“I painted the town black—I’m not trying to make a specific statement with them…They could represent watchmen or danger or the shadows of a human body after a nuclear holocaust, or even my own shadow. But what makes them exciting is the power of the viewer’s imagination. It’s that split-second experience when you see the figure that matters.”
Richard Hambleton’s infamous Stop Sign Series, which were painted on actual stop signs, were exhibited at the Tribeca Film festival in 2017 during the showing of the documentary chronicling the artist’s career, Shadowman. The series encapsulates the longevity of the artist’s obsession with the shadow figure motif as his work transitioned fro the streets of New York to the walls of the gallery.
The origins of Hambleton’s Shadowman can be traced to the early 1980s and to the streets of New York City when Hambleton, along with his downtown contemporaries including major actors of the street art and graffiti movement such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, would hurriedly paint on walls, doors and subway cars under cover of darkness ready to flee from police at a moment’s notice. During this time, hundreds of Shadowmen appeared across the city; splattered black silhouettes lurking around every corner, each one as unexpected and frightening as the last. For Hambleton, the immediacy of the Shadowman as well as the instant psychological effect on the viewer was at the core of his artistic practice.
Richard Hambleton’s Untitled (Stop Sign) was painted in 2017 and displayed
