Herbert Muschamp
Oct. 4th, 2007 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
susanstinsonI just read in the New York Times that architechture critic Herbert Muschamp has died. He was fifty-nine.
I met Herbert only twice, but he made a strong impression, and he was important to my brother. The first time was in the early eighties. I had come to visit the east coast for the first time in my life, from Colorado where I had lived from the age of six. I was an undergraduate, visiting my brother in Boston. It was the first time I had seen my brother since he had had emergency surgery for cancer, and Herbert, whom he had met at an artist colony, was there with his sweet partner, Tucker, soon, sadly, to die of AIDS. Herbert had helped my brother get a job drawing a figure in rose covered pajamas for a big fashion ad, and some of the roses in some of the editions of the paper were scratch and sniff to smell like the flower when a person opened the morning paper. Herbert, Tucker and I set off together to do something or other, and I heard that Herbert reported back to my brother that I seemed to have my wits about me, but probably should not be sent to New York City on my own. I think he was pretty much right, and I went to the city with my brother's ex-girlfriend Victoria, also an artist and also a friend of Herbert's. I had visited her at an artist colony, the Cummington Community of the Arts in Western Massachusetts, where I have long since landed. I had my first one evening, semi-official romantic encounter with a woman at a party at Victoria's little apartment at Cummington, dancing to the theme from Fame ("I want to live forever. I want to learn how to fly HIGH..." -- she was a wonderful writer.), and when Victoria and I went to NYC, we danced at a women's bar, The Duchess, too. Herbert was annoyed that we didn't call him.
The other time I saw Herbert was a few years later when I was living in Boston, in Jamaica Plain, and went to the city for an opening of a show of my brother's drawings at Artist Space gallery in NYC, which Herbert had helped curate. He was very tense and art world opening busy that night, and it was clear that he didn't have time for me to be bothering him, so I didn't. But I'd hear snippets about him from my brother over the years, and stayed strangely fond of him, although, most likely, he didn't remember me at all.
My brother and I were talking about Herbert when I was in Colorado last week, and I think that he was the person who told my brother (who told me) about the landscape historian JB Jackson, whose essays I love and am planning to quote at the Jonathan Edwards and the Environment conference on Saturday. I didn't know until last week that Herbert used to hang out with Andy Warhol at the Factory, but it made sense. In one of his most famous architectural reviews, which the writer quotes in his obituary, Herbert compared Frank Gehry's then new Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao to Marilyn Monroe:
What twins the actress and the building in my memory is that both of them stand for an American style of freedom. That style is voluptuous, emotional intuitive and exhibitionist. It is mobile, fluid, material, mercurial, fearless, radiant and as fragile as a newborn child. It can't resist doing a dance with all the voices that say, "No." It wants to take up a lot of space. And when the impulse strikes, it likes to let its dress fly up in the air.
Rest in peace, Herbert. And if the impulse strikes, let it fly.
I met Herbert only twice, but he made a strong impression, and he was important to my brother. The first time was in the early eighties. I had come to visit the east coast for the first time in my life, from Colorado where I had lived from the age of six. I was an undergraduate, visiting my brother in Boston. It was the first time I had seen my brother since he had had emergency surgery for cancer, and Herbert, whom he had met at an artist colony, was there with his sweet partner, Tucker, soon, sadly, to die of AIDS. Herbert had helped my brother get a job drawing a figure in rose covered pajamas for a big fashion ad, and some of the roses in some of the editions of the paper were scratch and sniff to smell like the flower when a person opened the morning paper. Herbert, Tucker and I set off together to do something or other, and I heard that Herbert reported back to my brother that I seemed to have my wits about me, but probably should not be sent to New York City on my own. I think he was pretty much right, and I went to the city with my brother's ex-girlfriend Victoria, also an artist and also a friend of Herbert's. I had visited her at an artist colony, the Cummington Community of the Arts in Western Massachusetts, where I have long since landed. I had my first one evening, semi-official romantic encounter with a woman at a party at Victoria's little apartment at Cummington, dancing to the theme from Fame ("I want to live forever. I want to learn how to fly HIGH..." -- she was a wonderful writer.), and when Victoria and I went to NYC, we danced at a women's bar, The Duchess, too. Herbert was annoyed that we didn't call him.
The other time I saw Herbert was a few years later when I was living in Boston, in Jamaica Plain, and went to the city for an opening of a show of my brother's drawings at Artist Space gallery in NYC, which Herbert had helped curate. He was very tense and art world opening busy that night, and it was clear that he didn't have time for me to be bothering him, so I didn't. But I'd hear snippets about him from my brother over the years, and stayed strangely fond of him, although, most likely, he didn't remember me at all.
My brother and I were talking about Herbert when I was in Colorado last week, and I think that he was the person who told my brother (who told me) about the landscape historian JB Jackson, whose essays I love and am planning to quote at the Jonathan Edwards and the Environment conference on Saturday. I didn't know until last week that Herbert used to hang out with Andy Warhol at the Factory, but it made sense. In one of his most famous architectural reviews, which the writer quotes in his obituary, Herbert compared Frank Gehry's then new Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao to Marilyn Monroe:
What twins the actress and the building in my memory is that both of them stand for an American style of freedom. That style is voluptuous, emotional intuitive and exhibitionist. It is mobile, fluid, material, mercurial, fearless, radiant and as fragile as a newborn child. It can't resist doing a dance with all the voices that say, "No." It wants to take up a lot of space. And when the impulse strikes, it likes to let its dress fly up in the air.
Rest in peace, Herbert. And if the impulse strikes, let it fly.
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Date: 2007-10-04 02:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-04 03:02 pm (UTC)