(Ideal) Madison Avenue Saturday Excursion: Exhibition of the Private Collection of Robert Rauschenberg at Gagosian Gallery

Note:  It is difficult to imagine a more splendid way to spend a Saturday than visiting and viewing this exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery at 980 Madison Avenue.  The gallery press release which follows is incredibly enticing and promises a view into a superb collection of paintings and sculptures curated for his own pleasure and, I would imagine, with at least a slight nod toward posterity, by a master modern artist.

          With this exhibition, a posthumously published Robert Rauschenberg, the art and communication continues (mostly) unabated.

Andy Warhol:  Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg (1967)

NEW YORK, N.Y.- Gagosian Gallery, in collaboration with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, presents “The Private Collection of Robert Rauschenberg,” selections from Rauschenberg's personal art collection. This is the first time that Rauschenberg’s collection has been publicly presented and that an artist’s collection has been exhibited at the gallery. It follows the acclaimed introductory survey exhibition of Rauschenberg’s own work presented at Gagosian West 21st Street in 2010. Proceeds from the collection help fund the endowment established for the Foundation’s philanthropic activities.

        An artist’s collection is a rare resource, charged with anecdotes of how and why and where works were acquired, as well as whether they represented epistemic interests, or they were used for reference in the creation of new works. This fascinating exhibition provides special insight into Rauschenberg’s broader inspirations as well as his friendships and affinities, the causes he supported, and his personal philanthropic initiatives.

Marcel Duchamp:  

Above: Bottlerack (detail of base) (1960 Duchamp-signed replica readymade)

Below:  Bottlerack (full view)(1920 Duchamp-signed replica readymade for Suzanne Duchamp)

          A game-changing figure in post-war American art, Rauschenberg bridged all traditional boundaries between medium and genre and forever changed the relationship between artist, image, and viewer. He quickly identified as his driving energies and motivations the incidental, the immediate, and the perception of a presence greater than his own artistic virtuosity. Rauschenberg truly believed in the communicative and transformative potential of art and throughout his life he devoted his creative energies equally to artistic and philanthropic activities. In 1970 he founded Change, Inc. to assist artists financially in emergency situations, and in the 1980s he inaugurated ROCI (Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange), a pattern-breaking, collaborative, global exhibition project that forged entirely new artistic territory in international dialogue and peace-keeping. In 1990 he formed the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation to benefit and promote awareness of the causes and groups close to his heart. Activities included educational art programs, environmental and humanitarian campaigns, as well as grants and direct assistance to artistic collaborations. Since Rauschenberg’s death in 2008, the Foundation is responsible for maintaining this legacy as well as the expansion of philanthropic activities consistent with his personal view that “Art can change the world.”

Jasper Johns, Map, 1960


          In addition to his philanthropic spirit and his championing of positive change, Rauschenberg was also acknowledged to be one of the most generous and inquisitive artists of his time, passionately engaged in, and supportive of, the art of others. Over a lifetime, he acquired through exchanges, gifts, and purchases, an astonishingly rich collection of artworks by seminal forbears (Joseph Beuys, Marcel Duchamp, René Magritte, Edweard Muybridge); a wide circle of friends, including choreographers and composers (Trisha Brown, John Cage, John Chamberlain, Merce Cunningham, Oyvind Fahlstrom, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Karl Heinz Stockhausen, Jean Tinguely, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Susan Weil); and younger colleagues (David Byrne, Robert Mapplethorpe, Brice Marden, Bruce Nauman, Ed Ruscha).

Ed Ruscha:  Romeo, With Contraceptive Ghost (1980)

          Some of these artworks—such as Duchamp’s Bottlerack (1960), Cage’s original scores, Marden’s Choice (1967), and Ruscha’s Romeo, With Contraceptive Ghost (1980), represent milestones in recent contemporary art history; others, such as Warhol’s Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg (1967), John Chamberlain’s jewel-like sculpture Homer (1960) and Trisha Brown’s vigorous notations are of a different order, intimate and highly personal, though no less potent. Whether masterpiece or token in the general order of things, Rauschenberg ascribed equal importance to all and this exhibition of the art with which he surrounded himself seeks to reflect the breadth, openness and sincerity of his vision.

          A catalogue of selected works from the collection is currently being prepared by Gagosian Gallery and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg in his Pearl Street studio, NY, ca. 1956
© Jasper Johns/ Licensed by VAGA, New York

The Novelist (W.H. Auden, December 1938)

Encased in talent like a uniform,

The rank of every poet is well known;

They can amaze us like a thunderstorm,

Or die so young, or live for years alone.

They can dash forward like hussars;  but he

Must struggle out of his boyish gift and learn

How to be plain and awkward, how to be

One after whom none think it worth to turn.

For, to achieve its lightest wish, he must

Become the whole of boredom, subject to

Vulgar complaints like love, among the Just

Be just, among the Filthy filthy too,

And in his own weak person, if he can,

Must suffer dully all the wrongs of man.

Groom Sues Photographer, Demands New Wedding (From The New York Times, November 3, 2011)

NOTE:  Just the oddest, stupidest story and another example (supplementing Watergate where all those lawyers were sent to jail) illustrating why lawyers are held in generally low regard.

Without belaboring the matter, I should mention that after Caroline and I were married, our wedding photographer unexpectedly disappeared for about six months, causing my parents consternation, which trickled down on us since it was Caroline who had engaged him.  He was a very good photographer, who had previously published a book of images of Elvis Presley impersonators.  Once we caught up with him, he was semi-chagrined, but everyone was happy with his work.  That being said, the wedding itself was a pretty tense affair and the pictures (for us at least) captured that much too memorably, so we dispersed copies to interested parties, retaining none for ourselves.  I cannot imagine restaging either that particular ceremony or re-engaging our photographer.  I would, however, re-marry my wife and celebrate this publicly any number of times (we've already done this once on the beach in Cabo San Lucas, which was splendid), varying the guest list a bit and missing terribly certain dearly departed souls.

Dan Fried, an owner of H & H Photographers, called a demand for $48,000 to recreate a wedding “an abuse of the legal system.”

By:  JOSEPH BERGER

Of all the many things that make up a wedding, few are more important than the photographs. 

Long after the last of the cake has grown stale and the tossed bouquet has wilted, the photos endure, stirring memories and providing vivid proof that the day of one’s dreams took place.

So it is not particularly surprising that one groom, disappointed with his wedding photos, decided to sue. 

The photographers had missed the last dance and the bouquet toss, the groom, Todd J. Remis of Manhattan, said.

But what is striking, said the studio that took the pictures, is that Mr. Remis’s wedding took place in 2003 and he waited six years to sue. And not only has Mr. Remis demanded to be repaid the $4,100 cost of the photography, he also wants $48,000 to recreate the entire wedding and fly the principals to New York so the celebration can be re-shot by another photographer.

Re-enacting the wedding may pose a particular challenge, the studio pointed out, because the couple divorced and the bride is believed to have moved back to her native Latvia.

Although Justice Doris Ling-Cohan of State Supreme Court in Manhattan dismissed most of the grounds for the lawsuit, like the “infliction of emotional distress,” she has allowed the case to proceed to determine whether there was indeed a breach of contract. But she displayed a good deal of amusement about the lawsuit’s purpose in an opinion in January that quoted lyrics from the Barbra Streisand classic “The Way We Were.”

“This is a case in which it appears that the ‘misty watercolor memories’ and the ‘scattered pictures of the smiles ... left behind’ at the wedding were more important than the real thing,” the judge wrote. “Although the marriage did not last, plaintiff’s fury over the quality of the photographs and video continued on.” 

  

'Unacceptable' pictures
 

Mr. Remis is suing H & H Photographers, a 65-year-old studio known fondly among thousands of former and current Bronx residents because it chronicled their weddings, bar mitzvahs and communions.

One of the two founders, Curt Fried, escaped Nazi-occupied Vienna in September 1939 as a 15-year-old and was drafted into the United States Army, where he learned to shoot pictures assisting cameramen along the legendary Burma Road supply line to China during World War II. Mr. Fried recalled that in the late 1940s, Arthur Fellig, the celebrated street photographer known as Weegee, twice sought work at the studio when he needed money, but was turned down because he did not own a suit. (N.b. Weegee detail bolded by me because it's so interesting.)

In November 2003, Mr. Remis, an equity research analyst, and his fiancée, Milena Grzibovska, stepped into the H & H studio, which was then in Riverdale, met with Mr. Fried and signed a contract to have photographs and videotape taken of their wedding the next month — on Dec. 28 — for $4,100.

It was a small party, with fewer than 40 guests, at Castle on the Hudson in Tarrytown. Photographs show a cheerful bride and groom surrounded by delighted relatives, including Ms. Grzibovska’s mother, Irina, and her sister Alina, who traveled from Latvia. 

But a month after the wedding, when Mr. Remis returned to the studio to look over the proofs, he complained that the three-person crew had missed the last 15 minutes — the last dance and the bouquet toss. He noted in a deposition last July that the employees at H & H did not respond in a courtly fashion.

“I remember being yelled at more than I have ever been yelled at before,” Mr. Remis said.

In his lawsuit, he also complained that the photographs were “unacceptable as to color, lighting, poses, positioning” and that a video, which he had expected to record the wedding’s six hours, was only two hours long.

“I need to have the wedding recreated exactly as it was so that the remaining 15 percent of the wedding that was not shot can be shot,” he testified.

Mr. Fried, now 87, chuckles at this idea: “He wants to fly his ex-wife back and he doesn’t even know where she lives.”

Mr. Remis, who said at his deposition that he has not been employed since 2008, and his lawyer, Frederick R. McGowen, did not return messages left on their phones. Ms. Grzibovska did not respond to a message left through her Facebook page. The next court hearing is scheduled for Thursday.

Mr. Fried said Mr. Remis left the studio in 2004 with 400 proofs — essentially small photographs used for selecting a few dozen photographs for the album; Mr. Remis claims “the office kept everything.” But a 2004 magazine published by Mr. Remis’s alma mater, Bowdoin College, which is also online, displays a photograph of the bride and groom in a feature on alumni weddings. Mr. Fried said it was a photograph his firm took. 

'Abuse of the legal system'?
 

The couple separated around 2008 and their divorce, which Mr. Remis contends was amicable, was finalized in 2010. Mr. Remis sued in 2009, just before the statute of limitation was about to expire, according to Mr. Fried.

Mr. Remis testified that he wanted photographs of the wedding, even if it ended in divorce and even if Mr. Fried contended he already had them.

“It was unfortunate in its circumstances,” he said, “but we are very much happy with the wedding event and we would like to have it documented for eternity, for us and our families.”

Mr. Fried retired in 2004 and turned his half of the business over to his son Dan, who now operates the studio with Lawrence Gillet, a son of the other founder, from a loft in Irvington, in Westchester County. 

Dan Fried said that the costs of defending the lawsuit had already matched the amount sought by Mr. Remis and that it was hurting his business’s bottom line. He said the case was “an abuse of the legal system.”

Mr. Remis’s lawyer works for Goodwin Procter, where Mr. Remis’s father, Shepard M. Remis, is a litigation partner. The younger Mr. Remis has testified that he is paying his lawyer himself.

Curt and Dan Fried are paying their lawyer, Peter Wessel, themselves, they said, and the costs — $50,000 — the time the suit has taken and the distress have taken a toll. 

“I had a good life, thank God,” Curt Fried said, “and at the end of my life this hits me in the face.” 

Self (Involved)

 Mr. Chips

        It is not in doubt that the most self-involved people I know, or have ever known, share the same profession. They are all college professors, all tenured and, I would say (based on honors and accolades they have received), highly esteemed in their narrow fields of largely irrelevant studies.

Professor Indiana Jones

        It would be painful to recite details of their near complete narcissism and would be far more fun to tell jokes about it, or make valid (and only  slightly extreme) comparisons between their behavior and that of other self-obsessed characters like the ones Tony Roberts performed so amusingly and convincingly in Play It Again, Sam and Annie Hall.  Like the fictional Dick Christie in the first movie and Rob in the second, these people are very hard to "reach," both figuratively and literally.  Making meaningful contact with them is, as some people say, like trying to get an appointment to see the Pope.

Tony Roberts as Dick Christie in Play It Again, Sam

 

        When I was in college, I held my professors in almost uniformly high regard and did not notice (in most cases) whether or not they were as blinkered as my contemporaries are.  Because I worked on campus during  several summers, I got to see many of them in quiet, "non-business" moments and, based on that, I do not think so.  They actually seemed pretty normal and to have an enthusiasm for life, family, friends (and summer) that was infectious.

Professor Edward Jessup (in Altered States) giving self-involvement a bad name and reaping (temporarily) just desserts. Blair Brown saves him and brings him back to himself.  I love Altered States.

 

        I myself am not terribly self-involved, just looking for other selves to be involved with.  I'm what you might call "lonely sociable."

Begins and Ends (A Gun For Sale)

I.                     

     Murder didn’t mean much to Raven.  It was just a new job.  You had to be careful.  You had to use your brains.  It was not a question of hatred.  He had only seen the minister once:  he had been pointed out to Raven as he walked down the new housing estate between the little lit Christmas trees – an old, rather grubby man without any friends, who was said to love humanity.

     The cold wind cut his face in the wide Continental street.  It was a good excuse for turning the collar of his coat well up above his mouth.  A harelip was a serious handicap in his profession.  It had been badly sewn in infancy, so that now the upper lip was twisted and scarred.  When you carried about you so easy an identification you couldn’t help becoming ruthless in your methods.  

II.

     “You haven’t failed,” he said.

     London had its roots in her heart;  she saw nothing in the dark countryside.  She looked away from it to Mather’s happy face.  “You don’t understand,” she said, sheltering the ghost for a very short while longer.  “I did fail.”  But she forgot it herself completely when the train drew into London over a great viaduct under which the small, bright shabby streets ran off like the rays of a star with their sweet shops, their Methodist chapels, their messages chalked on the paving stones.  

Baby Let Me Follow You Down (Greeced Descent)

Baby let me follow you down, 
Baby let me follow you down

Well I'll do anything in this God Almighty world

If you just let me follow you down.

Can I come home with you, 
Baby can I come home with you ?

Yes I'll do anything in this God Almighty world

If you just let me come home with you.

Baby let me follow you down, 
Baby let me follow you down

Well I'll do anything in this God Almighty world

If you just let me follow you down.

Yes I'll do anything in this God Almighty world

If you just let me follow you down.

KEY:

1.  Eurozone map.

2.   The Construction and Destruction of Troy, Orosius Master, Paris, 1405–6. In City of God (Cité de Dieu; original text in Latin); Saint Augustine, author; Raoul de Presles, translator. The Philip S. Collins Collection, gift of Mrs. Philip S. Collins in memory of her husband, 1945. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Ms. 1945.65.1, fol. 66v.

3.   Water Jar with the Sack of Troy (Iliupersis), Greek, about 520–500 B.C. Black-figured hydria attributed to the Leagros Group. Terracotta. Staatliche Antikensammlung und Glyptothek München.

4.  U.S. President Barack Obama greets  Greek Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou, East Room, White House, March 9, 2010.

5.  Political poster; origin unknown.

6(a).  Link:   Baby Let Me Follow You Down (Bob Dylan with The Band -- Last Waltz)

6(b). Link:  Baby Let Me Follow You Down (Bob Dylan and The Hawks, 1966)

7.  Euro/Eurozone symbol in front of European Central Bank, Frankfurt, Germany.

8. (Note)  Despite existing in what seems to be a permanent terror state regarding world events and the lack of convincing, competent U.S. leadership, I really love Baby Let Me Follow You Down.

AUTUMN'S ARTIST -- TRIED SO HARD (GENE CLARK)

Stopped awhile this morning on my way back home
I had to realize this time that I'd be all alone
Cause she is moving somewhere far away not slow
And though I tried so hard to please her
She said she really had to go

Even though this time it really hurts me bad
I've been through similarities
It's not the first break I've had
And I just can't let it bring me down too low
And though I tried so hard to please her
There must be something more to know

So I'll stop and look right past the pain
Cause I've been in love before and I can love again
While she is moving somewhere far away not slow
And though I tried so hard to please her
She said she really had to go

Tried So Hard -- Gene Clark (featuring Clarence White!)