Love Among the Ruins by Modern IDENTITY Inc.

56 BLEECKER GALLERY AND LATE 80s NEW YORK

Curated by Susan Martin, Maynard Monrow, and Bill Stelling Produced especially for Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project by Some Serious Business, Inc. Howl! Happening Sunday, September 10 – Saturday, October 7, 2017

Felix Pène du Bois, SCREAMIN’ JAY HAWKINS, ca 1986. Private collection.

PENNY ARCADE . SUZANNE ANKER . AUSTĖ . D ONALD BAECHLER . SYLVIE BALL . JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT . JULIAN BECK . BILL BECKLEY . MIKE BERG . JOHN BOWMAN . JEFF CARPENTER . STEFANO CASTRONOVO . GEORGE CONDO ARCH CONNELLY . BRUCE CONNER . SCOT T COVERT INGRID DINTER . ARNOLD FERN . VINCENT GALLO . JEDD GARET . GRAHAM GILLMORE . ALLEN GINSBERG . NAN GOLDIN . ERIC GO ODE . ROBERT HAWKINS . ROBERTO JUÁREZ . SCOTT KILGOUR . RUTH KLIGMAN . NORMAN KORPI . JOYCE KOZLOFF . TSENG KWONG CHI . DAVID LACHAPELLE . GREER LANKTON . CLAIRE LIEBERMAN DANIEL MAHONEY . FRANK MAJORE . FIDEL MÁRQUEZ SYLVIA MARTINS . MCDERMOTT & MCGOUGH . TAYLOR MEAD . NICOLAS MOUFARREGE . DAVID NELSON . FELIX PÈNE DU BOIS . JEFF PERRONE . ELIZABETH PEYTON WILLIAM RAND . ELAINE REICHEK . RENE RICARD . BILL R I C E . AL E XI S RO C KMAN . N I C O L AS RU L E . VIT TO R I O SCARPATI . BRUNO SCHMIDT . JO SHANE . MARK SINK STEPHEN SPROUSE . KEN TISA . NOEL VIETOR . WILLIAM WEGMAN . D ONDI WHITE . MARTIN WONG . THOMAS WOODRUFF . JIMMY WRIGHT

CONTENTS

Floating Among the Better Sort of Modern Angels SUSAN MARTIN

Art lIves Forever BILL STELLING

Bohemian Swansong TOM BREIDENBACH

Remembering Brothers ADAM ROLSTON

PILGRIMSâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; PROGRESS ARIANA REINES

Love in the Time of Darkness PENNY ARCADE

After Party CARLO McCORMICK

104

Dwelling JEFF PERRONE

112

The Mirror Is My Mother EILEEN MYLES

116

Legend TOM BREIDENBACH

121

Risky Behavior SUR RODNEY (SUR)

126

Beyond Downtown LINDA YABLONSKY

140

Love Among the Ruins ROBERT BROWNING

Love Among the Ruins: 56 Bleecker Gallery and Late 80s New York Curated by Susan Martin, Maynard Monrow, and Bill Stelling September 10–October 7, 2017 Produced by Some Serious Business for Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project © 2017 Howl Arts, Inc. Howl! Archive Publishing Editions (Howl! A/P/E) Volume 1, No. 19 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of Howl! A/P/E. All essays and poems included in this volume are © 2017 by their authors All images included in this volume are © 2017 by the artists and photographers Front and back cover photographs © 2017 Mark Sink with the exception of Penny Arcade “The Mirror Is My Mother” from I Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems © 2015 Eileen Myles Andy Warhol, After the Party, 1979. © 2017 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS) Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project 6 East 1st St. NY, NY 10003 www.HowlArts.org 917 475 1294 Some Serious Business: www.someseriousbusiness.org Editors: Susan Martin, Maynard Monrow, Bill Stelling Design and Art Direction: Marika van Adelsberg Copy Editor: Jorge Clar HOWL! COMMUNITY Arturo Vega Foundation Lalo Quiñones Jane Friedman Donovan Welsh BG Hacker Board of Advisors Curt Hoppe Marc H. Miller Dan Cameron Carlo McCormick James Rubio Debra Tripodi Lisa Brownlee Howl! Board of Directors Bob Perl, President Bob Holman, Vice President BG Hacker, Treasurer Nathaniel Siegel, Secretary Brian (Hattie Hathaway) Butterick Riki Colon Jane Friedman Chi Chi Valenti Marguerite Van Cook, President Emeritus Founder and Executive Director: Jane Friedman Gallery Director: Ted Riederer Program Director: Carter Edwards Gallery Coordinator: Corinne Gatesmith Marketing and Public Relations: Susan Martin Social Media and Development: Michelle Halabura Videographers: Andreas Nicholas, Yoon MJ Gallery designed by Teddy Kofman Creative Consultant: Some Serious Business The Arturo Vega Project: Jane Friedman ISBN: 978-0-9975565-8-2

Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame Struck them tame; And that glory and that shame alike, the gold Bought and sold

— ROBERT BROWNING, Love Among the Ruins

Let’s also say that change is neither good or bad. It simply is. It can be greeted with terror or joy. A tantrum that says, ‘I want it the way it was’ or a dance that says, ‘Look, it’s something new.’ — DON DRAPER, Mad Men (AMC)

Dean Rolston, FLOATING, printed for his memorial, 1994.

FLOATING AMONG THE BETTER SORT OF MODERN ANGELS Susan Martin I hate to begin with the big D—death—but there it is. My co-curator Bill Stelling’s brilliant title for the exhibition, taken from Robert Browning’s poem “Love Among the Ruins”, aptly describes the main themes—love and mortality—that were the impetus for this show.

As I lost so many friends so suddenly and unexpectedly in the last year, I was

taken back to a time when love and mortality were daily confrontations in our collective lives—when lights dimmed as dear friends, colleagues, and role models succumbed to AIDS.

By the end of the go-go 80s, the economy was in ruins, the art world crashed and

burned, and the heartbreak of AIDS permeated our world. And yet, as Love Among the Ruins demonstrates, even in the face of these crushing conditions art, creativity, and joy still flourished.

And, one of the centers of light amid the ruins was 56 Bleecker Gallery—a

beacon of exuberant art, madcap performances, and nonstop socializing. At the center of this whirlwind was my friend Dean Rolston and my co-curators, gallery director Bill Stelling, and force majeure Maynard Monrow.

When Dean died in 1994 from AIDS, he left behind a memoir—Remembering

Dying—a memento mori of the last two years of his life. No hagiography: In this short, powerful, beautifully written, and honest work Dean looks at his life and imminent death through the prism of contemporary culture and Zen Buddhism—contrasts that were apparent in his life. He was no saint, toggling between angel and devil, sublime and profane, like many of us in the late 80s. After his death, I sent letters to publishers soliciting their interest. Searching through his papers for this exhibition, I found the rejection letters that read as a sad commentary on the times: “Too many AIDS memoirs,” they say. Too many. To honor my dear friend, Some Serious Business will publish Remembering Dying. The book is a symbol of Dean’s sovereignty and agency in the face of death. “To suffer is not enough,” he says. We will not drown in forgetfulness. Through this exhibition, catalog, and memoir, we remember dying so that we can look back on this terrible period with grace, compassion, and new understanding.

Some Serious Business is proud to collaborate with Howl! Happening to shine

a light on another untold story about the art and social history of the East Village. Love Among the Ruins is not a nostalgic stroll down memory lane. It’s part of the continuum of living history that informs where we are—at this very moment—and spotlights the artists 11

(living and dead) whose originality and exuberant style continue to resonate with the world we inhabit right here, right now.

So love and death and love again—we’re at a tipping point, brothers and sisters—

a paradigm shift of epic proportions. We’re simultaneously “letting go altogether and being in spirited motion” to co-create a world in which love is a revolutionary act—a universe that fully acknowledges the last line of Browning’s poem: “Love is best.”

ABOVE: Kate Simon, DEAN AND ANDY, 1983. Private collection. RIGHT: Austė, VILNIUS, 1995. Collection of the artist.

Maynard Monrow, UNTITLED/EXISTENTIAL JUNKIES, 2017. Courtesy of the artist and Gavlak Gallery.

ART LIVES FOREVER

BILL STELLING

Love Among the Ruins is a memoir written on the walls of a gallery. Like many, I remember a time of art, sex, and death. There were corollaries of cocaine and heroin, and walks down to Avenue D to visit Chuleta, or whomever else happened to be standing on that corner. You would run into famous people there. This show isn’t about scholarly documentation; it ranges far into the subconscious of that period, showing the world through the creativity of its inhabitants. You will see works by people who never had a show at 56 Bleecker, but who were part of its world.

The middle of the 2010s has been about rediscovering the 1980s. Jean-Michel

has assumed mythic status, even though he was a petulant brat, a radiant child of druginduced paranoia. If you knew Jean, you will understand. Area, CBGB, Fun Gallery, and Club 57 are the subject of museum retrospectives. I try to remember what we were nostalgic about during the 80s. I think we disdained nostalgia, but I am not sure. All we were sure about was that art lived forever.

By the late 80s, the relatively dewy-eyed East Village art scene of 1982 had been

invaded by fashion and media. 56 Bleecker stepped slightly out of the neighborhood and embraced this confluence of art, trend, nightclubbing, performance, and style. It also was caught in the vortex of AIDS, as when Keith stopped by the gallery to say his final farewells. We showed a hundred drawings by Vittorio Scarpati, done from his hospital bed, as he was being kept alive on a ventilator. He was not able to attend his opening exhibition.

I blame it on Patrick Fox. He started this wild, mad gallery in the ruins of the

Anderson Theater, attracting the cool, the hip, and the talented. He shaped its aesthetic, and when he walked away from his eponymous gallery after the move to Bleecker Street, all that was left was the Tin Room.

I was brought in by Dean Rolston and Jason Vass like a janitor to clean up

broken glass. The name was changed, and Dean wanted the place to have a slightly more pretentious presence. He separated the “56” from the “Bleecker,” as they do in France, and thus 56, Bleecker Gallery. If you knew Dean, you will understand. Our business cards had to be square; the graphics had to be magnificent. We can thank David Pace for that. I look at mine now and am glad that it still pulses with that era.

A typical day: Unlock the gallery while a row of human scarecrows hidden under

scaffolding are lit up by crack pipes across Crosby Street. Move aside the garbage that Joe’s Carting Service has piled up in front of the door because we refuse to pay for garbage pickup. Get the wood stove going so we don’t freeze to death. Wait for the inevitable visit from Rene Ricard, who has already made his rounds of Helen, Jacqueline, and Sylvia for his “breakfast” money. Depending on his daily catch, he either 18

hits us up, or brings a Styrofoam container of Chinese food which he eats standing up. Later that night, we run into him at William Rand’s loft, mainlining art history. We love and fear Rene. If you knew him, you will understand. For many of us, Rene lives forever.

Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” was Rene’s soundtrack, but I still hear Scott

Covert singing “If there’s a cure for this, I don’t want it…” as he wandered the halls of Cabrini, visiting friends who would become memories. David LaChapelle’s beloved Louis graces one of our gallery invitations. There is some irony in knowing that Iggy Pop still lives on as a musician and rock icon while Stephen Sprouse is gone. Mark Sink, our de facto house photographer, documented them. Through him, they live forever in the exhibition catalog.

Not everybody died, though. Jeff Perrone, who curated a show called Dwelling,

spoke eloquently about issues as relevant today as they were in 1989. He has again honored us by creating a show within this show. Elizabeth Peyton, whom we met in her tiny apartment next door to The World, had a very early show in the Tin Room. Of course,

nobody got it. Artists like Graham Gillmore and Scott Kilgour have moved away from New York and continue to make important, relevant work. The magical Auste may live in . Connecticut, but downtown lives forever through her fierce women.

I follow Penny Arcade on Facebook, and lately her posts have been rants about

the homogenization of the East Village. If you know Penny, you will understand her anger. Her village has been bulldozed by somebody who probably lives in Dubai. It’s hard to reconcile the corner of 1st and First—where bums used to cook stolen chicken parts on fires of broken furniture in garbage cans—with the French restaurant now there and its $42 à la carte entrées. That ruined landscape that we inhabited is gone. Through this exhibition, I am hoping that the beautiful, ugly, destructive, and creative world we remember lives on forever. PREVIOUS: Mark Sink, photograph ca 1988. Courtesy of the artist.

Robert Hawkins and Rene Ricard, DAD. Private collection.

OPPOSITE: Vittorio Scarpati, UNTITLED, 1988. Courtesy of Sylvie Ball.

William Rand, SUGAR CHURCH: PORTRAIT OF RENE RICARD, 1991. Courtesy of the artist.

OPPOSITE: Robert Hawkins, GHOST SHIP, 1989. Courtesy of the Lee Arthur collection.

Robert Hawkins, TWIN TOWERS, 2007. Courtesy of the Lee Arthur collection.

Rene Ricard, PLEASE HOLD ME THE FORGOTTEN WAY, 2004. Courtesy of the Lee Arthur collection.

Claire Lieberman, NOCTURNAL CONE, 1988. Courtesy of the artist.

PREVIOUS LEFT: Dondi White, BLACK BOOK, 1978-79. Courtesy of the Beth Rudin DeWoody collection. PREVIOUS RIGHT: Nicolas Rule, NECROMANCY, 1988. Courtesy of the artist. OPPOSITE: Eric Goode, UNTITLED, 1988. Courtesy of the artist.

John Bowman, GRAVITY LESSON, 1987. Courtesy of the artist and Winston Wachter Fine Art, NYC/Seattle.

Eric Goode, UNTITLED, 1988. Courtesy of the artist.

BOHEMIAN SWANSONG

Tom Breidenbach

The mid-1980s were marked by the militaristic Pollyannaism of Ronald Reagan’s Morning in America and the twin scourges of AIDS and (prominent among other hard drugs) crack cocaine. From this volatile amalgam emerged an art whose apocalyptic vitality was born of desperation, an art distinguished by a noir streak as unsparing in its vision as the popular political culture was smugly deluded in its. While Reagan-ism initiated a ratcheting up of Western imperialism, along with a betrayal of the social commitments of a prior generation, the art of downtown New York registered the costs of all this—personal, civil, as well as spiritual—which continue accruing around the nation and world. Lurid, scathing, and lyric by turns, the poetic chronicles of the period express the lament of a sensibility bound up in the atrocities collective blindness abets. The visceral nature of this work, including its gallows humor, reflects that valor born of dejection, a loyalty to the ideal even amid devastation.

Arnold Fern, TRIUMPH OF THE DAWN, 1984. Courtesy of the Martin Boyce collection.

Felix PÃ¨ne du Bois, UNTITLED (EAST VILLAGE), 1987. Private collection.

Jedd Garet, BLOOD FLOOD, 1986, Private collection.

Scott Kilgour, UNTITLED, 1987.

ABOVE: Fidel Mรกrquez, UNTITLED, 1989. Courtesy of a private collection.

David Nelson, UNTITLED, 1989. Courtesy of a private collection.

Bill Rice, UNTITLED, 1987. Courtesy of a private collection.

Rene Ricard, GOD AND MOMMY, 1989. Courtesy of the Bob Murphy collection.

Alexis Rockman, WHAT THE FISH SEES, 1986. Courtesy of the artist.

REMEMBERING BROTHERS

ADAM ROLSTON

I have some questions I’d like to ask you? I have some things I’d like to tell you. Since you’re dead, I’m going to pretend for a moment that you’re not. Tell you a thing or two about what you meant to me and perhaps to others. I want to tell you who you were to me. I want to fit you into my story. I want to fit me into yours. You were big, outsized, so smart—seven languages, two degrees—with a parade of friends, lovers, and enemies. You lived like you were writing the novel of your life, of our lives. Dinner wasn’t just dinner. It was a chapter. It was a performance. You were Auntie Mame with a Y chromosome.

I will never forget learning at your apartment on 10th Street, in the middle of a

cocktail party filled to capacity with your self-consciously and decidedly sophisticated friends, in about 1980, that you had “discovered” us—Julie and me, your little brother and sister. In our wide-eyed, young-adult presence, you explained that we were like diamonds in the rough; that several years prior you had decided to take an interest in our development. I had been “discovered.” This was news. And more importantly, I was at least interesting enough for you to have “taken an interest.”

You and Matthew were always so tied to each other. You belonged to another

world Julie and I could only slightly grasp. She and I watched. We watched very closely, growing up in your exotic shadow. We paid attention to every detail. When you were home, we studied you like at a class outing to the zoo. It was like watching an animal out of its element, evocative of a world impossible to know and out of reach. How could we not worship you and resent you at the same time? You and Matthew could see to some horizon that was beyond our view.

You were like a round peg trying to fit into the square hole of the American

average. Thus your abhorrence of the middle classes…our middle class upbringing from which you ran. What would have become of you? A beautiful, eccentric outlier and misfit from the beginning, probably would have been to the last. But perhaps just a little sadder. The child-man.

I remember you home for the holidays. Me all teen discomfort. You were in

graduate school. It was McGill Law at that point. Or were you studying for the bar and that was already after Columbia Law? All very prestigious. You brought home your “study partner.” He took my breath away. Canadian French, blond, stocky, small, and compact… the most exquisite mustache, a rich tan, and a sweet, joyful fraternal smile reserved for me. “Ah, this is your little brother; enchantè,” with a handshake meant for an adult. You studied by the pool. We roughhoused, dove, and raced. It was like an alternate universe, PREVIOUS: Mark Sink, Matthew and Dean Rolston, ca 1988. Courtesy of the artist.

Sylvie Ball, MARILYN, 1988. Courtesy of the artist.

ABOVE: VINCENT GALLO, MY FIRST PENNY, 1986. Courtesy of Isabella del Frate Rayburn.

Jane Dickson, UNTITLED, 1981. Private collection.

where boys and men were kind, loving, and affectionate. I remember the curly blond hairs drenched in Johnson’s Baby Oil that crawled up his thigh, into and out of his blue speedo. So French. I was destroyed with longing.

The study partner was like an explosion with no sound. I remember David’s

disdain. The middle brother’s sneer that required no expression or words. The fear it instilled. The fist in my back when caught watching you two. Self-loathing and desire all wrapped up in one emotion that had no description. The house filled with subtexts and denial. But he was glorious, and so were you. So far above. You needed none of us. You were a world unto yourselves. You even had your own language none of us could speak.

A couple of years earlier, just into undergraduate, maybe even at the end of high

school, Dad insisted that you get yourself fixed. He would pay for it. Money could solve the problem. There were psychologists that could help. And thus began our family’s dance with the therapeutic professions. We had come a long way. We had a long way to go.

During college, Julie and I would come visit like J. D.’s Franny and Zooey. Just

as disenchanted as they. You alternately regaled us and ignored us. Bossed us around and left us to our own devices. You were trouble then. Not reliable in love, as a lover, or in giving love. Dean got in the way. In the effort to move forward, with the passion, the momentum that it took to get you out of bed, you always broke something or someone— and sometimes me, Julie, Matthew, family or friends. But you could always charm your way back. Back to us.

I followed you to New York. Had planned it forever. It was the only place we could

be then. An island. An oasis. I saw things I couldn’t believe. Warhol attacking Fran in a tone that could chill ice, across cigarettes and martinis. I watched Keith at his own birthday ingratiate himself to Castelli across a bar that pulsed neon blue. Explosions of coke on a mirror table in the Michael Todd room. I saw Isozaki preside over the throng to the phallic beat of Grace. I knew adventures stumbled onto streets, tripping at dawn all lost and gone. I dream of people who no longer exist. Have seen things that I would never have imagined. Met people who showed me a way to be in a world that had no place for me, all because of you. You opened the door. You gently pulled back that little brass tab on the hook at the end of the velvet rope, for me. You never helped me navigate. You never held my hand. You did what you could, but most importantly, you opened my eyes. You let me in just a little, but enough. You allowed me to see what you saw, and you changed me forever. You were Darwin’s proof text. You were a highly adapted subspecies. Your rarified unnatural habitat was Manhattan at the fin de siècle. You were self-built from the ground 47

up, to navigate a world of passing passions, barbs, crooks, insults, injuries, snobs, whores, ecstasies, intellectuals, junkies, disappointments, dilettantes, debutantes, robber barons, and posers. You were the consummate metropolitan. You could converse with anyone. Condescend to everyone. Charm all. You were the pied piper. You needed anyone and everyone to share your passions—just to survive.

At first it was your dinner parties. Then it was your corner of the nightclub, your

booth, your VIP. Then the gallery. You created your own velvet rope, behind which everyone wanted to be. There seemed to be endless openings, dinners, parties that collected great art and great artists, and people always of interest. I was a spectator occasionally caught in your current. I could catch a glimpse if I stood just right. There was the chatter of petty jealousies, machinations, loves and hates. Stories of jockeying, begging, borrowing, and stealing; always on the edge, always barely legal. You gave a lot. You took a lot. Some adored you. Some hated you, but none were ever indifferent. You loved art, but mostly I think you loved collecting people. Like Andy, you were always at the center but entirely absent. Matthew made. You made hay.

I remember your first lesion. Like a hickey from a vengeful lover. You stood there

in the gallery, oblivious that I had noticed. Going about your business while everything fell apart in me. A frantic dance on a sinking ship. At that moment, it seemed that your life—your illness—was inevitable. Like a rake’s progress, it was preordained. It was part of a narrative already written. Self-fulfilling. Our families “just wanted us to be happy” and thus informed us that we would never be. We blamed ourselves. I blamed you. We never rejected it as our due until too late. At least for some of us. At least for me. I never asked for your help. You never asked me. I never imposed. I wish I had. I never told you how it cut me off at the knees. I barely knew myself. And then I was just embarrassed. By my own cowardice. So I joined ACT UP.

It was great to make it simple. There was a wrong and there was a right. There

were no bad brothers, only clear-eyed soldiers. They had constructed a world that had no place for us to consolidate their precious privileges. They had foisted this devastation on us. Aggressive in their negligence. We fought and in the end we won. It took decades, but we won. For now we’ve turned the tides. But they have been turned and lost before. No doubt they will again.

Really, I only have one question left in me that will never go away. Why did you

leave without saying goodbye? You assembled your death party. I had learned by then that this was how it was done. You left with strangers who loved the dying person, not the living one. The person after, not the one before. You had moved to Tassajara a couple of years prior. Everyone had visited except me. I think you knew. You asked me to come. 48

I didn’t want to. I dreaded it. But I was glad you had asked. It was a weirdly generous thing. I could barely speak to you. You had asked me for something I could do. I made the reservations. And then, the day before I was to arrive, you killed yourself. You cut me off at the knees.

I am sure it had nothing to do with me. Of course, at the same time I must doubt

it had absolutely nothing to do with me. I hated you for it. You had punished me for my disregard, for my cowardice, or you had not. I couldn’t parse it. Some said it was your fast decline—bad timing. Some said you had spared me. I felt gone. I had disappeared. I had been erased. I will never recover. I will never recover you. But what I will always have is all that you gave me. All that is me. Everything you showed me. Just by being generous enough to open the door. McDermott & McGough, NICOLAS, 1989. Private collection.

Rene Ricard, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR, 1989. Courtesy of William Rand.

PREVIOUS: William Wegman, NO FUN SLEEPING UNDER A PICTURE LIKE THIS, 1975.

Courtesy of the Beth Rudin DeWoody collection.

OPPOSITE: Jo Shane, MALE TORSO, 1986. Courtesy of the artist.

Tseng Kwong Chi, WASHINGTON DC, 1982. Courtesy of the Beth Rudin DeWoody collection.

OPPOSITE ABOVE: Mike Berg invitation. OPPOSITE: Bruno Schmidt invitation.

Frank Majore, HORNETâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S NEST, 1987. Courtesy of the artist.

Arch Connelly, UNTITLED, 1986. Private collection. OPPOSITE: Mike Berg, UNTITLED, 1988. Collection of David Pace.

Bruno Schmidt, SAINT CHRISTOPHER, 1988. Courtesy of the late Jeanette Bonnier. OPPOSITE ABOVE: Julian Beck, COMPLETE DIAGONAL, 1948. Courtesy of Ubu Gallery. OPPOSITE: Julian Beck, WHITE CRACKLINGS, 1944. Courtesy of Ubu Gallery.

“Every work of art with which we come in contact, no matter how passively we receive it, has its consequence….This contribution of wisdom, perception, beauty, or the quality of arousing awareness—this is the glory of art. It pleases the senses, yes, but actively: it is a social worker, a doctor, a meliorism….” —Julian Beck, March 20, 1953

Elizabeth Peyton, KISS, 2000. Courtesy of Melissa Feldman.

Vittorio Scarpati, UNTITLED, 1989. Courtesy Yoko Mori.

Norman Korpi, MAGNET #7, 1989. Courtesy of Cathay Che.

Stephen Sprouse, UNTITLED (autographed photo of Debbie Harry painted by Sprouse), 1988. Courtesy of Scott Ewalt.

Martin Wong, TWO SKELETONS, 1973. Courtesy of the Beth Rudin DeWoody collection.

Nicolas Moufarrege, UNTITLED, 1981. Courtesy of Sur Rodney (Sur).

Taylor Mead, KISS, 1968. William Rand collection.

Taylor Mead, MAN WITH BIRD, 1963. William Rand collection.

PILGRIMSâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; PROGRESS

Ariana Reines

Greer Lankton, SIAMESE TWINS, 1981. Private collection.

In SAFEWAY I heard a whining Song. Dill fills the air with longing What was the Twentieth Century Appetite. I grew up wondering would I Ever fuck like them, the dead. They left Behind the lingering sense of an ethos: To discover love, if you could, in your Own way for your own self, outside the dread And shame they’d installed all around you. Is the asshole closer to death, is shit close to it And why when some pray do we put our ass In the air to kiss the ground, the rosebud Of the dark side of our minds waving in the blue Sex and death got married and had a baby. I wasn’t there when it happened and nobody exactly Told me about it. There was a lingering scent on the air My first years in New York going to the one no two really Good nightclubs, when the Meatpacking District Was still full of actual meat and blood and tall whores In beautiful crowds picking carefully over the cobblestones In their enormous heels and wigs. Here ends the only Nostalgia I shall permit myself. I was feeling kind Of Auschwitzy in a vegan restaurant in Warsaw. There was an H&M and a multiplex across the street From the ghetto wall nestled inside an apartment Complex. I’m alive only because the false identity My grandmother’s husband bought her before he was killed Meant she had a job just outside that wall. The malls Are built all over the world that we might shop our way out Of oblivion. It was easy to weep at the wall. I put 72

My forehead on it and said my dead uncles’ names and Tadeusz Richter the name of the man my grandmother actually loved. A plague. A genocide. The usage of the world. Lathe Of all difference. I used to have a nightmare that recurred: A spiral of water draining down a hundred thousand family Pictures. None of them people I knew, all of them faces I could love if I had the chance. The idea of loving as a public Act is something I inherited. The felicity of men who fuck Like friends is the thing I admire. The Emma Goldman brilliancy and courage of the women Of Act Up is my living moral referent. But I Don’t know how to write a poem about AIDS. I don’t know anybody who died of it. I read Tim Dlugos to face Warsaw because of a line about his Father or grandfather speaking Polish. Can everything Be made to resolve into my originary pain? What drove My mother insane. And an idea of liberty and elegance Perfected by gay men in cities: the constellation of my youngest Desires. I’m on a banquette in Winslow Arizona next to my Post-gender lover, my person. I used to talk a lot about the Gay Priesthood, about queerness as a Kohanim, priest Class of the world, with whom you get high, tend to the sick And imprisoned, advocate for the misunderstood, and die In grace. Where would we be without nightclubs, the liberation Of sex from “love” as defined by hetrosexist patriarchy, the lesbians Who teach poetry in prisons, the women who radiate zero Sexuality in order, like running fleeing nymphs to flee the frankly Real male gaze, where would we be? Where would we be without Chelsea Manning’s agony? The Dans Macabre of plaguetime Paris? The New York I never knew? 73

Stefano Castronovo, CHRIST JACKET, 1986. Collection of David Pace.

David LaChappelle, UNTITLED, 1988. Private collection.

Arch Connelly, UNTITLED, 1990. Private collection.

Sylvia Martins, ANTHROPOLOGY, 1990. Courtesy of the artist. OPPOSITE ABOVE: Suzanne Anker, COBRA, 1989. Courtesy of the artist. OPPOSITE: Elaine Reichek invitation NEXT: George Condo, BROTHEL, 2001. Courtesy of the Beth Rudin DeWoody collection.

LOVE IN THE TIME OF DARKNESS

PENNY ARCADE

Mark Sink, Taylor Mead, ca 1988. Courtesy of the artist.

Once upon a time, there was only one art scene in New York—that art scene resided downtown. There were art businesses, but that was different. They resided on Madison Avenue, the Upper East Side, and other places around Midtown—but no matter where you worked or lived, whether you were famous or obscure, to make the art scene in New York you had to come downtown.

Downtown New York was, even then, a semi-mythical place that existed as much

in people’s imaginations as it did in its geographic location. For over a century and a half, people from far-flung places were lured to the city by the promise of a mecca built on artistic lineage, whose values were truth, art, beauty, history, and iconoclasm. For those of us who experienced the tinsel clash of big money, yuppies, and limos when they first crossed the boundary of 14th Street, nothing could have been more foreign to our downtown aesthetic—not even if Visigoths in animal skins had appeared on the backs of dinosaurs charging past Union Square Park. That would have been more palatable.

Coked-up, Rolex-encrusted, ties stuffed into the pockets of their Brooks

Brothers suits, on the arms of debutantes or expensive call girls—or in some cases, with what Harry Koutoukis referred to as “twinks,” a word he coined to describe the marshmallow, cookie-cutter cuties favored by some gay men—these Kens and Barbies moved through the bowels of the New York underground like a barium enema, passing through but never touching the authenticity of that world. And yet, something—money— changed everything.

The explosion of East Village galleries floundered in the mid 80s. Greedy

landlords killed the golden goose of cheap gallery space just as AIDS was proving it was here to stay, rooting itself in our broad community and decimating three or more generations of artists, filmmakers, playwrights, poets, writers, designers, intellectuals, clubgoers, and our most numerous denizens—people who had escaped rural and suburban America with no other ambition than to live a louche, artistic life in the slums of New York City. The spores of that East Village gallery scene alighted on the then no man’s land of what is now called Noho, the area between Bowery and Broadway crossed by streets that hearken to a different New York—that of the late 1800s, with names like Great Jones, Bond, and Bleecker—tic-tac-toed with long alleyways like Cross Alley, Jones Alley, and Shin Bone Alley. This was a remnant of Olde New York, which for half a century was the place where you found the greatest concentration of the homeless, the alcoholic and the drug-addicted. Even in the 1980’s, you took your life in your hands there at night… perhaps even in the daytime.

Today, the last of those alleys, Jones Alley at Great Jones Street, has been 84

privatized. The term “jones,” slang for an addiction to drugs, is said to have originated among the addicts who lived on. In the mid 80s, with the dispersal of the East Village gallery scene, in an old Dutch building that still stands with entrances on both Bleecker and Crosby streets, 56 Bleecker Gallery was born.

Bankrolled by Dean Rolston, the gallery was built on the bones of another that

first moved there from the East Village. Rolston partnered with Bill Stelling, formerly of the legendary Fun Gallery in the East Village, which he had co-helmed with Patti Astor. Rolston and Stelling were soon ably assisted by the charming Maria Celi, who undertook the day-to-day running of the gallery.

In keeping with its somewhat mysterious, scandalous, and blurred history, 56

Bleecker Gallery stands out as a dark cornerstone in the thrashing artistic nightlife of New York’s 80s, where clubbing and art merged. New forms mulched in the ferment of 70s punk DIY, presenting themselves where fashion, performance, literature, sculpture, criticism, installation, and painting all thrived—a heady, fomenting pulse in a world where in the constant presence of death anything went. Art was now a part of fighting back, announcing LIFE in the name of a brave new world where hip hop, graffiti, and post-punk baroque opulence meshed with classical forms. In group shows, the elder statesmen of the Avant-garde mixed with young emerging artists (lowercase “e” please) whose work held the seeds of future accomplishments. In some cases—unlike today— these group shows focused on artists being young and having immediate potential, while ignoring the arc of development.

New art critics and writers had emerged in the 80s—Rene Ricard, Edit DeAk,

Gary Indiana, and Lisa Liebmann, among others—and while the shows themselves often broke new ground, the real draw was the crowd that attended those shows: art explorers, culture vultures who gathered there in the real sense. Many nights you knew you were in the right place at the right time, a sanctuary in that dark storm of death that enveloped the 80s. Everyone was ready to participate in what might be the next big thing, while still a holding place for sacred lineage on which all true and eternal art is predicated.

I myself participated in one of the most legendary events held at 56 Bleecker in

1988—the production of Jackie Curtis’s Glamour, Glory and Gold. Curtis, who died from an overdose in 1985, left a gaping hole in the spirit of Downtown. Taylor Mead, poet, painter, and comedian extraordinaire, who had participated in every art movement in New York since the 40s, was tapped by Dean Rolston to direct a cast that even now boggles the mind. The great actor Ondine (Pope Ondine of Warhol’s Factory); the iconoclast, performer, and playwright Harry Koutoukas of Caffe Cino; Ruby Lynn Reyner, star of John 85

Vaccaro’s Playhouse of The Ridiculous; John Edward Heys, star of Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company; critic, writer, and playwright Gary Indiana, who represented everything that was brilliant in criticism and art; and the erudite, maddening, and extraordinary Dame Margo Howard-Howard, best described as having the body of woman and the head of a fish. She, Heys, and I shared the title role of Nola Noonan. Our leading man was played by the handsome Mitch Markowitz. Created as a one-night extravaganza, Glamour, Glory and Gold moved to The World, a nightclub on East Second and Ave C, where it continued to run every Thursday for 17 weeks.

Howl! Happening’s survey of 56 Bleecker Gallery is saved from the ephemeral

nature that often plagues obscure, fleeting, and yet important moments of art history by the luck of having the inclusion of graphic artist David Pace’s complete oeuvre of all of the work he created for 56 Bleecker—from publicity materials to stationery, posters, and invitations for every show of its brief life.

Howl! Happening, like 56 Bleecker, serves a similar function today as a contem-

porary holding place for diverse art movements and groups that have lost their homes— and for the history of art itself. Dedicated to preserving our collective downtown past, Howl! practices a noble if threatened endeavor. 86

ABOVE LEFT: Patrick McMullan, CARMEL JOHNSON, COOKIE MUELLER, ANDY WARHOL, DIANE BRILL AT

DIANE BRILL’S BIRTHDAY PARTY AT DANCETERIA, 1984. Courtesy of the artist.

ABOVE: Patrick McMullan, MAN ON ST MARK’S PLACE, 1986. Courtesy of the artist.

Penny Arcade as Dame Margo Howard-Howard. Courtesy of the artist.

OPPOSITE: Julian Beck performance invitation.

Stephen Sprouse invitation to after-party at The World.

Ken Tisa, VERY GOOD, 1985. Courtesy of the artist.

Ken Tisa, THE BIRTH, 1988. Courtesy of the artist.

OPPOSITE: Scott Kilgour, HENRY GELDZAHLER, 1987. Courtesy of the artist.

David LaChapelle invitation, design by David Pace.

Roberto Juรกrez, CAT IN THE HAT, 1982. Courtesy of the artist. OPPOSITE ABOVE: Scott Covert, LIFE ON MARS, 1985. Courtesy of the artist. OPPOSITE: Scott Covert, HUNTED, 1985. Courtesy of the artist.

AFTER PARTY

CARLO McCORMICK

It’s hard to know when the party is over. Some of us are just happy to be where we are and don’t pay much attention when the room starts to thin out. Most everyone in that room can tell you what it felt like. Our social lives shifted from shiny glamour and perpetual novelty to the grim expectations of diminishing returns, when all that revelry and the rising death toll started to shrink the scene. We began to keep in touch with our friends through a steady diet of memorial services rather than the once-constant socializing of nightclubs. But we stayed, those of us who could, because there was no better place to go. We spent everything we had on the moment without investing much in an idea of the future. When was that, and why did that change seem at once so sudden and yet so gradual?

In retrospect, 56 Bleecker Gallery was something like the in-crowd backroom

of the cultural nightclub that was the downtown art scene. There were animosities and affairs and a lot of attitude, but it was, for that time, a clubhouse for the community, where so many of us could stay busy and loiter at the same time. Places like 56 Bleecker were remarkably insular, an inverse contraction: the bigger the audience, the smaller the scene. So many other people we didn’t even know had started to care about what was going on there. Like backstage at a big concert, these moments tend to be rather duller than expected: stars with their lights somewhat dimmed, too tired from a long tour, and way too much partying to be up to all the storied antics. The openings were epic, as good as any party I remember, but galleries are daytime businesses. In the light of day, 56 Bleecker was more modest and intimate, a place to enjoy art outside the crowds and the larger than life personalities.

56 Bleecker Gallery was a privileged place before New York became a place of

privilege. Gathered together—odd specimens all—did anyone notice that the dance floor had emptied, with music quieter and darker, a sadness forming that was as palpable as it was deniable? The city was still a playground in so many ways, but already the thrills were settling into the torpor of a cynical ennui, as the orthodoxies of the underground were eroded in a new age of public ambition. We, who had so firmly believed in the decayed and degenerate aesthetic of No Future, watched the dawn of a future that would take many of us years to understand.

My memories of 56 Bleecker are vague and muddled, and quite probably wholly

inaccurate. Maybe it was that the sense of loss was beginning to overwhelm the sense of discovery, but there were frustrations and the shadows of a doubt that seemed real PREVIOUS: Andy Warhol, AFTER THE PARTY, 1979. Screenprint on Arches paper, 21 1/2 x 30 1/2 inches.

ALL OPPOSITE: Ingrid Dinter, UNTITLED #1, UNTITLED #2, UNTITLED, #3 UNTITLED #4, 1986. Courtesy of the artist.

enough. Much like Bill Stelling, who was the gallery director at 56 Bleecker, and who had already changed our world with the aptly named (by Kenny Scharf) Fun Gallery, I had seen the two most ebullient and radical movements from the 80s—graffiti art’s shift from the trains to the canvas, and the glorious pluralism of the East Village art scene— disposed of by media and art world alike. They were not just passé, but somehow already a stigma within the same decade. It was a time of reinvention necessitated by survival, but most us were pretty miserable trying to be someone else. And the few of our generation who had made it seemed to be having a lot less fun with success than you might expect. Success, as it often does, was tearing apart the fabric of community, creating inequities and alienations within something that had formerly been tightly knit.

It’s all a blur, really. They had a great neighbor in the Barbara Braathen Gallery on

the same block. She shared a similar history and showed many of the same artists. I remember Artforum’s offices were then on Bleecker Street, across from the gallery. It . was around that time I stopped writing for them and the other art magazines, because it somehow seemed less corrupting to write about popular culture for Paper magazine. Because so many friends were involved, I went to a lot of shows at 56 Bleecker. Except for Auste, I don’t recall if I wrote about them, though I remember that other writers, like Cookie Mueller and Rene Ricard, actively supported the gallery.

I remember some other things, like getting Bruce Conner really drunk after his

show there, and taking shit for it afterwards when he trashed the fancy restaurant where the after-party was held. These are all unreliable accounts at best. Mostly what I remember is the art—how it sustained me during the first (and so far only) time when my abiding love for art was disillusioned by finally seeing the art market for the grotesque and soulless beast it was. Being reminded of why I still cared about art, and always would, is what I remember best of all. To this day I thank Bill, Dean, and Maynard for sharing that love. Postscript

Sometime during the heyday of 56 Bleecker Gallery—at that time when we were

burying far too many amazing people and the downtown scene was beginning to fizzle rather than sizzle—I first came across After the Party, a print by Andy Warhol made in 1979. It was pure deadpan decadence, and affected me as few of Andy’s works did—a still life of dirty glasses, emptied bottles, dirty coffee cups, an ashtray, and plates of half-consumed food sprawled wantonly across a table like a memento mori. What party had ended? Was it Sixties Pop or Seventies Disco? These things are more than nostalgia 102

or history; they linger like the remembrance of things past, a long story of misadventure told across generations in a grand, outsider lineage. Soon after 56 Bleecker closed, I left my club jobs and velvet ropes to work at a bar called Max Fish. There I met a new generation of artists who got me writing about art again, and as I got to know them, each told me that they came to New York to meet all these people who were no longer around. They would always ask, “Where did everyone go?” Absent from the table, they’re still here nonetheless—each a story to tell, all having left their mark like the glasses and bottles on Warhol’s image—signs of a veritable feast of prolific and daring art among the ruins of the banquet years.

PREVIOUS: Nan Goldin, RENE WITH FLOWERS, NYC, 1990. Courtesy of the artist.

Stephen Sprouse, IGGY, 1988. Private collection.

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DWELLING

JEFF PERRONE

PREVIOUS: Jimmy Wright, MOVIE HOUSE TOILET #3, 1973. Courtesy of the artist.

Jeff Perrone, KILL YOUR LANDLORD, 2016. Courtesy of the artist.

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Martin Wong, MARY-ANN, 1988. Collection of Mary-Ann Monforton.

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From the Exhibition Dwelling, 56 Bleecker Gallery December 17, 1988–January 21, 1989 I said yes because the room, drenched with history, is no white box, not slick, not clean, not an idealized space that you can drop art into with a sound. The room has background noise, the echoes of habitation, the feel of residence; perhaps the horses that were kept here in the 19th century and the grooms who fed and pampered them are speaking; perhaps the flaking, textured pressed tin is a crust of time, of memory.

I said yes because we wander, turn the corner, and our dwelling disappears, all

but waiting for the prodigal return—the basis for all narrative. Because it is my surrogate self, where I reside even when I’m not there: a physical place and a psychological space. Yes because sometimes I have to travel, I have to leave my dwelling, and I hate it. Perhaps I imagine it really won’t be there when I get back, that it will be a smoky shell. I still remember coming home one night, my neighbors shivering in the snow, and the revolving red lights of the fire engines.

I said yes because I live and work in one small room, and it’s all I need for

sanctuary. So I think about people fleeing the violence of Central American dictatorships funded by our government, and how these people seek asylum here, in spiritual dwellings, free from fear—except for fear of prosecution, of another kind of illegality.

I said yes because of the homeless, most of whom are children, who may not

know home but know dwelling—if only the shelter of their mothers’ arms. Yes because of the burnt-out buildings and land speculators, and stencils: This Property is owned by the City of New York, city of crack houses. And yes for the four boys who live next door to me, with their parents, in a one-bedroom apartment, who laugh and scream and splash in the tub every night after dinner, and who call out “Hello my frien” when they hear me in the bathroom.

Most of all, I said yes for those people who often have no choice about their

dwelling, languishing in hospital rooms, but strong and courageous, and who say to me: “If I can just get home, I’ll feel better” and “I refuse to die in the hospital.” And for Jim, who, rather than spend another day on the ward, waited until the middle of the night, and then yanked out his Hickman. And for how we make a dwelling with no more than a pink flower in a vase, a few shells on the window sill, and a good book.

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Photographer Unknown, Portrait of Bill Rice. OPPOSITE LEFT TO RIGHT, TOP TO BOTTOM:

Thomas Woodruff, VERY MUCH, VENUS AND CUPID, STATIC, PRESENT, NICE HAT, MARCH, APROPOS, ACCOMPANIMENT, 1984. Courtesy of PPOW Gallery.

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111

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OPPOSITE TOP TO BOTTOM: Bill Beckley, HOT AND COLD FAUCETS WITH DRAIN, EPILOGUE, TWO OF SEVEN SINS, ONE OF SEVEN SINS, 1991. Courtesy of the artist.

Robert Hawkins, DEVIL, 1982. Collection of Bob Murphy.

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THE MIRROR IS MY MOTHER

EILEEN MYLES

PREVIOUS: Mark Sink, UNTITLED, ca 1988. Courtesy of the artist.

Graham Gillmore, BRITANNICA, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.

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If I’m not in there I’m in here

with impatience and truth.

the city accordion in someone’s kind

An angel should come and they would

hands, squeeze in, pull out,

speak. On my birthday they were handing me

holds us closely on the couch.

millions of pictures of myself, as they

The mirror is moved

do in our culture, the clapping of

and I’m facing the wall, let me turn

hands, lights, everything that’s not

quickly and turn to the city. The beauty

dead and dark. I brought my ancient

of Christmas is accidental,

bunny home from Boston, the puppets I brought my mask. Now this African woman

a legion of scarves getting

looks down on my life, poor and white

off, and cars, paintings, movements,

outside the christian lights blink

a Cardinal aghast, turning the pages

comically onto my tenement bed.

of the New York Times they had lived

In East Frisia the lightning means

together for quite a few years

they’re taking your picture again.

both happened to be standing there

Don’t squint, let your mother

when the Berlin Wall fell down.

look at your beautiful face and love you for breath and movement and

As I watched her lying there,

hearing an animal suddenly moving

shriveled, the huge head decorated

in the brush let it pass.

and the room swayed with candles

Never strike.

and white flowers and as I said it was if you moved a mirror and what you saw was the wall instead. My uncle’s lips looked rubber, smeared all over his poor old Irish face. It was his voice I knew, not his lips. Poor old Uncle Tim who always wiggled his ears. Aunt Ann always so huge in power and strength, strangled by grief, a little pooch, dependent on her grandchildren who loved her. I say death is a strange thing. I want to stay open to this life, my rubber lips twisting in lies and fear, my eyes burning 117

LEGEND

Tom Breidenbach

And the story of what happened next is a mystery lost to time, so much wind across waves at the seashore, a shimmer among crests in the spume

the spears of whose glint impress like sterling letters the whisper yet issuing from the incessant peal of that mysteryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s undying heart.

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Arch Connelly, UNTITLED, 1990. Private collection.

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Jeff Carpenter, CANDACE, 1989. Courtesy of the artist. OPPOSITE: Ruth Kligman, A MONSTER BECOMING GANESH, 1998. Courtesy of William Rand.

LIFE IS ABOUT RISKS. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

RISKY BEHAVIOR

Sur Rodney (Sur)

How did we get here? And, why 56 Bleecker? It was the site where Frank O’Hara’s play The General Returns From One Place to Another was performed. The play appears in Amorous Nightmares of Delay: Selected Plays, published in 1978 by John Hopkins University Press. Taylor Mead played the General, and asked Ruth Kligman and myself to act as the two other characters in the play. Were we written into the play by Taylor? Didn’t matter, Ruth and I agreed. We were the only trio of characters in that version of the play. So that’s what brings me here when considering 56 Bleecker. I have no memory of how we were dressed for the occasion.

Now I’ve been invited to present something literary for one of the programmed

events at Howl! Happening, and presenting Frank O’Hara’s play as orchestrated by Taylor Mead would be impossible. Reading my own work seemed irrelevant to the occasion, certainly less so than Ruth Kligman’s. She figures much more prominently in 56 Bleecker’s history. I’m recalling her arrangement with the gallery to co-present a viewing of her paintings in her 14th Street studio, which she’d acquired through a deal with Franz Kline decades earlier.

For this occasion, wearing a wig that once belonged to Candy Darling, and in

Ruth Kligman’s honor, I have chosen to present a revealing of her innermost thoughts— in her own words. This might be considered risky behavior, considering I will be reading sections from a bound copy of a typed manuscript of her unpublished novel, Who Am I. Is that risky enough? It was gifted to me by the lady herself, during my all too brief relationship as her friend, personal secretary, confidant, and all-around dandy.

Mark Sink, Ruth Kligman, ca 1988. Courtesy of the artist.

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OPPOSITE: AustÄ&#x2014;, Illustrated poem.

Allen Ginsberg, MASTABA, 1970. Courtesy of the Beth Rudin DeWoody collection.

ABOVE: Joyce Kozloff, PORNAMENT IS CRIME SERIES #9: CELTIC COUPLING, 1987. Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, UNTITLED (WORKING CLASS HEROES), 1978. Courtesy of the Beth Rudin DeWoody collection.

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Elaine Reichek, ARIADNE IN CRETE, 2009-2010. Courtesy of the artist.

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BEYOND DOWNTOWN LINDA YABLONSKY

Nan Goldin, COOKIE AND VITTORIOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S WEDDING, NYC, 1986. Courtesy of the artist.

Reading the press release for this show made me cry.

Not just because many of the people mentioned in it were gone too soon. Some

succumbed to AIDS. Others passed more recently on a raft of other afflictions. Their loss still hurts. Always will. Others are still around, some not quite as prominently as they were in the 1980s. That’s not their fault.

It’s their scene that faded.

Well, let’s not wallow in nostalgia. Life is an event.

The other day I visited a friend on East 9th Street, near Avenue D. My father lived

at that corner when he was a boy. In the summer, he swam in the East River, which used to be across the avenue. Now housing projects sit there, on landfill that once was a dock.

Things change.

By the 80s, three quarters of the apartment buildings on that block of 9th Street

were abandoned. Or they were charred hulks. Or they were vacant lots, littered with syringes and broken glass.

I may have walked over that way in those days—to buy dime bags of heroin, or to

check out one of the art galleries that popped up in the area, before developers acquired the whole squalid neighborhood and made it look like a suburban contractor’s idea of urban living, as it does now.

Weirdly, seeing the street that way reminded me of the time I went to the north

German city where my mother spent her childhood, before she emigrated to this same East Village. That was in 1931. Her whole hometown was bombed during the Second World War, but when I was there, in 1999, the apartment house where she’d lived was still standing, with a few others like it. The rest looked like 9th Street. Maybe someday those buildings will acquire character.

What distinguishes one city from another isn’t just its skyline but its ruins, which

testify to whatever came before. Once they’re swept away, a piece of that city’s soul goes with it. Unless its residents leave another kind of trace. In this case, they did. They left stories. They left art.

In the 80s, youngish bohemians shared the East Village with families who

actually were from Bohemia. Like other neighborhoods in the city, no two streets were quite alike. Shops were rooted in specific blocks. They weren’t franchised. If you were interested in what they sold, you had to go there. Otherwise, you just heard about them from friends or read about what went on around them in the East Village Eye or the SoHo Weekly News or the Village Voice.

130

One thing these neighborhoods never lacked were ambitious chroniclers,

who told you what was happening and where it was at. Which made you want to see for yourself.

It was no different in the galleries. They didn’t just have art. They had fun. FUN

was the name of the gallery that started the engine. People gathered there. Some of the art grew out of hip hop and graffiti. Some of it was surrealist pop. Some was punk. It wasn’t like SoHo. The East Village didn’t have art about art. It came from life, as messy as it was telling. It reached for the sublime.

As a young person, I always wanted to go beyond. To break out of the prosaic

expectations that I’d absorbed from my parents and rejected. They wanted to inhabit the American dream. I wanted to fly over it. I wanted to live in an ether suitable for roaming. (Wanderlust struck me at an early age.)

I wanted to align myself with people who lived apart from the middle class

suburb that my parents believed was the dream’s home address. It gave them material comforts they didn’t know in childhood. I had them, so I lusted for a life of the spirit. I wanted the gate code to an empyrean enclave where one kissed gods. I lived a fast life in my mind, and if I had to die, I wanted it to be on a dance floor, cushioned by deep bass and elevated by a chorus of epiphanies. I wanted to get so hot I’d burn up in a pillar of air and embers.

That was in the 70s.

I’m still here.

Love Among the Ruins is set in the years 1987 to 1989, the period when Bill

Stelling and Dean Rolston operated 56 Bleecker Gallery in a corner space established earlier in the decade by Patrick Fox, another guy on the scene.

These were years that brought mourning to America. They brought catastrophe—

AIDS and death, and Ronald Reagan, the president who wouldn’t speak the name of the killer.

Fortunately, that wasn’t all that the 80s gave us.

In New York, the arts flourished in ways unseen since the 60s, when art was so

pop or so conceptual that many people could accept it only as a joke. They laughed. They moaned. They shook their heads in bewilderment, or amazement, or distaste— symptoms of effective art. In the end, they embraced it.

This made room for all kinds of art, and I don’t mean just the static, visual kind.

We had new music. We had video and film. We had poetry, dance and performance. It was all one world, not just the art world. Most of all we had a scene, one that places like 56 Bleecker Gallery generated. 131

We called it Downtown.

That’s where the artists who created this community located it, because that’s

where they lived—in the East Village, SoHo, Tribeca, Chinatown—unless they were from the South Bronx. But even they brought their scene downtown.

I mention it because this story is partly about real estate. The rest of it is about

nightlife. Which is what makes a scene a scene.

The 80s preceded smartphones and the Internet. People had to carry loose

change for pay phones, and they didn’t go out just to walk the dog. They went out to do art, and they wanted to be seen doing it—in nightclubs and bars, on street walls, and in storefronts that had become galleries, even for a single night. That scene was sexy.

It was easy to find space to put on a show—any kind of show. It was an era of

showmanship, of self-display. People worked where they lived and partied where they worked. If you want to get attention for your art, give it a party. People will come.

Now they’re dispersed.

Read the names of active participants in 56 Bleecker’s scene: fashion designer

Stephen Sprouse; photographer David LaChapelle; actor and painter Bill Rice; future nightclub impresario, restaurateur, and hotelier Eric Goode; and all these artists—Bruce Connor, Julian Beck, Greer Lankton, Robert Hawkins, Mark Sink. The list goes on.

At 56 Bleecker, Taylor Mead directed a production of Glory, Glamour and Gold,

a raucous play written in the 60s by Warhol Superstar Jackie Curtis. The cast had the performance artist Penny Arcade, playwright H. M. Koutoukas, and another Warhol Superstar, Ondine. (The original production had introduced an actor named Robert De Niro.)

And then there were the gallery’s exhibitions. As the press release has it,

“Openings featured guests as diverse as Stavros Niarchos, Richard Gere, Lauren Hutton, Fab 5 Freddy, and Henry Geldzahler,” names that all carried weight at the time.

Such a multigenerational, cross-disciplinary social mix had always been a feature

of nightlife in New York—before AIDS, anyway. Afterward, the mix became homogenized. The scene broke up, or down, into separate worlds for art, music, film, what have you. The energy was different. “Downtown” was just a direction.

I’m not saying that the 80s were better than the times we’re living in now. Every

decade generates its own outrages and affronts, its own novelties and distractions. But study the portraits in this show and ask yourself, “Who looks like this now?”

Personally, I didn’t see much of what went on at 56 Bleecker. Let’s just say I was

otherwise occupied. (Okay, first I was on drugs, then I had to get off them. And I lived in SoHo.) But I had been on the scene, and I knew a number of the artists that Rolston and 132

Stelling (a founder of FUN) showed. One was Vittorio Scarpati, whose exhibition of drawings opened just a month before AIDS took him.

Stelling and I were among the many friends who watched Vittorio make some of

those works. He was in the hospital, tubes in his chest. He had pneumocystis pneumonia. You can see the tubes in his cartoons, along with his breaking heart, his personal devils, and his angel, which personified his thoughts. There wasn’t much hope for his life, but the drawings kept him going well past the time his doctors thought he would expire. In an almost literal way, they were his last breath.

Vittorio was married to the writer Cookie Mueller, a downtown celebrity. She was

dying too. I had intense friendships with the two of them, the way you do when you see the same people every day. I didn’t just survive them and many others selected for this show, and more—I can’t name all of them. I can’t even count them. But I’ve been a beneficiary of their collective brilliance. They went beyond. And I’m still here.

So for me, Love Among the Ruins is not about nostalgia. It’s about legacy.

It’s about paying a debt.

Donald Baechler, ABSTRACT PAINTING WITH SPACESHIP, 1985. Courtesy of Cheim & Reid.

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ABOVE: Scott Kilgour invitation

Bruce Conner invitation OPPOSITE: Invitation to Dame Margot Howard-Howardâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s book signing.

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LEFT: Invitation to Writers at MK.

Invitation to Sylvie Ball exhibition at Red Zone.

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LEFT: Invitation to THE GENERAL RETURNS FROM ONE PLACE TO ANOTHER by Frank Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Hara.

Invitation to original production of GLAMOUR, GLORY AND GOLD at 56 Bleecker Gallery.

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Noel Vietor, TIMES SQUARE PRISON, 2017. Courtesy of artist.

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Invitation to Straight To Hell at the Pyramid Cocktail Lounge.

Cynthia McAdams, Maynard Monrow, Dean Rolston, and Bill Stelling, nd. Courtesy of the artist.

LOVE AMONG THE RUINS

Robert Browning

Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles, Miles and miles On the solitary pastures where our sheep Half-asleep Tinkle homeward thro’ the twilight, stray or stop As they crop— Was the site once of a city great and gay, (So they say) Of our country’s very capital, its prince Ages since Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far Peace or war. Now the country does not even boast a tree, As you see, To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills From the hills Intersect and give a name to, (else they run Into one) Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires Up like fires O’er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall Bounding all Made of marble, men might march on nor be prest Twelve abreast. And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass Never was! Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o’er-spreads And embeds Every vestige of the city, guessed alone, Stock or stone— Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe 142

Long ago; Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame Struck them tame; And that glory and that shame alike, the gold Bought and sold. Now—the single little turret that remains On the plains, By the caper overrooted, by the gourd Overscored, While the patching houseleek’s head of blossom winks Through the chinks— Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time Sprang sublime, And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced As they raced, And the monarch and his minions and his dames Viewed the games. And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve Smiles to leave To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece In such peace, And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey Melt away— That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair Waits me there In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul For the goal, When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb Till I come. But he looked upon the city, every side, Far and wide, All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades’ Colonnades, 143

All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts,—and then All the men! When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand, Either hand On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace Of my face, Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech Each on each. In one year they sent a million fighters forth South and North, And they built their gods a brazen pillar high As the sky Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force— Gold, of course. O heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns! Earth’s returns For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin! Shut them in, With their triumphs and their glories and the rest! Love is best.

Austė, drawing for REMEMBERING DYING. Courtesy of the artist.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The curators would like to gratefully acknowledge and thank all the artists (both past and present) associated with this exhibition, whose brilliance inspired the show. We honor you, the gallery, co-founder Dean Rolston, and all those creative and gentle souls we lost to AIDS. Special thanks to our partners at Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project—Jane Friedman, Ted Riederer, Carter Edwards, Michelle Halabura, and Corinne Gatesmith—SSB could not have better collaborators! And to Jordan Artim, an essential part of the curatorial team: your contributions to this project are immeasurable. To Dean’s brothers Adam Rolston and Matthew Rolston, we thank you for your loving support. Deep bows in the direction of Marika van Adelsberg who designed the complex and beautiful catalog, as well as Dean’s memoir, Remembering Dying. And to Austė thank you for contributing the haunting and beautiful drawings made specially for the book. For his iconic imagery, capturing the spirit and denizens of 56 Bleecker, Mark Sink has been inspirational. David Pace’s vast archive has added great depth to the exhibition. Thank you. To the writers in the catalog, we are indebted for the brilliant insights about the life and times of late 80s New York: Penny Arcade, Tom Briedenbach, Carlo McCormick, Eileen Myles, Jeff Perrone, Ariana Reines, Adam Rolston, Sur Rodney (Sur), and Linda Yablonsky. Thanks also to Lee Arthur, Patti Astor, Penny Arcade, Sylvie Ball, Tom Beale, Garrick Beck, Zach and Nina Bregman, Barbara Braathen, Joan Brodsky, Maria Celi, Cathay Che, Heidi Lange of DC Moore Gallery, Beth Rudin DeWoody and assistant Dong, Laura Dvorkin, Christel Engelbert, Phillip Estlund, Scott Ewalt, Melissa Feldman, Charlie Finch, Elizabeth Fiori, Jedd Garet, Sarah Gavlak, Robert Kiernan, Nan Goldin, Sam Gordon, Fayette Hickox, Kimball Higgs, Paulina Jakubowski, Ben and Karina Kelley, Paul and Melissa LaMarre of EIDIA, Gracie Mansion, Cynthia MacAdams, Everett McCourt, Peter McGough, Anita Antonini and Brian Karlsson of the Patrick McMullin Company, Sean Mellyn, Yoko Mori, Max Mueller, Bob Murphy, Barbara Nessim, Christine Nichols, PPOW Gallery, Paul Pieroni, William Rand, Isabella del Frate Rayburn, Claudia Rippee, Jacob Robichaux, Brad Schlei, Joe Scotland, Adam Sheffer and Ellen Robinson of Cheim & Read Gallery, Bill Siroty, Robert Stilin, Sam Trioli, June Trisciani, UBU Gallery, Jason Vass, Jimmy Wright, and Pavel Zoubok. And to our panelists: Kimball Higgs, Barbara Braathen, Alex Fiahlo, Mary-Ann Monforton, David Pace, and Adam Rolston, hooray for telling your stories so we can remember and share the love. To Brian Butterick, for bringing his directorial genius to Glamour, Glory and Gold, and to all who took a starring turn in this outrageous Jackie Curtis classic, Brava! To the writers of Poetry Noir, thank you for your words and deeply moving personal reflections: Sur Rodney (Sur), Ariana Reines, John Giorno, and Tom Breidenbach. And deep appreciation to consummate artist and dear friend John Kelly for closing the show with grace and style. And because an opening with such a stellar group of participants needs an after-party to greet new friends and renew old ties, to Eric and Jennifer Goode and the staff at Bowery Bar: we thank you for your generosity. And last, but not least, the curators acknowledge and thank Patrick Fox, whose vision began it all. Maynard Has the Last Word! Special Thanks!!!!! • First and Foremost I would like to thank Dean Rolston for lighting the “light” and showing me the way! • To Susan Martin for brandishing the audacity to conceive this brilliant time-sensitive exhibition! • To Bill Stelling for giving me the opportunity of a lifetime, which in turn provided me with the best God Damn downtown New York Art degree, bar none! • To Sam Roeck for beginning this odyssey and bringing Jordan Artim to us! • To Jane Friedman, thank you dharling for allowing this MadFabulousness to take place! • To Ted Reiderer, this project would not be possible without your sanity! • To Ramsey Chahine for providing the pure pleasure of beauty! • To Beth Rudin DeWoody for your aesthetic generosity! • To Taylor Mead (RIP), bless you. You are gone but not forgotten! • To Rene Ricard (RIP) for “Teaching” me that a queen is nothing less than a king in heels! • To Ruth Kligman (RIP) for her priceless advice: “When you’re on your back, there’s only one way to look!” Some Serious Business “The Artist Always Comes First” Founded at the height of the conceptual 70s, Some Serious Business incubates emergent expression in the arts, germinates intrepid new works and ideas, and presents diverse projects that celebrate audacity, experimentation, and surprise. SSB’s core artist-driven programs and partnerships are both catalysts and sanctuaries that sustain visionary creators and thought-leaders. Based on the principle that the artist always comes first, SSB supports hybrids and chimeras that traverse performance, literature, theater, dance, visual art, moving image, music, architecture and design, social practice, and fields of unforeseen possibilities. Guided by eggheads and free spirits who value collaboration, SSB is as much about process as outcomes. From the ridiculous to the sublime, SSB revels in the creative process—embarking with artists and fellow travelers to explore the puzzles, mysteries, messiness, challenges, dialogue, and peak experiences along the way. www.someseriousbusiness.org