Artist Feature: Dan Witz
"...the smell of leather jackets, sweat, and clove cigarettes."
Moshing, slam dancing, thrashing, skanking. A sweaty hot mess, swaying and pushing into the humid crowd, fostering unrestricted self-expression and interaction with a loud pounding soundscape. The pit, the bedroom of hardcore music.
I remember my first pit experience; 1991 Detroit, Gangster Fun opening for Fugazi, absolutely the most liberating experience of my 14-year-old self. I remember what I wore, the smell of leather jackets, sweat, and clove cigarettes. The beginning of what would become decades of dance halls and underground clubs, Nat Shermans, red lipstick, Doc Martins, and slam dancing! The art of the pit boils down to the boundaries that you define at any given moment. This is beautiful to me. The crowd shifts and swirls in front of a stage, the point of impact, forceful but friendly, an exhilarating release of aggression, a release of passion, an enigmatic grace.
The work of Dan Witz embodies the energy and pulse of the hardcore music scene. Unimpressed by what he was seeing in the late 70s/early 80s NY gallery art scene, he utilized his formal academic training and applied it to the street art scene, soon becoming a pioneer. Street art was his go-to for many years, alongside the punk subculture. Becoming a museum enthusiast by day and a staple in the punk scene by night, he became inspired by both classical art and the energy and authenticity of the hardcore music scene. Fusing the two, he took his art in a new direction. Utilizing his academic realist style, he began documenting the chaotic nightlife of the punk music scene.
“I discovered in my museum wanderings – especially in the epic baroque multi-figure pieces – that painting actually had plenty of potential for the adrenaline and animalistic frenzy I craved. The action, especially in the large set pieces by Rubens, Brueghel, and Bosch can be dizzying, sometimes it even manages to achieve an almost punk-rock pitch of chaos and catharsis.”
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Dan Witz (born 1957) is a Brooklyn, NY based street artist and realist painter. He grew up in Chicago, IL, attended Rhode Island School of Design from 1975-77 and came to New York in 1978 to attend Cooper Union, receiving a BFA in 1980. In 1982, he received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1992 and 2000, he received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and in 1998 he received a fellowship from the Public Art Fund. Witz, consistently active since the late 1970s, is one of the pioneers of the street art movement. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Witz has been featured in many publications including The Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, New York Magazine, The Huffington Post, ARTINFO, among many others.