Catalogs

For more than five decades, Ben Morea has been a key figure at the intersection of art and activism. Although his anarchist provocations are well documented, his artwork has only recently started to be recognized for its place in post-war painting. “Full Circle” is organized around the recurring symbol of the circle in Morea’s body of work.

The exhibition features some of the artist’s earliest paintings from the 1960s, as well as selections from more recent String Theory, Tantric, and his current Animist series spanning the 1990s to today. Accompanying the paintings is a full run of Morea’s anarchist periodical Black Mask, reflecting his contributions to 1960s counterculture and political radicalism.

“Ben Morea: Full Circle, 1964–Present” underscores the continuity in Morea’s artistic explorations and the enduring relevance of political interventions in the cultural sphere.

Curated by Daylon Orr.

Download PDF Ben Morea: Full Circle, 1964-Present

Boo-Hooray is pleased to present our 18th catalog, dedicated to the New Black Music of the 1960s, more widely known as “free jazz.”

Usually defined by its improvisatory mode or amelodic form, the New Black Music actually troubles the opposition between improvisation and composition, taking, instead, improvisation as the rigorous deconstruction of composition and melody, as traditionally understood. During the late-1950s, and throughout the 1960s, the transformations in (free) jazz reflected Black life and politics: musicians and writers such as Milford Graves and Amiri Baraka posited jazz as a distinctly African art form, bringing into opposition the dominant Western musical stricture, its key terms and orientations (i.e. tone, melody, tempo), finding through and beyond them energy, movement, thought, timbre, texture, rhythms, overtones and microtones, multiphonics, tone clusters—the musicians’ sound released into a new limitation.