The latest in Will Nunziata‘s series of Judgmental Maps is hipster central, Williamsburg, Brooklyn (sorry Portland). What do you think? From “Tattooed Moms” to "Probably Jews” and “Yep, More Jews” to “Ended Up At a Party Here Once”, Will seems to have covered all the hipster-cliché bases. Click here to see more Judgemental maps and to view it larger and find your sweet/must-avoid spot.
A JOHN WATERS RETROSPECTIVE & YES, HE WAS DIVINE
They are forever linked in cinema history; Harris Glenn Milstead and John Waters. Waters you know, and Milstead is much better known by his stage name Divine, who People magazine once called the “Drag Queen of the Century”. The 2013 documentary I Am Divine is now playing on Showtime while, John Waters is being celebrated with Fifty Years of John Waters: How Much Can You Take?, a film retrospective now playing at Lincoln Center. Neither Waters or Divine would be who they are without the other and this documentary celebrates that with some of the best talking heads you could ever get; Jackie Beat, Brenda Bergman, Greg Gorman, Mink Stole, Michael Musto, John Epperson, Holly Woodlawn, Bruce Vilanch and more. Divine got involved with Waters’s acting troupe, the Dreamlanders in the 60s, starring in his very first films Mondo Trasho (1969), Multiple Maniacs (1970), Pink Flamingos(1972) and Female Trouble (1974) which all are now cult classics.
“They always refer to my films as cult movies and I’m never quite sure what they mean. All cult really means today is that something is popular and no one foresaw its success.”
Divine later starred with 50s heartthrob Tab Hunter in the mainstream successes Polyester(1981) and Lust in the Dust (1985). In the early 80s Divine became a disco diva and achieved global success with hits like “You Think You’re a Man”, “I’m So Beautiful”, and “Walk Like a Man”. Sadly, Divine died suddenly in 1988 of a massive heart attack while still basking in the glow of the hit Hairspray (1988). It’s a cliché to say, but it’s true – Divine paved the way for all of the future Rajas and Jinx Monsoons and the Bianca del Rios of tomorrow.
Fifty Years of John Waters: How Much Can You Take? is at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, September 5-14. I Am Divine is currently on Showtime and Netflix.
PICASSO UPDATE: EXIT CENTER STAGE
In its removal from its place of 55 years at The Four Seasons restaurant, the 95 year-old “Le Tricorne,” a 19-by-20-foot stage curtain painted by Pablo Picasso, did not suffer a single tear. When it was rolled up on the tube, some workers rubbed it as though it were an ancient scroll and it left the Seagrams Building without ever touching the ground. After its restoration it will be on display at The New York Historical Society.
Photos, Michael Nagle for The New York Times
BRICE & HELEN MARDEN OPEN HOTEL TIVOLI UPSTATE
Art power couple, Brice and Helen Marden bought the Hotel Tivoli (for $1.5 million) near their upstate home and studios and have spent a year or so renovating it into a homey retreat. The transformed 10-room Hotel Tivoli now has art by friends like Franceso Clemente and the late Rene Ricard and has a newly reopened 100-seat restaurant called The Corner. Brice told The Wall Street Journal;
“There’s always been a place here, and it’s good that it stays going. I’m anxious to get it open.”
The Mardens are hoping that the hotel and restaurant will attract locals and the Bard College crowd, as well as visitors from Hudson just a bit to the north. The vintage furniture in the hotel was bought upstate by the Mardens, who collaborated with the Reunion Goods & Services on the renovation. The personal details made their way to to the door moldings, which are a custom gray paint mixed by Brice. Apparently, the secret to the color —referred to as “Brice Gray”— is adding some cadmium orange to a regular old Benjamin Moore gray. Brice’s canvases sell for millions. (A small one is like $3 million+, which would buy and renovate the Hotel Tivoli, with plenty left over...)
In addition to their nearby residence, Rose Hill, they also own several other houses and multiple studios (including a huge West Village spread and a place on Hydra in Greece). And they already have another hotel, as well the Golden Rock Inn on Nevis in the Carribean, which they bought in 2006. Says Helen;
“We each have a hobby. Golden Rock is mine, and this is Brice’s. But this is the end of our hotel chain.”
For more pictures and the full article, go here. Photos by Tina Tyrell
THE HIGHLINE'S PHASE 3 OPENS IN 2 WEEKS
I don’t have to tell you about The Highline, right? If you’ve not walked it, you must have heard of the elevated tracks, originally used to offload goods from trains to storage, repurposed 5 years ago into an imaginative elevated urban park. It’s success has been off the charts. The entrance is a block from my house, so I use it to get to Chelsea (as long as I don’t have Lamonte in tow, as there are no dogs allowed, a fact that used to upset me, but I get why now. Phase 3 is set to open on Sunday, September 21. This section starts at 30th street and goes west toward the river and then wraps around the new development, Hudson Yards which is being built over the existing train depot underground. One remaining section, the “10th Avenue spur”, where there will be “an extraordinary, sheltered, and vegetated interior room” will not be opening until construction is completed on the 52-story tower tower that straddles this section of the park in late 2015.
THE PICASSO HAS (ALMOST) LEFT THE BUILDING
My first real job in New York City was as a host at The Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram’s building. It has been a New York institution for some 55 years and the design of both the Bar and Pool rooms, by Philip Johnson (who officed upstairs up until his death) are classics of modern design. (They don’t look like much in pictures, but in person, they are mega-chic and almost imposing.) You enter on the ground floor and come up into the Bar Room, which is connected to the Pool Room, by a long hallway with “Le Tricorne,” a Picasso wall hanging, along one wall. The famous Picasso will exit the restaurant at midnight tomorrow. The focus of a nasty dispute between Seagram Building owner Aby Rosen’s RFR and the Landmarks Conservancy, it has been in the New York news of late: Rosen wanted to move the art, the Landmarks Commission said it was too fragile. In June, they agreed to move it to the New York Historical Society, at Rosen’s expense, where experts from Art Installation Design and Auer’s Rigging will use special equipment restoring it. Four Seasons co-owner Julian Niccolini (who was there when I worked there some 34 years ago!) said this of the piece;
“…it will be here for the next few days. During that time, we’ll enjoy it and give it the standing ovation it deserves after nearly six decades as the backdrop of wild parties and quiet moments when families celebrate life’s milestones. Everyone is welcome to stop in and see it before it leaves.”
Actually, one more now… and will it ever return? And what of the other rumor that Rosen also wants to evict The Four Seasons and open his own restaurant in the same space? He would be slightly more popular in this town, if he bought the Statue of Liberty and painted a logo on it. Note: After its restoration, the mural will be on display permanently at The New York Historical Society.
JOAN RIVERS ON NEW YORK (+ AN EERIE OCURRANCE)
New York magazine’s Jennifer Vineyard spoke to Joan Rivers last year and earlier this year about her childhood in, and favorite parts of, New York. (I swear, as I’m typing this, just now Elton’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road comes on iTunes. Read on and you’ll see why tears are welling in my eyes…)
“We were right off of Eastern Parkway, which was all leafy and green. Everybody knew everybody. It was a terrific place. You could ride your bike. You were totally safe… But New York was the magic city. New York was where you took the subway in and you came out and you were either in Times Square or you were on Fifth Avenue. New York was Oz. All I wanted to do was get out of Brooklyn and get into Oz. All I wanted to do was find that Emerald Road, the Emerald City, the Yellow Brick Road. That’s all I wanted.
New York has so many opportunities. You want to be an artist, it’s there. You want to go into publishing, it’s there. You want to do fashion, it’s there. New York gives a child choices; it’s not a one-horse town. It’s not like Houston: You go into oil, or you don’t go into anything. Life is an adventure, and New York is the place to have it. I tape Fashion Police in Los Angeles, and I’m on the red eye home Friday nights because I want the weekend in New York.
This is my ideal day. Saturday morning: I love to get up to go to a museum. I always take a taxi, and only open the door into the bike lane. Because I love to see how many Citi Bike riders I can pick off. I love to spend mornings at MoMA, where I eat M&Ms and I sneeze on Jackson Pollocks, just to see who can tell.
On the more straightforward side: Cemetery tours are fascinating. One, I get to see my friends, but two, for example, and usually they give you tours, Brooklyn’s Green-Wood cemetery alone, they have Louis Comfort Tiffany buried there, Henry Steinway is buried there, Boss Tweed is buried there, Samuel Morse is buried there, and Horace Greeley, founder of the New York Tribune. It’s amazing, when you go back and see who lived in our city, and who decided to be buried in our city.
And I love walking my dogs in New York, because I like making citizen’s arrests of people who don’t pick up. Oh, I am so on to them. I’m bending over and picking it up — so should you.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’m never bored in this city.”
To read the rest go to New York magazine.
A $3.2 MILLION COMIC BOOK + A $38.1 MILLION CAR
The World’s Most Expensive Comic Book
An original Superman comic, sold for 10 cents at a West Virginia newsstand in 1938, was purchased at auction Sunday night for $3.2 million, making it the most expensive comic book ever sold. The copy of Action Comics No. 1, which features a caped Superman lifting an automobile, was sold on EBay by Darren Adams of Pristine Comics, above. The previous record for a comic book was $2.1 million, for another Action Comics No. 1, sold by Nicolas Cage in 2011 to assist paying his massive debts. Cage purchased the comic in 1997 for $110,000. (FYI, Nic was cast as Superman in Tim Burton’s ill-fated, never produced filmSuperman Lives and he named his son Kal-El, Superman’s birth name.)
Action Comic No. 1 had an initial print run of 200,000 copies, but only 100 or so survived, and most of those have had some restoration work done to them. Purchased off a newsstand by a man from West Virginia in 1938, it was stored in a cedar chest “at high altitude” for four decades. A couple of owners and more than 30 years later, Darren Adams purchased it for seven figures. He first saw the copy in a bank vault.
“It wasn’t just a copy of Action Comics No. 1. It was THE copy. I was floored. The emotion was overwhelming.”
Adams and EBay are donating 1% of the sale price to the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation for spinal-cord injury and paralysis research.
The Most Expensive Car Ever Sold At Auction
The 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO Berlinetta, reportedly one of only 39 made, sold for $38,115,000 at Bonhams in England. The sale easily topped the previous record of any car ever sold at auction – $30 million for a 1954 Mercedes-Benz W196R F1 single-seat racer, sold last year at Bonhams. The Ferrari GTO was developed to race in the 1962 3-liter class FIA GT World Championship series, but it was involved in a crash early in its life that killed the driver, and was subsequently repaired. Experts say a crash involving a Ferrari of its type doesn’t decrease the value – it appears to only to increase the mystique. BTW, for about the same money you can get a used Gulfstream G550 (for around $33 Million) and with the $5 Million or so leftover you could buy a 2014 Lamborghini Veneno Roadster. Just sayin’.
UNDER THE (FIGURE) INFLUENCE @ PHILLIPS NEW YORK
September in New York is of course, back to school, Fashion Week, the fall season of Broadway, Chelsea gallery openings and art auctions, among other things. Philips‘ Under the Influence is a catch all name to sell some art. Not as blue chip as Christie’s and Sotheby’s but nonetheless a player, it’s always fun to see Phillips catalogue and estimates (and then check back to see what sold for what and what failed to sell at all.) I’ve cherry-picked my favorite figurative works from the latest hodgepodge collection of well-known (and lesser-known) names to make my own little curated exhibit that only exists here (…and The Wow Report) Although you won't see the uncensored Wolfgang Tillman's "Spitting on Dick" there.) You can see lots of other non-figurative (and non-pornographic) work, all 257 lots, here. What else do you have to do on a Sunday? OK, well then, get going.
CHECK OUT HIRST'S ($57,000,000) CASTLE
Well, it’s not really a castle but I like the headline pun – so sue me. Yes, the richest artist in the world ($300+ million) just bought this five-story, 18 bedroom manse for $57 million. Commissioned by the Prince Regent, and considered one of the finest examples of its kind, it was built by the architect John Nash in 1811. Its imposing facade and half-acre garden make it one of the most unique houses in Central London. It was owned for nearly 50 years by Anne Van Lanschot and her businessman husband, Ian Mackeson-Sandbach. They bought it soon after they were married, but after Ian’s death in 2012, Anne had decided it was time to move on.
“When we bought it, my only condition was that it had a garden. We were at a party – the Queen Mother was there too – and noticed a For Sale sign outside the house, and bought it. Crazy, really.”
Hirst already has an extensive property portfolio. His main residence is a 300-year-old farmhouse in Combe Martin, North Devon, on 24 acres, but he has also has a beach home in Mexico and Toddington Manor, the magnificent 300-room mansion in the Cotswolds. It was designed by Lord Sudeley and built in 1820 with a style later echoed in the Houses of Parliament. Poverty forced the fourth Lord Sudeley to sell it in 1894. A retired businessman, David Wickens, bought it in the early Seventies and ran it as a school for foreign students. But after the school closed, it stood empty for 20 years, falling into disrepair, before it was bought by Hirst for around $5 million in 2008. It will no doubt take tens of millions to restore and renovate. According to Hirst it will house his ever-expanding blue chip art collection (Warhol, Bacon, Freud and likely some Hirst too) and be open to the public “sometime toward the end of my life.”