Last night I was at the launch of The Godfather of Street Art, an exhibition of works by Richard Hambleton, curated by Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld and Andy Valmorbida in collaboration with Giorgio Armani, which has recently transferred from New York. It was exciting to see Carine Roitfeld there supporting her son, and of course lots of other elite fashion people including Lara Stone and husband David Walliams, Pam Hogg, Vogue’s Emma Elwick-Bates and Sarah Harris and Amber Le Bon. Richard Hambleton (born 1954) is most widely known for his “Shadowman” series of paintings in the early 1980s, in which he placed life-sized silhouetted images of mysterious people around New York (and later Paris, London and Rome), often locating them in dark corners and alleyways for maximum scare factor. I like the art: it is can be seen as rather menacing but I think the figures are quite romantic in a Byronic sort of way, the wild and perhaps misunderstood lone poet or artist out on the margins. I also loved the usage of gold paint, which felt very decadent. A great party.
Carine Roitfeld and Roberta Armani
avogueidea 