Secret History of 2 Columbus Circle: Aids + Loss + NYC Cultural Esthetic

[bettyellen]

I really liked this article which is sort of about a famous, controversial NY building built in the early sixties. It kinda blames part of the wrong turn NYC has taken style wise, in the last 20 years or so, on the AIDS epidemic and the dearth of gay men of a certain age. I guess we can't blame everything on Rudy. It's very long, and sort of meanders, but here ya go.

The Secret History of 2 Columbus Circle
By HERBERT MUSCHAMP
Published: January 8, 2006

...snip....
"MORE THAN 80,000 NEW YORKERS have died of AIDS so far, according to city figures. That number represents more memory than a city can afford to lose. It stands for the collective memory of an audience - the seasoned gay audience, perhaps the most culturally receptive group any city has ever seen. Early on in the AIDS crisis, the city registered the cultural impact caused by the loss of gay artists. The effect produced by the loss of the gay audience is more insidious, however. An audience retains the memory of a performance. What happens to that memory when the audience is gone?
... snip....
WE WERE THE CHILDREN of white flight, the first generation to grow up in postwar American suburbs. By the time the 60's rolled around, many of us, the gay ones especially, were eager to make a U-turn and fly back the other way. Whether or not the city was obsolete, we couldn't imagine our personal futures in any other form. The street and the skyline signified to us what the lawn and the highway signified to our parents: a place to breathe free.

We must have resembled those scary blond children from "Village of the Damned." The moment Audrey Hepburn stepped out of the cab in the opening scene of "Breakfast at Tiffany's," our eyes started to glow. With the Hepburn character, Holly Golightly, we saw our defenses against the pain of isolation transformed into a glamorous style of independence.
...snip....
IF YOU WERE PART OF THE GAY AUDIENCE, however, the criticisms aimed at Mr. Hartford's museum might have sounded oddly familiar. If you had sharp ears, you would have recognized the whirring of wheels, the creaking of old gears. The mechanisms for producing stigma were at work, an apparatus designed to give prejudices the appearance of ideas. And if you had been a target of this prejudice, you were less likely to discount the Gallery of Modern Art for any number of the aesthetic transgressions of which it stood accused.

Sexual ambiguity was integral to swank, for example. A prelude to the recent phenomenon of the metrosexual, the swanky guy adorned himself to a degree more commonly associated with feminine fashion. The taste culture of swank was socially ambiguous, too. Swank came out of the ghettos - Italian, Jewish, African-American and Hispanic. It was a pop vernacular for those seeking to transcend their exclusion from the WASP establishment. (Sammy Davis Jr. once affirmed that he never wore the same undershirt twice.) There was even room in it for gay WASP's, though by the mid-60's they were more likely to prefer the Rolling Stones to the Everly Brothers for fashion inspiration. Pop, in every form, had emerged by then as a paradoxical code for difference, a sign of independence from establishments of all kinds.:

more:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/08/arts/design/08musc.html

[tom22]

1. Hunt Hartford,

and he is still alive, led one of the most amazing lives of the 20th century. He is still alive, has a few million bucks to his name, being taken care of by I believe a daughter (there was an article in VF a year or so ago). and his taste has begun to be vindicated!

[bettyellen]

2. was he a big boozer? my dad used to bitch about the A+P heir who

was a drunk and neglected the business, letting it tank in the late sixties or early seventies. My dad worked for them for 37 years and lost his job when they restructured their operations and hired cheaper labour. :shrug:
the descriptions + pics of the building and gallery are awesome, aren't they?
i'd love to see more.