Can I Be Your Edie?

It was a muggy, rainy Wednesday night and a select group of us from MoMA were trekking down to Brooklyn for a studio visit. This being my second time to Brooklyn since living in NYC, I wasn't thrilled about the prospect of being in Red Hook - the most industrial edge of the borough. Walking along scrap metal junkyards and deserted warehouses, under a massive bridge being constructed slash renovated, we found ourselves on a shady side street, devoid of any life, either human, plant or animal. Eerie, yes. Kind of off the beat, this could be cool, most definitely.


We knocked on a large, grey steel door...and waited...and waited. Finally, a skinny, Brooklyn-ite hipster from the depths of the warehouse emerged bleary eyed, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He motioned us in, and we followed him up two sets of wide stairs, with neon lights blazing our way. Then we entered the Space. It was as if I had stepped through a time portal and landed in the Warhol Factory of the 60s in Midtown Manhattan. I felt calmly at home amongst the paint speckled floorboards, the art work half finished on canvases against the walls or sculptures scattered across the floor. The group, a mix of grungy yet beautiful artists with cigarette boxes rolled into their t-shirt sleeves, skinny jeans hanging from their lean frames, and tied up boots - a look that spoke of nonchalance but still, a 'look'. Only the one who led us in did any talking. The rest floated around the different large rooms, drinking PBRs and smirking at our preppy and inquisitive group.

Their Mission, although a bit hard to articulate, revolves around a dead white man, Bruce, who died on September 11, 2001 but NOT in the terrorist attack. He just so happened to die on that day. His large, plastered face hangs ominously above one of the rooms, like a demi-god dictating their thoughts behind the brush strokes. The group is dedicated to "preservation of the legacy ogf the late social sculptor". Okay, so I guess I can buy into this...but what I really appreciated was their re-appropriation of art history. The other part of their mission is to "resurrect art history from the bowels of despair" hence the crass and crude image to the left of Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Another large work was of Velazquez’s greatest and most intriguing work: Las Meninas which was reappropriated by Picasso in the late 19th century and now here again, by the Bruce High Quality Foundation. The folding and intermingling of artists and eras is fascinating.

Overall, I left feeling a bit Dazed & Confused, but very, very intrigued. So much so that I was tempted to hang back, observing the artists in their natural, free spirited environment, wishing I could drink the Kool Aid with them. And of course, re-appropriate the Muse herself, Edie Sedgwick.