A New Deitch Project

Spring 2010 | New York's alternative art kids sadly bid farewell to their champion Jeffrey Deitch as he takes on L.A.

I have been collaborating with Jeffrey Deitch for 25 years. Ironically, our very first collaboration took place in the same Grand Street gallery that will host my book launch and show called MY AMAZING FRIENDS today. 25 years ago, on September 8, 2001 (three days before September 11, 2001), I hosted a big, crazy happening in this very same space. It was Fashion week (as it is this week also!) And so I called it an “Antidote to Fashion Week”, filling the gallery with lots of eccentric underground talent— artists who were inspired by fashion and fashion designers inspired by art. There was “fashion wrestling” (glamazons in evening gowns tackling each other for prizes), turban wrapping lessons, an artist named Nelson brought a barber chair, blindfolded people, then gave them haircuts with scissors that were attached to screeching amplified electronic sounds, and that was the tip of the iceberg. The crowds were so huge, they clogged Grand Street so police intervened (just in time to hear designers threeASFOUR orchestrating a theremin concert on the roof). Most gallery owners would have gone hysterical at the chaos but not Jeffrey. He loved it. And as I was a troublemaker, I loved him back for that. Because that was when I realized he was one of the only people in the art world who truly understood that art is everywhere—not just hanging stuff on walls in museums or galleries. And this was what my practice was all about.

I laughed when I dug up this old column I wrote in PAPER in 2010 on the occasion of Jeffrey leaving New York City to become the director of MOCA in Los Angeles (the Museum of Contemporary Art). I was kind of in mourning that Jeffrey was leaving. In this piece I wrote 15 years ago, I recounted exactly that day in his Grand Street gallery in September 2001, when I realized Jeffrey and I were totally like-minded when it came to art. This was the first time Jeffrey and I collaborated and it began a creative relationship that continued for decades. And now today, we are here again. Throughout the years, Jeffrey Deitch and I collaborated on many more insane cultural ‘happenings’ from art stores, to projects that hovered around fashion week, showing an outrageous hair artist from Detroit to elderly quilters from Appalachia. We even started the legendary Art Parade together. Jeffrey supported, understood, and trusted all my crazy ideas. He always said YES to what I dreamt of doing when everyone else said NO. It feels so good to do this very personal launch and show with Jeffrey in his Grand Street space, which I have so much history with. I am so grateful for him. Here is the piece I wrote in the Spring of 2010 about that moment in 2001 and now running it in 2025. Talk about full circle!

I hope many of you can come by and see my show. Because it really is a document of history. I invited over 60 of my amazing artist friends I’ve grown to love over the years—who are in my book and in my collection— to submit a piece of art that I love. My amazing friends in the show range in age from 27-87 years old. I write about them all in my book. I also wrote about them in a little booklet that you can see in the gallery. Some of my amazing artist friends are legendary, some are deceased, and some are lesser known and have not yet been discovered. But all are great people and great artists. And all are important pieces of a historical puzzle that I lived and documented over the past 50 years. It will be up at Deitch 76 Grand Street until Feb 22. You can buy my book STUFF (co-published by Amazing Unlimited and Damiani) here K.H.

(Cover of Erin Wasson)

A New Deitch Project | Spring 2010

IT WAS DURING FASHION WEEK—September 8th, 2001, to be exact that, I first really got to know the New York art dealer Jeffrey Deitch. The Twin Towers were still standing (unbeknownst to us, with only three days left to exist), and PAPER was, as usual, making mischief. I had decided to give Fashion Week a much-needed kick in the ass by pulling together an all-day un-fashion "happening" antidote to the predictable shows in Bryant Park. What a fun excuse this would be to celebrate some of the talented, out-of-the-box artists I knew whose work was informed and inspired by style and fashion!

I didn't know Deitch well but had heard he was a fan of PAPER and that this bespoke-suited man, who'd previously worked as an art advisor to Citibank, was not as straight as he appeared and had a soft spot for less conventional art mediums like fashion, performance, and music. On a whim, I called him about my idea, and he immediately and enthusiastically said yes, offering us his Grand Street gallery, Deitch Projects, for the day.

What a wild, amazing (and now legendary) day that Saturday in September turned out to be. All of downtown's art and fashion folk squeezed into the Deitch space beneath the artist COOP's huge, semi-pornographic paintings of the couture collections that had just appeared in our September issue. Talk about shock value—Dior couture sprayed onto zaftig, huge-breasted, Russ Meyer-inspired babes. In the next room, an artist named Norman the Electric Chaircutter was giving free haircuts to blindfolded guests with scissors attached to electronic sound nodes that made huge screeching sounds as he snipped. Artists Andrew Andrew, seated at sewing machines, were asking people to disrobe so they could turn their everyday outfits into "art" (giving them bathrobes while they waited). Everyone wore turbans that day—myself included!—as our friend Waris (now the well-known jewelry designer) taught turban wrapping classes using scraps of Day-Glo fabric we'd bought on Canal Street. Then there were the wild, hourly "fashion wrestling" matches where glamazons in gowns and high heels would actually wrestle fiercely in a ring, competing in both style and strength.

But my favorite moment of the day came when my new designer friends, AsFour, arrived and informed me that they wanted to cover their faces with hoods, climb onto the roof of the two-story building and play an electric theremin concert for the neighborhood. My first reaction was, "There's no way Jeffrey Deitch will ever have the insurance to allow (probably drunk) people to climb a ladder, get onto the roof, and perform a concert." But they begged me at least to ask him. Apologetically, I mentioned it to Deitch, and in one second flat, he enthused, "Yes! Great idea!" I remember thinking to myself at that moment: "I love this guy. He is truly subversive." No business owner in his right mind would have ignored his liability for the sake of an amazing idea. No one got hurt that day, but when the Dazzle Dancers got naked to aerobicise in the middle of Grand Street as the electric theremin blasted from the roof, traffic stopped, the neighbors became infuriated and the police arrived. All the while, Deitch was standing in his business suit on the sidelines, watching the chaos with a gigantic grin on his face… loving every minute. I realized then that this man was not a mere gallerist, but a passionate art enabler and provocateur.

Thus began an inspiring and collaborative friendship between Deitch and me, PAPER and Deitch Projects. Our Fashion Week project returned a year later, bigger and better, with a cast of thousands… this time in his enormous garage on Wooster Street. We had (pre-Hirst) Spin Art machines; live bands performing all day; a quilting bee held by housewives flown in from Alabama (courtesy of designer Alabama Chanin); an amazing exhibit of painted burkas; puppet shows featuring miniature outfits from the latest European fashion collections; and outrageous Black hair stylists whom we'd bussed in all, the way from Detroit. We even had a fashion show where one designer handed out "goody bags" with live waterbugs in them! The project grew so large that the next year Deitch decided to take it all to the streets. And so our Fashion Week extravaganzas morphed into the Art Parade, which became an annual downtown institution produced by Deitch Projects, PAPER and Creative Time.

Meanwhile, Deitch continued enthusiastically supporting the work of radical cross-over creatives like musicians–performers Fischerspooner, Kembra Pfahler's The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, and The Citizens Band, as well as designers like Jeremy Scott and AsFour. When I approached him in 2006 about creating an "art department store" at Art Basel Miami to selling artist collaborations from 99¢ to $999,000, Deitch said "Yes!" once again. He rented the space, brought the cash registers, got Tauba Auerbach to create the amazing shop sign, and commissioned Jim Drain to paint the walls; I curated the merch. On opening night, with lines snaking around the block and Eli Broad waving his American Express Black Card in our faces to purchase a $60 Jeff Koons Supreme skateboard, I once again saw that huge grin on Deitch's face as he stood in the middle of it all, observing the insanity.

If you can sense my nostalgia, it's because I'm sad for New York (and PAPER) that Deitch is leaving us and that his galleries will be shuttered this June so that he can head to Los Angeles to run the Museum of Contemporary Art. Once again, he's jumped off a cliff for the sake of art and said "yes!" to a crazy radical idea: running a major museum. While I will miss his unwavering support of risky art, wild ideas, and cultural chaos, I am excited to see who will step up to the plate and fill this gaping hole left in the New York art world. I mostly hope that his risk will pay off and the folks at MOCA will join the cult of "yes!" by allowing him to continue his creative combustion for the sake of pushing art and the role of museums to a new level.