#RIP: PHOTOGRAPHER, ROXANNE LOWIT

Beloved fashion photographer Roxanne Lowit has died.

Her Instagram account posted the message last night,

We are very sad to say we lost a remarkable woman today.

Roxanne Lowit was a legendary photographer who provided an intimate look into the world of fashion and showed us a side of nightlife that most people didn’t get to see. Roxanne was a woman who believed in magic. Roxanne was a bright,creative light. A great friend who enriched others’ lives in so many ways – she was loved by many and will be greatly missed.

Rest In Peace my love. You’re the best.

For over three decades, Lowit captured the faces, personalities, of the world of art, fashion, music and nightlife. The list goes on an on, a who’s who of pop culture; Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali, Kate Moss, Yves Saint-Laurent, Johnny Depp, Madonna, Pamela Anderson, Naomi Campbell, George Clooney… you name them, she shot them.

A native New Yorker, Lowit was originally a textile designer. She went to F.I.T. but she found her true calling by taking her camera where nobody else thought to go at the time: backstage at fashion shows. Everyone else was fixated on the runway, Roxanne was behind-the-scenes where the real action was.

Lowit’s photography has appeared in every major fashion title in America, Italy, France, England, and Germany; Vogue, Allure, Vanity Fair, Tatler, GQ, W, and many others.

With Roxanne at the New Museum opening, where I showed my “Drink Up” painting, in 2014

Before becoming a painter and writer, I worked as an art director for several magazines and would hire Roxanne often. We became friends, but she knew EVERYONE and everyone knew Roxanne. Often while we were all having fun at a party, she was working –and playing– she mixed the two seamlessly. That’s how she got such great candid pictures like those below. She was nice and fun and gossipy and a real New Yorker.

Roxanne did four books; Moments (1990), People (2001), Backstage Dior (2009), and Roxanne Lowit Photograhs Yves Saint Laurent (2014).

Her work has been exhibited in many of the world’s major museums, including the Met, Whitney, the Victoria & Albert, and the Andy Warhol Museum. Check out her work here, you’ll be amazed.

Roxanne, you’ll be missed by many. I’ll see you backstage, honey…

A DOOR FROM THE HOTEL CHELSEA JUST SOLD FOR $100,000 (WHO WROTE A MASTERPIECE BEHIND IT?)

Last week, 52 beat-up wooden doors went up for sale at Guernsey’s auction house. But it’s not the doors themselves but what happened behind them that had bidders clamoring. Arlan Ettinger, president of Guernsey’s said they’re,

“anything but beautiful.”

These doors were the physical entry into New York’s bohemian renaissance and they all saw lots of sex, drugs, and and rock and roll too, at the infamous Hotel Chelsea. 

• Oddly, the door that once led to the actual Doors’ Jim Morrison, only fetched $7,500..?

• A door that once opened for Madonna went for $13,000… as did Jimi Hendrix‘s.

• The door to where Andy Warhol filmed Edie Sedgwick for the iconic Chelsea Girls went for $52,000.

• $85,000 bought Room 424’s door, where Janis Joplin and Leonard Cohen created the dirty reality for his line ”giving me head on an unmade bed while a limousine waited in the street” immortalized in Cohen’s Chelsea Hotel No. 2. 

• And the door to Room 225 is where in 1965 Bob Dylan wrote what some consider to be THE best album ever, Blonde on Blonde. That one went for $100,000. 

The $100,000 door

These artifacts of New York cultural history were destined for the dump but for the work of former Chelsea Hotel tenant Jim Georgiou. Five years ago, he salvaged the doors after they were thrown out during the hotel’s renovation. Homeless at the time, Georgiou insisted that half the proceeds from the auction be donated to City Harvest, a nonprofit organization that collects and redistributes food from restaurants, bakeries, and greenmarkets. 

He told Artnet, 

“Having been homeless myself, I appreciate all City Harvest does to help those who are in need of help, and giving back to a charitable organization, to me, honors the memory of the Chelsea. It was a place that was initially designed to be a collective—where everyone shared what they had with their neighbor.”

The Hotel Chelsea has provided room and board to some of the most preeminent figures in culture from Mark Twain and Tennessee Williams to Allen Ginsberg, Valerie Solanas, Simone de Beauvoir, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs. (I once took Quentin Crisp to meet Burroughs in his room there.)

Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey there. 

Scores of artists and musicians from Jean Tinguely to Julian Schnabel to Diego Rivera and Jackson Pollock, Yves Klein, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Willem de Kooning, Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, Rene Ricard, and Sid Vicious, to name just a few. It was also home to the painter Alphaeus Philemon Cole, who at the time of his death in 1988, was the oldest man to ever have lived, at 112 years old. 

It’s been bought and sold recently, with renovations set to be completed by 2019 but the hotel will surely never see it’s glory days as the cultural epicenter it once was.

To read more about the history of the hotel, you can go here.

(Photo, Wikimedia Commons)

#RAWHIDE CELEBRATES THE COWBOY IN ART

Writer Philipp Meyer says in his novel The Son;

“The cowboy has been written about as if it were the pinnacle of freedom… In fact, it was a sleepless drudgery almost beyond imagination.”

The new Whitney just opened with a show, America Is Hard To See, and to me, this exhibit serves as a sidebar to that show idea. From Clint Eastwood & John Wayne westerns to Tom of Finland and Marlboro ads, the image of the cowboy is central to our cultural identity in the U.S. #Rawhide, curated by Dylan Brant and Vivian Brodie, examines the role artists have played in shaping this archetype and illustrating the way in which they have been able to continue interpret and articulate the relationship to the our identity. I’m originally from Texas and when I’ve met foreign nationals in the past, the first thing they think of (besides Kennedy’s assassination) is a cowboy, which, given your POV can a critique and a reflection of our nation’s values and dreams. This show is an homage to the longevity and durability of this uniquely American symbol. Curator Dylan Brant says;

“Ultimately, this show deals with the fabrication of a figure and how artists have influenced that fabrication.”

#Rawhide runs through July 11 at Venus Over Manhattan. For more images and info, go here.

NEW WHITNEY: A PEEK INSIDE "AMERICA IS HARD TO SEE"

In my previous post, I gave you my take on the Whitney from the outside. When the new Whitney Museum of American Art opens doors to step inside, on May 1, 2015, the first exhibit is selection of works from the Museum’s permanent collection, called “America is Hard To See“. It features over 600 works by some 400 artists, from about 1900 up to the present. The exhibition’s title is taken from a poem by Robert Frost and the show delves deep into the Whitney’s collection, reflecting the way artists think and work. All mediums are presented together without hierarchy. Numerous pieces that have rarely, if ever, been shown, appear alongside familiar icons, in an effort to challenge how we think about American art. With 600+ works it is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to even scratch the surface visually, the scope of the show is so broad, so, I’ve just introduced the galleries here that get progressively larger as you go down each level. So many treasures in one gallery after the next, I could go on and on… I’ve been to the museum twice now, and I was so excited by the whole, that I'll return again and again to focus on seeing individual works. There’s a great, new handbook of the collection that I recommend. No matter HOW much you know (or think you know) there are artists and work to discover that you’ve missed, I’ll bet.

My favorite galleries, for many reasons, Abstract Expressionism & Pop, also happen to represent my own interests as an artist and the time that I entered the planet. There are real masterpieces in the center gallery that work SO well together it kind of made me giddy; Alex Katz‘s Ada alongside Warhol‘s Nose Job; Jasper John’s Three Flags next to Alan D’Arcangelo‘s Madonna & Child. But you also get Calder’s Circus, choice Edward Hopper & several sublime Georgia O’Keefe‘s on the top floor.... 

The fifth floor with the most recent work represents my time in New York City and there are many friends and aquantainces represented here; Keith Haring, Jean Michel Basquiat, Mark Morrisroe, David Wojnarowicz, Peter Hujar, Robert Mapplethorpe… all dead by AIDS with the exception of Jean Michel. Great work on that floor but death and loss is represented by the missing in its center and at the far end, a painting of planes crashing into the World Trade Center. You can now see the newly opened WTC from the terraces, so, we don’t forget, but life goes on. NYC and humanity is self-renewing and that’s hopeful and exciting. I’ll tell you the whole city is excited by this new museum opening. At dinner the other night, at the Polo Bar, I brought the aforementioned handbook to my pal Veronica Hinman for her birthday and the bag was sitting on the banquet. A twenty-something waiter came over to ask if I had been to the museum and he was SO excited to hear about it. This is New York City, kids, we don’t get that excited about much! You see De Niro on the street and it’s like, “Hi, Bob.” So, come and see for yourself and GET INTO IT. For more info, you can go here.

"HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD"

The exhibit “Hooray for Hollywood!” will feature works feature works by artists like Laurie Anderson, Robert Mapplethorpe, Izhar Patkin, Andy Warhol, and William Wegman that pay homage to the late gallery director Holly Solomon’s achievements, both as a gallerist and Pop icon, as well as the enduring friendships she fostered with her artists. “Hollywood,” opens tonight at Pavel Zoubok Gallery and Mixed Greensin New York City. Holly studied acting with Lee Strasberg and reveals her theatrical side in a 1976 work by Mapplethorpe – a black-and-white triptych presents Solomon puffing on a cigarette in a bed. In the final image, she reclines fully with eyes closed and dramatically leans her head back, as though she’s reached a state of peace. She appears charismatic and alluring in the 1963–4 photo booth strips by Andy Warhol.

I knew Holly and took this Polaroid of her (bottom, which is not in the show but I remembered I had it so I thought I’d dig it out) I used to design invitations and catalogues for her Fifth Avenue gallery and at the time, I had no aspirations to be in the art world, thank God, or she would have scared the shit out of me. She was an intimidating character but we got along well. Even if she was yelling at me about something that went wrong, it never really got me upset. She DID study to be an actress, and at the time I thought, “it’s all an act”. She had perfected the bitchy, intimidating New York gallerist and she played the part to a T. As they say, she was a real character – now one of legend.

Robert Mapplethorpe, 1976

Trey Speegle, 1987