Barry McGee

Murals, LACMA parking garage (now torn down) by Barry McGee (Twist).

Barry McGee (aka Twist aka Ray Fong aka Robert Pimple; born 1966, San Francisco, California) is a painter and graffiti artist.

McGee rose out of the Mission School art movement and graffiti boom in the San Francisco Bay Area during the early nineties. His work draws heavily from a pessimistic view of the urban 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.

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, as well as the gallery 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.

Life and career

McGee graduated from El Camino High School in South San Francisco, California.

McGee graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1991 with a concentration in painting and printmaking. He was married to the artist Margaret Kilgallen, who died of cancer in 2001. The couple has a daughter named Asha.

McGee has had numerous shows in many kinds of galleries and was also an artist in residence at inner-city McClymonds High School in Oakland, California in the early 1990s.

McGee's work was included in the 2001 Venice Biennale. [1]

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

Barry McGee LOFT installation at Roberts & Tilton Gallery Los Angeles, CA. Dec.2, 2006-Feb 3, 2007. [2]

Controversy

Barry McGee self-portrait

Adidas Y1 HUF shoes

McGee was involved in a controversy regarding the Adidas 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. McGee responded to the controversy in a March 2006 press release.[3] He stated that the drawing was a portrait of himself as an eight-year-old child. Barry McGee is half Chinese.

In 2004, as part of an exhibit, McGee spray-painted "Smash the State" on the walls of San Francisco Supervisor Matt Gonzales's City Hall office (City Hall is a registered national landmark)."^[1] Gonzalez told the press that he knew his office would be repainted for the next occupant.

Trivia

• Barry McGee also is known by many variations of his TWIST moniker: TWISTER, TWISTY, TWISTO & more.

• McGee is connected with the Asian hipster magazine Giant Robot.

• 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 has been scavenged or stolen. [4]

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

• Mission School
• Lowbrow (art movement)

References

Further reading

• Barry McGee. 2002. Barry McGee: The Buddy System. ISBN 0-9648530-3-5
• Barry McGee, Germano Celant, and Miuccia 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

External links

• "Barry McGee" on Art:21, PBS.com, 2005.
• A review of Barry McGee at Fondazione Prada
• "Barry McGee", UCLA Hammer Museum, 2000.
• "Twist" by Timothy W Drescher, Shaping San Francisco Digital Library.
• "Trains and Trucks with a Twist of Pain" by Eric Nakamura, Giant Robot #9, 1997
• "Barry McGee aka TWIST" on "Known Gallery"
• "Barry McGee at Deitch Projects: or, WHY, BARRY, WHY???" by Stephanie Lee Jackson.
• Transit Project Twist gallery
• Barry McGee gallery, Flickr.
• "Artist stays street savvy: Barry McGee's urban images reflect his tagger roots" by Jesse Hamlin, San Francisco Chronicle, May 2, 2002.
• "Yerba Buena art inspires calls to fire department" by Kenneth Baker, San Francisco Chronicle, October 28, 2003.
• "Last word on government: Graffiti installation in Gonzalez's office gets mixed reviews" by Ilene Lelchuk, San Francisco Chronicle, December 10, 2004.
• "Twist (Barry Mcgee) Interview" by Charlie Bucket, Charlie's Factory, November 23, 2006 (original interview, 2000).

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