May 31, 1989
Wednesday, 10:40 pm

Went to the gym this very muggy morning then to Bess Cutler Gallery to pick up the check and talk to Herb. Of course, neither Herb nor the check were there.

I bought turkey sandwiches on at Schatz's Deli and headed over to lunch with Josie. White Columns is moving into the Archives Building on Christopher Street after all. Josie's very big and still has five more weeks. Puffed up, she said she looks in the mirror and sees one of those women in the New Jersey shopping malls and can't stand it.

We ate the sandwiches and gossiped about the same things we gossiped about when I'd drop in to visit her at White Columns on the far end of Spring Street. They have a nice apartment with an old TV set they inherited from a relative and still works so they can't get rid of it yet and looks like an unpainted Rodney Allen Greenblatt sculpture. They have three-legged Danish Modern dining room chairs her family had when she was little. Very nice, pleasant young married's apartment except for the Serrano "Piss Christ" hanging on the wall.

Home and a nap then worked on Map painting which is now "Nabokov Map" and will have the text from the afterward of Lolita about inventing America.

Stopped by Simon's space to pick him up for dinner. John Sacci was wrapping up his Kiki Smith just back from a show in Texas. He likes the "Waterfall" painting. There was a Peter Hujar photo of David Wjnorowich and his big dick sitting on Simon's desk.

Simon and I went to Spring Street Natural and talked about a number of things that I can't remember but some of it, most of it, was about the "Erotophobia" show opening Tuesday. I brought up Nabokov's "Pale Fire", the part about pornography and the idea about our contemporary view of porno coming from a model created by de Sade, and how that opposes Gary Indiana's view -- and Simon's -- that America doesn't have good porno (like de Sade) because we don't have an aristocracy.

That led to a discussion about the difference between an organization and a collective and how the unions are made corrupt by "organized crime" in the same way pornography and eroticism is organized and ruined for profit. Because of that it cannot have any real personal value or a disruptive force in the marketplace because it is part of that market.

Simon said the Rubells are interested in my work and want to come over. Thea Westreich thinks my work has no "edge," whatever that means. That may be the point -- they're just paintings, vehicles, containers and the edge is me plus the viewer. Simon wants to bring her over.

We talked about Ruth Kaufman (or was it Estelle Schwartz?) and her reaction that my paintings are too nihilistic, involved in endgames and unemotional. But then Simon pointed out that her reaction to them was very emotional, that she was raving mad so how could they be unemotional. I said it was the construction of them that forced people to come to terms with very simple vocabularies when they rub up against their own. That makes some people think and that upsets them because they're not sure how to do it, what to think about.

After dinner we walked home and talked about future shows: one on "trees" with environmental groups such as Earth First! and Greenpeace; and another show on "cruelty" and the use of it in America now by the police as well as the population.