Ed Hamilton's Blog

A blog reader writes: "Just re-watched the BBC 1981 ���Chelsea Hotel���, and was simultaneously searching as to the life stories of the main characters, some familiar, some not. One that I can find absolutely no trace of is the dancer Bernard Lyce. Anyone know his story during and after his Chelsea years? Even the IMDB listing for the cast omits his presence.

Found him I believe in a NYT 1990 obit, after looking at the BBC film documents, subtitles on the screen misspelled his name. Another lost much too soon. Every day is a gift.

Bernard Lias, a dancer and choreographer who toured with the Alvin Ailey company in the 1970's, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. The cause of death was not disclosed. He was 44 years old.

Mr. Lias was born in San Francisco and as a child attended the Anderson Sisters School of Dance there. He joined the Alvin Ailey dance company as a teen-ager and in 1974 became a principal dancer with the troupe. He also performed with Judith Jamison, a longtime principal dancer with the company, in independent productions and was a consulting choreographer for the movie ''The Wiz.''

He is survived by three sisters, Beverly Lias of Manhattan and Rene Lias and Betty Balnton of San Francisco.

There is very little else to be found about Lias - an appearance or two in dance program literature, and a brief mention in a blog by his grandniece. I thought there might be more, given he seemed so talented."

If you can help this reader learn more about Bernard Lias add a comment on send an email to the blog. 

From the Press Release:

Slag Gallery  announces Stella Waitzkin: These Books Are Paintings, a solo exhibition of work by the sculptor Stella Waitzkin (1920-2003). The show features a selection of significant pieces dating from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. In these works, we see a range of compositional approaches the artist applied to her idiosyncratic use of the cast book form: single sculptural objects, assemblages, and rows of cast resin books set upon shelves. Waitzkin���s powerful artworks explore themes of transformation, memory, gender roles, and the disruption of expectations.  The show is curated by Craig Hensala.

FEBRUARY 2 - MARCH 11, 2023
OPENING RECEPTION: THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 6-8 PM
Slag & RX, 522 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011

As an aside, for those who missed the chance to see Stella���s work in its natural habitat at the Chelsea, a portion of her apartment has been recreated at the Kohler Art Institute in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.  The Kohler���s mission is to rescue and preserve intact, artist-built art environments.  Waitzkin���s actual art environment (that is, her apartment on the 4th floor of the Chelsea Hotel) was demolished in the recent renovation.

Additional reading - https://www.stellawaitzkin.com/artist

https://www.stellawaitzkin.com/copy-of-library-trust?pgid=k06sjotw-a2e99a78-2a09-4a75-8c05-887ddd73a319

If you���re looking for something fun to do over the holidays, look no further than the Irish Rep, our favorite neighborhood theatre, right around the corner on 22nd St. They���re staging a delightful production of former Chelsea Hotel resident Dylan Thomas���s ���A Child���s Christmas in Wales.��� The play is based on Thomas���s famous 1954 poem of the same name, which, in case you���re not familiar, is pretty much what it sounds like, the author���s remembrance of a snowy childhood Christmas���though they all run together for him and Thomas ���. . .can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.��� The special thing about the poem is that it quickly becomes an evocation of all the Christmases that ever were and ever will be. Here you have excited kids opening presents and running around the tree, and old aunts fussing over the dinner as fat uncles sit smoking their pipes by the fire. There���s turkey and goose and blazing pudding and elderberry wine (sorry, no eggnog); there���s Mrs. Fogarty���s horrendous Christmas cake; and young Dylan and his friends chase cats with snowballs and sing carols at neighbors��� doors. And of course, in case you didn���t catch it the first couple times, there���s plenty of snow:

Our snow was not only shaken from whitewash

buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground

and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and

bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the

roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather

moss, minutely white ivied the walls and settled on

the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb

thunderstorm of white, torn Christmas cards.

At the end of the long, exciting day, ���Always on Christmas night there was music.��� Well, not so much in the poem, but the play (adapted and directed by Charlotte Moore) supplements its words with a couple dozen Christmas carols, all sung by the stellar cast. In fact they are all so good that it���s almost a crime to single any one actor out, although Jay Aubrey Jones, with his booming voice, is almost the perfect holiday uncle, and Kylie Kuioka is delightfully chirpy and cheery as an excited kid on Christmas morning. Kerry Conte, Ali Ewolt, Dan Macke, and Ashley Robinson are all equally exceptional���so there, since I���ve mentioned them, crime mitigated, I suppose. Thomas (in)famously downed eighteen whiskeys at the White Horse Tavern before staggering back to the Chelsea Hotel, but he���s not dying in this one. Quintessential holiday entertainment. (Thomas���s room at the Hotel, 205, which had been on the chopping block is now reportedly being spared. Lets hope this is true.)

Featuring some images shot in the former room 822 at the Chelsea Hotel SEX makes a reappearance at this year���s Art Basel.  Artnet wonders if the world is ready?

"Sealed in a condom-like Mylar sheath, Sex sold over 150,000 copies on the day of its release. The New York Times dubbed it ���deliberately degenerate hoopla.��� It featured not only Madonna as Dita, but also cameos by fashion titans like Naomi Campbell and Isabella Rossellini, cult figures Udo Kier and Tony Ward, and music-industry guests like Vanilla Ice and Big Daddy Kane (who look fabulous!). Sex was denounced by the Vatican and banned in India and Japan. Amid the global hysteria, what���s often lost is the power of the images themselves.

Sex was firmly ensconced in the Sex = Death era, and the tumult of the times is encapsulated in all of the piercing and seedy dungeon bondage and goings-on���but so is the defiant sexuality. This wasn���t just a hot, sex-positive paean to the singer���s libido, but a political cri de coeur and a reflection of percolating angst. In the foreword, Madonna wrote, ���My fantasies take place in a perfect world, a place without AIDS.���

The photo below was taken prior to the demolition. Even though 822 has been demolished, reconfigured and renumbered the beautiful mantel was spared.

The legendary Nico, the blond, Germanic Ice Queen who fronted the Velvet Underground before darkening her image with heroin, motorcycle boots, and a leaky harmonium to become the Godmother of Goth, lived and loved in the Chelsea Hotel over several stretches in the sixties, seventies, and eighties. Check out this month���s issue of the Brooklyn Rail, where I review Jennifer Otter Bickerdike���s enjoyable and revealing biography of this enigmatic, misunderstood, self-destructive underground Icon: You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone: The Biography of Nico.

The list of Chelsea Hotel characters who appear in Bickerdike���s book is a long one indeed, and includes: Lou Reed; John Cale; John Waters (when he asked Nico to sing at his funeral, she said, ���Call me when you���re dead���); Gerard Malanga; Andy Warhol; Bob Dylan (he wrote ���I���ll Keep it With Mine��� for her); Edie Sedgwick; Billy Name; Jimi Hendrix; Leonard Cohen; Jonas Mekas; Barbara Rudin; Iggy Pop; Rene Ricard, Susan Bottomly (International Velvet); Mary Woronov; Jim Morrison; Paul Morrissey (���I mean it would literally make you want to slit your wrists. . .��� he says of her music); Victor Bockris (quoted extensively in the book); Jim Carrol, Valerie Solanis; Joe Bidewell; and Viva (she had the misfortune of rooming with Nico, who shut out the light with heavy curtains, burning candles and singing funereal dirges as she practiced her harmonium long into the night).

Additionally, Chelsea Hotel fans will find a review of Rene Ricard's God with Revolver and an essay by Raymond Foye in the October issue of Brooklyn Rail.

It took one punch to start a gay revolution. It took a gender-bending lesbian to throw that punch.This is her story!
 
A play with music based on a true story and real events, STORM�� recounts the life and times of Storm�� DeLarverie, a Big Band singer (aka Stormy Dale) during the ���40s and a male impersonator at America���s first racially integrated drag show, the infamous Jewel Box Revue, throughout the ���50sand ���60s. More importantly, she is an unsung shero of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion.


Much like Rosa Parks��� refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955 played a pivotal role in the Civil Rights Movement, Stormy���s scuffle with police in 1969 during a raid at the Stonewall Inn was instrumental in igniting the modern-day Gay Rights Movement. Historical accounts of Stonewall practice a tradition of whitewashing and genderwashing by erasing key minorities when talking about the Stonewall Rebellion and Civil Rights.
 
IT WAS A REBELLION,
IT WAS AN UPRISING,
IT WAS CIVIL RIGHTS DISOBEDIENCE
IT WASN���T NO DAMN RIOT!
          ���Storm�� DeLarverie
 
STORM�� is inspired by a photo essay by playwright Carolyn M. Brown thanking Stormy for throwing the first punch at Stonewall, which accompanied a Storm�� DeLarverie mural by artist Rachel Wilkins for her ���Shoulders of Giants��� exhibit of LGBTQIAGNC+ movement trailblazers. Other cast of characters include Billy Strayhorn, a composer for the Duke Ellington Orchestra, Elaine Romagnoli, founder of The Cubby Hole and several lesbian bars; Billy Daye, a female impersonator with the Jewel Box Revue, and Diana Jones, Stormy's love interest and life partner of 25 years. .
 
Location: WOW Cafe Theater (59 East 4th Street, New York, NY)
 
Tickets: $18/online, $20/door
 

Saturday, October 15, 2022 @ 7PM
 
Sunday, October 16, 2022 @ 3:30PM


SHOW LINK
https://our.show/stormetheplay

Other links to Storme at the Chelsea:

Storme Delarveri�� Takes To The Stage Again
Who will play Storme? 
Rally around Storme
Storme with her version of "I Fell For You."
Gala for Storme 
Icon of the LGBT Community Dies

Everyone remembers the Dutch Masters Cigar Box painting, which hung in the lobby for many years before the hotel took it down and tried to sell it, only to be sued by the artist Larry Rivers��� estate, who won the return of the painting by claiming it had only been on loan to Stanley Bard. Rivers lived in the hotel in the fifties and sixties, returning frequently thereafter to visit friends. One of these friends was the librettist Arnold Weinstein, who helped Rivers write his autobiography, What Did I Do? a rollicking romp through several decades of the New York art scene���and much else besides. River went everywhere, did everything, and knew everyone, and is as famous for his high-octane, polyamorous lifestyle as for his often wildly transgressive artworks.

Though it came out in 1992, Rivers��� book is well worth reading, and Rivers��� art, especially that from the sixties, is overdue for a reevaluation. Leave it to say, I���m as fascinated by the multiple layers of
meaning inherent in the Dutch Masters paintings (a series of works), as I am bemused by Rivers��� portrait of Napoleon, which he labeled, for no apparent reason, ���The World���s Greatest Homosexual���, by turns mystifying and enraging most everyone in France.

            Anyway, if you���re interested, I review Rivers��� book in the Fall 2022 issue of a great little magazine, The Exacting Clam, which also features lots of odd, brilliant, and brilliantly odd prose and poetry. You can read much of The Clam online, or you can order a print copy on Amazon.

Ed Hamilton

Readers in France still have time to make it to The Recontres d'Arles Bettina exhibit. Her work is on display until August 28.

The Rencontres d'Arles presents the first monographic exhibition of American artist Bettina Grossman, better known as Bettina. Bettina spent the first years of her career in Europe before returning to the United States in the 1960s. Shortly after, a traumatic fire destroyed much of her work. In 1970, she moved to the legendary Chelsea Hotel and, to recover from this loss, worked a lot. After years of producing in isolation, the artist was featured in two documentary films, which led her to meet Yto Barrada. In the tradition of artists supporting ��� and nurturing ��� the work of other artists, a strong relationship ensues, which culminates in multiple projects. L' exhibition at the Salle Henri-Comte offers a unique insight into Bettina's life in New York. Whether photography, video, painting, sculpture or textile design, his works are serial, modular and rigorous ��� each having a function in a larger and self-referential system, where we find forms repetitive geometric shapes with a transcendental and almost shamanic dimension.


Bettina, as you know, was part of the Chelsea Hotel artistic community until her death in 2021.

Rick Librizzi, who died last year at 82, grew up in a house by the railroad tracks, and while he didn���t ride the rails during the depression like his roustabout father, it���s to the railroad that he attributes his subsequent career in art:

My friend said, ���That���s abstract expressionism.��� I [that is, Rick] said, ���What?! Abstract expressionism, what the hell���s that?��� And he said, ���Jackson Pollock spilling paint!��� And I said, ���Oh shit, that���s like the railroad,��� because when they painted the switches, they dripped the paint all over the place, so I would see all the paint drip and I would look at it. . . .so I started dripping paint, pouring paint all over the place. (From: Hero in Art: The Vanished Traces of Richard Hambleton, by Istvan Kantor, Autonomedia; p. 187)

Librizzi is a longtime Chelsea Hotel resident, so it���s no surprise that the Chelsea is where he met Istvan Kantor, author of this genre-redefining ���bionovel��� about street artist and professional junkie Richard Hambleton, who created the famous ���shadow��� paintings, and who, having only recently passed away himself in 2017, has been in the news a lot lately. After Rick and Istvan met up at the hotel they walked the few blocks to W20th St. near the Hudson River, where ACA Gallery was hosting a retrospective of Hambleton���s work. Kantor���s revealing book is an invaluable record of the people who passed through Hambleton���s life, many of whom are quoted extensively throughout. There���s a chapter about Rick and another about his son Nemo Librizzi, who also lived at the hotel and wrote the informative press release for his father���s show.

Though Librizzi went on to become a habitu�� of the Cedar Tavern, rubbing elbows at the bar with the likes of Franz Kline and his buddies, and though he painted all his life, he���s most well known as an art dealer and collector. He met Andy Warhol while the future pop artist was still an illustrator, and this early connection paid off later when Warhol approached him to act as his Art Dealer (Kantor, p. 187). In the early 70s he sold more Warhols than anybody, Librizzi claims, including thirty-five in one day, and that���s how he made a living that enabled him to paint when he could take time away from his business (Kantor, p. 187). Later, Librizzi would also champion Hambleton, from the shadow artist���s early years, up through his sad decline due to cancer, when Rick rented room after room for the misbehaving junkie, and helped negotiate Hambleton���s sale of the reproduction rights for his artwork, so there would be money to take care of the dying artist (Kantor, p. 198-199).

The present show is a retrospective of Librizzi���s art career and, as such, it covers a span from the early 70s up through the end of his life. Unfortunately, only a scattered few of the paintings are dated, making it difficult to trace his development. But there are two distinct themes that characterize his work���which we might call the abstract expressionist and the downtown grunge���and to which Librizzi returns time and again over the four and a half decade span of his artistic life. (No pop art, oddly, for a man who made his living selling Warhols. Perhaps he had seen enough of that stuff.) Not surprisingly, both themes hearken back to what Rick saw and experienced in the rail yards of his childhood.

Whether the paint is poured or dripped or laid on with a broad brush, the expressionist paintings are all pure abstracts, and all very minimalist. In two pieces, both apparently from the mid-80s, and featuring broad blocks of color, one can see the influence of Hans Hoffman (with less paint). A related group of paintings, from the mid-2000s and painted in Provincetown, where Librizzi frequently vacationed, are so minimalist that they could almost be considered color field paintings; these, for me, seem almost too relaxed. The big blue, orange and white triptych is nice, with all color problems satisfactorily resolved. It���s almost Librizzi���s best in a way, and I can���t quibble too much with its choice as the featured art work for the show���though to me it seems mannered, and not representative of the artist���s true strength or intent. I do like the unnecessary triptych construction, however, just because���why the hell not?

            Which brings me to the artist���s strengths. Among the expressionist paintings are two that stand out. One is an otherwise unexceptional pink-and-blue drip painting where Librizzi has slapped wrinkled cellophane on top of the canvas in a haphazard fashion. In another, the blue, green and orange canvas���tacked sloppily to a warped frame with a hank of distressed cord attached���appears to have been cranked though a mangle. Both these paintings look like an act of vandalism was performed on them, and this devil-may-care aesthetic endows them with an energy and a dynamism that most of the other pieces lack, and forms a bridge to the more successful downtown grunge paintings.

The paintings that I believe were influenced by Librizzi���s association with the downtown scene of Hambleton and similar street artists have a much more limited color palate of asphalt black and industrial gray, and look almost burnt or stained, as if pulled from a dumpster, a construction site, or some random pile on the street. The magnificent ���656��� painting looks like it was fashioned from tar paper ripped down from an old tool shack���or maybe from a railroad switching station. Other pieces have found objects such as spools attached in an almost ���organic��� way, by which I mean it seems as if they sprang, fully formed, from the street itself, fashioned by the forces of time and the elements, and without any additional construction or ���artistry��� needed at all. These pieces have the look of post-industrial and almost post-apocalyptic detritus, like evidence of some disaster, hung on the wall at the police station for the arson investigator to sort through.

I always did get a sense of anarchy and rebellion from Rick, a refusal to play by the ordinary rules of art and life. And I think, in a way, he wanted to be one of those downtown artists from the Rivington School, getting drunk and high and fucking things up, disrupting the status quo. Maybe if Rick had been more like Hambleton���that is, a deranged martyr to art���he might���ve been able to carry this show���s tantalizing taste of grit and ash through to its logical conclusion. But a martyr makes a sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice, and it���s not only of himself, but of those around him as well. As Rick, who had worked for Ray Charles and other addicts and thus come to realize the inspiration that drugs could provide, says of his time in the art scene:

. . .everybody was on drugs. But I knew that if you took heroin, it was the end, and I had to make a living. I couldn���t, I had kids to support, I couldn���t get involved with that. I couldn���t get involved with something that was going to possess me (Kantor, p. 190).

The sheet metal ���paint cans���, which Librizzi created toward the end of his life, sum up, for me, what���s best about his art. These simple sculptures look to be fashioned from discarded construction materials he found laying about the hotel, which was in the middle of its ongoing eleven-year renovation. Like some of the other industrial pieces, these seem torn straight from life, almost ready-mades, as if Rick simply stepped outside his apartment door and dragged them from the garbage can where they had already undergone an accidental paint-dipping. While this sentiment is belied by the careful studies Librizzi did for the pieces (also on view), yet they still seem to retain a residue of the suffering of the residents of the hotel who had to go through all the metal-grinding and hammering noise that it took to install the pipes and ducts for that new HVAC system. In his final years, Rick, regrettably, had to go through that suffering himself, but instead of despairing, he reached down inside himself and turned it into art. These pieces are as close the ���street���, that is, to real life, as you can get, and that makes them resonate���you can almost hear the shrill grinding as they are cut, and smell the sharp, acrid smell���and ultimately that���s what gives them their poignancy. That���s why the title of the show, ���Life is Art���, while perhaps a bit clich��d, is so apt. Rick turned his life on the railroad yard, the downtown art scene, and finally the Chelsea Hotel, into art, building, upon a solid foundation of industrial grunge, what his son Nemo calls ���a poetic ascent into the abstract unknown.���  Ed Hamilton

[Rick Librizzi���s show, ���Life is Art���, runs through July 29 at ACA Galleries at 529 W 20th St., 55E; Istvan Kantor���s book, Hero in Art: The Vanished Traces of Richard Hambleton (Autonomedia, 2022), is for sale at Village Works bookshop at 90-B E 3rd St., and other fine stores.]

Chelsea Hotel Scaffolding, we hardly knew ye. Well, that���s not exactly true, now, is it? After all, you were up for over ten years. You provided shelter for the homeless���one of whom lived in the entryway to the El Quijote for two years or more���and a dry surface for all the pampered doggies from the hotel, so they didn���t have to get their little paws wet when they went out to use the potty. But you also provided cover for illicit late night vice activities. Fights were common, as were late night screaming matches, and probably muggings as well. Workers could slip out of the hotel to sneak a smoke under your sheltering boards, or, in foul weather, to sit in rows against the hotel, scarfing down sandwiches purchased from the now defunct Aristocrat Deli. Often, there were huge, filthy dumpsters, debris trucks, and oil-stained portable boilers arrayed before you to form a virtual wall, uniting with you to block the hotel from the street, and from the light of day���and of course presenting an even more hazardous obstacle to the wellbeing of any tenant venturing out after dark. Your vast array of support poles and cross bars at sidewalk level made it difficult at times to get to the entrance of the hotel, especially when the comedy club was in full swing, with unruly patrons milling around in the small walking lanes. At times you supported an even greater edifice of scaffolding, festooned in all its glory with tattered black netting, covering the entire fa��ade of the Chelsea and stretching all the way to the gabled roof, but you went through most of your years sadly alone. Now you have gone on to greater things, darkening the doorways of who knows what unsuspecting building���perhaps even one much grander and more beautiful than the Chelsea���while we, the survivors, are left to mourn your passing. Perhaps one day you���ll be back, rising like a Phoenix from the sweltering garbage of the sidewalk, once the present owners grow bored with their dubious business model and sell the hotel to someone with another sort of ���vision��� that requires eleven more years of further construction. But please don���t hurry on our account.