Cassandra Langer

Do not miss the Patricia Cronin exhibit at the Sackler Feminist Center at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NYC. Cronin’s exhibit is a homage to the 19th Century sculptor, Harriet Hosmer who was the inspiration for Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun. Hosmer was a friend of the Brownings and a lover of women. She helped to support Emma Stebbins another sculptor whose lover was the actress Charlotte Cushman, one of the original drag kings. Cronin’s water colors are real collector’s items. Done in velvety rich blacks and luminous whites with touches of gray they glow with a radiance that speaks the love the artist has for her subjects. Cronin painstakingly researched and attempted to restore to the public all of Hosmer’s works. Many of these are lost and so instead of trying to replicate them from descriptions, Cronin created a series of “ghosts” as standins for the missing works. The book that Cronin did is a steal at $32.00 and sold in the museum shop. Distinguished American art historian, William Gerdts contributed a beautifully written information packed essay. 

Meanwhle, I will be attending the Jackson Heights Poetry Festival next weekend. It is sure to be an exciting and fun event with readings by poets from Jackson Heights and other regions. Many of these take place at the Garden School. Check it out on Facebook. Tune in for more news.

At times I wonder if any writer who isn’t a celebrity will ever be deemed “good enough” by the editors at some of the publishers we have to court to get our work out? I wonder how other serious writers academic and otherwise feel about the state of publishing now? I am thinking of a biography and art panel I recently attended in NYC. This is my forth event concerning biography and the writing of other people’s lives. I find myself deeply disappointed by what I have heard and seen. Most of the time the presenters are not prepared. They fly by the seat of their frayed pants expecting the audience to suck up to whatever they happen to let fly. Most of it is fart city and an insult to those attending. For a serious writer it is just an exercise in frustration. You wonder if these people are just plain irresponsible, so into the performative that they cannot not even access their own scripts, or just plain don’t give a damn wanting to take the money and run. The only biography sessions that have seemed serious are those that have been held by the psychohistory association which at least seems to want to know something about the person’s background, life and how they constructed themselves in the world as well as how that played out in their interior life.

On a better not Anyone who hasn’t seen the Louise Bourgeois film-The spider, the mistress and the tangerine which is playing in NYC at the Film Forum should not miss it. This is a model of what art/biographers and interviewers might achive if they put their nose to the grindstone and their minds to giving audiences insights into art and artists.

My Brooks works comes along gradually as we move into her life in the aftermath of WWII. The Italian situation is complex and requires understanding what an incoherent mess Italy was after the German’s surrendered. The hows and whys of Brooks’s decision to stay in Italy rather than return to France with her lover, Natalie Barney remain obscure and misleading. In trying to tease them out of what she wrote in her ms. about the war years and in later letters one runs up against Brooks’s somewhat duplicitous representation of herself.

June roles around with new political revelations from Obama and the do nothing to help the real working class congress.  His stance on the Holocaust is encouraging but what is he really doing to make a difference? My chapters on Brooks are moving along. I hope to finish up the last two by the end of August if I am lucky.

I Am rereading Barbara Guest’s Herself Defined about the American imagist poet Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) whose work I have always been crazy about and deeply influenced by as a writer by. I think she and Emily Dickensen remain my favorites. I had the pleasure of meeting Perdita (H.D.’s daughter) once out in the Hamptons. She was a very bright and lovely woman. I enjoyed our afternoon together.

Currently working on the transcript of my interview with the photographer and writer, Allen Frame. This will be finished some time next week and I hope to see it published in time for his September show here in New York City. I also want to catch Pattie Cronin’s show at the Brooklyn Museum. She has done a wonderful take off on the lesbian sculptor, Harriet Hosmer’s work. Hosmer worked in Rome and was the prototype for Henry James’s novel on the women artists there. So lots of good work happening and enjoyable.

Saw the Picasso show at Gagosin Gallery. It was remarkable. He was a prick and a genius. These last works are so free, sexy and full of life that it simply blows one away. The lushness of the paint, the sheer engagement with art and what it means to be an artist of Spanish heritage as well as dialoging with the history of art. His poetic vision in relation to the female body is astonishing in its eroticism and appreciation given how much of American culture is hateful toward women in general.  I also caught the Yayoi Kusuma show at the other Gagosin space. She is living and working in an asylum. Perhaps it is, like King of Hearts, the only sane place to be these days? Who really knows. Even so, the work engages chaos theory in ways that almost no other contemporary artist seems to be capable of doing. Her works evoke particle and wave theory in a beautiful and alive way with startling beauty. I was enthralled.