Mr. Chow: A restaurant and creative magnet

No place represents this abundance of talent and artistic prowess like Mr. Chow, a chinese restaurant in (New York).

Warhol, Katz and Haring walk into a restaurant … could be the introduction of a shallow joke, but no, these three art giants all frequently strolled into Mr. Chow and were good friends with its owner Micheal Chow, aka M. Not just these three frequented this establishment, the list of incredible artists goes on: Hockney, Newton, Basquiat, Scharf, Clemente and Ruscha are just some of the names that met at but also defined Mr. Chow. Micheal Chow was a colorful character himself and wasn't a stranger to art either.

Born as the son of one of China’s most famous actors, leading figure at the Peking Opera house, and a mother from a wealthy tea dynasty, he was sent to London at the age of 13, after his father was arrested and jailed during the Cultural Revolution.

"From that day on, due to political reasons, I never communicated with nor saw my father again. His parting words to me before I left Shanghai were, 'Wherever you go, always remember you are Chinese.'"

Micheal proceeded to study architecture, and tried to make it as a painter. After that failed, he opened his first restaurant, famous for its dapper european decor, Italian waiters and Chinese cuisine – a cultural ensemble unheard of at the time.

The restaurant's colorful mix of cultures combined with its owner's vibrant history made for the perfect environment for modern artists to mingle. Today Micheal Chow is a hugely successful restaurateur, actor and one of the most prolific contemporary art collectors in the world. Even back in the day he commissioned many pieces from Haring, Katz, Basquiat, Ruscha, Hockney and Warhol. Warhol even designed the restaurant's chopstick wrappers and Hockney’s portrait of Chow was on the matchboxes!

From marginalised to rockstars

As mentioned, the Pop Art scene was a very tightly knit community. Whilst the likes of Alex Katz bridged the gap between the abstract expressionist movement of the 50s and the Pop Art movement of the 60s, Warhol brought the genre into the mainstream. They both paved the way for younger artists within this genre to be bold and brave with their craft. And bold and brave they were…

New York critic and curator Carlo McCormick says: “Every bit of modernism was actually a gang of friends getting together. And there’s no arguing that this gang – a bunch of bratty kids – defined an era.”

Haring and Basquiat are quite representative of this whole group and generation of Pop Artists. They both came from marginalised social groups, Basquiat being of color and Haring being homosexual. This clashed hugely with the then snobbish and inflexible museum landscape of the time. Their art did not fit into the norm, it was vibrant, often very political and resonated with a much younger age group. They stuck with it and with their peers they completely changed the art landscape forever.

For both of these artists, New York played an important and similar role in their development and rise to fame. Basquiat, born in Brookly and from Haitan and Puerto Rican descent, and Haring, born in Reading Pennsylvania, came from very different backgrounds and faced different challenges. New York however allowed them to express their character and they both started by using the city itself as their canvas. Basquiat rocketed to fame from doing local graffiti under a pseudonym to exhibiting in the country's best galleries. Harings introduction to New York was extremely transformative. He organized shows, made creative connections like for example Basquiat, who he became good friends with, and was able to identify as a homosexual man in an environment that celebrated exaclty the culture he only knew as being vilified. Critically, New York also introduced Haring to graffiti. The mix of slight criminality, public attention and technical difficulty really appealed to Haring and he soon developed his signature look of white chalk on empty black advertising panels. He liked to call New York his laboratory, where he could experiment with ideas with an audience.

Through this public and very urban approach of these two artists an era began where artists became celebrities, meaning artists like Basquiat and Haring could prosper but also making their work more into a spectacle rather than, as intended, a deep reflection of reality. The degree of reflection has since changed drastically as with time people understood their struggles and challenges better.

The city of New York to this day has brought us, housed or nurtured some of the brightest and most creative minds in history. Especially the art scene has used its broad audience and endless possibilities to communicate their messages into the world. Mr. Chow as an example embodies this network of the greats and reflects how much inspiration must have come from the mingling of said greats. The city itself gave room to live and breathe that inspiration and bring it to the world.

New York is and was the breeding ground for Pop Art as we know it today.

Pop-Art and New York are heavily related to each other! Within this blog we show a glimpse of how New York itself helped Pop Art to become so popular.

[Image Source: TateShots | Alex Katz: “I’m After the Immediate Present” | Youtube (2012)]

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