Richard Corman Art

While Richard Corman’s photography varies widely in subject matter, it is always intensely focused on the infinitely varied expressions of the human spirit. Ken Burns, documentarian ...

Richard Corman Madonna (Pink), 2019 Color Silkscreen on Paper with Deckled Edges Hand signed and numbered AP 1/3 by Richard Corman on the front (this is one of only three Artist's Proofs, aside from the regular edition of eight) 24 x 24.1 x 0.5 inch Frame Included This beautifully designed color silkscreen was created by photographer Richard Corman, in collaboration with master printmaker Gary Lichtenstein. It is based on an iconic photograph that Richard Corman took of Madonna in 1983 - on the brink of success, but before she became the "Madonna" the world would come to know - one of a series of images, all taken in one now-famous photo shoot, that are now considered the most iconic, revealing and celebrated images ever taken of the Pop star. The printer had to first deconstruct the iconic photograph and then reconstruct it into a color silkscreen - creating a new original work. A true collaboration between the master photographer and master printmaker! Richard Corman, in explaining why they chose the color for this special collaboration, noted that it was the same Prada pink color as the cover of the limited edition monograph of Madonna polaroid photos published years earlier. (though depending on the light on the wall, and your eye, the color of the present print can variously appear to be pink, red or coral!) Hand signed and numbered AP 1/3 on the lower front (this is a rare Artist's Proof, aside from the regular edition of only 8) A true limited edition collectible silkscreen and a must have for all Madonna fans and followers. Measurements: Frame: 24 x 24.1 x 0.5 inches Sheet: 18 x 18 inches Richard Corman on his iconic "Madonna" photographs from the early 1980s: My mother was Cis Corman, a renowned casting director in New York City. In the summer of 1982 she was casting The Last Temptation of Christ for Martin Scorsese and called me to say they had just tested a girl for the part of the Virgin Mary. She said, “You must meet this girl — she’s an original.” I was 28 and had just finished an apprenticeship with Richard Avedon and was looking for interesting people to shoot. So I got this girl’s number and called. It was Madonna. At the time she was living in Alphabet City, and she suggested I go to her apartment and chat about what I wanted to do. I had to call her from a phone booth across the street, because the neighborhood was full of drug dealers, and they didn’t let people just walk in and out. There was a group of kids outside the building, on the stoop, in the hallways, and when I said I was there for Madonna the seas parted. I looked up the staircase, and I saw this girl leaning over the edge of the banister, and even from three stories below I could see these catlike eyes just looking down. I knew at that moment that she had something special — I really did. She had her best friend and neighbor, Martin, with her — he later died of AIDS—and we sat and talked. She served me a cup of coffee on a silver tray with three pieces of Bazooka bubblegum. There was no pretense to it. When I came back a few days later to shoot her, she said, “You know, we should go up to the roof because I go up there with all the kids from the building.” She was like the Pied Piper of the neighborhood — they loved her. They followed her, they danced with her, they sang with her. It was something they did on a daily basis, and it was remarkable. We just walked up and they gathered around. She put the boom box on — it was her music, though I don’t remember which song — and they just started dancing and singing. She was so alive and unpretentious. She was fierce, determined. Nothing was going to stop her. After we came down from the rooftop, we walked through the neighborhood, laughing and chatting, stopping in front of a storefront that you see in one of the shots, stopping in front of a senior citizen’s home...

Basquiat, Jean-michel; Corman, Richard. Vintage silver gelatin photograph of Jean-Michel Basquiat Large, limited vintage silver gelatin photograph o...

Basquiat, Jean-michel; Corman, Richard. Vintage Silver Gelatin Photograph of Jean-Michel Basquiat Large, limited vintage silver gelatin photograph o...

The original, Unique Polaroids of Madonna from Photographer Richard Corman’s 1983 photoshoot presenting the future cultural icon on the Precipice of Fame, six weeks before the release of her debut album. We are offering the complete set of 66 Polaroids, as featured in Corman’s new limited edition fine art book “Madonna 66”. “I think the Polaroid is this little jewel that, in some ways, is just untouched... They’re not manipulated, they’re raw, as the subject matter was... I just feel that they’re important. I feel that this is a piece of pop-culture history.” -Richard Corman, as quoted in the New York Times Corman’s Polaroids “prove with utter certainty that Madonna was destined for icon status...” -Harper’s Bazaar On the history of the photoshoot, as featured in Vogue (November 28, 2016): “Madonna has remade herself so many times in her 30-plus-year career—Hollywood vamp, urban cowboy, new-age hippie—that it’s easy to forget that once, at the beginning of things, she wasn’t all that different from so many other city kids: a cool New York City girl who had fled her hometown of Detroit for the East Village. Photographer Richard Corman knows this version of Madonna well. In the early 1980s, when the singer was just getting her career in music and film off the ground, Corman spent months taking pictures of Madonna for several sittings in New York. This was at the behest of his mother, a casting director who saw potential. He caught on right away. ‘I called from across the street, and when I looked up, she yelled to come upstairs, and I saw these cat eyes looking over the railing of her four-story walk-up. I knew then and there that this was somebody special,’ says Corman of their first meeting at her apartment on East Fourth Street. ‘She was funny in the most beguiling way. As soon as I walked up, she served me espresso and bubblegum on a silver plate and tray’... “The 66 images—taken at Madonna’s brother’s house in Manhattan—were taken as test shots for a movie his mother was casting that never got made. Madonna did her own styling. ‘She was wearing white lace leggings under torn jeans... a jean jacket with graffiti on the back and the sleeves cut off, with these rubber bangles, more like friendship bracelets, that she would give away to friends. Her makeup was just so brash—these red lips, and she created that mole on the side of her face,’ he says. ‘You’d say now that it was so chic—you walk into Opening Ceremony, Urban Outfitters, and this is what everyone is wearing—but she was a visionary. It was so bohemian and gritty and down-to-earth. She was going to vintage clothing shops...