Arty Farty Friday ~ James Rizzi

James Rizzi. He was born on 5 October 1950, in Brooklyn, New York, into a family of Irish-Italian background. He died aged 61 in December 2011. I hadn't, knowingly, come across his work before. Its focus is on urban life - New York in particular, a city which he obviously loved a lot. His paintings are usually categorised as "pop art", but are quite different from the work of Warhol, Lichenstein, Hockney; more comparable with Keith Haring 's or Wayne Thiebaud's. (Links are to archived posts of mine.)

Rizzi's paintings are full to the brim, it's hard to ever find a smidgin of blank space. They have a naive, childlike feel: happy, uninhibited, enthusiastic, and....well, not a little zany! His work has been described by critic Glenn O'Brien as a cross between Picasso and Hanna-Barbera, combined with an evocation of Native American friezes.

Rizzi's friend, Matthew Posnick told the New York Daily News that:

“Jimmy always retained the ability to see the world through the eyes of a child, with innocence and fun and a humorous, childlike wonder for everything that happened in this world.”
From obituaries (linked below) he was said to have been
"an ebullient figure, highly sociable and a lover of basketball and golf, who frequently worked for children's and Aids charities."

New York was obviously his first, and abiding love, but German cities seemed to "get" him too, so much so that it was from that country he obtained many commissions. Teddy bears, a boxer's robe, German postage stamps, the dome of a shopping mall in Oberhausen, and the Happy Rizzi House, a psychedelic office block, in Braunschweig. In 1999 he adorned the bodywork of three cars promoting the Volkswagen Beetle.

From his start in the early 1970s, when police would shut him down as he tried to sell his work on the sidewalks of Brooklyn Heights or in Washington Square Park, Rizzi rose to huge international appreciation spanning continents.


More detail at: Wikipedia, The Guardian, New York Daily News.

Examples of his work. Please click on the images for clearer or enlarged views.

ASTROLOGY

The chart is set for 12 noon, as I have found no information on his time of birth.

We can't be sure of Moon's exact position. In late Cancer at 12 noon it could have been in Cancer or early Leo as Rizzi was born. It'd be fitting if he had been born somewhere around noon or early afternoon, because then a Yod would have formed linking Venus (the arts)/Saturn (work)/Mercury(communication) to Moon (inner self) by sextile, and those planets to Jupiter in Aquarius by quincunx. I like to think of a Yod as calming otherwise scratchy aspects and making them work. In this case Jupiter in Aquarius at the apex of the Yod describes Rizzi's art exactly: a lot (Jupiter) of life's oddities (Aquarius). Jupiter in Aquarius, in any case, is acting as a kind of funnel for the loose bundle of planets occupying the other half of the chart.
That's his art signature : Jupiter in Aquarius!