Post #196: Conjuring Up Meyer Lansky

Most of my readers have never heard of him. You need to have grown up in NYC during the 20s and 30s to know the name. He was the Money Man for the mob, on a par with Lucky Luciano. He made them all rich and respectable. My cousin Rose was married to one of his cronies, Willie L., who went from being a bootlegger to a respectable multi millionaire liquor wholesaler with a penthouse overlooking Central Park.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Anyhow, as many of you know, I work from my sub-conscious, rarely pre-planning work. A few weeks ago, I started a new panel, about 30”x 54” and who should show up but Meyer Lansky, banker for the mob. The one who made them all wealthy. How do I know it’s Lansky? I “googled” him. What else?  Frankly, he’s a monster, a golem, and I don’t want him around. A friend offered to take him home with her with the caveat that she can put the canvas in the dumpster if he causes trouble.

By the way, I looked Lansky up on line and saw that an ex girlfriend wrote a book about her long love affair with him, claiming he was sweet and kind (and very, very rich.) and he looks just like the guy in my painting!

Post #195: A Watched Pot Never Boils

Many years ago, I rented space at the former Yale & Towne Lock Factory for the Historic Neighborhood Preservation Program, Inc., a nonprofit I ran for almost forty years. Since I was actually an artist in real life, I soon made friends with the dozens of painters, sculptors, dancers and photographers who rented the generous, high-ceilinged lofts, often (illegally) making them their home. One such friend (still is) was a photographer, Bob Baldridge who rented prime space overlooking Long Island Sound. He fitted up a bathroom and a tiny kitchen that served his needs. Along the way, he even acquired a girlfriend, the wealthy but insecure granddaughter of a famous artist. She had tried out several careers and was at that time exploring whether she wanted to be a celebrity chef. She convinced Bob to allow her to use his space for a dinner party that would allow her to try out her new career. Bob borrowed chairs and tables and a giant cook pot. I agreed to co-sponsor. A date was set. Invitations went out. Money for cheap wine was obtained and a supply of paper cups and plates. What could go wrong? Who couldn’t boil spaghetti and heat up sauce?

By 6 pm Bob’s girlfriend had put up gallons of water and a pot of store bought sauce on his makeshift stove. A small crowd had begun to gather in the long hallway outside his door. Bob decided not to let anyone in until the food was ready, but he was happy to pour endless paper cups o wine to keep the party happy. Unfortunately, we had never inquired as to how many people were coming. The word of the event had apparently spread far and wide and before long, a line extended for a hundred or more feet down the hall. Bob kept handing out endless paper cups of wine while the chef struggled to get the spaghetti water to boil.

It took almost five hours for dinner to be served. The line outside Bob’s door had by now reached into the adjacent building. Raucous, drunken laughter echoed through the old factory walls. Bob opened bottle after bottle of wine while his chef struggled with her makeshift stove.

You’ve all heard the adage “A watched pot never boils”?  Well it’s true. At least not til after midnight when everyone’s too drunk to care.

Post #194: The Artist’s Wife

Growing up at the edges of the New York art world in the 1940s, the one thing I swore I’d never become was an “Artist’s Wife.” Fortunately, it’s a position that while commonplace when I first came of marriageable age, now rarely exists. No self-respecting woman artist today would accept the role, but when I came into the scene, almost every male artist I knew had one. He couldn’t function without her. And the better the Artist’s Wife, the greater the chances for the husband’s success. Just read the biographies of deKooning or Jackson Pollack!

Many years ago, one of my closest friends, a beautiful Viennese refugee, became a highly desirable “artist’s wife”. She proudly accepted the role, even reveled in it. Her days were filled with service to the Great One, an arrogant but talented SOB. She ran his errands, dealt with his gallery and entertained wealthy and important clients. He repayed her by seducing, or attempting to seduce all her friends, as well as every other woman who crossed his path. Needless to say, it did not end well, and his
career tanked along with his marriage.

I ran into him many years later after he had remarried a sexy but incompetent blonde thirty years his junior. She couldn’t tie her shoelaces without his help and needless to say, his once booming New York career as a “great artist” was over.
PS. This is a Sad but True Story!

Post #193: Little Ralphie

Despite having lived for over 90 years in (or near) what is (or was) the greatest city in the world, I confess to never having met a real celebrity. I did pass Andy Warhol one day on Madison Avenue wearing his signature white wig and I shared an elevator ride with Peter Ustinov at Saks Fifth Avenue. He even flirted with me. But other than those encounters, I’ve never met anyone whose name you’d recognize. The only exception was someone I knew as “Little Ralphie,” He was my friend Thelma’s baby brother. She was frequently required to baby (stroller) sit him and considered him a royal pain in the you know where. Who knew that in 25 years or so he would become one of the most famous men in the world? Certainly not Thelma (or me). Had we known, we would have been nicer to him.

Little Ralphie (and Thelma’s) father was a down and out, Depression poor house painter. Like everyone else I knew, he was struggling to keep the family afloat. In later years, when interviewed, Little Ralphie, now the world-renown Ralph Lauren, would refer to him as an artist, and, since he spent his days painting apartments, that description could be considered at least partially true. One afternoon, my mother and I encountered him outside a hardware store on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx. We were in search of something to polish our new (second hand) baby grand piano. Of course, Mr. L. was the perfect person to ask. “Quid Oil” was his response and so we went off in search of Quid Oil. “Quid Oil? Never heard of it.” No one knew what we were talking about. After a few unsuccessful attempts, it finally dawned on us that what he was suggesting (in his heavy Yiddish accent) was Crude Oil. Kvid Oil was what we heard. Many years later, I heard the rich and famous Ralph Lauren interviewed about his background and he referred to his father as an “artist,” a “painter,” which I guess was true (as far as it went.)

I don’t remember if we ever found Quid (Kvid) Oil, or just; ended up using Johnson’s Wax.

Post #192: Magic Scissors

 

Many years ago, at a local tag sale, I picked up a pair of pre-World War II German scissors. Now I really didn’t need any more scissors, but these were German scissors! The best of the best! No way I could pass them up. They have magical powers, know exactly what you want them to do without you having to consciously tell them. I think I paid around $2, a substantial sum at the time. It turned out that what I didn’t need were all the other scissors in the drawer. These were magical scissors; they read your mind! You never needed to tell them what to do; your unconscious led the way.

My first project with the magic scissors was a lampshade decorated with six inch high cut outs dancing, strolling, wrestling. Alone, in pairs, or in a crowd. When you turned on the light the lampshade came alive with a dozen or so nymphs, wrestlers and dancing Maenads, the drunken followers of Bacchus, the Greek god of wine. A party in my bedroom every night! And if I rotated the silk shade that held them even a few degrees, a new, backlit cast of characters appeared, held in place by an easily removable dab of rubber cement.

My next scissor success was an illustrated window, come alive with more nymphs and drunken maenads. Somewhat larger this time, around 18’ high, I cut them out of a roll of heavy duty wrapping paper. Again, my magic scissors did the trick, giving silent instructions that told them what to do. I have to confess I take no personal credit for them. It was the scissors, Tiny, half inch hands with expressive fingers appeared. Now, like many artist, i normally have trouble drawing hands. How come I could cut out these exquisite shapes with no underlying sketch? It’s my magic scissors. I give them all the credit.

Well, maybe my subconscious (and fifteen years of drawing classes) helped.

Post #191: The Art of Cutting Cardboard

There’s something very rewarding about working with an inexpensive, disposable material like cardboard. I’ve been a fan (short for “fanatic”) of this cheap, endlessly versatile material for decades now  

First of all, it encourages experimentation; you won’t hesitate to toss failures into the recycling bin. It’s not $5 Arches watercolor paper you’re wasting; it’s just refuse you were going to dispose of anyway. Cardboard is easy to cut and, while hard to repair, cheap enough to throw out and start over. I buy it in  4’x8’ triple ply sheets from a warehouse in Norwalk. They take 2’ off the top so the boards fit into the back of a standard pickup truck. You can cut it with a single-edge razor blade or an x-acto knife and if I’m strong enough to cut through, so are you.

The use of “humble” material like cement,  cardboard or scrap wood and metal was encouraged by an avant-garde art movement known as  “Arte Povera” that  arose in Turin in Italy in the 1960s after World War II. It extolled cast-off, “found” materials in lieu in of expensive, often unavailable traditional art supplies. It’s a great way to encourage taking risks.

I’ve done several interesting projects with sheets of cheap cardboard as well as with discarded cardboard boxes. They’re unlike anything you’ve seen before. My first magnum opus was at an exhibit at the Westport Art Center of a group that called themselves “The Boxists.” Traditionally slick, mostly former well-known illustrators, they got stuck with me against their better judgment. However, my higgledy piggledy 8’ pyramid of discarded Supermarket boxes stole the show. I lit them from within and filled them with ‘real life’ figures.

My next experiment with cast off cardboard was a dozen, larger than life cut-outs based on the gangster- developers who were making fortunes trashing my beloved city. I included their equally disreputable  accomplices and their friends and family.

They were my artists’ way of getting even.

Post # 190 Ninety-Nine Faces on the Wall

You all remember the old camp bus song, “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall”, well, several months ago, for some totally inexplicable reason, I began to obsessively draw faces. all kinds. old, young, pretty, not-so-pretty, men, women, etc. I think I stopped around the 99^th. Although I always started out with a real person whose photo I cut out of a magazine or newspaper, the finished portrait never had the slightest resemblance to it. It was as if my hand was no longer in charge and the face in front of me had acquired a life of its own. This went on for several weeks at which point I exhausted both myself and my paper supply, ending up in bed with some kind of puzzling flu that required over a week to get over.

The process by which I produced this Rogue’s Gallery of faces was pretty weird in itself. I would cut interesting subjects from the local newspaper, or the New York Times and begin to sketch them on soft newsprint paper with a pencil or piece of charcoal. That was when the magic took place; the image on the paper would take over and I was no longer in control of what I was drawing. The face in front of me bore no resemblance to the photo I was looking at. Someone or something else was now in charge.

Day after day new faces appeared. My studio walls became obsessively covered with them. When I ran out of wall space, I brought down huge sheets of triple ply cardboard from the attic and covered them, front and back with faces. I finally exhausted both my paper supply and my well-being, ending up in bed for over a week with a strange flu. I’m lucky it was only my health and not my sanity.

I wish I could explain what happened, but I can’t. It was as if I had been consumed by pandemic loneliness and a need for “company” and my subconscious mind responded by creating its own crowd.