Living with Legends

In disIntegration, Michele Zalopany’s realistic pastel paintings, some in color, some black and white, chronicle the birth and death of the American Dream—in parallel Black and White varieties–in her home town of Detroit, from it’s inception in the boom years of World War II, to it’s last gasp in the deadly riots of 1967.  It was a dream that was dogged from the very beginning by racial strife, and bookended by two incidents of racial violence, each with its own particular character reflective of its time.

            We hadn’t originally meant to attend the opening, or, actually we had, but it had slipped our minds.  Debbie and I were on way out of the Chelsea to get some dinner, when we ran into a couple from the hotel.  They said they were going to Michele’s show, and they had their car there, so we caught a ride over with them.  We figured we could munch on some cheese and crackers and thus stave off hunger for the half-hour or so it took to see the show. (Opening night photos courtesy of Linda Troeller, L to R – Ed Hamilton, Debbie Martin, David Remfry, Lothar Troeller)

            But once we got there, predictably enough, we ran into a lot of our friends from the hotel, and so we ended up talking to them for quite some time.  I kept looking around for the cheese and crackers, or grapes, apple slices, hell, anything, the lettuce plate-liner that you’re not supposed to eat, but apparently the spread was in a different room.

            The gallery was crowded, and I was about ready to pass out from hunger, so I didn’t get a real good look at the art.  When I finally got a chance to talk to Michele, I couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say at the time.  But I wanted to say something positive, so I complimented a nearby painting.

            “Oh thank you,” Michele said graciously.

            “That one’s from an earlier show!”

            So I really put my foot in my mouth there.  I decided it was best not to say anything more.  All  I could think about was getting something to eat.  Where were those damn cheese and crackers?  I think I would have even guzzled some wine at that point–though I stopped drinking a while back—but I couldn’t find any of that either.

            We went back on the weekend, when we could get a better look at the paintings.  The first thing you see on entering the gallery is a larger than life black and white painting of a police line-up.  Three Black men and three Black women stand staring into the camera, their faces animated by looks ranging from surprise, to resignation, to fear.  But the most salient feature of the painting is the people’s clothes, for these people clearly aren’t bums or underworld figures, but seem instead to be solid working class citizens, dressed up for church.  It’s quite striking when you realize this—something that you may not have immediately noticed.  In fact, you may have already formed an impression of the people, perhaps based on their race, and the new realization forces you to confront the sources of that impression (which may be a deep-seated prejudice) within yourself.

            The painting, entitled Line Up, is based on a photograph from 1943, the year of the Belle Isle Bridge riot, in which groups of Blacks, angered by lack of decent housing, squared off against equally murderous bands of Whites who feared that the newly arrived southern Blacks were taking away their jobs on the assembly line.  In fighting across the city, 34 were killed and nearly 700 injured.

            On the opposite wall, a smaller though equally remarkable painting of a black hand protruding from the rear window of a police car, serves, coupled with the larger painting, to bracket the exhibit.  Police Car, in color to underscore the more recent time period, is an image drawn from the 12^th Street riot of 1967.  This riot, even more deadly than the 1943 troubles, with 43 dead and 467 injured, had been exacerbated by white flight to the suburbs and the subsequent overcrowding and redlining of the inner city slums.  What I find most striking in this image is that the black hand is actually one of the lighter things in the painting, and its lightness serves to underscore the truly ominous blackness of the police car and the policemen who sit in the front seat, shrouded in deepest shadow.  While we may be inclined to relegate the black and white Line Up to the distance past of our collective memory, the realistic colors of Police Car draw up back toward the present, imparting to the image a greater urgency and immediacy.

            Many of Michele’s paintings exhibit this same subtle poetry: at first glance you take in the scene, and then, upon more reflective viewing, you’re suddenly hit with a small, striking detail that throws the whole painting into relief, imparting to it a deeper meaning and significance.  You see a painting of a cozy suburban house, Michele’s childhood home, it turns out—and then you see the bars on the windows.  Or there is a painting of a woman—Michele’s mother–her face smiling, her arms raised in celebration of the fulfillment of the American Dream—yet she’s standing in some sort of industrial structure that looks like a large drain pipe.  Similarly, a black and white painting of the Belle Isle Bridge, scene of the 1943 riots, presents even through the gray, overcast pall a charmingly pastoral scene—and then in the background, scarcely noticeable at first, a smokestack rises menacingly, hinting at the dawning conflict.  Michelle’s paintings are rather like haiku, where the scene is set in the first two lines, and then in the third there is movement, complication, challenge, the emergence of meaning.  In perhaps my favorite image, Marvin Gaye, in slick, black vinyl raincoat against a rain-damp background,  is shown smiling, and you think, well, he represents one of the few black people who “made it” in America—but then you notice that he’s looking slightly bemused, as if he sees clearly what’s goin’ on, but can’t quite believe it, it’s just too absurd.

            Michele came of age against the backdrop of these two violent episodes: the first, years before her time, nonetheless coloring and informing the world of her childhood; the second, ocurring just as she arrived on the cusp of adolescence, shattering the fragile order that had been cobbled together in the ensuing years.  It’s clear that she has thought about these issues deeply, and come to a point in her life where she is now able to marshal the quiet power of her art to make a definitive statement on racism and the hollowness of an American Dream that does not extend to all equally.  Her method reveals what realism can do, that it’s not just a competitor of photography.  There’s an emphasis that she is able to achieve through a tight disciplined control of her method: by focusing so painstakingly on the real, she seems to have arrived at a meditative state that enables her to reveal what’s beneath the surface veneer of an image, valorizing the source of a hidden significance that was hitherto diffuse and nebulous in the original photographs from which she worked, tricking out the emotional content that lay dormant in the bare earth of her source material.  For perhaps, as Wittgenstein said, “The world is all that is the case,” but, oh, when you look at it really, really closely, maybe that’s not quite true, or not at all.  The devil, as they say, is in the details. (Ed Hamilton)

[Michele’s show, disIntegration, runs through October 7 at Esso Gallery on 26^th St. in West Chelsea]

I can’t remember a time when there were more people in the Chelsea Hotel lobby, must’ve been more than a hundred.  As we munched on sausage strips and potato balls courtesy of El Quijote, long time tenant Merle – remarked that Stanley should have theme parties for the residents and guests every week, since we pay so much in rent.

     Be that as it may, the occasion of the festivities was to honor the filmmaker Shirley Clarke with a plaque on the façade of the hotel.  Clarke, who lived at the Chelsea for 25 years, first in the 60s & 70s, and then, after a stint in California, for a time in the 80s is famous for such groundbreaking works as The Cool World, Portrait of Jason, and The Connection.  Clarke is the first woman to be so honored, joining a roster of male artists commemorated on the front of the hotel.

      Most of the people in attendance last Thursday, September 21, seemed to be from the film world, as most Chelsea residents who stumbled upon the proceedings seemed either confused or annoyed as they fought their way through the lobby-choking crowd.  But we did get to chat with a few Chelsea friends: Artist Judith Childs told us about her recent trip to the South of France, and Jazz Singer Sathima Bea Benjamin told about her fascinating — though arguably not so recent — association with Duke Ellington.  The Chelsea never gets boring.
     After some wine and cheese we moved out to the street for the unveiling.  We couldn’t stay out there more than 3 minutes due to NYC regulations (We exceeded that). The speakers were brief, and then a dignitary yanked down the red cloth and we all cheered. “There sure are a lot of words on that,” a lady next to me remarked.  “There’s no way anybody could read that,” an elderly gentleman said.  The plaque was too high up on the building, and the print was too small, but Clarke easily wins the prize for most reading material crammed on a plaque.  (There was no room for her plaque anywhere else on the building, but perhaps another plaque could be moved so it could be brought closer to eye level.)  Filmmaker Barbara Hammer received the first ever Shirley Clarke Avant Garde Film/video grant, and told of riding her motorcycle with Shirley on the back, clinging tight, through the hills of San Francisco.

   Perhaps the most touching part of the evening was the reading of Wendy Clarke’s letter to her deceased mother.  (Read by Howard Weinberg) She wrote of planting Shirley’s ashes in her garden on the roof, and of throwing a handful over the edge, down onto 23^rd St.  It was a tribute fitting to any Chelseaite, and of course Shirley Clarke would have approved.  (Ed Hamilton) (Photo of Wendy & Shirley at the Chelsea courtesy of Howard Weinberg. Event photos courtesy of Linda Troeller. The letter is after the jump. Report from Sept. 20 event is here.)

(more…)

Filmmaker DeeDee Halleck sent us her memories of Shirley Clarke to post on the anniversary of Shirley Clarke’s death.  I tried to meet DeeDee at the plaque unveiling so I could thank her in person, but there were so many people there I didn’t get a chance to say thanks.

Shirley Clarke was my mentor.  I learned more from her than anyone else I ever knew–  mostly about how to be a mentor– how to energize people, how to push them to do good work, how not to give up when the technology was failing, the people lethargic or the situation impossible.  Shirley pushed things and people to the edge.  She never gave up.  Altziheimer claimed her about ten years ago, but she held on, tenderly nursed by two of her beloved disciples, Piper and David Cort, who bathed her and tucked her in and smoothed her forehead.  Her daughter Wendy and many of her colleagues were with her during her last days in a Boston hospital.  She died last month in a sweet sleep surrounded by Felix the Cat and Betty Boop, the toys of her youth held tight for all these years.

Shirley was somewhere between Betty Boop and Felix the Cat herself, with a bit of Charlie Chaplin’s tramp thrown in.  She often wore a bowler hat and tight smart little suits, like something out of a 1930’s chorus line. All she needed were spats to complete the costume.  She had style.  A small woman with the body of a dancer, she had piercing black eyes, like a beady little mouse.  She was witty and bright, and endlessly energetic. 

Shirley started as a dancer.  Her first films were dance films, such as Dance in the Sun (1953) and In Paris Parks (1954), a lyrical look at gesture and movement in a public landscape.  I saw this early work and Bridges Go Round, a piece she did for the Brussels World Fair at the Hunter Art Museum in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  It changed my life.  Seeing her name on the credits and the joy and energy of the images made me realize that women could and should make their own films.  I decided to try to study film in college. 

Her work in the early 60’s, The Connection and The Cool World are landmarks of the American New Wave movement.  The Cool World is a New York version of Italian neo-realism, every bit as powerful and poignant.  It remains (with Robert Frank’s Pull My Daisy) the best expression of marginal life in that era.  Her film, Portrait of Jason (1967) was one of the first with a gay protagonist in an open and sympathetic (and completely unromantic) manner.  Shirley and Viva Superstar shared the screen as talent in Agnes Varda’s Lion’s Love, which was always my favorite Varda film.  Somehow Shirley (and Viva) added a New York edge to Varda, who can wax sentimental and cloying. 
(Photo courtesy of Rachel and Just)

In the early seventies I somehow found my way up to her workshop space in the penthouse of the Chelsea Hotel.  Shirley lived and worked there making live and taped video performance, installation and documentation with a collaborating group of artists.  I was lucky to have been a part of that work.  We formed a troupe, those of us who worked with Shirley.  She called us the TeePee Video Space Troupe and the idea was to experiment with performance that integrated video and other technologies.  It was the days before video cassettes and each tape had to be hand threaded into the portapak decks.  Not that it was really about recording per se.  Most of what we did was never on tape: the tape was only one of the elements of the constructions, the happenings, the events.  It was electronic performance in an interactive mode.  The troupe included myself, Andy Gurian, Shirley’s daughter Wendy, Bruce Ferguson, Vicki Polon, David Cort, Bob Harris, Parry Teasdale, Shalom Gorewitz, Susan Milano, Shridir Bapat and others.  There were regular drop-ins like Agnes Varda, Shigeko Kaboda, Beryl Korot, Nam June Paik, Skip Blumberg, Barbara Haspiel, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Jori Schwartzman, or neighbors at the Chelsea, Carl Lee, Viva (toting one of her kids), photographer Peter Simon, Doris Chase, Andre Vosnevshenski, George Kleinsinger, Virgil Thompson, Harry Smith, Arthur C. Clarke (no relation).  At any given time there always seemed to be one or two Japanese dancers around.  Sometimes even Andy Warhol climbed that flight of stairs after the last elevator stop, looking for Viva.  Louis Malle came by, as did Susan Sontag, Joris Ivens, Peter Brooks, Jean Rouche and Shelly Winters.  The Chelsea had a certain cachet for visitors from Europe, Hollywood and Japan and Shirley was queen of the Chelsea. 

Around Shirley swirled miles of video cables, cameras, monitors and telephones.  She was wired. Shirley had a new project every night.  We were needed to help make it happen.  It was sometimes frustrating, often exhausting, but it was hard not to trot over there, because you never knew what you might miss if you stayed away.

One time Arthur Clarke somehow got hold of a laser beam.  He unwrapped a long rectangular box with a fat cable, borrowed from some Columbia lab by a fan of 2001 Space Odysey.    This was many years before those red needles of light sparkled on every cashier’s counter.  The laser was exotic and thrilling and Shirley and Arthur giggled like kids phoning in bogus pizza orders as they plugged it in and carried it out to the edge of the Chelsea roof, aiming it down at the sidewalk. From that distance it was hard to keep steady, but Shrider quickly screwed it into a tripod tilted over the edge.  Passers-by on 23rd street stooped to pick up the resulting tiny red jewel.  Both Clarke’s roared with laughter as they made it jump five feet out of reach.  When we tried using the laser in our performances, it etched intricate patterns on several of our cameras.

One night we all agreed to do dawn.  We broke into five groups and went out to video dawn.  We recconoitered on the roof with stacks of monitors and cued up the five tapes from the five groups.  Shirley rang up for bagels and champaigne and when they were delivered we toasted the pink sky and switched on the decks for a multi channel piece of morning in New York.  Shots of steam rising from the street vents, tracking shots of bottle collectors pushing their carts, shots of pigeons in flight mixed and matched across the screens.  The natural sounds of the live streets below us mixed with the taped steam hisses and pigeon coos to make a city symphony of sounds as well as sights. Behind the pyramid of monitors flickering the black and white visual poems were the pastel sky scrapers, their windows reflecting the rising red sun ball.  One special moment was when pigoens flew right to left across one of the monitors and appeared in the bottom left of the neighboring monitor, as if in one continuous flight. It was one of those synchronisities that we were all sure Shirley planned. We didn’t giggle during that event.  Exhausted and emotional we sat in the rosy light with tears streaming down our cheeks, the kind of tears that can punctuate a late Beethoven quartet played well.  When the tapes spun empty at the end we came together and hugged.  Like some Omega circle, just more spontaneous and real. 

I remember one night we set up an elaborate elevator installation: a camera on each Chelsea floor aimed at the elevator door and a Pisa-like leaning stack of monitors on the roof recreating the Chelsea’s 10 floors.  Wires ran up the center staircase picking up the feed on each floor.  Then someone would do a performance on the elevator and we would watch the roof TV stack.  We could see the performance only when the doors opened on floor after floor.  It was a great idea.  It never quite worked.  None of Shirley’s projects ever "worked" in the conventional sense, but we knew that the ideas totally worked.  It was exhilerating.    It was being high every night.  We were urban guerillas of the Chelsea penthouse, plotting an electronic coup that would liberate the imaginations of the world.

The image of Felix the Cat was one of the very first images to glow from a cathode ray tube in television experiments in the 1930’s.   At this moment, high above us on a flickering celestial screen, an implike Shirley in a spiffy bowler hat morphs in and out with Felix in a perpetual soft shoe routine.  Goodnight, Shirley.  May some of us, your students, transmit electric visions as sassy and brilliant as you and Felix, with an edge as sharp and a passion as deep.