.
Music plays as you wander from room to room checking out The Work. Some classic gems I caught: Let Your Backbone Slide by Maestro Fresh Wes, Don’t Sweat the Technique by Eric B. & Rakim and Northern Touch by…the collective we sorta call the Northern Touch All-Stars.
(Be sure to scan the QR Code for the playlist; you can take the music home with you. Rather than provide the playlist now…just go. The experience and the art will create natural memories that the music in the background will trigger. That’ll imbue the playlist with potency. Let the playlist become a soundtrack to your AGO experience.)
Don’t go in expecting a full University style seminar on hip-hop. Hip-hop is 50 years old; it’d be difficult to contain or even define all that it means. Or to describe the impact it has had and is having.
It’s The Culture…this is what we do. This is who we are.
Appreciate this cultural snapshot of who we’ve been and treasure some of the many things we’ve seen.
Hip-hop is massive now but it wasn’t always massive. (Especially in Canada…it took a while for Toronto to shed the Screwface Capital label. (Though being from Scarborough, I do like the term; it makes me laugh.))
The highlight of The Culture is the following photograph by Patrick Nichols.
A Great Day in Toronto Hip Hop features 103 key players from the scene captured all in one place. How many of the 103 can you name and identify?
I’ll spot you Eternia and Eugene Tam and Choclair. There…you got 100 to go!
As you can tell from the title A Great Day in Toronto Hip Hop is a sendup of A Great Day in Harlem a 1958 black-and-white photograph of 57 jazz musicians in Harlem, New York, taken by Art Kane.
(That night I had my Sony camera slung around my neck when Henry and I entered an AGO elevator. Patrick Nichols was in the elevator and as a photographer he got excited I was shooting on film. Umm, no. Sorry. I let him down by proclaiming I’m not that cool. I thumb pointed to Henry, he’s cool…he shoots on film.)
Speaking of The Culture…I ran into DJ 4Korners: the Raptors DJ. A basketball team with a DJ is The Culture, now.
Eugene Tam from Play De Record was there that night. 6 Mom and many more cultural contributors to the city. Represent, I suppose.
The opening night jam included a performance from OG Michie Mee:
A Canadian hip-hop pioneer in more ways than one. Her notable style includes blending dancehall reggae music with hip-hop. She performed in the Walker Court. If you felt rumbles on Dundas Street West just outside the AGO it was from all the rump shaking going on inside.
This opening night jam for The Culture was truly A Great Day in Toronto Hip Hop. The Culture is #PantsWorthy. (Thank you to the AGO, Henry (follow him on IG) and thank you to Heidy M. For more culture happening in Toronto, follow her on socials. She’s classier than I am…she’d never drop the phrase rump shaking. See? Classy!)
I suggest at least two visits to truly soak in all of The Culture.
#ProTip #1: Admission to the AGO is free the first Wednesday night of each month, between 6 pm – 9 pm. You can book your free General Admission tickets online in advance.
#ProTip #2: Level 5 is The Culture. However, Level 4 features Moments In Modernism. That exhibition includes a Chuck Close and a Mark Rothko. Moments In Modernism is equally #PantsWorthy. Anytime you can chill with a Rothko, ya gotta go. Dude’s work is delightfully dope.
Classy Recommendations From A Guy Who Owns More Than 1 Tuxedo T-Shirt…
Sammy Younan
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Sammy Younan is the affable host of My Summer Lair podcast: think NPR’s Fresh Air meets Kevin Smith: interviews & impressions on Pop Culture.