Gilbert Sorrentino - Lunar Follies

In an unprecedented outpouring of affection and respect for Anastasia Humboldt-Grimaldi’s championing of risky art, her trenchant yet unfailingly generous critical writing, and her unwavering support of contemporary exhibit spaces, the Dimension Matrix Galerie (recently relocated in the basement of the newly Re-Reformed Gospel New Disciples Church of Self-Love in Bayside, Queens) presented a one-night vernissage of new works by thirty-four of today’s most highly acclaimed new artists. All of the works, including “Heinz Beppo’s Marsalis Dream,” by McClark Lott, an installation especially erected for Ms. Humboldt-Grimaldi, are dedicated to her on the occasion of her retirement as chief art-and-cinema critic for Ici. Yet just who is Anastasia Humboldt-Grimaldi? Is she every man’s girlfriend, the girlfriend of the whirling dervish, the girl from Ipanema, the girl in expensive tights, the girl that somebody left behind, the “shadow dance” girl, the girl that somebody loved in sunny Tennessee, the girl in the Alice blue gown, the girl in the crinoline gown, the girl with the big thing in her, the girl of the Moravian peasant factory, the girl who proudly blows the trumpet, the girl who is you, the girl who is like you, the girl who is like another girl, the girl of somebody’s feverish dreams, the girl who is an occasion of sin, the girl of Pi Beta Phi, the girl on the magazine cover, the girl who paid $ 84 for a T-shirt, the girl on Happening! the girl who was compromised in the stock room, the girl that somebody marries, the girl that somebody wants to marry, the girl in the closet, the girl with a brogue, the girl with the golden braids, the girl who threw up at a party for a famous person, the girl who was the sweetheart of the whole battalion, the girl whom lust made free, the girl who rewrote the “Dear John” letter, the girl with the fake Rolex watch, the girl for whom “it” is not about money, the girl who eats and eats, or — is she simply WOMAN? Whatever she is, was, or will be in the exciting aesthetic future, she’s still got terrific legs, and the edgy and vibrant art world would agree with Jefty Vogel’s characterization of Ms. Humoldt-Grimaldi as “a round-tripper homer slugger like Kent Griffin [ sic ].”

Arrttbbeatt Chelsea

The first chalice holds a glorious naked girl, perfect in all ways, gentle, beautifully proportioned, and, as the artist’s notes inform us, “modest in public and lascivious beyond telling” at home. The small room is dark and the only sounds audible are those from the vintage Wurlitzer jukebox that plays “And the Angels Sing” repeatedly. The moon looks down, the night grows deep, the sky over the bay turns a profound black as the moon “takes a powder.” The girl may well be locked into her own personally invented and meticulously nourished misery, and soon enough. The second chalice holds nothing, as do the third and fourth chalices. These are not true chalices, but grape-jelly jars, although this matters little, since “this” is not about money! A hat rack completes the installation. When queried, the artist, Benjie Kooba, whose “Semen Dreamin’” piece at the Smith Street Atelier last spring was criticized by the Purity Commission as the cause of wholesale nocturnal improprieties among morally susceptible citizens, remarks: “Don’t ask me!” He is wearing loose-fitting trousers of unbleached linen, well-worn sandals, and a black T-shirt, the very picture of the hot young artist. He is just adorable, despite his snaggle tooth and things.

The annual Groundbreakers exhibit consists primarily of the “Effete,” as the useful if not especially knowledgeable catalogue insists on calling the various imagings that comprise this year’s show. Debbie Danfort, the curator of the exhibition, is, not to put too fine a point on it, a “dumb broad,” as they say in the meatpacking district’s hippest and hottest diners, even though she occasionally reviews — you’ll pardon the expression — new fiction, whatever that may be, for The New York Times Book Review. In any event, this year we have wild maladies of the sky, green shades, the radiance, the radiance, the stars’ bliss in blissful heaven, seasons in the evening, and a green beast, a bloated beast, a beast serene in the purple shade of a copse called “Satan’s Ear,” and a sleepy, mildewed, fat beast to, as they like to say, boot; then there is a startling display of summer, broiling, humid, stinking, rotting, with its moisture, its heat, its sticky sidewalks, madness, crime, murder, lust, and noise, rank blooms, sagging trees, overgrown gardens, tough jays and dusty grackles and boss crows, the sweet virtuosic repertoire of grey mockingbirds on the evening air, from black trees, from rose skies, from beyond the blue hydrangeas, next to which stands an authentic honest-to-God young virgin in white linen dress, white stockings, white shoes, her hair tied back in a chignon with a white silk ribbon, it’s too good to be true, her hand extended toward one of the massive nodding blooms. All this has been managed so as to arouse the brittle laughter of the cruel, the stupid, the shambling half-dead in putrefyingly expensive clothes; whose seams gap and tear; whose seams pop open or rip immediately upon wearing; “who may die before their time, Deo volente,” some bitter and unpleasant person says on an elevator.

Visions of a Visionary: J. Herschel and His Times

Photographs and Memorabilia from the J. Herschel Collection

J. Herschel with a letter to his mother; J. Herschel with a bouquet of moss roses; J. Herschel where his love lies dreaming; J. Herschel and the fifth Mrs. Herschel having their “morning ride” at Rancho Seymour; J. Herschel posing with a letter from his mother; J. Herschel and Harry Norman pore over Norman’s collection of musical gems; J. Herschel in pursuit of the young ladies of the Slocum Musical Society; J. Herschel arguing for “social restraint” in the well of the House of Representatives; J. Herschel playing a bunting horn; J. Herschel and an unidentified woman in the bath; J. Herschel throwing nickels and dimes to a group of freshly washed homeless people; J. Herschel studying one of his 412 dubious Picassos; J. Herschel playing “Jealousy” on an electrified accordion; J. Herschel beating out some hot jive on a fourteen-karat gold tambourine; J. Herschel playing with himself and others at Ascot; J. Herschel under the piano with a young maid dressed in his fourth wife’s clothes; J. Herschel giving his celebrated talk, “Let’s Read a Lot,” to members of the Stanford University English Department; J. Herschel and Mr. Carney Grain dressed as Sisters of Charity; J. Herschel and the “mighty drum major,” Julian Scott, enjoying a few Super Bowl heroes; J. Herschel lunching on nuts and weeds at the Wallace Stegner Foothills Cottage; J. Herschel dressed as Doctor Music; J. Herschel claiming that some of his best friends are Jews; J. Herschel on a quiet evening in the library with Reinhard Heydrich’s souvenir photo album, “Poland”; J. Herschel abusing himself to the point of madness to photos of Jenny Lind in her corsets; J. Herschel and Mabel A. Royds, the “choir boy”; J. Herschel at the Grand Opening of Cleveland’s Blackamoor Minstrels in Washington, D.C.; J. Herschel and the Reverend Branford Christy, the devout embezzler, chuckling at the Rolling Stones lying in vomit; J. Herschel and Mrs. Christy doing something for which there is no name on the beach at Rio; J. Herschel with the original “lost” draft of Gilbert and Sullivan’s shocking joint confession; J. Herschel inventing the computer program, Pan Urge; J. Herschel and the Bohemian Club of San Francisco making water amid the majestic redwoods; J. Herschel buying Southward Fair; J. Herschel buying the Prado; J. Herschel buying Topeka, Kansas; J. Herschel fainting at the beauty and charm of the fine restaurants of Palo Alto, California, “where dining is a skill”; J. Herschel masquerading as Albert Speer on the last day of Oktoberfest; J. Herschel demonstrating the correct way to eat spaghetti to the ignorant Neapolitans; J. Herschel and Louise Bathy, “Venus’s contortionist,” eating soup off each other’s heads; J. Herschel getting an injection of penicillin for what he often called “the old Joe”; J. Herschel somberly displaying the toilet seat that infected him with the AIDS virus; J. Herschel dancing the rhubarb dance with Moravian peasants in his “return to my roots” excursion; J. Herschel lecturing on the errors made by Captain Cook on his ninth voyage to Sandy Hook; J. Herschel in his Female Blondin costume; J. Herschel cavorting with Mrs. Grandwill and her Company of Sluts; J. Herschel with some of his best friends, none of whom look Jewish; J. Herschel finding God and peace and serenity and regretting his ruthless, selfish, corrupt life; J. Herschel screaming as he is whisked to hell by three demons, all of whom seem pleased with the assignment, jaded though they may be.