Subliminal Projects, Shepard Fairey’s studio, was opening a posthumous art show featuring numerous Dee Dee Ramone’s paintings on Friday night, and of course the exhibit had drawn a large crowd of punk rockers and celebrities. When I go to this kind of openings, I always feel like a totally ordinary person who has opened the wrong door and suddenly is in the middle of the backstage party without realizing it.
That said, I didn’t recognize most of the people who were there, but I got the impression they were all in the music business. Still, Linda Ramone was there of course, as well as Barbara Zampini, Dee Dee Ramone’s widow, and ex Sex-Pistols Steve Jones, who seems to be Fairey’s best friend these days. The room rapidly filled up with girls with a Hollywood plastic, guys with a punk-rock look, and probably a few art lovers, but the general interest of the room turned toward intense conversation, drinks and Fairey’s DJ set, heavy on Ramones’ hits of course.
And the paintings in all this? There were these big colorful, naïve, and plain weird things hanging on the white walls, either very simply representing a yellow surf board, or an orange Chelsea Hotel, or being extremely busy and intriguing, built like graffiti where there are a lot of things to read. There even were two pieces blatantly copying Andy Warhol, but some of them were showing a lot of anger and violence among these yellow, orange, green splashes of colors, which were contrasting with all these people, mostly dressed in black. I just got the impression Dee Dee Ramone had seen a lot of primitive art, street art and read a lot of cartoons.
The exhibit, called ‘Dee Dee Ramone: A Memorial Exhibition’ runs through November 17th and marks the 10th anniversary of his death.
