Morrissey

Highlights of the 2022 Whitney Biennial: Matt Connors

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

There I was, wandering the 5th Floor of the Whitney Museum on my first visit to the 2022 Biennial edition, filled with my usual trepidation, when about 10 minutes in I discovered Matt Connors. I was immediately captivated.

Ahhh…That rarest of rare things: Great Painting on view in the Whitney Biennial. Six works by the amazing Matt Connors line one of two walls given to him on the 5th floor of the Whitney Biennial. After Scriabin (Red), 2020, Untitled, 2021, Body Forth, 2021, I / Fell / Off (After M.S.), 2021, Number Covered, 2021, Fourth Body Study, 2021, left to right.

He was generously given parts of 2 walls and I came away feeling that every one of his works displayed was strong. A feeling I only had one other time on the floor- that for the Paintings on view by Jane Dickson. Ms. Dickson has been working somewhat under the radar of many documenting a time and place in Paintings & Photographs, that no one else has- the Times Square area, before its Disneyfication (which makes it as loathed by locals today as the area was before. No small feat!). When I left, I stopped into the bookstore, as I usually do on my way out, and discovered this huge Matt Connors monograph with the cryptic title, GUI(L)D E. (Hmmmm…If the means the “L” is silent, it becomes GUID E.?) I looked through it to see if my intrigue would grow into more, and I couldn’t put it down. But I had to when they closed.

Body Forth, 2021, Oil and acrylic on canvas

That night, I did some research and discovered that Mr. Connors is not new by any means, but he’s not even in mid-career yet. In fact, his most recent show just closed days before the Biennial opened. Drat! I would have loved to have seen it.
Not only is he not new, he is, apparently, exceptionally prolific. GUI(L)D E is, apparently, part 2 of a retrospective of his work to date, following 2012’s A Bell Is Not A Cup, reprinted in 2016. GUI(L)D E covers his work since in almost 500 pages! His auction prices put him in the “established” category. 30 to 50 grand, or more, for his Paintings were the prices I saw. Even considering what I’m about to say next, my feeling is those prices are likely to hold for the time being. Being so prolific might work against him in this regard. Fewer, of anything, equals more expensive.

Though his work to date is abstract, these two works only hint at Matt Connors’s range. First Fixed, 2021, and How I Made Certain of My Paintings, 2021, left to right. I stood in front of How I Made for quite a while, getting increasingly drawn in to the composition’s unique geometry…

I have seen enough to call Matt Connors one of the “stars” of this Biennial. 

Let’s get lost. About to dig into my copy of Matt Connors GUI(L)D E, published by Karma in 2019, for the first time…

Not being able to get it, or his work off my mind, I went back to the Whitney just to buy GUI(L)D E the following night. After its 464 pages, plus the dozen works I saw the day before, my intrigue solidified into love, as in: “I love his work!” What? So fast? Why? First, I am extremely impressed with his color sense. In my view, Matt Connors is a true master of color. His choices are just gorgeous, rich, ripe, and work together brilliantly (not meant as a pun, but I’ll take it). Proof of this can be found in the Special Edition of GUI(L)D E, which comes with a Limited Edition print that seems to be based on his 2019 Painting Bird Through a Tunnel, or After Scriabin (Red), 2020 (seen in the first image in this piece) in any one of TWENTY-FOUR color ways! I’ve spent hours arguing with myself over which one I like best! Then, his compositions are unique and run the gamut from, apparently, completely free, perhaps improvised, to based on more representational scenarios. Then, there’s the way he manages, and reimagines, shapes. Fond of basic shapes, and multiples of them, “perfect” geometry is not always what he aims for, and that helps to leave his pieces fresh, in my view. His work continually surprises. At times I think he’s another Mondrian, on the next page another Matisse. All the while, he is as prolific as Jasper Johns, and as creative with paint as Paul Klee, as his work shape shifts from one to the next. Though some, many, all, or none, may be influences, he resolutely follows his own sense. In the end, that’s what I admire most, along with there being real variety in his strokes and mark making that is stunning.

Good luck(!) to those “isms” lovers trying to “box” Matt Connors! His work proves the folly in that. Why bother? Just sit back and enjoy looking for a change.

I / Fell / Off (after M.S.), 2021

Though he works in what most would call “abstraction,” his work strikes me as being accessible to virtually anyone. Accessible, perhaps. Understandable is another matter. His work is (almost) fiendishly inventive, leaving the viewer to ponder “what it all means,” while his color sense, which can be breathtaking, is going to seduce many an eye and surprise even those who think they’ve seen every palette an Artist ever invented.

One Wants to Insist Very Strongly, 2020

It’s nice to see Matt Connors, and Jane Dickson (along with what may still lie ahead on the 4th floor, yet unseen), like Jennifer Packer in the 2019 Biennial, holding the Painting flag high in these two Biennials, which have far too much video and installation work for my taste (not meant to disrespect these mediums or the Artists who work in them- I’m forever a Painting guy, who also has a passion for Modern & Contemporary Photography), and way too little Painting and Photography. Painting (especially Painting by Americans) has made a grand resurgence this century, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at the past few Biennials. You’d have to go up to the 8th floor to see the landmark Jennifer Packer: The Eye Isn’t Satisfied With Seeing (until April 17th) for living proof of that. And, hey wait- Isn’t Photography now the most popular medium in the world? WHY are there so few Photographers represented, again, at a time when virtually EVERYone is a Photographer? A good number of those I see are doing excellent, even ground-breaking, work.

First Fixed, 2021

A terrific, and large, Biennial could be mounted just from these overlooked American Painters and Photographers. Someone should do one! Message me if you want my suggestions.

As with Jennifer Packer, I’m sorry I missed the boat on Matt Connors’s work when I may have been able to afford it. Those days are likely gone forever. So, I will continue to explore & enjoy his work on the printed page, and just be happy I got a copy of GUI(L)D E before it went out of print and sells for $500.00 per, like the 2012 edition of A Bell Is Not A Cup does.

*-Soundtrack for this post is “Sister I’m a Poet,” by Morrissey from Beethoven Was Deaf and My Early Burglary Years.

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Jasper Johns: Contemporary Art Begins Here

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (except *)

Art in NYC, 2021, Part 1-

Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Or is it Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg? Who came first? Mr. Johns said, Mr. Rauschenberg “was the first person I knew who was a real artist (i.e. a working artist)1.” At the time, Jasper Johns was working at the Marlboro Bookstore.

Contemporary Art starts here. Jasper Johns seen in his Pearl Street studio in 1955, with two of the most important early works in Contemporary Art- the first Flag Painting, 1954-55, and Target with Four Faces, 1955. At the time, Robert Rauschenberg had an apartment/studio upstairs. *Photo by George Moffet from the MoMA Jasper Johns: A Retrospective catalog, p.125.

Still, it was Jasper Johns who came to acclaim first when in 1957, Leo Castelli visited his Pearl Street studio, seen above, saw his work and offered him a solo show the following January. The rest is history. In 1959, Time Magazine said-

“Jasper Johns, 29, is the brand-new darling of the art world’s bright, brittle avant-garde. A year ago he was practically unknown; since then he has had a sellout show in Manhattan, has exhibited in Paris and Milan, was the only American to win a painting prize at the Carnegie International, and has seen three of his paintings brought for Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art.” 2.

For my part, I was so taken with Robert Rauschenberg’s work that I was slow in getting to Jasper Johns. Over the years, his work has spoken to me more and more, to the point of shouting to me now. Messers Johns & Rauschenberg eventually became romantically involved only to have it end in 1961. At this point, almost 70 years since the Photo above was taken, all that really matters for the rest of us is that both have created two of the most important bodies of work of our time.

Happy Birthday, Jasper Johns! The Artist cutting an Ale Can Birthday Cake on his 90th birthday, May 15, 2020. *Unknown Photographer.

Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror is an early candidate for the show of the decade. With around 500 pieces, it’s so vast it’s split between two major museums simultaneously- the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Philadelphia Museum. Scheduled to coincide with the Artist’s 90th birthday on May 15, 2020, its opening was unfortunately delayed due to covid until September 29, 2021. Still, it’s a stellar 90th Birthday present. Having visited the Whitney half about 10 times, in my opinion, it ranks with the finest shows yet mounted in their new building- Frank Stella, Vida Americana, and Julie Mehretu. It’s brilliantly conceived & laid out and very thoughtfully & intelligently installed.

Roll up! It just so happens this bus, the M14, will take you to the show, among other places…

There have been some important, major, Jasper Johns shows to this point including the 1996 Jasper Johns: A Retrospective at MoMA, Jasper Johns: Something Resembling Truth, at the Royal Academy, London in 2017, and previous large shows at the Whitney & Philadelphia Museums. Yet, given the long-standing relationships Mr. Johns has had with both of those institutions, and the large holdings of his work they each have, I wonder if there will EVER be a more comprehensive look at the work & career of this now legendary Artist, especially with his involvement. As a result, Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror is something of a perfect storm in an imperfect time of a show. Though I have only seen the Whitney half (and the rest in the fine Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror catalog, the only place where you can see the entire show) , it still ranks among the great shows I’ve seen in the past decade including Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman & Designer and Kerry James Marshall: Mastry. Also, consider this- Imagine being the curator of the largest Jasper Johns show ever, then being told you only get to mount half of it in your institution! HOW do you divide an Artist’s career in half, and make it cohesive particularly to a discerning Art audience like NYC, while not shorting the equally discerning Philadelphia Art audience?– or vice versa?

Off and running. The exhibition’s lobby contains 39 Paintings, Drawings & Prints that range over his entire career arranged chronologically, and includes a number of very well-known works.

From the evidence I have right now, having seen the NYC half and the Mind/Mirror catalog , they’ve done an extraordinary job. Both halves are full of important pieces and rarely seen supporting works. The show is broken down into themes, which follow the chronological arc of the Artist’s career, which are then divided in half between the two locations and arranged into rooms by theme. Somehow, a visit to one doesn’t leave you with an overriding feeling of missing too much. Yes, if you have followed Mr. Johns career and you go to the Whitney you’ll find yourself looking for his first Flag, 1954-5, or Untitled, 1972, both of which are on view in Philly, but what IS here more than makes up for it. Time and again I found myself surprised that such and such a work WAS here. Not only that, more often than not, it is so thoughtfully displayed that there’s very likely supporting pieces nearby which shed completely new light on it. A good example of this is the wonderful gallery devoted to one of his most fascinating pieces, According to What?, 1964, which was surrounded with three walls of related work that reveal how much each detail in According to What? means to the Artist and how much thought and planning went into it. 

According to What?, 1964, Oil and objects on canvas. This is one of his works that can be seen as a “summing” up of where he was at that point, coming on the heels of Retrospectives at the Jewish Museum, NYC, and the Whitechapel Gallery, London (which would happen, again, after his MoMA Retrospective in 1996. It’s full of objects that he would reference in other works, which surround it in this gallery. It’s also a “tribute” to Marcel Duchamp, with a copy of his Self-Portrait hanging down on the left on the panel that is usually closed when this piece is seen.

Having said all of that, there is a somewhat basic conundrum to consider. Seeing ONE work by Jasper Johns leaves the exact same feeling as seeing, approximately, 250 in each half of this show, or all 500 for that matter: What’s going on? What is it “about?”

Installation view of parts of two of the surrounding and supporting walls. The series of Prints on the left isolate elements of the Painting, which brings the viewer back to study each in the larger work. There is another half of this gallery behind me.

Looking at a few or a few hundred begins to shed light. At the age of 24, in the fall 1954, Jasper Johns destroyed all of his work in his possession 3. He wiped the slate clean (something he would do again, non-destructively, after the MoMA Retrospective in 1996). Right from the earliest work he then created using “things the mind already knows,” he said of the flags, targets, numbers, etc. he featured resulted in pieces the viewing public immediately had a way “in to” at a time of densely personal Abstraction that often lacked one. He created multiple pieces with each object around the same time, then suddenly, one would return years, even decades, later. They became parts of his own language. Symbols. Stand ins. Of what? That’s up to Mr. Johns and each viewer to decide. Thus far, that’s kept viewers and the Art world busy for over 6 decades.

Three Flags, 1958, Encaustic on canvas.

“Jasper Johns is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker whose work is associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada and pop art.” Wikipedia.

There, in one sentence spotted on a search result page is why I avoid Wikipedia. Mr. Johns’s early work is the antithesis of Abstract Expressionism! He and Robert Rauschenberg set out to do their own thing in the face of the all-encompassing tide of AbEx that was at its zenith when they began. To this end, Mr. Rauschenberg even famously erased a Drawing by Willem de Kooning, one of the most prominent of the first wave of AbEx Painters. Jasper Johns’s stated creed was “When I could observe what others did, I tried to remove that from my work. My work became a constant negation of impulses.4” “I was anxious to clarify for myself and others what I was5.” As for “Neo-Dada,” he, like countless others, was influenced by Marcel Duchamp AFTER he saw his work in 1957 and then met him circa 1958-9. But, people “associated” his work with Duchamp’s beginning in 1957, when he had never seen it!

White Flag, 1955, Encaustic, oil, newsprint, and charcoal on canvas. His second and largest flag, on loan from The Met.

Yes, his post-1954 early work center around familiar objects that he has turned into Paintings or Sculpture, his “vocabulary” of elements “the mind already knows” famously include the American Flag, targets, numerals, words, ale cans, Savorin cans and string. yet I don’t see them as “pop,” and I don’t consider Mr. Johns (or Robert Rauschenberg or James Rosenquist for the matter), “pop” Artists, though I know some do. Flags, targets and numbers are not soup cans or Brillo boxes. (His Ale Can Sculpture resulted from a dare, so I read it somewhat tongue in cheek.) His Savorin can Sculpture and Prints are based on the can and brushes in his studio. The wall card makes the case that the Savorin can and paint brushes are “stand-ins” for the Artist. Again, not “pop.” This is interesting because his “object” based work of the 1950s allowed him to remain detached. “I don’t want my work to be an exposure of my feelings,” he said around 1977 6. Over time that has seemed to change, but looking for specifics gets tricky.

A gallery full of his Savorin can Sculpture, 1960, and Monotypes from the 1970s and 80s he made of the object on the 4 surrounding walls. He used a Savorin can as a paint brush holder in his studio. Not sure that makes it “pop.”

As you walk through the show you’ll see expressive passages in Paintings that are a hallmark of AbEx (as in According to What?), but rarely entire Paintings (there are a few), and these were done after the heyday of the first wave Abstract Expressionist Painters. These passages don’t define him or any of his work, in my view, especially given his early work stood diametrically opposed to theirs. It’s really one technique among the very many Mr. Johns uses. As time has gone on, Jasper Johns has shown more interest in Art history, and numerous Artists, like Picasso, Leonardo, Duchamp and Edvard Munch, have “appeared” in his work. As I mentioned in my piece on MoMA’s Cézanne Drawing show, which included a dozen works from Mr. Johns’s collection, he has amassed a world-class Art collection, demonstrating impeccable taste in his acquisitions, that is fascinating in its breadth. Whatever his initial influences were, from the beginning with Flag, 1954-55, Jasper Johns’s work has looked like no one else’s. In my view, that Wikipedia page should read- Jasper Johns’s work is associated with Japer Johns.

One of the most extraordinary works of the 1950s. Target with Four Faces, 1955, Encaustic on newspaper and cloth over canvas surrounded by four tinted-plaster faces in wood box with hinged front.

Another fascinating early work is Target with Four Faces, 1955, which contains 4 heads cut off at just below the eye. They all appear to be male. The piece has a door that can be lowered blocking the faces from view. And, there it was, on loan from MoMA, appropriately on the first wall in the first gallery. A shot over the bow of the Art world in 1955, and today. I came away believing that if Jasper Johns had never made another work after it, Target with Four Faces was enough to seal his stature.

Detail. I was told by a Whitney staffer that the heads were cast from four people in his studio. Note the hinged door above them, which when closed, gives the work an entirely different effect. Also notice the amount of work that went into placing the heads just so. Standing to the side reveals that the tip of the noses must be right up against that door when it’s closed.

Either way, they can’t see what is going on in front of them. Are they present while someone is being targeted, but unseeing? Or, are they the ones with the target on them? It’s easy to read things into them, including Mr. Johns’s fellow gay men being targets, or the public being blind to the “targeting” of others. What about the prominence of their noses, or their closed mouths? Or…..? It’ll say something else the next time I look at it.

One of my favorite elements of Jasper Johns’s early collages are when the underlying material, often newspapers, comes through- either intentionally or through age. In this marvelous very small Flag from 1965, Encaustic and collage on canvas, 7 3/4 by 11 1/4 inches, it’s hard to tell which is the case, particularly with the row of faces to the right. Included in a stunning gallery at the heart of the show of small works from throughout his career.

But, fortunately for the world, he has continued to create. For 68 more years, so far! His Flags raise similar wonder. Does that they were Painted by a gay man in the 1950s living in a country with harsh stereotypes against him and his kind enter into it? A yearning for a Flag that stood for all? For me, anyway, it’s hard to see either of these pieces and not wonder about these things. Of course, as you move through the show one thing becomes quickly apparent. In the Art of Jasper Johns virtually nothing is THAT simple. 

Untitled, 1992-5, Oil on canvas, 78 by 118 inches.

After these early “objects” and object based works, in the early 1960s, Mr. Johns’s work becomes something of a “non abstract form of abstraction,” as the late Kirk Varnedoe, curator of the MoMA Johns Retrospective called it7, where objects and symbols become elements and not the sole subject. Was this done to subvert attempts at “reading” his Art?

The Seasons, 1989-90, Acrylic over intaglio on paper. That figure is reputed to be the Artist’s. On the terrific installation of this show- While this might seem a small detail, I can’t recall ever being in a show where virtually NONE of the pieces suffered terribly from glare. Here, I’m standing directly in front of  The Seasons and there is no reflection. Oh, if only other museums (and galleries) would see what a huge difference it makes it might help persuade them to pay the considerable current cost for glare-free acrylic glazing on pieces with glazing.

In the 1960s his work turned to more private imagery and symbols as opposed to the well-known objects, like Flags and targets. In works like According to What? his use of them reaches a crescendo, and these continued for some years until he wiped the slate clean, again, and began his Cross-hatched period. Things seem to build to another crescendo, like The Seasons, above or Untitled, 1992-94, which led up to his MoMA Retrospective, which would change everything.

Catenary (I Call to the Grave), 1998, Encaustic on canvas with wood and string. After the MoMA Retrospective, Mr. Johns stripped his canvases bare and began to address aging and death in the Catenary series, which numbers 19 Paintings, of which this one never fails to stir me, 55 Drawings and 6 Prints.

The MoMA Retrospective in 1996 caused the Artist to take stock of where he was and led to him drastically changing course. He wiped the slate clean, again. By that time, his work had grown very complex, but now his work emptied. His focus turned to the eventuality of death. This resulted in his extraordinary Catenary series, 1998, and has continued to be (one of) the overriding themes of his work to this day. 

The remarkable Farley Breaks Down 2014, Ink and water-soluble encaustic on plastic. I was stunned when I first saw this in 2019. A work without precedent in Jasper Johns’ enormous output created at 84. The Whitney wisely acquired it.

In 2019 I happened in to Jasper Johns: Recent Paintings & Works on Paper at Matthew Marks Gallery and was frankly overwhelmed when I saw a series of works titled Farley Breaks Down. I’d never seen anything like them, typical of Jasper Johns, yes, but even in his long and productive career they stand alone. I wrote about the show here. Just prior to these there are works in ink and water-soluble encaustic on plastic, but with this subject, Mr. Johns has reached an entirely new level. In 1965, LIFE Magazine Photographer Larry Burrows created a series of Photographs following a helicopter crew, Yankee Papa 13, on a mission in the Vietnam War. During it, one crew member was killed and another wounded. The last Photograph in the series shows Cpl. Farley back at the base breaking down. A few years later Larry Burrows was killed in another of these helicopter missions. It is this image that Jasper Johns chose to interpret. Jasper Johns did 2 years in the Army during the Korean War based in South Carolina and Japan. Still, exactly why he chose to create this series of works in his 80s is up for conjecture.

Detail of “Farley.”

Is it coincidence that over the years, Mr. Johns has lost his entire circle of fellow Artists- Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, Morton Feldman and John Cage among them? The series is remarkable both for its incredible power and melancholy (which is not new to his work), as well as it’s stunningly beautiful flowing technique. It’s almost like these pieces are created with colored tears. Yet here, loss is the subject, and for the first time in his work, it’s presented almost nakedly.

A half gallery of dark works created after the breakup with Rauschenberg in 1961 (except for the work on the far left and the sculpture in the middle, including Liar, in the facing left corner.

There is also the pain of another kind of loss. The loss of romantic love. While I have no idea what Jasper Johns’s romantic life has been like, the second part of the first gallery is devoted to the searing works Mr. Johns created after his relationship with Robert Rauschenberg ended in 1961. The visual evidence is overwhelming that it had a devastating effect on him. After these, there is silence in his work where romance might be concerned. He shows deep affection for friends and those he admires, but there is never an expression of romantic love. This, also, is rare in Art8.

Recent Jasper Johns. Untitled, 2020, Intaglio on Magnani Insisioni paper. This piece was on view in both the Matthew Marks & Whitney shows.

As if the Whitney & Philadelphia Museums shows weren’t enough Jasper Johns there was also a remarkable show of his most recent work coinciding with the opening of JJ:M/M, Jasper Johns: New Works on Paper at Matthew Marks Gallery!

Untitled, 2021, Acrylic and graphic over etching on paper. Different, as ever, these works emphasized the cosmology theme which has appeared in some earlier works. The detail in these is both subtle and remarkable. The show consisted of a wall of these, facing a wall of Drawing based works like Untitled, 2020, above with stick figures.

Having seen upwards of 300 of his pieces between the two NYC shows two things stand out for me are- first, Mr. Johns incredible intellect. As you walk through the show you begin to notice that Jasper Johns does nothing- including speak, without very carefully considering what’s going to come out. At first glance some of his pieces look improvised, until you see a carefully crafted Drawing or other supporting pieces in which every detail has been carefully rendered, belying the careful consideration and the large amount of work that went into them. And this is continued over a seemingly endless body of work over 65 years of continually doing something different.

Diver, 1962-3, Charcoal, pastel and paint on two sheets of paper mounted on two adjoining canvas supports, 7 FEET 2 1/2 by 71 3/4 inches!

Second, I haven’t realized how much the anguish of loss is a central theme of his work. This includes the thought of facing one’s own aging and death. For such a private man who’s work is often so dense as to defy understanding, he has repeatedly found his own unique ways of expressing it powerfully. Though each section (of both the NYC & Philly halves ) of Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror is titled, loss and death are not among them. They are the unstated central themes of a good deal of his work, which continues through his latest work shown at Matthew Marks this past fall.

In the final gallery, along side 4 pieces from the remarkable Farley Breaks Down series, is this Painting, similar to the pieces lining the west wall of the Matthew Marks show, like Untitled, 2021, shown above.

Slice, 2020, Oil on canvas. A close look at this large piece reveals amazing detail and depth, the background reminiscent of End Paper, 1976 and Céline, 1978.

As the wall card says, “…ungraspable…”

Picasso outlived, and outworked, all of the boxes his work was put in- the so-called “Blue Period,” the “Rose Period,” Cubism, etc., etc. He did this by simply being himself. His Art changed as he changed. Jasper Johns, who has outlived all his contemporaries, was, perhaps, the first Artist to be lumped into the “Contemporary Art” box in 1958. Still going strong at 91 in 2022 as the Art world is morphs into whatever is coming next, Mr. Johns career has been one long continuous model for Artists- “When I could observe what others did, I tried to remove that from my work,” which has led to 68+ years of fresh ideas that point the way to the future.

Flag Above White With Collage, 1955, Encaustic and collage on canvas. Mr. Johns has used encaustic (a mixture of hot wax and paint) continuously throughout his career, one of the very few to use it so frequently, if not the only one, among major Artists. It is used in most of the works in the show.

It turns out that Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror is not the only great and important show currently up in the Whitney this fall/winter! Since I sub-titled this piece “Art in NYC, 2021, Part 1,” Part 2 will look at it.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “I Don’t Want to Be Your Shadow,” by the Psychedelic Furs, from Forever Now, 1982, or “My Life is a Succession of People Saying Goodbye,” by Morrissey from You Are The Quarry, Extended Edition.

BookMarks-

With a career spanning a whopping 68 years(!), and counting, among the longest in Art history, you’d expect there have been a LOT of books published on Jasper Johns, and you’re right. There are. I see books I”ve never seen before each time I look. The latest being a catalog for a show on Jasper Johns and Edvard Munch (the book with the orange spine, above)! Among them, a few that I’ve seen are particularly recommended-

Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror, Philadelphia Museum/Whitney Museum/Yale-  Though it’s close to 4 pounds, it’s wonderfully succinct and the best place to get an overview of Jasper Johns’s work over his amazingly long career up to 2020. The text accompanying each chronological section is also concise, remarkably distilling voluminous information down to a few pages, though I found the essays hit or miss. The book is the only way to see the whole show besides traveling to both museums (where it is only up until February 13, 2022). Highest recommendation for those seeking one Jasper Johns book with the most and broadest range of his Art in color.

Jasper Johns: A Retrospective, Museum of Modern Art- The catalog for the landmark Johns show in late, 1996 to early 1997 with a fine essay by curator Kirk Varnedoe, is a thorough look at his work up to 1996. In my opinion, it remains the finest reference on Jasper Johns due to its comprehensive 250 page Chronology and Plates section which goes up to the end of 1995. It’s also of ongoing importance in the history of the Artist when you consider that having this Retrospective had such an impact on the Artist that it caused his work to drastically change after and since. The immediate result was the extraordinary Catenary series, though all of his work since bear the hallmarks of that change. Here is a terrific record of his work up to that point that includes many illustrations. A model exhibition catalog that Mr. Johns designed the endpapers for. Essential for the Jasper Johns fan.

Jasper Johns: Redo an Eye, Wildenstein- A 300+ page look at the work of Jasper Johns that provides a comprehensive look at the Artist’s Art over his entire career up to about 2018, and one of the few to cover his later work. Author Roberta Bernstein says she has spent much time with Mr. Johns over the past 50 years, in addition to focusing on studying his Art. As a result, the book provides numerous insights. The most comprehensive overview currently available, it’s also available as Volume 1 of the Jasper Johns: Catalogue Raisonné of Painting and Sculpture, listed further below. Includes many illustrations, though in smaller sizes then the MoMA Retrospective, above, or the Whitney book, which are meant to illuminate the text since it originally served as the introduction to the Catalogue Raisonné, which has the large size reproductions. Recommended for those who want to dive deeper into Jasper Johns.

Jasper Johns: Catenary, Matthew Marks Gallery- (The book with the blue spine in the bookshelf pic with the string appropriately hanging down from it.) Matthew Marks Gallery has shown the Artist for many years, and has often published very well done and beautiful catalogs for their shows. Each is worth seeking out. Among them, I’ll highlight two here. Published to accompany the show of the same name in 2005, this was the only opportunity to date to survey this exceptional body of 80 later works which was the result of the Artist’s reaction to the aforementioned MoMA Jasper Johns: A Retrospective. They center around aging and death, each of which is illustrated in color here. It includes a fine essay by Scott Rothkopf, the co-curator of Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror. It’s also beautifully published by Steidl. Out of print but not expensive.

Jasper Johns: Recent Paintings and Works on Paper, Matthew Marks Gallery- Published to accompany the unforgettable show of the same name in 2019, a NoteWorthy Show, which shows yet another new side of the Artist’s work. Featuring the extraordinary Farley Breaks Down series along with a number of other compelling recent works, with over 60 illustrated here. I was stunned when I saw the Farley pieces. They seemed to be without precedent- both in Johns’s work or that of any other. Both books are highly recommended to those interested in John later & current work.

For serious study & research, there is the Jasper Johns: Catalogue Raisonné of Painting and Sculpture, a 5 volume set that currently trade at big discounts from its $1,500.00 list price. I can’t help but wonder if this is because they are already out of date since Mr. Johns has continued to create prolifically since it was published. It only goes to 2014. Then there is the Jasper Johns Catalogue Raisonné of Drawing set published in 2018 and the Jasper Johns: Catalogue Raisonné of Monotypes, collecting his unique prints to about 2018 (like the Savorin can Prints seen above).

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 7 years, during which over 275 full-length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, you can donate to keep it going & ad-free below. Thank you!

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here.
Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them.
For “short takes” and additional pictures, follow @nighthawk_nyc on Instagram.

Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

 

  1. Jasper Johns: A Retrospective MoMA Catalog, p.124 ↩
  2.  “His Heart Belongs to Dada,” Time, May 4, 1959 ↩
  3. Jasper Johns, Mind/Matter, p.29 ↩
  4. Quoted in Michael Crichton, Jasper Johns, 1977 Whitney Catalog, p.27. Roberta Bernstein, Jasper Johns: Redo An Eye, p.20, says “While Johns respected many of the Abstract Expressionists, he was committed to establishing a new direction that embraced a more literal subject matter and engaged viewers in a way that was independent of the artist’s personality. ↩
  5. Roberta Bernstein, Jasper Johns: Redo An Eye, p.20 ↩
  6. Michael Crichton, Jasper Johns Whitney 1977 exhibition catalog,  p.20 ↩
  7. MoMA Retrospective Catalog, p.15 ↩
  8. Robert Rauschenberg is, coincidentally or not, another Artist who’s work appears not to reference his romantic life. ↩

Vida Americana: Revolutionizing American Art

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

The museums and galleries will reopen.

The revolution comes north. The first major work by one of Los Tres Grandes in the USA. José Clemente Orozco, Reproduction of Prometheus, 1930. Jackson Pollock made a trip to see it, then called it “The best painting in the contemporary world.” He  kept a picture of it on the wall in his studio throughout the 1930s1.

Exactly when that will be in NYC is unknown at moment. Near the end of the voluminous list of unfortunate and tragic occurrences resulting from the pandemic in NYC is that the Year in Art shows, 2020, had gotten off to an exceptionally strong start here. A number of very good and important shows were forced to close early in their run, meaning relatively few got to see them. Unfortunate, not tragic. I’ve already looked at the most NoteWorthy, as I’m fond of saying, gallery show I’ve seen thus far this year- Noah Davis at David Zwirner. The most NoteWorthy museum show I’ve seen in 2020 is the landmark Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925-1945 at the Whitney Museum, which opened on February 17th and “temporarily closed” on March 12th.

The entrance of Vida Americana (“American Life”), seen on March 11, 2020, the day before it “temporarily closed” for the coronavirus pandemic.

With over 200 works by 60 Artists, Vida Americana makes the heretofore overlooked case for the influence the Mexican Muralists, particularly Los Tres Grandes (“The Big Three”), Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, had on American Artists & American Art between 1925 to 1945. It does so convincingly in side by side installations and bringing to the fore little studied connections a number of major American Artists had with their Mexican counterparts. 10 years in its planning and 4 in creation, Vida Americana succeeds in making its case in resounding fashion with wonders seen now and likely never again according to the show’s curator, the inimitable Barbara Haskell, who’s been at the Whitney since 1975 2.

Times are hard everywhere as I write this as April, 2020 comes to a close. In researching Vida Americana, I was reminded that a little over 100 years ago, in 1918, the “deadliest pandemic in history” (according to John M. Barry’s book The Great Influenza) left 100 million people dead worldwide. A sobering thought at this moment.

Things can always be worse.

300,000 Mexicans died. Luckily, the three Artists at the center of Vida Americana, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, were not among them.

The first work in the show. Diego Rivera, Dance in Tehuantepec, 1928, Oil on canvas. Rightly famous for his incredible Murals, he was also a terrific easel Painter for his entire career, work that has yet to receive the attention on the level of his Murals. Are those some remnants of his passion for Cezanne, particularly in the clothes worn by the lead gentleman?

Though the decade-long Mexican Revolution ended 100 years ago in 1920, the final death toll may never be known. Today, estimates range between one million and three million, (not including that 300,000 who died in the 1918 pandemic). Diego Rivera spent the entirety of the Mexican Revolution studying in Europe on a grant from the governor of Veracruz to further his Art education. He precociously devoured the work of the great European Painters of the time, as can be seen in his easel Paintings that wonderfully echo El Greco and Cezanne, around 1913, and his adoption of Cubism, from 1914-18 or so. He knew Picasso and Georges Braque and was something of a competitor of theirs as he tried to make his own name, before finding his own style. In 1919, towards the end of his European period, Diego Rivera met David Alfaro Siqueiros, who was also in Europe on an Art scholarship. Vida Americana (American Life) takes its name from the sole issue of the journal Vida Americana that contained a manifesto of sorts written by Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

José Vasconcelos, date unknown. As minister of education, he commissioned Artists, including Los Tres Grandes, to Paint Murals. And so, he had a major influence on Mexican history, and unintentionally, American Art history,

Meanwhile, back in Mexico, after the Revolution ended in 1920,  a profound change swept across Mexican society. New president Alvaro Obregon’s government enacted progressive social reforms that empowered workers and farmers. This transformative project wasn’t so simple. “There was no shared culture. No sense of a Mexican national identity,” Barbara Haskell said3. “The Mexican Revolution led to the need for Art that depicted the history and everyday life of the people.” President Obregon appointed José Vasconcelos as director of the Universidad Nacional de Mexico (National University of Mexico). He reached out to Diego Rivera in Europe in hopes of recruiting him for the campaign to create a new national culture. Backed by a Mexican government stipend, Diego Rivera, took a trip to Italy to study the great Italian Renaissance frescoes during the winter of 1920 in Verona, Padua, Venice, Ravenna, Florence, and Rome, where he saw Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. After he was sworn in as Mexico’s minister of education in the fall of 1921, José Vasconcelos commissioned Artists, including Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, to create grand public Murals depicting the history and everyday life of the nation’s people, and “Los Tres Grandes” were born. They rose to the challenge, and in the process, reintroduced the Mural to Western Art.

Installation View. My mission? Get this shot without people in front of the Art, which includes two rarely seen works by Frida Kahlo.

Vida Americana is so big, with so many pieces drawing one’s attention, so many connections leaving much to study and ponder, in the one visit I was able to make I had to focus on, first, seeing it all, and second, on how the Mexican Muralists directly influenced Jackson Pollock and Philip Guston, two Americans who’s paths have long intrigued me.

One example of how extraordinarily this show was hung throughout. Jackson Pollock, Untitled, c1938-41, Oil on linen, 22 1/4 x 50 1/4 inches, David Alfaro Siqueiros, War, 1939, Nitrocellulose on composition board, 48 5/8 x 63 7/8 inches, Jackson Pollock, Composition with Flames, 1936, 26 1/2 x 21 1/2 inches, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Our Present Image, 1947, 87 3/8 x 68 11/16 inches, Pyroxylin on fiberglass, 87 3/8 x 68 11/16 inches, left to right.

Fast forwarding from 1920 to my own teen years, Jackson Pollock and Edward Hopper were the two Artists who planted stakes in my mind for modern American Art, after centuries of European domination that culminated at the time with the all-encompassing brilliance of Picasso. Of course, they had come on the backs of almost 200 years of earlier American Artists before my time, yet American Art seemed to be playing second fiddle the Europeans until the post-Second World War years. It was easy to get lost in the Americanism of Messers Pollock and Hopper and easy for me to relate to them particularly since both spent most of their career in NYC. Greenwich Village was home for Edward Hopper for about 50 years, and Jackson Pollock legendarily frequented the Cedar Tavern and other bars in the area, while living with his wife, Lee Krasner, in Springs, Long Island, where I indelibly visited his studio in 1999. In looking through his career, it was well-known that he came here to study at the Art Student’s League with Thomas Hart Benton. “He drove his kind of realism at me so hard I bounced right into non-objective painting,” Jackson Pollock later said reflecting on studying with Thomas Hart Benton4.

Jackson Pollock, Untitled, 1938-41. This “pre-drip” period fo the Artist’s work remains understudied and under-appreciated in my view. Whereas the journey Mark Rothko took from figuration to abstraction is interesting, Jackson Pollock’s is downright fascinating. Here, in this stunning work, the figures break up with such intense rigor and stunning color, it really does make you wonder where it was all going to lead. It also makes me wonder how many other Artists would have been content to continue Painting just like this, a very brief period in Jackson Pollock’s brief career.

After leaving Thomas Hart Benton, what always mystified me was how Jackson Pollock became “POLLOCK” to quote the title of the film made some years back- the Artist who burst on the scene, with a never before seen style that revolutionized what Painting could be in the late 1940s and early 1950s before his tragic death on August 11, 1956 at 44. I even wrote a piece with that title after the most recent MoMA Jackson Pollock show in 2016, Jackson Pollock: A Collection Survey 1934-54. Truth be told, looking back on it, though there were some clues in that show, I remained puzzled at how the Artist came up with his style, which has been called everything from “dripping,” to “splash and dash” to fill in your own, here. We know now that all of these terms sell Jackson Pollock’s formidable technique very short, as is demonstrated here.

“I simply paint the life that is going on at the present—what we are and what the world is at this moment. That is what modern art is.” José Clemente Orozco

Jackson Pollock, The Flame, 1934-38, Oil on canvas mounted on fiberboard, left, and José Clemente Orozco, The Fire, 1938, Oil on canvas, right. Seeing these works side by side was an eye-opening revelation for me.

José Clemente Orozco was the first of Los Tres Grandes to visit the USA in 1917-19, living in NYC and San Francisco. In 1930, he was commissioned by Pomona College in Claremont, California to paint a mural in the student cafeteria. Prometheus became the first true fresco ever painted in the USA.  Jackson Pollock made a special trip to see it. He called it, “The best painting in the contemporary world5,” and kept a picture of it on the wall in his studio throughout the 1930s. At the Whitney, there is a large, though reduced, reproduction of Prometheus (see the first picture in this piece), along with a few other, smaller, works by José Clemente Orozco that are hung next to early works by Jackson Pollock. HERE was the long-awaited first eureka moment in my quest for insights into Mr. Pollock’s work. The similarities in elements, even styles, between  them when seen side by side were beyond compelling. They were revelatory.

Jacob Lawrence, Selections from The Migration Series, 1940-1, Casein tempera on hardboard. On the wall card, it says, “Lawrence credited Orozco in particular with inspiring his ambition and his use of bold colors and architectonic forms.”

On an adjacent wall was an installation of selections of the work by Jacob Lawrence that seemed to take Mr. Siqueiros’ ideas in different and unique directions. I looked up to see if there was a now lit lightbulb hanging over my head. It wouldn’t be the last time.

David Alfaro Siqueiros, center, and Jackson Pollock, right, in Union Square, NYC, 1936, Archives of American Art/Smithsonian Institution Photo.

David Alfaro Siqueiros was the last to arrive in the USA. While each of Los Tres Grandes were on the cutting edge, if not the edge, socially and politically, he took it further. He believed that revolutionary ideas required revolutionary materials and techniques. In 1936 he established the Siqueiros Experimental Workshop in Union Square, a stone’s throw from where I sit writing this, which he referred to as a “Laboratory of Modern Techniques in Art.” Some 30 years later another Artist would explore “new materials and techniques” when Andy Warhol moved his Factory to Union Square. Among the students at the Siqueiros Experimental Workshop was Jackson Pollock, who was about 24, and who had been without a teacher since Thomas Hart Benton moved from New York to Missouri in 1935. “One anecdote recalls Siqueiros constructing something resembling a Lazy Susan, filling it with paint, and spinning it atop a horizontal canvas ”a predecessor to Pollock’s later drip technique6.”

David Alfaro Siqueiros, The Electric Forest, 1939, Nitrocellulose on cardboard, 28 x 35 inches, left, Jackson Pollock, Landscape with Steer, c.1936-7, Lithograph with airbrushed lacquered additions, 15 7/8 x 22 7/8 inches.  It’s interesting that while David Alfaro Siqueiros’s works are often political, Jackson Pollock’s don’t appear to be.

Later in the show, Gallery 11 is devoted to the Siqueiros Experimental Workshop. Here, a David Alfaro Siqueiros was hung next to a Jackson Pollock, and now I could feel the figure breaking down even more. Complete abstraction is not far away. The technique was getting wilder and more experimental. Now, it wasn’t that big a jump at all in my mind from works like Landscape with Steer to a work like his 20 foot long Mural, 1943, in a genre that itself would appear to be a nod to the influence of Los Tres Grandes. For me, this was the biggest takeaway among many, from Vida Americana. But, the joys of the show weren’t solely technical or historical.

Finally! The scene shown earlier, sans viewers. Frida Kahlo, Me and My Parrots, 1941, 32 5/16 x 24 3/4, left, Alfredo Ramos Martinez, Calla Lily Vendor, 1929, 45 13/16 x 36 inches, center, and Frida’s Two Women, 1928, 27 3/8 x 21 inches, right. All three are Oil on canvas.

Walking through the show, all three Artists are well represented, as are a number of other lesser-known Mexican Artists of the period. Frida Kahlo is not one of them. Perhaps as popular, if not more popular, than any other Artist represented in the show, her possible influence on American Artists from 1925-45 is curiously not touched on. Perhaps, it’s taken for granted that her example and influence have never stopped influencing Artists and the general public?

Out of focus shot of the installation showing the 2 Fridas, far right, facing 2 works by Diego Rivera.

Even not as well known is that it was an American who was Frida Kahlo’s first important collector. In 1938, when she was still an unknown in the US, the actor and Art collector Edward G. Robinson visited Diego Rivera in Mexico City. After selecting some works by Mr. Rivera, the Artist led him into Frida’s workspace. He bought 4 Paintings from her for $200.00, each(!), her first major sale7. To that point she had often given her work away. After Edward G’s purchases she said, “This way I am going to be free.” She didn’t have to ask Diego for money. This American had had a real influence on this great Mexican Artist. 

Frida is represented here by two beautiful examples of her work, including the stunning Self Portrait Me and My Parrots, 1941, beautifully installed facing two large works by the husband she married twice, Diego Rivera.

In looking at the work of Diego Rivera, it’s interesting to me that his figures seem to vary between the stereotyped and the specific and you’re likely to encounter either as you move from work to work of his. In both of these works, depicting specific people doesn’t seem to be his point. In many other works, including Man at the Crossroads, 1933, which he Painted for Rockefeller Centers, his inclusion of a portrait of Lenin, and his refusal to remove it, led to the work’s destruction. Elsewhere, he includes a number of his lovers, his wife, Frida Kahlo, and numerous other known persons, including Charlie Chaplin, and self-portraits.

Diego Rivera, Man Controller of the Universe, 1934, reproduction of the Mural at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City.

None of the three members of Los Tres Grandes were strangers to controversy, with, perhaps, Diego Rivera’s Man at the Crossroads, 1933, Rockefeller Center commission being the most legendary incident. Man at the Crossroads was produced in a revised version as Man Controller of the Universe or Man in the Time Machine, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts), Mexico City, in 1934. A stunning reproduction of it occupies the entire wall, and windows, that face the High Line, and is accompanied by a huge study.

In Gallery 3, titled “Siqueiros in Los Angeles,” another of the highlights for me were two loans of major works by the great Philip Guston.

Philip Guston, Bombardment, 1937-8, Oil on canvas, 42 inches.

Bombardment, 1937-8, one of the Artist’s masterpieces, from the Philadelphia Museum It’s as near to a “perfect Painting” as one can imagine, unique in Art history, and a work that deserves even more attention than it already has, if one can say that about a masterpiece. Securing the loan of it for this show was a major coup. My look at Philip Guston: Painter at Hauser & Wirth a few years back proved a bit controversial, but I make no bones of my admiration for his work before and after his “abstract period,” which I have continued to try find a way in to. It’s gotten easier. But here, in Bombardment, we have a work that is a one of a kind. A rare modern circular Painting (harkening back to the Tondo in the Renaissance, one of Philip Guston’s favorite periods of Art) in which motion, energy, death and destruction find no resting place in a brilliantly orchestrated “explosion” of paint. A work like this would be impossible in a Photograph. It’s also hard for me to look at and not think of Picasso’s Guernica, a mural, also from 1937, and both inspired by the Spanish Civil War, though they couldn’t be more stylistically different. Stylistically, it does make one think about the possible influence of David Alfaro Siqueiros, who Philip Guston had served as an assistant for. Looking at it closely, though it’s “only” 42 inches in diameter it feels a bit like a mural, not unlike another major work by the Artist nearby. 

Philip Guston, Reuben Kadish, Jules Langsner, Reproduction of The Inquisition also known as The Struggle Against Terrorism, 1934-5, Dimenseions and materials not stated.

Here was an amazing model for Philip Guston’s legendary early Mural collaboration with Reuben Kadish and Jules Langsner, The Inquisition also known as The Struggle Against Terrorism, 1934-5, something I never even knew existed. Murals on walls are not tranportable. Yet, throughout this show the curators continually find innovative ways of “bringing” them here and making them a part of the show- like this, and like Prometheus, shown up top, and the study for one of Diego Rivera’s “Portable Murals” for MoMA seen further below. Amazing. 

Detail. I would guesstimate this space is about 12-14 inches tall. The real one is over 1,000 square feet.

Philip Guston and Reuben Kadish were both about 23 when David Alfaro Siqueiros called them “the most promising young painters in either the US or Mexico.” He urged them to come to Mexico where he helped them secure a 1,000 square foot wall where they Painted The Inquisition also known as The Struggle Against Terrorism in the courtyard of the University of Michoacan, Morelia. Due to controversy over its depiction of the catholic church, the Mural was hidden from view for 40 years until it was accidentally discovered in 1973, yet it languished for a further 30 years until efforts began to restore it. Though very small, the model gives the viewer a sense of wonder that the Artists could envision the daring and monumental composition they created.

Thomas Hart Benton, Six Panels from American Historical Epic, 1920-28, Oil on canvas mounted on wood, varying sizes. Though panels, these terrific works were begun before Los Tres Grandes created their Murals, yet they share much in common, particularly its depiction of history. On the wall card it states, “Believing that art’s role was to tell the truth, Benton refused to sanitize history. Thus this mural cycle celebrates American history while also drawing attention its environmental and social injustices.” Exactly what we see in the work of the Mexican Muralists.

Diego Rivera, with his wife Frida Kahlo arrived in the US in November, 1930 to open a retrospective of his work in San Francisco, which was followed by one at the newly opened MoMA, NYC the following year. By that point, he was considered “the hero of the Western world, who embodies the spirit of the Mexican revolution8.” “His idea about creating a national epic (in his Murals) was something that would also be very influential on American artists,” Barbara Haskell added9.

Diego Rivera, Pneumatic Drilling, 1931-2, Charcoal on paper, 97 1/4 x 76 7/8 inches. Apparently a full size Drawing for one of the Portable Murals the Artist did for MoMA in 1931. About this work, MoMA said in 2012, “The day after Rivera arrived in New York City, the New York Herald Tribune reported on his plans to “paint the rhythm of American workers.” Rivera later identified this scene as depicting preparations for the construction of Rockefeller Center, which was still in its early stages when he arrived in New York10.” These are the kinds of scenes many American Muralists would do in their WPA FAP Projects, commencing a few years later.

The influence of the Mexican Muralists on the WPA Federal Art Project, 1935-43 is another revelation of Vida Americana. Reintroducing the Mural in Western Art brought it out of the church and into the realm of Public Art. At its peak in 1936, the Federal Art Project employed 5,000 Artists, possibly double that over the 8 years it existed, producing 2,566 Murals and more than 100,000 easel Paintings. It’s obvious, to me, that in looking at the Murals they produced many of them seem to follow in the footsteps of their Mexican counterparts, stylistically, and in their content, many of the Murals belied the influence of the Mexican Artists who’s works were steeped in history and the life of everyday people and workers.

Michael Lenson, Mining (Mural Study for Mount Hope, West Virginia Post Office), c. 1933-34, Tempera on wood, top, Xavier Gonzalez, Tung Oil Industry (Mural Study for Covington, Louisiana Post Office), 1939, Gouache, pen and ink, on pencil on paper mounted on cardboard.

Once you start looking for the influence of the Mexican Artists included in Vida Americana, particularly that of Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, you begin to find it turning up all over and in surprising places. Add to this the incalculable influence of Frida Kahlo, as an Artist, as a woman, and as an unconquerable human being, it turns out, as Vida Americana finally demonstrates, the influence of Mexican Art on American Artists from 1925-45 rivals that of any other.

March 11, 2020. A Whitney staff member speaks about “Siqueiros in Los Angeles.” It might be a while before we see this again.

It will be very interesting to see how the Whitney, and all the museums, handle their schedules, and the virus, when they reopen. Will shows that were up when they temporarily closed be extended? What will that do to their future exhibitions and loans? It all remains to be seen.

The curtains have been drawn. For how long? A view of the Hudson River from the fifth floor behind the show. The former Department of Sanitation complex directly across the West Side Highway, which I mentioned in my piece on the Whitney building, has now been dismantled in preparation of…? What will the future bring?

As I write this in early May, it looks like Vida Americana will reopen giving others a chance to see this landmark show, in my view, the first one mounted in the Whitney’s new building (Thus far, I’ve written about their new building, Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Stuart Davis, Grant Wood, Laura Poitras, the 2017 Whitney Biennial, and other smaller shows). In the meantime, having the chance to see it once has given me much to think about during this pause. While the world on the other side of the pandemic will be different, so too will be the way I henceforth look at 20th century American Art history.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “Mexico” by Morrissey from You Are The Quarry.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 6 years, during which over 250 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, you can donate to keep it going & ad-free below. Thank you!

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
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  1. Whitney Museum introductory video ↩
  2. Comments from Ms. Haskell in this piece are excerpted from her remarks at the Press Preview, unless otherwise noted. ↩
  3. Here. ↩
  4. Here ↩
  5. per Barbara Haskell ↩
  6. Here ↩
  7. Here. ↩
  8. Whitney Museum video ↩
  9. Here ↩
  10. Here. ↩

What The Met Is Wearing To It’s Gala

“I would go out tonight
But I haven’t got a stitch to wear”*

Sorry. I care not one iota for “celebrities,” but I do care deeply about my second home, 1000 Fifth Avenue, NYC, aka The Metropolitan Museum of Art. So, while the rest of the world is ooohhhhinng and ahhhhhing over who’s wearing what (or not wearing what), I’m much more interested in what the building is “wearing” to tonite’s “Met Gala,” formally called the “Costume Institute Gala.” So? I thought I’d give you a look at it during the last moments the public was allowed in late Sunday, May 6th, as preparations for what is still widely called “the fashion event of the year” were winding up. The Met was closed today to allow for finishing touches…you know…nails and hair…

I don’t plan on covering this year’s Met Fashion Show, “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and The Catholic Imagination.” I’ll leave that to my friend, the incomparable Magda. But, wow, the signage sure strikes me as being “loaded.” Click any Photo for full size.

After 1,600 visits these past 15 years, I still get goose bumps when I turn the corner and see this in front of me. Oh, look! They finally built me an apartment out front! Yes, the satellite trucks were there 24 hours before “opening step off.”

The view of the world famous stairs under the tent.

The view in Gallery 300, just south of the Grand Staircase, (aka Byzantium South). Yes, the “real” outfits are being hidden, but I do love how carefully so many of them are draped. Well? It’s The Met.

Gallery 304- Medieval Europe, with the figures going all the way back into the next galleries.

Gallery 305- Medieval Sculpture Hall. The Met’s famous Christmas Tree is installed right in front of the Spanish Choir Screen. The figures go all the way back, almost to the Robert Lehman Collection.

Alexander McQueen, partially seen in Gallery 306- Medieval Treasury.

The American Wing Courtyard seems to be the focal point of the evening’s festivities.

The riser with the chairs is over what is now the American Wing Courtyard Cafe. Before that, it used to be a Sculpture Court. I spent countless hours Drawing here in the ever-changing light, with Central Park to the immediate right, often spending Friday nights, Saturday and Sunday here. The Sculpture has been moved to the center of the Courtyard, or upstairs in the remodeled American Wing.

Looking towards the center of the Courtyard from the American Wing.

Gallery 305 Medieval Sculpture Hall

Gallery 300 now closed.

Gallery 301- Late Roman

Exiting the building at closing heading north.

As always, watch out for the fashion police! Even the concrete blocks were protected with shrink-wrap.

I wonder how many Gala attendees will opt to head to “Bar & Grille,” instead.

*- Soundtrack for this Post is “This Charming Man,” by Morrissey and Johnny Marr from “The Smiths,” 1984.

“On The Fence, #19 . The Met Gala Edition”

This Post is dedicated to MQD and NSS.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free for over 7 years, during which over 275 full length pieces have been published!
I can no longer fund it myself. More on why here.
If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate to keep it online & ad-free below.
Thank you, Kenn.

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
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Chris Ware-“The World’s Smartest Cartoonist”

Chris Ware stands in front of the original Art for the covers of his new book, Monograph, at the opening for the show of the same title at Adam Baumgold Gallery on November 10, 2017. Click any Photo for full size.

Chris Ware has been universally respected among his fellow Cartoonists & Graphic Novelists for quite some time. At this point, it’s becoming relevant to consider his place among ALL his peers, including the all-time legends. Now, he has made that a much easier thing to assess with the release of his new book, Monograph, a gorgeous, and, (typically) meticulously well-done, Rizzoli mid-career autobiography and retrospective in one. But before anyone else can begin to assess his accomplishment through it, no less than Art Speigelman, one of those enduring masters of Cartons & Graphic Novels in that pantheon of legends, calls him “the World’s Smartest Cartoonist,” in his Introduction to it. After he, his wife, Francoise Mouly, the Art Editor of the New Yorker & an Independent Publisher, and Ira Glass have their say up top, the rest of it is so well done, I don’t think there’s a better case to be made for his accomplishment. Take that, future biographers/monographers! For the rest of us, no matter how closely you’ve followed Chris Ware, you’ll find known favorites alongside much that is previously unknown, including a surprising amount of detail about Mr. Ware’s life along the way.

“Good cartoon drawing is good design.” Charles M. Schulz, the creator of “Peanuts,” said in 1997. The published covers from the Drawings, above, for  Monograph, 2017. Front cover, right side, and back cover, left. Their “meaning?” Perhaps, that there’s a lot going on in that head…Inside (between the covers).

Speaking of what might be going on in that head, along the way, Monograph’s 280 pages also provides the best evidence that Chris Ware is a bit of a throw-back in his tastes in Art, Cartooning, Music & Architecture, a side that co-exists with, and informs, the visionary that is given to flights of fantasy, usually involving the past or the future, often without notice. They all coalesce in Art that, at times, could be mistaken at a distance for an Architect’s plans, as seen above.

An echo? Speaking of Architects, Frank Lloyd Wright, “Madison Civic Center (Monona Terrace)” Night View, 1955, Ink on paper presentation drawing. When I first saw Monograph, this drawing by Wright, recently on view at MoMA, came to mind. Chris Ware lives near the early Frank Lloyd Wright houses in the Chicago suburbs.

By now, none of this is news to anyone who has seen his work over what is already 30…Can it be? Yes, it is…30 years! What’s lesser known is that, personally, he’s also an enigma. I’m only 15 years in myself, yet, what I still have trouble getting used to is that along with all the things Chris Ware is, he is, on top of it all, endlessly self-effacing.

I don’t think it’s an act.

Take a look at his expressions and body language during his first national television appearance, November 13th, on one of the last episodes of Charlie Rose, which is, also, a good introduction to him. Note the 5:07 mark, for instance-

For the past 15 years he’s been telling me off and on that his original Art, which now sells for upwards of many thousands of dollars per in galleries, “is easily disposable.” First, he said it in 2002, after Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth came out. Just this past week, he said it again. Standing in the middle of the opening of his newest show at Adam Baumgold’s East 66th Street gallery. I had commented on the fact that he is his best and most astute collector, and asked if he was planning to open a museum. He replied by talking about disposing of it.

From left to right- Art for “Hold Still,” an iconic 2005 New Yorker cover, Art for the Acme Novelty Lunchbox, a page of Rusty Brown, subject of his next book, a very early “Jimmy Corrigan” page from Acme #1, two Self-Portraits, and a page that appeared in the New York Times Book Review in October, 2015, far right. Mr. Ware’s Original is titled “Why I O Comics.” I heard he wasn’t pleased that the Times published this with the heading “Why I Love Comics.” All of this Art is, or was, part of the collection of Chris Ware.

All I could do was shake my head and nervously smile when he said it, again, because he can’t be serious. CAN HE? Taking no chances, I did the only responsible thing I could. I told him to call me first. Then, I looked for “answers” in the show, and in Monograph, itself.

The museums will, also, come calling one of these days. I have no doubt of that. In my opinion, they should have, already. I’m referring to his work being in the permanent collection of MoMA, The Met and The Whitney, and the other big museums around the world. To be fair, the Whitney Museum did include Chris Ware in their 2002 Biennial, when he was the first cartoonist ever invited, and was given an entire gallery where about 48 works, by my count, were on view. They even commissioned him to create the poster for the show. He has, also, been included in important shows at other museums, at NYC’s Jewish Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, both in 2006, and elsewhere.

During this latest encounter, we stood in the midst of the opening for his newest show with Mr. Baumgold, for Monograph. The rooms were filled with original Drawings by Mr. Ware going back to the late 1980’s, when he was 20 or 21 years old, works that even his most avid readers have not seen, or probably even knew about.

“The Sunville Daily,” 1987, Ink and red pencil on paper. By Chris Ware at about age 20. Looking very closely, you’ll find elements of his later work, but, overall, this is shockingly different from everything that came after.

The fact that he’s kept a good number of his earliest work that those long time readers have never seen, proves that he attaches at least some value to them, himself, and I have a hard time believing it’s only sentimental. Chris Ware has a professor’s level knowledge of the history of cartooning (as seen here), as well as an acute awareness of its current state, witness the expert (yes, expert) contributions he’s made to books on George Herriman and Daniel Clowes, as well as the astute quotes bearing his name that appear on many new and notable graphic novels, including being front and center on the front cover of, perhaps, the most auspicious debut of 2017, Emil Ferris’ “My Favorite Thing Is Monsters,” which I wrote about here. Of course that eye is applied first, foremost, and probably, most critically, to his own work.

Athletically challenged. “Gym Class,” 1987, Ink and red pencil on paper, depicts some of the dread, and possibly, the bullying, he dealt with in school. One of the earliest works in “Monograph,” elements of his now “classic” graphic style appear, and are already confidently rendered. A key point in Chris Ware finding his direction. (That’s a reflection from across the gallery above the center character’s head. Sorry.)

Mr. Ware came to fame with the release of his first full length book, the graphic novel, Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid Alive, in 2000. It won the Guardian First Book Award in 2001, an award that considers not only graphic novels, but ALL books released during the year. The glowing reviews served to highlight the fact that there had, literally, been nothing like it to that point. The graphic novel had seen its first big breakthrough in underground and non-superhero comics, perhaps, since Art Spiegleman’s Maus, the Pulizer Prize winner in 1992. Seven years in the making, it’s possible to watch his style solidify over its 380 unnumbered pages. Almost as soon as it was released, Chris Ware’s name had been made. When I first saw it, I knew from the one of a kind dust jacket that opened out into an amazingly intricate double sided poster that here was a truly unique book. 16 years later? A well worn copy is still near to hand. It’s a book that doesn’t reveal all its secrets in one reading. Every time I pick it up I still find new things, new threads, I’d previously missed. I’m not alone. “Jimmy Corrigan” has given rise to a continuing stream of critical examination, theorizing, analysis and speculation.

The original cover Drawing for the front of the remarkable folded book jacket/double sided poster for Jimmy Corrigan as seen in Monograph.

“Reading him, I always have the feeling that the pages aren’t big enough for everything he’s trying to squeeze into those orderly rectangular panels.” Ira Glass, Monograph Preface.

A flat of the whole, double sided cover, in color. The Drawing reproduced above is the left half of this image. Little discussed (perhaps because it’s the back of the cover/poster), the right half contains the story of Jimmy’s ancestors, including his African-American ancestors (one seen being sold as a slave), which were unknown to him. Some see commentary on the “imperialistic” nature of American colonization and the idealism of the “American dream” in the story of Jimmy’s ancestors as well.

Jimmy Corrigan turned out to be semi-autobiographical. In it, Jimmy gets a letter and phone call out of the blue from the father he’s never met suggesting they meet over Thanksgiving. Before going, he tries to imagine him and what impact knowing him would have on his life. When he finally meets him, he discovers he’s nothing like he imagined him to be. He also meets his dad’s adopted African-American daugther, Amy, who Jimmy had no knowledge of.

Some time after it was published we learned that Chris Ware, himself, never knew his father growing up, until finally meeting him, once, mid-way through writing Jimmy Corrigan. Sadly, the elder Mr. Ware passed away shortly before the book was finished, without ever having seen his son’s close-to- home masterpiece. Later, Chris Ware said that “I didn’t spend that much time with him. I added it all up once…I knew my father for just about five hours1.” That’s about as long as it takes to read it, something that is on my mind when I re-read it now, which I prefer to do in a single sitting to really feel that length of time pass. Through the mastery of his creativity, and the unique ways the characters are depicted, the work becomes more than a story, “more,” even, than Art. It’s also a record of the moment to moment thoughts, hopes and dreams of 4 generations of the Corrigans, and their reactions to events as their lives unfold before our eyes, across time. Reactions that most often include little, even no, inter-action. Almost every character in it is, mostly, cut off from every one else. In that sense, it’s also a classic of isolation, a meditation on its eternal nature (across generations)- Every character in Jimmy Corrigan suffers from extreme isolation and loneliness. Unlike the hard-core lonely, who have given up on the human race, every character longs for it to end. At least in Chris Ware’s work, life always happens in spectacular rendering, in color that speaks its own language, and with gorgeous, ever-surprising design.

Back at the show, increasingly sought after, only one Jimmy Corrigan original page, (from the Acme Novelty Library #1, which predates the book), was on display, but it was a good one, that succinctly sums up what I said about the book, itself.

“Jimmy Corrigan, Calling Mom,” Acme #1, 1993, Ink and blue pencil on paper. This page, from the first year he drew Jimmy  didn’t make it into the final “Jimmy Corrigan” book, though it captures much of the poignancy of it.

While Chris Ware is well-known as an admirer of the great George Herriman and his “Krazy Kat” strip, having done the cover art for the 13 volume reissue of what many, including he, consider the greatest comic strip of all time, his influence lives on in Mr. Ware’s own ground-breaking graphic design, which builds on “Krazy Kat’s” Sunday full pages, that Mr. Herriman treated freely, like a blank canvas, when it came to laying out his stories. Over the past 30 years, it’s been taken to the point that it has become one of his trademarks. Along with George Herriman, Charles Schulz and his “Peanuts” cartoon strip that ran for 50 years are another major influence on Chris Ware. “Charles Schulz is the only writer I’ve continually read through childhood and into college2.” Charlie Brown, who Mr. Ware calls “the first sympathetic cartoon character3,” is the predecessor of Jimmy Corrigan. Interestingly, the final Peanuts strip ran on February 13, 2000. After serializing the story in the early 1990’s, the first edition of the completed and collected Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth was published on September 12, 2000.

Learning at the elbow of the master. Chris Ware included this self-portrait in his “Tribute” to Peanuts after their final strip in 2000,  ending by paraphrasing Mr. Schulz final panel- “How could I ever forget them?” The complete strip is reproduced in Monograph.

In the years before and after Jimmy Corrigan, Mr. Ware developed a whole slew of characters, that appear sporadically, only some of them “human.” They range from “Quimby the Mouse,” and “Branford the Bee” to “Rusty Brown,” and “Rocket Sam.” But, in the end? It seems to me whatever lifeforms they are doesn’t matter a bit. It only serves to make them seem “uncannily human” to the reader.

“Quimbies the Mouse,” 1990, Ink and red pencil on paper. Later, he would lose the “siamese” aspect and it would just be “Quimby the Mouse.”

These appeared in the (shorter) installments of the Acme Novelty Library, released sporadically over the years. Mr. Ware’s full length books take him so long to create we’re lucky to get one per decade. There must be something in the water in the Chicago burbs because Monograph is second for this decade. And? At the show, he was speaking about ANOTHER book, to be released in 2018, “Rusty Brown, Part 1.” And though Zadie Smith commented “There’s no writer alive I love more than Chris. Ware. The only problem is it takes him ten years to draw these things and then I read them in a day and have to wait another ten years for the next one4.” it may take even Mr. Ware’s most devoted reader more than a day to work their way through Monograph 280 pages that are jam-packed with almost as many details as this image of the Milky Way.

Monograph’s surprises include this six page story including the red pencil underdrawing on paper he was using at the time. “I Guess, (from RAW Volume 2, No. 3, 1991),” 1990, Ink on mylar, red pencil on paper.

Over the years, Mr Ware has created books that range in size from miniatures to the gigantic, even one with a multitude of sizes (14) in one (the award winning Building Stories, 2012). Now? He has outdone himself. Weighing in at over 9 pounds and measuring 18 by 13 inches, it’s fitting that this mid-career Autobiographical Retrospective is large enough to mirror his achievement. In this case, Monograph needs to be this big. Trying to read the detail in something like the folded book jacket for Jimmy Corrigan, above, would be neigh impossible in a smaller size.

Speaking of gigantic. “Sparky’s Sparky Is Best Comics and Stories (I Am a Sickness That Infects my Friends.),” 1991, Ink, red pencil on paper, 50 inches tall(!) by 30 wide.

As for what else Monograph contains, Mr. Ware’s work has appeared on 23 New Yorker Magazine covers, almost every one of which eschews his “intricate” graphic design (the most recent one, in September, 2017, I wrote about, here), while also holding the distinction of being the very first “cartoonist” to have his work serialized in the New York Times.

The devil is in the details. Chris Ware is, also, endlessly fascinated with stand alone characters, especially hand-made mechanical examples. “Quimby the Mouse,” was incarnated as a wooden toy a while back. Unfortunately, the manufacturer painted every one of his eyes wrong. So? Mr. Ware grabbed the 14 of them in the vitrine and correctly hand painted each eye. Shown with the original Art for their box cover.

After Jimmy he continued to release regular installments of his “Acme Novelty Library,” along with smaller books, including “Lint,” two volumes of excerpts from his sketchbooks, a “Quimby the Mouse” collection, forays into mechanical figures, products and toys, book covers for others and the Ragtime Ephemeralist, an “infrequently appearing” volume devoted to you guessed it- ephemera, and scholarly articles, related to Ragtime, edited, designed and published by Chris Ware. The latest issue, from 1995, totals 256 pages! In 2011, he even broke out of the medium of print, for the first time, digitally publishing “Touch Sensitive” an interactive story from Building Stories that is still available for free download on iOS, here. In 2015, he debuted an actual internet-only work, serializing “The Last Saturday” online, here, on The Guardian’s website. Though he wasn’t a fan of technology early on, as the digital forays “Touch Sensitive” and  “The Last Saturday” show, Chris Ware is a man with one foot in the past who is, surprisingly, open to selectively dipping a toe in the future, though he is an avowed lover of the print medium.

3 Views of a Secret. A rare Chris Ware Painting, bottom, the Drawing for its appearance on an Acme cover, and a version of the same piece, as a New Yorker cover mock up, all featuring Jimmy Corrigan- with, and without, Super-man.

The next milestone was Building Stories, which had been partially serialized in the New York Times, released in 2012 in a large box containing 14 publications of varying size and bindings. The order which the reader read it was up to them, thereby creating countless ways its tales could be told. Five years later, almost to the month, now comes Monograph. Its huge size is, no doubt, daunting to many. After seeing his original Art, I realized that Monograph mirrors the size of the illustration board Mr. Ware favors to draw his Art on. So, the book will provide an experience as close as is possible to seeing the actual original Art in person. As the ultimate Chris Ware (Auto)biography, it’s chocked full of historical Photos of Mr. Ware, his family, friends and associates, while its running commentary sheds new light on the path he and his Art has taken, an invaluable resource to those studying his Artistic development.

As we chatted this time, he drew two small self portraits in my copies of the Acme Novelty Datebook (his Sketchbooks), Vol 1 & 2. He seemed pleased to see them when I produced them for his signature, sketchbooks being near and dear to my heart (I made my own for many years). He mentioned that there would be a Volume 3! Later, I looked at the Drawings he did. Wow.

Sketch by Chris Ware in my copy of the Acme Novelty Date Book, Volume 1.

A bit reminiscent of this, which was on view in a corner across the room- Acme #4 (Sparky’s Best Comics and Stories) Cover, 1994, Ink and blue pencil on paper. What was I saying about all his characters acting “human?”

“The accolades he got he felt weren’t his, for some reason. He didn’t feel they were…deserved. And I think he didn’t feel particularly connected to the world.
He was appreciative and very, very loving about all of the good things that came his way but I think he was always mildly surprised.” Whoopi Goldberg on Charles Schulz 5

As with Charles Schulz, the creator of the most famous comic strip in history, I don’t know what lies at the heart of Mr. Ware’s self-effacement, but  I hope it won’t take another 30 years for him to accept the compliments his work receives. If he continues producing the kind of work he has over the past 30 years, then, he might not have any choice but to get used to people saying nice things about his work.

Back from the show, with this question on my mind, I began to re-read Jimmy Corrigan for the umpteenth time, this time in its paperback incarnation (which has a few significant differences from the hardcover), I happened upon this beauty on the lower right back cover.

A-ha! Chris Ware dumpster diving to SAVE copies of his work that have been discarded! Jimmy Corrigan, Paperback edition, back cover detail.

I get it! I FINALLY found the answer to his self-affacement. He WANTS me to throw out his work so he can save it and re-sell it!

They’re right. He IS smart! ; )

**********************************************************************
Collector’s Note- This is something I’ve yet to see anyone point out. While I suspect that many/most of Chris Ware’s fans already have Monograph, for those that don’t, I’ve discovered something that you might want to keep in mind.

There are TWO editions of Monograph.

When I discovered it, I called the publisher, Rizzoli, and even they didn’t know what the differences were! So, I took it on myself to find out. The “regular edition,” ISBN 978-0847860883, is the one most commonly available. However, there’s also the “Bookplate Edition,” ISBN 978-0847858125, which I’ve almost always seen selling for the same list price ($60.00) as the “regular” edition. However, it contains 2 major differences. First, it comes with a small double-sided “errata” sheet that is SIGNED by Chris Ware. Second, the “errata” sheet comes tucked inside of a folded reproduction of the original Drawing for his quite rare 2002 Whitney Biennial Poster, “The Whitney Prevaricator.”

Top of the inside of the inserted Reproduction of the Drawing for the Whitney Biennial Poster. If you collect Chris Ware, I recommend you get the “Bookplate Edition,” which is signed TWICE by Mr. Ware, and includes this.

On the top of the verso of this sheet is text noting that this is the “Fine Art Edition,(referred to as the “Bookplate Edition” in the trade) of Monograph, which Chris Ware has ALSO signed, and numbered out of an edition of 550. Buyer? Be Ware. (Sorry.)

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “In The Future When All’s Well,” by Morrissey from Ringleaders of the Tormentors. Another Artist who’s work is deemed “depressing” by some.

“On the Fence, #16, The Smartest Birdies…on this Fence…on April 1st…at 3pm” Edition.

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  1. http://edition.cnn.com/2000/books/news/10/03/chris.ware.qanda/index.html ↩
  2. https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6329/chris-ware-the-art-of-comics-no-2-chris-ware ↩
  3. http://classic.tcj.com/alternative/interview-with-chris-ware-part-1-of-2/ ↩
  4. Quoted on a sticker on the shrink-wrap for Monograph. ↩
  5. in “The Complete Peanuts, Volume 5 1959-1960, p.xi. ↩

Cancer Saved My Life

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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava.

I grew up in a pre-determined life.

An empty lot? No, this is the box I grew up in. Click any image for full size.

I existed to follow in my father’s footsteps. The problem was that I had absolutely no inclination, or desire to do so.  Right through high school graduation there was never one iota of thought or discussion given to thinking “he might want his own life” by my family. After I escaped, by going on the road with a band, my family actively worked against my efforts trying to force me to come back to their plan. I disowned them in 2005. Lots of lonely holiday seasons have followed. By then, the die had been cast. I wound up knee deep in a career I never wanted to be in just to survive.

I know how he feels.

Finally, I dug myself out and got back to having a career in music, which went very well, until I got fed up with the record business (back when there was a record business), but that’s a story unto itself. Then, in 2007, I was diagnosed with cancer. I got the news, the results of my biopsy done the previous week, over the phone while I was sitting in my office.

“How was your weekend?,” the doctor asked quite casually. “Good,” I said. “That’s the good news. The bad news is that you have cancer,” were his exact words.

Time stopped. The clock read a little after noon as I recall.

I could see the blurred shapes of my coworkers walking in front of the glass walls of my office who’s door was closed, but, after those words, that room symbolized how I felt. It felt like I was in this box surrounded by immediate circumstances- this diagnosis and my job. It felt like a room I’d never been in before. The world was going on outside of it, beyond the glass walls. I could see out the window across the hallway and see sunlight coming down the narrow street, shining on the windows on the other side, a few hundred feet distant.

I was in a different world now.

No stranger to spending a lot of time alone, I was now in a  world inside myself, more fully than I had ever been before.

After giving me my diagnosis on the phone, he said you really should come in to talk. “Yeah. I guess so,” I remembered saying. I was barely listening at this point. Disbelief is the first thing that hits you.

A few days later I went to meet with him, he sat down, and said to me “I had to show your slides to my colleagues. We’ve never this before.”

Huh?

What could possibly be worse? To get a diagnosis with cancer, THEN the doctor tells you “we’ve never seen this before.”

!?

Apparently all 15 of my biopsy cores came back with cancer. I asked “Are you sure those are my slides?” He said yes, and I don’t remember anything of the meeting after that. It was like a window shade rolled down over my mind after that, like it had been glazed over. I walked out of the hospital, in a daze and crossed insanely busy Park Avenue (which runs both ways) a few hundred feet north of 14th Street in the middle of the day without even looking to see if traffic was coming! Somehow I made it across to Union Square. To this day I have no idea how I got there. I walked back to work at 2 PM. My boss, Rob, who would become a good friend, and the only one I had told at work, came in and sat in my office, he looked at me and asked me if I was OK. I don’t remember responding, just sitting there in that space deep inside of myself still in shock.

Cancer? And? It’s bad?

I’ve never really been sick a day in my life. I’ve never had surgery. I’ve never spent the night in a hospital. There was no cancer in my family. I broke a bone in my hand once, I messed up my knee a little bit, I destroyed the hearing in my left ear playing in the band, and I destroyed my feet wearing rock ‘n’ roll shoes onstage made by the guys who made Kiss’s famous boots. That’s been the extent of my health issues in my life. To be diagnosed with cancer, and have to work your way through the biology, the medicine, the treatment options, the incredibly incomprehensible technology, and try to figure out, alone, what is the best treatment for you, is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

Shock was the first stage for me, and it was quite a while before I got over it. Looking back now, it was years before I got over the shock that yes, I have cancer. Growing up, cancer was a death sentence. One thing I learned that even then, in 2007, most people I eventually told, treated me like I was going to die.

I was alone as I’ve ever been. Why is there even a light on?

Given all my responsibility at work, I didn’t say a word to anyone else there about any of this. A few days later my boss, Rob, came in and announced he was leaving. ! What? Are you serious? He got a better offer. The owner of the company, who still didn’t know, wound up giving me his job. He was the CFO of the 3 corporations with offices in 3 states! He was making $150,000 more than I was making. I was the Controller, but I wasn’t a CPA, which he was. And? I didn’t get a raise.

I had to deal with researching treatment options, not to mention the strain of being newly diagnosed with cancer, while learning his job, at the end of the year with a financial closing period looming for three corporations. I don’t know how I got through all of that. I had two full-time jobs. Learning about cancer, looking for doctors, and researching treatment options, side effects and outcomes, was the other full time job.

Well? At least I didn’t have to worry about “celebrating” the holidays!

I did my due diligence, learned as much as I could, got four opinions, and then decided on the treatment. And then? Every cancer patient’s worst nightmare happened. I picked the WRONG treatment. I chose to have hormone therapy followed by two types of radiation treatment. That’s 3 treatments. Why? Because I just didn’t want to have surgery. People die during surgery.

So, at peace with my choice, that I had avoided surgery, I went back to the hospital to begin my treatment. The doctor who had diagnosed me and called to give me the news sat nearby holding the needle with the hormones in it about 2 inches from my left arm. He said, “You know you’re not going to have any libido for twice as long as you’re going to be on this, right?” The treatment was scheduled to take 2 years. So? That was four years. “Um, what? No. I didn’t know that.” I had asked the question during the original meeting, but didn’t ask the right follow up question. Uggh!

I stopped him. He, basically, saved my life right there.

I went home devastated. After all of this, all of these opinions, all of this research I had made a mistake!

The writing on the wall SCREAMING at me. These letter are about as big as the mistake I made.

This treatment plan was chosen for the WRONG reason- basically, for my comfort. Since it wasn’t surgery, it was in my comfort zone. Ok. So? Now what, Kenn? The cancer is still here.

I had no choice but to start over. Square one.

Going to back to the beginning, I had to face that the most basic fact was the one I wasn’t focused on COMPLETELY. And that is-

Cancer was trying to kill me. This was WAR.

I then asked myself a hard, fundamental and essential question- What do you want to accomplish through treatment? There was only one answer. Get ALL the cancer out of my body as quickly as possible, via the means with the longest track record of proven results. By that I mean long term survival rates free of cancer.

A woman reached out to me online to tell me about her husband’s story. He had been treated and it hadn’t gone well. He had bad side effects after, and both of their lives were now negatively impacted, every day, by them. Then, she said, “If I had to do it over again, I’d insist he go to Dr. Samadi.” Who? He’s a surgeon. Since my treatment choice had turned out to be WRONG, I decided to consider surgery even though, yes, “people die during surgery.”

Umm..? People die from cancer, too, Kenn! MANY more people.

You want your best chance of getting cancer out of your body and possibly beating this horrible disease? Surgery was my best choice. (Mine. Every diagnosis is different. I am not a doctor and I am certainly not giving medical advice here. What worked for me may not for someone else. There are side effects from any treatment, and they are just one factor that needs to be carefully considered.) I was still young enough that if surgery didn’t work I could have radiation treatment(s) after. In my case, I couldn’t do it the other way around. I posted on a cancer support website asking who other patients thought was the best surgeon in NYC. About 20 people responded in 24 hours. Dr. Samadi got 3 votes. No one else got more than 1. The next day Dr. Samadi, himself, contacted me through the website.

“Hello. With your diagnosis, I can treat you and your prognosis will be excellent.”

Huh? What “good” doctor is on the internet looking for patients?

I didn’t respond. My bias against using the internet for this returned. What was I thinking looking for a cancer doctor ONLINE? The road to help, and an answer, felt endless…cold, lonely. It was November, outside and the dead of winter in my soul.

Life lies dormant on The HighLine in February. The path stretches far out ahead into the cold night…

About this time my friend, Fluffy, told me to try Columbia Presbyterian. President Clinton had been treated there. So? Being as Dr. Samadi was there, and with these other recommendations, I decided to call his office.

No one returned my call. ?

I decided to finally write back to him and tell him I tried. He said, “I’m leaving on a trip tomorrow at 1:30pm. Just come to my office and I will get you in.” Without an appointment? Again, irregular. But? Ok. I did. He did. Opinion #5.

I was impressed with every thing about him. He told me he could give me a triple golden outcome (i.e. be free of cancer with neither of the two most serious side effects, i.e. incontinence, impotence). An expert in the (then) new robotic surgery, he also had had state of the art training, and experience, in the two other, time tested types of surgery. Should the robot somehow fail, he could switch to one of them without missing a beat and complete the operation. No other doctor I knew of in NYC could do that. He had treated many patients successfully (I would speak to some). He seemed to have every base covered. The robotic surgery seemed to promise minimal incisions leading to a quicker recovery. I left feeling I didn’t want anyone else to touch me. I realized later that that feeling of ultimate confidence is something you MUST have in a doctor you choose to treat you! I decided then and there to make an appointment to have Dr. Samadi operate on me. I had done a 360 on surgery. Let’s go! It was the third week of November. The earliest appointment was in March!

What? Let me get this straight-

He’s booked FOUR MONTHS in advance AND still took time to find me online and offer his help (to me)? Wow. Now? I was in awe. It felt like a hand had come out of the sky and plucked me out of the worst nightmare of my life. “Just get on the schedule and I will move you up,” he said, as my condition required quicker treatment.

He operated on me on February 7, 2007. 10 years ago today.

4 hours later, my eyes partially opened. The bottom half of my closed eyes revealed light. I slowly opened them more. There were trees, branches and sunlight. Where was I? It was early February. This wasn’t winter. This was spring. Around this narrow opening of light, it was all darkness. Just a narrow rectangle of light in the lower center.  It didn’t look like the famous “tunnel” near death experience survivors speak about. But, there was a center section of light surrounded by blackness.

Passing this doorway this week uncannily reminded me of “waking up” that day.

I laid there for over an hour and a half before anyone came over. I was in the recovery room. At least that’s where I was told I was. The light was from an open window about 100 feet across from me. I wasn’t sure I was alive.

To this day? Part of me feels like I died on that operating table on February 7, 2007.

In many ways, my life did end that day. As I realized that, I started thinking of my “new life” as having begun that day, too.

So, today? I’m 10 years old.

The part of my life that DID die from cancer? Ok…

I had no wife, no girlfriend, no family, no kids, no one I could see on a daily basis, there was almost no love in my life. Most of my friends took off after I got sick. The girl I had been seeing did me three days before my surgery, then I didn’t hear from her for four months. Until she sent me a card. A card? You live two blocks away from me. You’re the closest person I know in the whole world to where I live. I’m getting through my recovery alone, in a 4th floor walkup, with no one to help me. And, you send me a card?

She wasn’t the only one.

My “best friend” of seven years pulled up shop in New York and decided to move home to Indianapolis, Indiana. She went to see a friend of mine at a bar the night of my surgery when I was lying unconscious in the hospital. She told him she was leaving in the morning. He asked her, “Are you going to say goodbye to Kenn?” She said “Yes.” She never did. She left town and never even said goodbye to me. I was hoping and expecting she would help me over the next couple of weeks.

One of the first things cancer taught me was it made me realize that the two or three friends I had left were my real Friends (cap, mine, as I am wont to do in this Blog). Forget the online nonsense of what people call “friends.” How dare they use that word! I KNOW what a Friend is. I learned the hard way. When push comes to shove, When the stuff hits the fan, and all bets are off, like the soldiers talk about “in their foxholes,” you’re lucky if you have two or three people by your side. That was the first major lesson I learned.

The doctor who diagnosed me told me I had a 20% chance of making it through year 1 after treatment without needing additional treatment. Today, I celebrate TEN YEARS without addtional treatment!

But? Early on? I was sure I was a goner. That 20% quickly flipped in focus to 80% against.

I decided to sell everything I owned and make preparations for “the end.” I lived like I was going to die. My assistant at work forced me out of my job while I was laid up in bed, so I left my job of 10 years, and the career I never wanted, to focus on my recovery. After I did, I took stock of my life.

Almost everyone was gone. My career was gone. My former boss, now friend, Rob used to ask me, “What are you doing in this job? You’re a creative guy.” It hit me pretty hard. I didn’t have an answer for him, until life handed me the answer. My cancer was gone (at least until my next test). What am I going to do now?

I decided to take care of myself. Complete my recovery, and live being myself- 24/7. Crazy, right? Who does that? 10 years later, I haven’t looked back. (Yet.) It’s pretty scary, though. I can’t say I don’t worry about the future. Then again? Who doesn’t?

Yes, someone is sleeping in the doorway of this gallery.

So? Yes, a fair amount of the life I knew did die on February 7, 2007.

The second big thing cancer taught me was what REALLY MATTERS in life.

Are you ready?

I realized that ALL that matters in life is Loving and being Loved.

Read that again. I’ll wait.

That’s all. Period. End of sentence. Goodnight! Get home safely.

But, having no love in my life? Being a “get it done” kind of guy. I decided I could “get it done” and find love. I spent most of the next 5 years looking for love- E V E R Y W H E R E. What I re-learned was that “finding love” is impossible. Love isn’t something you can “find.” It just happens. Or? It just doesn’t happen. Finally? I decided to love myself. It was all I had left.

“The words of the prophet are written on the subway wall,” Paul Simon once sang. Or? A block away.

Besides? If you don’t love yourself, who will?

Of course I’ve been very lucky, and have so very much to be thankful for. I have been trying to practice mindful giving thanks from moment to moment. Having cancer, also, puts you in touch with the cancer community. I heard a lot of stories. Many terrible. Many inspiring. It’s miraculous, to me, that anyone survives cancer, given how it was when I was growing up. I’ve watched some dear people die from it. I’ve talked to quite a few people who didn’t have good outcomes- either from complications from their treatment, or from cancer returning and spreading. The cancer community is, also a wonder. Survivors like the author Musa Mayer, (who is “also” the great Philip Guston‘s daughter) have forged new paths in cancer advocacy and given hope and support to countless others in ways that didn’t exist when I was diagnosed.

I was privileged to be in the presence of Musa Mayer a few weeks ago as she spoke about her father’s, Philip Guston’s, work in the Nixon Drawings show @ Hauser & Wirth.

Beyond them, to say I’m grateful to the doctors who treated me and saved me 10 years ago is a huge understatement. Recently, I had the honor to meet another one who’s on the front lines right now, Dr. Melissa Pilewskie at Sloan Kettering Memorial Cancer Center. Listening to her, I couldn’t help but marvel at her inner strength, and those of my doctors. She told me that as a surgeon she has treated 2,000 patients in 5 years. That’s 400 a year. There’s only 365 days in a year! Ok, Dr. Pilewskie is obviously a world-class doctor, with an extraordinarily rare skill set. I couldn’t help but wonder…where does this young lady get the inner strength to deal with cancer patients all day every day? Let alone to deal with them so well. It was a humbling experience that reminded me of the debt I owe the doctors who treated me. On my 10 year anniversary, it was also an insight into how far cancer treatment has come in my lifetime, and continues to progress, and a reminder of how many very special people are in there fighting tooth and nail to treat, beat, and even cure cancer. This isn’t a “job” to them. It’s their mission.

THANK YOU! And, bless you all.

If you get diagnosed with cancer (PLEASE, no!), you now have a great chance of being treated, and then get to go on with your life. My advice to you is- Get the best doctor your insurance will cover and get treated. Go for your follow up tests, religiously. For everyone else who doesn’t have cancer? Catching cancer early really is your best chance to beat it. Don’t miss those checkups! That’s how mine was discovered, my life saved.

The big reveal from my experience with cancer is that cancer wound up forcing me to have the life I always wanted to have.

Finally.

No one lives forever. I was living my life like I was going to live to be 200, and everything I REALLY wanted to do, I would get to one day. Well? One day is N O W. That’s why I have this site. That’s why I spend my life going to see Art 6 days a week, taking photos and listening to music. I can’t wait for “one day” anymore. Damn the expense (which goes up every minute)! Damn the later impact on my life (he says now)!

If I don’t do this NOW? WHEN am I going to do it? I don’t know if any of this would’ve happened if I didn’t get cancer.

After I started to recover, I had some of those plastic bracelets made for my site before this one. I was writing about my daily experiences with cancer, in an effort to give others who were newly diagnosed some information through sharing my experiences, because at the time no one else was doing it. On them, I had three phrases engraved. One was

Get tested

The second was

Get treated

And finally-

LIVE YOUR LIFE!

They were there as a reminder to myself, a mantra, as much as what I’d learned.

Close, and seeing this this week was a coincidence, and a reminder.

Early on my friend and cancer survivor, Stephanie 2, told me that cancer “would change my life in ways I could not imagine.” She was right. My experience with cancer challenged me in more ways than any other. In the end? It challenged me to face myself. To love myself and to be myself, fully, no matter what.

I’m not grateful for cancer. I HATE cancer. It’s taken the lives of friends, acquaintances, and many I’ve admired from afar. It’s cost me parts of my body I really didn’t want to lose.

In the end, I’m more grateful for life (than what it cost me to have it). For the chance to change the course of my life, and finally live the life I always wanted to have.

Ok, so cancer didn’t really “save my life.” Doctor Chuey, Doctor Dinlenc and Doctor Samadi did. I used cancer as a wake up call to save myself after they did.

So?

Life, in February. The High Line, February, 2017.

I hope you’ll join me in celebrating my 10th Birthday.

If I’m actually still alive.

———-

With my undying thanks to those who saved me-

-Dr. David Samadi

-Dr. Caner Dinlenc

-Dr. John Chuey

-Helen Petrocelli, RN

-The staff of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital

To those who stood by me-

-Fluffy

-Rob

-Kevin- Thanks for the ride home

And, with my thanks, and admiration to fellow cancer survivors, patients, and a professional-

-Stephanie 2

-Dave (R.I.P)

-Kitty

-Mrs. Kitty

-Mrs. Fluffy

-Musa Mayer

-Sv

And,

-Dr. Melissa Pilewskie

I took all the photos appearing in this Post over the first six days of February, 2017, except the photo of Musa Mayer, on January 10, 2017.

*- The Soundtrack for this Post is “Accept Yourself,” by The Smiths (who you can watch perform it in 1983!, below), written by Morrissey & Johnny Marr. Morrissey was 23, or 24 when he wrote this. Astounding. Its lyrics just fit-

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free for over 8 years, during which 300 full length pieces have been published! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate to allow me to continue below. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art & Photography books, and Music from my collection! Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here. 

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

What I Learned Shopping For Clothes With Magda

This site is Free & Ad-Free! If you find this piece worthwhile, please donate via PayPal to support it & independent Art writing. You can also support it by buying Art & books! Details at the end. Thank you.

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- unless otherwise credited)

Those few who actually know me know that I’m pretty much obsessed with women’s fashion (on women), probably as much as I am with Art & Music. I spent a lot of my free time the past 10 years drawing my ideas for clothes and toyed with the idea of starting a line before coming to my senses about how much money it takes to do it right (thanks to my friend Maiya’s experience, who actually did it), and especially, how “stealable” fashion ideas are. It would totally suck to come up with something new and different that some people thought was good only to have the idea stolen by a big company and not have the resources to stop them. I figured I’d need 10 great ideas so I could keep them coming. I also came to believe that fashion should be one to one, as in one of a kind items, which is total financial suicide, unless you are a brilliant tailor, too. I finally decided that if I met the right girlfriend/muse, I might design for her. In the meantime, I’ve contented myself with sharing an opinion, or twelve, when asked.

May 12, 2016, Magda at the corner of West 14th and 9th, the northern boundary of the Meat Packing District, one of her faves, on a beautiful spring day.

So, there I was the other day with my friend, the Fashion Guru & Blogger extraordinaire, Magdalena, from prettycripple.com. Yes, Magda is disabled. She’s in a wheelchair. (I don’t think she knows that, though, so I won’t tell her if you don’t.) We decided to spend a gloriously sunny afternoon in the Meat Packing District, which I will refrain from giving my opinion about, and say that I VERY much miss what it was back in the 1990’s and before. Magda, who hadn’t been there in a while, wanted to see which of her old fave small boutiques were still in business. I was psyched to see what we’d find. Unfortunately, we soon discovered that many of her favorites were no more, and another one, Scoop, is joining them any day.

Sign O’ The Times. Back in the day, Hogs & Heifers was just one of countless bars and nightclubs in the Meat Packing District. There were so many great ones, I actually only went to H&H once or twice. Now long gone, its sign on the wall outside is just about the only vestige remaining of what this neighborhood once was- not all that long ago.

After grabbing brunch, we began perusing, and as she went through the racks we’d compare notes on what she liked. It started out normally enough. At Scoop she got a very nice, reversible hat, which immediately came in handy in the bright sun at a nice discount.

Wait. Sun? Me? Mr. Night Owl? I know. I told Magda I’d “get up early” for our 2:30pm get together.

Ok. She has an eye for a bargain that’s also practical and versatile. No news there. Finally, we wound up at a pop-up type stand a few blocks away. Then things got interesting.  To my eyes, the clothes were a bit over the top, so I didn’t look very closely. They were handmade, though, which is always nice to see, fashion should be one to one. Women are unique, right? Magda agrees. She certainly is.

So, she picked out a blue number and I thought it was over the top but doable. Then, she took things to another level and she lost me. She picked out this top/jacket, and I didn’t say a word.

 

 

I watched. If she had asked me, I’d have said, “No.” But, she was in a zone. She didn’t have to ask. Buying clothes is as much what you’re going to wear with something and I don’t know her whole, amazing wardrobe, only what I’ve seen her wear, and what she wears on her Blog. And, what she was wearing right then. There you see the final result.

She fell in love with it. I fought back my initial reaction and tried to see it through her eyes. This is where going to see a wide variety of Art, or listening to a wide range of Music pays off- you fight off your initial reactions and try to keep an open mind long enough so you can learn something about it. I can’t tell you how many times this has made a big difference for me. Many of my favorite Artists, Composers and Musicians got to me through this process.

Standing there, it was now happening unconsciously. Automatically.

Dinner (and cocktail) time. Her new hat in full effect, doing its job.

Magda wound up buying the piece, which she had immediately loved, (and another), and we left. She wore it out. We parted and I was left thinking about the experience. I woke up today still thinking about it. I see the similarity with how I’ve come to love so much Art & Music.

There are Artists, and people, who are so good at what they do, and/or have a vision, that you have to trust them. You have to, at least, give them the benefit of the doubt. You have to see where they’re going with it, as they say. Try and see it through their eyes. Along the way you may learn, too. Magda has her own style. I’ve known a lot of entertainers, Musicians and Artists who did as well. They were themselves 24/7. My last Post was about one, who I didn’t know. It comes out of their pores. They dressed “differently” than most. They thought differently than most. That’s part of the process of being that creative, and part of what makes them special, and certainly unique.

Magda has that. Magda is more than “only” a “Role Model,” which she most certainly is. She’s a “Roll Model!”

It’s one thing to help someone buy clothes or give them your opinion. It’s absolutely pointless to try and do it with someone who’s a force of nature. Water seeks it’s own level. The winds blow where they will. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. Magda is an Artist, a successful graphic designer with her own company, but Art permeates her life in just about every part of it I’ve seen. So…What did I learn…Be yourself- everyone else is taken. Being around Magda reinforces that for me. It’s liberating being around someone like her who’s so free inside of herself.

So, the message to myself is- At such times? Shut up. And stay out of the way, so you don’t get rolled over!

*- Soundtrack for this Post is “To Me You Are A Work Of Art,” by Morrissey. Thank you, Morrissey. If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have met Magda, and made a friend.

You can follow Magda @prettycripple or on prettycripple.com

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free for over 8 years, during which 300 full-length pieces have been published! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate to allow me to continue below. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art & Photography books, and Music from my collection! Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

Watching The Watchers With Laura Poitras

This site is Free & Ad-Free! If you find this piece worthwhile, please donate via PayPal to support it & independent Art writing. You can also support it by buying Art & books! Details at the end. Thank you.

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Laura Poitras is, perhaps, best known for her Documentary CitizenFour, a behind-the-scenes chronicle of Edward Snowden’s unprecedented classified documents release and it’s after effects. It’s the culminating work of her 9/11 Trilogy. For Ms Poitras, and many others, Film is an Art Form1. I would agree that as a means of creativity and expression, Film as an art form is undeniable. In the bigger picture, Film, being 100-odd years old (depending on when you say it began), is still a relatively young Art Form to be considered “High Art.”

Does it belong in Museums yet, or is that premature?

Face to face with unspeakable horror. A screenshot of Poitras’ video O Say Can You See in her new show, Astro Noise, at the Whitney Museum.

While Film’s place in the front ranks of our popular culture seems assured to us now, it’s unknown what future generations will think, as is if it will speak to them. Of course, they could also reject Painting, Sculpture or whatever Artform that we accept now, but given a few thousand years of history to the contrary it at least feels there’s a better chance those will endure. Then, exactly what Film’s lasting works are, if any, also remains to be seen. If history tells us anything about Art it’s that what appears to be “Great” to the people of any given time often gets resigned to the dust bin by those that follow. No doubt that will happen to most of what’s been created in our lifetimes, but some of it may remain that speaks to those who come after us, even much after us. Consider that documentaries (one of my personal favorite genres of Film) are an even newer form, one that is continually evolving in both form and possibilities, and it may be somewhat surprising that Laura Poitras, one of the most respected Filmmakers and Documentarians working today, now her first solo Museum show, Astro Noise, at The Whitney.

Obviously, The Whitney Museum, like many other Museums & galleries around the world isn’t waiting for the future to judge what is or is not Art. In this case, I applaud their choice, and given the controversial nature of much of the show’s content, their guts. That, actually, shouldn’t be surprising. As Whitney Museum Director, Adam D. Weinberg says in the Foreword to the fascinating book of the same name accompanying the show, (which features a striking contribution from no less than Ai Weiwei), “(Whitney Museum founder) Mrs. Whitney’s early commitment to radical realist artists and her profund belief in the democracy of American art positioned her as a champion of free expression and the Whitney as a site for potential controversy2.”

“Is this “art?” I’d say Yes- As much in the presentation as in the work3. I’m not big on most of what I’ve seen done in video in galleries or Museums (William Kentridge being one exception off the top of my head). The pieces on view are beautifully conceived (individually and as a group), charged with meaning (for her, you and me, yet globally as well) and presented in a very artful way that regardless of what side of any political fence you may be on will give you pause to think. They force you to see the world around you, very far from you, and indeed, even hidden from you while showing how the world has changed since that fateful day almost exactly 14 and a half years ago. In “Astro Noise” it’s all plainly on view.

Disposition Matrix, 2016. “Don’t attempt to control the horizontal…the vertical…”

The first room features a double sided video screen, a fact not obvious until you walk to the other side of it, both sides showing her 2 channel video O Say Can You See, 2001/16, pictured above. At first you’re faced (literally) with watching people’s expressions as they view Ground Zero in the days after 9/11. For most Americans, these are the first days of a new world, and these people are both witness to what is before their eyes and the implications of it their mind’s eye also sees. In spite of the fact that 9/11 was one of the most photographed & filmed tragedies in history, this is something not many who aren’t named Laura Poitras took the time to look at. It’s the “right in front of us” element of this show. As someone who lived here that day, it’s something “familiar” yet seen in a new way, which is always something I value in Art, (and reminds me of the Man Ray quote I Posted recently.) As we may not know from her documentaries, which deal largely with “others,” this powerfully shows that Laura Poitras is also gifted at documenting what’s in front of us and largely missed.

From here, all becomes “movie theater dark” as we encounter the unseen and the hidden.

Walk around to the other side of the video screen and the ramifications begin to become all too real. We watch two prisoners being interrogated in Afghanistan shortly after. Two types of reaction to 9/11. From there, the show’s dark & winding trail continues with video of drones in various night skies around the world intermingling with the peace, beauty and serenity of the stars, which you watch lying flat on your back. Then there are banks of “peep show” like slots containing documents and videos from various government surveillance agencies around the world (See “Disposition Matix,” above and “Anarchist,” below), including ours, which, unlike in the first rooms, can really only be seen by one person at a time, making it personal. Finally “Astro Noise” leaves us with a graphic proof that we are all now being watched- even while we’re looking at this show.

While I was pondering the “Art” of this, I realized that her trials and travails that are a part of the genesis of this show, and of her work, reveal something I admire about Laura Poitras very much-

Her integrity is not for sale.

As such, she strikes me as something of a “throwback.” She’s a throwback to Artists, Musicians & Writers of yore- men and women who created because they had to. It’s as if their very lives depended on it, their raison de’tre.  If the public responded to their work and paid for it, the better to create more of it, but regardless, they were on a mission. They lived, breathed and died their art.

Laura Poitras is using art to show us “ourselves”- our collective selves. Me, you, the people in power- elected or not, and enabling us to “see” them and decide for ourselves how we feel about it all. That’s pretty much all any Artist can do. Say what you want about Ms. Poitras politically charged show, she’s on a mission.

“World peace is none of your business

You must not tamper with arrangements

Work hard and sweetly pay your taxes

Never asking what for”*

Anarchist, 2016. Somebody in the U.K.’s tax money hard at work. “What for?”

“Astro Noise” creates the undeniable feeling that somehow along the way Post 9/11, in addition to all the horror that’s gone on here and around the world be it by terrorists or by trying to stop them, as the “cost” of it all continues to become apparent, as the unseen becomes visible, we’re seeing we’ve all lost even more than we realized or consented to. We’ve lost our right to privacy.

While Edward Snowden “tipped” Ms. Poitras to the NSA’s role in that sending her a file titled “Astro Noise,” this week, I saw a headline that read “You’re On File In China.” Yes, that’s another part of the story, though every bit as concerning.

A surveillance camera surveils a sign warning it’s presence. How quaint. There’s too many cameras to hang signs anymore.

Closer to home, it’s enough to make me how much of our freedom we’ve lost, too ?

“World peace is none of your business

So would you kindly keep your nose out”*

Consider this- In a country where the law says a suspect is “innocent until proven guilty,” all of a sudden, we’ve ALL being treated like suspects.

Why?

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “World Peace Is None Of Your Business”s by Morrissey & Boz Boorer from his 2014 album of the same name. Published by Warner Chappell Music and Universal Music Publishing Group.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free for over 8 years, during which 300 full-length pieces have been published! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate to allow me to continue below. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art & Photography books, and Music from my collection! Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

  1. “I think of filmmaking as art...” ↩
  2. Astro Noise by Laura Poitras, Published by the Whitney Museum, P.20 ↩
  3. Whether this will be “Art” and continue to speak to people generations from now or not is anyone’s guess. ↩

Morrissey’s “List of the Lost”

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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

“Um, Nighthawk? Planet Earth, calling. You said you were reading this way back on October 23, 2015. Exactly 4 months have passed. Leaves and snow have fallen. ’15 became ’16. The Grammys finished making their own, annual, “List of the Lost.” So…

How the heck is it?”

I thought you’d never ask. ; )

 

It’s a powerful, thought provoking, sad comment on human nature and parts of American society’s basest motivations that interestingly takes place in this country at a time when its author was yet to live here 1. It’s a work that will linger in the mind for both its messages and its craft. Along the way, many of the author’s long held core beliefs find their way into the narrative, along with a range of others. As an admitted Morrissey “fan” it’s not appropriate for me to “review” List, because of course, I’m going to say “It’s great! Read it!,” but it’s not that simple. Unlike Autobiography, which I think is 1/2 of a classic and I hope for an update one day, List is a novel, a dark one, that takes place in a land where the sun never shines and where the untoward lurks around every corner, every moment. In the place of “review,” then, some observations. For those planning on reading it (as I write this it still hasn’t been published in the USA, but very reasonably priced copies are available online. Mine was less than 10. including shipping.) don’t worry, I will not “spoil the plot,” or give too much away. (As always, I have read nothing anyone has written about it, save for Morrissey’s quote on the back cover, )

I have been aware of Morrissey, listening to his music, going to see him and The Smiths (in 1986), and following his career since “The Smiths” (their debut Lp) came out in 1984. Some of my Posts here use his songs as their soundtracks. Almost 32 years on it’s IMPOSSIBLE for me to read something like this and not find my mind constantly being pulled in a hundred directions with every line, like following a decades long trail of bread crumbs. This is one reason I prefer movies with actors I don’t know (as when I first saw “2001”). Not knowing anything “about” them helps me believe their character more – there is none of their personal gossip and real life lore to get in the way. Reading List, it’s too hard for me to not bring any other point of reference to bear And? There are many- take 2013’s Autobiography. In it we learned (sorry for the spoiler, but you’ve had two years to read it) that young Morrissey was a runner, and one who did well at it. By chance, the 4 heroes of List are runners, a half mile relay team. Along with one of their girlfriends and the team’s coach they are most of the major players. In 1975 when the story takes place, they are 20, Morrissey was 16. So, is it fair to wonder why early on the author can go into such detail about the experience of running? The purpose of the runner? His feelings during training or of winning or losing? The depth with which he writes about their activity is knowing and considered. It’s obvious (or it sure feels that way) that he’s lived it. Been there and done that. So, Morrissey was a runner and has now written a novel about runners. A novel about 4 runners, a relay team, is very unusual if not unique.

And it’s in “coincidences” like this where my “troubles” began.

Morrissey’s Autobiography clocks in at 480 pages in paperback. HIs first novel, List of the Lost, totals a mere 118 pages. List took me longer to read. I started reading it 3 times. The first to get an idea of it, like I’ll take a quick walkthrough of a major Art show I’m seeing for the first time, to get a feel for how to approach it. The restart was “Ok, let’s just read it.” Once I realized how very much Morrissey has packed into the very economical 118 pages, I realized it was too hard for me to read it in a vacuum (which won’t be a problem for most readers). I started athird, taking notes and making an outline. 28 pages of notes later, I finished reading List last night.

Readers Meet Author…”With The Hope Of Hearing Sense.”* Count Basie Theater, NJ Jan 15, 2013

As someone who grew up in America, 3,500 odd miles from where M grew up, though not all that many years apart, I find his observations on American family life fascinating. He does say in Autobiography that he visited the USA with his family as a kid. I grew up in one of those repressed households he describes early on, and seeing it through his eyes was a revelation- for me, about my own life-

“Sex was always there…yet… difficult to obtain…because of the atomic supremacy in the family values of their upbringings which, of course, circumscribed the sons’ freedom to fly, since a certain sexlessness kept the grown child tied to the family, even if the impossibly constricted demands could very easily lead to a form of sexual cremation for the young child. The parental mind would allow the child time to develop political views, but there would certainly be no question of allowing the child time to choose its preferred religion, and even more importantly, the grand assumption that all children are extensively heterosexually resolved at birth whipped a demented torment across the many who were not. Whether physical maneuvers were difficlut or easy (and it is usually one or the other, and for eternity), our foursome found in each other a generosity of spirit and determination that all other circumstances seemed blind to. Each would make up for the other’s loss- so firmly they took their friendship into their own hands, and around it went.” List of the Lost, Pages 11-12.

As you can see, he immediately folds this observation seamlessly into setting the stage for the characters in his book. Following this “crumb”, I began to notice snippets of more opinions and observations, at first gradually, then more at length, that are nothing less than commentary on society and a range of many other topics. They are generally well placed as context, but they did tend to “jar” me out of the story to ponder a bigger picture. As I read the book, I was fascinated by what the writer chooses to include, and leave out (see ^ below). This is largely accomplished through the voice I call the Narrator (N). Exactly who he is is never revealed. Yet, his views are remarkably similar to the author’s. (“Narrator Meet Author”?) He is the “other” major character in List.

The N provided a steady stream of interest for me, delaying my completion date at every page turn, and he pontificates for pages at a time in a 118 page book. Animal nature, animal rights and lack thereof, human nature, the differences between animals and humans, sex, hookups, middle aged men, old men, old women, Churchill, Princess-later-Queen Elizabeth, royals in general, nuclear engineers, the police, war and war dead, the asexuality of friendships, who really won WW2, sports as “news,” justice & the courts, meat overeating Americans and their children (a laundry “list” of M’s hot button issues if there ever was one), are some of the topics our N addresses at length, while key moments of plot happen in a flash. Other topics, yes including homosexuality are occasionally discussed at length by the characters, but mostly it’s left to the N.

For me, it’s tempting to take List apart and make it into two books- one of the Narrator, the other the story proper. There would be minimal overlap from the former to the latter, but the former may well stand as treatise by itself. The N goes deeper than I’ve heard Morrissey go on many of these topics before, even in Autobiography, where most of these are not touched on.

(^)Interestingly and completely absent among that list there is no music. No talk of it. No mention of anything going on in music at the time. This is very surprising. Autobiography is full of this talk. Would it have been all that unique if the 4 had been members of a band, instead of runners? Then everyone would have read it as The Smiths. Disaster. Besides, he’s addressed all that in Autobiography. Without music, we are, almost, in an alternate, USA-based, young Morrissey universe. The universe of Moz the runner and not young Moz the Bowie/Ramones/NY Dolls acolyte of a few years later.

His role seemingly all-seeing, the narrator also steps in to address and reveal the inner mind of the characters. Some of the best writing in the book comes at these times, in my opinion. At once- the micro and macro view of the world, and their worlds, big and small. It’s as if everything that happens in our lives, or life, takes place in the same cosmic “mind”, only in different parts of it.

Unlike parts of Autobiography, this time, things as a whole feel sharply focused. He has compacted the story to its most essential moments, leaving the rest of the room for the N. In that way, it’s cannily done. In two outings we have a fascinating autobiography that might be a bit too expansive in parts and a amazingly compact novel that doesn’t “waste” one moment’s time. Its story, in spite of its twists and turns, could be outlined quickly- mine is less than a page, but therein lay lifetimes of choices, instincts, ramifications and intentions as seen from the eyes of youth and the aged. Each, a product of environment, experience and family like those on Page 11, has their point of view, their reasons, their dreams. Yet, in the end, each are destined to the same fates- over which they may have “limited” control.

By setting the piece in 1975 he allows some distance on the events- both figurative and literally, though of course, in the end, that doesn’t matter- all of the tale’s key points hold every bit as much today. A morality play set in 1975 that serves as a tale of warning for today, like a gift from a caring “Hey, watch out for this.” friend, lest we too wind up on the List of the Lost. The “problem” is that while many things are in our control, as we see here things also happen in life that no amount of watchfulness is going to stop.

What does his song say? “Books don’t save them, books aren’t Stanley Knives.”*

List of the Lost is published by Penguin Books.

Soundtrack for this post is “Lucky Lisp,” by the author of List of the Lost and Stephen Street from Morrissey’s Bona Drag album.  It came on one day recently and crystalized for me why it took me so long to finish this book. As in “Yes, I know it’s taking me a long time to finish. Then again, I still haven’t gotten what “Lucky Lisp” is about!” It seems these folks haven’t, either.

*-From “Reader Meet Author” By Morrissey and Boz Boorer from Southpaw Grammar published by Warner Chappell Music Publishing.

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  1. His first visit was apparently in 1976, per page 125 of the eBook Autobiography. He mentions “three more trips to America before 1980…and I cry my way back to intolerant Manchester,” where he works as a basement filing clerk “to get the money to return to America.” Pages 127-28. He’s famously lived in Cali, next door to Nancy Sinatra for years now ↩

The Next Penn Station

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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*- unless otherwise credited)

“The past is gone
It went by, like dusk to dawn
Isn’t that the way
Everybody’s got the dues in life to pay”*

Madison Square Garden. Believe it or not, concerts are held & the Rangers and Knicks play on the 5th Floor, Penn Station is in the basement.

I’m a lifelong NY Rangers fan. I was at Games 1 and 5 of the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals at MSG, and yes, I also was at the unforgettable Game 7, June 14, 1994, when the Rangers won the Cup for the first time in those forgettable 54 years, the first time they ever won it at home. My seat was right above the guy with the famous “NOW I CAN DIE IN PEACE” sign. Oh, I know how he felt- Having been a Rangers fan for more than half of those 54 years to that point, It may have been the greatest experience of my entire lifetime.

I convinced the company I worked for to get Ranger Season Tickets for a few years after that.

MSG does not pay to advertise on Nighthawk.NYC, so I had to replace their ads. I think it looks much better now, right?

I was also a Knicks fan during the Frazier-Willis Reed years, and saw one playoff game by that Championship Team at MSG, still, the greatest basketball team I’ve ever seen. Additionally, I’ve seen many many concerts at MSG by Prince, Elvis Costello, Radiohead, the Rolling Stones, Yes, Miles Davis, Lady GaGa, Blondie and Morrissey, himself.

Morrissey @MSG June 27, 2015. One of the most recent unforgettable moments I’ve had there.

The Garden has been a big part of my life.

All of that, the fact that the Knicks are headed back up (which will result in more popularity & attention), and the billion dollars the Dolans spent to renovate the Garden1(while somehow paying $0 to the City in Property Taxes) stand on one side.

“Sing with me, sing for the years
Sing for the laughter, sing for the tears
Sing with me, just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away”*

MSG Renovations, in progress here, included new periphery lighting and huge new advertising billboards, only partly installed here. Renovations to Penn Station? $0

The countless thousands of others who commute or travel through Penn Station every single day stand on the other.

For me? This is a no brainer.

As NYC debates what to do about that pathetic transit hub called “Penn Station,” which used to be the name of one of the glories of American Architecture (on the same location), before some genius decided to tear it all down, let’s not be shortsighted, again, or yield to big money.

“Half my life
Is books, written pages
Live and learn from fools and
From sages”*

There is only ONE choice here-

Do What Is Best for the commuters and travelers, FIRST and Last. That’s an investment in helping to keep NYC great, as well as a step towards bringing transportation here into the 21st Century. Then, when the best plan for that has been determined? Put MSG on the next best option.

The Farley Post Office (right), across 8th Avenue from the current MSG, could be where the “next” MSG goes, though it’s landmark status may be a problem.

Sorry, Dolans- MSG is an AFTERTHOUGHT in this discussion, NOT the priority.

End of story.

Right now, there seems to be no clear vision. Some steps are in progress, however, with the construction currently underway of Moynihan Station in part of said Farley Post Office, as seen today-

“Raise the curtain and show them what they’ve won!” It’s the entrance to the New Moynihan Station, the new Amtrak Station, at the Farley Post Office, across the street from MSG, Jan 28, 2016.

But there remains no concrete overriding plan that “solves” the bigger problem. Governor Cuomo’s proposal doesn’t sound like “it” to me.

First, we need to make that choice I just outlined to fix mass transit. Period. Then, create the best urban design plan that facilitates it. THEN put MSG on the next best location 2. Penn Station needs to be a focus, not an afterthought “shoehorned” into MSG as the Governor’s plan tries to do. They are two separate structures on two different sites in my opinion. The chance exists to do something defining & wonderful here. A chance we had and failed to seize at Ground Zero, and more recently in Brooklyn. It is another chance to define NYC for the 21st Century. Yes, whatever we build will “define” the City going forward. Why not build something GREAT for the “Greatest City In The World,” (to quote Lin-Manuel Miranda)?

Will we seize that chance and do something Great with it? I’m not holding my breath. I don’t see the leader with the guts to overrule the special interests and push something magical AND every bit as functional as we desperately need through.

So? I’m left to Dream On….

While I’m dreaming…If we were going to build something new AND Great? I STRONGLY suggest we beg 3 Frank Gehry to design it, then leave him alone to do it. Gehry, America’s greatest living architect, who’s father lived in Hell’s Kitchen, in the very shadow of MSG & the Farley Post Office, has created masterpieces that have helped put even Bilbao, Spain on the map. If he’s creating this in Las Vegas, isn’t it about time we got a masterpiece from him to help define NYC for the 21st Century?

Gehry’s Lou Ruvo Center, Las Vegas. Not a train station, though it’s located on “Grand Central Pkwy.” Check out their site to see it at night. Exterior & Interior photos courtesy of Jane In Las Vegas. Thanks, Jane!

“Dream on
Dream on
Dream on
Dream until your dreams come true”*

Ok…next problem. Do I hear anyone say-

“What about that other transit disaster, and monstrosity, a few blocks north known as the Port Authority Bus Terminal?”

Maybe we could get a “deal” on both from Mr. Gehry? My brain glosses over orgasmically thinking about how amazing that could be.4

Remember to thank me later. After I wake up.

*-Soundtrack for this post is “Dream On” by Steven Tyler and recorded by Aerosmith on their 1973 self-titled debut album. Published by BMG Rights Management US.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free for over 8 years, during which 300 full-length pieces have been published! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate to allow me to continue below. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art & Photography books, and Music from my collection! Art & Books may be found here. Music here and here.

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

  1. MSG looks great inside. The exterior is now a mess, in my opinion. ↩
  2. The Voice makes mention of the $300 Million in tax breaks MSG has received the past 30 years, thanks to Ed Koch…and counting. Well? Since they no doubt invested that money well they could possibly build the new MSG from the proceeds, and given the bull market the past 8 years, might be able to build it without even touching the principle! If ANY public official turns around and gives them MORE tax breaks now? SERIOUSLY? ↩
  3. which we may have to after he got jerked around so badly in Brooklyn. That turned out so well, hasn’t it? ↩
  4. Keep in mind the NY Times building, across from the Port Authority, came THIS close to being a Gehry. I shed a tear every time I walk past it. ↩