From: Jerry Tartaglia (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Jan 06 2004 - 05:41:22 PST
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 6, 2004
Fourteen Years After Artist Dies in Squalor, Estranged Sister $ues for
Control of Once "Worthless" Work
Jack Smith was estranged from his family in life, rejected by them in
sickness, and abandoned by them in death. Now, after the artist's friends
and admirers have spent years struggling to restore Smith's films, preserve
his papers and artistic output, and create his burgeoning posthumous
reputation, Smith's sister Mary Sue Slater has petitioned the Public
Administrator to take possession of the legacy she once found abhorrent.
Smith died in September 1989 of HIV-AIDS. Although his underground film
Flaming Creatures was recalled as a cause celebré of the 1960s and his
performances influenced several generations of avant-garde artists,
Smith-who spend his last years in a squalid sixth-floor walk-up in New York'
s East Village-was a cult figure at best. The performance artist Penny
Arcade, one of a handful of friends who nursed Smith during his final
illness, took the responsibility of contacting the artist's sister after his
death and turning over to Slater's lawyer some $50,000 in negotiable bonds,
found in Smith's apartment.
"One month later," Arcade remembers. "Mrs. Slater and her son Michael came
to New York to see for themselves how Jack lived. They hadn't even paid for
a funeral. They seemed horrified by his life." Regarding her brother's work,
Arcade recalls that Mrs. Slater told her "no one should be allowed to see it
and they shouldn't want to see it." In her recent affidavit, Mrs. Slater
blames her husband for estranging her from her brother and his artistic
production: "My husband did not approve of Jack's homosexual lifestyle and
did not want our sons to be tainted by it." (Mr. Slater passed away in 1992,
a decade before Mrs. Slater rediscovered her interest in her brother's
work.)
Arcade, who had arranged for Smith's cremation, organized and underwrote a
memorial service at Performance Space 122; meanwhile, the family removed
what they wished from Smith's apartment. According to Arcade, "Michael
Slater returned again to take more things. His mother wanted Jack's costume
jewelry-she thought she could sell it at a flea market." As the Slaters
declined to file for probate, create an estate, or settle Smith's debts,
Arcade was left to pay rent on the apartment and fight eviction, to protect
the disorganized mass of material the artist left behind. She enlisted a
group of artists, architects, writers and filmmakers including Village Voice
film critic J. Hoberman.
Arcade and Hoberman met with Michael Slater to explain the importance of
Smith's work and outline steps to save it. "He wanted to know if this junk
was really valuable," Hoberman recalls. "I told him that it was both
worthless and priceless. Worthless in that there was no market for it, and
that the films would all need to be repaired and restored; priceless in that
it was of tremendous aesthetic and historical importance. He seemed
surprised that I though his uncle was one of the most influential and
significant artists of his period."
Arcade and Hoberman were determined to preserve Smith's films, drawings,
papers, photographs, costumes, theatrical props, and other artistic effects.
Although Mr. Slater expressed initial interest in helping on this project,
he and his mother never responded to Hoberman's letters detailing the work
being undertaken to preserve Smith's work. Arcade took charge of packing and
moving Smith's artistic effects to a secure storage location. Hoberman
enlisted assistance of Anthology Film Archives, a New York based institution
devoted to the preservation and presentation of avant-garde cinema, and
working with the filmmaker Jerry Tartaglia began a program to restore Smith'
s extent films and place them in distribution. This project, which involved
fund-raising as well as the painstakingly repair of severely damaged films,
took seven years.
At the same time, Arcade and Hoberman undertook a search for institutions
interested in archiving Smith's photographs, papers, costumes, props, and
drawings. Thanks to Arcade's persistence, the experimental art center P.S.1
agreed to store and help catalogue this material in preparation for a show
and publication devoted to Smith's work. Sifting through and organizing the
material proved another massive undertaking. The exhibition, curated by
Edward J. Leffingwell, required five years to come to fruition; before the
show opened in late 1997, it was necessary to create a legal entity to
protect Smith's material. "As the Slaters ignored our letters for seven
years and the Public Administrator disregarded repeated appeals to address
the situation, Penny and I created the Plaster Foundation, with our lawyer
Mary D. Dorman," Hoberman says. "Its sole purpose was safeguard, promote,
and distribute Smith's work."
The P.S.1 exhibit, along with an accompanying catalogue and a parallel film
series at the American Museum of the Moving Image attracted local, national
and international attention; the show (Smith's first) was prominently
reviewed in the New York Times and featured on the cover of Artforum
magazine. Since then, two more books have been published on Smith and his
work has been shown in a number of museums and galleries both in the US and
abroad. Administered by volunteers and surviving on modest revenues, the
Plaster Foundation has continued to take responsibility for the preservation
and dissemination of Jack Smith's art-work for which its directors have
neither asked nor taken recompense.
In November 2002, five years after the P.S.1 exhibit raised Jack Smith's
profile, Mary Sue Slater wrote to Hoberman. She expressed no appreciation
for the considerable labor that had gone into saving her brother's artistic
legacy. Rather, she accused Hoberman of profiting from Smith's art and
demanded her "share" of the money. Since then the Public Administrator has
filed a claim on Slater's behalf in Surrogate's Court. Arcade and Hoberman
believe that Slater's belated interest in her brother's art, coming after
nearly 13 years of silence, was inspired by a private collector who is
underwriting her suit.
Contact: Mary D. Dorman, 646-230-7444
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.