On Sunday, December 19 the friends of Bettina Grossman will host a gathering at the Chelsea Hotel, 222 West 23rd street to celebrate the life of Bettina. The memorial begins at 11:00am.
It’s the perfect success story: an artist, dedicated to her vision, labors in obscurity for decades, undeterred by lack of critical and popular success, only to be recognized and hailed as a genius in the end. Of course it’s Bettina’s story, but it’s also the prototypical Chelsea Hotel story, as perhaps such a thing could only happen in a place like the Chelsea, a mythical island where dreams can come true, in the middle of another semi-mythical island called New York—that latter island, sadly, a place where a lot of beautiful dreams go to die.
Bettina passed away of respiratory heart failure on November 2 at the age of 94. She had been staying, as we learn from Corey Kilgannon’s excellent obituary, in a Brooklyn care facility at the time of her death, recuperating from a fall suffered several months before.
Often in the evening, Debbie and I would hear a timid, almost imperceptible knocking at our door, and we would open the door to find a tiny, elderly woman, increasingly hunched and shriveled as the years progressed, finally resorting to the use of a walker. Bettina almost invariably just wanted to talk, and usually about something that was going on around the hotel. Though shy and soft spoken, she was often insightful, and had a disarmingly wry sense of humor.
A lot has been made of Bettina’s eccentricity, especially as relates to her reclusive nature and her penchant for junking up her apartment. But as to the former, even though her mobility was limited, she was always out and about in the hotel and the neighborhood. Bettina was up on our floor frequently since she was always looking for her friend Rachael Cohen, who took care of her in her final years. Once, before I really knew her that well, I remember rounding the corner in our hallway in the summer of 2003, the night of the blackout, and running right into her—quite literally. After admonishing me to be more careful, she immediately began to talk about the “young man” with a drug problem who lived on another floor and how his eyes burned with a demonic fire. “Yes,” I said, distracted, perhaps in a somewhat condescending tone, “sometimes it can be like the drug possesses someone.”
“I’m not speaking of this as some kind of metaphor,” she assured me.
Sometimes Debbie and I would bring her soup from a nearby restaurant, though we never could get it quite right: was it noodle from this particular Chinese place, egg drop soup from that, or vice versa? She was very particular. Other times we might surprise her with a treat. One time we brought her a mini Cowboy Pie, which has a bunch of chocolate chips and pecans and caramel in it. I think we bought it mainly for the funny name, but Bettina was not impressed. “You know I’m not going to be able to chew that,” she said, later adding that, “I didn’t like the ‘cow pie’”
Once, in appreciation for something we had written about her on the blog, Bettina decided she’d like to give us an artwork. And so at the appointed time we showed up and banged on her door with a rock so she could hear it, and were admitted part way into her apartment to view various candidates, such as small abstracts on paper. But she never could decide what would be appropriate, and we didn’t want to press her, and after an hour or two it became clear that she really didn’t want to part with anything. She needed her art around her.
Or maybe she had determined that we didn’t understand the work, and that its meaning would be lost on us. She did once gift us with a beautiful cabbage.
Bettina found art in everyday objects; or, better yet, she felt that, through art, she could reveal the meaning that lay hidden below the surface in everyday objects. That, I take it, was what her theory of the Noumenon was about. If you just look properly, or put the pieces together properly, a new layer of meaning can emerge. That’s why Bettina photographed puddles and shadows and disembodied limbs, as a warped reflection, or an object set at an odd angle or placed in an unusual juxtaposition with another object, might be suggestive of something beyond itself. It’s no coincidence that she came up with the idea in a place like the Chelsea, as the Chelsea is a place where every day offers the opportunity for a weird chance encounter from which meaning can emerge.
Perhaps the Noumenon is why Bettina hoarded so many artworks: these works had revealed a meaning to her, or—in the case of the ongoing projects—she was waiting for them to reveal it. The leaves and sticks and rocks that she piled up in the hallway contained something she saw, and maybe others did not, a message, perhaps, if a cryptic one, that she couldn’t just allow to evaporate—or to burn away. Lately, it seems like the developers and politicians have been hell bent on wiping out all traces of the old—of the old Chelsea, and of old New York in general. But they never could keep Bettina down. She kept hanging her artworks and storing her projects in the hallways until she was no longer able to do so.
As mentioned, success for Bettina came late in life, and this was due in large part to the generous support she received from other artists, both in the Chelsea community and in the larger artistic community as a whole. The role of eyeware and jewelry artist Rachael Cohen in caring for her when she was in declining health has already been mentioned. And painter and fifth-floor neighbor Robert Lambert stood by her with companionship and encouragement through the dark years when nobody else seemed to appreciate her work. Special mention must also be made of a pair of documentary filmmakers who helped put this extraordinary woman’s life and art on the world map. First of all, Sam Bassett, who moved to the Chelsea around the time of the Bard family’s ouster, providing a creative spark when everything around the hotel seemed to be falling apart. He spent months working with Bettina to clean out her apartment so she could better showcase her prodigious work, in the process really bringing her out of her shell and giving her a much needed boost in confidence and self-esteem. We were all amazed—I think no one more so than Bettina herself—by the treasures unearthed from what Robert Lambert so aptly called an “Egyptian tomb”.
Neither Robert nor Sam are with us at the hotel any longer—the price of “progress”, it seems—but support for the Chelsea artistic community continues to flow from the larger art world. Dutch artist Corrine Van der Borch’s equally wonderful, though somewhat more accessible documentary, “Girl with the Black Balloons” gained Bettina even greater exposure. And the serendipitous tale of where the black balloons came from, and how they made their way to Bettina, is one of those “only in the Chelsea” stories that amply demonstrate why islands such as this are necessary for art and for life.
Perhaps Bettina’s greatest moment was her show at Governor’s Island, an opportunity that came courtesy of Moroccan artist Yto Barrada, who befriended Bettina and showed her own work alongside the older artist at that and other venues here and in Europe. I saw Bettina at the show, riding her scooter around the large space, circulating among groups of people, the star of the show as she was always meant to be. Now truly in her element, she couldn’t have been happier. When I caught up with her, she spoke of an upcoming show in Germany. She was very proud. Still, there was that old concern resurfacing: “They’ve taken a lot of my pieces, and what if they don’t bring them back?”
“They’ll bring them back.”
“Eventually, maybe, but I’m not going to be around forever.”
“It’s important for people to see them. They’ll bring them back.”
But I don’t think she was all that worried this time, it was just that old habits die hard. “I know,” Bettina said finally. “I know they will.”
https://www.chelseahotelblog.com/living_with_legends_the_h/2010/07/girl-with-black-balloons-wows-em-at-edinburgh.html
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