Search(http://www.facebook.com/massappeal)

(http://twitter.com/massappeal)

(http://instagram.com/massappeal)

(http://youtube.com/massappeal)

(http://massappeal.tumblr.com/)

Join

Share

Charles Fazzino and TATS CRU Capture the 1970s in Collaborative, 3D Piece

(/)

(http://www.facebook.com/massappeal)

(http://twitter.com/massappeal)

(http://instagram.com/massappeal)

(http://youtube.com/massappeal)

(http://massappeal.tumblr.com/)

NEWS MUSIC

Charles Fazzino and TATS CRU Capture the 1970s in Collaborative, 3D PieceArt (http://massappeal.com/news/art/)Words by Adam Lehrer (http://massappeal.com/author/adam-lehrer/) / Friday, March 28th, 2014

Pop artist Charles Fazzino and three of the Bronx-based legendary grafitti collective TATS Cru –Bio, BG 183 and Nicer – all look at each other and grin. They’re all in agreement. Were the 1970s thequintessential period for downtown Manhattan creativity? Between pop art, graffiti, punk rock,disco, hip hop, no wave, Warhol, Basquiat, Patti Smith, The Ramones and so on and so forth; ofcourse it was.

“Growing up [art] was the outlet,” says Bio. “There was so much devastation around you;abandoned buildings, the city was in financial trouble. Those conditions made it an outlet forpeople, whether it was art, the dance, the music. That’s how people coped with the situation.Making something positive out of a bleak environment.”

It is this bleak and creatively fertile time period in Manhattan that is celebrated and depicted inthe unprecedented collaboration between Fazzino and the grafitti crew. Named after the Lovin’Spoonful song, “Summer in the City,” their collaborative piece is a Fazzino-styled 3D rendering of1970s Manhattan.

The relationship between Fazzino and the crew is lighthearted and sincere; in the year that it tookto complete the project they formed a genuine friendship. Fazzino, standing at a towering statureand draped in more traditionally artsy clothing — a button down, black shirt, and black slacks —obviously comes from a different side of the artistic spectrum than the loose fittings jeans andtee-shirt-clad men of TATS. Prior to the onset of the project however, the TATS men didn’t knowFazzino by name, but they knew his work.

“When we first heard the pitch for the project we weren’t really sure who Charles was,” saysBG183. “But then we walked in the studio and we were like, ‘Oh damn we know this work.’ The fitwas really good with the color and the way his work pops out at you.”

Aside from the similar choices in extreme color contrasting, Fazzino and TATS share the Bronx;Fazzino having been born in the borough and the TATS men having lived there all theirlives. “People from the Bronx all seem to identify with each other through that commonality,” saysFazzino.

The TATS guys were as excited to learn a new style of art — cut outs and 3D canvas — from one ofthe masters as they were to be a part of recreating the New York they grew up in. “The first thing Isaw of [Fazzino’s] was the baseball stuff and I was just blown away,” says BG. “But I had no ideahow to do it, so to be able to do this 3D work is like the best thing in the world right now.”

()djbooth  Professor Green ft. Mr. Probz ­ Little Secrets() SHARE () EDITOR'S PICK

Fazzino gradually converted into an ardent admirer of graffiti work, but he wasn’t always positivethat he truly admired the form. He didn’t become a true believer in graf until he was introduced toit by a fellow student at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan in the early ’70s. “At first I wasn’tsure,” says Fazzino concerning his initial reaction towards the tags he saw littered throughoutNew York. “But one tag artist who really got famous and is now in all the visual art museums wasKeith Haring, who went to school with me, who started in graffiti but grew to do work that wasreally spectacular. Guys like him and Kenny Scharf (http://massappeal.com/tag/kenny-scharf/) provide perfect examples of people that did illegal work to doing stuff that’s now in allthe art museums just like the TATS CRU.”

Robert Vasquez, a mutual friend of Fazzino and TATS, pitched the idea for years to his buddyCharles having been a longtime fan of TATS, graffiti and hip hop culture. “Growing up in theBronx,” he says, “my museum was the streets. I thought a collaboration between these guyswould be amazing.”

Vasquez’s conviction proved spot on. The final product of “Hot Town: Summer in the City” isindicative of Fazzino’s style; a large 3D cityscape made of cut out individual pieces popping outof the canvas, but with some long forgotten buildings of the 1970s as well as movie posters andother water marks of the decade. While looking at the piece, the left of the canvas shows northManhattan, or Harlem, and from left to right the piece makes its way downtown. People wear bellbottoms and sport afros. Movie posters advertise New York-centric examples of classic 1970scinema including Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather” and Sidney Lumet’s “Serpico,” twodirectors that are also proud New Yorkers. At the bottom of the piece is where the TATS guyscame in, recreating the graffiti-riddled subway cars of the ’70s. Bio, BG, and Nicer applied theirsignature tags to the trains harkening back to the decade when the subways of Manhattanresembled fringe art museums.

The project is unique amongst Fazzino’s body of work though it stands less an outlier than onewould initially think. Along with the high profile media events he’s created artwork for includingSuper Bowls, MLB All Star Games, Daytime Emmy Awards, Grammy Awards and more, he’s bestknown for his 3D city scapes. However, he generally only creates cities as they are in the moment.“Hot Town: Summer in the City” is his first project that recreates a city’s appearance in the past.Despite this fact, the project hardly represents Fazzino’s sole dabbling in nostalgia.

“A lot of my work is about nostalgia,” says Fazzino. “Many times I like to create things past andthings that have happened in the past and document it in my art work. I thought it’d be reallycool to bring back everything that the 1970s was famous for in New York; hotels that don’t exist,restaurants that don’t exist, and landmarks that have changed or changed names.”

Along with the buildings and landmarks, like the PanAm Building and the Essex House, the fallenWorld Trade Center Twin Towers are clearly depicted towards the right, or Manhattan’s south,eerily reminding us New Yorkers especially and Americans all of the tragedy of 9/11. Recreatingthe towers proved a special undertaking for Fazzino.

“This was such a cool project to work on because since the World Trade Center catastrophe this isthe first piece I’ve created that features the towers in it,” he says.

The choice of buildings featured in the piece had as much to do with the artists’ personalaffections and memories as historical reference, “I remember walking around the city and goingto eat at Howard Johnson’s,” says Fazzino.

Fazzino and the TATS CRU come from very different aspects of the art world, but those aspectsnonetheless share similar histories of striving to be taken seriously amongst high art circles. Inthe 1970s pop art, with its employment of images yanked from advertising and mass media, wasoften scoffed at amongst serious art critics, even with Andy Warhol’s fame at its peak. Graffitiwas even less revered. Considered ugly, delinquent and criminal to anyone the least bit removedfrom the fringes of downtown Manhattan’s drug-fueled and debauched art scene, it seemedimpossible at the time that graffiti would ever be considered something a museum ackowledged.

Flash-forward to now, both of these forms are in museums and quite profitable. The growingacceptance of these two forms of art stands in as a metaphor for the gentrification of Manhattan,where the downtown art that once stood on the fringe is now accepted by the wealthier classes ofNew Yorkers, just as the downtown real estate is inhabited by the upper class. “I definitely thinkso,” says Fazzino agreeing with this suggestion. “I feel that this project also has great appeal towhose who are younger and didn’t get to experience [that era of New York] where as we all did.”

The artists involved all feel that aspects of themselves and their personal histories come acrossin the piece despite the fact that it’s a collaboration, and that in a sense is what makes the finalproduct so immensely special. The project is a time machine transporting you to a bygone era ofthe world’s biggest and craziest city through the eyes of artists who were there contributing towhat made that era so incredible in the first place. “There was always a guy dropping his drawersin the subway,” says Fazzino in reference to a male character flashing his penis in the subwayportion of the piece and to rousing laughter among the crew. “It’s all those little nuances thatmake this piece special.”

“Everything you see in there and you know exactly what’s what,” says Nicer. “The flasher in thesubway, the tags in the subway, a lot of this stuff isn’t even there anymore. So you can say thispiece is very personal to us because we all live and have lived in New York.”

All four of the artists pinpoint their favorite individual flourishes of the final piece.

“Well if you ask nicely I’d probably have to go with the stripper,” says Bio.

“The grafitti on the train man,” says BG without any shred of doubt. “But also that HowardJohnson’s, they used to have the best ice cream soda.”

“I miss Tavern on the Green,” says Fazzino. “It used to be a nice place to go there with the family.Lots of these things have disappeared and it’s nice to look back on them.”

PREVIOUS:RICKY OYOLA FOR ZOOYORK KINGS(HTTP://MASSAPPEAL.COM/RICKY-OYOLA-ZOO-YORK-KINGS/)

NEXT:A PLEA TO SAVE

ENTENMANN'S DONUTS(HTTP://MASSAPPEAL.COM/A-

PLEA-TO-SAVE-ENTENMANNS-DONUTS/)

Tags: 1970s (http://massappeal.com/tag/1970s/), charles fazzino (http://massappeal.com/tag/charles-fazzino/), gentrification(http://massappeal.com/tag/gentrification/), Graffiti (http://massappeal.com/tag/graffiti/), hot town summer in the city(http://massappeal.com/tag/hot-town-summer-in-the-city/), Manhattan (http://massappeal.com/tag/manhattan/), Pop Art(http://massappeal.com/tag/pop-art/), TATS CRU (http://massappeal.com/tag/tats-cru/)

SHARE:

Share

Finally, Nicer longs for the 1970s fashion sense seen amongst the cut out people walking throughthe three dimensional streets of the piece, “I miss the clothing,” he says. “Look at all those bellbottoms and afros.”

Whether or not New York still fosters the emerging talents of today’s young artists, writers andmusicians isn’t addressed in this piece, but “Hot Town: Summer in the City” transports you to the1970s of New York City, an era where New York-based artists suffered, hustled and changed thecourse of artistic history.

Limited editions and originals will be available for sale starting in mid-April and sold by theFazzino Art Gallery (http://www.fazzino.com/). More work and information about TATS CRUcan be found here (http://tatscru.net/).

HIT US WITH YOUR THOUGHTS!

TRENDING NOW

(http://massappeal.com/charles-fazzino-tats-cru-collab/?share=facebook&nb=1) 446

(http://massappeal.com/charles-fazzino-tats-cru-collab/?share=twitter&nb=1) 25

(http://massappeal.com/charles-fazzino-tats-cru-collab/?share=reddit&nb=1)

(http://massappeal.com/charles-fazzino-tats-cru-collab/?share=google-plus-1&nb=1)

(http://massappeal.com/charles-fazzino-tats-cru-collab/?share=pocket&nb=1)

Facebook social plugin

Also post on Facebook Posting as Adam Lehrer (Change) Comment

Add a comment...

Gucci Mane Writes Open Letter to FansShare

Gucci Mane Writes Open Letter to FansFrom: The Trap God

News(http://massappeal.com/gucci-mane-writes-open-letter-to-fans/)

Nicki Minaj "Only" ft. Lil Wayne, Drake, and Chris BrownShare

Nicki Minaj "Only" ft. Lil Wayne, Drake, and Chris BrownNicki supports the Eat A Booty Gang.

Music(http://massappeal.com/nicki-minaj-only-ft-lil-wayne-drake-and-chris-brown/)

On The Grind: Jimmy GoreckiShare

On The Grind: Jimmy GoreckiPhilly to LA, and beyond.

On The Grind(http://massappeal.com/on-the-grind-jimmy-gorecki/)

Income Inequality Makes NYC One of the Most Segregated Cities in the U.S.Share

Income Inequality Makes NYC One of the Most Segregated Cities in the U.S.Creating an economy where only the rich and their low-income service workers can survive.

News(http://massappeal.com/income-inequality-makes-nyc-one-of-the-most-segregated-cities-in-the-us/)

Nardwuar, The Human Serviette's Most Awe-Inspiring Interviews

(http://massappeal.com/nardwuar-the-human-serviettes-most-awe-inspiring-interviews/)

The Most Insane Recent Sneaker Releases

(http://massappeal.com/five-of-the-most-insane-recent-sneaker-releases/)

Stream Run The Jewels' "Run The Jewels 2"

(http://massappeal.com/stream-run-the-jewels-run-the-jewels-2/)

How Will Qatar Deal With 122-Degree Heat During 2022's World Cup?

(http://massappeal.com/how-will-qatar-deal-with-122-degree-heat-during-2022s-world-cup/)

What You Need to Know About Ebola in NYC

(http://massappeal.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-ebola-in-nyc/)

Watch New Yorkers Fail to Understand Young Thug Lyrics

(http://massappeal.com/watch-new-yorkers-fail-to-understand-young-thug-lyrics/)

Watch Roger Linn's Demo Video for the Original MPC

(http://massappeal.com/watch-roger-linns-demo-video-for-the-original-mpc/)

MOST POPULAR

MOST SHARED

WEEK

MONTH

YEAR

Man Attacks Four NYPD Officers With Hatchet

(http://massappeal.com/man-attacks-four-nypd-officers-with-hatchet/)

Michael Brown's Official Autopsy and Toxicology Report Released

(http://massappeal.com/michael-browns-official-autopsy-and-toxicology-report-released/)

"Inaccurate and Misleading" Information Spread About Michael Brown's Autopsy

(http://massappeal.com/inaccurate-and-misleading-information-spread-about-michael-browns-autopsy/)

Gavin, Premo, and Zoo York.

(http://massappeal.com/zoo-york-welcomes-gavin-nolan-with-new-part-soundtracked-by-dj-premier/)

Zoo York Welcomes Gavin Nolan With New Part Soundtracked by DJ Premier(http://massappeal.com/zoo-york-welcomes-gavin-nolan-with-new-part-soundtracked-by-dj-premier/)

VIDEO

J-Zone “Mad Rap/Stick Up” VideoYou a hater.

RECOMMENDED

(http://massappeal.com/j-zone-mad-rapstick-up-video/)

Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” Covered in 20+ Different StylesFaux Tom Waits, Marilyn Manson, Tenacious D, and more cover the MJ classic.

(http://massappeal.com/michael-jacksons-thriller-covered-in-20-different-styles/)

Watch New Yorkers Fail to Understand Young Thug LyricsNib lig lie eh begin in onlah begeinnnin!

(http://massappeal.com/watch-new-yorkers-fail-to-understand-young-thug-lyrics/)

“Rhythm Roulette” With Pyramid VritraPV with that chill sh*t.

(http://massappeal.com/rhythm-roulette-with-pyramid-vritra/)

Legends Never Die: Trigz

Trigz is from the West Coast. So is Jason Goldwatch.

(http://massappeal.com/legends-never-die-trigz/)

Philly to LA, and beyond.

(http://massappeal.com/on-the-grind-jimmy-gorecki/)

The number of warrants issued is growing every year.

(http://massappeal.com/patriot-act-anti-terrorism-searches-being-used-against-

common-criminals/)

The fear is real.

(http://massappeal.com/senegalese-american-boys-beat-up-and-called-ebola/)

Emoji hands in the air for your boy.

(http://massappeal.com/drake-drops-6-god-heat-of-the-moment-and-how-bout-now/)

Dr. Judy Melinek has "disowned" the opinion that Michael Brown was reaching for Darren Wilson's gun.

(http://massappeal.com/inaccurate-and-misleading-information-spread-about-

michael-browns-autopsy/)

On The Grind: Jimmy GoreckiPhilly to LA, and beyond.

(http://massappeal.com/on-the-grind-jimmy-gorecki/)

Gucci Mane Writes Open Letter to FansFrom: The Trap God

(http://massappeal.com/gucci-mane-writes-open-letter-to-fans/)

Income Inequality Makes NYC One of the Most Segregated Cities in the U.S.Creating an economy where only the rich and their low-income service workers can survive.

(http://massappeal.com/income-inequality-makes-nyc-one-of-the-most-segregated-cities-in-the-us/)

Patriot Act Anti-Terrorism Searches Being Used Against Common CriminalsThe number of warrants issued is growing every year.

(http://massappeal.com/patriot-act-anti-terrorism-searches-being-used-against-common-criminals/)

Join

(http://massappeal.com/legends-never-die-trigz/)

Legends Never Die: Trigz

RECOMMENDED

BACK TO TOP HOME (/) CONTACT (HTTP://MASSAPPEAL.COM/CONTACT-US/) ABOUT (HTTP://MASSAPPEAL.COM/ABOUT/) FULL SITE (/)

About • (http://massappeal.com/about/)Advertise • (http://massappeal.com/advertise/)Contact Us • (http://massappeal.com/contact-us/)

Privacy Policy • (http://massappeal.com/privacy-policy/)

© Copyright 2014 Mass Appeal Holdings - Street Disciples Since '96. New York City, USA. Click Here to Read Mass Appeal's Privacy Policy (/privacy-policy/)