Wednesday
night, JH and I, and Harry Stendhal hosted a reception called Warhol
Happening at the Maya Stendhal Gallery.
Maya is Harry’s
sister. The focus of the reception was a piece of the film work – specifically
footage of Andy Warhol et al – of veteran avant garde filmmaker
Jonas Mekas.
Mr. Mekas came to New York City circuitously from Lithuania after
the Second World War, where he and his brother spent the last years
of the war and right after in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany.
DP’s – they were known as to Americans in that era – was
a term which was not sympathetic or gratifying or complimentary in
its use, as one might imagine, considering what they had endured
under the hand of the Nazis and the Soviets, but was instead, derogatory.
Fortunately for Mr. Mekas, he found his beacon in life – the
light in the darkness – in film, and New York in the 1950s
was the beginning of a revolutionary new world for the arts.
The installation in the Maya Stendhal Gallery includes one
large video projection surrounded on either side by smaller videos
of random footage
taken of Andy and his friends, mainly at the house (or compound of
houses) he owned out in Montauk in the 1970s. Featured in these (silent)
films are several adults and some children – namely Tony
and Tina Radziwill and John-John and Caroline
Kennedy, as well as Lee
Radziwill. There is also footage of a lunch at Micheline
and Alan
Jay Lerner’s, footage of Peter Beard,
of Mr. Mekas and several of the members of Andy’s Factory including Jane
Holzer who
in those days, was the first very famous Warhol character “Baby
Jane Holzer.”
Mrs. Holzer came to her fame overnight when a feature article about
her was written by a then hardly known (but for only a minute more)
writer named Tom Wolfe for a magazine which debuted to the world
as a Sunday supplement in the New York Herald-Tribune. The magazine
was edited by a young and brilliant editor (we can conclude in retrospect
rather than in anticipation – as brilliant is so easily concluded
nowadays) named Clay Felker. The magazine was called New
York and
although it had the same logo as the magazine of the same name which
exists on the newstands today, any resemblance to today’s elitist
look-down rag ends there.
Harry
Stendhal, Jonas Mekas, and Virginie Marchand
Helen
Kim and Anna Bohichik
It
was a very exciting era – freshly hyping the
notion of glamorous to the point of ridicule; rebellious,
and outrageous. This was operating under the simultaneous
counterpane of the Viet Nam War which was, in the early Mekas/Warhol
years, moving very slowly into the great American consciousness
(as the body count began to build) until it finally surrounded
and enveloped the culture with the same dull and grainy grimness,
sometimes in color, sometimes in black and white, of the
film footage of Warhol and his glam gang of characters in
Mekas’ film clips.
The innocence in these silent, darting, dashing, alternatingly discombobulated
clips do not reflect the catastrophic times nor do they portend what was to come,
although – the two little boys, for example, wrestling in their bathing
suits on the lawn above the sea – John Kennedy and Tony Radziwill – many
are no longer with us, having come to untimely deaths; as it was with Mr. Warhol
who also came to an untimely ending in a botched medical situation. Nor do they,
or can they portend the vagaries of aging that has affected the characters in
the clips who
are still
with us, as well as the rest of us.
Meanwhile, back at the Maya Stendhal Gallery. There were about
two or three hundred who showed up for the look see. Veuve Cliquot provided
the champagne to the immense pleasure of the guests who also consumed an enormous
portion of fabulous tea sandwiches prepared in the kitchens by the inimitable Vincent
Minuto (of Hampton Domestics – an NYSD advertiser). New York society’s
number one DJ Tom Finn also provided a special collection of
music of the era, which played throughout the evening.
Gallery parties are gallery parties are gallery parties. The mix is always highly
eclectic. I couldn’t help watching the guests watching the film clips – many
of them entirely unaware of the era or even the characters therein (as hard as
that is to believe). Andy Warhol is now a character of literary proportions,
a giant, a legend, whereas at the time of these film clips he was just an artist
of some celebrity who had a penchant and talent for acquiring and/or creating
other celebrities to surround himself with.
At the beginning of the evening, the first
guest to arrive was Anita Sarko, a longtime member
of the downtown scene in New York (as well as one of the nicest people
in New York – hip or un-). She and I chatted about early Warhol.
I told her my story of going to one of his first gallery openings
(the recollection printed on these pages a few years ago) in 1962,
and then to a party afterwards at his then studio on East 46th Street.
For all the fame that followed him, and despite his outre costume
(mainly the white/grey fright wig that became his signature), in
person he had a rather quiet, even innocuous presence. Although it
was clear that he was what today we’d call a “starfucker.”
Anita concurred with a laugh over the irony. She told me that in those early
years she’d seen him around for a long time at parties although he never
spoke to her because she wasn’t “somebody.” Then one night
she went to a dinner party only to find that he was her dinner partner. At dinner
he told her that he didn’t like the way she was wearing her hair and suggested
a different “do.” She told him that she’d worn it like that
for awhile but decided against it because she felt it made her look like a man
in drag. Unfazed, Andy continued throughout the rest of the meal to insist that
she change her hair back to the previous style. She didn’t, of course,
as Anita is one of those people who has a mind of her own, and is, as they say,
her own woman. We laughed over the incident while marveling at the outcome of
that memorable time and the remarkable person whose enigmatic persona is captured
on Jonas Mekas’ film.
Mr. Mekas, not so incidentally, came before Andy Warhol artistically,
which is, no doubt, what attracted the artist to him.
Jonathan
Capehart and Todd Klein
Barbara
Sussberg
Pat
Altschul, Brian Stewart, and Stephanie Kriger
Alyssa
Barrie
Lara
and Lisa Meiland
Jeffrey
Esses and Jason Hirsch
Denise
and Larry Wohl with Lee and Cece Black
Larry
Wohl and
Lee Black
Rocky
Aoki and Harry Stendhal
Barbara
Preminger, Ray Smith, Seth McBride, and Carlton DeWoody
Rebecca
Silver and Roger Webster
M.M.
Serra
Anita
Sarko
Lisa
Meiland and Melissa Berkelhammer
Mallory
Kean and Pegy Siegal
Leslie
Padgett
Caterina
Hausmann, Emily Stern, and Rosalia Buccaro
R.
Couri Hay, Maya Stendhal, Jeremiah Silva, and Michele
Gerber-Klein
Subscribe
below to receive emails about the activities
of NYSD ...
Annette
Tapert and DPC
Geeta
and Heidi Rosenau
Cece
and Lee Black with Denise Wohl
Mireya
and Joseph D'Angelo
Nathalie
and Cynthia Moureto
David
Hirsch and Stefanie Hirsch
Natalie
Glaser, Harry Stendhal, and Lauren Lesser
Brittny
Gastineau and Starlight Randall
Brittny
Gastineau and
Harry Stendhal
Jonas
Mekas and Colette
Maya
Stendhal and Linda Silverman
Maggie
Norris
Rebecca
Silver and Roger Webster
Click
image to visit
Jessica
and Jason Schwalbe with Ariana Rabbani
Vincent
Minuto
Andrea
Pappas and DPC
Barbara
Preminger and friend
Stephanie
Krieger, Pat Altschul, and Brian Stewart
Robin
Verges, Mina-Jacqueline Au, and Elana Safar
Rebecca
Hall and Roger Webster
Colette
and friend
Raul
Suarez, Elisa Wagner, Ron Ferri, and Fran Nelson
Christian
McPherson and Felicia Taylor
Richard
Mauro and Sara Vass
Andrea
Blohm and Ashley Jackson
Leslie
Padgett, Andrea Blohm, and Ashley Jackson
Greg
Gregor and Samantha Kain
Sylvester
and Gillian Miniter
Linda
Silverman and Jeff Scher
R.
Couri Hay,
Linda Mansfield, and Carmine Cassino
DPC,
Jonas Mekas, and JH
Andrew
Black, John Auerbach, and Peter Washkowitz
David
Hirsch, Jason Hirsch, Jeffrey Hirsch, Stefanie Hirsch,
Jonny Friedman, Adam Hirsch, and Lily Stawski
Anita
Sarko
Courtney
Mainardi and Charles Burger
Alli
Lyons, Jason Hirsch, Drew Derisi, Michelle
Liebman, and Nikki Kobrick
Barbara
Preminger, Anne Lacombe, and Eve McGrath
Jonny
Friedman, Lauren Glassberg, and Ben Harris
Yael
Friedman, Andy Rosen, and Stephanie Lerman
Michael
Gross with Mallory and Roy Kean
Marissa
Piropato, Phillip Alden Thomas, Georgina Schaeffer,
Jeffery Caldwell, and Daniel Cappello
Charlie
Scheips and Edward Leffingwell
Cameron
Levkoff, Jesse Feldman, and Georgia Liebman
Talia
Maltz, Anna Cygnar, Lauren Spinner, and Dawny Esposito
For
more about him:
Jonas Mekas: filmmaker, videomaker, film critic, poet, lecturer, curator. Born
into a farming family in Lithuania on December 24, 1922. Imprisoned in a forced
labour camp in Nazi Germany from 1944-45. Studied philosophy at the University
of Mainz from 1946-48. Relocated to the United States on October 29, 1949. Worked
in factories in Brooklyn, New York from 1949 to 1950.
In 1954, Mekas became editor-in-chief of Film Culture magazine. He was the movie
critic for the Village Voice newspaper in New York from 1958-75, and the movie
critic for Soho Weekly News newspaper, also in New York, from 1976-77.
He was
President of New American Cinema Group (Filmmakers Cooperative) from 1961-80,
film curator of the Jewish Museum from 1968-71. He taught film at higher education
centers including Cooper Union, international Center for Photography, M.I.T.,
New School for Social Research, New York University. He lectured on film throughout
the US, Europe, Asian and South America. He has been Program Director and President
of Anthology Film Archives since 1970.
He has befriended Kenneth Anger, Stan
Brakhage, John Cassavetes, Salvador Dali, Miles Davis, Robert Frank, Allen Ginsberg,
Jack Kerouac, Henri Langlois, John Lennon, Norman Mailer, Nico, Yoko Ono, Nam
June Paik, Lou Reed, Andy Warhol. He married Holis Melton in
1974 – parents
of daughter (Oona) and son (Sebastian).
An excerpt from an interview with Jonas Mekas.
For the entire interview, click
here.
JM: In 1950-51, my New York life begins. I keep
stressing New York, because I don't know America. All my American
life has been in New York. New York's movie
life was very busy in 1950. First, on 42nd street between 6th and 8th Avenue,
there were maybe fifteen movie houses, and you could see everything, and spend
all night watching movies. You could see four or five westerns. You know, they
were specializing: westerns, imported European films – 'art' films, they
were then called – comedies, short subjects, newsreels and so on. Now,
if you wanted to see old movies and classics, you went to MoMA, which we did.
And we did not miss a single day, because we wanted to catch up with everything.
Or if you wanted to see newsreels, there was a theater just for newsreels. If
you wanted to see the avant-garde, the new experimental films, you went to Cinema
16 programs. Every month they had a new program. If you were of a more Trotskyite
persuasion, you went to Club Cinema on 6th Avenue and 10th Street, where every
Friday or Saturday night – I don't remember – they showed documentaries
of a leftist persuasion. If you wanted to see very rare early silent films of
various formats, you went to the Theodore Huff Society, again once a week, run
by Herman Weinberg, Bill Everson, Bill Kenly and some other
people. I'm talking
about 1950.
In 1953, I started the first screenings of what was called at that time Experimental
Films. I showed the Whitney Brothers, Gregory Markopoulos, Kenneth Anger.
I started my own screenings at Gallery East, which was on Avenue A and 1st street.
As you
can see, I didn't move very far... [Anthology Film Archives is at 2nd Street
and 2nd Avenue] Also in 1953, a woman by the name of Dorothy Brown had
weekend screenings in her loft on Ludlow Street. I helped her. Around the same
time, Gideon Bachmann was running the Film Study Group, which
I joined. I helped to write notes. Once a week or so, or every two weeks, we
had screenings, usually
with filmmakers present. And on it goes. And if you were clever enough, which
of course I was, I also used to sneak into the New York University. As part of
the film department, George Amberg – who began as a ballet critic, and
wrote a very important book on ballet – was holding screenings of the avant-garde
films for students, but you could sneak in. And he had filmmakers present. That's
where I met Gregory Markopoulos. George was very verbal and perceptive – he
could really go into the work and explain it, he was a very brilliant person.
You could also sneak into the New School for Social Research where Arthur
Knight had classes on the independent, avant-garde, experimental film.
With filmmakers also usually present. So, as you can see, there was a lot going
on. Actually,
the second evening after arriving in New York, I was already at the movies. I
saw The Fall of the House of Usher (Jean Epstein, 1928)
and The
Cabinet of Doctor
Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920) on, I think, 16th Street
or somewhere, at the New
York Film Society run by Rudolf Arnheim.
