Richard Hambleton on his art

Interviewed by Joan Moossy & Paul DeRienzo, Richard Hambleton is the only surviving member of that special historic coterie of the 80's including his close friends Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Andy Warhol. Hambleton is a conceptual artist and develops projects that are really only completed once people react to them. Hambleton has exhibited throughout Europe and has a cult-like following in Italy and Japan. He has done a variety of public art going back to the early '70's. From 1976-1979, he painted 620 murder victims with outlines around bodies in staged scenes often in areas of major cities around the globe designated as "low crime". Headlines quickly proclaimed the effective realism of these tableaux and their effects on increasing urban paranoia. In 1982, Hambleton painted standing, threatening strange Shadow Man© figures with black paint on the landscape of the darkest corners of city streets. Eventually he transferred these images onto paper and canvas always stirring deep public emotion.