"I love Living with Legends: Hotel Chelsea Blog"

2022-10-21 23:28:38

Living with Legends: Hotel Chelsea BlogCONTACT THE BLOGEd Hamilton - Huffingtonpost.comEd Hamilton | Facebooktwitter.com/[email protected] Soir Le Soir, 7/8/2022The Financial Times The Financial Times, 8/5/2022Curbed.com Curbed.com, 2/1/2022 The New York Post New York Post, 7/15/2022The Dutch Financial Daily The Dutch Financial Daily, 6/30/2022 Gothamist 1/24/19 6sqft 1/29/19 NY Times 2/17/17 NY Times 12/2/16 Times of London 12/26/15 Metro NY 11/24/15 NY Post, Oct 26, 2013 Vanity Fair October 2013 Wall Street Journal 5/12 New York Times 4/12 New York Times 1/12 WNYC 1/12 New York Daily News 1/12 The Local 01/12 NPR: The Morning Edition 10/11 Page 6 Magazine 7/08New York Resident 2/07 WNBC.com 5/23/07 Australian Broadcast Company 5/15/07German Public Radio 2/2/07 (MP3)International Herald Tribune, 12/19/06The NY Times, 12/19/06Chelsea Now, 11/24/06Y-fileMetro New York, 10/16/06Chelsea Now, 10/12/06Typepad Featured Blog NY Times, 6/4/06Chelsea Neighborhood & GentrificationHighline "All Aboard the High Line Give away" - Huffington Post 2007 "High Line: Corporate plaza or avenue in the sky?" Chelsea Now - 2007 McBurney YMCACocktails at the Y and conversing on gentrification Chelsea Now - 2007 ABC News - Documentary - May 2007Chelsea Neighborhood Housing Issues The Making of a New York State Real Estate Legend - Chelsea Now SRO tenants win landlord harassment suit - Chelsea Now Shalom Tenants Alliance celebrates 4th anniversary Tenants at Breslin lose battle, vow to win war Recent Commentsdoug holder on NY Supreme Court Says No to “Smart” Fire Alarms in Chelsea Hotel Apartments (at Least for Now)Jill Rapaport on Stanley Bard, Former Owner and Manager of The Chelsea Hotel, Dies at 82Suzanne Lipschutz on Stanley Bard, Former Owner and Manager of The Chelsea Hotel, Dies at 82Hilary Dunn on Stanley Bard, Former Owner and Manager of The Chelsea Hotel, Dies at 82S Again on Stanley Bard, Former Owner and Manager of The Chelsea Hotel, Dies at 82Vic on Stanley Bard, Former Owner and Manager of The Chelsea Hotel, Dies at 82Bill LePage on Stanley Bard, Former Owner and Manager of The Chelsea Hotel, Dies at 82Bill LePage on Stanley Bard, Former Owner and Manager of The Chelsea Hotel, Dies at 82Thomas Chrapkiewicz on Stanley Bard, Former Owner and Manager of The Chelsea Hotel, Dies at 82Gigi Mederos on Stanley Bard, Former Owner and Manager of The Chelsea Hotel, Dies at 82Categories 5 Questions (71) Art (291) Bard Family Ousted (93) Current Affairs (2) Dead Authors (59) Ed Hamilton's Slice of Life (112) Events (170) Film (1) Ghosts (31) History of Activism (19) Hotel Chelsea (887) Living Authors (119) Marlene Krauss (19) Music (3) Personal Accounts (276) Rock & Roll (110)See MoreArchivesOctober 2022August 2022July 2022June 2022May 2022April 2022January 2022December 2021September 2021August 2019More... Subscribe to Living with Legends: Hotel Chelsea Blog Subscribe to Legends Via E-mailAbout Subscribe to this blog's feed Subscribe in a reader Feedjit Live Blog StatsRecent Fiction Penduline Press Omphalos 14 Host (Czech Republic) Waco’s Art & Literary Journal: Bohemia Media6sqftNY Post - Oct 2013Vanity Fair - Oct 2013Wall Street Journal - May 31, 2012WNYC - Jan. 13, 2012New York Daily News - Jan 11, 2012NPR - Oct. 3, 2011New York Times - March 30, 2012Chelsea NowPage 6 MagazineLiterary TravelerBBC LondonGuardianChelsea NowFocus MagazineLA TimesBLVD MagazineNew York PostDe PersNew York ObserverUK Alumni MagazineU of L Alumni MagazineLouisville MagazineGary O'Brien Show, WDWSRadio AustriaWashington Post Book WorldWashington City PaperWashington Post ExpressLe MondeThe Santa Fe New MexicanUniversity of Louisville Alumni NewsAssociated ContentTime Out New YorkNew York ObserverVanity FairJoey Reynolds ShowNew York ObserverGothamistHoward Stern ShowEdge New YorkNew York ResidentNew York Times - 6/19/07New York Times - 12/19/06New York Times - 6/14/06Globe and MailSpiegelVillage Voice October 06, 2022 The Queen of WeirdThe legendary Nico, the blond, Germanic Ice Queen who fronted the Velvet Underground before darkening her image with heroin, motorcycle boots, and a leaky harmonium to become the Godmother of Goth, lived and loved in the Chelsea Hotel over several stretches in the sixties, seventies, and eighties. Check out this month’s issue of the Brooklyn Rail, where I review Jennifer Otter Bickerdike’s enjoyable and revealing biography of this enigmatic, misunderstood, self-destructive underground Icon: You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone: The Biography of Nico.The list of Chelsea Hotel characters who appear in Bickerdike’s book is a long one indeed, and includes: Lou Reed; John Cale; John Waters (when he asked Nico to sing at his funeral, she said, “Call me when you’re dead”); Gerard Malanga; Andy Warhol; Bob Dylan (he wrote “I’ll Keep it With Mine” for her); Edie Sedgwick; Billy Name; Jimi Hendrix; Leonard Cohen; Jonas Mekas; Barbara Rudin; Iggy Pop; Rene Ricard, Susan Bottomly (International Velvet); Mary Woronov; Jim Morrison; Paul Morrissey (“I mean it would literally make you want to slit your wrists. . .” he says of her music); Victor Bockris (quoted extensively in the book); Jim Carrol, Valerie Solanis; Joe Bidewell; and Viva (she had the misfortune of rooming with Nico, who shut out the light with heavy curtains, burning candles and singing funereal dirges as she practiced her harmonium long into the night).Additionally, Chelsea Hotel fans will find a review of Rene Ricard's God with Revolver and an essay by Raymond Foye in the October issue of Brooklyn Rail. October 06, 2022 | Permalink| Comments (0) Digg This | Save to del.icio.us October 03, 2022 True Colors Project Presents A New Musical Play ~ STORMÉ It took one punch to start a gay revolution. It took a gender-bending lesbian to throw that punch.This is her story! A play with music based on a true story and real events, STORMÉ recounts the life and times of Stormé DeLarverie, a Big Band singer (aka Stormy Dale) during the ‘40s and a male impersonator at America’s first racially integrated drag show, the infamous Jewel Box Revue, throughout the ‘50sand ‘60s. More importantly, she is an unsung shero of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion.Much like Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955 played a pivotal role in the Civil Rights Movement, Stormy’s scuffle with police in 1969 during a raid at the Stonewall Inn was instrumental in igniting the modern-day Gay Rights Movement. Historical accounts of Stonewall practice a tradition of whitewashing and genderwashing by erasing key minorities when talking about the Stonewall Rebellion and Civil Rights. IT WAS A REBELLION,IT WAS AN UPRISING,IT WAS CIVIL RIGHTS DISOBEDIENCEIT WASN’T NO DAMN RIOT!          —Stormé DeLarverie STORMÉ is inspired by a photo essay by playwright Carolyn M. Brown thanking Stormy for throwing the first punch at Stonewall, which accompanied a Stormé DeLarverie mural by artist Rachel Wilkins for her “Shoulders of Giants” exhibit of LGBTQIAGNC+ movement trailblazers. Other cast of characters include Billy Strayhorn, a composer for the Duke Ellington Orchestra, Elaine Romagnoli, founder of The Cubby Hole and several lesbian bars; Billy Daye, a female impersonator with the Jewel Box Revue, and Diana Jones, Stormy's love interest and life partner of 25 years. . Location: WOW Cafe Theater (59 East 4th Street, New York, NY) Tickets: $18/online, $20/door Saturday, October 15, 2022 @ 7PM Sunday, October 16, 2022 @ 3:30PMSHOW LINKhttps://our.show/stormetheplayOther links to Storme at the Chelsea:Storme Delarverié Takes To The Stage AgainWho will play Storme? Rally around StormeStorme with her version of "I Fell For You." Gala for Storme  Icon of the LGBT Community Dies October 03, 2022 in Art | Permalink| Comments (0) Digg This | Save to del.icio.us August 30, 2022 Larry Rivers: The Polyamorous Painter of the Chelsea HotelEveryone remembers the Dutch Masters Cigar Box painting, which hung in the lobby for many years before the hotel took it down and tried to sell it, only to be sued by the artist Larry Rivers’ estate, who won the return of the painting by claiming it had only been on loan to Stanley Bard. Rivers lived in the hotel in the fifties and sixties, returning frequently thereafter to visit friends. One of these friends was the librettist Arnold Weinstein, who helped Rivers write his autobiography, What Did I Do? a rollicking romp through several decades of the New York art scene—and much else besides. River went everywhere, did everything, and knew everyone, and is as famous for his high-octane, polyamorous lifestyle as for his often wildly transgressive artworks.Though it came out in 1992, Rivers’ book is well worth reading, and Rivers’ art, especially that from the sixties, is overdue for a reevaluation. Leave it to say, I’m as fascinated by the multiple layers of meaning inherent in the Dutch Masters paintings (a series of works), as I am bemused by Rivers’ portrait of Napoleon, which he labeled, for no apparent reason, “The World’s Greatest Homosexual”, by turns mystifying and enraging most everyone in France.            Anyway, if you’re interested, I review Rivers’ book in the Fall 2022 issue of a great little magazine, The Exacting Clam, which also features lots of odd, brilliant, and brilliantly odd prose and poetry. You can read much of The Clam online, or you can order a print copy on Amazon.Ed Hamilton August 30, 2022 in Art, Bard Family Ousted | Permalink| Comments (0) Digg This | Save to del.icio.us August 16, 2022 BETTINA GROSSMAN: BETTINA. POEM OF PERMANENT RENEWALReaders in France still have time to make it to The Recontres d'Arles Bettina exhibit. Her work is on display until August 28. The Rencontres d'Arles presents the first monographic exhibition of American artist Bettina Grossman, better known as Bettina. Bettina spent the first years of her career in Europe before returning to the United States in the 1960s. Shortly after, a traumatic fire destroyed much of her work. In 1970, she moved to the legendary Chelsea Hotel and, to recover from this loss, worked a lot. After years of producing in isolation, the artist was featured in two documentary films, which led her to meet Yto Barrada. In the tradition of artists supporting – and nurturing – the work of other artists, a strong relationship ensues, which culminates in multiple projects. L' exhibition at the Salle Henri-Comte offers a unique insight into Bettina's life in New York. Whether photography, video, painting, sculpture or textile design, his works are serial, modular and rigorous – each having a function in a larger and self-referential system, where we find forms repetitive geometric shapes with a transcendental and almost shamanic dimension. Bettina, as you know, was part of the Chelsea Hotel artistic community until her death in 2021. August 16, 2022 in Art | Permalink| Comments (0) Digg This | Save to del.icio.us July 24, 2022 Boyhood in The Railroad Earth: “Rick Librizzi: Life is Art” at ACA GalleriesRick Librizzi, who died last year at 82, grew up in a house by the railroad tracks, and while he didn’t ride the rails during the depression like his roustabout father, it’s to the railroad that he attributes his subsequent career in art:My friend said, “That’s abstract expressionism.” I [that is, Rick] said, “What?! Abstract expressionism, what the hell’s that?” And he said, “Jackson Pollock spilling paint!” And I said, “Oh shit, that’s like the railroad,” because when they painted the switches, they dripped the paint all over the place, so I would see all the paint drip and I would look at it. . . .so I started dripping paint, pouring paint all over the place. (From: Hero in Art: The Vanished Traces of Richard Hambleton, by Istvan Kantor, Autonomedia; p. 187)Librizzi is a longtime Chelsea Hotel resident, so it’s no surprise that the Chelsea is where he met Istvan Kantor, author of this genre-redefining “bionovel” about street artist and professional junkie Richard Hambleton, who created the famous “shadow” paintings, and who, having only recently passed away himself in 2017, has been in the news a lot lately. After Rick and Istvan met up at the hotel they walked the few blocks to W20th St. near the Hudson River, where ACA Gallery was hosting a retrospective of Hambleton’s work. Kantor’s revealing book is an invaluable record of the people who passed through Hambleton’s life, many of whom are quoted extensively throughout. There’s a chapter about Rick and another about his son Nemo Librizzi, who also lived at the hotel and wrote the informative press release for his father’s show.Though Librizzi went on to become a habitué of the Cedar Tavern, rubbing elbows at the bar with the likes of Franz Kline and his buddies, and though he painted all his life, he’s most well known as an art dealer and collector. He met Andy Warhol while the future pop artist was still an illustrator, and this early connection paid off later when Warhol approached him to act as his Art Dealer (Kantor, p. 187). In the early 70s he sold more Warhols than anybody, Librizzi claims, including thirty-five in one day, and that’s how he made a living that enabled him to paint when he could take time away from his business (Kantor, p. 187). Later, Librizzi would also champion Hambleton, from the shadow artist’s early years, up through his sad decline due to cancer, when Rick rented room after room for the misbehaving junkie, and helped negotiate Hambleton’s sale of the reproduction rights for his artwork, so there would be money to take care of the dying artist (Kantor, p. 198-199).The present show is a retrospective of Librizzi’s art career and, as such, it covers a span from the early 70s up through the end of his life. Unfortunately, only a scattered few of the paintings are dated, making it difficult to trace his development. But there are two distinct themes that characterize his work—which we might call the abstract expressionist and the downtown grunge—and to which Librizzi returns time and again over the four and a half decade span of his artistic life. (No pop art, oddly, for a man who made his living selling Warhols. Perhaps he had seen enough of that stuff.) Not surprisingly, both themes hearken back to what Rick saw and experienced in the rail yards of his childhood.Whether the paint is poured or dripped or laid on with a broad brush, the expressionist paintings are all pure abstracts, and all very minimalist. In two pieces, both apparently from the mid-80s, and featuring broad blocks of color, one can see the influence of Hans Hoffman (with less paint). A related group of paintings, from the mid-2000s and painted in Provincetown, where Librizzi frequently vacationed, are so minimalist that they could almost be considered color field paintings; these, for me, seem almost too relaxed. The big blue, orange and white triptych is nice, with all color problems satisfactorily resolved. It’s almost Librizzi’s best in a way, and I can’t quibble too much with its choice as the featured art work for the show—though to me it seems mannered, and not representative of the artist’s true strength or intent. I do like the unnecessary triptych construction, however, just because—why the hell not?            Which brings me to the artist’s strengths. Among the expressionist paintings are two that stand out. One is an otherwise unexceptional pink-and-blue drip painting where Librizzi has slapped wrinkled cellophane on top of the canvas in a haphazard fashion. In another, the blue, green and orange canvas—tacked sloppily to a warped frame with a hank of distressed cord attached—appears to have been cranked though a mangle. Both these paintings look like an act of vandalism was performed on them, and this devil-may-care aesthetic endows them with an energy and a dynamism that most of the other pieces lack, and forms a bridge to the more successful downtown grunge paintings.The paintings that I believe were influenced by Librizzi’s association with the downtown scene of Hambleton and similar street artists have a much more limited color palate of asphalt black and industrial gray, and look almost burnt or stained, as if pulled from a dumpster, a construction site, or some random pile on the street. The magnificent “656” painting looks like it was fashioned from tar paper ripped down from an old tool shack—or maybe from a railroad switching station. Other pieces have found objects such as spools attached in an almost “organic” way, by which I mean it seems as if they sprang, fully formed, from the street itself, fashioned by the forces of time and the elements, and without any additional construction or “artistry” needed at all. These pieces have the look of post-industrial and almost post-apocalyptic detritus, like evidence of some disaster, hung on the wall at the police station for the arson investigator to sort through.I always did get a sense of anarchy and rebellion from Rick, a refusal to play by the ordinary rules of art and life. And I think, in a way, he wanted to be one of those downtown artists from the Rivington School, getting drunk and high and fucking things up, disrupting the status quo. Maybe if Rick had been more like Hambleton—that is, a deranged martyr to art—he might’ve been able to carry this show’s tantalizing taste of grit and ash through to its logical conclusion. But a martyr makes a sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice, and it’s not only of himself, but of those around him as well. As Rick, who had worked for Ray Charles and other addicts and thus come to realize the inspiration that drugs could provide, says of his time in the art scene:. . .everybody was on drugs. But I knew that if you took heroin, it was the end, and I had to make a living. I couldn’t, I had kids to support, I couldn’t get involved with that. I couldn’t get involved with something that was going to possess me (Kantor, p. 190).The sheet metal “paint cans”, which Librizzi created toward the end of his life, sum up, for me, what’s best about his art. These simple sculptures look to be fashioned from discarded construction materials he found laying about the hotel, which was in the middle of its ongoing eleven-year renovation. Like some of the other industrial pieces, these seem torn straight from life, almost ready-mades, as if Rick simply stepped outside his apartment door and dragged them from the garbage can where they had already undergone an accidental paint-dipping. While this sentiment is belied by the careful studies Librizzi did for the pieces (also on view), yet they still seem to retain a residue of the suffering of the residents of the hotel who had to go through all the metal-grinding and hammering noise that it took to install the pipes and ducts for that new HVAC system. In his final years, Rick, regrettably, had to go through that suffering himself, but instead of despairing, he reached down inside himself and turned it into art. These pieces are as close the “street”, that is, to real life, as you can get, and that makes them resonate—you can almost hear the shrill grinding as they are cut, and smell the sharp, acrid smell—and ultimately that’s what gives them their poignancy. That’s why the title of the show, “Life is Art”, while perhaps a bit clichéd, is so apt. Rick turned his life on the railroad yard, the downtown art scene, and finally the Chelsea Hotel, into art, building, upon a solid foundation of industrial grunge, what his son Nemo calls “a poetic ascent into the abstract unknown.”  Ed Hamilton[Rick Librizzi’s show, “Life is Art”, runs through July 29 at ACA Galleries at 529 W 20th St., 55E; Istvan Kantor’s book, Hero in Art: The Vanished Traces of Richard Hambleton (Autonomedia, 2022), is for sale at Village Works bookshop at 90-B E 3rd St., and other fine stores.] July 24, 2022 in Art | Permalink| Comments (0) Digg This | Save to del.icio.us July 19, 2022 Chelsea Hotel Scaffolding, April 24, 2012-July 18, 2022: Rest in PiecesChelsea Hotel Scaffolding, we hardly knew ye. Well, that’s not exactly true, now, is it? After all, you were up for over ten years. You provided shelter for the homeless—one of whom lived in the entryway to the El Quijote for two years or more—and a dry surface for all the pampered doggies from the hotel, so they didn’t have to get their little paws wet when they went out to use the potty. But you also provided cover for illicit late night vice activities. Fights were common, as were late night screaming matches, and probably muggings as well. Workers could slip out of the hotel to sneak a smoke under your sheltering boards, or, in foul weather, to sit in rows against the hotel, scarfing down sandwiches purchased from the now defunct Aristocrat Deli. Often, there were huge, filthy dumpsters, debris trucks, and oil-stained portable boilers arrayed before you to form a virtual wall, uniting with you to block the hotel from the street, and from the light of day—and of course presenting an even more hazardous obstacle to the wellbeing of any tenant venturing out after dark. Your vast array of support poles and cross bars at sidewalk level made it difficult at times to get to the entrance of the hotel, especially when the comedy club was in full swing, with unruly patrons milling around in the small walking lanes. At times you supported an even greater edifice of scaffolding, festooned in all its glory with tattered black netting, covering the entire façade of the Chelsea and stretching all the way to the gabled roof, but you went through most of your years sadly alone. Now you have gone on to greater things, darkening the doorways of who knows what unsuspecting building—perhaps even one much grander and more beautiful than the Chelsea—while we, the survivors, are left to mourn your passing. Perhaps one day you’ll be back, rising like a Phoenix from the sweltering garbage of the sidewalk, once the present owners grow bored with their dubious business model and sell the hotel to someone with another sort of “vision” that requires eleven more years of further construction. But please don’t hurry on our account. July 19, 2022 in Bard Family Ousted | Permalink| Comments (0) Digg This | Save to del.icio.us July 06, 2022 Activist Artist, Writer And Friend of the Chelsea Hotel, Molly Crabapple Reads and Exhibits at Opus 40In case you’ve never been, Opus 40 is a 60-acre sculpture garden outside of Woodstock, NY. Its centerpiece is a spectacular 6.5-acre bluestone earthwork that looks like a cross between Stonehenge and a Mayan pyramid. We went there over the weekend for, of all things, a poetry reading by Chelsea Hotel friend and fellow traveler Molly Crabapple, now a well known artist and journalist who is also having a show of her paintings in the gallery on the grounds. As the sun went down through the trees at her back, Molly—after warning us that she was “not a poet”—read a moving, and very poetic essay about the legacy of evil and imperialism, stretching from the Arabic world, to Spain, and thence to the New World (and back), declaring, with The Nasirids, the last Muslim dynasty to rule a corner of Spain, that “There is no victor but God.” Molly is a committed activist who was arrested at Occupy Wall Street and has also published a book on the Syrian war, Brothers of the Gun, in collaboration with  journalist Marwan Hisham.In 2015, Molly’s fascinating and scandalous memoir, Drawing Blood, came out, detailing (among other things) her early years in New York when she made her living as a fetish model while she awaited her big break. Here’s her account of one such session that took place at the Chelsea Hotel:One night, I lay on the couch with Vinyl Vivian and a friend of hers. . . .Suddenly, an older lady barged in, gray curls flying, back straight with all the imperiousness of the well funded. She was someone important, Melli told me, doing a documentary on the hotel, but now she stood over us, ordering me and Vivian into passionless contortions. Startled though we were, Vivian and I writhed around gamely, like professionals. After ten minutes, the Belgian was gone. Several years later, I saw myself on the cover of an art book, frozen in time with Vinyl Vivian. We were entwined, topless, and intimate as we never were in life. The text inside described an orgy that had never happened, starring nameless girls who we were not. The photographer described herself not as a director of the scene, but an invisible bit of the background. She never told us we’d be on the cover. Why would she? We were hotel room fauna. National Geographic would sooner notify a giraffe. (p. 98)In addition to containing a lot of great writing, Drawing Blood is stunningly illustrated by Molly herself. The drawings, many in full color and others in moody sepia tones, range from the whimsical to the risqué to the thought-provoking. Molly was nice enough to inscribe our copy of her book on what was (unsurprisingly) our favorite of her drawings. A more beautiful memoir is rarely seen these days. You can view several of Molly’s larger works, including many moving portraits of proletarian women, at her show in the Opus 40 gallery. In a related project, Alissa Quart of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project also has a series of screens depicting worker co-ops  displayed in the space outside the gallery.Speaking of which, I should mention the other readers who appeared with Molly that evening, one of which was, indeed, journalist and author Alissa Quart, who read stimulating essays and poems on abortion clinics, school shootings, and late capitalism. Rodrigo Toscano, a labor organizer for the United Steel Workers also entertained us with his erudite verses. And, in one of the highlights of the evening, Fence editor Rebecca Wolff read a fascinating poem entitled “Halloween” about how a witch gave her a migraine (not exactly what it sounds like, though the poem itself certainly weaves a magical spell, and I, for one, was ensorcelled).To get back to Molly’s memoir, after her time modeling at the Chelsea, she goes to work at the burlesque “supper club” The Box, where, to our surprise, the Chelsea Hotel’s own Rose Wood makes a cameo appearance, performing in a surreal skit as a transgender prostitute who fucks a banker, stabs him to death, and then sets the bed on fire.In more recent years, Molly had been living in a building oddly reminiscent of the Chelsea Hotel in its glory days. Though a much smaller building, the 128-year-old 14 Maiden Lane, way, way downtown in the financial district, was filled with artist’s lofts, and naturally became the scene of much creative collaboration and raucous celebration. They had legendary parties, photo shoots on the roof, and projected movies on the wall of the vacant building next door. Sadly, however, that’s not the only parallel to the Chelsea: developers bought the building in January, evicting all the tenants. (As we’ve said before, it’s the same thing that’s happening in building after building across New York with no end in sight and with no one in power willing to do a damn thing. New York is not for New Yorkers anymore; it’s for tourists and rich, parasitical speculators.) No news on where Molly is living now, but doubtless she is busy rising from the ashes of 14 Maiden Lane and having the last laugh on them all.[Opus 40 is located at 356 George Sickle Rd, Saugerties, NY 12477.  The joint show, Molly Crabapple’s “Annotated Muses” and the Economic Hardship Project’s “Bossworkers”, runs through August 8.] July 06, 2022 in Art | Permalink| Comments (0) Digg This | Save to del.icio.us June 28, 2022 Outlaw Art Critic of the Chelsea Hotel: A Review of "Rene" by William RandAll of us still living at the Chelsea remember Rene Ricard—because who could forget him? And we all have our share of more or less scandalous anecdotes to relate concerning the famously brilliant wild man, who lived here for (approximately) the last two decades of his life. But for those of you who don’t know, Rene was the Warhol superstar who almost starred in Chelsea Girls, but for the fact that he couldn’t stop criticizing Andy on camera, and who later rose to prominence as the art critic who discovered Jean Michel Basquiat. Rene was also an accomplished poet and painter in his own right, and was much sought after for his charm and sparkling wit.Rand’s new book (published by Osprey Press) is excerpted from his “diary” entries of the eighties and early nineties, and concerns his personal and collaborative relationship with Rene over a ten year period. So this is before Rene’s tenure at the Chelsea, when he was, despite being, as Rand says, “the most famous art critic in the world”, for all intents and purposes a homeless junkie. Here’s how Rand describes him: “. . .his hair is greasy and matted, he’s wearing worn out slippers. He is not human. A Dracula in his abhorrence of daylight, a gargoyle wearing a human soul. . .” (p. 10) And: “. . .ragged and haunted, tired and rabid. He is a fallen star, and he carries the atmosphere of rebellion and dead ashes in his wake. People have a funny way of dying around him.” (p. 13)            The Chelsea does play a large role in the book, however, for at one point Rand rents two rooms here, installing Rene in one of them—complete with crackhead supermodel boytoy for inspiration and steady infusions of cash for the apparent purchase of drugs—with instructions to produce a critical essay on Rand’s paintings for his upcoming show at the 56 Bleeker Gallery. Rand himself takes the room across the hall to make sure Rene completes the essay before leaving the hotel. Well, to make a long story short, Rene does produce an essay, which turns out to be a rambling meditation on darkness and evil:When we look at William Rand’s paintings with their turbid and densely painted supersaturated backgrounds we are not so much confronted with a dark void as we are with enigmatic occurrences cloaked in shade and the mystery of these paintings is in the puzzlement of these presences. (p. 43)Rand is quite an accomplished painter, and though his paintings are quite dark—both in physical appearance and in subject matter—what struck me most was how his lighter colored figures seem to emerge from the dark, stygian depths, almost rising up out of the canvases, giving the works a profoundly spiritual and redemptive dimension. I think Rene sees this too, for toward the end of his essay he writes of “pus-colored weirdoes” emerging from the depths of a stream, and white explorers being disgorged from a plane into the heart of darkest Africa, although for him even the white paint forebodes evil.            In one of the most exciting incidents in the book, Rene leads Rand into a dark, deserted park on the Lower East Side. There, unsurprisingly, they are mugged by a group of thugs, who hold knives to their throats, search them top-to-bottom, and even turn their socks inside out. Though Rand is understandably terrified, Rene seems to think nothing of it, and afterwards callously laughs at Rand for begging for his life. (It almost seems as if Rene has set Rand up, either in cahoots with the thugs, or—more likely—just for the sheer hell of it.) The next day, perhaps in revenge, Rand reports the incident to Page 6 of the New York Post, who are all too happy to cover it, since it concerns Rene. When he sees the article, Rene is furious, but not for any of the reasons one might expect, certainly not because it makes him look like a fool or a lunatic or a crook—none of that makes any difference to him—but because it mentions that Rand paid him to write the essay for his show! (It’s important to note that at this point, Rene was sleeping in a coal chute.) There’s a couple of other incidents like this in the book as well, including one in which Rene turns down $20,000 to authenticate some fake Basquiat paintings. The man may have been a homeless junkie, but he had his integrity.Even though Rene wasn’t living here at the time, the Chelsea Hotel pops up again and again in Rand’s book. Just to give you a taste: on page 38, Rene tells us how, when Andy Warhol was filming Chelsea Girls at the hotel, he gave everyone speed so they were all “. . .UP UP UP for days. Of course we were fighting. Of course there were arguments. Everyone was on edge, and there he stood in his white wig with the camera rolling. He did not want to miss a thing.” (Also, though it doesn’t take place at the Chelsea, I can’t help mentioning it: In one notable episode Rene tells how he’s mad at Andy, so when Andy is casting for Blowjob, Rene auditions all the actors on the stairs, giving them each a blowjob so they can’t get it up when they get upstairs.)There’s no index in the book, but I’m not above name-dropping the various Chelsea people who grace its pages: Raymond Foye (who also edited the book, and is credited as being a very sixties person. Rand says of him: “I want to drive to the mountains in a blizzard with him in a Volkswagen Beetle, because he is like that, really sixties”); art critic Edit DeAk; Michele Zalopany (at a gallery in the East Village, critics walk through the show of another artist (Sherrie Levine) to get to hers); poet Ira Cohen; painter Julian Schnabel (he teaches Rene a lesson by making him stay overnight in jail—at least according to Rene—Rene pays him back by breaking up his marriage to Jacqueline); Jacqueline, Lola, Stella, and Vito Schnabel; painter Donald Baechler (he paints potatoes to mock Rene for his modest upbringing); Jimi Hendrix (he steals Rene’s velvet pants at an orgy); Warhol Superstars Ondine and Jackie Curtis; mail artist Ray Johnson; writer Quentin Crisp; painter Larry Rivers; painter Joe Andoe; Edie Sedgwick ( “. . .sooooooooo beautiful,” Rene says. “Give her the right combination of drugs and she was like diamonds in heels”); fashion designer Charles James; Madonna; writer Eileen Myles; painter Philip Taaffe; painter Bill de Kooning; director Paul Morrissey; and gallerist Robert Miller.As mentioned, Rene did eventually find a permanent home at the Chelsea Hotel, living out the final years of his life here until he died of cancer in 2014 at age 67. This was certainly the proper place for him (rather than a coal chute!), as it remains the proper place for others like him, of which there are undoubtedly a few out there (though not many). Even here in Bohemian Paradise it wasn’t all roses for Rene, however, and he wrote a poem in 1987 which seems, in light of the recent upheaval at the hotel, somehow oddly prescient:The Unhappily DeadSuddenly cabs don’t stopfor youYour job gets lost. You endup living off yourfriendsIf they see youYou’re always hungry andKeep losing weight. YouMove into a room in a hugeBldg. in Chelsea. It takesAn eternity to realize you arein hell.              RR[Rene/William Rand/New York Diaries (Osprey Press, 2022) is available at Village Works Bookshop & Art Gallery  at 90 E 3rd St. in the East Village, and at other fine literary establishments] June 28, 2022 in Art | Permalink| Comments (0) Digg This | Save to del.icio.us June 23, 2022 Rent Stabilization Board Sticks it to Apartment Dwellers; SRO Tenants, Not so MuchIgnoring hardships caused by the pandemic and runaway inflation, on Tuesday Mayor Adam's handpicked Rent Guidelines Board voted 5 to 4 to allow increases of 3.25% for one-year leases and 5% on two-year leases on rent stabilized apartments in NYC. The corresponding figures for SRO units and residential hotel stabilized units are 0% for one-year leases, and 0% for two-year leases.  June 23, 2022 in Current Affairs | Permalink| Comments (0) Digg This | Save to del.icio.us June 17, 2022 NY Supreme Court Says No to “Smart” Fire Alarms in Chelsea Hotel Apartments (at Least for Now)As part of the ongoing 11-year renovation of the Chelsea, owners Richard Born and Ira Drukier of BD Hotels have been in the process of installing a “life and fire safety” system in the hotel. However, apparent glitches in the system, including repeated false alarms, have raised concerns among residents. At the root of these apprehensions is the system’s “smart” technology, by which I mean that the individual fire alarm units apparently contain a speaker and a voice communication system connected to the enterprise WiFi network.Since plans for the new system were announced, tenants have been asking questions about issues of reliability, security, privacy, eavesdropping, surveillance, and hacking. Are the smart speakers activated by smoke or by sound? (That is, do they “hear” the alarm component of the device go off and then report it? And could they be triggered by an outside alarm? Even one from the street?) Are these smart systems capturing and saving audio data from inside tenants’ apartments? If so, where is this data stored? And who has access to this data? Will outside parties be able to hack into the system, perhaps to install spyware or to facilitate some criminal enterprise, such as burglary?             Perhaps there’s nothing to worry about, but rather than needlessly sacrifice our personal security, privacy, and peace of mind, tenants have asked repeatedly to see the specifications of the system in question, in order to have them evaluated by an outside expert. Needless to say, this information has not been forthcoming. Instead, Born and Drukier sued tenants to force us to accept the installation of the dubious devices.             Judge Lynn Kotler of the New York State Supreme Court seems to agree that our request is reasonable. She states in her decision that Chelsea Hotel Owners:“. . . has not shown that any law requires the installation of speakers and an emergency voice/alarm communication system inside apartments or dwelling units, as part of any emergency or fire safety system. Indeed, fatal to the plaintiff’s application is a detailed demonstration in evidentiary form of what the proposed fire and safety system would entail.”             The judge’s decision leaves open the possibility that Born and Drukier could return to court with some compelling rationale as to why this particular fire safety system is necessary. Presumably that would involve providing the specifications of the system.The new fire safety devices are presently located throughout the building, in some of the transient guest rooms, and in some of the permanent residents’ rooms. As to the permanent residents who had them installed, some were probably not aware that the devices contained the “smart” technology, and others were unaware that refusing them was an option.  June 17, 2022 | Permalink| Comments (1) Digg This | Save to del.icio.us May 25, 2022 Akhnaten at the MET: A Revival of Philip Glass’s Timeless Opera of Ancient EgyptMy second exposure to the music of Philip Glass was through the Chelsea Hotel: Pianist Bruce Levingston (who lived in Sid and Nancy’s old room) hosted a celebration of his music way back in 2006. Ethan Hawke (another former Chelsea Hotel resident) and Michael Stipe recited selections from Glass’s and Allen Ginsburg’s Hydrogen Jukebox, and Glass himself showed up to play a selection from Einstein at the Beach. After such a special show, I couldn’t help but become a huge fan. (My first exposure was like a lot of peoples’, through Koyanisquatsi, the trippy Native American-inspired meditation on the disorienting fast pace of modern life that earned the Glass piece a place in the cannon of teenage stoner films—right up there with The Wall and The Song Remains the Same. I saw this film more than once, certainly, at the midnight movie at the Vogue, which was the repertory theatre in Louisville when I was growing up in the 70s, and it made an indelible impression.)But Akhnaten (now in a revival of the 2019 production at MET) is just spectacular, and it’s my new current favorite Glass opera. The final opera of the Glass’ Portraits Series, which also includes Einstein on the Beach and Satyagraha, Akhnaten tells the story of the titular Egyptian king who introduced the cult of monotheism, in the form of sun worship, to ancient Egypt, displacing the traditional polytheistic religion and its powerful priesthood.The sets of the production are minimal: industrial-looking scaffolding, staircases, and the like, which, when you think about it, is entirely appropriate, as the Opera is all about stripping things down, employing Occam’s razor to shear away beards of the superfluous gods. Much of the time, strikingly, the backdrop is nothing more than a huge sun disk. As for the costumes, though there are many Egyptian influences—such as animal head headdresses to represent the old gods of the hieroglyphs that will soon be swept away—Akhnaten’s coronation gown looks more Elizabethan than anything else; one of the priests of the old religion looks like a Voodoo Hungan or witch doctor, complete with a tophat crowned with a skull; the ancient “scientists” who remove the old king’s organs scurry around him like some kind of bright-eyed sci-fi insects; and (in a stroke of sartorial genius) the chorus of jugglers wear dun-colored full body leotards to represent the mud of the Nile cracked and dried by the sun.All of which brings me to the Music. Where to start? It’s Monumental—like the subject itself. A man behind me remarked that listening to Glass’s music is like going into a trance. Of course I’ve heard remarks like this before—that his music is mesmerizing, hypnotic—so much so that they’ve become clichéd. But whatever trance it produces doesn’t dull the awareness, and certainly doesn’t put you down for the count: it relaxes and invigorates at the same time. I’ve also heard it said that Glass’s music is repetitive. But for me it’s not so much repetitive as kind of circular, like turning a crank on a hurdy gurdy, it just keeps recycling over and over, a kind of carnival sound punctuated with revelations and distinct moments of illumination. It creates tension and drama. It cycles you down to the depths only to exalt you in a cosmic event, an exploding supernova—and it does it again and again. Glass’s music has a timeless quality, it transcends time, recreating the moment over and over so it can’t slip away. It could be music for robots, with sections of it extended almost indefinitely. And I don’t say that disparagingly, but only because robots would presumably have a superior capacity for endurance; on long space flights, say, you wouldn’t want 3-minute songs. Instead of 3 hours long, Akhnaten could be 300 hours long, or 3000 years longs. Glass’s music gives us a glimpse of eternity. Like the eternal cycle of the sun through the heavens, this music is not meant to end.One of my favorite scenes is the Funeral/Coronation that opens the opera. The play curtain rises upon the old gods in their animal headdresses overseeing the removal of the dead king’s organs by the ancient scientists, as the king’s ghost intones: “Open are the double doors of the horizon. . . Take this king to the sky, that he not die among men. . .” Then, young Akhnaten, played by countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, descends naked to be ritually clothed by the priests in his elaborate regal raiment. The priests and the chorus of jugglers praise the newly crowned king as he ascends the ladder and finally sings. The whole extended sequence is exquisitely moving, and I sat in rapt attention throughout.Unfortunately, my concentration was broken at that point when a man passed out a few rows in front of us. Not that it was his fault, of course, but he was in the middle of a row, and so a dozen or more people filed out and stood in the row milling around directly in my line of sight, not knowing what to do. It disturbed the trance of the aforementioned man behind me as well, but at least he knew what to do, as it turned out he was a doctor. He checked on the sick man, and then ordered a wheelchair to be fetched. But it took the staff several minutes to find a wheelchair, and by that time we had missed the whole rest of the act. Even the sick man had recovered by this point, and didn’t want to leave, but the doctor (reportedly) prevailed upon him get checked out at the hospital.But my favorite scene is the Hymn in Act II, when Akhnaten, against a backdrop of the sun disc—which morphs from yellow to grey to a very striking blue—praises the sun god in song, and then, as a chorus sings Psalm 104, ascends toward the gigantic, blood red sun. This whole scene is visually stunning, but it also gives Anthony Roth Costoanzo a chance to shine as well, especially as (whereas the rest of the opera is sung in ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Hebrew) he sings his part in English:All the beasts are satisfied with their pasture.Trees and plants are verdant.Birds fly from their nests, wings spread.Flocks skip with their feet.All that fly and alightLive when thou hast arisen.(from: Winton Thomas’s English Translation)Since this was the premier, the master himself came out for curtain call at the end. I had run into Glass once before, coming off the elevator at the Chelsea Hotel, long ago. While I don’t know if he’s ever lived at the Chelsea himself, he’s been associated with a lot of the people who lived here. I’ve mentioned Ginsburg, and Glass also composed a song cycle for Leonard Cohen, based on the latter’s poetry collection, Book of Longing. Glass is 85 now, and looking much smaller than I remember him, but still apparently getting around fine, which is a good thing for all of us, for surely he’s got plenty of music left in him to compose.[Akhnaten runs from May 19 through June 10 at the MET. ] May 25, 2022 in Art | Permalink| Comments (0) Digg This | Save to del.icio.us April 25, 2022 The Duchess of Warhol: The Estate of Brigid BerlinIf you are a fan of pugs, and a fan of Chelsea Hotel characters, Wednesday’s auction of items from the Brigid Berlin estate will ring all of your bells! Check out the pug portraits.A couple of Billy Name monographs might be more to your liking.Or maybe buy a music book or two.The auction begins Wed, Apr 27, 2022 at 10am EDT. April 25, 2022 in Art, Hotel Chelsea, Music, Rock & Roll | Permalink| Comments (0) Digg This | Save to del.icio.us April 06, 2022 RIP Donald Baechler 1956 - 2022Sadly, we have learned of the passing of former Chelsea Hotel resident and artist Donald Baechler. Only recently Baechler's black and white flower painting was returned to the lobby of the Chelsea after having been removed in 2011. We saw Baechler's work along with the work of several other Chelsea residents at the 2017 Museum of Modern Art show dedicated to Club 57. While we mourn his passing, his memory lives on at the Chelsea. ArtNews Obituary.Lobby 2022Lobby 2008 April 06, 2022 in Art | Permalink| Comments (0) Digg This | Save to del.icio.us January 14, 2022 Artist, Poet, Authority on African Art: George Chemeche, 1932-2022The Chelsea Hotel community was saddened to learn of the passing of one of its own: artist, author, and poet George Chemeche, a resident of the hotel since 1971. Though we’d run into George a few times in the past year, he hadn’t had much to say—not that such was entirely unusual for him. We know that he had been in declining health for some time, and he died of heart failure on January 11, 2022.Born in Basra, Iraq in 1932, George emigrated with his family to Israel in 1949 at age 14. He attended a kibbutz on the Sea of Galilee, and later the Avni Art School in Tel-Aviv. Taken under the wing by such illustrious patrons as Lady Fergusson, great niece of Lord Balfour, a former Prime Minister of England, and Baroness Alix de Rothschild, George traveled to Paris in 1959, where he was admitted to the prestigious Ecole Superieure des Beaux Arts. Not that he lived like royalty, by any means: renting a small Garret in Montparnasse, he frequented the bars and cafes when he wasn’t painting, living la vie de boheme. One wonders if his legendary beret and sandals date to that era, or if they were a later addition. (Those of you who want to know more about George’s fascinating life can check out Amanda Chemeche’s wonderful essay about her father in The Forward, June 21, 2020.)George has told us of how he arrived at the Chelsea, intending to stay only a few days or weeks until he found a suitable studio, but how Stanley Bard, impressed by his art, convinced him to stay on at the hotel, renting him the large, unused space behind the check-in desk. Several years later, when Stanley needed the space back for offices, George made no bones about it, moving his canvasses to storage and doing his painting, from then on, in his large apartment upstairs.Stanley wasn’t the only one impressed by George’s art, as his paintings are in the permanent collections of The Guggenheim, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Israel Museum, and The Denver Fine Art Museum to mention a few.For many years, a large sculptural work by George was displayed prominently in the Chelsea Hotel lobby. Perhaps the day is coming when we’ll see its return. Anyone who has had the good fortune to be invited to George’s apartment for dinner or drinks couldn’t help but be impressed by his awe-inspiring collection of African statuary. Less well known is that George was an authority on African art with several books to his credit, including: Ibijis: The Cult of the Yoruba Twin (5 Continents Editions); The Horse Rider in African Art (ACC Publishers); and Eshu: The Divine Trickster (ACC Publishers). Finally, George was a published poet. In writing about his work for the back cover of his 2014 chapbook, When Gods Sneeze (Finishing Line Press), I commended his language for being, while often soaring, “always well-grounded in an earthy humor and good cheer.” Though I hadn’t looked at the book in a few years, when I picked it up today it fell open to one of my favorite of George’s poems, “The Tent”, which, as it concerns a journey, I’ll quote at some length:I was a stranger among strangers,an immigrant among thousands of immigrants,a homeless boy sheltered in in a hollow tent,a foreigner in a foreign land. . . .I lost my sweet home to a gloomy tent, my mother tongue to unfamiliar tongue,my playful friends to unfriendly throng,my hope to a hopeless reality,my magic carpet to a sand floor. . . .In a way George’s life was defined by journeys: first to Israel with his family, then to Paris, then to New York. While “The Tent” deals with loss and what’s left behind when we leave a place, other poems, such as the enchanting “Night in Casablanca” acknowledge the necessity of change, risk, and the ability to “sail free as far as your free mileages allow”:In that Garden of Allah, where awesome lovers blossom,a divine thought elated your soul.You would rather be a sinner in a foreign landThan a household saint, wholly shackled on both hands. . . .George is survived by his daughter Amanda Chemeche. [A Memorial Service is planned for March 2022.]Photo by Amanda Chemeche. January 14, 2022 in Art | Permalink| Comments (0) Digg This | Save to del.icio.us December 13, 2021 Remembering An Artist Who Persevered: Bettina Grossman: Sept. 28, 1927 to Nov. 2, 2021On Sunday, December 19 the friends of Bettina Grossman will host a gathering at the Chelsea Hotel, 222 West 23rd street to celebrate the life of Bettina. The memorial begins at 11:00am.It’s the perfect success story: an artist, dedicated to her vision, labors in obscurity for decades, undeterred by lack of critical and popular success, only to be recognized and hailed as a genius in the end. Of course it’s Bettina’s story, but it’s also the prototypical Chelsea Hotel story, as perhaps such a thing could only happen in a place like the Chelsea, a mythical island where dreams can come true, in the middle of another semi-mythical island called New York—that latter island, sadly, a place where a lot of beautiful dreams go to die.  Bettina passed away of respiratory heart failure on November 2 at the age of 94. She had been staying, as we learn from Corey Kilgannon’s excellent obituary, in a Brooklyn care facility at the time of her death, recuperating from a fall suffered several months before.Often in the evening, Debbie and I would hear a timid, almost imperceptible knocking at our door, and we would open the door to find a tiny, elderly woman, increasingly hunched and shriveled as the years progressed, finally resorting to the use of a walker. Bettina almost invariably just wanted to talk, and usually about something that was going on around the hotel. Though shy and soft spoken, she was often insightful, and had a disarmingly wry sense of humor.A lot has been made of Bettina’s eccentricity, especially as relates to her reclusive nature and her penchant for junking up her apartment. But as to the former, even though her mobility was limited, she was always out and about in the hotel and the neighborhood. Bettina was up on our floor frequently since she was always looking for her friend Rachael Cohen, who took care of her in her final years. Once, before I really knew her that well, I remember rounding the corner in our hallway in the summer of 2003, the night of the blackout, and running right into her—quite literally. After admonishing me to be more careful, she immediately began to talk about the “young man” with a drug problem who lived on another floor and how his eyes burned with a demonic fire. “Yes,” I said, distracted, perhaps in a somewhat condescending tone, “sometimes it can be like the drug possesses someone.”“I’m not speaking of this as some kind of metaphor,” she assured me.Sometimes Debbie and I would bring her soup from a nearby restaurant, though we never could get it quite right: was it noodle from this particular Chinese place, egg drop soup from that, or vice versa? She was very particular. Other times we might surprise her with a treat. One time we brought her a mini Cowboy Pie, which has a bunch of chocolate chips and pecans and caramel in it. I think we bought it mainly for the funny name, but Bettina was not impressed. “You know I’m not going to be able to chew that,” she said, later adding that, “I didn’t like the ‘cow pie’”Once, in appreciation for something we had written about her on the blog, Bettina decided she’d like to give us an artwork. And so at the appointed time we showed up and banged on her door with a rock so she could hear it, and were admitted part way into her apartment to view various candidates, such as small abstracts on paper. But she never could decide what would be appropriate, and we didn’t want to press her, and after an hour or two it became clear that she really didn’t want to part with anything. She needed her art around her.Or maybe she had determined that we didn’t understand the work, and that its meaning would be lost on us. She did once gift us with a beautiful cabbage.Bettina found art in everyday objects; or, better yet, she felt that, through art, she could reveal the meaning that lay hidden below the surface in everyday objects. That, I take it, was what her theory of the Noumenon was about. If you just look properly, or put the pieces together properly, a new layer of meaning can emerge. That’s why Bettina photographed puddles and shadows and disembodied limbs, as a warped reflection, or an object set at an odd angle or placed in an unusual juxtaposition with another object, might be suggestive of something beyond itself. It’s no coincidence that she came up with the idea in a place like the Chelsea, as the Chelsea is a place where every day offers the opportunity for a weird chance encounter from which meaning can emerge.Perhaps the Noumenon is why Bettina hoarded so many artworks: these works had revealed a meaning to her, or—in the case of the ongoing projects—she was waiting for them to reveal it. The leaves and sticks and rocks that she piled up in the hallway contained something she saw, and maybe others did not, a message, perhaps, if a cryptic one, that she couldn’t just allow to evaporate—or to burn away. Lately, it seems like the developers and politicians have been hell bent on wiping out all traces of the old—of the old Chelsea, and of old New York in general. But they never could keep Bettina down. She kept hanging her artworks and storing her projects in the hallways until she was no longer able to do so.As mentioned, success for Bettina came late in life, and this was due in large part to the generous support she received from other artists, both in the Chelsea community and in the larger artistic community as a whole. The role of eyeware and jewelry artist Rachael Cohen in caring for her when she was in declining health has already been mentioned. And painter and fifth-floor neighbor Robert Lambert stood by her with companionship and encouragement through the dark years when nobody else seemed to appreciate her work. Special mention must also be made of a pair of documentary filmmakers who helped put this extraordinary woman’s life and art on the world map. First of all, Sam Bassett, who moved to the Chelsea around the time of the Bard family’s ouster, providing a creative spark when everything around the hotel seemed to be falling apart. He spent months working with Bettina to clean out her apartment so she could better showcase her prodigious work, in the process really bringing her out of her shell and giving her a much needed boost in confidence and self-esteem. We were all amazed—I think no one more so than Bettina herself—by the treasures unearthed from what Robert Lambert so aptly called an “Egyptian tomb”.            Neither Robert nor Sam are with us at the hotel any longer—the price of “progress”, it seems—but support for the Chelsea artistic community continues to flow from the larger art world. Dutch artist Corrine Van der Borch’s equally wonderful, though somewhat more accessible documentary, “Girl with the Black Balloons” gained Bettina even greater exposure. And the serendipitous tale of where the black balloons came from, and how they made their way to Bettina, is one of those “only in the Chelsea” stories that amply demonstrate why islands such as this are necessary for art and for life.            Perhaps Bettina’s greatest moment was her show at Governor’s Island, an opportunity that came courtesy of Moroccan artist Yto Barrada, who befriended Bettina and showed her own work alongside the older artist at that and other venues here and in Europe. I saw Bettina at the show, riding her scooter around the large space, circulating among groups of people, the star of the show as she was always meant to be. Now truly in her element, she couldn’t have been happier. When I caught up with her, she spoke of an upcoming show in Germany. She was very proud. Still, there was that old concern resurfacing: “They’ve taken a lot of my pieces, and what if they don’t bring them back?”            “They’ll bring them back.”            “Eventually, maybe, but I’m not going to be around forever.”            “It’s important for people to see them. They’ll bring them back.”But I don’t think she was all that worried this time, it was just that old habits die hard. “I know,” Bettina said finally. “I know they will.”https://www.chelseahotelblog.com/living_with_legends_the_h/2010/07/girl-with-black-balloons-wows-em-at-edinburgh.html  December 13, 2021 in Art | Permalink| Comments (0) Digg This | Save to del.icio.us Next» advertisementLegends of the Chelsea Hotel "One of the recurring pleasures of Ed Hamilton's "Legends of the Chelsea Hotel" is his sly rendering of its former proprietor, Stanley Bard, an eccentric patron of the arts who almost pathologically refused to acknowledge that the Chelsea was anything other than a crystal palace inhabited by muses and magicians." NY Times Book Review, June 2007Lords of the Schoolyard BUY "LORDS OF THE SCHOOLYARD" NOW! The Chintz Age: Tales of Love and Loss for a New New York by Ed Hamilton BUY "The Chintz Age" NOW! 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