Print as the Medium of Change
1419 Art primarily features artists’ work through the medium of print – historically perhaps the most powerful medium of social change. Print is not a neutral medium. Its colors and stark nature catch the eye of the observer. Print requires consideration and reaction. Print engages the emotions, and its importance is recognized by dedicated curators at many of the world’s leading museums. Our artisan-quality, signed and limited edition prints feature memorable, important art prints on carefully selected papers which enhance the impact, purpose, and character of the work.
St. Louis, Ferguson, and the global fight for respect
1419 Art seeks to elevate the voices of the most talented artists from diverse communities around the world, primarily through the emotive medium of print. Our goal is to enfranchise these communities, and to include them in the contemporary dialogue through positive messaging and action. While we began our project in St. Louis, Missouri; our message is global.
We seek art and patronage from a global network of passionate people who want to be part of the broader conversation about freedom, respect, and justice.
St. Louis sits at the confluence of the two largest rivers in North America – the Missouri and the Mississippi – in the heart of the continent. Water and people have washed violently into and through the St. Louis region for centuries. With the people came ideas, and with ideas came passion and conflict. Being in this city, we confront the conflicts and currents of justice and injustice every day. It inspires our selections of art and artists.
This region’s history as a cauldron of activity, art, politics, and people dates back to Cahokia, an ancient Native American capital. Its urban history runs from Cahokia to the founding of today’s St. Louis by the French, its transfer to the Spanish colonialists, back to the French, and finally its entering the hands of the United States via the Louisiana Purchase.
Voices seeking freedom, respect, and justice in St. Louis didn’t enter the United States peacefully, and they haven’t rested since. As a part of Missouri, St. Louis entered the Union as the business and trading center of a slave state under the auspices of the Missouri Compromise. It wasn’t much of a compromise for its enslaved population, and it was a fraught entry and fought from the start.
Its location put the city at the confluence of the North and the South, of industry and agriculture, of continental migration and the fight for the moral compass of the United States. Today, it remains a coliseum of social conflict and an epicenter of the social justice movement. 1419 Art brings the passion of its host city and the purpose of today’s most expressive female and minority artists to a global audience of collectors, supporters, and allies.
Throughout its history, St. Louis has lurched in and out of infamy, which has served as inspiration for progressive artists, authors, and citizens seeking change:
– The Dred Scott suit began in the city’s Old Courthouse in 1846. The changes it set in motion eventually resulted in the Fourteenth Amendment.
– St. Louis was the first U.S. city to legalize prostitution in 1870.
– Minor v. Happersett lead to the Nineteenth Amendment, which overruled this decision and guaranteed women the right to vote.
– Masters and Johnson created public scandal and private joy with their sex research and empowering view of women, which began in the city in 1957 and ran for decades (those two woke up many a marriage way beyond the banks of the Mississippi, and probably ended many others).
– And in 2014, St. Louis re-entered the global conscience when the suburb of Ferguson erupted in protest after the shooting of Michael Brown, at the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement.
All the protesting, fighting (real and ideological), and blood spilling in this river city has given rise to an incredible depth of culture and art. American cultural greats Mark Twain, Tennessee Williams, and T.S. Elliot grew up in and around the city. St. Louis produced Scott Joplin, Maya Angelou, Chuck Berry, Masters & Johnson, the Black Artists Group (BAG), William Burroughs, Ntozake Shange, Gyo Obata, Jonathan Franzen, and perhaps not coincidentally three of Hemingway’s four wives.
1419 Art wants to stand on the shoulders of these greats, with our collective legacy being the voices of the artists we bring to the world and the positive changes these artists inspire. 1419 Art wants to amplify the messages of the marginalized and disenfranchised members of our community today, including those with whom our peers may not agree, and those others may not find so easy and comfortable to support (yet).