I was spending the day in Chelsea. It was late spring of
last year and it was a warm Saturday. There wasn’t much to see, but an old
friend of mine had a show up, and it was the last weekend to see it so I made
the trek from Brooklyn. It was very quiet that Saturday, maybe it was the heat,
or the end of the season for art shows, but it was nice as I was pretty much
alone on the streets. As I was about to go into the exhibition, I noticed
across the street a woman sitting outside a gallery on a folding chair smoking
a cigarette and looking despondent. I slowly recognized her. It was an artist
who I vaguely knew but I didn’t like her or her work so I really wasn’t much
interested in taking the easy walk across the street to see what she had been
up to. She sat there as if she was the proprietor of some long lost little
neighborhood store, maybe she sold fabrics or owned a candy store where she
sold penny candies to the neighborhood children in a long lost lower eastside
or my old neighborhood in Brooklyn. These old ladies and men would sit outside
their little meager stores taking in some sun and air until a customer would
walk past them entering into their cool dusty spaces to buy something. That’s
what she reminded me of as I silently stood there with the sun glaring down on
me watching her smoke her cigarettes. When someone came along and went into the
gallery she would toss her cigarette down on the sidewalk and step on it as if
in disgust with her dirty habit and follow the person in. I stood there
fascinated. When the person would leave she would once again take her place on
the chair light up another smoke and just stare. If she saw me watching her she
didn’t show any signs of being watched. She was not a very good artist, her
ability to get shows now and again came about because she was married to a
minor but successful artist who I had a falling out with many years earlier.
Because of our falling out, he kept me from getting some grants, prizes and
residences and I knew that I would never get these grants, prizes and
residences as long as he sat on the panels. I would have to wait until he
either left the panels or dropped dead. She had no chin, and I often thought
that her overweight husband who had several might give her one, talent he
couldn’t share with her, because he had very little of his own to pass around.
A couple went into the gallery and once again she took the cigarette from her
mouth and tossed it on the sidewalk (there was quite a pile of these butts
surrounding the chair) and followed them inside. I couldn’t understand why on
this lovely Saturday afternoon she wasn’t in the Hamptons at their big house
that his commissions had paid for instead of sitting out in the hot sun glaring
and smoking, smoking and glaring. Her name had a stupid rhyme to it, and she
had no chin, she was also somewhat overweight a matching pair, this husband and
wife, like cheap salt and pepper shakers.
“Oh you should see their house in the Hampton’s” my friend Beverly told
me one day as we sat eating sandwiches in Washington Square Park. I turned to
her with a look of disgust on my face, which told her what I felt for this art
world couple, and that she should drop the subject right away. After looking at
my friends work my curiosity got the best of me, and I crossed the street and
saw her looking at me, as if she knew who I was, but couldn’t place my face,
which was fine with me. The gallery (which by the way is no longer there) was
dim and the walls were hung with these lousy little drawings and paintings by
her, all of them miserably uninteresting but I looked anyway, and soon I knew
she was in the room with me, because of the stench of the cigarettes. I hate
that smell especially since I gave up smoking nearly 20 years ago.
When I turned around there she was looking
sad and despondent, and even more unattractive up close reeking of cigarettes.
I didn’t even sign the guest book, I felt like I shouldn’t even be there, and
felt her glaring eyes following me, so finally I had enough and left. The light
and sun felt nice after the dark gallery and as I walked back down to 9
th
avenue I turned to look back and there she was sitting on her wooden chair
smoking her cigarette and waiting for the next customer to enter her little
shop.
I saw this extraordinary exhibition today, and I doubt if you will see a
more beautiful show this year. It fills the whole museum and although I
knew many of the artists there were a few new discoveries for me,
notably Fortunato Depero who not only did paintings but also toys, stage
sets, costumes, ads and much more. All the famous artists are here also
including Balla, Marinetti and Severini but I was very impressed by the
lesser known artists. These guys were full of contradictions and some
of their beliefs were and still are difficult to deal with including
misogyny,(yet they included women in their group) a love of war and
their attraction to Italian fascism which is also covered in the
exhibition. They also loved machines, speed, movement, the city and the
future and boy what art. There are magnificent paintings, drawings,
books, furniture, sculptures and more, in fact I could not find one work
that I didn't like. Its wonderfully installed and will be at the Gugg
until Sept 1, so there is lots of time to see it. 
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