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A
Bob Schulenberg-illustrated manilla envelope
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The
Gang Who Knows Too Much at the Pink Teacup last night
in Greenwich Village
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Last
night in New York. There was
a small birthday party for the Aquarians of some note and notice
amongst a small
group of friends and people of high acquaintance: Adolfo,
Alex Hitz, Liz Smith, and Peter Rogers. At: The Pink Teacup at 42 Grove
Street in the Village. Which, if you’ve never been, and you
like Suth’n-frahd-food kids, head right down or over and
fill up. So cahjzz, so good and forget the cornbread. Betcha can’t
eat just one. Billy Norwich, Elizabeth Peabody, the
Birthday Kids, Paige Rense, Ellin Saltzman, Ann Richards,
DPC, Dominick Dunne,
Joe Armstrong, and Casey Ribicoff. The birthday cake was shipped
in courtesy of Mr. Hitz, from Atlanta. A seven layer caramel cake.
The Pink Teacup, 42 Grove. There’s your party next time. |
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Alex
Hitz and Adolfo
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Elizabeth
Peabody
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Liz
Smith and Ann Richards
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Iris
Love and Paige Rense
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Ann
Richards, Dominick Dunne, and Casey Ribicoff
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Iris
Love, Paige Rense, and Liz Smith
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Peter
Rogers and Alex Hitz
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I
met Bob Schulenberg through a mutual friend in the mid-1960s here
in New York. He was an illustrator with a prosperous career and I
was a neophyte actor who needed some pictures for my not-so-prosperous
career, (which I gave up the ghost on a couple of years later), and
Schulenberg, who loved taking pictures, offered to do it for the
cost of the film and developing.
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Bob
Schulenberg at home in Los Angeles. Photo: Bob
Stone.
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He arrived at
our apartment (I was married then) at about four in the afternoon,
carrying a camera bag and a large black sketchbook.
The sketchbook, I soon learned, was always part of his gear – a
combination monthly calendar and a daily (or almost), sometimes even
hourly, sometimes even moment-to-moment Diary of his whereabouts
and goings-on.
He was (still is) a highly sociable fellow, an exquisite and indefatigable
conversationalist when he’s in the mood, and a very friendly
fellow. A child of Hollywood – he was born and brought up in
Los Angeles, he loved the idea of the image and so that was what
he set out to do with me: put me in what his eye regarded as the
proper image context. One of the results are here.
I haven’t
looked at these pictures since the days following when they were
taken, and all these years later, they are somewhat
shocking, mainly just
from the point of view of time and its effect on one and all (and namely me).
I was young
and very uncertain about many things at that time in my life. Schulenberg,
with his unimpeachable perspicacity, sought an image that he felt I would grow
into. The result was interesting at the time, but not something I could personally
relate to. First of all, I felt like a geek in disguise, awkward and hardly cool.
Now I see — and it is not surprising at this point that his vision of
that image had an accuracy which I have grown into or become accustomed to, the
youth as
well as the uncertainty having passed into history, was prescient.
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Early
DPC by Schulenberg
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Anyone who’s known or experienced Schulenberg has experienced the miles
and miles of conversation plumbing the depths and skittering over the tops of
all kinds of subjects, mainly those of a social, historical, philosophical or
psychological nature. And then there’s the music. About two or three the
following morning, with the talkers still in full force, we got onto the subject
of music.
He was explaining
to me – the neophyte – how composers psyches are
revealed in their compositions. This, he could demonstrate, and he did, by going
to the piano where first he played Mendelsohn the way Chopin would have. And
Bach the way DeBussy would have. And Scarlatti as Tchaikovsky would have felt
it, or Liszt via Beethoven, and vice versa.
This is all without a note of music
in front of him. And then came the Gershwins, and finally the American
in Paris(Schulenberg had recently returned from a couple of years living in Paris), and
then the Rhapsody in Blue, and finally the sun was coming up over Manhattan and
though the lights were still on in the apartment, the sun was pouring in, and
so we called it a day.
In all the years following there must have been trillions of words that have
passed between us, for Schulenberg is one of the most stimulating, thought-provoking
individuals I will ever know. And amusing, and intriguing, and laugh riot funny.
And in the meantime, when he wasn’t photographing or playing the piano,
and while he was talking, there was the sketchbook. As we all sat and talked,
he was almost always with pen in hand, working away. Not unlike the way your
aunt Min might have sat knitting while the conversation blossomed around the
fireside, and meanwhile she’s outfitting an entire family with her creativity
energy.
I soon learned that Schulenberg had one of these sketchbooks for every month
of his life since his days in the mid-50s at UCLA. Sketches of everything. A
constant exercise of perfecting his hand while keeping his eye on the subject.
Forty-five years later there are hundreds and hundreds of them. Some of my favorites
are those he did daily during the 1960s and 70s when he lived in New York. They
are his Journal, his Diary of Manhattan and its environs. Beginning with this
entry, we are going to start sharing some of them with you, along with some of
his words about where he was and what he heard and saw in his travels.
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| BOB
SCHULENBERG'S DIARY OF MANHATTAN |
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Jim
Harvey
January 12th, 1962
I'm sending you this drawing of Jim Harvey because of his curious
place in art history. He was an "Action painter." There's
one of his on the easel behind him. He had a show at the Graham
Gallery that was politely received. He'd dress up in a kind
of jump-suit cum space suit and throw the paint all around.
While his "Action paintings" were not particularly
epochal, his day job was as a package designer and he designed
the BRILLO box that was so exploited by Warhol. Jim died early
of Leukemia, I believe, a few years after this drawing. |
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Joe
Heil with his Bonnard Tiffany
November 24th, 1961
Joseph Heil had the largest collection of Art Nouveau
objects that he gave to MoMA. He was a friend of
Jim Harvey's. |
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Eric
C. Fast, Charlotte Frieze,
Dominique Browning, and Gregory
Long
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Wednesday
night’s annual Orchid Dinner benefiting
the New York Botanical Garden brought together 31 of New York’s
great designers and creative forces designing centerpieces composed
of orchids. All kinds of orchids.
Bob Harwick and his orchestra
played and the guests danced but the centerpieces held fast with
the fascinatin’ rhythm.
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