Living with Legends: Hotel Chelsea Blog

Boyhood in The Railroad Earth: “Rick Librizzi: Life is Art” at ACA Galleries

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 habitué 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 clichéd, 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 20^th 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 3^rd St., and other fine stores.]

Chelsea Hotel Scaffolding, April 24, 2012-July 18, 2022: Rest in Pieces

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 façade 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.

Activist Artist, Writer And Friend of the Chelsea Hotel, Molly Crabapple Reads and Exhibits at Opus 40

In case you’ve never been, Opus 40 is a 60-acre sculpture garden outside of Woodstock, NY. Its centerpiece is a spectacular 6.5-acre bluestone earthwork that looks like a cross between Stonehenge and a Mayan pyramid. We went there over the weekend for, of all things, a poetry reading by Chelsea Hotel friend and fellow traveler Molly Crabapple, now a well known artist and journalist who is also having a show of her paintings in the gallery on the grounds. As the sun went down through the trees at her back, Molly—after warning us that she was “not a poet”—read a moving, and very poetic essay about the legacy of evil and imperialism, stretching from the Arabic world, to Spain, and thence to the New World (and back), declaring, with The Nasirids, the last Muslim dynasty to rule a corner of Spain, that “There is no victor but God.” Molly is a committed activist who was arrested at Occupy Wall Street and has also published a book on the Syrian war, Brothers of the Gun, in collaboration with  journalist Marwan Hisham.

In 2015, Molly’s fascinating and scandalous memoir, Drawing Blood, came out, detailing (among other things) her early years in New York when she made her living as a fetish model while she awaited her big break. Here’s her account of one such session that took place at the Chelsea Hotel:

One night, I lay on the couch with Vinyl Vivian and a friend of hers. . . .

Suddenly, an older lady barged in, gray curls flying, back straight with all the imperiousness of the well funded. She was someone important, Melli told me, doing a documentary on the hotel, but now she stood over us, ordering me and Vivian into passionless contortions. Startled though we were, Vivian and I writhed around gamely, like professionals. After ten minutes, the Belgian was gone.

 Several years later, I saw myself on the cover of an art book, frozen in time with Vinyl Vivian. We were entwined, topless, and intimate as we never were in life. The text inside described an orgy that had never happened, starring nameless girls who we were not. The photographer described herself not as a director of the scene, but an invisible bit of the background.

 She never told us we’d be on the cover. Why would she? We were hotel room fauna. National Geographic would sooner notify a giraffe. (p. 98)

In addition to containing a lot of great writing, Drawing Blood is stunningly illustrated by Molly herself. The drawings, many in full color and others in moody sepia tones, range from the whimsical to the risqué to the thought-provoking. Molly was nice enough to inscribe our copy of her book on what was (unsurprisingly) our favorite of her drawings. A more beautiful memoir is rarely seen these days. You can view several of Molly’s larger works, including many moving portraits of proletarian women, at her show in the Opus 40 gallery. In a related project, Alissa Quart of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project also has a series of screens depicting worker co-ops  displayed in the space outside the gallery.

Speaking of which, I should mention the other readers who appeared with Molly that evening, one of which was, indeed, journalist and author Alissa Quart, who read stimulating essays and poems on abortion clinics, school shootings, and late capitalism. Rodrigo Toscano, a labor organizer for the United Steel Workers also entertained us with his erudite verses. And, in one of the highlights of the evening, Fence editor Rebecca Wolff read a fascinating poem entitled “Halloween” about how a witch gave her a migraine (not exactly what it sounds like, though the poem itself certainly weaves a magical spell, and I, for one, was ensorcelled).

To get back to Molly’s memoir, after her time modeling at the Chelsea, she goes to work at the burlesque “supper club” The Box, where, to our surprise, the Chelsea Hotel’s own Rose Wood makes a cameo appearance, performing in a surreal skit as a transgender prostitute who fucks a banker, stabs him to death, and then sets the bed on fire.

In more recent years, Molly had been living in a building oddly reminiscent of the Chelsea Hotel in its glory days. Though a much smaller building, the 128-year-old 14 Maiden Lane, way, way downtown in the financial district, was filled with artist’s lofts, and naturally became the scene of much creative collaboration and raucous celebration. They had legendary parties, photo shoots on the roof, and projected movies on the wall of the vacant building next door. Sadly, however, that’s not the only parallel to the Chelsea: developers bought the building in January, evicting all the tenants. (As we’ve said before, it’s the same thing that’s happening in building after building across New York with no end in sight and with no one in power willing to do a damn thing. New York is not for New Yorkers anymore; it’s for tourists and rich, parasitical speculators.) No news on where Molly is living now, but doubtless she is busy rising from the ashes of 14 Maiden Lane and having the last laugh on them all.

[Opus 40 is located at 356 George Sickle Rd, Saugerties, NY 12477.  The joint show, Molly Crabapple’s “Annotated Muses” and the Economic Hardship Project’s “Bossworkers”, runs through August 8.]