Susan and Louis Meisel — honored at the Parrish Art Museum’s Midsummer Gala Dinner — are icons of my youth.
As a teenager majoring in Art History at NYU, I lived one block east from the Louis K. Meisel Gallery. Walking home from class, when I crossed Houston Street, I shed my student self and entered a world where people threw down their keys in a sock. Where artists renovated their lofts by day and congregated in bars by night. They disparaged each other’s work, then went home together. Often to illegal lofts: raw artists’ studios with undemarcated sleeping areas, mismatched kitchen appliances and bathrooms with raised fixtures for the plumbing.
Soho in the old days.
“Is it art?” everyone postured — of the black slab sculptures, the minimalist white paintings, abstruse words on walls, chocolate covered nude performances and outre installations. “Art Who?” was the favorite reply.
Compared to the abstract expressionism I understood as fine art, Audrey Flack’s paintings in the Meisel Gallery were shock of the new. Her meticulous horror vacui women’s vanities looked like air brushed photos. Far from uptown’s masculine brushstrokes, this was feminine, opulent, evocative. It spoke to me. And it was, most definitely, “art.”
I didn’t realize it at the time, but, I was discovering Audrey with the rest of the world. Meisel’s gallery made her — as well as the movement he named: photorealism.
Walking home from school, I saw all of Meisel’s shows. Walking around Soho, I saw Susan. A striking petite brunette, she had the look of somebody significant, going somewhere purposeful, doing something important. She was, in fact, working to build the Meisel real estate empire, and her own body of art. I wasn’t working at all. So, we were both around a lot.
Our paths began to cross once again a few years ago in the Hamptons. This time, I introduced myself. And yes, I looked familiar.
The Meisels were donating their Sagaponack Sculpture Field to the Parrish — 20 pieces, including works by Flack and Kenneth Snelson, on two acres.
Walk into Armin and Judy’s farm to table gourmet restaurant in Water Mill (where Jimmy Fallon is a regular), and you might find Susan at the oven baking their luscious deserts. She and Louis are their business partners and friends. Susan loves baking. And she loves to stay busy. She’s even published seven food and Hampton-centric coffee table tomes.
“Talk to Louis,” Susan told me at the Parrish, when I asked about the early days. “It was his gallery.”
“We moved to Soho in 1972, and started the gallery in 1973, one of the first seven or eight there,” he began. “I had a small gallery on Madison and 79th for five years. And when my friend Ivan Karp opened in Soho, I couldn’t wait for my lease to run out.” Meisel began championing Richard Estes, Audrey Flack, Chuck Close, Charles Bell, Ron Kleemann, and Tom Blackwell. “All my dealer friends said, ‘How are you gonna make money from an artist that can only do one or two paintings a year?’” he remembered. Today, he’s still showing that work at 141 Prince, now in 20,000 square feet.
The son of an art paper manufacturer, Louis started out working for Theodoros Stamos, the youngest of the Abstract Expressionists, and Franz Kline, part of the group dubbed the Irascibles. “I was stretching their canvases, cleaning their floors, running errands. Stamos and Mark Rothko were best friends. One day Stamos said, ‘You know all about paper, take me and Rothko over to Nelson Whitehead,’ a competitor of my father. I got about 150 sheets of Arches paper for them.
“Six months later, the phone rings. ‘It’s Mark.’ I realized I was alone on the phone with Mark Rothko! I was so much in awe, I was scared to talk to him. ‘The paper you got for us,’ he said. ‘I need more! Get it!’ And he hung up. My father was selling papers to Kline. So, I brought some to Rothko’s studios. It was $300. ‘I don’t have any money,’ Rothko said. ‘Take one of these.’ And he gave me a painting from his last group. It was beautiful. Unfortunately I had to sell it to buy my loft in Soho.”
The painting, two by three feet, sold for 10 grand.
And Audrey? “She was five artists in five decades in five movements, but she did not get her due as an abstract expressionist. Nor did she get it as a new realist. But then I found her and brought her into photorealism in the ’70s. She became very famous, one of the most important women artists of her time. She did 40 photorealist paintings, and I got 32 in museums, including here I also got Janson to make her the first woman artist in his History of Art, with a full page, in Volume Four. We were great friends. And she had a great life.”
Recently, she had worked with the Parrish for its retrospective show “Audrey Flack: Mid-Century to Post-Pop Baroque” that will open in October.
But right now, it was opening night of the first East End show for celebrity favorite Kaws aka Brian Donnelly and the first museum show painter/ceramicist Julia Chiang. They joined the exhibit that opened June 30: Eddie Martinez (“Buflies”) and Sam Moyer (“Ferns Teeth”). They are, in fact, two married couples.
Parrish Art Museum Executive Director of two years, Dr. Mónica Ramírez-Montagut brought them in. “I gave Kaws his first museum exhibition and big publication catalog, in 2010,” she told me. “The way he bridges popular and fine art, speaking about the human condition to folks that are not necessarily art experts, made me keen to include him. His message is fresh, powerful and goes straight to our emotions. His accessible imagery creates a gateway from the familiar to the profound.”
That’s right on message for Ramirez-Montagut. She is creating a gateway from the Parrish to the artists it represents and the community it serves. “I want everyone to find something that speaks to them,” she continued. That includes programs for all East End demographics, including special needs. She even turned the lobby into a “creativity lounge.”
Those themes figure prominently in the gala artists’ backstory. “Kaws introduced me to Eddie Martinez. This show speaks to our community of artists. It gives visibility to a deep support system that tends to remain invisible.”
One of Monica’s earliest administrative acts was to promote Corinne Erni to the first new Chief Curator in 38 years. She, too, is bringing a new vision, evident in this show.
Sam Moyer’s site specific installations of stone works that explore fern motifs speak to Erni’s 20-year commitment to fight climate change through the arts.
“The fern is the oldest existing plant,” she told me. “Moyer also uses a lot of cast off marble and looks at geology. The way the stone is cut up, the way she creates the canvas around it, and the way a marble bench sits in front as a contemplative experience creates an incredible interaction with our wooden beams and other natural materials. What she does is architectural and it plays off our own Herzog & de Meuron museum design.”
“I always look for interactive dialogues and international voices. Here we have Sam and Eddie, connected to this area and creating art specific to this space. Eddie’s immense paintings, three in each of two galleries, always leave a fourth wall empty, to give the works space to breathe and let the colors burst into the space.
“Chiang also operates in the realm of abstractions. And here the body is the basis for this work, created specifically for the Parrish.”
We caught up with Debbie Bancroft, synonymous with this gala. “It was the first Parrish that I haven’t chaired or cochaired since the turn of the century, the last century that is! Not that anyone noticed,” she deadpanned. “It’s always equal parts pith and play. This year’s chairs — Catherine Carmody, CJ Follini, Andrea Pemberton, and Charlotte Lucas Pilaro — were great, and the staff, at peak performance. It was nice to kick back, relax and enjoy my guests.”
Artists Shirin Neshat and Sean Scully were honored along with philanthropists Susan and Louis Meisel.
Debbie remains very much involved, as a trustee. Frederic M. Seegal and Alexandra Stanton are Trustee Co-Chairs; Sean Cohan and Timothy G. Davis Trustee Co-Presidents.
“The Friday night is technically the young person’s party, chaired by the wondrous Larry Millstein,” Debbie continued. “But, Saturday felt young, fresh and glam, too. Kaws is such a wonderful, fun artist, a celebrity favorite. So, there was a definite zing to his participation. People were noticeably excited by him, which is kind of ironic because he’s the shyest, sweetest, most soft spoken person. Yet, he brought real exuberance. So I think, all in all, a pretty damn good night.“
See for yourself!
