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The “Other” Robert Frank

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Barbershop through screen door-McClellanville, South Carolina, from the Scalo edition of Robert Frank’s The Americans.

Almost every piece I read on Robert Frank begins the same way. Take the 14,999 word obituary The New York Times published after Mr. Frank passed away at 94 on September 9th, 2019 for example. The body of their piece begins-

“Robert Frank, one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century…”

Stating succinctly what I’ve heard said about him most often. In the 3rd para it adds-

“He was best known for his groundbreaking book, The Americans…1”

A copy of the 50th Anniversary edition of The Americans, published by Steidl in 2008 in close collaboration with Robert Frank, and so this will remain the  definitive edition.

Again, summing what seems to be the consensus I’ve encountered as I’ve explored the world of Modern & Contemporary Photography (which for me, means the world post the publication of said The Americans in 1958, in France, and 1959 here). Yet lurking in that sentence is a problem.

Good days quiet, 2019, with its slip case above, Robert Frank’s final PhotoBook.

While he is indeed “best known” for The Americans, nowhere in the entire 14,999 word obit is there mention of any other PhotoBook by Robert Frank! That’s typical, too. It seems that for many people Mr. Frank’s exalted reputation rests on that one book. But, Robert Frank, didn’t stop working after publication of The Americans in 1959. He created and published Photobooks regularly over the following SIXTY YEARS! His last one, Good days quiet, was published in April, 2019, shortly before his passing. Yet, it seems to me that this single-book focus also monopolizes the conversation around Robert Frank’s work.

Want proof of that? Quick- name five other books by Robert Frank. [“Final Jeopardy!” Music plays…] Ok. Three.

It all began here. Robert Frank, Portfolio, Steidl facsimile edition. Containing a selection his early work, 1941-46, Mr. Frank presented the original to prospective clients after arriving in New York from Zurich in 1947.

The Americans singlehandedly created the genre of Contemporary Photography spawning countless thousand of books in its wake. Yet, given his reputation, it’s kind of amazing Robert Frank’s “other” books have received so little attention. Especially after you see them. It would be easy to account for that saying, “Well, there are more PhotoBooks published today than ever before.” Most PhotoBooks come and go  having only created a ripple in the vast world of human awareness. True, but, these are different. Full of poignancy, daring, surprising juxtapositions of the new and the old, they don’t hesitate to break rules. And, they are the work of Robert Frank, “one of the most influential….” oh, you know. Whereas The Americans, and his prior books, like London/Wales (another masterpiece in my view), contain work that looks at the world, his subsequent books largely look inward. In a number of the images a sense of loss is palpable.

Fourteen “other” Robert Frank books. The 7 on the bottom are his late Visual Diaries, discussed further below. Good days quiet is above them. Robert Frank: In America, not by Robert Frank per se,contains about 100 Photographs that are not in The Americans. And so it provides an excellent chance to study Robert Frank’s image selection, invaluable for anyone considering making a PhotoBook.

Without having familiarity with most, if not all, of Robert Frank’s PhotoBooks, it’s not possible to have an understanding of him or his accomplishment. Given his key position in Photography of the past 60 years, by extension, it’s pretty hard to be able to understand the accomplishment of anyone else working in this era. Realizing that I, too, was in this boat, seemingly adrift in the fog of ignorance, I decided to do something about it last year during the lock down. I began hunting down every OTHER Robert Frank book I could find. What I found was, frankly (sorry), astounding, but, I really shouldn’t have been surprised.

Robert Frank: Moving Out, 1995-6 Exhibition Guide.

In 1995 I saw the Robert Frank: Moving Out Retrospective at the “old” Whitney Museum. At that point, I had a copy of The Americans, but knew nothing more about his work. What I saw that day was indelible. The greatest (of the few) Photography shows I’d seen before 2005’s Diane Arbus: Revelations at The Met. It showed me that Mr. Frank never stopped creating or exploring his vision. Later in his career (as it was in 1995), he had taken to writing on is prints and I was stunned by them. They were “raw,” yes, but they were also revolutionary. I immediately ran out and bought the exhibition catalog, unheard of for this Painting guy at that point. The impact of those later Prints, and the retrospective as a whole has stayed alive with me ever since.

Robert Frank: Moving Out Exhibition Catalog. Ostensibly not “by” Robert Frank, is still a spectacular book, and the best overview of his work to 1995 there is with excellent, informative essays and gorgeous reproductions (it was printed by Steidl). Copies in Very Good, or better, condition trade quite reasonably as I write this.

But, I still hadn’t seen his other PhotoBooks, and as we all know, a PhotoBook is a unique way of presenting Photographs that has proven itself to be every bit as vital and effective as hanging them on a wall- even on the walls of the Whitney. Mr. Frank is, perhaps, the master of image selection, and laying out & sequencing a PhotoBook, skills that are apparently in short supply based in many of the books I see each year. If they have no other values (which they definitely do) they are portable “master classes” in the Art of making a PhotoBook. 

The Table of Contents for Steidl’s overview (shown 2 pictures down) turned into my checklist of books seen so far. Some of the uncheck entries are essays in the book.

To date, I still haven’t seen all of his books. I’m up to 22 of them. Luckily, almost all of Robert Frank’s books have been reprinted over the years and most remain in print, due to his relationship with the renowned Gerhard Steidl of Steidl, making the newer editions relatively affordable. After publishing the terrific Storylines in 2004, the pair began work on the 50th Anniversary Edition of The Americans, which is the version that will now remain Robert Frank’s final word on the classic.

Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans: Expanded Edition accompanied the show of the same name honoring The American’s 50th Anniversary I saw at The Met in 2009. And so, it is the final word on The Americans during Robert Frank’s lifetime and the ultimate reference on it. Another book not “by” Mr. Frank it is exceptionally thorough and the hardcover Expanded Edition seen here contains the 83 contact sheets the images in The Americans came from! (NOT included in the softcover edition.) It’s also enough of a “making of” book for students to study how The Americans came into being. Highly recommended.

Since those two volumes Messers Frank & Steidl have produced a steady stream of books.

Robert Frank: Books and Films Published by Steidl, 2020. The best place to start exploring Robert Frank’s “other” PhotoBooks.

In 2020, Steidl honored and revisited their collaborations with an overview of all the books titled Robert Frank: Books and Films Published by Steidl. Succinct and well-produced it is the best place to start exploring the PhotoBooks of Robert Frank and the best place to determine where to turn next in your own journey through them (with the Moving Out catalog the best place to explore his work: his Photography & Film to 1995). Each book is shown chronologically and gets a section of its own by Steidl publication date with thumbnails and historical & publishing info. Here, you can get a taste of each book before diving in.

Robert Frank: Storylines, 2004, the first Robert Frank/Steidl publication is auspicious given what followed, and remains the best retrospective of his work. Steidl is preparing to reprint it.

From what I’ve seen thus far, after The Americans, he turned his camera inward. His later work, renowned for its “rawness” as the NY Times obituary put it, often feature poignantly “raw” images of his life and feelings. This is seen best, perhaps, in his late 7 volume Photo Diary series. They are a truly unique body of PhotoBooks that at once look back (by including vintage Photographs- some familiar, some not), and more recent shots, brilliantly laid out, with each book not containing too many Photos. This gives each book an internal sense of space that allows the Photos room to breathe. The book design, by Messers Frank and Steidl, with assistance and input from Mrs. Frank, the under-appreciated Artist,  June Leaf, is simple and clean, but fresh and new at the same time, as  you’d expect from two master craftsman who each bring a lifetime’s experience to each book. Mr. Frank began with a book dummy and the feel and design of these has been pretty faithfully reproduced by Steidl. These are not luxury items. They are produced to be picked up and looked through in functional yet non-pretentious materials.

Little known is that Robert Frank was commissioned to shoot catalogs for Milan designer Albert Aspesi titled Aspesi Ideas. This is a copy of the 2nd of the 3 he did. We shouldn’t be surprised by this. After his arrival from Zurich, he did over 150 fashion shoots for Harper’s and Junior Bazar. Even great Artists have to pay the bills.

I’m not going to give a book by book breakdown here. It would take a book to do so. And now, there is a book that does just that, Steidl’s tribute/overview Robert Frank: Books and Films Published by Steidl, 2020,, traces the entire history and legacy of the German publisher’s work with Robert Frank, including both books it republished and brand new PhotoBooks. It’s the best place to start for anyone looking to get an overview, or to choose where to go next in exploring the published work of Robert Frank.

The seven volumes of Robert Frank’s Visual Diaries, 2010-17, six in a similar design- a softcover in a slipcase. The seventh is Household Inventory Record, 2013, designed to look like the original which was created in an actual Household Inventory Record book.

Highlights? For me, it’s very very hard to single any of them out. They are part of a continuum that spans and tells the story of one extraordinary Artist’s life. Luckily, as I write this, virtually all of them are still in print and available at or close to list price. Assuming you have The Americans, I would recommend starting with Steidl’s overview. Look through it, read the introductory summary about each book, look at its thumbnail images and see which one(s) speak to you. Storylines, which accompanied a 2004 European touring retrospective exhibition, is Robert Frank’s look at his own career in a book he obviously had (from the look at the making of it in Steidl’s overview book) a central role in designing as well as a close involvement with the underlying show (we’re told in the introduction). And so it remains the best place to see his career through his eyes. It also set the stage for what would follow from the Frank/Steidl collaboration. Also essential in my view is the early London/Wales, which Steidl reissued, and which sets the stage for The Americans. Of the books after Storylines, the “Visual Diaries,” were the big surprises for me. Tal uf Tal ab (2010), You Would (2012), Park / Sleep (2013), Household Inventory Record (2013), Partida (2014), Was haben wir gesehen/What we have seen (2016), and Leon of Juda (2017) strike me as being akin to as close to a “PhotoBook Autobiography” as we’re likely to get. A mix of new and old Photos, typically brilliantly sequenced, they break more rules than they follow. Six of the seven are identically sized and come in matching slipcases, as shown above, while Household Inventory Record is a reproduction of an original created in a standard Household Inventory book. It’s pretty hard for me to single one of these out, so I decided to start with the first volume,Tal Uf Tal Ab. They contain between 29 and 68 Photos each. Good days quiet, 2019, being his last book is also essential in my view. Not part of the Visual Diaries per se (it is the same size as the 6 Visual Diaries, though in a different format), it nonetheless carries some of the feeling and style. Intended as a “final” book, or not, it nonetheless is a moving work showing that Robert Frank had lost none of his considerable skills as a Photographer, editor or book creator.

From Storylines. Pieces like this seem to meld Film and Photography as Robert Frank continually stretched out the ability of Photographs to tell a story.

While a biography of Mr. Frank has already been published, the time is here for the critical studies of his entire body of work to begin. Given Moving Out was 26 years ago, and Storylines, which never traveled to the US, 17, the time is also here for a full scale retrospective. The Americans continues to receive the attention it’s earned. No PhotoBook or Art Book collection should be without it. Yes, no library of any kind of books should be without it. Robert Frank’s “other” PhotoBooks created in the following sixty years shows us a different, inner, landscape- its depths, its wonder, its beauty, poetry and tragedy are no less compelling. They complete the picture Robert Frank showed us, and the journey he took us on.

Robert Frank, from Good days quiet, 2019.

Meanwhile, his Art continued to grow and expand, in my view. It’s full of innovations that have largely flown under the radar compared to his early work. But those innovations are not lost on Artists & Photographers who have been creating along side, or since he created them.

Sick of Goodby’s, 1978, from Robert Frank: Moving Out.

In much of later Robert Frank I get the feeling that he was crossing the boundaries between Photography & Film, with his writing on his prints and especially his collages, which are daring and almost completely overlooked. While his early work already looks timeless to us, there is much else in his oeuvre that remains to be discussed, understood and appreciated. This is like the late work of a number of other Artists from Picasso to Rauschenberg. Luckily, much of this work is there to be seen by all of us right now in the books he created.

Having seen 22 so far, I look forward to seeing those I haven’t yet seen. And then, there are his Films…

Robert Frank, from Good days quiet, 2019, his final book.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “The Other End (of the Telescope)” Written and performed by Elvis Costello on All This Useless Beauty, 1996, performed in the UK that year here-

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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. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/arts/robert-frank-dead-americans-photography.html ↩

Gilles Peress’s Silent Movie

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Gilles Peress, Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, with Annals of the North. Steidl Photo

Henri Cartier-Bresson in the newly liberated Nazi Concentration Camps…

Robert Capa in Paris during its Liberation…

Robert Franks- London & Wales…

Robert Franks- The Americans…

Larry Burrows- Vietnam…

Gilles Peress- Telex Iran…

These were some of the images and PhotoBooks that flashed through my mind while looking through a copy of the newly released two-volume Whatever You Say, Say Nothing by Gilles Peress published by Steidl. I don’t think this will be the last time it’s spoken about with those monuments of Photography. Even though the Photographs in it were taken 50 years ago next year, I believe Whatever You Say, Say Nothing will be included when the list of THE Books of this Decade is finalized.

Steidl Photo.

It comes in a strong tote bag (it better be- the set weighs almost 30 pounds!). The two PhotoBooks contain 1,960 14 3/4 by 10 inch pages with 1,295 images, including some amazing wide-angle shots that will look like panoramas to iPhone users. These are often shown on a 2 page spread that’s almost 30 inches wide! The first volume has “Whatever You Say” in silver letters on the spine, Volume II has “Say Nothing” on it. Each set is accompanied by the “text and image almanac,” The Annals of the North, itself 900 pages.

Steidl Photo.

Billed as “A Documentary Fiction” on the title page, the word “Fiction” allows me to bring it into the world of “Art,” though everything it shows us was actually witnessed by the Photographer in Northern Ireland. In 1972, at age 26, he witnessed the “Bloody Sunday Massacre,” then returned to continue shooting there over the next decade. Whatever You Say, Say Nothing marks the first time most of this work has been seen. 

Steidl Photo.

Per Steidl-
“Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, a work of “documentary fiction,” organizes a decade of photographs across 22 fictional “days” to articulate the helicoidal structure of history during a conflict that seemed like it would never end—where each day became a repetition of every other day like that day: days of violence, of marching, of riots, of unemployment, of mourning, and also of “craic” where you try to forget your condition.
Held back for 30 years and now eagerly anticipated, this ambitious publication takes the language of documentary photography to its extremes, then challenges the reader to stop and resolve the puzzle of meaning for him or herself.”

Steidl Photo.

It’s fitting I’m seeing this on the heels of having seen and written about Francisco Goya’s Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War) at The Met, which left me pondering so-called “documentary” Photography and Goya’s possible influence on Artists & Photographers.

Steidl Photo.

Culling down a decade’s worth of work to 1,295 images must have been incredibly difficult, but there’s no evidence of that to be seen in the books where there are no “weak” images and those chosen are brilliantly sequenced in service to the “22 Day” concept. I particularly admire the image layout- not full bleed but with the slimmest of margin, maximizing the available real estate. It was too hard for me to think of a fictional narrative to accompany the images as they went by. I was too gripped by what’s depicted in the Photos themselves. Gilles Peress’s remarkable images have lost not one bit of their power in the intervening 3 decades since he took them. They are a part of history that has much to teach us now, and no doubt will in the future. But those are just two of the innumerable levels of this monumental work.

*- Soundtrack for this Post is “Sunday, Bloody Sunday,” by U-2 from War, 1980. After its release, I saw them at The Ritz, NYC, on their first US tour.

My thanks to Monika Condrea.

BookMarks-
Gilles Peress’ Whatever You Say, Say Nothing is about to be released in the US.

For a compelling look at events in Northern Ireland in 1981 check out the excellent Yan Morvan’s Bobby Sands, Belfast Mai 1981 (French Edition) from Andrew Frerer Editions. (Note- My copy is French & English. There is only one edition as far as I know.) Mr Morvan was also about 26 or 27 when he shot in Northern Ireland.

If you buy from these links NighthawkNYC may earn a small commission which will enable me to continue to keep this site up, with my Thanks.

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Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
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Francisco Goya: Modern Art & Photography Begin Here

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

The seemingly all-seeing eye. Francisco Goya, Los Caprichos, Plate 1, 1799, Etching, aquatint, drypoint, burin. The wall card reads- “In the first plate from the Caprichos, Goya presents himself as a sardonic observer of contemporary society.” Exactly what we’ll see in the rest of The Met’s Goya’s Graphic Imagination.

Francisco Goya’s Paintings are on the “must-see” lists of many museum goers, particularly the 200 or so portraits he did of royal, aristocratic or upper-class patrons over his 39 years as a court Painter1. Like this one-

Francisco Goya, Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga (1784–1792), 1787-8, Oil on canvas. One of the most charming Paintings in The Met for many. I can’t help but think it’s also more. An allegory about the end of  innocence? On the right, small birds in a protective cage. On the left, a magpie is eyed by cats. Any wonder this was the last Goya portrait commissioned by the child’s father, the Count of Altamira? Herein lies a hint of what lurks in Goya’s Graphic work. Its young subject died at age eight, 4 years after posing for it. A final touch- the magpie holds Goya’s card with his signature in his beak. Met Museum Photo of the work unframed.

But, to get the full picture of Goya’s Art, I believe his graphic work deserves every bit as much attention. Yet, chances to see his Drawings & Prints in depth are rare due to the fragility and light sensitivity of the originals. In 2015, a complete set of Goya’s timeless Print series Los Caprichos (the Caprichos) was shown at The National Arts Club in Gramercy Park, which I wrote about here. 2015 also saw the last large Goya Retrospective in the U.S., Goya: Order and Disorder, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which I actually made a day trip out of town to see and wrote about in the same piece. 

Goya after Velazquez, A False Bacchus Crowning Drunkards, 1778, Etching. Goya achieved, and demonstrated, his mastery of of the challenging medium of Etching copying the earlier Spanish master as in this remarkable Print done when Goya was about 32. And, he had the confidence to modify the composition of one of the greatest Painters of all time.

In the intervening 4 1/2 years, I’ve been preoccupied, if not obsessed, with exploring Photography & PhotoBooks, so when I finally got to see Goya’s Graphic Imagination at The Met in April with about 118 Drawings & Prints, I wondered if I might be able to spot Goya’s influence on Photographers and Photography, and on Modern Art in general for that matter.

“Both types of works on paper are closer to one another than they are to Goya’s painting. Paintings are a public expression. By contrast, an album of drawings is intimate and personal. These smaller-scale works served as a platform for Goya to think through his most private ideas.” Mark McDonald, Met Curator of Goya’s Graphic Imagination.

Goya’s eye, which seems to look askance at us in the Self-Portrait that opens Los Caprichos, up top, apparently never rested. He recorded much of what he saw in his Sketchbooks, which have largely survived. Over time, his beliefs ran in and out of sync with those of the powers that be, so he became adept at keeping his opinions to himself. It is in the privacy of these Sketchbooks that he gave full reign to what he felt about all he saw around him while keeping his position at court. He eventually rose to the exalted position of First Chamber Painter in 1799.

Title page to the first edition of Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War), 1863, 24 years after the invention of chemical Photography. Met Museum Photo. Due to the low lighting in the show I was unable to take satisfactory pictures of much of the show without a tripod, so in those cases, I am using The Met’s Photos. This page was not included in the show.

A number of his Drawings became the basis of his Prints, including  Los Caprichos and later, inspired by the Peninsular War, 1807-14 and the Madrid Famine, 1811-12, Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War). It was the 10 or so Prints from this series, equal parts “graphic” and revolutionary, on view in The Met’s show I looked forward to seeing most. Due to those ever-changing political winds, it wasn’t until 1863, thirty-five years after Goya’s death, that the world got to see his Fatal Consequences of Spain’s Bloody War with Bonaparte, and Other Emphatic Caprices, as he had originally titled a set of 85 Prints that he gave to an associate during his lifetime, when it was finally published under the title Los Desastres de la Guerra with 80 Prints2.

Plate 15 from Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War): ‘And there is nothing to be done.’ (Y no hai remedio.) Met Museum Photo.

“Every figure in Los Desastres de la Guerra plays a specific role, defined by gesture, expression and costume. Nothing is superfluous.” Janis A. Tomlinson, Goya’s War: Los Desastres de la guerra, P.17

The series shows things never before seen in Art to that time, including graphic depictions of the horror of war, imprisonment and famine. About two hundred thirty years earlier, circa 1633,  Jacques Callot published his Print series Les Grandes Miseres de la guerre or The Miseries and Misfortunes of War. Of them, the Art Gallery of NSW, Australia, which owns a set, says– “Callot’s series is less an indictment of war than a moral tale about the unhappy consequences that befall the undisciplined soldier.” Callot’s Prints are in a long landscape format, and show what they depict at a distance. It is thought Goya owned a set of them, and they may have been an inspiration for him. In his series, Goya puts the action full frame presaging the words of Robert Capa, famed for his 20th century war & conflict Photographs, “If your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”

Plate 1 from Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War): Sad foreboding of what is going to happen (Tristes presentimientos de lo que ha de acontecer), ca. 1815 (published 1863), Etching, burin, drypoint and burnisher. Met Museum Photo.

As powerful & profound as they are, there’s an element of them that is particularly puzzling. In more than one work, Goya’s caption gives the viewer the idea that what he’s showing are things he actually witnessed. DID Goya see the things he shows us?

DID he? Or, didn’t he actually see this happen? The title says he did. Plate 44 from Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War): ‘I saw it.’ (Yo lo vi.). Met Museum Photo.

There is some debate around this. Wikipedia says repeatedly that he went around and saw the battles of the Peninsular War- without quoting a source for these statements I have seen no where else. While it seems it would have been hard for him to miss the daily effects of the Madrid Famine going on around him, the Artist going to battle scenes is harder for me to imagine. He was in his 60s and had suffered a serious illness that left him completely deaf. If he didn’t actually go to them, he could have been inspired by news accounts or from the accounts those closer to the action.

Preperatory Drawing for Plate 64 from Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War): ‘Cartloads to the cemetery.’ (Carretadas al cementerio.) Prado, Madrid Photo.

Plate 64 from Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War): ‘Cartloads to the cemetery.’ (Carretadas al cementerio.). Here an extremely rare opportunity to compare the Drawing, above, with the final Print. Met Museum Photo.

At this point, it’s unlikely we’ll ever know for certain how much of what we’re shown, if any of it, the Artist actually personally witnessed first hand. I’ve come to feel that thinking about this is a waste of time. Goya was an Artist- not a Photographer. He was working before the invention of chemical Photography and setting down his ideas by hand on paper, stone or canvas. With all due respect to the skill of Artists who Drew and Painted down through history, Drawing & Paintings done from life or memory are incapable of showing us the real world as it existed. Time is a key element in Drawing & Painting and in the time it takes to make one the world has changed. The people in it have moved. The light has changed. Things have happened and finished. In war, particularly, things happen way too fast to be captured accurately in a Drawing, let alone a Painting. They can give us a sense of what happened. What Goya is showing us is “something else” than the full reality of the moment- even if he did see it happen right in front of him. It’s his vision of things. If he tried to render it accurately to the scene in front of him, it’s still only an approximation. We’re seeing it through his eyes, and, as becomes apparent as you look at his Drawings & Prints, he does have a point of view.

The line for Goya extends further down the hall to the left than you can see here. April, 2021.

After seeing them in the show, it’s hard for me to think that these unprecedented images are not precursors of so-called war and conflict Photography. After the show I began to look to see if the Photographers, themselves, acknowledged this. In 2005, the renowned British Photographer Don McCullin, renowned for his coverage of the Vietnam War, among numerous other conflicts over his long & eventful career, told the BBC “When I took pictures in war I couldn’t help thinking of Goya.” Elsewhere he said, “…if what happened in front of my eyes was like a scene out of Goya. I wasn’t there to make icons. I had to bring back information that could possibly prevent other such miseries.” In those words I feel a simpatico with what Goya might have been trying to accomplish in Los Desastres de la Guerra .

Garroted Man, 1776-78, Etching. Done at about age 30, Goya’s second etching! A forerunner of Los Desastres, is also one of his most unforgettable images. According to Janis Tomlinson, Garroting “was considered one of the more humane forms of execution3.”

If a Drawing is incapable of showing us the complete “reality” of a scene, then it is what some might call today, “conceptual.” I was struck by some similarities of Goya’s Prints with so-called “conceptual” Photographers, who modify or create scenes from scratch that they then Photograph, like Duane Michals, Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdson or Deana Lawson. Goya, too, may have been creating a scene on paper to make it express what he saw in his mind’s eye (keyword= may).

Plate 30 from The Disasters of War’ (Los Desastres de la Guerra). Proof, without caption. Without the titles makes them infinitely harder to decipher. According to the wall card, here, people fall to the ground after a building explodes.

Yet, no writing about these work exists in Goya’s hand besides the captions on the plates.

“It is important to emphasize that the inscriptions are not titles. They are captions that encourage a potential understanding. The captions do not explain the work for us. The meanings are often unclear, but this isn’t because Goya was being obtuse. He was thinking through drawings and prints for his personal purposes, and as such, there is no need for him to explain their significance to himself. His works on paper are so internal and layered that they would have sparked multiple associations, even for Goya.” Mark McDonald, Met Curator of Goya’s Graphic Imagination.

So, the captions add another layer of mystery to what we’re seeing! Duane Michals captions many of his Photographs right on the print itself. Robert Frank wrote directly on the image as his career went on, and so does Jim Goldberg, among others. Coincidences? Possibly.

Jim Goldberg, Ron E., Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, 2014, Magnum Photos Print.

During the lockdown I read Believing is Seeing by Errol Morris. Among Photos taken from 1855 until very recently, Mr. Morris examines the work of the 1930s Farm Services Administration (F.S.A.) Photographers, including Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, and the evidence that they may have modified the scenes of some of their most iconic F.S.A. images from the 1930s. Modifying a scene to make it closer to what the Artist or Photographer is seeing in his or her mind’s eye would make them kin to what we see in Goya’s Drawings & Prints. So, it doesn’t really matter all that much if Goya was actually present when the events he shows us were happening. “The FSA collection (in the Library of Congress) therefore offers scholars an unparalleled opportunity to place masterworks, such as Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother (1936), in the context of companion images taken on the same day. This visual evidence offers a much more reliable guide to the photographer’s original intent than the artist’s recollections recorded decades after the fact,” James Curtis, the author of Mind’s Eye, Mind’s Truth: FSA Photography Reconsidered, said here. (The other images Dorothea Lange took that day in the archive may be seen here.) In my view, it doesn’t matter if the F.S.A. Photographers, “posed” subjects or modified scenes as Mr. Morris’ and Mr. Curits’ books suggest. Like it doesn’t matter if Goya saw “I saw it.” Even if, say Dorothea Lange, did modify the scene somehow4, she did not change the woman’s situation, which is the real and lasting point of the Photograph. At the end of the F.S.A. chapter in his book, Errol Morris concludes, “It is the idea that the photograph captures that endures 5.” It seems to me, regardless of their genesis, it’s exactly the same with Goya’s Prints & Drawings.

“The demise of Goya’s fortunes at Court has been attributed to his objections to the repressive nature of the restoration regime. Yet he had long survived within politically charged surroundings, and it seems likely he would have kept his political opinions to himself.” Janis A. Tomlinson, Francisco Goya y Lucientes: 1746-1828, P.221

Goya, Self-Portrait, c.1796, Brush and point of brush, carbon black ink, on laid paper, seen at the show’s entrance.

After escaping trouble for his views after the Peninsular War, it finally caught up to him leading to his leaving Spain and becoming an exile in France near the end of his life, where he died at 82 in 1828. His remains were later exhumed and reburied in Madrid in 1919. As far as being the possible “Father of Modern Art” goes, I think a great case can be made for his nomination. Goya’s extremely wide range of subjects, from the royals to the incarcerated preshadowed the work of many Artists & Photographers of the past century. And he never minced the Drawn line, or words, when calling out those he felt were wrong. When I say “Modern Art & Photography Begins Here,” I’m not so much referring to the stylistic innovations though they are there for all to see, and his later Paintings were certainly ahead of their time, I’m referring to the content, and the depicting of what was not seen in Art to that point. Goya’s Drawings & Prints, and his Paintings, like the 2nd & 3rd of May, 1802, break away from the chains of Pontifical or Royal commissions. They show us a world that is all too familiar to us today. A world that has seen no end of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man.

In considering Goya’s candidacy as the “first modern,” it feels that he lived too long ago to be considered. Yet, it’s interesting to realize that Goya was born in 1746 and died in 1828. J.M.W. Turner, who’s work is often seen as “modern” lived from 1775 to 1851. Charles Dickens, who’s novels captured the “modern world” as soon as anyone else’s, lived from 1812-1870. Edouard Manet, often mentioned as one of the first moderns lived from 1832, only 4 years after Goya’s passing, to 1883.  James McNeill Whistler 1834-1903 and Vincent van Gogh, 1853-1890, was born 25 years after Goya’s passing. Chemical Photography was introduced to the world in 1839- eleven years after Goya’s death. Goya seems perfectly situated chronologically.

The Custody of a Prisoner Does Not Call for Torture (La seguridad de un reo no exige tormento)
ca. 1815; published ca. 1859. While not a part of the posthumous La Guerre set, Goya included a number of Prints of prisoners in the set he gave a friend during his lifetime. I’m also including this as an example of the show’s low, protective, lighting. This may be seen with better lighting in a Met Museum Photo, here.

Between his Paintings, his Drawings and his Prints, taken as a whole, Goya shows the full range of people, from all layers of society, from those of privilege to prisoners without privilege. People living in the utmost splendor to people starving to death, extending on what Rembrandt had done. Some of it was timely, referring to people and events only known to specialists and historians now. Much of it is timeless since human nature hasn’t changed. Met Curator McDonald sums this up-

“Not much changes. The same idiocy, cruelty, and violence take new shapes, but Goya captured those universal anxieties. So much of what we are dealing with now can be identified in Goya’s art—there’s politics, conflict, bloodshed, and ignorance of the impact of our actions fueled by stupidity and bad choices—the same old problems.” Mark McDonald, Met Curator of Goya’s Graphic Imagination.

Plate 79 from Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War): Truth has died. (Muriola verdad). 1814–15, published 1863. The penultimate Print in the series. Met Museum Photo.

It was interesting to me that Goya’s Graphic Imagination. was on view a few hundred feet away from another major show of the work of another Artist who was focused on people: the famous and the already forgotten- Alice Neel: People Come First. It’s also interesting that both shows were up during the pandemic: our own 21st century horror show. As big a test of the resilience of New York as I hope to ever see.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “Outside of Space & Time” by David Byrne & St. Vincent from their classic album Love This Giant.

BookMarks-
The Met’s catalog for Goya’s Graphic Imagination is exceptional. It features large, often full page plates of all the works on view on very nice stock and includes very insightful text from the show’s curators. These texts include numerous insights that weren’t included on the wall cards in the show. And so, it’s one of the better books on the subject of Goya’s Drawings & Prints and a very good place to start for those who want to know more about the show or the subject. Highly recommended.

The best overview of the work of Goya known to me is Janis A. Tomlinson’s Francisco Goya y Lucientes : 1746-1828 , published by Phaidon, which is my go-to book for all things Goya. In fact, I’ve relied so heavily on it that I am now on my second copy. Beware of nebulous listings on Amazon! This is a large book- in both hard & soft cover editions. There is apparently a subsequent smaller softcover edition I have not seen. For studying the Art, the large edition, which has over 250 images, is the one you want. Out of print, but quite inexpensive in Very Good condition, the hardcover is the way to go especially since it is really no more expensive than the softcover and its binding should last longer. 

The best overview on Goya’s Drawings is called simply that- Goya Drawings. Published by the Prado Museum, Madrid, who hold the world’s greatest collection of Goya’s work. It was one of my NoteWorthy Art Books of 2020. It also contains a few Prints but most of its 250 reproductions are of his Drawings, sectioned from all through his career with insightful text in English in a nice, smaller size.

Janis Tomlinson has also written two books about the prints.Graphic Evolutions The Print Series of Francisco Goya (Columbia Studies on Art) and Goya’s War: Los Desastres de la Guerra. Both are excellent and recommended, the latter the most comprehensive book on Los Desastres available. They are a bit harder to find in very good condition, but worth seeking out. Goya’s War contains reproductions of the all 80 published Prints in Los Desastres. It was only published in softcover. 

Photography Related-

Errol Morris’Believing Is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography is a fascinating deeper look at iconic Photographs starting with Roger Fenton’s Photographs of the Crimean War, 1855, to current events, causing the reader to question his or her beliefs about just what these images say and what they conceal. Extremely wide-ranging it’s an essential book for Photographers, Art lovers, Art writers and anyone who cares about images.

James Curtis’ Mind’s Eye, Mind’s Truth: Fsa Photography Reconsidered (American Civilization) is lesser known and a ground-breaking look at the work of the Farm Services Administration Photographers, including Walker Evans, Russell Lee and Dorothea Lange. It puts their most famous images into the context of the Photographer’s work that day and analyzes them in a bigger picture way revealing much that is not apparent in the one, famous, Photograph that was widely circulated.

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.
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.

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  1.  Janis Tomlinson, Francisco Goya y Lucientes: 1746-1828, P.1 ↩
  2. Also, as Janis Tomlinson points out- “For if, as the artist himself admitted, only twenty-seven sets of Los Caprichos had sold in much better times, how could he hope to find buyers in a capital devastated by war for these images of brutality, sadistic indifference, and tragic resignation?” Janis A. Tomlinson, Goya’s War: Los Desastres de la guerra, P.17 ↩
  3. Janis Tomlinson, Francisco Goya y Lucientes: 1746-1828, P.44 ↩
  4. James Curtis interview with Errol Morrisin Morris’, Believing is Seeing, P.138 ↩
  5. Errol Morris, Believing Is Seeing, p.185 ↩

William Buchina’s Stream

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

“What’s the matter with me
I don’t have much to say
Daylight sneakin’ through the window
And I’m still in this all-night café
Walkin’ to and fro beneath the moon
Out to where the trucks are rollin’ slow
To sit down on this bank of sand
And watch the river flow”*

William Buchina, Low Information Settings #1. 48 x 72 inches. Redacted documents, things being dug up, cryptic symbols, protest signs, places that almost look familiar (Is that a WWII Berlin Flak Tower upper left?), welcome to just some of the mysterious recurring images in Mr. Buchina’s work. All works 2020, Acrylic on canvas, unless specified.

Roaming your eye over one of William Buchina’s pieces feels a bit like watching an image stream. There’s so much going on in any of them, as seen in William Buchina: Low Information Setting, at Hollis Taggart, on West 26th Street, Chelsea, it’s a daunting task to unpack it all. His ideas seem endless, and they look back as much as they seem to look at “now” (well, it sure feels like now), or a time undetermined. While you look, there’s also a stream of names that run through your mind as possible “influences” for such work. For me, they range from Max Ernst to Bruce Conner to R. Crumb and Neo Rauch. Then, the next time you look, all of that starts all over again.

Low Information Settings, #7, 24 x 36 inches. Deserted stores or malls are another recurring element. All too real-world right now.

I’ve only been looking, and looking again, for about 2 months so I’m not going to claim any special insight into what his work “means,” but I will say it certainly resonates with the moment. This led me to look at his prior work, and see if to see if he had found serendipity in 2020-21. His website shows work going back to 2012 and a fascinating evolution. I found similar intrigue, complexity and depth. A soft touch for an Artist who Draws well, judging from what he shows there, Drawing has been central to William Buchina’s Art for quite a long time. His older works, like Lust, Crime & Holiness #30, 2013, shown further below, are every bit as complex, if not even more so. The stream of images that populate his older pieces, too, has now become a river.

Installation view. Low Information Settings #10, 2021, 96 x 72 inches, center, features a composition that reminds me of the ground-breaking layouts of George Herriman, Charlotte Salomon and Chris Ware.

Detail of the lower two thirds of L.I.S. #10. Unlike the Artists just mentioned, Mr. Buchina’s horizontal sections seem to add more mystery to the work. Looking at this section, the death and mouring (and lack of mourning in some quarters) of Princess Diana came to mind.

At first glance, his pieces often seem to be a chaotic jumble of people, places & things, but order is miraculously achieved through a number of compositional devices, brilliantly handled, the horizontal layers in this composition being only one. In pieces this complex they become fascinating to spot. How they hold the work’s wildly disparate images and multiple sections together is something of a tour de force.

Low Information Settings #3, 2020, 75 x 48 inches.

Though his images are often fantastic, unique amalgamations, the unexpected melded to something seemingly mundane, their inspiration appears to be more surrealistic than the fantastic work from the drug saturated 1960s as seen in Robert Williams or the early R. Crumb of Zap Comics. Yet, among the Surrealists, Mr. Buchina is closer to the Max Ernst of La Femme 100 Tetes (The Hundred Headless Women) or Duchamp than to Dali or Miro. Behind the curtain, it turns out that Mr. Buchina keeps a trove of found Photographs and other images, some of which he displayed in a prior show, that serve as inspiration/jumping off points for the streams of images he shows us that have a habit of looking vaguely familiar but you just can’t quite place it, or he adds other, usually unexpected elements to it, making it his own. Regardless the source, the imagination is his. It’s stunning and it never lets up.

Mask up! Detail of Low Information Settings #5. Full work is 72 x 48 inches.

Heightening this, remarkably, the times have caught up with some of what he has shown us. Though masks are seen regularly in the Low Information Settings pieces, as in the detail from #5 from 2020, above, the viewer might take it for granted these are covid19 pandemic references, until you realize masks have appeared in his work for years as his archive shows.

Lust, Crime & Holiness #30, 2013 India ink on paper 72 x 108 inches (hexaptych) shows a wide variety of masks 7 years before covid, and is just one of his pieces that show them pre-2020. Photo from williambuchina.com

Going back in time to look at work like this, I was struck by how the new works (Low Information Settings & the Scenery series) seem to be set in large buildings, complexes, or malls, which serves to provide a setting and a unifying element. The earlier works are more “free form,” with sections often hanging in pictorial space. Low Information Settings strikes me as a real breakthrough for Mr. Buchina. Not better. Different.

As for echoes of the recent political and social past in his work? According to the show’s catalog, “Mr. Buchina never views his imagery as overtly political.” Words to bear in mind, particularly when looking at a work like this-

Low Information Setting #6, 2021, 72 x 96 inches.

Detail. According to the show’s catalog, this work was finished days before the Washington insurrection. When I look at this work, I wonder if the setting isn’t a museum given all the Art on view in the background and on the upper levels, as seen in the prior image. After all, 2019 was a year when museum boards came under intense scrutiny, and 2020 a year when the museums came under fire for inequality, predjudice and exclusion.

“People disagreeing everywhere you look
Makes you wanna stop and read a book
Why only yesterday I saw somebody on the street
That was really shook
But this ol’ river keeps on rollin’, though
No matter what gets in the way and which way the wind does blow
And as long as it does I’ll just sit here
And watch the river flow”*

It doesn’t end there. In William Buchina: Low Information Setting, unrest, protests (of an unspecified kind), deserted/abandoned stores & malls, and any number of other things that are to be seen on a walk through any city probably anywhere in the world in 2020-21, appear in almost all of the pieces on view. The only thing missing are ambulances rushing people to treatment centers.

Low Information Settings #8, 2021, 24 x 36 inches. While the colors are exaggerated to an almost Day-Glo extent, these three complementary colors (red-yellow-blue based)harmonize a number of other works and set an atmospheric tone for the series.

But, then it was the surreal colors, the reds, yellows and blues particularly, that stopped me. What if you didn’t take all of this literally?

Scenery in Blue #8, 2021, Ink on paper, 30 x 44 inches.

Who was it who first said that all Art is really Self-Portraiture? These could all be inner portraits. Could they be scenes from the inner life of the Artist as he navigates both his world and the world of Art & image history? Could these be portraits of an imagination that’s image based and has a gift for stringing together disparate snippets that somehow manage to not only hold together, but do something far more difficult in today’s image oversaturated world- hold the viewer’s attention, and hold it long enough to get them to think about what they’re seeing?

Low Information Settings #2, 2020, 44 x 44 inches.

Then, of course, they could all “mean” nothing. But where’s the fun in that? Personally, I doubt it. Perhaps William Buchina’s Art strikes the raw nerve of navigating and surviving a “new norm” that’s anything but “normal.” The world in 2021 feels surreal in so many ways. Even things we thought we knew well are different or changed (like waiting in lines to buy food). And, there are a lot of people fed up with that “old norm” that are demanding to be heard. It’s possible to read all kinds of things into these works, but 2 months in, it seems you might have to look long and hard for specific references. And that leaves me continuing to think about them.

The moment I discovered William Buchina. 7pm, March 6, 2021. I was walking up West 26th Street when I saw this in the almost dark (closed) Hollis Taggart Gallery through their window. That was all it took. Immediately intrigued, it would be a month before I could go back and actually see the show.

At Hollis-Taggart, the show was rapidly selling out by the time I finally got to see it after being vaccinated. That’s evidence that some images in the endless stream still have the power to stick for longer than the moment they take to flash by.

Detail of Low Information Settings #5. The full piece, seen above, is 72 x 48 inches.

“Wish I was back in the city
Instead of this old bank of sand
With the sun beating down over the chimney tops
And the one I love so close at hand
If I had wings and I could fly
I know where I would go
But right now I’ll just sit here so contentedly
And watch the river flow”*

*-Soundtrack for the Post is “Watching The River Flow” by Bob Dylan from Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Volume II

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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A Visit To Macy’s Spring Flower Show

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava
As I ventured back out into the world, I received a request to go and see Macy’s Flower Show. A piece about a Flower Show on an Art site? The reader told me that the show is being held in conjunction with the Fashion Institute of Technology, aka F.I.T., in Manhattan, the renowned fashion school1. Ahhh…Ok. Long time readers will recall that I covered the China: Thought the Looking Glass fashion show at The Met in 2015 in depth here. Before that, I drew my own designs for a number of years. Actually, fashion is a realm I’ve always kept an eye on. ; )

Click any image for full size. The two week show begins across the street in Herald Square where two majestic Owls always stand watch on top of the pillars. Oof!

I’m also posting this is to offer some support to Macy’s and their iconic Herald Square store, long a hub of shopping in NYC, for New Yorkers and tourists from all over the world- the anchor of the entire West 34th Street area.

Flashback- Dark times. June 7, 2020, the evening after the break ins and looting at Macy’s and in the area finds the store boarded up and security guards on duty. Of course, during the pandemic, the store was closed for months.

In 2020, they were hit by vandals during the lockdown, and they were already facing hard times as many shop online. NYC would not be the same if we were to lose them. And so, I bring you a look at Macy’s Spring Flower Show which features fashion designs and installations by some talented F.I.T. students to offer some support. Enjoy!

The light of spring. You can enter Macy’s from any number of points but the Herald Square entrance shown here, and in the picture above, is the most famous and the one I consider the “main” entrance. It directly faces the Empire State Building, on the next block east.

The view of the Flower Show just in side the main entrance.

I was there about 4pm on a weekday. As I walked through the store, I noted there were shoppers though not as many as usually.

A look at the F.I.T. students installations, the highlight of what I saw-

Caption for the above installation.

Caption for the above installation.

Caption for the above installation. .


Caption for the above installation.

A closer look at the top section…

…and the lower part.

Caption for the above installation.

If you need some shoes to go with these outfits, hit the 2nd floor. ; )

The 7th Avenue entrance on the northeast corner of West 34th Street was where I exited. The store occupies an entire NYC block. Just amazing.

A well-worn plaque on the ground out front belies how many soles have come here since 2002 when it was put here for the store’s 100th.

The architectural details still take you back in time. It always amazes me to walk through a store so big, with countless sections, right in the middle of Manhattan.

Lookin’ good! Hang in there, Macy’s! Like the rest of us.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “F Me Pumps” by Amy Winehouse from Frank, 2003.

For Sv.

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.
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.

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  1. Who also have a Fashion Museum which regularly runs interesting shows. Currently, it’s only open online. ↩

A Year Without Art

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Part 1- A Hush All Over The World

Last call. Hudson River, 7:30pm, May 30, 2020. Immediately after I took this I had to hurry home to be off the streets before the 8pm curfew, the first time in my life I’ve lived under a curfew, let alone one during a pandemic. The scene, with the light going out, fits the reality of life at that moment.

It was exactly a year since I was able to see Art when I left The Met Breuer on March 8, 2020, for what turned out to be its last day ever, with the NYC covid shutdown commencing the following day, It was longer than I thought it would be that day, but much shorter than I thought it would be when we were in the heart of the shutdown with the City being the epicenter of one of the worst outbreaks of the virus to that point a few months later. Over 32,000 have died from covid in NYC alone as I write this. I count myself lucky not to be one.

Galleries on West 19th Street, June 4, 2020.

Since I started regularly going to see Art in 1980, this was the longest I hadn’t been able to do so in person.

Someone posted this captioned photo on a window of the shuttered Park Restaurant that summed up one aspect of life in NYC in the pandemic. Here I need to clear something up. In April, 2020, I posted a slideshow of a “deserted” NYC. Yes, the streets were empty- day and night. But that was largely because everyone was staying home- as they should have, and only going out for essential errands.

During that time, a time I spent entirely alone (450+ days, and counting), Art & PhotoBooks were my friends and family. They enabled me to keep seeing & exploring Art & Photography, and actually continue to discover Artists & Photographers. Of course, during the shutdown, the only way I could see books were in my library or by USPS delivery. 

I must digress here. 

The shadows half engulf the embattled  West 18th Street Post Office, May 29, 2020, during the height of the pandemic in NYC and during the height of the discussion about cutting the funding of the USPS. Yet, through it all, Manager Miss Lloyd and staff showed up almost every day and persevered throughout enabling people like me to get potentially life-saving supplies.

My debt to the Post Office goes much deeper. In a pandemic everything quickly disappears from store shelves. All I had was a bandana until the USPS was able to deliver some masks to me in July. Isopropyl Alcohol took a while longer to find, and I finally found some in a store after months of looking.

The new normal. The line for Trader Joe’s extends hundreds of feet down the street to the left and 100 feet in front. April 5, 2021.

Through it all, the staff at Trader Joe’s were positively heroic in keeping this community going, only closing for a couple days here and there when a team member got sick for extra cleaning. Completely uncharted ground for them, they quickly emerged as a role model business in terms of how they adapted and carried on, modifying and inventing procedures to keep their team and the public safe. 

ALL of these heroic essential workers deserve our highest thanks and gratitude. If and when this ends, there should be a parade for them down the Canyon of Heroes.

I don’t know what to say about the countless medical professionals who hung in there during the worst of times, especially those who treated me right in the middle of it for a non-covid related condition, and particularly those who lost their lives trying to help and save others. The tragic story of Dr. Lorna Breen, who worked for the hospital that saved my life in February, 2007, broke my heart when I heard about it. “It’s OK Not To Be OK” were words I took seriously. They are wise- to a point.

Only you can judge if you need real, professional, help, or not, when you are locked down, or overwhelmed, as Dr. Breen apparently was. As a victim of suicide, I can’t stress enough that while it is “OK Not To Be OK” for a while, if you continue to not be OK, reach out and get help- by phone, online, or in person. 

Outdoor dining in the middle of winter in a structure built right IN West 17th Street. February 20,2021. Yes, that structure, and many others, was built right in the street! I admire the creativity restaurants showed in staying open once they were allowed to, though it seemed too unsafe for me. Their creative mindset is an example for other businesses struggling to survive the pandemic.

Many of them did not. In April, the legendary Eisenberg’s Sandwich Shop, 174 Fiffh Avenue, closed after 92 years. I doubt the space was ever remodeled in that time allowing you to walk into the past anytime you went in. It was one of Anthony Bourdain Top Restaurants (#11) in NYC, and one of mine. Every time a place like this closes a part of NYC goes with it, probably never to be replaced. While, many high end galleries got SMA loans, which continues to mystify me, most small businesses did not.

Spending so much time on my own, what did I do besides read Art & PhotoBooks? I took pictures every single day, during excursions I timed when almost no one would be out. I did no writing, but a lot of thinking. I dipped my toe into the ocean of Instagram, though I am no fan of monopolistic social media as it is. It was a VERY strange feeling walking around without a list of Art shows to go see in my pocket. What to do? I just wandered aimlessly, and sure enough, I saw something new, surprising or shocking, which takes a lot after 30 years of living here.

Other than that, I have been silent. Still, much to my surprise, readership continues to climb, which I try to not think means that people like the site better without me, and I continue to hear from readers all over the world. As always, Thank You for reading my pieces. I hope this finds you & yours well where it finds you. 

Coming Attractions? This window on a shuttered multiplex movie theater usually features posters of what’s playing or coming. Now it serves to make me wonder what the future holds. February, 2021.

I’m a different man than I was when I left The Met Breuer on March 8, 2020. I had NO idea what I, NYC, or the world was in for in the coming weeks and months. Much still remains unknown. I’ve survived the worst of the covid pandemic in NYC (knocking hard on wood). Along the way, I’ve survived a number of unrelated crisis that were made exponentially more difficult because everything was closed here. Yet, I got through all of them with no help from anyone, except those mentioned above.

A covid testing facility in the Flatiron after hours.

As the vaccine took effect, I turned my sights to going to see Art, again. Yet, I say that with a certain amount of guilt. There are too many, many, many people in this country and around the world without access to the vaccine! And, there’s little to no information as to when they might get it. The pandemic has been horribly managed virtually everywhere in the world. If the distribution of the vaccine continues to be as badly managed, any recovery will also be delayed. At the cost of how many more lives?

A woman about to be vaccinated. The Javitz Convention Center has been put to good public use since covid hit. First as a US Army Temporary Hospital last year, and now as a mass vax site. I was vaccinated here twice, the first time I’d set foot in the place since it opened in 1986. If you’re on the fence about getting it? For the record I had absolutely NO SIDE EFFECTS either time. None. Zero. Not even a sore arm. Two weeks after Pfizer shot #2 it was fully effective I was told by the Registered Nurse who gave it to me.

And, I’ve yet to hear anyone mention something else very important- It’s almost MIRACULOUS that a covid vaccine has been developed in a year!

Look at the history of pandemics and scourges. 2021 marks FORTY years since the CDC first officially reported what would be called AIDS, there is STILL no HIV vaccine! William Shakespeare lived his entire life under the threat of the plague, which devastated London no less than 3 times during his lifetime. The plague was a scourge that lasted from 1350 to well into the 1800s! So, WE ARE INCREDIBLY LUCKY a vaccine was found so quickly. I shutter to think what 1, 2, 3 more years without a vaccine would have looked like.

Why I digressed…

Art, unless you make it yourself, is a luxury, “important” only once the main necessities of life and well-being have been covered. As I ventured back to see Art I had everything I’ve said thus far, and everything I’ve been through this past year, on my mind. 

Part 2- Temperature Check

The Met’s famous main entrance, gated, during the 5 months it was closed, unprecedented in my lifetime, May 21, 2020.

Going to The Met or MoMA now (April, 2021) is a very, very strange experience.

MoMA, Main Lobby Entrance, April 29, 2021. Even 5 minutes before closing I NEVER saw it like this. This is usually crowded with people and staff. It’s daytime! Note the sun streaming in from the famous Sculpture Garden directly behind me.

They were both almost entirely empty on weekdays when I’ve been there. In some ways, it’s a dream for me. I can have almost any gallery I want completely to myself.

The Met’s Roofdeck, April 22, 2021. Looking around, I felt that perhaps I wasn’t supposed to be here? But, there is a guard way off on the left.

The only exceptions were The Met’s dual blockbuster shows- Goya’s Graphic Imagination and Alice Neel: People Come First. The times I went I waited 15 minutes to get in to each show.

April 22, 2021. This terrific show opened in early February, when virtually no one had been vaccinated and closed on May 2nd as more were just beginning to be. Very unfortunate timing for a great and timely show of work too rarely seen in this depth & breath due to their fragility.

On subsequent visits I asked people in the front of the line how long they waited and they also responded 15 minutes. The lines are due to The Met’s safety procedures and not letting the galleries get too crowded so visitors can maintain distance. Once inside, I thought they were “comfortably” occupied with ample distance. The lines are interesting because the Goya show was about to end on May 2nd, which generally would cause lines to get in, pre-pandemic, but the Alice Neel show had only opened on March 22nd. That means expect longer lines to see it as the summer progresses. Both shows will live on and continue to be discussed. I am disappointed The Met did not extend the Goya show, or schedule it to open later in the year, so more people could see it as more are vaccinated. Alice Neel: People Come First is a landmark show, perhaps the most important Painting show in NYC since Kerry James Marshall: Mastry because it demonstrates how contemporary Alice Neel remains- as a woman, an Artist/mother and as a thinker and activist. Her position in the canon of great Artists of the 20th century had been established by the regular shows her work has increasingly received over time, including the Whitney Retrospective on the centennial of her birth in 2000, and most recently, Alice Neel, Uptown at Zwirner in 2017, which I covered. 

The boarded up Hauser & Wirth Gallery, an SMA Loan grantee, on West 22nd Street behind Joseph Beuys columnar basalt stone, June 4, 2020. Public Art, like the Beuys seen here, was not boarded up.

Elsewhere around town, most galleries seem to be open for business, those that are left that is, each with their own terms. The carnage that has devastated small business has not spared the smaller galleries. A walk down West 26th Street showed that perhaps 50% of galleries are gone (It could be higher since some entire multi floor buildings were devoted to galleries and I have not gone into them to do a headcount). Among the survivors, some will let you right in. Some with an appointment only. Some are requiring info for contact tracing and/or temperature checks, all are requiring masks and distancing. That’s from reading signs on the doors as I walk past. I’ve only been to a few gallery shows. From the email I get, the number of shows is drastically lower than it was. It should be said that the summer is always slow(er) here so perhaps galleries are getting ready to be more active post-Labor Day. I also haven’t been able to get a sense of Art world employment and the current status of the many who were laid off or furloughed during the shutdown. 

Never say Never is just one lesson of 2020.

As for the Art market, I have noticed some softening in asking prices around town, though of course that depends on who and what we’re talking about1. Is this a buying op, or a harbinger of a long overdue market correction? It’s still very early in the recovery (if it is the recovery), and a bit hard to tell where things are heading,

11th Avenue, April 8, 2021.

It seems to me that most of it will depend on how quickly more people get vaccinated everywhere around the world so the world as a whole can begin to recover. Art is global, made & traded virtually everywhere, but that’s only one instance of how interconnected everyone and everything is. As poorly as the covid crisis has been handled everywhere much now depends on how well the global vaccine distribution is handled. The pandemic will only end as quickly as the vaccines can reach those who need it. Only then can the world truly begin to heal and a real recovery begin.

And we can can get back to exploring Art.

*- Soundtrack for this Post is “Spring Is Here,” composed by Richard Rogers & Lorenz Hart and recorded by Frank Sinatra on his immortal Sings For Only The Lonely, 1958. Rogers & Hart are among the very greatest songwriters of all time in my opinion and Lorenz Hart’s lyrics remain extremely under appreciated. Heard here in a gorgeous 2018 stereo mix where you can fully appreciate the brilliant arrangement by Nelson Riddle-

“Once there was a thing called spring
When the world was writing verses like yours and mine
All the lads and girls would sing
When we sat at little tables and drank May wine
Now April, May and June are sadly out of tune
Life has stuck a pin in the balloon
Spring is here! Why doesn’t my heart go dancing?”

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  1. The auction market seems to still be as strong as ever. Auctions are primarily resales of Art, whereas many galleries are selling new Art. ↩

NoteWorthy Art Books, 2020

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

While PhotoBooks have been an all-encompassing passion of mine these past four+ years (though of course I had some earlier), Art Books have been a passion ever since I first saw one, or, for over half a century. Before I could go to a gallery or museum, here was a way to see all, or a selection of, the work of an Artist or a group of Artists- in one portable package. I was instantly fascinated by that, and I still am. Yes, physical books because Art, or Photo, eBooks are few and far between- still. The quality of the physically printed Photo, or Photo of a Painting, is still unsurpassed. In 2020, museums and galleries were closed for much of the year all over the world. For me, and perhaps innumerable others, Art Books were there, 24/7, to provide a means of exploring, seeing and studying Art. Fittingly, as they were for me before I was able to go to shows in person, this year, in my world entirely without any other people for 11 months, Art & PhotoBooks were my sole companions.

Having presented my NoteWorthy PhotoBooks, 2020, (as well as in 2019, and 2018), this year,  I’ve decided to also present my thoughts on the Art Books I’ve seen in 2020 that I most highly recommend for the first time. All of these books, I highly recommend, so I’m not picking one out of them as “most highly recommended.” Here they are-

NoteWorthy Art Books of the Year, 2020

Philip Guston Now, DAP/National Gallery of Art, and
Philip Guston: A Life Spent Painting

After a gap of 15 years between retrospectives of his work, two excellent overviews of Philip Guston’s remarkable oeuvre are published in one year. Deciding which one to get is hard. Both have a lot going for them. For someone looking for one book with the most images in the largest size, along with one of the finest texts of Robert Storr’s career, Philip Guston: A Life Spent Painting is the choice. For someone looking for the only place to see the most controversial show of 2020, now postponed to 2024, along with an equally excellent text, Philip Guston Now is an excellent choice. For the serious Guston aficionado, the only choice is to buy both. For someone already familiar with Philip Guston’s work who wants to learn more about his work, either book will provide countless fresh insights.

Philip Guston: A Life Spent Painting may be the finest achievement in the long career of author Robert Storr. Yet, I give special credit to Philip Guston Now for being one of the most remarkable exhibition catalogs I’ve ever seen. Personally, I find its text by co-curators Mark Godfrey, Alison de Lima Greene and Kate Nesin, to be nothing short of brilliant both in its content and how it flows seamlessly from period to period through the Artist’s long career, treating the whole in a fresh way. This, alone, would be enough for a high recommendation, but the book is taken to another level by the addition along the way of pieces by 10 Contemporary Artists- William Kentridge, Glenn Ligon, Tacita Dean, Peter Fischli, Trenton Doyle Hancock, David Reed, Dana Schutz, Amy Sillman, Art Spiegelman and Rirkrit Tiravanija. Most provide unique insights into specific works by Philip Guston and a number of them directly address the “hooded”/klan works, the focus of the controversy around the show the book was published to accompany.

Dana Schutz’ Essay in Philip Guston Now.

The show, also titled Philip Guston Now, was first postponed due to covid to July, 2021, then  controversially postponed, again, to 2024 by the National Gallery of Art, Washington; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Tate Modern, London, where it is scheduled to be mounted. “We are postponing the exhibition until a time at which we think that the powerful message of social and racial justice that is at the center of Philip Guston’s work can be more clearly interpreted.1.” Like many others, I am at a loss to understand that statement. On the one hand, it denigrates the intelligence of visitors. On the other, what if 2024, isn’t that nebulous “time” the message speaks of under whatever unmentioned criteria they’re using to determine it? However, the show’s catalog did come out this year in anticipation of the originally scheduled opening. Its inclusion of the featured pieces by those 10 Contemporary Artists is exactly the kind of thing Art monographs need more of, in my view, as they struggle to remain relevant- given how many other books already exist on most Artists, and the large expense involved in creating them in what may be increasingly challenging times for museums who, largely, publish these books.

The reproductions of the Art in Philip Guston Now only adequate in terms of quality, in my opinion, are best used for reference to the points large and small being made throughout the text. Some of the Art is reproduced one image on a page with a copious border, others are 4 to a page. It does include new Photos taken in Philip Guston’s studio, which appears to be largely as he left it. The other big reason for getting this book is to see the works in, and to have a record of,  this important show, so you can prepare yourself to see it, IF it ever opens. Also important to note- many works will not appear in each of the four scheduled stops the show will make. So, the catalog is the only place to “see” the whole show.

The large 13.35 by 11.5 inch pages create an almost 27 inch spread making the images in Philip Guston: A Life Spent Painting the largest in any Guston book to date, and with over 850, the most images in any Guston book as well. This will make it a slam dunk choice for many, but take a look at both.

The illustrations are better and more numerous (850) in Philip Guston: A Life Spent Painting, whose 13 1/2 by 11 1/2 inch size is more accommodating close study. Get that book for the best current overview of the Art. As for its text, Robert Storr contributes one of his finest efforts, apparently the results of many years of work. As good as the text in Philip Guston Now is, Mr. Storr’s doesn’t take a back seat to any Guston book I’ve seen to date, which is why a recommendation for both books is the only one I can give at this point. They join Philip Guston: Retrospective, published by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in 2003, to accompany the last major retrospective of his work and now out of print, my go-to Guston book to this point, as standard references to the work of this enduringly contemporary Master.

Drawing for Conspirators, 1930, Graphite pencil, pen and ink, colored pencil, and wax crayon on paper, seen at the Whiney Museum in July, 2015, in America Is Hard To See, the most recent showing of this work. A number of the essays in Philip Guston Now reference this work.

Before continuing, I feel I must briefly address the controversy centered around the show’s inclusion of Philip Guston’s klan Paintings. I’ve been somewhat surprised that the attention seems to focus on his late klan pieces. I think it’s important to remember that they go back to when the Painter was about 18. In Philip Guston Retrospective, the backstory is relayed on pages 16 & 17. It begins by quoting Mr. Guston-

“I was working at a factory and became involved in a strike. The KKK helped in strike breaking so I did a whole series of paintings on the KKK. In fact I had a show of them in a bookshop in Hollywood, where I was working at that time. Some members of the klan walked in, took the paintings off the wall and slashed them. Two were mutilated. That was the beginning.”

(The text then continues) “The Ku Klux Klan, also known as the Invisible Empire, had a significant membership in California in the 1930s and 1940s, and Los Angeles County was its most active Klavern. Guston and several other of his friends also painted portable murals for the John Reed Club on the theme of ‘The American Negro.’ Guston’s submission was particularly volitile. Based on the Scottsboro case, in which nine black men were sentenced (many said on false and circumstantial evidence) to life in prison for raping a white girl. Guston’s mural depicted a group of hooded figures whipping a black man. The murals were eventually attacked and defaced by a band of ‘unidentified’ vandals. The experience of seeing the effect of art on life and life on art never left Guston, and the unsettling image of the hooded figure was branded into his visual imagination.”

In the 1930s, in addition to strike breaking, the klan also targeted Jews. Philip Guston, originally Philip Goldstein, was Jewish. Of course, their main target were Blacks.

Artists don’t live in the nebulous times those 4 museum directors speak of in their postponement statement. They live, work, and often respond to, the times of their lives. Philip Guston lived long enough to see that racism was deeply embedded in the fabric of American life, possibly even in his own life. I believe those are things that may have influenced his later hooded figure/klan works, though they are for each viewer to interpret for his or herself. If this ins’t the time for all of us to look inside at ourselves and see how we can be better, how do we know 2024 will be a better time to do so?

NoteWorthy Art Book of the Year, 2020

Noah Davis, David Zwirner Books. An early candidate for the most important new Art monograph of the new decade might be hard to top for that title in the next 9 years. Noah Davis passed away of cancer at the very young age of 32 on August 29, 2015. Still, the amount he accomplished and the work he created in such a short life will live on indefinitely. Editor Helen Molesworth was Mr. Davis’ personally chosen curator, and she curated the show that opened earlier this year in NYC, which  I wrote about before it moved to The Underground Museum, L.A.., which Noah Davis founded with his wife, the Artist Karon Davis. The text includes interviews with those who knew Mr. Davis, including legendary Painter Henry Taylor, Deana Lawson, Lindsay Charlwood, Dagny Corcoran, Daniel DeSure, Thomas Houseago, and Venus X by Ms. Molesworth. Only the second book on his work thus far, it will remain the standard reference for the time being, and a standard reference regardless of what else comes out on one of the most important Artists of  our time. It’s only too bad Mr. Davis didn’t live to see it. Noah Davis was not only an extraordinary Painter, he was one of the Artistic visionaries of our time. He showed it was possible to succeed as an Artist without gallery representation, and then he audaciously founded his own museum to serve audiences he felt were being left out by the existing museums. Generations to come will be influenced and inspired by his Art. Generations of Artists will be, also, influenced by his example. 

From 2020, let’s set the wayyyyy back machine back to the very first Art Book to captivate me when I was a kid was Rembrandt: His Life, His Work, His Time, by Bob Haak, published by Abrams in 1969. A large (13.5 by 11 inch), 348 page hardcover, with 612 illustrations including 109 hand-tipped color plates, it had these words on the front flap-

“There emerges, in this book, a Rembrandt who is human, fallible, majestic- a man who went through all the common vicissitudes of life and yet was determined to remain true to himself as an artist.”

I’d never seen anything like it. Here was an entire world, the entire life and work of an Artist that just exploded in front of me, singeing my mind as I turned each page, as Rembrandt’s wondrous turned painfully sad life went on, accompanied by the Artist turning his hand from Painting to Drawing to Prints, and back, each among the supreme works done in the medium by anyone, before or since. Most of all, it was the incredible humanity in his Art that has stayed with me to this day. He rendered everyone, from beggars to the exalted, babies and the very old, and foremost among them, he rendered himself, continually throughout his career, from early on, until near the end, creating a body of Self-Portraits, the like of which the world had never seen. Those words on the flap turned out to be the key! As the years went by, I began to understand where that unequalled humanity in Rembrandt’s work came from. Such is the power of a truly great Art Book.

Fast forward a half century to 2020 and the release of 3 great books on the Master, each one of my NoteWorthy Art Books, 2020…

The heavyweight champions. The Complete Paintings weighs in at 17.78 pounds, The Complete Drawings & Etchings at 14.99 pounds.

Rembrandt. The Complete Paintings, Taschen XXL Series
Rembrandt. The Complete Drawings & Etchings, Taschen XXL Series
Rembrandt. The Self-Portraits. Taschen XL Series. Nothing more needs to be said- These will remain THE standard visual reference books for Art lovers on the work of the foremost Painter of humanity in this house for the foreseeable future or until the experts change their minds, yet again, on what is, and what is not, from the hand of the Master and deserves to be included. And you know they will (though not the last WORD, for that Gary Schwartz’ amazing books on Rembrandt will retain their prominence in this household). Again. In the meantime, bliss out in peace. Even Mr. Schwartz approves in an Amazon review2. With all due respect to the esteemed authors, in my opinion, these books would be closer to “perfect” if they had his contributions. Photography, paper, binding, finish are first rate all around. 

After all these years, well into the age of the selfie, this first body of Self-Portraits still remain at the top of my list of favorite Art works.

It’s a bit bold of Taschen to publish these books given the still in-flux state of what exactly is a Rembrandt, and given that the esteemed publishers have not yet issued a revised version of any of the XXL books. My guess is they felt the completion of the Rembrandt Research Project’s work, published in a six volume set, the last in 2014, provided an opportunity for a collection. I’ve recently heard of at least one change to the accepted canon, but for better or worse, anyone wanting to see the most Rembrandt in a large size will be left with these three books as the best option for the foreseeable future.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Taschen XXL Series
As I just got through saying about the original Dutch Master, if you want to see as much of the work of the late New York Master, Jean-Michel Basquiat as possible in one volume, as LARGE as possible, Taschen’s XXL Jean-Michel Basquiat is the only book for you. Yes, another Taschen XXL on this list this year. Look at the $200. list price (for this and for each of the Rembrandt Paintings and Drawings books) this way- You’d have to spend a large fortune to travel to the world to see all the Art contained in one of these, IF the work happened to be on view. Even then, you won’t get to see it this close up in what is usually, very good to excellent Art Photography. And consider that much of the key work of Jean-Michel Basquiat is in private hands because the museums were slow to accept and buy his work. They missed the boat. Private collections rarely show or lend their work making the chances to see more than 5 Basquiat Paintings anywhere at any time extremely rare! That’s exactly why I spent so much time running around seeing the 5 Basquiat shows mounted here in NYC last year. My pieces on them are here. In all that effort, I still only saw about 130 or so pieces!

David Hockney: Drawing From Life, National Portrait Gallery, London
The incredibly prolific Mr. Hockney has had a life long obsession with Drawing. That alone makes him a man after my own heart. I’ve followed along with his Drawing evolution with empathy. He’s often spoken of the challenges of Drawing and man, could I relate to them, as I spent 3 days every week Drawing at The Met for about a decade. Sometimes, I’d look at his Drawings and I could see my own efforts. But, most times I looked, he was light years beyond me. His use of an incredibly wide range of Drawing tools and media is unprecedented among major Artists 0in Art History- everything from chalk to graphite to the iPhone and iPad. With each new tool he found his own way, and achieved remarkable results (like his huge, multi page iPad Yosemite Drawings) that are all the more remarkable for being instantly recognizable as David Hockneys. He’s also been proflic in the number of books published on his Art. Yet here is the first collection of part of his Drawing oeuvre this century (the David Hockney: A Drawing Retrospective, 1996, the last overview I can recall). It’s wonderfully done and ingeniously designed, with chapters following the Artist’s evolution of a single subject each, culminating in his Self-Portraits. Published to accompany the show of the same name at the National Portrait Gallery, London, it’s a remarkable book that due to its ingenious concept has an unexpectedly personal feel to it- as you turn the pages, you begin to feel you know each subject. It’s particularly recommended to Drawing students and lovers of the endangered Art of Drawing.

Francis Bacon or The Measure of Excess by Yves Peyre, a friend of Mr. Bacon’s, stands in front of the new monograph on Cecily Brown. Cecily’s father, David Sylvester, was also a long time friend of Bacon’s and gave us the enduring classic Interviews with Francis Bacon.

Francis Bacon or the Measure of Excess, Yves Peyre, ACC Art Books.
Slowly, steadily and continually, the late, great British Artist has now established himself in the upper echelon of Artists I am absolutely obsessed with. To the point that the LAST thing I need is ANOTHER Francis Bacon book. I’d never heard of Yves Peyre, though the cover says he “was a close friend of the artist.” He’s also a poet and has authored a book on Henri Michaux. Well, some of Mr. Bacon’s other friends have already given us books on Mr. Bacon, from David Sylvester (Cecily Brown’s dad, who’s Interviews with Francis Bacon remains most essential) and Michael Peppiatt, down, including another poet, Michel Leiris, and most of them are quite good and have held up for a few decades already. Some of them also offer quite good collections of reproductions of Mr. Bacon’s Art (something EVERY Francis Bacon books seems to need to give us). Yet, as a one volume overview of Francis Bacon’s career with excellent, full 11.73 by 9.83 inch page reproduction, Francis Bacon or the Measure of Excess is my current recommendation and personal choice as a one volume visual reference. The texts of the earlier books remain important, and recommended, summing in a nutshell why it’s VERY hard to have only one Francis Bacon book. Even if you have other books, Mr. Peyre shines the new light of a fresh approach to Bacon, which is somewhat remarkable given how many others have chimed in on his work already, during his life and since his passing in 1992. Of course, if you want THE Francis Bacon publication, the 5 volume Catalog Raisonne is still in print at 1,000 British Pounds a copy, plus shipping. I’ve seen it, and it is exceptionally, even remarkably well done, with Martin Harrison, the foremost authority on Bacon today, astoundingly uncovering 100 previously unseen works (Oh! To find just ONE in a flea market…). The Bacon Estate says it will never be reprinted, and so likely will never be “cheaper.”

Sofonisba’s Lesson, Michael Cole, Princeton University.
Wait. What? Who? Sofonisba Anguissola, 1532-1635, was a female Painter & educator in the Renaissance. Believe it or not, a female Painter in the Renaissance. And a great one, in my view. To say her work has been in eclipse since would be an understatement. I, for one, was unfamiliar with her or her work until I saw this incredible, irresistible face staring out at me from the cover. I doubt I’m alone in that. The Met appears to have nothing by her. Neither does The Frick. Ah, but one person who immediately saw her talent was Il Divino himself, Michelangelo, who informally gave her advice! Nuff said. There is no possible higher recommendation in the Art world than that. Into the gap of knowledge for the rest of us mere mortals steps Michael Cole’s beautifully done, concise, monograph that goes a very long way towards putting her back on all of our maps, where she belongs to stay, in my view, henceforth, as the true Master Artist she was.

As you can see both of these Portraits are first rate, but look at the table covering, left, and the collars and cuffs on the right. For me, there are number of different techniques, even styles, on views in each work and that speaks volumes about the depth of her skill.

At 2.5 pounds, it’s not as big in size or as weighty as the Rembrandt or Basquiat XXLs on this list, yet I admire this book so much that if it weren’t for Noah Davis being released this year, it might well be my NoteWorthy Art Book for 2020. A lesson for all those Artists struggling for recognition today- Sofonisba’s Lesson comes 12 years before the 500th Anniversary of her birth in Lombardy in 1532. Better late, than never.

Goya Drawings, Thames & Hudson/Prado Museum.
Back in the day before Photography with chemicals ruled the world, Drawing & Painting were the primary means by which events of the day were recorded or, along with those past, recreated. Primary among the great Artists who recorded the events of their day remains Francisco Goya. While his The 3rd of May, 1808, is perhaps, his most well-known such work, though we have no way of knowing if the Artist actually witnessed this scene personally. He also created a large body of Drawings the scope of which, and the humanity of which, only Rembrandt’s can equal in my mind. Like the original Dutch Master, Goya’s Drawings magically capture a pose or an expression in an almost impossible economy of line, while looking for all the world like they were done quickly, without second thought. Ahh…Drawing at its most sublime. 

2020 saw the release (or at least the availability in this country) of two excellent Goya Drawings monographs, both of which are published by no less than the Prado Museum, home of the world’s finest & most comprehensive Goya collection, one of which is a NoteWorthy Art Book for 2020. Goya Drawings immediately becomes the choice resource for the lay reader, the Drawing or Painting student or Artist, and for the serious Goya student. A remarkable overview that does not scrimp on detail, insights, or the number of color images, in manages to stay concise and succinct. I picked it and didn’t know what to make of it from very generic front cover. “Goya Drawings”? That’s a huge subject for such a small book. Once I opened it I could not put it down. Sure enough, his Drawings over his entire career are covered, period by period in depth, and while not each and every one is covered, the overview is broad enough to convey the big picture  but can be dipped in to at any point for a closer study of any one work, which is written about on the page with its illustration- quite rare in a comprehensive book like this, and an indication of its superb design.

Finally, along with the other Goya Drawings book they published this year, Francisco de Goya: Cuaderno C (or Sketchbook C), which reproduces in facsimile one of his sketchbooks, both books are part of the Prado’s continued effort to make its Goya riches available to the public, online for free, and in these two modestly priced and superb books, Goya Drawings was released in honor of it’s 200th Anniversary in November, 2019. Bravo!

I Am Still Learning, c.1825-8, Lithographic crayon on grey laid paper,  on the next to final page. Goya was about 80 when he Drew this symbolic Self-Portrait. A fitting culmination to an immortal career, …and to this piece as words to live by.

Afterword/Forward to 2021

We’re not out of the pandemic woods yet. It might be a while before we are. I hope and pray not a long while. We shall see. Still, many smaller businesses have permanently left us. Many others are hanging on. I have been staying to myself this year, which means living in complete isolation for all of 2020. Yup. You read that right. I will only go into an enclosed space if I have to. Still, I have made very brief journeys into local bookstores, and peered in the window from the street of others, to see how busy they were. Frankly, what I’ve seen is very scary. Throughout the week, you could roll a bowling ball down the aisle of almost any bookstore here and hit no one. On the weekends, they’ve been closer to normal. Part of that is, no doubt, early holiday shopping. Still, the big takeaway for me is that the time is now- today and 2021, to support independent bookstores if you want them to survive. Many of the books and Artists I discover each year (and have my entire life) I’ve discovered browsing books in bookstores- including Rembrandt: His Life, His Work, His Time, by Bob Haak, shown earlier, 40 years ago. You can’t do that online. I’ve been waiting for eBooks to begin to replace physical Art & PhotoBooks for many years now. As 2020 closes, it doesn’t seem that we’re any closer to that than we were 5 or 10 years ago. A high quality eBook could replace most Art books published today- IF the image quality was comparable. They’re not. Screen image quality is nowhere near that of printed image quality. Then, there are Artist’s Books and PhotoBooks. Many of both are painstakingly crafted in every single detail, down to each material used, which no cyber experience can match. These books are often works of Art in themselves, and for many Artists & Photographers who don’t have gallery representation, they provide a primary focus for having their work seen on their terms, the way they intend it to be seen. Physical books in general have a charm and provide a tactile experience no eBook can match. If you value books, like I do, consider supporting your favorite local indie bookstore in person or online. While you can.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “Better Days Ahead,” by Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson from the album Secrets, 1978…

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Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
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  1. Here. ↩
  2. With a caveat on the Drawings volume, so he went ahead and created a concordance to ease referencing the new Schatborn reference numbers Taschen’s behemoth uses to refer to the work to the standard Benesch numbers, available here! ↩

December 8th, 1980-2020

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Tales from Isolation. Day #322

Two Days In My Life

After my early young adulthood as an Art lover, and before I focused on Art, again, I spent about 15 years in Music. Early on, I was on the road with a band, based out of Miami, Florida, for five years. Towards the end of 1980, things were getting really bad in South Florida, inspiring the TV show “Miami Vice,” which after having lived through the reality, I found hysterical. It got so bad, the word was that there so many murders the only cases that were being investigated were when a cop was killed.

My Axe. My blonde 1976 Fender Jazz Bass. The color darkened from 4 years of playing in smoke-filled clubs, rests on my way worn Gig Bag.

Around this time, we took a gig playing a party in Coconut Grove. Not something we ever did- before or after, but it was for a friend of a friend who loved the band, and we liked the idea. “Hey, I’m having a big party and it would be so great if you guys came and played” kind of thing. He made it worth our while to take our gear off the stage of the club we were house band at on Miracle Mile, so what the heck. It was an afternoon outdoor job, and we were up on a hill looking down over the large lawn on a road between us and a row of houses lining the water. Suddenly, a group of police cars descended on the scene across that road. It was a raid. A drug bust. Then the host/our boss for this gig, came over and said “Keep playing.” When trouble starts in a club or a bar, the boss ALWAYS comes over and says “Keep playing,” (like I imagine the boss did on the Titanic) while everyone else is falling all over themselves rushing to get to the exit. “Keep playing.” Like when a riot broke out in a biker bar we were playing in. But that’s a different story.

My blonde 1978 Fender Fretless Precision Bass. I went Fretless after I met the late, great Jaco Pastorius, the genius of the Bass, and a Fretless player, in 1977.

It’s funny how the guys from the union, the AF of M, are never around at those times- only when someone playing was not a member. We looked at each other, the girls dancing in bikinis in front of us, glanced at our cars parked behind us, and then at the unfolding drama going on across the street in front of us. Don Johnson’s got nothing on me. I’m living vice in Miami. 

If gunplay broke out, we might well be in the innocent line of fire, like too many others, before or since. 

Luckily, it proceeded without bullets, a line of cops escorting suspects emerged, and that was the final scene on a long and eventful road trip, full of  unexpected turns, on my journey into full adulthood. Time to go. It so happens that Paul, a friend in another band I had worked with, called to say he was leaving and moving to NYC. He offered to take my stuff with him if I wanted to get out.  

Hmmmm…After some thought, and discussion with my then girlfriend, a local, I decided to take him up on it and move back. Paul and his girlfriend, who went from being a waitress a few years earlier, to being a member of an internationally known band (not her boyfriend’s) a few years later, pulled up with a large trailer hooked to their car and the three of us loaded all of my belongings into it, and off they went. 

A few days later, I got into my Porsche 914 and drove it from Miami to Orlando and we both got on the AutoTrain. I had made the complete 27 hour nonstop Miami to NYC drive too many times to do it once more. The ride was pleasant enough, though I didn’t get much, if any, sleep, and woke early on Monday, December 8th, 1980. After detraining near Washington, DC, I drove the rest of the 5+ hours to NYC, where the rest of my life would begin.

Shortly after I arrived at my parent’s house I heard the news that John Lennon had just been shot and killed in Manhattan, outside his home at The Dakota. 

WHAT??????!

Bob Gruen, John Lennon- Statue of Liberty, 1974, Magnum Photos.

It was just unfathomable. It still is. Even for someone who lived through JFK’s assassination, and saw Oswald get killed, live, on television. Someone who had heard RFK’s assassination live on the radio. Someone who had lived through the assassination of Martin Luther King. Someone who remembers Malcolm X getting murdered. Murder is not something you ever “get used to.” Murder of such great men, each cut down in their prime, is a crime against humanity.

And murder was exactly why I left Miami!

So began the rest of my life…

December 8th, 2020

I took the C train uptown and got off at West 72nd Street to go The Dakota to pay my respects. Arriving, I was greeted on the platform by Yoko Ono’s transformative Sky mosaic mural. The north side of the station, ironically, is directly underneath The Dakota, where Yoko still lives, I believe1.

Yoko Ono, Detail from Sky, Tile mosaic, West 72nd Street B,C Station, underneath The Dakota, December 8, 2020.

After admiring it and its “Imagine Peace” section, and thinking, “Gee, countless millennia of war hasn’t worked out so well, maybe it IS time to give peace a chance…?,” I headed up the stairs and was greeted by a sky that looked remarkably like the mural.

“…above us only sky…” Exiting the 72nd Street Station at Central Park West, with The Dakota looming on the left, December 8, 2020.

I turned the corner onto West 72nd Street and was greeted by no one. The sidewalk was empty. Down the block, in front of The Dakota, where it happened, stood two uniformed building employees, as usual. I stood for a few minutes on the sidewalk, taking in the scene, and thinking about what had happened 40 years ago today.

The Dakota, West 72nd Street, December 8, 2020.

It almost seemed like I was there on the wrong day. Then, I spotted one small bouquet left by a family.

Across Central Park West, looking into Central Park, I could see a long line of visitors waiting to enter the Strawberry Fields section of the Park, but no one else was here, allowing me a private moment in a place where many people live, but which has always reminded me of this day 40 years ago whenever I’ve passed it.

I walked down the street until I came to the spot. I stood there, briefly, alone with the 2 Dakota staff members.

The Dakota, West 72nd Street, December 8, 2020.

In NYC, particularly in Manhattan, everywhere you look and everywhere you walk, you’re walking on history. And the place is not nearly as old as any city in Europe or many other cities elsewhere. Here is one such spot. Passing it now, you’d have absolutely no idea something horrible and world changing happened right here, because it happened 40 years ago. 40 Years. John Lennon was born on October 9, 1940, during the Nazi Blitz of Liverpool. He had just turned 40 when he died. He’s now been dead for almost as long as he was alive.

My thoughts turned to another fact, as what had happened in all that time raced through my mind. Each and every time something’s happened, like 9/11, and all the rest, sooner or later, I wondered- “What would John Lennon say right now?” In addition to everything else he was, Liverpool’s John Lennon was one of our most prominent, and proud, New Yorkers, and a citizen of the world.

Bob Gruen, John Lennon, NYC, 1974. Magnum Photos. NYC in 1974 is light years from the NYC of 2020. It speaks volumes to me that he was so proud to live here then. This t shirt has been on sale here to this day, probably because of this Photo.

On December 8th, 1980, we were all denied knowing

for the rest of time. 

Now, as I sit here after getting back from West 72nd Street, I’m left to wonder- How would the world have been different? 

If you think that’s a questionable question, consider this- There are some who believe that The Beatles played a roll, perhaps the KEY role, in the collapse of the USSR2, in spite of all the countless billions spent to do it by other means, as seen in the PBS Documentary, “How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin,” from 2009. A grainy video of Part 1, is below (Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5)-

If that’s not helping “give peace a chance,”  I’m not sure we’ve seen much else that is. It’s something that needs to be more closely studied, I think. If it’s true, then we’ve VASTLY underestimated the achievement of the Beatles, already the most revolutionary cultural force of my lifetime. And, we’ve completely ignored the lesson.

Even still, there are hundreds of millions who would have been very interested in what John Lennon had to say on any topic had he lived. Like there would have been to hear what JFK, RFK, MLK or Malcolm X would have said had they lived. 

If all of them had lived, I think this world would be quite a different place today. Along with John’s loss, today I mourn that. Again. 

Yoko Ono, Another detail from Sky, Mosaic, West 72nd Street B,C Station, underneath The Dakota, December 8, 2020.

December 8th, 1980 was a day my life, and the world, changed. Neither have been the same since. It’s up to those who remember those we’ve lost to keep their memory & their messages alive.

*- Soundtrack for this Post is “Imagine” by John Lennon.

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  1. I greatly admire Yoko Ono, for many reasons, not the least of which is the supreme grace with which she handled John’s passing publicly. As an Artist, I believe she is still under-appreciated. My pieces on her work to date are here and here. ↩
  2. Here, ↩

NoteWorthy PhotoBooks, 2020

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

As it has been in all realms of life, 2020 has been an extraordinarily challenging year to be a book publisher, particularly a smaller one. Working with anyone- from your team, to the subject Artist, right through to the printers and binderies- all had to be done remotely for almost the whole year. Shipping between many countries has been off and on, and off again. (As I write this, shipping between Japan and the USA is still down.) Finally, bookstores around the world have been closed for much of the year. Somehow, a good number of books were published in 2020, though a good many previously announced titles have been pushed back. Under the best of circumstances, it’s not easy to get a PhotoBook published. So, I congratulate any and everyone who has published one this year. Bravo!

Antoine d’Agata, 17.03.2020 – 11.05.2020, page 158 from Virus, taken during the pandemic in Paris from March to May.

Since there’s no such thing as “best” in the Arts, I’ve opted to do a list of recommended “NoteWorthy” PhotoBooks the past 3 years. This year, due to the pandemic, I’ve seen fewer books than I had the past few years. Nonetheless, these books stood out for me among those I have seen, and I decided to do a list this year because I believe they would have been on it no matter how many more I had seen.

Josh Kern’s second PhotoBook, Love me, was released in 2020 and promptly sold out. In this spread from it the Photographer shows us his working notes. Along the top, it reads “There’s nothing that holds it together.” On the side, “Took a thousand pictures of this moment and not a single one is good.” This reminds me that as incredibly hard as it was to publish a book this year, the hardest parts of making a great PhotoBook happen long before it gets to be printed.

Most Photographers don’t have gallery representation, so, PhotoBooks are a primary means of reaching an audience for them. Without a dealer, they’ve taken on the job of building their own followings. Through diligence, a few of them even have upwards of 1 million followers on social media. For me, the accomplishments of these independent Artists is yet another indication that the gallery model is being bypassed by people who are not only creative Artistically. One example of how things are changing is young German Photographer Josh Kern, who I was among the very first in the US to discover last year. Josh did a Q&A with me as his first PhotoBook, Fuck me, was about to sell out of 1,100 copies. He has now sold out of 1,200 and 1,100 copies of his first two PhotoBooks respectively without help from Amazon, a gallery, or even a US book distributor. Remarkable for someone who was a 22 year old college student when he started, and another sign of where things are heading. 

As I’ve mentioned in the previous years I’ve done this list (2018 and 2019), reconciling publishing dates with the date books actually appear is a bit problematic. Some books published in 2019, even 2018, only reached stores here in 2020. I’ve seen a number of books listed as being scheduled to be published in 2020 that have not made an appearance in stores here yet. So, once again, I’m sticking to books I’ve actually seen become available in stores, or to purchase, this year.

NoteWorthy PhotoBooks, 2020
The All-Magnum Photos Edition

That’s right. Coincidentally, each of these books was created by a Member of Magnum Photos, the legendary world’s leading Photographer’s co-operative. If I were to recommend one book this year of all the books I saw, I’d be torn between these two-

Paolo Pellegrin: Un’antologia, Silvana Editoriale. Ok. It says “2018” on the colophon, but how many people here have seen this? D.A.P. listed it as being available in the USA in Fall, 2019. I didn’t see it until late January, 2020. Un’antologia may be the most well-done retrospective I have ever seen. Perhaps, I shouldn’t be surprised. It was designed by a team headed by Yolanda Cuomo, who has designed countless wonderful books, including Diane Arbus, Revelations, the finest book on Ms. Arbus I have seen. Gorgeously produced and extremely thorough, this 6 1/4 pound, 742 page hardcover with over 1,000 illustrations accompanied the show of the same name at the Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, from October, 2019 to March, 2020, and as a career Retrospective- so far (c. 1960 to date). Yes, it ran to March, 2020, so I’m also using that to qualify if for listing here. Page after page is nothing short of stunning to the point that it becomes necessary to remind yourself that you’re looking at the work of one man- and Mr. Pellegrin, 56, is still a relatively young man, with hopefully, decades of work ahead, not someone looking back on a career that’s winding down. Nonetheless, it makes an open and shut case for Mr. Pellegrin as one of the world’s most important Photographers, just in case you didn’t already know that, with a legacy that’s already monumental. There’s an English edition in 1,000 numbered copies, and an Italian edition also numbered to 1,000 copies. That’s all! Un’antologia is also a fitting testament to curator Germano Celant, who passed away this year. Early on, he said to Yolanda Cuomo, “This is not a book by Paolo. It is a book about Paolo,” Don’t wait much longer. 

Virus, rear cover.

Antoine d’Agata, Virus, Studio Vortex. I thought I was a bit prepared to see this from seeing a number of these images on Mr. d’Agata’s social media pages, but no. I was staggered when I first paged through this massive tome. Mr. d’Agata who lives with no fixed address, lived and worked out of the Magnum Paris offices while producing this work (while Paris was shutdown). He also spent “countless” days and nights staying over in treatment centers. Wait. HOW many people are going to accept an offer to go and watch a covid19 patient being treated? Umm. No, thanks. Antoine d’Agata, as you can see above, said “Yes.” “My object is to get photography back to requiring true commitment, to being a language that is unique by its potential subtlety and rawness,” he said1. “True commitment,” in spades. The work he created, which number 13,000 images in the two months, ranges from “normal” Photographs to many taken with a thermal camera, like the image above, which produces shots that reveal things a normal camera wouldn’t. The results are often “painterly,” but unlike any Paintings I have yet seen. Going in to 2020, Francis Bacon was the Painter Antoine d’Agata’s work most reminded me of. With Virus, he’s created his own world, a world we’ve all lived in, alone together. The only other PhotoBook that came to my mind when thinking about Virus is Aftermath, Joel Meyerowitz’ equally massive look at Ground Zero after 9/11. Both Photographers had unique access. Both have succeeded in creating the most remarkable, historic and valuable documents of these horrific events. In the midst of the horrors the world has seen and continues to see during the pandemic, if I may say this, Virus also strikes me as also being a work of Art. There are images of medical professionals treating patients that have no less than a Pieta like feel to them. Just unforgettable. I look forward to the day when I can look through Virus and focus on its Painterly aspects and its qualities as a work of Art, and hope I get to see it. Virus’ 825 pages includes text by Mathilde Girard I admire quite a bit. There are just 325 copies of the English edition. As my co-most highly recommended PhotoBook of 2020, Virus is a staggering accomplishment.

There are two other books by Magnum Photos Photographers that especially stood out for me this year-

Gregory Halpern, Let the Sun Beheaded Be, Aperture. Ho hum…another year, another terrific Gregory Halpern book on this list. Let the Sun joins Confederate Moons and Omaha Sketchbook on this list in the three years I’ve been making one. I find all of his books have remarkable staying power. Meaning that the images linger in my mind long after I’ve closed the cover. That’s every bit the case with Let the Sun, which has more layers to it than it has pages (120), meaning different things are going to jump out to you with each perusing. Then there’s the remarkably intimate Conversation between Mr. Halpern and Stanley Wolokau-Wanambwa. Any place outside of NYC is foreign to me, but Guadeloupe is exceedingly hard for me to imagine. Yet, the shared history with slavery makes Guadeloupe not all THAT foreign and its unique experience with it makes it even more haunting. Somewhat quietly, Mr. Halpern continues to build a remarkably strong body of portraits, more of which lie at the heart of Let the Sun Beheaded Be. Remarkable when you consider the Photographer is not fluent in French and he communicates with his subjects before Photographing them.

Yael Martinez, La Casa sue Sangra (The House that Bleeds), KWY Ediciones. A 2020 Magnum Nominee, his work looks like no one else’s. He seems to have a unique way of getting inside the skin of those he portrays, his Photographs are so intimate. Of La Casa, Mr. Martinez says, “‘A people without memory is condemned to repeat their mistakes.’ Guerrero is one of the Mexican States that have been most affected by organized crime; It is the second poorest and most violent state in the country. I am thus trying to depict the situation which many families in this region face, which they live through daily, and which is one of the causes of the unraveling of Mexico’s social fabric.” La Casa focuses on the forced absence of beloved family members, each image with an overriding darkness and use of color that are both intimate and epic. His Photos bring you right there, capturing moments that often border on the magical. A house that bleeds could be a family or a community, he has said. He began with his family, before eventually expanding the project to include other family around Guerrero. The classic work of the Farm Security Administration Photographers, including Dorothea Lange (see below), came to my mind as a possible influence (though Mr. Martinez shoots in color). Printed in an edition of 1,000 copies, and still in print as far as I can tell, I spent most of 2020 seeking a copy of La Casa. Another marvelously unique Artist and powerful voice for Magnum Photos.

I don’t know how they do it, but year after year Magnum continues to find extraordinary Photographers to add to a roster that makes me ask the impossible to answer question- Is this THE greatest Magnum Photos Roster ever? Until I ask the same question, again the very next year. 

Other NoteWorthy PhotoBooks of the Year, 2020

Gordon Parks: The Atmosphere of Crime, 1957, and Gordon Parks X Muhammad Ali, both Steidl. Sadly, Gordon Parks left us in 2006, but his Foundation has been doing a strong job of keeping his legacy alive with shows (here in NYC at Jack Shainman Gallery), and a superb series of books published by Steidl. On the heels of the essential Gordon Parks Collected Works, (Steidl’s site says it’s Out of Print- you can still find it if you hurry), 2020 brought us The Atmosphere of Crime, 1957, and Gordon Parks X Muhammad Ali. Atmosphere seemed to strike a nerve with buyers when it came out, and garnered more attention, while GP X Ali benefits to no end of the close connection the two shared.

Atmosphere includes the original LIFE articles, like this one from September 9, 1957, and images never before seen.

Atmosphere of Crime is a brilliant look at the true complex nature of crime flying in the face of the mainstream media’s stereotypes, showing completely other sides to the American public with frankness and empathy. Unlike the work of Weegee, or even most of Gordon Parks’ prior Photographs, these are in color, which adds another dimension to both the you-are-there realism and the Artfulness of his timeless work. Powerful, raw, cinematic, Atmosphere paints a remarkably broad picture of the realities of crime in 90 images over 120 pages. It’s gives me the feeling of seeing a 1950s film noire in color. Of course, Mr. Parks later directed the classic Shaft in 1971- only 15 years later. It’s revealing to compare the two. Not to be missed.

One of the most important historical, and creative, records of The Greatest of All Time, Gordon Parks X Muhammad Ali, is centered around 2 assignments Mr. Parks was on to shoot The Champ in 1966 and 1970 for LIFE Magazine. The book is characterized by an intimacy that shows Ali in unguarded moments that are often incredibly poignant. While others, including Thomas Hoepker, have given us classic images of Muhammad Ali, Godon Parks’ stand out for me because they cut right to the heart of the man, which remains here, larger than life for all time.

Reproduction of the original opening spread of the 1966 LIFE article, with text also by Gordon Parks. The full articles are reproduced in both of these Gordon Parks books.

Gordon Parks Photographed The Champ at 2 key points in his life. First, in 1966, amid intense controversy over his becoming a Black Muslim, changing his name to Muhammad Ali, and being a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. The resulting landmark LIFE Magazine article “The Redemption of the Champion,” also written by Gordon Parks, helped the public see the truth. I remember seeing it in a barbershop waiting for a haircut as a kid. The oversized magazine created a larger than life effect that cut right through all the noise. I believe the article helped start Muhammad Ali on the road to being the icon he remained for the rest of his life. 

Both are the multi-talented Gordon Parks near his considerable Photographic peak. Both speak for themself. Both will live on in your mind, indelibly. A show titled Gordon Parks X Muhammad Ali is scheduled to open at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in 2021. In 2020, I found it impossible to choose one between Atmosphere of Crime and Gordon Parks X Muhammad Ali. Good luck if you try to.

Ernst Haas: New York In Color, 1952-62, Prestel. During my now 4 year deep dive into post-Robert Frank’s The Americans Photography and PhotoBooks, I focused on exploring the history of early color Photography. I soon discovered that William Eggleston was NOT the first Photographer to have a solo show at MoMA. It was Ernst Haas, who’s Ernst Haas: Color Photography opened August 21st, 1962. FOURTEEN YEARS before Photographs by William Eggleston opened there on May 24, 1976. Mr. Haas’ estate has worked with Prestel to publish the wonderful Ernst Haas: New York In Color, 1952-62, which now serves to put Mr. Haas’ work into the same discussion with another legend of earlier color Photography- Saul Leiter, who’s color work in NYC, in the same period, has been held in unique esteem. Mr. Haas’ admirers already treasure Steidl’s classic Ernst Haas: Color Correction, which is to be reprinted.

Ernst Haas, NYC, 1952(!) Move over, Saul Leiter, and tell William Eggleston and Stephen Shore the news…

With the release of Ernst Haas: New York In Color, 1952-62, Mr. Haas goes toe to toe with Mr. Leiter on his own turf, in his own time! Lovers of Photography are the winners. NYC is plenty big enough for both of them. I recommend this book to anyone who loves Mr. Leiter’s Early Color, which I consider an essential PhotoBook of this century, as much as I do.

John Gossage: The Nicknames of Citizens, Steidl. The latest in the renowned Photographer’s “loving yet critical, generous yet ironic vision of America,” to quote the publisher, it follows Jack Wilson’s Waltz, published in 11/2019, Should Nature Change, 8/2019, and precedes I Love You So Much!!!!!!!!, forthcoming, all from Steidl. Picking up any one of these books is like taking one from a box of chocolates. Once you sample the poetry of Mr. Gossage’s images, you’re more than likely going to want to devour the others in the series. I’ve been so focused on exploring the history of color Photography these past 3 years that I was slow on the intake of this series. Nicknames is the first one I’ve gotten and I was immediately captivated by Mr. Gossage’s vision, and as Magnum Photographer Martin Parr said about another John Gossage/Steidl book he witnessed being created, Looking up Ben James- A Fable, “I am amazed that the collective vision of this volume is so familiar, but entirely alien. It restores my faith in photography to know that a mature and original photographer like John Gossage can see the things I just did not notice.” As I perused these books, another series on America came to mind- that of English Magnum Photos Photographer Mark Power’s, Good Morning, America. Mr. Power’s is in color and doesn’t include portraits per se, but the two ongoing series are fascinating to look at together, given one thing they do share- they both look at America during a similar time frame.

 

Luigi Ghirri, Cardboard Landscapes (Paesagge di cartone), Museum of Modern Art. This book was a gift from Luigi Ghirri to legendary MoMA Director of Photography, John Szarkowski, in 1975. It languished forgotten in the MoMA collection for decades until being recently rediscovered. Now reproduced faithfully for book lovers, it makes a stunning impression. Here, we get the full range of Luigi Ghirri’s considerable gifts, along with his gift of sequencing. The result is a breath of fresh air. The first half of the book is quite humorous. We sense the Artist’s personality shining through. The rest retains a bit of the feel of his recently ended career as a surveyor. In the end, it’s a book that is a serious work of Art that doesn’t take itself oppressively seriously. Still, it’s hard for me to look through it and not see a bit of the roots of Artists as diverse as Maurizio Cattelan, Stephen Shore, Richard Prince and Erik Kessels. Such is the net effect that, even though the Ghirri bibliography has exploded the past few years with some fine titles, Cardboard Landscapes gives us yet another entirely different side of this remarkable Artist.

Dorothea Lange, Words & Pictures, Museum of Modern Art. “All photographs—not only those that are so called ‘documentary’…can be fortified by words2, Dorothea Lange said. Elsewhere she said, “Am working on the captions. This is not a simple clerical matter, but a process…They are connective tissue, and in explaining the function of the captions, as I am doing now, I believe we are extending our medium,” in a note that reveals the importance of captions (and words) in seeing her work. It’s so rare to gain major insights into major Artist who passed away 55 years ago, but that’s exactly what the show this book accompanied did. “Dorothea Lange, Words & Pictures, which opened barely a month before the NYC pandemic shutdown added a completely new dimension to our appreciation of the work of Dorothea Lange by focusing on the role her words play in their understanding. It lives on in this exceptional book that is a joy to look at as well as to read. In many shows where words play a part, they’re often hard to read due to glare on the glass and the numbers of other viewers.

Dorothea Lange, Words & Pictures, Installation view, MoMA Photo.

The open book seen in the lower center wall latrine above as reproduced in Words & Pictures.

Here, you can read them clearly without distraction, glare or others looking over your shoulder, while seeing Ms. Lange’s classic images in gorgeous reproductions printed on 150gsm Arctic Volume Ivory, which makes the book better, in some ways, than seeing the actual show! Also, among the essays is one by the legendary Sally Mann. Along with whatever other books you have on Dorothea Lange, like the excellent Dorothea Lange: The Politics of Seeing, this one is essential.

Roy DeCarava: the sound i saw, David Zwirner Books. Roy DeCarava has been in eclipse since his passing in 2009, just short of his 90th birthday. Due to his estate’s new relationship with Zwirner his work has returned to view in force, both in shows and in books. The classic The Sweet Flypaper of Life (with Langston Hughes) was finally reissued in 2018, and 2019 saw the rerelease of another out of print Roy DeCarava classic- the sound i saw, this time in a luxurious oversized edition which pairs his poetry with many classic images. Growing up studying Jazz through Lps, I wasn’t familiar with Mr. DeCarava’s work as I was with, say, Alfred Lion’s for Blue Note. The difference I see between Mr. DeCarava’s Jazz images and everyone else’s is that I can tell he knew his subjects personally. These images ooze personal connection, and that’s very rare in Jazz in this period. No. It’s uneqelled. I don’t know why more of his amazing images didn’t make it on to record covers, but here many of them are over 208 pages in this 5 pound collection, in addition to others that set the mood. If you love Music, and especially if you love Jazz, this is an essential book that features exceptional, intimate images of legends Mr. DeCarava well knew, including important images of John Coltrane, and Billie Holiday (seen smiling!), Ornette Coleman and Duke Ellington, among others. It is the finest book of Jazz Photography I have ever seen.

NoteWorthy PhotoBook Publisher of the Year, 2020

From Remember the South by Frank Frances, one of the first three auspicious releases on Kris Graves’ new Monolith Edition imprint.

Kris Graves Projects & Monolith Editions. I can’t imagine how hard it was, and is, to produce and sell books in 2020. In addition to the obstacles I listed near the beginning of this piece, once you get the physical books printed and in your hands, all the bookstores were closed for much of this year. And then customers, including this one, have been slow to return to indoor shopping. Yet, through the pandemic, the lockdowns and quarantines that are still going on around the world, book publishers have tried to maintain a sense of “business as usual.” For all of them- big and small, this must have been quite challenging. I’m sure we’ve lost a good many of them already. Yet, Artist-run, Kris Graves Projects has not only carried on, they’ve released a steady string of impressive titles, 18 in 2020, including the third set of LOST, with their usual high quality, and at popular prices. Kris Graves also debuted Monolith Editions this year, dedicated to publishing the work of BIPOC Artists, with three auspicious releases. I reached out to Mr. Graves trying to gain some insight on just how he’s done ALL of it during the hardest year of almost all of our lives. He said-

“This year allowed me to be home more than any other in recent memory, so I worked on making content and working with artists. I wanted to make less books this year but I guess I can’t stop myself. Only four of the books were ideas during the covid times, everything else was in the works. Also, with my photoshoot income diminished, I had to find ways to make some profit on books. I also had more time to let people know the books exist.”

From @themaniwasnt

18 books in 2020 would have been a large output for ANY PhotoBook publisher, but he didn’t stop there. Kris Graves, himself, has created an exceptional, and exceptionally powerful, body of work in 2020, the result of incessant travels around the country, going to sites of monuments and protests, putting himself at considerable risk. It’s a body of work that captures the moment and will, I believe, be historically important. Though not yet published in PhotoBook form, some of this work may be seen on his Instagram feed, @themaniwasnt, and in National Geographic, January & February, 2021. About it, he said-

“As far as my own work, I have done about 30 days of traveling on National Geographic’s watch and dime, so that helped me make a ton of personal work. Without those trips I would not have shown much new work this year. Although, I now have four seasons of Cape Cod imagery and that is becoming a project now. I think that artists need to keep shooting until some magic occurs. If this winter is mild, I will take a bunch of bike rides around Queens to make some new images here also.”
It speaks volumes that at a time when many are stuck, stopped, or done, Kris Graves has not only maintained, he has continued to move forward- on multiple fronts, and produce important work, himself, along the way. 

Finally, this year I’m also listing some NoteWorthy Art Books for the first time. Stay tuned.

Addendum-

Two books I saw late in 2020 were subsequently added to my list, per my Instagram account, @nighthawk_nyc-

Justine Kurland, Girl Pictures, Aperture. My text reads- “Two 2020 PhotoBooks I was late in seeing must be appended to my NoteWorthy PhotoBooks piece for the year. First, is the amazing Girl Pictures by @justine4good, Justine Kurland. Fresh, exciting, challenging, unique, and endlessly mysterious, particularly for this male outsider, it’s not to be missed, especially while it’s not yet sold out and out of print.
It’s kind of amazing it took 20 years for this work to be published as a body. But, here it is and it’s a classic that’s bound to influence generations to come.”

Tyler Mitchell, I Can Make You Feel Good, Prestel. My text reads- “The second of the two 2020 PhotoBooks I was late in seeing that must be appended to my NoteWorthy PhotoBooks piece for the year, Linked in Profile, is Tyler Mitchell’s I Can Make You Feel Good. That’s exactly what his first PhotoBook does. Filled with joy, it’s also filled with remarkable, fresh Photography that runs the gamut from fashion, to documentary, and portraits all serving his vision/dream of a “Black utopia,” aided by the book’s generous 9 1/2 by 12 1/2 inch size. It’s another book, like Girl Pictures just posted, that blurs the line between real and fiction, but isn’t that what dreams do?
An auspicious and important debut PhotoBook as is ANY book that can make us feel good in times like these.” (It should be noted that this is Mr. Tyler’s first PhotoBook for a major publisher. He previously self-published a book. )

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*-Soundtrack for this Post is “Every Day Is A Miracle” by David Byrne, from American Utopia now a terrific concert film directed by Spike Lee.

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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. Magnum Photos profile ↩
  2. The full quote reads, “All photographs- not only those that are so-called ‘documentary’, and every photograph really is documentary and belongs in some place, has a place in history- can be fortified by words.” Dorothea Lange, Words & Pictures, p. 12. ↩

The End Of The Art World…As We Know It

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava
This is Part 3 of my series on the end of The Met Breuer also concludes my look at what I saw before the March 12th “temporary closing,” Part 1 looked at some of the history of the Breuer building, Part 2 looked at some of the most memorable moments and its legacy. Part 3 looks at where we are now, and wonders about the future…

Forlorn. The Met two months deep into its “temporary closing,” seen on May 21st.

When the clock struck 6pm on March 12th and I walked away from The Met Breuer on my last visit, much was unknown. I didn’t even know it would be the last time I would visit it. Five months later, a few questions have been answered, but the answer to most of them remain unknown. As I wrote in Part 1 and Part 2, March 12th turned out to be the very last day of The Met Breuer, which remained closed until The Met turned the Breuer building over to The Frick Collection in July, ending the Gerhard Richter: Painting After All show, which I saw on its last day, with it. Now, looking back on The Met Breuer (TMB), it’s becoming clearer that more than it has ended. In the ensuing five months, among Manhattan’s Big 5 museums, and the Brooklyn Museum, only The Met has announced plans to “hopefully” reopen on August 29th, (after being closed for five and a half months- unprecedented in my lifetime, and losing TMB along the way, as they “celebrate” their 150th Anniversary). As the fall season in the NYC Art world rapidly approaches, it looks right now to be a non-event.

A number of people I’ve spoken to in the Art business have lost their jobs or are scaling back their operations. I’m sure they are the tip of the iceberg among Art business professionals who have been laid off or furloughed. The rest gamely soldier on, hopefully safely. The Art Fair world (including The Photography Show, which I’ve extensively covered the past three years) ever-increasingly a staple of the Art business, has virtually disappeared overnight world-wide. While some events and shows have moved online, I think most people would agree, it’s not the same. Yes, Art & Photography can be sold online, and it is in large amounts, but it’s not the same as seeing it in person. I look at as much Art as anyone does online, and with rare exceptions, like Closer to Van Eyck, which I wrote about in January, wondering if it was the future of seeing Art, it’s just not the same experience. For me, looking at most Art online can only give one an idea of the piece. 

So, whither to the Art world, and Art in NYC?

The shuttered Matthew Marks Gallery on West 22nd Street, received a small business Paycheck Protection Program loan from the Small Business Administration of between $350,000 and $1,000,000. Note- All loans quoted in this piece are sourced from the Small Business Administration, here. Seen in June, 2020.

Nothing has been heard from any of NYC’s “big 5” museums or the Brooklyn Museum about their plans since March, beyond The Met’s reopening announcement, which is dependent on City and State approval. Some galleries are open. Some galleries are “open by appointment only.” Some galleries here are not open. Some are gone, as in out of business. Email from the Art world has provided little to no additional insight. I began to look elsewhere for answers to some of the countless questions.

The American Alliance of Museums conducted a survey of its member museums and its findings are dated June, 2020. I found the report chilling but not surprising. The result that has gotten the most publicity so far is the answer to-

“Do you believe there is a significant risk of your museum closing permanently in the next 16 months, absent additional financial relief?”

16% of 648 responders answered “YES.” With Art museums making up 20% of responders, doing some extrapolations, I calculate that as being “YES” from 24 out of 152 US Art museums. Since there’s no way of knowing how (or if) the NYC museums responded, we still have no way of knowing how they stand. I, for one, would be very surprised if any of Manhattan’s “big 5” museums or the Brooklyn Museum were to permanently close in the next 16 months, but who knows.

As concerning as the survival question, very surprising to me is the response to the question- “Months of Operating Reserves Remaining?” 56% of all US museums have 6 months OR LESS of operating reserves on hand. 67% of all museums responding have LESS than 1 year on hand (as of June, 2020, presumably). Again, I doubt the “big 5″+ Bklyn are among them. But, I am starting to wonder what their “staying power” is.

Each of them has been spending money like it’s going out of style this century- but not on Art, leaving each of their collections lagging those elsewhere in Modern & Contemporary Art! Consider-

The Brooklyn Museum seen on August 7, 2014, during its terrific Ai Weiwei: According to What? show, 10 years after its new entrance opened.

In 2004, The Brooklyn Museum remodeled at a reported cost of $63,000,000., which included adding this new entrance and outdoor plaza, a new lobby, a boardwalk, and “Vegas-style fountains with jets of water that dance1.”

In 2006, MoMA moved their exhibitions, including the historic Matisse-Picasso show, to their storage facility in Queens, dubbed MoMA Qns, while they undertook an $858,000,000. renovation.

In 2006 the Morgan Library and Museum opened their 90,000 square foot expansion of their 225 Madison Avenue campus designed by Renzo Piano. Cost= $75,000,000[1 Here.]. 

In 2007-8, the Guggenheim Museum spent $29,000,000. renovating their immortal Frank Lloyd Wright building that I tried to help save in 1984 from their dubious expansion2. (Though we’ve been living with it since, yes, I still consider it dubious.) 

The New Museum presents an attention grabbing silhouette that contrasts with the rough and tumble history of the Bowery at the expense of the gallery spaces inside. There are too many odd, small and strangely placed galleries that are easy to miss and must be very problematic for their excellent curators. Seen here in April, 2017.

December 1, 2007, the New Museum opened its new 50,000 square foot building on the Bowery. Cost= $50,000,000.3

The Whitney, seen shuttered on May 27th. What is it with NYC museums and Renzo Piano? And WHY? Five years after this building opened, it still says absolutely nothing to me. Inside, the lobby is useless and the galleries just “Ok” in my opinion. My bet is that over time, the 13,000 square feet of outdoor space will come to be seen as a mistake. The big question so far, beyond the Whitney’s board, is why have so many of its major shows felt truncated or petered out? Vida Americana is the first one that doesn’t

October, 2014, The Whitney Museum’s final show closed at the building Marcel Breuer designed for it at 945 Madison Avenue and that they occupied since September, 1966, almost 50 years. In 2015, they reopened on Gansevoort Street in a building also designed by Renzo Piano. Cost= $442,000,0004.

MoMA’s famous main entrance shuttered during the protests, seen on June 27th.

The second “new” MoMA of this century was open, officially, from October 21, 2019 through March 12th, 2020, at a cost this time of $450,000,000. (400 million for new construction, 50 for renovation of the last “new” MoMA)5. Total cost of 21st century MoMA renovations and expansion= $1.3 BILLION. Though I referred to “the gorillas in the room” in my look at the “newest” MoMA, beyond spending that $1.3B on Art, there is another gorilla they could have spend it on.

The sun is setting on the New Museum building, seen here in April, 2019, in more ways than one. Plans have been announced to expand into the building to its right, once that building is torn down, with a design that has nothing to do with its existing design, and once again, leaves me scratching my head. As we just saw with MoMA- getting it right the first time would have been much smarter. Ever notice how this never happens to The Met, the kings of museum renovations? Nonetheless, the New Museum have had a run of excellent shows, including unforgettable retrospectives of Raymond Pettibon and Nari Ward. For those of you keeping score at home, Renzo Piano has nothing to do with this expansion- as far as I know.

In June, 2019, the New Museum announced plans to expand the building they only opened in 2007. Cost- $63,000,000.6 Their total 21st century building & renovation costs= $113,000,000. Note- The New Museum has no permanent collection. Under the Paycheck Protection Program, The New Museum received $1,000,000. to $2,000,000. in loans.

Fotografiska – New York across Park Avenue, seen on August 15th.

December 14, 2019, the Fotografiska- New York, a new Photography museum opened on Park Avenue South. Cost not known to me. They renovated an entire landmarked six story building, so it wasn’t cheap. They were open for 3 months before the shutdown.

The Met. Not exactly how they drew up celebrating the 150th Anniversary of their founding. They’re probably hoping to get another chance on the 150th Anniversary of the 1000 Fifth Avenue building in another couple of years. Hopefully, they’ll have a better logo then, too. From a distance, this looks like “15C,” no? Seen May 21, 2020.

And, all this while The Met has done countless renovations including the entire Greek & Roman Wing and the entire American Wing. When the closure hit, they were also knee deep in their European Paintings Skylight renovations. In 2011, Thomas Campbell, then Director, announced a renovation to their Modern & Contemporary Wing using TMB as a satellite for shows in the 8 year interim, at a cost of $800,000,000, plus renovations and rent of the Breuer, only to see The Museum fall on financially hard times, in spite of record attendance due to a legal loophole changing the admissions policy. Mr. Campbell resigned, and the plan was scrapped. On September 22, 2018, The Met announced it had made a deal to ‘sublease” the Breuer building to The Frick Collection in July, 2020, so The Frick could renovate their own building. Daniel Weiss, President/CEO. said The Met would save $45 million under the deal7. Cost of renovations to The Frick Collection is reported to be $160 million. It’s unknown if that includes whatever they’re paying to The Met for their “sublease” on the Breuer building8. I don’t think it does since this figure was published before The Met and Frick agreement was made public. 

The Met’s plaza under reconstruction to install fountains seen in May, 2014. Their $65,000,000 cost was paid for by David H. Koch, who’s name was controversially installed in gold letters on both fountains when they opened in September, 2014, to protests.

In November, 2018, Daniel Weiss and new Director Max Hollein announced a $70,000,000. plan to renovate the Africa, Oceania and the Americas Wing and a $600,000,000 dollar plan to renovate their Modern & Contemporary galleries (down from the $800,000,000 original plan,) “now that the museum is on track to balance it’s $320,000,000. annual budget by 2020,” according to the NY Times, November 18, 20189. There has been no word yet on whether their budget will still be in balance this year, or on the status of announced renovation plans. 

Why all of this building, renovating and huge outlays of capital?

2019 Visitors per the Art Newpaper
Metropolitan Museum- 6,479,548
Museum of Modern Art- 1 ,922,121 (MoMA was closed for renovation for 4 months)
Guggenheim Museum- 1,283,209
Whitney Museum- 1.030,945
Other NYC Art museums- less than 1,000,000 each.

The museums were in a race to compete with each other for visitors. It seemed like each and every year new attendance records were set in NYC. The museums felt the need to go bigger and better to keep up and keep drawing record numbers (and to lure donations of money, naming rights, and Art- particularly since they have now been priced out of buying many of the masterpieces of Modern & Contemporary Art they missed when they were new). These seemed to feed on each other in an unprecedented cycle of museum building and renovations this century.

Then, on March 13, 2020, the music suddenly stopped. Only Daniel Weiss, it seems to me, was left with a chair. In September, 2018, a year and a half before the pandemic, he saved The Met $45,000,000. by getting The Frick to sublease the Breuer building. Wait. What? An NYC museum getting OUT of an expensive expansion project? We didn’t know it then, but that may have marked the beginning of the end of these projects. Between that and how deftly he has handled The Met’s precarious finances to this point, he has earned a job for life, in my opinion. Still, looking back on March 13th from the vantage of five months it seems obvious to me that that was the day the Art world, as we knew it10, ended.

The closed front doors of the Whitney Museum, May 27th. It looks like when these doors do reopen, the blockbuster Vida Americana will as well. The Whitney & The Guggenheim each received between $5,000,000 and $10,000,000. in small business loans under the Paycheck Protection Program. The Met and MoMA received nothing under this program.

Five months later, the best that can be hoped for in 2020 is these museums were open for a total of 6 1/2 months- from January 1st through March 12th and September 1st through December 31st (the best case scenario at the moment). If so, they will be EXTRAORDINARILY lucky to reach half of 2019’s numbers. Given a new reality of fewer open days, shorter hours and admissions limits, that would appear to be extremely unlikely. The bigger question is WHEN will the big numbers return to the museums? The biggest question is- What happens if they don’t soon? Or ever?

It’s possible we are heading into dark times. Given scarce public funding, philanthropy fills in the gaps for  the museums. Despite the fact that sources of museum funding has come under closer scrutiny, in the near future there may be too many places in need of funding for those willing to fund. That closer scrutiny may give way to necessity. That before most of them reopen 16% of museums (of all kinds- not only Art museums) say there is a “significant risk” of permanent closure is a number that may or may not rise as things develop. NYC’s Art museums may be a bit more insulated than most, but they have made some huge decisions that may prove to be very shortsighted. 

One building that won’t be open soon is the new Hauser & Wirth behemoth on West 22nd Street towering over and horribly out of place among its residential neighbors. Frankly, it’s already an eyesore. As numerous small galleries go out of business around it, Hauser received $1,000,000.-$2,000,000. in Paycheck Protection Program loans in July. Yet, they have the money to build this?

Of course, ALL of this leaves out one very important group- living Artists. Most Artists (not named Jeff Koons, who received a PPP loan of $1,000,000. to $2,000,000.) are largely left on their own, and, whether they have gallery representation or not, are relying on the internet to sell their work. When you consider the workforce as a whole, they are a bit “lucky” to even have that outlet. Many others have no ability to work or earn without physically going to a  workplace.

Still, I’m sure there are many Artists around the world who are beginning to wonder “If this gallery isn’t showing my work to people in person, what am I paying them for?,” adding even more fuel to the “We NEED a new model!” movement I’ve heard from countless Artists & Photographers these past five years, from which there is no going back. The vast majority of Artists in the world don’t have gallery representation and have been making their own way in the Art world for their entire careers. In my opinion, and in my experience, this movement is only going to continue and grow.

Since no one yet knows how long this is likely to last, it’s also unknown if those loans are sufficient to tie over those who received them. (Full disclosure- Amount given/loaned/granted or donated to NighthawkNYC= $0.) For the rest of the Art world, as it is for the rest of us, it’s “God Bless the child who’s got his own,” as Billie Holiday sang in 1941. Right now, I can’t help but wonder- Will the day come when any or all of the museums who’ve spent tens, hundreds of millions, or billions of dollars on renovations or new buildings come to rue the day they did? As they presumably prepare to enter the “brave new world” we all face, wherever we are, IF  they are among the 34% of museums who told the AAM they have 4 months of Operating Revenue Remaining as of June? They will.

It seems to me in their race to outdo each other, they may be in danger of shortsightedly overlooking the REAL race. The most important race. The race to survive. 

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” by R.E.M. from Document, 1987 seen here in their official video, brilliantly Directed by James Herbert-

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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