Barry Kamen
Barry Owen Kamen (22 September 1963 – 3 October 2015) was a British artist, stylist and model of mixed Burmese, Irish, Dutch and French descent.
Such agency models were scarce so the Buffalo movement turned to the streets to find new faces, such as Naomi Campbell, who Kamen described as "this nutty girl aged about fourteen, but she was part of the crew".
As fashion journalist Ian R Webb notes of the Kamen brothers, ‘Everything was going on creatively, and they were at the centre of it.’[6] Notable appearances were in magazines such as The Face and i-D; advertisements; catwalk shows for fashion designers such as Vivienne Westwood, BodyMap, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Yves Saint Laurent and Yohji Yamamoto; and music videos such as Neneh Cherry's "Manchild", styled by iconic jewellery designer (and close friend) Judy Blame.
[7] In 1986, he appeared on the catwalk for Comme des Garçons with artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, musicians Ben Volpeliere-Pierrot and Migi Drummond from Curiosity Killed the Cat, and singer-songwriter Richard Jobson from Skids.
Some of Kamen's final work as a stylist on Boxer, in collaboration with photographer Paul Vickery, was exhibited posthumously in 2016 at the Exposure Gallery on Little Portland Street, London.
Early work in this style included album art for Nick Kamen (his brother, fellow Buffulo muse and Madonna collaborator), Elton John, Diana Ross, Manic Street Preachers and UB40.
Other works from these series can be found in the collections of Kate Moss, Tatjana Patitz, Johnny Depp, Naomi Campbell, Neneh Cherry, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Helmut Lang among others.
Taking inspiration from Old Master pictures from the greats such as da Vinci, Velasquez, Holbein and Titian (whose work he would consistently visit in public collections throughout his life) and borrowing from the pomp, ceremony and power stances of traditional portraiture, Kamen embarks on a complete shake-up of what portraiture can mean and for whom, painting many figures important to him both professionally and personally (Judy Blame, Glen Erler, Ray Petri, Mark Lebon, Tatiana Strauss, Johnnie Sapong, his mother, siblings, political and historical figures are among the sitters/subjects).
His interest and ability to decode and deconstruct Old Master pictures, and adapt them into poignant explorations and often criticisms into the nature of power, where it is located and what it conceals, is remarkable.
Fluidly sliding between the abstract and the figurative, layered using repeated words and phrases written or pasted onto the canvas, these works use a limited palette of greys, whites, blacks and pinks.
