Stefano Tonchi
Rashaad Newsome's 21st-century art party
Newsome's work, which has ranged from video to collage to sculpture and focuses on the many iterations of black music, dance, and gay culture, goes a long way in explaining the unusual mix of standard downtown art and society types like Venus DeWoody, Michael Avedon (Richard's grandson), Stefano Tonchi (editor of W), and Anthony Haden Guest, with a range of Newsome's crowd—his tatted, dreadlocked, or otherwise impossibly hip, friends; afro divas, a tall, brawny RuPaulesque drag queen with bright green lipstick on; Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def); friends gussied up in designer sneakers, T-shirts, slouchy pants, track jackets and any other conceivable emblem of stereotypical, hip-hop celebrity-driven black culture. All of them represented some facet of his fascinations, from underground gay vogueing culture to the mainstream machismo of radio rap. More
