FRIENDS REMEMBER GLENN O'BRIEN

“The great Glenn O’Brien just left us I’m sad to say.

Part of the forest is cleared, never to see another like him, absence, farewell, mercy, a loss reverberates in the art firmament.

With him a temple of flying buttresses has ripened and faded into air, taking history with him.

A density of life, lightness of being, virtuoso of style, a wearer of the mask of Warhol who could speak ascertainable truth in this master mask. This cosmic sun that shined astringent, phosphorescence … farewell.

I loved you from afar, not made of the same mat of clouds, noisy leaves, epitaphs and night-winds. You have nothing left to burn; benediction, wit, toasts, holding the chandelier in the cantinas of the art world.

There are things I could say.

” –art critic, Jerry Saltz

“He was committed to keeping alive the Warholian spirit of New York as a fast, dynamic, and infinitely possible place. He was one of the last real New Yorkers in that way: a hustler dressed to the tens like a one-man Rat Pack, a street poet with a million dollar art collection, a philosopher king at the front row of a fashion show. I think he believed in the dream of a young, street-wise New York in his mid-sixties more than I did in my early thirties.

Glenn was so good he could be bad and get away with it—like he was flirting with you as well as hearing your confession. (Years later, when I had to interview Kate Moss for the magazine, her agent responded to my performance with, “You did okay, but you’re no Glenn O’Brien,” to which I wanted to shout, “No, I’m not, there is no other Glenn!”) Glenn demanded a lot from our staff for the new iteration of Interview because the magazine meant so much to him—in a way he was returning to his first battlefield, the hallowed publication that put him on the map. Being true to the legacy of Andy Warhol was also vital; Glenn hung a photo of Warhol in his office, and a year later, when egos got in the way and everything turned sideways, Glenn stormed out of his office for the last time with that photo of Warhol under his arm, a symbolic, Elvis-has-left-the-building goodbye).” –writer, Christopher Bollen, New York magazine

“My years at Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine as its Executive Editor conflated with a few of his when he was writing his Glenn O”Brien’s Beat column He was a real cultural presence in New York. Deeply stylish. I was a bit intimidated by him even though he was always nice to me. The way he carved out his career in the New York media world on his own terms was always an inspiration to me. 

Glenn was the first editor of Interview from 1971 to 1974. After his departure, he continued to write for the magazine and returned as editor several times, with a nearly 20-year association with the title. He was a music critic for the publication in the punk era. He later wrote The Style Guy column for GQ, was Editorial Director of Brant Publications, hosted the access cable show TV Party, is credited with inventing the term “editor-at-large,” was Creative Director of advertising at Barney’s, edited Madonna’s Sex book, wrote several other books, was an early champion and collector of Jean-Michel Basquiat among other artists, and wrote a column for ten years for ArtForum.” –writer, Kevin Sessums

Interviewing Basquiat for his “TV Party”

“Heartbreak. Glenn O’Brien died this morning.

He was the editor of Andy Warhol’s Interview when I met him in 1972– young , handsome, with the features of a medieval knight, all wit , knowledge , erudition and a sly , skeptical take on the world . He never behaved with anything less than the honor , dignity , panache and courage of a knight through the years that followed.” –writer, Joan Juliet Buck

“No much time left for those of us remaining from the old scene. Goodbye Glenn. You were the wittiest and smartest cookie in the Downtown jar (like one Warhol enjoyed collecting perhaps?) It was an honor and extreme pleasure to call you a friend. I am so glad we took the bullet train to Kyoto together back in 1985 (when we were both in Tokyo doing Kiri Teshigahara’s And Steven Pollock’s Art in Action show.) An unforgettable week in Japan. See you in that great majestic golden temple in the mist.” –performance artist, musician, Ann Magnuson

Wearing Warhol’s glasses in 2008. Photo, Todd Eberle

“To celebrate Andy Warhol’s 80th birthday, Glenn commissioned me to photograph Andy’s personal effects from and items from the “Time Capsules” at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh when he edited Interview. He almost put on one of the many of Andy’s wigs, but found them too creepy, so he put on a pair of Andy’s glasses instead.” –photographer, Todd Eberle, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, April, 2008

We’ll let him have the last word. Glenn’s last Instagram post, @lordrochester, 6 weeks ago…

“Andy Warhol died 30 years ago today. I remember thinking “who’s opinion will I care about now?” and I still don’t know. I hope to become more like like him every day. He was and always will be my (dear) boss.” –Glenn O’Brien

Well, they are having some TV party somewhere tonight.

#RIP: WRITER, EDITOR, DOWNTOWN FIXTURE, GLENN O'BRIEN

Glenn O’Brien, writer, editor, and man-about-NYC has died. O’Brien had been combatting a serious illness for years. 

He once described himself like this; 

“I am a writer, editor, copywriter and creative director. I have also worked as a grocery clerk, demolition man, steelworker, waiter, bartender, convention salesman, needlepoint painter, art director, singer, stand up comedian, and record producer.

I’m a Pisces with Aquarius rising and a Cancer moon. I’m also a Fire Boar and right handed.“

An instantly recognizable art world fixture, O’Brien trained his deadpan wit on art, music, and fashion as an editor and contributor for Rolling Stone, Allure, Esquire, and The New Yorker, among others. He wrote long-running, columns for Interview, Artforum, and at Details and GQ.

O’Brien was born in Cleveland. He spent his college years at Georgetown University, where he became friends with the art writer Bob Colacello. O’Brien told the New York Times in 2015,

“They thought, ‘Let’s get some nice clean-cut college kids who aren’t amphetamine addicts and see if they can run the magazine.‘”

In the 1980s, O’Brien had a public-access television show called TV Party, which was a mix of live music, semi-coherent interviews, skits, and general craziness. O’Brien said,

“The show ran on Channel D and Channel J, and was quite popular with the kids. We lucked into following the Robin Byrd Show for a while, and so inherited an audience of horny guys. We also got a big high school following thanks to smoking a bunch of pot and talking shit.”

Guests over the years included the artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Chris Burden, and Robert Mapplethorpe, and musicians David Byrne, Mick Jones, and Iggy Pop. Debbie Harry once stopped by on a pogo stick. O’Brien wrote,

“The show never officially ended. Chris got sick and almost died, I got married and decided I needed to make some money, some people went to rehab, some left town, and some died of AIDS, which had just appeared… We had a good run fucking up television, though. Cursing, getting high, advocating subversion, being party desperados.”

2015 was a busy year for O’Brien. His relationship with GQ ended badly, with him leaving the magazine and its editors assigning a new writer to his column. He was quick to trash their decision in an interview,

“I created the Style Guy, not GQ… Their proprietary attitude toward what I’ve done is not only insulting, but really unoriginal. They could have at least called their replacement the ‘Style Intern.’ ” 

That same year O’Brien launched an online show, Tea at the Beatrice with Glenn O’Brien, a low-key successor to TV Party on M2M/Apple TV, in which chatted informally with his art and fashion friends, including Richard Prince, Olivier Zahm, Inez and Vinnodh, and Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, of Proenza Schouler. He also became an editor at large at Maxim.

We had limited interactions over the years but we had scores of friends in common who will mourn the loss. It's a cliché to say they broke the mold, but we aren't likely to get another one like this anytime soon.

Glenn O’Brien was 70.

With Jean Michel Basquiat on O'Brien's "TV Party"

(via ArtNews)

FRAN LEBOWITZ ON HOW SHE'D IMPROVE NEW YORK (& WHY IT'S STILL THE GREATEST CITY)

The best thing about Interview was always in the title. Before I moved to New York, I learned about the city through Interview magazine (& SNL.) Warhol is gone, but one of it’s earliest writers, the always seriously funny Fran Leibowitz is still around. She started out writing B-movie reviews in 1972 and is in the current issue talking to old friend, artist Francesco Clemente. She still loves New York and Francesco asked her a few questions about how to save the city that has changed SO much in the last 30 years…

Cover by Richard Bernstein, 1981

CLEMENTE: I know you follow politics, and I always thought you would make an excellent mayor of New York.

LEBOWITZ: I have thought that, too.

CLEMENTE: If you were going to run for office in New York, what would be your program, and what kind of qualifications would you declare you have?

LEBOWITZ: The first thing I would do is say, “I don’t care if New York avoided bankruptcy by substituting tourism for the garment business,” which is what happened. These four guys figured out how to lift New York out of this dire financial condition with the campaign, 

“I Love NY.” 

I hated this thing. They used the big Big Apple sign to lure these people who hate New York—because everyone hated New York then—to New York. And in order to do that, you have to change it so they like it. Obviously, I was opposed to this, and I still am. The other day I read that last year 58 million tourists came to New York … where a puny eight million people are trying to live. Unless they own a hotel chain, I don’t think a single one of these eight million people are happy about this. Without these tourists, New York would be fantastic. I don’t want them to come. Stay home! I have a double policy, which would also solve immigration: I would stand at the border of New York City and I would say, 

“You can come here to live, but you can’t come here to visit.” 

If you’re coming here, you better be immigrating. Immigrants are good, tourists are bad. I would stand at the border and say, 

“You’re coming here to live, really? With one suitcase? No, you’re not. Go back.” 

I think that would solve both problems. And just think how fantastic New York would be. The housing problem would be solved completely. Bloomberg was always bragging how many hotels were being built—I remember seeing him on the news, saying, 

“And this is the nine millionth hotel in Queens.” 

Queens! Because it’s everyone’s dream: “Someday I’m going to go to New York and go to Queens.” 

Every place there’s a hotel, there’s one less apartment building. So just think, if there were, say, only 10 percent of the hotels that exist now, there would be all these apartments for people who live in New York, as opposed to people visiting New York. And then all this junk in the theater, we would no longer need the kind of stuff that tourists like. People say, 

“Well, what would you do with Times Square?” 

And I always think, “Gee, I don’t know. There could be butchers and bookstores.” 

Like a city. Things that New Yorkers need. There’s no reason why it has to be the way it is. People say, 

“Oh, did you like New York better when it was filthy and dangerous?” 

No. But why do these things have to be either/or? Couldn’t it be clean, or cleaner. I mean, New York’s not exactly antiseptic. It could be clean and less dangerous, and not horrible, not under a tidal wave of tourists. 

CLEMENTE: You failed to describe your qualifications to be mayor of the city.

LEBOWITZ: Here are my qualifications: I am a New Yorker. I like New York. And I like cities. And it’s not my desire to make New York more suburban. I would personally just like to vet each person. The way the admissions director of Harvard decides who goes to Harvard, I’d like to decide who comes here. I’d like to be the admissions director of New York. And you know what we have enough of? Bankers. I’m sorry, we’re full up. No, no, no. You have an idea for an app? Go to California.

CLEMENTE: There was a brilliant article by Régis Debray—he was a guerrilla guy with Che Guevara—saying that, since the election of the American president has an effect on the life of every citizen of the planet, all citizens of the planet should vote.

LEBOWITZ: Well, you know, so few Americans vote that we may not even notice it. It’s very important who the president of the United States is. America is a great idea, so that’s why it’s a great country. China is not a great idea: capitalism and a dictator. It’s like the two worst possible things you could imagine together. It’s a very bad idea. And it’s also not a modern idea; dictators are an old-fashioned idea. Capitalism, pretty old-fashioned, too. But it’s important who the president is. And even when America is not working that well, it still works better than other places. For instance, I, unfortunately, take the subway a lot. It’s not my preference, but it is my lot in life. You sit or stand in the subway, and you look around—I do, because I don’t have a phone so I’m not playing a game—and you see people. You see a young girl wearing a headscarf, and standing next to her is a Hasid. And if you asked them, 

“Do you like that Jew?” 

She would say, “No, I hate him.” 

“Do you like that girl in the head scarf?” 

“No, I hate her.” 

But here’s the great thing about New York: They leave each other alone. So in New York we have zillions of different kinds of people, many of them hate each other, but violence based on that hatred is really uncommon here. This idea that people have to love and understand each other is absurd. It’s not human nature. But this idea that people cannot kill each other? It actually works here. More than it works in any other place. We have something here that you don’t hear about anymore; we have tolerance. Tolerance is really a better thing than understanding. Because it doesn’t agitate against human nature. Like love does. Or acceptance or understanding. Not only don’t they not understand people different from them, they hardly understand themselves. It’s placing too great a burden on the average intelligence. So forcing people into a situation where they’re supposed to adore each other is probably bad. But letting people get on and off the 6 train without stabbing each other, that’s good.

There’s a LOT more of great interview you can read here. If you live in New York City, you can see her live in conversation with the New York Times‘ Frank Rich at BAM this Friday the 18th. Ticket info here. (via Interview)

#RIP: INGRID SISCHY

Ingrid Sischy, 63, former editor in chief of Interview and a highly regarded writer on culture in general, died Friday morning at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center of breast cancer. Everyone in the art fashion and publishing world knew Ingrid. New York is not such a big town really, especially when it comes to culture and Ingrid was at the center of it for 35+ years.

One of the best and admired editors and writers that straddled the fashion and art worlds, Sischy was born in South Africa and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland. She was editor of Art Forum from ’79 to ’87 and was a photography and fashion critic of the New Yorker from 1988 to 1996. 

In ’97, Ingrid became a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and wrote cover stories about Madonna, Nicole Kidman and Kristen Stewart, as well as big feature stories on John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Keith Haring, Jeff Koons and Jean Michel Basquiat. 

She served as editor of Interview from ’89 to ’08 with her partner, Interview president and publisher Sandy Brant. Graydon Carter wrote a wonder tribute for Vanity Fair today where he said this;

“She shared her life with Sandy Brant. In the beginning they were editor and publisher of Interview magazine. Over the years their relationship became more personal, and once together, they became inseparable. It was rare to see one without the other. At the end, they had been together for 25 years, and married for the last couple of weeks.” 

I worked at several of the same publications that Ingrid worked at, like Vanity Fair, but never at the same time. She and Sandy lived right around the corner and I would see them from time to time on our corner. We had many mutual friends in common but I can’t say I knew her well. Her name came up recently with regard to a specific project and it was generally agreed, she knew her stuff but she could be a tough cookie. She was a well-respected as a cross-pollinator of culture and she was a New York fixture in the same way you might think Fran Lebowitz is. They really don’t make editors with her knowledge like that anymore. She’ll be missed. (Photo, Gasper Tringale)

ERIC FISCHL LEAVES MARY BOONE AFTER 30 YEARS

After more than 30 years together, Eric Fischl just left Mary Boone Gallery. Ron Warren, a director and partner at the gallery says: 

“Eric has wanted to change his working relationship with the gallery. I think he has decided that the art world and the market have changed so much that he wants to concentrate on making his work, and distance himself from being represented by a gallery. We have had a long relationship with Eric, but relationships evolve. Right now, Eric says he wants to concentrate on his work, not be affiliated with a gallery. We respect that and will continue to have a good relationship with him.”

Both Boone and Fischl voiced concerns about the state of the market in a recent article in Interview magazine. The article, written by Fischl, is a conversation between the two about their long working relationship, and the various shifts that have taken place in the art world over the years. Lamenting the lack of vision of today’s collectors, Boone says many collectors… 

“often just want a laundry list of the top names” 

Fischl agrees, adding that... 

“artists are treated more like brand names… There has become this kind of collecting hysteria.”

In the interview, Fischl talked about wanting to work with Boone because he saw her gallery as… 

“a nexus for my generation of artists” who shared a “deep belief generationally that art could change society, that it could change culture. So it had an idealism to it. Your gallery had a glow about it of something really new and fresh. It felt like something different was starting to happen.”

The Art Newspaper could not reach Fischl for comment, but as artist Alan Belcher has noted, his recent work shown at Frieze Art Fair this year says volumes. Take a look here. For me, these public statements are NEVER what’s really going on. In reality, how does leaving one gallery change the art world or your place in it? Well, for one thing, if Fischl is not represented by a gallery now, he’s free sell his work directly and potentially profit greatly. Galleries take 50%, as a general rule, but as an artist gets more established, this can be negotiated. Fischl is obviously established, whatever you may think of his work, and he’ll now be free to manage his career and see what that’s like.

(via The Art Newspaper)

PAIGE POWELL'S PHOTOS OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT

Paige Powell moved to New York determined to work for Interview magazine or Woody Allen, the ambitious arts graduate secured positions with both in less than a month. Powell was quickly accepted into Andy Warhol’s inner circle and became Associate Publisher at Interview, where she was a contributing photographer and writer and by 1983 she was dating Jean-Michel Basquiat who had formed a fast friendship with Warhol. “We went over to Jean-Michel’s loft on Crosby Street and I remember getting off the elevator and Jean-Michel walking right into me like a magnet. We started talking about the show I was planning and he got really excited.” More than twenty years after that first meeting, Powell is revisiting her relationship with Basquiat and sharing her shots of the artist in the exhibition, “Jean-Michel Basquiat, Reclining Nude”. Taken with her 35mm Canon, the archive was catalogued by Pink Martini musician, Thomas Lauderdale who Powell credits with making the show a reality. “The entirety of my archival materials would still be boxed up in cabinets if it weren’t for him.” After the opening, there was a fun dinner with Powell’s pals and everyone participated in musical interludes, with accompaniment by Thomas Lauderdale. “Jean-Michel Basquiat, Reclining Nude” runs through February 22 at the Suzanne Geiss Company.

Paige Powell by Patrick McMullen at "Jean-Michel Basquiat; Reclining Nude" at Suzanne Geiss Company

Top, left, Rufus Wainwright, Justin Vivian Bond and Paige Powell sing “Sixteen Going on Seventeen”; Glen O’Brien and Patrick McMullen do “Danny Boy”; Gus Van Sant tries “Moon River”; Susanne Bartsch and Lauderdale went with “Falling In Love Again”; David LaChapelle sang “Fly Me To the Moon; Mr. Mickey finishes with “There’s No Business Like Show Business”