Monday, April 12, 2010

Trying to figure out if this is working.

Obviously it has been some time since I have posted to this blog.  Although I have continued interest, I have found that the material lacks context, so I am working on figuring out the best way to tag material, include better links, and provide access to blogs of a similar nature.  Please be patient.  Thank you.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Following in Grandma's Footsteps

I had my moment in the sun as an artist's model as well.  (Please see previous post.)  Below is a series of photos John Lesnick did in homage to Duane Michals, entitle "Exit the Photographer."  I believe John took at least one class with Mr. Michals at a workshop in Venice.  John asked my friend Larry and I to pose for him on this project.  He wanted to use Larry's apartment, which Larry had just moved into and which, being on the top floor of the building, had good light.

As far as I know, John only printed this one series.  He presented it to me as a gift about a year later.  (He complained that creating the mat for the sixteen pieces was more work than he usually did for photographs.)  I then gave it to my friend, Jack Bayer, as a birthday gift one year.  Jack passed away about 10 years later of heart-related causes.  Again, the family swept in, but this was one piece they didn't care about, so it landed back in my hands.  After cleaning 10 years of cigarette smoke residue off of the glass and frame, it turned out o.k.  Here are the full series and one of the individual scenes:

 

  

The photos are fully mounted on acid-free cardboard.  Each individual photo is 4" x 6" and the framed work is 33"w x 26"h.  The work is dated 1980, and signed.

Why I like this piece:

Apart from all of the narcissistic reasons, (I mean, who doesn't revel in their faded beauty?) this is a good homage to Duane Michals.  It follows his artistic MO, but it follows John's particular way of translating that method to his own uses.  I suppose one could infer that the photographer leaving the scene of his own creation to join a scene (imaginatively) being created elsewhere is clever.  Perhaps too clever, but John was early on in his career (1980) and so perhaps this represents his working on an issue rather than actually resolving an issue.  

That is one good thing about art.  If it is done with the idea that the questions are more important than the answers, than it is at least done in the spirit of art.  The questions engender more questions, and that is why art often reflects its era more accurately than the carefully recorded history of the same era.  

What this piece reminds me of:

First, it reminds me of how the Lower East Side has changed so completely from those days.  You may remember that I mentioned a friend who was mugged 3 times in as many months.  That friend was Larry, pictured above.  He left New York defeated by the danger.  New York, supposedly, is less dangerous these days, but it could easily revert to the late 70s and early 80s, when you had to know where and when you could be on the streets.

Mostly it reminds me of Jack.  Jack had this over his desk in his studio apartment in Chelsea.  He liked it very much.  Jack was a very ruggedly handsome man.  He had served in the Navy during the late 60s, and ended up in New York with a career as a freelance graphic artist. He made a good, if modest, life for himself in the city.  He also made no excuses for his vices.  In today's world of political correctness, he would have smoked his cigarettes and over-indulged in food and drink because the practice of self-denial in such things would have smacked of hypocrisy to him.

Jack and I carried on a brief affair about a year after Terry's death.  He was one of Terry's trio of caregivers.  We became closer because of our shared grief I suppose, but the affair only lasted a few months.  It is one of the signs of how time had changed such that when he passed away a few years later, in the late 90s, I hadn't spoken to him for over a month.  I had to track down a close friend of his to find out that he had died of congestive heart failure.  He had programmed all his phone numbers into the phone, and no one thought to listen to his message machine.



Monday, February 8, 2010

Arts and Crafts and Grandma

My parents called me up to a spare bedroom.  They were rummaging around, trying to find things, and figured it would be a good time for me to take whatever few items I had left there.  They opened a blanket chest and pulled out a shank of braided, auburn hair (almost honey colored), wrapped in a plastic bag.  "This was your grandmother's hair.  Do you want it?"  It took me a moment, but I said no.  

I knew my grandmother had been a model, which was not your average grandmother's calling.  She also had some pretensions to artistic endeavor and these pretensions expressed themselves in little crafts projects.  I offer two of them below:


This is a print which Grandma took the liberty of very lightly coloring in (so lightly that the camera couldn't pick it up).  She then signed it in a larger signature than the actual artist's, whose signature appears almost directly above hers nearer the neckline of the cowl.  It measures approximately 7.5" w x 9.5"h.

 

This is a vase which Grandma painted by hand.  It measures 5"d x 4"h.  As you can see in the full sized version (just click on it), the paint has worn away on a few of the outer buds, which I think is due to Grandma using paint that was too watered down.

 Why I like these pieces:

These are remembrances more than art, but I included them here because I think that they are exactly how art is in its simpler forms.  All art partakes of craft, but not all craft is art.  In the first example, my grandmother wouldn't endeavor to draw a young girl, but she would "gild the lily" and add color to improve, in her eyes, a worthy effort.  Art always competes with people's expectations of what art is.

The vase is my grandmother's and hers alone.  She perhaps copied the flower theme from some other item or work that she knew, but she knew how to mix the colors on the brush to obtain the desired effect.  I remember this vase placed on a bracket on the wall in her kitchen, holding a philodendron.  

What these pieces remind me of:

Of course, they remind me of my childhood.  My grandparents had a very nice 3 bedroom house with a good piece of land behind it.  Among all her other interests, gardening was my grandmother's passion, and she had fairly elaborate plantings, leading on a garden path down to a terrace which held a fireplace for grilling.  Further on were two trees where a hammock was usually hung in the summer.  Not bad for a suburban setting which today is very developed.

My grandmother was a stickler for good behavior.  There was to be no running or screaming or general roughhousing.  Speak only when spoken to, and always say "please" and "thank you."  This was quite different from my maternal grandparents, where kids were generally expected to be kids, which meant a little noise and/or conflict was par for the course. Each set of grandparents spoiled us in their own way.
 

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

A friend and an artist

John Lesnick was a close friend of mine.  We met felicitously in front of the loft building in Chelsea where I was visiting an ex-boyfriend at the time and where John lived.  I remember that he had just bought groceries and we greeted each other with the brown paper bag he was clutching acting as an annoying barrier between us.  We were immediately attracted to one another and had a brief affair which turned into a  lasting and deep friendship.  I was privileged to know him for the remainder of his life, through all of its ups and downs. He is in the collection at the Museum of Modern ArtVisual AIDS, and most of his art is now housed by the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation.

I bought this piece of art from him not too long after it was produced:


 

It is part of a series of full-figure male portraits that he did in a large format print.  This particular print (not titled) is number 7 of 10, is signed by John, and dated 1984.  These prints were produced at the Lower East Side Print Shop.  This organization became John's second home during the early '80s.  He was very productive at the time, but unfortunately not successful commercially as an artist.  

John discovered that he was HIV+ during this time, but he continued to work and travel and enjoy life as fully as possible.  He became an AIDS activist and was a case study in the advances in AIDS-related medicine during the '90s. I purchased one or two more pieces, and he gave me a couple of other pieces of his work as gifts.  When he passed away, I was able to complete this work:


 

As you can see it is quite large and fills one wall of the foyer to my apartment. (Apologies for the poor photography and the glare in both these photos.)  Each framed quarter measures 35.25"h x 43.5"w, so the full work is 70.5"w x 87" high.  It is number 7 of 12, signed and dated 1984.

Why I like this piece:

This piece puts me into a sort of meditative trance.  The pose of the swimmer's right hand appears to me as if it were a gesture of benevolence, but I can't quite figure out why that is.  I bought the original upper right quadrant because it stands as a piece on its own.  The reason it does that is because it encompasses that enigmatic gesture.

As a whole, the work partakes of photography and, to my mind, theater.  It is a set piece for some unwritten play, and it represents an aspect of one of the characters, perhaps the villain, that is decidedly unexpected.  I can imagine this portrait coming to the fore of the stage in the last act to symbolize the villain's attempt at redemption.  ("Angels in America" anyone?)

What this piece reminds me of:

This piece reminds me of loss and of peace with that loss.  John led a very full life, had many friends, and not too many enemies.  He was respected and loved.  John was the closest experience I could imagine of knowing Lazarus.  He very nearly died prior to the advent of protease inhibitors for the treatment of HIV.  When he came back to life, he lived as fully and as creatively without (too much) complaint that he had nearly been robbed of this second chance.  

The longer I live with this work, the more I appreciate it.  It is a comfort.  There is much more of John's work to show, and each will remind me of some other aspect of life during those times.  

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Terry's Art: Another Inheritance

Terry was a very visual person and had aspirations of an art career in New York.  It did not quite work out that way; he was very good at the software design he did for Intel.  He did produce some interesting work.  The four pieces here are, as far as I know, the only print project that he completed, and I believe it may have been done before he arrived in New York.

He also produced a series of photos of himself in drag which tell the story of a lonely woman's day and her ruminations on life.  That may come in a later post, but is rather heavy on the imagery and will take some time to organize. I apologize again for the quality of the photography; it doesn't quite capture the colors of these prints.

Terry created these four prints as a group:



 

 

 

 

The images are very saturated in color.  Each image measures 17"h x 14"w.  Each print is signed, not dated, and they are labeled in the artist's handwriting as Artist's Proof with a number for each copy and the number of proofs for the edition.

Why I like this piece:

These are idealized male torsos, and represent a type of art created by gay males during the post-Stonewall era to express their love of the male body.  The suppression of such images prior to the early 60s created a generation of artists to whom the image of the male body was the highest expression of their artistic skills.  Without a long-winded discourse on how the male of the human species, regardless of sexual orientation, became such a visual creature it is clear that the latter part of the 20th century may be remembered best for its mini-renaissance of male beauty.  From the physique photography of the '50s through the Abercrombie & Fitch catalogues stretching into the early 21st century, there was never quite so much attention paid to the male and all the variations on the ideal of that human form.

On another level, because of the colors in play on these prints, they relate rather well to the Floc'h and Riviere work in this previous post.  They partake of the same simple background, with a single subject in each frame. 

What this piece reminds me of: 

Although this series of prints reminds me of the time I spent with Terry, one aspect that he spoke of nearly came true, but in a weird way.  These prints have traveled with me to several different abodes.  When I settled in my current apartment, I became familiar with a neighbor whose profession was that of a lead glass window designer.  One of Terry's ambitions for these prints was to have them transposed into leaded glass.

I hadn't thought of that for years before meeting this neighbor.  I told her I had something she might consider for a subject, but her face fell when she saw these prints.  I don't think she was quite ready to approach the subject matter objectively.   



Update: Artist Located!

I was going through my collection of business cards and discovered that I had one from Yvonne Gayle Butler, whose work you saw in this post.  I took a chance and called the number.  The person who answered took a message and I soon received a return call from her daughter.  After I explained the purpose of my call, I was told that Yvonne would be in touch.  About 2 hours later I was talking to her in Paris!


Yvonne has since dropped the "Butler" to become Yvonne Gayle.  She is living primarily in Paris, though she visits New York frequently.  She has been exhibiting in Paris galleries recently.  As soon as we have established an email correspondence and she has a chance to check out the blog, I'm sure it will be interesting to follow her career and see how she is doing.

Monday, January 25, 2010

A "Family" Inheritance

This piece was one of the few things I inherited from a family member.  It is an abstract work which is a portrait of the person who ultimately passed it into my hands.  His name was Fred, and he was the person who introduced me to New York city, and not just to NYC, but to gay life in NYC.  

This work was done by Fred's boyfriend from the 1960's, Richard Passantino, who changed his name at some point to Richard Santino.  Richard went on to become the lover of Richard Poirier, a noted literary critic.  Mr. Poirier acknowledged Richard Santino as his lover, and as the creator of the collage for the front cover of his book "Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing" which remains a valuable reference on Frost's work. (A scan of the cover is included after the jump at the end of this post.) This book was assigned to us in a class taught by Joseph Brodsky at Columbia when I was a poetry student there.  I did not take the time to read the introduction of the book back then, so I had no clue of the connection until researching this post, but it goes to show what a small world this is.



The work is entitled "Mon Homme," and is a serigraph, signed and dated by the artist.  It measures 11.5" x 15.5" and is in the original frame.  It consists of an arrangement of mainly abstract cubes with the figure of a man seeming to recline on those forms.  There is a patterned background, and the overall colors are blue and yellow.   

Why I like this piece: 

I can verify that, as a person, Fred was composed of these colors.  He had very blue eyes, and his wardrobe almost always included a splash of yellow with the blue he used to set off his eyes. This piece is fairly simple in its composition.  I do not generally favor abstraction, but this clearly comes to us from the 50s and 60s when abstraction was more the norm.  But because of it's simplicity, the piece seems to have no grand aspirations other than an artist trying to capture the personality of, and his own feelings about, the man he loved.

What this piece reminds me of: 

This piece is my "madeleine" of the first few years in New York.  I moved to the city to attend graduate school at Columbia.  When I first moved here in January of 1978 it was merely with the intention to attend school.  The city held no fears for me, or attractions other than I knew that movies always opened here before they were shown in the rest of the country, and there were quite a few that appeared and never were shown to the rest of the country.  But the main thing was that, other than getting an education, I had no expectations of the city.  

One of the lifelines that I had in this endeavor was my father's cousin, Fred.  He taught English as a second language at New York University, and was well-known among ESL teachers for having produced a series of useful text books for the college level. My father put us in contact, and Fred put me up for the first weekend I visited Columbia to complete the registration process.  A week or two later, I moved into a Columbia University dorm for grad students.  

Fred introduced me to the subway system, pointed out some of the architectural wonders, and generally acted as a tour guide for those first few months.  He was a very good guide, having lived in NY for most of his life.  His apartment was in the Washington Square Towers, just south of Washington Square Park.  Early in the summer of that first year, he asked me to take care of his apartment while he was away on vacation in Puerto Rico.  It was a great opportunity to get a break from the dorm.  

I had an off-again, on-again girlfriend in medical school at the time, but our relationship had strained due to the long-distance aspect of the affair, as she was attending school in Philadelphia.  When I stayed in Fred's apartment, I had already decided that I wanted to explore the Village.  Christopher Street seemed a natural place to start.  It was already famous as a gay mecca, but I was more innocent than I knew.  That first evening, I could not believe what I saw and felt as I walked down that street.  Men were looking at me openly, very opposite to the furtive way I had always looked at men.  It took me three passes before I finally got up the courage to walk into a bar at the end of the street.  That night I took a man home for the first time in my life.

When Fred returned from his trip, he noticed the change in me.  As we were walking by Sheridan Sq. one evening not long after his return, he asked if I had anything I wanted to tell him.  I came out to him, and he came out to me.  "Now," he said, "you can meet all of my friends."  And I did, and it was one of the best coming out experiences that could be imagined. 

Fred was one of the best people to know if you were a young man coming out of the closet.  He had been involved with the Mattachine Society in the early 60s.  He regaled me with tales of how secretive gay bars and gay society was when he first came out.  He talked about the codes and signals that gay men used to identify each other in social situations, and how careful it was necessary to be at work.  He told me of his love for NYC; how it provided a gay man a real life.  He talked about his flirtations with students and with how he and his friends had come to know and love one another. 

That was Fred; one of the most generous men I've ever met.  I still use the stainless flatware that he gave me when I had to move out of the dorm.  He nursed and nurtured me through the usual heartbreaks and fears of becoming an out gay man.  

Fred too was taken by HIV.  He became ill on a visit to his beloved Puerto Rico.  During our last phone conversation, he spoke from his hospital bed.  I was in the process of losing two other friends and couldn't bring myself to tell him of these other catastrophes.  So while I kept the conversation light and topical, he pronounced me as being a very boring person.  

As was so often the case, when Fred passed away his "family" swept in to remove all the evidence, as if the family he had created in New York was of no account.  (Yes, I deem the quotes to be correctly applied.)  They did have the good grace to ask me if there was anything in particular I wanted.  His portrait was the first thing that came to mind. 

You can see the cover of "Robert Frost" by Richard Santino after the break.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Art, and Betrayal and Friendship

This piece of art was obtained in a roundabout way.  It is not a particularly happy tale, but it is about how art can twist things, even relations among best of friends.  This piece was first spied in the front window of Peter Spielhagen's antique store in the West Village.  I saw it out of the corner of my eye and stopped short.  My boyfriend at the time, Terry, went a few steps beyond before noticing that I was no longer at his side.  He hated when I did that.


I pointed to the painting in the window and said how much I liked it.  We went in and asked as to the price, and of course I didn't buy it on the spot. Again, I had to somehow justify the purchase.  I didn't think the piece would sell very quickly in any case, but knew that I would be back to take another look.  When I did go back, about three days later, the piece had been sold.  I won't say that I was heartbroken, but I did feel as if I had lost one of the best things I had seen in awhile.




This work portrays a boy grasping tree branches to climb out of a lake or pond, and glancing back for friends or just to check his progress above the water.  (Other observers may insist that the swimmer is checking to place his next step down into the lake.  I don't agree.) The piece is dated 1969 and signed by the artist, Robert Kalthoff, a winner of the Sargent Medal.  It measures approximately 14.5"w x 9"h.

Why I like this piece:  

There is a certain calm aura to this work.  At first it was a mystery to me why the artist chose to portray the swimmer leaving the pond with his face turned away.  But I realize that although the subject is approaching the viewer, and the sense of movement out of the water is palpable, the subject's backward glance creates a tension between time progressing and regressing.  The piece therefore has a heightened sense of the suspension of time which translates well to the viewer.  

Time can only "regress" in our minds, our memories.  We can't stop the cycles and flows of time around us.  But the artist has created a scene that partakes of stopping time in its simplest elements.  This is quite different than taking a snapshot and saying that time has been stopped.  The piece communicates its central message without any extraneous narrative; it shows a moment, at a shore, when a boy is climbing out of the water.

Many of my friends have expressed their wish to have this work when I'm "finished" with it.  It has pride of place whether it hangs solo on a wall or is grouped with other work; it always takes center stage. 

What this piece reminds me of: 

The first encounter with this work was in late 1983.  By the summer of 1984 I had mostly forgotten about it, but one evening while visiting Terry, my now ex-boyfriend, it did come up in conversation.  Terry said he had something to confess, went over to a closet, and pulled the art work out.  He said that he had intended to give it to me for a birthday present, but then decided to keep it for himself. 

Now, Terry and I were still very close friends.  He was a software engineer for Intel, and had a very strong artistic bent as well.  You will see his work in a later post.  Unfortunately, Terry was beginning to have symptoms of HIV-related illnesses in 1984.  Although our sexual relations had ended, his illnesses, and the friendships I had gained through knowing him, kept us close. 

When he pulled this out of his closet, and explained himself, I could barely contain my anger.  I was flabbergasted, and came very close to ending our friendship right there.  Of course, there were a few weeks during which our contact was minimal.  I was trying to process how he could do that, how he could hide from me something which he knew was important to me.  I went through all that and decided he was more important than what he had done with the art.  

Terry passed away in early 1985.  His parents were very supportive, both of Terry and of the group of friends who had taken care of him prior to their arrival.  Terry had admitted to them the gravity of his illness in late 1984.  They did not challenge the estate, and so his possessions were divided equally among those named in the will.  Everyone knew the story of the picture.

Cut to about a decade later.  I had a new partner, Dan, and we were working on putting together a country house on the Delaware.  Milford, PA was becoming a destination town for people looking for reasonable country homes.  Much of the town was being renovated.  One prominent new resident was Sean Strub, who had purchased an old hotel.  Diagonally across the street from that hotel was the old Pennsylvania School of Forestry, a building dating from the late 1800s.  It had been renovated to house several antique vendors.  One of those vendors was Peter Spielhagen.  He and his partner's business now occupies a majority of the building.

On a visit there over ten years ago, I noticed canvases that were eerily reminiscent of the "Swimmer."  Mr. Spielhagen confirmed that it was the same artist.  So a piece of art that already had a decidedly strange history in my life took another turn.  I discovered that there was a living artist with an important career behind it. Peter Spielhagen gracefully reminded  me of the artist's name in a recent email. 


Saturday, January 16, 2010

An artful vase

This is not a "visual" piece of art, but it is very visual.  This vase, entitled "Various Worlds, Various Ladders #1" was created early in the career of the ceramics artist Edward S. Eberle. This vase is not very representative of his work in that it is a very traditional template for vases.  Works he has created after this have gone in un-traditional forms, mostly representational of people and places. 

This was purchased at a store that used to be on 2nd Avenue, near 4th St. called Civilization.  It was a gift and housewares store, and unusual at the time because the Lower East Side had not yet gentrified up to the level of some of the items this store carried. 








 

 

The piece has a matte black glaze which has been extensively etched by the artist.  Each world, represented by the circles, is separated by a ladder border.  There are top and bottom borders of what I will call filigree. The bottom border serves to ground the whole piece, using hemispheres that relate to the world contained in the quadrant above it. Overall the piece is very harmonious, with all of the elements of the etching fitting together very well in a theme.

Why I like this piece:  

In my naivete, I thought that I had figured out the piece immediately upon my first encounter with it.  The four worlds were not "worlds" in my mind, but simply the four phases of the moon.  The first world (top photo) looks very much like the man in the moon to me, and the third world is a blank spiral, so that was the new moon. 

It has something more to say than just being a vase, and that was the clincher when I bought it.  It was enigmatic, (particularly after I bothered to check the bottom of the vase and found the title for it), and it was decorative in a thoughtful way.  The vase could be turned to present any one of the four different worlds.  The balance among them was always maintained by the ladder borders.  Although the etching is of a piece, it still seems as free as a doodle on paper.

All that being said, it is a piece I would be willing to part with.  In a way, it has become a responsibility that I no longer wish to carry.  After 25 years of ownership the vase has accumulated in value perhaps, but it is  not something I appreciate every day in the way I do the artwork on the walls.  I don't use it for flowers or for any other utilitarian purpose.   

What this piece reminds me of:

I am reminded of what the Lower East Side became during those few short years that were the decade of the 80s.  By the 1990s, there had already been the semi-riots around the development of Tompkins Square Park, the removal of Wigstock to larger venues, and the construction of New York University housing everywhere.  I was a witness to the evolution of the Lower East Side from being a frontier where a friend at the time was mugged for almost every month of the four months he lived on Avenue C before leaving the city in terror  into a territory of high-end bars and restaurants living off the fumes of CBGB's.  

It was a gay neighborhood by default because it was so cheap to live there and the Club Baths were still open on First Avenue.  Quentin Crisp was occasionally glimpsed in the area. There was off-off-Broadway, off-off-price designer duds, and away-from-Soho galleries.  While this piece doesn't trade in any of the grime and grit of that era, it does show what gems can be found amongst the dreck.  

I realize that sounds like I didn't consider the Lower East Side livable until it cleaned up its act, but in fact I started many weekend nights by heading there first.  It is where young smart people congregated and met and hung out.  I never lived there, already ensconced in the much grittier Hell's Kitchen, but what I'm  trying to express is that something is lost when the frictions created by old and the new are homogenized into, for instance, what is now Times Square.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Flea Markets and Photography

Although I had bought a few photos here and there previously, this group of photos represents my first major purchase of photography.  These cabinet cards were found at a flea market which first appeared on Canal Street, and which then migrated to 24th and 6th Ave. in Chelsea.  It was one of those purchases where I went back several times within the space of two hours or so, trying to decide if I could really justify the purchase.

The photos represent scenes from an ascent of Mt. Hood which took place sometime during the late 1800's.  I have placed two of the photos on this post, and the rest can be seen after the jump at the end of the post.



 

It is the first image that got me excited.  The other scenes you'll see after the jump are mostly beautiful landscapes.  Though direct attribution can't be made, an appraisal undertaken by Swann Galleries noted that these are likely to have been taken by Dewert.  (I'm still trying to find information about him.)  At some point I plan to donate the photos to the Mazamas Organization, a non-profit founded in 1894 which provides education about responsible mountain climbing in Oregon.

Why I like this piece:

These photos take part in both history and art.  It must have been a struggle to lug the equipment necessary for decent photos to the top of Mt. Hood.  And it is interesting to note that the photos in general are very carefully composed.  Nothing is too off-center, and nothing is accidentally cut out of any of the frames.  This is photography that is decidedly not "point and shoot."  The photographer was committed to his subject and provided the best images he could have possibly provided.

Even if the photos are not proven to be by a known photographer, this is clearly a photographer we should know more about.  The men in the photos are relaxed with the camera, although they are posed.  It is not a surprise to them that the camera is there, and it is not really a matter of "showing off" for the camera.  Photography was welcomed as a documentary tool.

So do these "documents" partake of art?  I would say so, and that is mainly due to the care taken with composition.  Even though they are not large images, the viewer gets the sense of the spectacular vistas available to the climbers.  That can be a difficult thing to do without careful consideration of the what is seen through the lens.

What this piece reminds me of:

This reminds of the amount of time I spent walking around New York city. I came upon this flea market after a little Saturday morning tour of Soho in the early 80s. New York was not quite so set in its ways, and real estate, especially unused parking lots on weekends, was  likely to be utilized in a more slapdash manner.

Now, quite a few of the parking lots are built over with condominiums hungry for buyers, or already converted to rentals. As I mentioned above, this particular flea market migrated to 6th Avenue in the lower 20s. Almost all of the open lots that were flea markets are gone. Many have moved to some place near 38th St. and Ninth Avenue, but I haven't visited there. There is still a garage on 24th St. near 6th Avenue which has two floors of vendors, but who knows how much longer that will last.

I am also reminded that I bought a few daguerrotypes at that flea market before I bought this group of photos. Daguerrotypes are very difficult to find now, and even then I was often told, "You should have come earlier. I had some really good ones." If I were a true collector, as was my friend Carl Morse, I would have been there as they were unpacking their trunks to get the real jewels.

The rest of the photos are after the jump:

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

And speaking of Paris

In 1985 I took my first trip to Europe to visit a friend who had just moved back to Amsterdam after a career at the U.N. in New York.  He graciously agreed to accompany me by train to Paris.  It was a great trip, and I couldn't leave Paris without a serious souvenir.  I came upon a small frame and print shop and purchased a print and a poster.  The poster will show up in a future post.
   
I considered the print a real find at the time, as it references both Tintin and Andy Warhol.  The image was somewhat familiar to me, and I was excited to find an original print of it.  The cans of crab arose in a Tintin adventure entitled "The Crab with the Golden Claws."  I quote from the Wikipedia entry:  "Tintin had discovered a smuggling ring which used tins of crab meat in order to smuggle their opium."  The work is entitled "Quatre Boites de Crabe Extra" and was created by Floc'h et Riviere, who are a team of illustrators famous in France for their collaborative work.  The print is numbered and bears the signature of both artists.  It is dated 1983.



Please forgive the poor quality of the photograph, which has some annoying artifacts from the light in the kitchen.  I took the photo with all sorts of lights on and off, but this was the best I could come up with.

Why I like this piece:

Of course, this is as close to an Andy Warhol as I'm likely to own.  The whole piece references pop art and pop culture.  It is jokey and fun, and likely the most saturated with color of any art work I have.  This is in the kitchen, and works perfectly as kitchen art.  It seemed out of place anywhere else I put it in the apartment.  It is vibrant and alive, and yes, it makes me want to eat something.

What this piece reminds me of:

I cannot forget how I found this piece, just wandering near the Sorbonne.  It was a small shop and I went in as much to rest as to browse.  But mostly it reminds me of Warhol.  

I used to go to a gay bar on Avenue A called the Pyramid Club.  It was on my list of places to cruise on a Saturday night, starting in the East Village and ending up on the West side.  They used to run a show which was billed as the first gay soap opera.  On a little stage, which was difficult to see from the bar anyway, there would be practically incomprehensible goings on for about 15 minutes or so, starting around 10:00 p.m.  Then the music would start and the area became a dance floor.  I guess Andy and his entourage were there to see the show, but I didn't notice him until I decided to join in the dancing.  There he was with a few other friends surrounding him, sort of bouncing around the way we used to dance back in the late 70s and early 80s.  

I did see him one or two other times; once at Irving Place, another club and once just on the street in the West Village.  New York allows celebrities to live their lives without too much fear of interruption. 

I also remember showing this and the poster to my friend back at the hotel room.  He had become ill and wasn't able to squire me around Paris as he hoped, but I was getting along fairly well on my own.  When I spread them out for him to see I remember his reaction as less than enthusiastic. Chacun à son goût!

Monday, January 11, 2010

Details, Details, and a thought or two

Because I was so habituated to "Les Bons Moments" I failed to document that each of the three panels are also entitled.  I have edited the original post to include that information, but it is a fair warning that I will not see everything there is to see about the art that I own.  Feel free to make notations in comments if you detect that I have missed some apparent details.  We'll all learn something.  

This is a good opportunity to play with the cliche "familiarity breeds contempt."   Familiarity also breeds a type of ignorance.  If you lived with something or someone for a long time, you begin to ignore some of the traits that got you involved in the first place.  Without revisiting the history we have with the people and things that impact our lives, we may miss the best way to appreciate them. 

Friday, January 8, 2010

The Gift

Last night I went to Posh for an after-job-interview drink.  I was seated with two 20 somethings on my right and two Broadway veterans on my left.  The atmosphere was convivial and the evening wore on very nicely.  The conversation turned mainly around our various attempts to get jobs as most of us were unemployed, and generally sharing our stories in and out of New York.  It was a great way to unwind after a job interview, and a better result than I've had a in gay bar in quite awhile.

One of the Broadway veterans allowed as his main job on Broadway had been as a costumer and property manager.  He offered to draw our fantasies of Broadway costumes.  The 20 somethings chose "Cats," and I chose Blanche from "Streetcar."  For a sketch done in a dark bar after a couple of drinks, the result is amazing. He drew them right in front of us, very quickly and with only a few quick grabs of the candle to check his work before he finished.




I am very grateful for this gift.  It was a pleasure to meet these people, and this sketch is a great reminder of the evening.  Art is everywhere, and sometimes comes to you unsolicited and with unimagined generosity.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

My Second Acquisition is also from a group show.

This piece, "Les Bon Moments a Rue Condorcet" by Yvonne Gayle-Butler, was purchased at a group show sponsored by the Young Communist League, I believe. My friend Robin Crutchfield had a few pieces in the show so I went to check it out.  While I enjoyed his work, this particular piece caught my eye.  The art on display was not for sale; it was just a way for people to get their work shown.  But I tracked down the artist and negotiated a price with her.  I have not been able to locate Yvonne Gayle-Butler in a quick internet search.





This piece consists of three sheets torn out of a sketchbook and assembled behind a paper mat which has some stray puffs of paint and the title of the piece written on it.  The three panels are also entitled on the mat.  In order of the three watercolors, left to right:  1. A robe hung on a doorway, backed by elaborate figurative wallpaper with the title  "Regard, regard, le voisin (?) regard encore."; 2. Slippers on an ornate rug, with the artist's knee and drawing hand with the title "A quatre heures avant crepuscule dans le salon avec l'air de paix."; and 3. Clothes drying (?) on a radiator with a box of toys (?) nearby with the title "La fenetre en le bord le voisir (?) regard par son gout".  

My translations are partial because the word "voisir" does not exist in any French language reference I have checked and the last word in the 3rd entry is illegible.  In order:  "Look, look, the ________ look again."  "A quarter hour before dusk in the peaceful living room." "By the window, the _________ looks at her _____."

While the draftsmanship is not great, there is a fair amount of attention to detail, particularly in rendering the wallpaper and the carpet.  The colors are muted except for the centerpiece, which is rendered more richly.  Besides the artist's signature on the mat, each page is also signed.

Why I like this piece:

The informality of the work, along with the slapdash way of composing the images into a triumvirate of domestic . . . something.  Maybe not bliss, but a sensibility almost as appealing and perhaps more engaged.  The robe hanging on the wall looks to me not as if rest is waiting to be had, but rather that rest has been put aside for the moment.  The second image of the artist actually at work is the centerpiece of the work and the centerpiece of the thought about being at home and working.  

In other words, three domestic and very serene still lifes.  The mundane becomes the subject of the artist's work. The third part is the clincher, as the haphazard arrangement of clothes and things waiting to be put away means there is other work to be done as well.  So the home is all things at once, where work is done and waiting to be done, but where "rest" at least resides, even if it's moment is temporarily gone.

What this piece reminds me of: 

I am reminded immediately of how impulsive I was then.  To track down the artist and arrange to buy a piece of art directly was not something I had ever done.  I don't know if the piece or my general compulsiveness about art drove me to it.  But I have never felt untouched when I look at the piece, so it must have been something more.  The site of the workhall on 23rd Street where the Young Communist League held the show has become a Gap store, if memory serves correctly (the northeast corner of 23rd and 8th Avenue).  

In the 80's artwork and the art world was more accessible, as I've mentioned previously. 

There were plenty of artists and many who worked in obscurity unless you made it to the type of unhyped and under-attended shows like this one.  I think I was one of about 3 people in the room on a Saturday afternoon.

And it reminds me of Robin, who remains a friend (or at least acquaintance) to this day.  We met at the gay clubs in the meat market district.  His bio is on the link, but I did not know he was an artist in his own right until we got to know one another better.  This show, which he was a part of, was not until 6 years or so later. 

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Dance, Photography and E-bay

This item was purchased on E-bay some time ago.  More about E-bay, and much more about photography, later.  This item charmed me.  It represents Ted Shawn, a modern dance pioneer, in what I would describe as an "ecstatic moment."  More can be found about him here and here.  On a personal note, we share a birthday.

  
Ted Shawn was the founder of Jacob's Pillow and was a major influence on Martha Graham.  He brought male sensuality into modern dance.






 


The image and the back of the postcard seem at odds with one another. I note that the box for the stamp on the correspondence side is not closed and the type within the box, especially the word "here" is off-register.  That indicates to me that this was not a professionally printed item. 


The image is clear, but also note the airbrushing or other modification made to highlight the upper body in the image.  I don't think the sky so conveniently follows the contours of the human body usually.  This image is based on a photograph taken ca. 1940, so I believe the whole object has been "antiqued" to make it look older.  As they say in the E-bay business, caveat emptor.  Happily, I bought it for the image, not because it looked antique.


Why I like this piece:

Again, the "ecstatic nature" represented in this pose is why I like it.  The "joie de vivre" that dance brings into one's life is what is really on show.  Of course, dance consists of all human emotion, as art does in general.  I think the modifications made to the image are appropriate.  Photography is as subject to amendment and occasional refinement as any painting still on the easel. 


What it reminds me of now:


I first encountered modern dance on the Dance in America series on PBS in the 1970's.  I was between universities and living with my parents, holding on to a job in a factory.  PBS showed Dance in America once a week.  It was there that I first saw Paul Taylor, Martha Graham, George Balanchine and Merce Cunningham performed.  I had no idea at the time that I would be moving to New York and have the opportunity to see these companies.  I didn't have any kind of network of friends that shared my interest in modern dance, and I didn't really know why I enjoyed what I was watching so much.  

Dance was a foreign language to everyone I knew and to me as well.  But I watched because the movement and the music spoke to a new way of expression, and I needed to know what that was.  The commentary before and after the performances helped to some extent, but without someone as a sounding board to understand or echo my thoughts on the subject, I simply absorbed as much as I could.  This period of my life could be understood as a "fallow" period, before beginning life again in New York city.

And once in New York, I found like-minded people who could answer the questions I had and who were instrumental in exposing me further to modern dance.  I was very lucky.  After a few years, I knew who Ted Shawn was.  Not so many years after that, there was this image on E-bay.



Monday, January 4, 2010

My First Acquisition

The first piece of art I ever purchased was in a group exhibition at a gallery in Soho whose name I have long since forgotten.  It was opening night and I attended with a close friend of mine.  The object in question is a mixed media piece entitled (I believe) Daphne's Hand.  The artist is Diane Karol who, I understand from a brief internet search, now teaches painting and mixed media at Queens College in New York.

I remember the evening fairly clearly for someone who perhaps had one too many glasses of the cheap wine.  My friend and I had already done a tour of the pieces on display, but this one caught my eye. On our second go round my friend was very quick to note my attraction to it and she dared me to buy it.  I'm not sure of her exact words, but something along the lines of "You know you like it.  Why not just take it home?"  And so I did.  (Although I had to go back and pick it up after the exhibit ended.)

It did make it through the first twelve years or so on the wall in my studio apartment.  When I moved in with a partner it was stored for quite a few years, and I have to say I didn't miss it much.  However, in my current apartment I discovered it in a box that had been moved and then stored again. I took it out, and kept it standing at odd locations around the apartment.  I didn't really pay that much attention to it, and it went missing without my noticing.

Recently, cleaning behind a nightstand in the bedroom, I discovered it again. It had probably been laying there for a good six months or so. Though dusty, it was not much worse for the wear, and now it is the first listing in this blog.  Here are the pictures:




 



It is composed of a cloth work glove which has laurel (?) leaves sewn into the material to form fingernails.  The nails are painted red and green.  The wrist is filled with material and that is where the signature appears.  There is quite a bit of dust which has worked its way into the glove material, but the nails are still glossy.

Why I like this piece:

The piece references mythology directly:  Apollo falls in love with Daphne, but she rejects him and in order to put off his advances asks the gods to change her to something he cannot love.  The gods grant her wish and she is transformed into a laurel tree.  Apollo adopts a wreath of laurel as his crown.

When I saw the piece in the gallery it stood out because it was an object as opposed to a painting or drawing.  Thought and effort had gone into it, and yet it seemed effortless in concept: simple and appealing.

Although it appears graceless and drab now, the concept still carries through for me and I have no intention of parting with it.  If Diane Karol ever reads this post, then she may have it if she plans to do a career retrospective at some point.

What it reminds me of now:

The whole episode in the gallery, the opening, etc., was part of life in those days.  Galleries still have openings, but I don't attend them.  And Soho is no longer the center of the art world.  Williamsburg is arguably the center for new artists, and Chelsea has all of the established galleries with their A-list artists.  Soho is more or less a shopping mall for the rich.  More modest stores like Broadway Panhandler have decamped.  To my mind Soho was a more accessible art market in many ways.  Chelsea today is not much different in terms of accessibility, but there's no direct subway line to the heart of the district.

I would spend hours wandering Soho and checking for new shows by favorite photographers and/or visiting galleries that had consistently interesting artists.  Leo Castelli comes to mind, and the other galleries in that building.  I discovered Larry Clark there, and the Photography Book store always had great deals on books, since I couldn't afford the prints themselves in most cases.