Howard

This is a picture of me at the first annual. So soulful. So pretty. Oh, those were the days. 1973.

The picture was taken by Howard Gross. Richard and I met him on a train in France in June 1972. He came into our car carrying a wispy bamboo fishing pole and a rucksack, looking every bit the Hemingway wannabee. We mocked him for that, and he liked it. Turned out he was an artist! From Chicago. Well, New York City really, but he went to the Art Institute and had his first show at the Frumkin Gallery in Chicago, and he was in Europe celebrating his recent successes. For the Frumkin show he had made wooden boxes filled with gunk - straw and mattress stuffing, I think - all with a golden lacquered hue. Apparently a few people bought them. Richard and I hung out with Howard for a week or so in Nice. I lost my travel journal on that train ride down to Nice, alas.

When Howard arrived at the First Annual he told Richard and me that he had hitch-hiked from Chicago. Later he confessed that he had flown into the Syracuse airport. As I remember, he had a pretty girl with him. It's always been a little hard to think of Howard with a girlfriend. Don't know why exactly. He spent most of the weekend making rubber molds of cracks in the front sidewalk. This was his new project. Documenting cracks. Conceptual art, you know. The decay of civilization, etc. The cracks in the facade. The real reality. And so on. A couple of years later - 1976 - he moved on to string. I took some of his string to Ireland when I went there to meet Deirdre. I tied it to a railing at the Martello Tower, site of the opening of Joyce's Ulysses. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan and so forth. I took a picture, as instructed, to document it and sent it to Howard.

I would see Howard a lot in New York. He actually introduced me to Noguchi, the sculptor. Idiot that I was, I had no idea who or how significant Noguchi was, just dumbly shook his hand and nodded. Howard also introduced me to the work of Louise Nevelson, a great gift. Howard raced through museums. I've never seen anyone go so fast. I'm not sure I ever saw any actual art when I went to a museum with Howard. But he took me to some great gallery openings where I saw art and met artists, and he had some great parties. For a while he was trying to cultivate the wealthy scion of the Otis Elevator fortune as a patron and friend. I don't think that ever worked out financially, but it did make for some great parties.

For a number of years, Howard lived in a place on 23rd Street that looked out over Madison Square Park directly at the Empire State Building. A fantastic, if cluttered and decrepit apartment, with a million locks and a steel bar you anchored to the floor and propped against the door to prevent entry. The apartment below was the studio of photographer W. Eugene Smith. We used to have beers with him and talk about photography in the bar that occupied the first floor of the apartment building. Until Howard let the water in his darkroom overflow and flood Smith's studio, that is.

Howard always had money problems and often bit the hands that fed him (never enough to really nourish him, he complained to all who would listen) - his father, his sister, the OK Harris gallery. Others. He was a great talker, could have been a masterful PR guy, but he was a terrible photographer and just plain careless in the darkroom. But he was fun to be around, at least when I wasn't annoyed with him.

I don't remember now why or how we lost touch. Maybe it just drifted away when I went out to Buffalo and Rochester in the late 70s/early 80s. By then Howard seemed mired in resentment that overwhelmed his ability to make art. Or so it often seemed to me. But what do I know? I certainly never knew if his art was any good. It always seemed innteresting in his presence because he talked so passionately about it, but then became sort of forgetable when you moved out of range of his voice. The last time I saw Howard, I remember thinking, well he's a good guy but he's pretty lost.

But with Google, nobody should be lost, right? But do you know how many different people named Howard Gross turn up in a google search? Where to start? Or, maybe not start. Maybe just leave it a dimmish sort of memory, the bright spots and the cracks.