To build this centre he evicts over ten thousand people. Moving this many people isn’t easy. There are many protests and petitions, but Moses gets it done.
You theoretically ought to negotiate with every individual until he is happy, Moses says. Do you imagine building anything under those conditions?
After the centre is completed, the real-estate value in the area soars.
You can’t tell me that the neighbourhood isn’t happy now, says Moses.
54
Walt changes his position in the carriage, following the angle of the sun. He remembers scenes from his past. The war is over. His mother is dead. And he is here on this train. He is travelling to New York. They will arrive there soon. His friend is writing another book. Bucke has written many pages. He has torn the pages from his notebooks. They are placed beside Bucke upon the seat. Walt’s whole life, written by somebody else, is lying there.
I want to talk about Long Island, Walt says. Now listen to me, Bucke. I stood on the shoreline where shipwrecks littered the sand. I watched the men who were bathing there. I sat in the sun. I took off all of my clothes. The men were bathing and diving into the water. They were so alive. I watched them. The tide was coming in. It would be a good hour before it reached me, but it would come. I ripped the sheet from the book, folded it and tucked it under my pile of clothes. I remembered my ancestors who I have never known. I had the impression that life was eternal. My life stretched out before me like a never-ending line in the sand and I could sense the universe. I walked out and waded in the ocean. I went out further and began to swim. I swam until I could not touch the ground. I floated and looked up at the sky and back at the beach where the bathers were dressing.
Walt once visited Bucke in Ontario. Walt never kept his room tidy. Instead of folding his clothes neatly in the drawers, he laid them out on the bed and chairs. He set his books and papers out on the tables and on the floor but never in the bureau provided. He spread himself throughout the house. He slept very late. When he woke he took an age to rouse himself. He did not dress until the afternoon. He walked about the house in his underclothes then he demanded lunch. He insisted that everyone come out for walks outdoors even though their days were already well established. They followed him through the garden and out into the pasture, over fences, through brooks, into the wilderness. The world was suddenly alive. The flowers smelt sweeter and the sun was hotter. The brook was icy cold. The season, always summer. Walt ripped pages out of books and stuffed them into his shirt pocket. This was to reduce the weight of what he must carry.
When is he leaving? asked Mrs Bucke.
I don’t know, said Bucke.
Haven’t you asked him?
Bucke wanted to say, I would have him here for ever if I could.
He can’t stay, said Mrs Bucke. I can’t stand it. He’s always lying about the house and ripping up our books. This man is unashamed of his reproductive organs. And I don’t think he’s much of a poet.
Bucke found Walt crouching over the remnants of books at the bottom of the garden. He was trying to get at something. Whatever it was, it was something he was not getting.
I need to speak with you, said Bucke.
I can find no order here, said Walt. I would do better in the middle of a war where nothing is certain.
How Bucke wanted to keep him there with him. What makes us want to possess the things we love? He has seen it in the daguerreotypes and photographs, images of loved ones framed and worn on the person or hung on the wall – a mother, a father, a deceased child, a soldier. He has seen photographs of Walt. These images depict his friend yet they do not adequately communicate his animated form. The Walt who is alive is always moving and changing. These pictures only show what existed once.
Bucke is reading alone in the carriage. He is taking a break from his story. He tries to think of his wife and his children. He will be very happy to see them again. He has lived away from them for too long. They are his family, his flesh and blood. But when he sees Walt standing in the corridor laughing with the porter his heart beats wildly. He thinks about Walt writing those letters for the soldiers during the war, sitting in their tents and writing the words of other men, writing down their hopes and dreams. How lucky they were to have him so close.
The Variations
(2011)
EDWARD MAPPLETHORPE
The walls of the Foley Gallery are lined with prints of abstract swirls and lines in colours of brown, black, white, grey and gold.
The artist Edward Mapplethorpe is telling an interviewer, I am able to achieve the colour by scattering light. It is all about process.
These pictures do not depict anything from Edward’s real life. These Mapplethorpes are organic forms.
These pictures have more in common with painting than with photography, Edward says. Here, one is observing the process of art and not just its final presentation. Here, there are no faces, bodies or landscapes. There is nothing recognizable. There is only colour, form and process.
In the centre of the room, Patti Smith is giving an interview to a journalist. She is explaining that she always knew Edward would become an artist. When she and Robert visited him in Floral Park, she talked to Edward about art and his future.
Edward says, These pictures are made by using the photographic process as the subject. Not just as a way to develop the photograph. In effect, this is not photography at all because the process is not complete. There is no camera here and there is no subject. There is only methodology. This is all done in the darkroom. Here, there is no reality to depict. The shapes are confusing. They are a product of the process, he says. Here, there is nothing more to see. There is no story to describe. There is no story.
I had the idea on September 11th, says Edward. It was something to do with seeing the towers inside out. I saw colours, shapes and process. I saw all the subjects I had ever depicted in my photographs and suddenly there was a definite thick black line between then and now – I decided I wouldn’t go back. I would replicate something of this effect in my studio.
He remembers how it all began.
Riding the subway into Manhattan, staring out the window at Queens sailing by, the fading fall light, the pink hue of apartment towers, the train plunging deep underground, Edward’s face reflected in the window, a shadow of Robert’s.
Edward thinks, We came from the same place, Robert and I. These photographs do not depict Robert but Robert is contained within all of them. On the information pamphlet Edward blocks out the word ‘Robert’ and reads ‘Mapplethorpe’.
When he stayed in Robert’s Bond Street apartment, he felt misplaced. The chicken-wire cage cast a shadow across the floor. Streetlight flooded the room. He bathed in dirty light. He was planning his own exhibition then. He could see it all perfectly, his own crisp, clear style.
Robert once asked him to change his name.
They were eating together in a diner. Edward named everything he could see –
table,
glass,
pitcher,
brother.
It’s not such a big deal for you. It’s not as if you are anybody yet, said Robert. Why don’t you take another name? Take Mom’s name. Why don’t you take Maxey? Take Maxey. No one has done anything with Maxey. You’re not going to screw this up for me. I have worked too fucking hard to make a name for myself. Don’t you want to be independent? Don’t you want to do something on your own?
But it’s my name, Edward said.
You should take Maxey. Maxey suits you. Mom would want you to have it. Look, everyone is happy with Maxey. I can’t change my name. I’m already a Mapplethorpe. I was a Mapplethorpe before you were born.
When Edward wrote a college thesis about his brother, he adopted an objective, critical tone but he never could separate himself from the name. When Edward walked into the diner that morning he was Edward Mapplethorpe but he walked out of it Ed Maxey.
I saw it on the news, says Edward. A dirty cloud falling on New
York. It did not settle on the ground. It did not end. I tried to breathe. My breath mixed with other fragments in the air, all the elements and particles, all the dirt and lint that had been swept up from the ground. There is only ever process. I saw it in the swirls of dust. I saw it in the way that every part was falling as it should, as its weight allowed, every desk, chair, every shard of glass, every piece of paper, every handbag, shoe, was falling completely in accordance with the laws of physics, and I was looking at the result of those laws, the result of how things collide. There would never be an end because the dust would never settle. No one would ever be able to trace the lines back, to find a beginning. And there was no end. Something shifted in me.
Edward says, I am getting my life back on track. This is my time now. There is so much I want to do. I went off the rails there for a while. But now I’m right back where I should be. There have been ups and downs, sure. I was an addict. But that’s all in the past. I have put all of that behind me. I am working harder than ever, creating, you know? I’m Edward Mapplethorpe again.
Photography is interesting, Edward says. Because it shows something that once existed. A photograph preserves a moment in time. A photograph is a window into someone else’s life but that moment no longer exists.
What was it like being Robert Mapplethorpe’s brother? the interviewer asks.
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The videotape lies on top of the VCR. The handwritten label reads The Perfect Moment. Robert looks at his silhouette in the television screen. There is his outline in the glass but not the detail of his features. Dandruff floats down onto his lap. He licks his dry lips.
You wanna watch a film? his assistant asks.
She puts the tape into the machine and switches it on.
What message do people have for Robert? What do they think of Robert Mapplethorpe? What do they want to share with him?
Man: He’s sensuous. Of our time. It’s great to see Robert’s work. Best wishes.
Woman: I’ve seen your work for many years but I think they touched me most tonight. Thank you for everything.
Man: I applaud Robert’s courage in realizing his own vision, and I applaud his aesthetic, which is impeccable. One of the greatest photographers of this century.
Woman: One of the sexiest people that ever existed.
Group: Robert, congratulations, and our thoughts are with you.
There is a shot of Robert’s self-portraits – the skull cane, Robert’s eyes, Robert with the whip up his ass.
It’s like watching my own funeral, he says.
In the hospital Robert has his own room with a TV. The nurse sets a vase of flowers on his bedside table. The card reads With Love, from Mom and Dad. But his mom is also ill. This means it must have been his father who sent the flowers. It must have been his father who wrote the card.
The nurse comes back.
I’m sorry, she says. These flowers were meant for another patient.
She takes them away. He watches them go.
56
The film Edmund is watching in the Museum of the City of New York is describing the construction of Brooklyn Bridge in the late nineteenth century.
Brooklyn Bridge represents not an external ‘thing’ but an internal process, an act of consciousness, the narration says. It shows the ambition of human will.
Next, the building of the Empire State Building in 1931, steel beams swinging into place, the skyward ballet of the men who fixed them, standing on tiptoes on the edges of beams and hammering bolts into place. The men in the picture are smiling as they eat their lunch sitting on beams, high in the air. Now the men are gone but the building remains.
The manufacturing of weapons during the Second World War and prosperity, then the slump, waning New York, economic decline – Edmund’s era – the 1970s – the famous newspaper headline: Ford to City: Drop Dead.
The construction of the World Trade Center, monoliths balanced on impossible struts. The clouded sky, not a building in sight except for the tops of those towers reaching.
The exterior of the tower that has replaced them reflects the sky.
The exhibition in the next room is about single-occupancy housing. The charts on the walls explain that only 1.5 per cent of New York City’s rental housing stock is a studio or one-bedroom apartment ready for occupancy. This is inadequate for a modern population that wants to live alone. On display is an example of a new breed of apartment designed to meet the shortfall of single-occupancy housing. This apartment utilizes space by ensuring each piece of furniture performs a variety of functions. A woman is demonstrating all the places in the apartment where objects can be stored. The fold-out chairs can be hung on the wall when your guests have gone. The sofa folds down. A bed can be lowered from the wall. The footstool can be opened and a table taken out. The TV slides over to reveal a closet filled with regulated kitchenware. Edmund doesn’t want to live alone. He crosses the room and looks out the window. Fifth Avenue has been closed to traffic. Outside, there is no space to move. It is teeming with people.
It is close to sunset. Soon it will be possible to see the black silhouette of the Eldorado Building on the other side of the park.
Edmund’s phone vibrates.
An email from T.
Let’s have dinner tonight, 8pm. Trattoria Spaghetto, Father Demo Square xx
Clockshower
(1973)
GORDON MATTA-CLARK
Gordon Matta-Clark climbs onto the stone ledge of the clock face and pulls himself up. He is hundreds of feet above New York. He reaches for the minute hand and steadies himself. On making contact with the minute hand a shower of water begins to fall. Gordon positions himself beneath the water, letting the water fall onto the rim of his black hat and then onto his coat and then his body then down his legs. He moves left and right to get the full flow of water directly onto his body. He moves the minute hand left and right so that the full flow of water drenches him. He reaches towards the clock face, and, from a fixed shelf there, he takes a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste from a water glass then he squeezes the toothpaste onto the toothbrush and he brushes his teeth. After he has brushed his teeth he takes the water glass from the shelf and holds the water glass directly under the running water. He drinks water from the water glass then places the water glass back onto the shelf. He then takes a brush covered in shaving cream and he rubs the shaving cream over his cheeks and chin. He begins to shave. He starts with one cheek then the other then he moves onto his chin and then his upper lip. He rinses his face in the water. He lies down under the clock face. He is covered head to toe in cream. Slowly, he sits up and moves the minute hand left and right to activate the water. He swings the minute hand back and forth and washes the cream away. He holds his leg up and washes the cream away. He sits up and directs the water onto his body, washing the cream away. He stands under the water. He takes an umbrella from the shelf and he holds it above his head so that he is protected from the falling water.
The camera pulls back, revealing New York City beneath him, the busy avenues and rivers of vehicles, the tiny people walking up and down the sidewalks, people crossing streets, the smoke and smog of industry, the distant view of ships in the harbour, water tanks and fire escapes, the grey sky above.
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For the World’s Fair in 1939 Robert Moses transformed Flushing Meadows in Queens from a landfill site into useable parkland with smooth lawns, recreational pavilions and landscaped walkways. He covered over trash with turf. He drained the marshes. He filled in the holes and landscaped the parkland, levelled out the avenues and boulevards, connected pathways, throughways and parking lots. But when he looked at the park left behind in 1940 he saw something unfinished, grass growing over unused ground, paths laid out but leading nowhere. All the parking lots were empty. The fair came and then it left. Nothing remained of it afterwards except the outline of a park.
The Chicago Fair in 1893 exhibited the technology behind the most recent phenomena – moving pictures, travela
tors, phosphorescent lamps. The World’s Fair in Paris in 1889 exhibited a Wild West show, a human zoo and the Eiffel Tower. The fair in San Francisco in 1915 displayed exhibits about the Panama Canal, the aeroplane and the motorcar. In New York in 1939 the subject was ‘The World of Tomorrow’. The theme of the 1964–65 New York World’s Fair is ‘Peace Through Understanding’. This time Robert Moses is in charge of it all. He organizes the building of a Walt Disney ‘Small World’ ride, a colour television studio, a Kodak Pavilion, the Westinghouse time capsule, a Transportation and Travel Pavilion. There is a ‘Moon and Beyond’ Cinerama. General Motors has an autoride into the future. The Amphitheatre puts on stage and water shows. There is a circus and a music hall with entertainers from Jones Beach. There’s a Better Living Center, Pavilion of American Interiors, The House of Good Taste, a Little Old New York restaurant, a 7up International Sandwich Gardens, and a Coca-Cola’s World of Refreshment. There is a Swiss Sky Ride, a Protestant Pavilion, a Mormon Pavilion, a Christian Science Pavilion and a Billy Graham Pavilion. The Vatican has a pavilion. The Federal Building contains a ‘Challenge to Greatness’ theatre and tributes to American heritage. The Carousel of Progress features life in the 1880s, 1920s, 1940s, and 1960s. There is a model of the plan for the World Trade Center. Chrysler exhibits an auto-production line. At the Illinois Pavilion there is an animatronic Abraham Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address.
Has there been much criticism, Commissioner? the reporter asks.
People like to criticize. Criticism doesn’t build anything. Criticism is always negative. Always some fellow thinking he knows better than everybody else. Just look at what we’ve built here. You can’t build something like this by listening to critics.
Everyone is Watching Page 15