Death Is An Evergreen Buzzkill

Two thirds of the terrific triple header at the Morgan Library's free Friday nights left me feeling that this summer has been a lot like an extended Old Home Week at New York City's museums.

Hujar: Contact

Contact sheets seem like an odd focus for an exhibit--even with magnifying glasses provided--until you realize they represent Peter Hujar's long-shot analog attempt at achieving posterity.   

The 110 sheets on view represent less than two percent of those in the library's collection. Hujar found escape from a Dickensian childhood peering through a camera lens at the age of 13.  Three years later he left home, eventually falling in with an arty crowd that included Paul Thek who was about to make a big splash in the art world, something that never happened for Hujar.  Portraits in Life and Death, his shot at the big time, misfired in 1976 even though it, and Thek's most acclaimed works, shared the same macabre inspiration: Sicilian catacombs.

Paul Thek, Coral Gables, Florida (ca. 1956)

It isn't hard to see why Andy Warhol shot "Screen Tests" of the young lovers, adding both to a reel he called "The Thirteen Most Beautiful Boys," but the couple kept their distance from the Factory scene. Hujar, who had trained as a commercial photographer, took a master class from Richard Avedon, eventually developing a style that used shadow as evocatively as his teacher employed saturated light.

By 1967 Hujar decided he was done working for other people and established his own home studio on the Lower East Side.  He primarily focused on portrait photography.  Many members of the downtown queer community posed for him, including Jackie Curtis, then a Warhol "superstar" and later Ethyl Eichelberger, a performance artist who made a name for himself playing some of history's most famous women.  Some say Curtis annotated Hujar's contact sheet herself, aspirationally.

Jackie Curtis (ca 1971)

This year's Biennial also memorialized Eichelberger. I was around for the beginning of these artists' careers, and untimely ends.  So much loss among the creative New Yorkers of my generation and the one before me, not always HIV-related.

Ethyl Eichelberger as Lucretia Borgia (1982)

Hujar and another of his boyfriends, Jim Fouratt witnessed the Stonewall rebellion together. Although Hujar didn't document catch the event on film, Fouratt, an organizer who later co-founded Danceteria, engaged him to shoot the first recruiting poster for the Gay Liberation Front.  He's second from the right, and still alive.

Hujar often encouraged his subjects to turn his camera on him, believing it loosened them up for his own work.  Unlike Avedon and Robert Mapplethorpe--whom he disdained for his emphasis on the superficial--he wanted to dig deeper and reveal what made people tick.  

His portrait sessions often took place during conversations that could last hours.  Filmmaker Ira Sachs made a movie about one of them called Peter Hujar's Day based on a book by a close friend he had photographed.  Her tape recorder became the audio equivalent of his camera.  Lucky for us and him, too.  Nearly 40 years after his death in 1987, it introduced him to a generation more inclined to recognize his artistic integrity.

Linda Rosenkranz (mid-1960s)

Candy Darling, another Warhol "superstar" (and no fool when it came to self-presentation), summoned him to her room at Cabrini Hospital, where she was being treated for lymphoma. He captured her deathbed glamor as if she were a real Hollywood icon posing for George Hurrell. Death isn't always an evergreen buzzkill.

Candy Darling, Cabrini Health Care Center  (1973)

As this as this exhibit amply demonstrates, the perfect photo could be elusive when cameras didn't come with delete buttons   Yet the preservation of his contact sheets and negatives, which are held by the Peter Hujar Archive, comprehensively maps an artistic journey with all its detours, hits and misses. Ironically, as a result of his chosen medium, Hujar's reputation has now eclipsed Paul Thek's, so much of whose truly unique work was ephemeral.

John Waters (1975)

A more insouciant photo of John Waters made it into Portraits in Life and Death.

In 1969, Elektra Records hired Hujar to shoot Iggy Pop who was about to release his debut recording with The Stooges.  I would love to have been a fly on wall for that overexposed session which nevertheless captures the protopunk's feral appeal . . . and big basket.

Hujar found Marsha P. Johnson, a Stonewall participant, at the Christopher Street Pier on Easter Sunday in 1976.  For the most part, he was much better at photographing people in his studio than outdoors.  I could have been one of the less muscular guys on bikes, although the piers on the Upper West Side were my usual stomping grounds.

His soulful portraits of animals outdoors were another story, perhaps because he had lived on his Ukrainian grandparents' farm as a child.  

"Butch & Buster" (1978)

Pets often got the studio treatment.  

Bouche Walker (Reggie's Dog) (II) (1978)

In 1980, Hujar formed an intense bond with David Wojnarowicz, 20 years his junior, who became his sometime lover, collaborator and driver.  

David Wojnarowicz #1 (1981)

Together they explored the New York metropolitan area at the peak of its industrial decline, with dumps a favorite stopping point.  Neither lived long enough to experience the city's regeneration, although it's likely the smoking ban and gentrification of their neighborhood would have appalled them. 

Canal Street Pier, 1983

Hujar is better known today than he ever was during his lifetime. Nearly 30 years after his death from AIDS, one of his photos appeared on the cover of A Little Life, a novel which has sold more than 2.5 million copies worldwide. Would he have cared that his image signals pain instead of pleasure?

"Orgiastic Man" (1969)

Tarot! Renaissance Symbols, Modern Visions

Tarot cards, hand-made, began as a trick-taking game for well-to-do Italians during the Renaissance.  Woodblock printing brought tarot to the masses and spread it beyond Italy. Players could purchase DIY sheets like these, color them and apply more substantial backing before trying to trump their opponents.

"Rosenwald Tarot" by Unidentifed Artist (Florence, ca 1500)

Thanks to the French, they became associated with fortune-telling two centuries later.

"Tarot de Marseille" by Unidentified Artist (Avignon, ca 1760)

A British illustrator gave the deck of 78 cards the look that remains the most widely used by charlatans today.  Pamela Colman Smith also happens to be the cousin of the actor who brought Sherlock Holmes to the American stage.

"Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot Deck" (ca 1921-31)

That isn’t to say that there haven’t been many design variations since, some surrealist.

"Paracelsus: Mage of Knowledge-Lock"
by André Breton (1941)

Untitled by Leonora Carrington (1969)

Inert Residue by Jorge Camacho (1998)

Aleister Crowley, also known as the "wickedest man in the world" because he never hid either his drug use or bisexuality, created the "Thoth Tarot" (1938-43). Although I couldn't care less about the occult symbolism, Lady Frieda Harris's illustrations are compelling.

"The Magus"

Knight of Wands

Dorothy lannone brought her deck--by far my favorite--into the realm of everyday life and added an explicitly sexual element. Each of these colorful cards from her "(Ta)Rot Pack" (1968-69) definitely struck a chord.

Betye Saar, who died in July at the age of 99, called this mixed-media etching "House of Tarot."  You'd never know from looking at it that her oeuvre is best known for critiquing anti-Black racism.  Perhaps I'm being a bit sexist, but it seems to me from the number of women at the exhibit and the preponderance of female artists, tarot is more a girl thing.

 

(1966)

 

Friends Who Came to See Me: Drawings from John Ashbery’s Collection

Half a century after the fact, I'll admit that I bought Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, my first (and only) hardcover book of poetry, because I thought its author was sexy.  In the jacket photo, John Ashbery had a clone mustache; this picture was taken ten years before the hot poet won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for his breakout work.  Ashbery exuded serene confidence even then.

John Ashbery, Water Mill by John Jonas Gruen (1965)

Turns out he had an early affinity for surrealistic collage which became a kind of model for his poetry.  He made this one at Harvard.  If I'd understood Self-Portrait wasn't supposed to make narrative sense, perhaps I would have tried harder to finish it. Ogden Nash was more my speed, although I did once commit the first stanza of "The Love Song of J. Arthur Prufock" to memory while walking Smokey in the mornings, figuring that if Mom could quote Shakespeare, her son should have a similar parlor trick.

Late for School (1948)

Ashbery, also an esteemed art critic, ran with a pretty cool crowd.  Several very talented friends made him gifts of their drawings.

"My Love, My Love" by Niki de Saint Phalle (1968)

I particularly like this one.  Ashbery dubbed Red Grooms "the Canaletto of Canal Street" and extolled his talent for making art popular.  His references to painters make a lot more sense to me than they did in 1975.  I've now seen works by Canaletto in Dresden, Edinburgh and Venice.  

"Summer Still Life" (1978)

Untitled by Francesco Clemente (2007)

Philip Pearlstein was among those artists who sketched Ashbery.

1972

Ashbery's husband, David Kermani, donated some 25 works on paper to the Morgan after the poet's death in 2017.  Larry Rivers caught the couple, who lived together nearly 50 years in Chelsea and Hudson, New York, in graphite and colored pencil. 

"David & John" (1977)

As soon as I got back to 47 Pianos I took this photo of drawing given to me on my 40th birthday.  Ted drew flowers growing in a rusty pan on the deck of the Muller Cottage.  It still makes me very, very happy.

Drawing by Ted Dawson (1993)

My visit to the Morgan also made me wish I hadn't donated my first edition of Self-Portrait (now semi-valuable) to my branch library.  Given the title poem's early shoutout to Vasari--whose Renaissance man talents were my favorite discovery in northern Italy last fall--I might have tried it again.  Maybe I'll listen to Ashbery reading his mastepiece aloud instead.

As Parmigianino did it, the right hand 

Bigger than the head, thrust at the viewer 

And swerving easily away, as though to protect 

What it advertises. A few leaded panes, old beams, 

Fur, pleated muslin, a coral ring run together

In a movement supporting the face, which swims 

Toward and away like the hand

Except that it is in repose. It is what is 

Sequestered. Vasari says, "Francesco one day set himself 

To take his own portrait, looking at himself for that purpose

In a convex mirror, such as is used by barbers . . . 

Or maybe not.  I just checked out what Thom Gunn, another hot poet a couple of years younger than Ashbery, said about about his more successful rival's work in his collected letters:

Since you brought up John Ashbery, and since I passed a vague judgment on him in my last letter, I thought I would take him up again. I quickly put him down. Totally incomprehensible. And you don’t even feel like wanting to know what he means. (January 1970)

*  *  *  *  *

Just been reading Ashbery‘s latest book, April Galleons. Now I don’t suppose he ever has any difficulty in placing his poems in an order: even passages within poems could be changed around. But it is difficult to object to a poet who can write the line,“ Isn’t that your son‘s tibia in the pilaf?“ And the book does make me laugh a lot. (June 1989)

*  *  *  *  *

I’m looking out my window now and seeing the leaves being blown on the wind like pages from the calendar in a 1940s Hollywood movie – gee, do you think I could write a John Ashbery poem after all? (November 1989)

Haters gotta hate!  And if the two men were to be judged by the quality of their friends, Ashbery would win hands down again. 

Alice Does Another Wonderland

It's 1940.  Only movie theaters have screens.  You're an immigrant child on New York City's Lower East Side, sick with pneumonia and you're feeling lonely.  If you've been admitted to Gouverneur Hospital, you're in luck.  

Murals painted by Abram August Champanier for the Works Progress Administration as part of the New Deal have just been unveiled in your horseshoe-shaped ward, designed to deter the spread of germs.  A visitor has arrived from overseas and Fabzio, a toymaker wearing a hat made of letter blocks, will serve as her guide. Best of all, Alice has invited you to tag along.

"Come Alice!" said Fabzio "I'll show you another wonderland--New York." "Oh jolly.  We'd love to see it!"

Champanier's son has said the mural's storyline was inspired by an actual tourist:  the young girl after whom Lewis Carroll had modeled Alice in the 19th century visited New York as an octogenarian in the 20th, an event heralded by many of the of the city's multiple dailies.  

Everyone was in high spirits as they were headed to the open sea and a fishing trip for Marlin. They piled pel-mell onto the subway and squeezed into the crowded train.

Alice and her pals tour some of the city's iconic landmarks in a series of 16 panels, ten feet tall, appropriately enough.  Champanier himself had arrived at Ellis Island in 1905 as Abram Sherschewitz, a nine-year old Jewish boy from Poland (then part of Russia) with his parents. After settling in New Jersey they opened a convenience store that carried champagne and Frenchified a last name to sound as fancy as as the bubbly beverage. Imagination obviously ran in the family.

And so they hopped on a plane.  And heading down the East River, they came upon the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges and were spellbound by the wonder of it all.

Unfortunately, Gouverneur, which lost its accreditation in 1961, fell on hard times.  By 1978, the building had been abandoned but three years later a renegade group of art lovers without formal authorization retrieved the murals prior to demolition and eventually restored them. This one was so damaged it required re-recreation.

"It's a Whale!" cried the Queen.  "It's a Swordfish!" shouted the Mad Hatter.  "Umph." said Fabio.  "It's a sardine!"

The Empire State Building had scraped the sky for the first time just a decade earlier, although some of the kids no doubt already had seen King Kong climb it before their confinement at Gouverneur.

As the clouds dispersed, a skyscraper loomed out of the mists.  Far below lay the city, steeped in weird shadow.

"Out of my way!" shouted the Queen to Alice. "Gapuff" grunted the Mad Hatter. "What's all the noise?! Let's stop this scallywaggerpuffin' and enjoy Coney Island!" cried Fabzio.

After their rescue, exhibition of the murals was piecemeal until a mix of private and city funding made it possible to restore them to their full glory.  A temporary installation at the Museum of the City of New York enables visitors to experience them almost like the children at Gouverneur once did, minus the illness.

"Would you tell me please," said Alice, a little timidly," what is that figure down below?"  "That the Statue of Liberty and Bedlee's (sic) Island," said Fabzio.  "How lovely!" said Alice.

Lady Liberty had been destroyed, too.  The conservators chose not to "antique" their re-creations. The Red Queen sounds pretty orange if you catch my drift.

"Off with her head!" shouted the Queen, "then we can proceed with croquet!" "But," said the King, "there is hardly room for marbles."

Champanier's longest mural stretches 22 feet, depicting an animal concert that substitutes word play for notes (and accuracy: Haydn never composed a "Joy Symphony"). Robert Moses, also using W.P.A. funds, had renovated the location six years before. 

That night they met by at the Central Park Zoo.  One by one they bowed before the Queen.  The cat brought a fiddle, the canary a viola, the rabbit his bull fiddle, the Mad Hatter an accordion, the Dodo a banjo, the Robot a bass drum, the mule a saxophone, Bobo a trap drum, Toto his fife, Tojo the french horn and Koko a flute. When they were seated Fabzio picked up the baton and conducted Haydn's Joy Symphony to everyone's delight.  "Bravo!" howled the Queen.

Alice straddling Fortitude in front of the New York Public Library made me wonder if Champanier had sought permission from Lewis Carroll's estate to use what we now call his intellectual property.  According to AI, he didn't have to:  under British law, Carroll's copyright expired in 1907.

"Why is a lion like a mouse?" asked the Mad Hatter.  "Oh!" moaned the Mock Turtle. "Because it isn't a mouse!" laughed Alice.  The Lion roard and said:  "It is very rude to make personal remarks."

When Champanier painted the penultimate panel, the SS Normandie, a French ocean liner, was the fastest passenger ship afloat.  Two years after she sailed into the Gouverneur's children's ward, the U.S. Navy seized the ship, with the intention to transport troops. Instead, the newly renamed USS Lafayette caught fire and sank in the Hudson.

And there goes a sailboat headed across the bay.

The good ship NORMANDIE warped out of the dock by tugboats, gets under weigh (words missing).

A trim little yacht goes speeding past the pier.

"Bon Voyage" shouted Alice, Fabzio and the rest of the mad, gay party, and a safe Return. "

Look at that sailboat go spanking in the breeze.

After an eventful day the whole merry kit and kaboodle returned to their books.

Champanier seems to have sunk into obscurity, too.  Despite also creating murals for the 1939 New York World's Fair and the Breakers Palm Beach (neither are extant), and active participation in an artist's club that eventually became the Whitney Museum, he lacks a Wikipedia entry, perhaps because he left New York City and spent his later years raising a family and teaching upstate.  Hopefully, Alice's re-installation at Gouverneur will prompt a reconsideration of an immigrant who gave as good as he got.

 

Self-Portrait (1918)