Better Late Than Never

It really isn't an exaggeration to say that I waited most of my life to see "Ruckus Manhattan," a papier-mâché vision of my adopted home created in the mid-70s not long after I moved here.  People waited in line for hours at the Marlborough Gallery, where it was first exhibited, to get a peek.  Now, thanks to the Brooklyn Museum, you can see parts of it until the end of June.  Go, go, GO! 

It took a village of talented people, led by Red Grooms and Mimi Gross, to build.  To give you an idea of the artistic crew's sense of fun, the Statue of Liberty--not on view--wore red platform heels!

But the inclusion of  a "42nd Street Porno Bookstore" took me by surprise. Then again, "dirty" bookstores were commonplace before the internet made them obsolete.  I'll never forget a little known fact I learned while working at the New York Public Library:  staff collected random porn from these stores on an annual basis for inclusion in the reference collection.  You just had to knew where to look in the card catalog to access them!

The Ruckus Construction Crew captured something a little different:  the creepy vibe inside.  

There's even a "live performance" room, brilliantly depicted by Madonna  in her video for "Open Your Heart" a decade later, before Mayor Giuliani and Disney cleaned up "the Deuce," also the name of an extraordinarily realistic HBO Show.

Porn shop proprietors could not have cared less about what turned you on. And this is one of the tamer publications on view!

The museum also provides easy access to another artistic phenomenon I missed in an earlier incarnation.  Again, massive popularity made it almost impossible to see "The Clock" a 24-hour montage of classic film and television clips stitched together by Christian Marclay when it premiered at MoMA in 2012.  But I was nearly alone in the "Doors" gallery while marveling at its humor, repetition and ingenuity.  You can be in and out in less than 60 minutes, too.

See the works of certain favorite artists often enough and they come to seem like old friends.

"Untitled (Fang Sculpture, Crow, and Fruit)" by Beauford Delaney (1945)

Houdon Paul-Louis by Kehinde Wiley (2011)

"Early Works #25: Self-Portrait" by Faith Ringgold (1965)

Although Alice Neel painted Henry Geldzahler, the curator of contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she despised him.  Which makes you wonder how she felt about this guy, who headed up the Brooklyn Museum's department of painting and sculpture from 1936 to 1952.

John I. H. Baur (1974)

A signed, limited edition print by this artist hangs above my bed at 47 Pianos.

"Striped Shirt" by Milton Avery (1932)

Isn't it about time some institution curated a Paul Cadmus retrospective?

Paul Cadmus by Luigi Lucioni (1928)

You've got to wonder if homoerotic works like this one were stored in closets until the public became more tolerant of the gay gaze.

"The Sculptor" by John Koch (1964)

Newer acquisitions were on view as well in the superb reinstallation of the American Wing.

"Fool's Errand #3" by Jarvis Boyland (2021)

Untitled by Andrea Chung (2022)

No matter what the mileu, Larry Clark certainly knows how to photograph adolescent cockiness.

"Angel" (1980)

Don't miss the wondrous interior of Liza Lou's "Trailer," parked in the museum's lobby, a locale that likely would have elicited a "huh?" from its 1949 manufacturer.

It's a cozy man cave 

. . . furnished entirely in glass-beaded objects.