Gossip Central

The Times of Bill Cunningham: “We all get dressed for Bill”

Mark Bozek’s documentary, The Times of Bill Cunningham, features a fresh look at his subject from a 1994 taped interview: Hard working and uniquely talented, Bill Cunningham eschewed the limelight yet pursued and promoted style, at celebrity functions and on the street, often perched on his bike on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 59^th Street where Bergdorf Goodman sits majestically. Ah, the department store. It’s a dying breed, just like the self-effacing Cunningham himself. Anna Wintour famously quipped, “We all get dressed for Bill,” extolling the special fame of fashion and street photographer Bill Cunningham. When he died in 2016, Wintour wondered if there’d ever be another like him.

The New York Public Library’s Literary Lions Gala by the Book

A bookish night at the New York Public Library, the Literary Lions gala celebrates writers. Charlie Rose attended, and was ensconced in conversation as pigs in blankets were passed. Jean Doumanian confessed to hating long cocktail hours, but the gabfest went on for a while. Writers do have stories. Julie Taymor is finishing her film on Gloria Steinem, and Gay Talese, ever the dapper gadabout, said he went out to screenings and book events galore, even stepping out to a pub to watch television, if nothing else was on his social calendar.

Ugo Rondinone at Guild Hall: Here Comes the Sun

Come out of the dark: Ugo Rondinone’s work at Guild Hall lifts us in radiant shots of sunlight. In the two large gallery spaces the walls are bare, lit by fluorescen fixtures. You might be mistaken to think you are in Walmart under this austere light, but the effect on the art is, well, looking in full sun, stunning. In one gallery, a series of graphic yet shimmering circles in gold and yellow are juxtaposed with Guild Hall’s regal space. In another gallery, large hoops made of twigs work as frames, and the few hung on the wall with nails suggest Christ’s crown of thorns, a beatific sight. In a third gallery, hung shingle style, are hundreds of children’s drawings of the sun, some in blazing color. Everywhere at Guild Hall, the suggestion of hope offers a glimpse of a better future.

Julian Schnabel’s Sculpture and other Delights at LongHouse Reserve

Two white sculptures stood grandly erect on a corridor of green, stately gentlemen greeting guests for the annual summer benefit at LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton. In plaster over burlap, the work by the artist/ filmmaker/ sculptor Julian Schnabel fit the earthy yet well-groomed site, a home to art by Yoko Ono and Buckminster Fuller. Schnabel was to be honored that evening, along with fashion designer Donna Karan. At cocktails, Schnabel’s family, his wife Louise Kugelberg, and sons Vito, Cy, and Olmo Schnabel circled Julian as Hal Willner, Zac Posen, Laurie Anderson, and Benjamin-Sainte Clementine gathered and kibitzed before the celebration. Laurie would perform that evening, and Julian brought Ben to perform too, at a dinner hosted by Jack Lenor Larsen. Ralph Gibson, Florence Fabricant, Fern Mallis, and many others wore rose for the occasion, themed la vie en rose.

“Camp” at the Metropolitan Museum: Susan Sontag as Metaphor

The sound of typewriter clicks permeates “Camp: Notes on Fashion” the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute’s extravaganza exhibition, relieved only by a recording of Judy Garland singing “Over the Rainbow,” from The Wizard of Oz. The MET gala, its yearly benefit this week, may only exist as a distraction from all that the “Camp” show shows, with un-wearable art on celebrities devised to do and outdo the “camp” theme, dressing up itself as camp. But the exhibition, taken from Susan Sontag, the twentieth century diva of cultural dialogues, is a cerebral tour de force.

The Times of Bill Cunningham Premieres at the New York Film Festival

When New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham would train his camera on you—whether at a posh opening or on the street—it made your day. Anna Wintour --Cunningham photographed the Vogue editor since she was a teen—famously used to say, “One dresses for Bill.” His discerning eye assessed celebrities and civilians alike, snapping those with elan, style, joie de vivre. His attention would say, You had “IT.” This beloved New York icon, who died in 2016 at age 88, is revived in a new documentary, The Times of Bill Cunningham, Mark Bozek’s loving tribute. Featuring an interview with Cunningham at its center, this entertaining documentary premiered at Alice Tully Hall this week, one of several stellar non-fiction selections at this year’s New York Film Festival.

Love, Cecil: Picturing the Queen

In his memoir, Without Stopping, the American writer and composer Paul Bowles describes a party held on the beach in North Africa’s Caves of Hercules, with one grotto that had been decorated by Cecil Beaton. Truman Capote, fearful of scorpions, had to be carried down the face of the cliff by a group of Moroccans. Guests lay in the moonlight among cushions in the sand sipping champagne and smoking hashish, serenaded by an Andaluz orchestra. If Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s documentary, Love, Cecil, about the life and times of Beaton, a singular British photographer and illustrator for Vogue and Tony and Academy Award winning scenic and costume designer—for the films Gigi and My Fair Lady-- omits mention of this gathering, she must be forgiven, because the detail she does provide—especially of Beaton’s art-- is truly illuminating. As she said in a recent phone chat, “Making the film was a pleasure to me.”

Peter Beard in That Summer, a New Grey Gardens Documentary

That Summer, the summer of 1972, Peter Beard and Lee Radziwill had the idea to make a film about East Hampton. On the Memorial Day weekend, a crowd of East Enders attended a private screening of That Summer in East Hampton. Director Goran Olsson was not present, nor was Lee, but Peter Beard and his wife Nejma Beard, a producer of this film attended, along with Bruce Weber, Joy Behar, and many others, to hear Vincent Fremont and Bob Colacello, experts on Warhol, tell stories about Andy Warhol and visitors Truman Capote, Bianca Jagger and many others to the Montauk estate back in the day. The film serves as a history of those heady times, of a great group of artists who came to Montauk in 1972.

Peter Hujar: Photographs of a Bygone Era at the Morgan Library & Museum

At an opening at the Morgan Library & Museum celebrating exhibitions of Peter Hujar’s photographs and Tennessee Williams’ memorabilia, a gentleman in a maroon jacket marveled that the Morgan, known for collections of old master drawings and manuscripts would now show photography, especially of the type created by Hujar. While Williams’ scripts and Playbills form the kind of closeted history right up the Morgan’s proverbial alley, well, Hujar’s work is something else. A decade older than Robert Mapplethorpe and Nan Goldin, Hujar too documented the downtown demimonde, its denizen in drag. Hujar’s portraits—black & white-- haunt, testament to the era before AIDS, a vibrant artistic world in the autumn of life.

Avedon’s America at Guild Hall: Another Country

A simple walk through Guild Hall’s exhibition “Avedon’s America” is an encounter with the familiar. Portraits from the world of pop culture: Hendrix, Joplin, Dylan, along with iconic fashion work like Dovima with elephants, evening dress by Dior, Cirque d’Hiver, Paris, August 1955, grace the walls. A favorite portrait of mine is the loving embrace of poets Peter Orlovsky and Allen Ginsberg from 1964, naked and showy, the former with his genitalia limp, just part of the candor from an era when such displays were just not done. So is it merely loving, or up yours to anyone uptight?