Ah, the 1980s. A previously unpublished photograph of Anita Sarko, Joey Arias and Edwige. By Patrick McMullan.
by Anthony Haden-Guest
{EDITOR’S NOTE: If you were living in Manhattan during the past four decades and were not personally acquainted with Anthony Haden-Guest, the explanation must be that you were not ambulatory, non compos mentis, or suffered from an acute case of agoraphobia. In the late 1980s, during the reign of Graydon Carter at Spy magazine, Anthony was twice acclaimed winner of the “Iron Man Decathlon” award, for his indefatigable party-going and concomitant work ethic. Never slowing down, he continues to be a superlative essayist, art critic, cartoonist, and social historian. If his mother had married his father before, not after, his birth, Anthony would also be Baron Haden-Guest, entitling him to a better table in restaurants. With this article, Orbmagazine is proud to join The Financial Times, The New Yorker, The Daily Beast and The Telegraph as purveyors of Anthony’s immortal prose. As a reward to our readers, we are providing you a link to The Telegraph’s obituary of Anthony’s mother, Elisabeth Furse. Hers was a life so improbable, you will never look at Anthony the same way again. The brash Brit is the perfect choice to chronicle downtown Manhattan in the ‘80s, and herein Anthony solicits your participation in its telling.}
Rufus, Earl of Albemarle, embracing his (almost) fellow peer
The Last Party, the show I had up at WhiteBox, the artspace on New York’s Lower East Side, for a couple of months last year, was intended to immerse viewers in the vivid culture that was born out of the clubs, bars, zines and subversive galleries of Manhattan in the mid 70s, which went selectively global, and which had sputtered out by the mid 90s (Thanks, Rudy). It consisted of photographs, video, paintings, drawings, graphics and some great surprises – Dan Glass rebuilt the bar of the Mars Bar in the WhiteBox space – and I think went pretty damned well. I attach a Times review, not to pat myself on the back, but to give an objective sense of it.
Anthony being bussed by the grandest of dames Anne Slater
We also had an evening of performance, with such sharp tongues as Penny Arcade. It was high energy, and when I spoke to the performers I realized that something unexpected was happening, that The Last Party project was tapping into just the same grief and rage about the changes in the city that the Wealth Gap and developers were bringing about as had been channeled by the Occupy movement.
Anthony with his fellow Brit art critic, Sir John Richardson
It was then that I decided to put together a picture book – a picture book that would transport readers/viewers into that oh so tainted, oh so recent but oh so distant Golden Age. The project goes well but I want more! From anybody out there with photographs, art, manuscripts, memorabilia – hideously stained flyers and drink tickets, whatever! – weird wearables, or just great, appalling stories. Anything whatsoever at all!
Contact: anthonyhaden.guest@yahoo.co.uk