Money. The Antithesis of Creativity.

June 1999

This week has certainly been a tumultuous one, notwithstanding the shitshow of Trump’s insane cabinet picks and Biden’s “Hunter pardon”. A few days ago, we watched an attempted coup in South Korea when the president, Yun Sook Yeoli, imposed martial law and was quickly slapped back by his own citizens as they immediately overflowed the streets with protests. (Take note fellow Americans). Then a few days later there was that CEO of United Healthcare gunned down on East 53rd Street. And we learned the next day that the words “DENY”, “DEFEND”, and “DEPOSE” were discovered etched inside the bullet casings. I had breakfast with a friend who, when discussing the possible motives for this murder, commented, “Forget political assassinations. The new assassinations will be corporate ones. Just wait and see.” She then added, “Power to the people."

I must say it’s been fascinating for me to talk to my artist friends post-election about what life will be like for us after January 20th. Nobody seems to know what to do or how to feel. It’s all very abstract so far, even though we know we must gird our loins. One of my dear artist friends who has always been an activist shrugged their shoulders and told me “I don’t know what to do or where to go. I’m just gonna watch it all for now,” adding “They wanted it all, they got it all. Let’s see what they do with it.” More than one of my friends has told me they’re getting the popcorn popped, ready for Season 2 Episode 1. Other artists I know are diving deep into their studios making as much art as they can, which is the best way they know how to respond to this abyss we are staring into.

Me? As if I didn’t have enough to do, I am opening an insane cultural department store for the holidays next week at one of my favorite galleries: WHAAM! Gallery on Elizabeth street. Run by my new, young, OG-loving friend, Anatoly Kirichenko, WHAAM! is tucked away in one of those Chinatown shopping malls. What I’m doing is definitely lunacy and totally DIY (hey, that’s how I roll) but in the end, it will be guaranteed FUN and filled with all the amazing stuff that my amazing friends make and more. I’m even holding BOB ROSS learn to paint classes on December 22nd all day !!!!!!

Yup, when the world stresses me out, leave it to me to come up with some lunatic idea/way to bring my favorite wildly creative and likeminded friends, and friends I haven’t even met yet, together and submerge myself into the exhaustion of blowing peoples minds day and night until I manifest it into reality. This is what satisfies me at this moment. One of my old friends told me recently that I am “relentless.” I guess he’s right. Every day I try to drink the ocean from a firehose. I guess that’s how I, as an older person, deal with what’s going on during this latter part of my life. I feel a huge sense of urgency to create and share and surround myself with goodness.

For this week’s vintage column, I dug deep in my drawer and found this appropriate jewel I wrote in 1999—TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO!!!!! I love it because it talks about my lifelong obsession: MONEY VS CREATIVITY. I’ve always believed MONEY and corporations were (and still are) POISON to the creative process. I continue to rant about this today!!!!!! A lack of money is always the best idea-kickstarter. As an aging punk, I still feel a slight thrill when things go south: times of zero money availability, unexpected catastrophes, or other out-of-control situations. This is when the artist in me busts out and ideas start literally spitting out of me. Remember, a great idea doesn’t cost more than a bad idea. Art is free to make. And I, as do most of the best artists I know, love a challenge. Life is too short to just watch the news and moan about it. We need to make our own news, invent new ideas and amazing SOLUTIONS to problems never seen before. We as artists need to lead the way.

So come say hi to me at my crazy AMAZING STUFF store at WHAAM! (15 Elizabeth Street from December 12th-30th) and maybe pick up some madness like a bad Santa-posing-as Kim-Kardashian sweater, an AmyCakes clown collar, some Tauba Auerbach rolling papers, or a Creative Growth gumball machine. It will lift your spirits! Oh yeah, and Happy fucking holidays. K.H

(Cover of Prince)

Money Can't Buy You Style | June 1999

AFTER YEARS OF STRUGGLING TO PUBLISH THIS MAGAZINE INDEPENDENTLY, I can see now that our constant lack of resources has resulted in a sort of spontaneous combustion of amazing creative invention. We've always had to solve problems not with our pocketbooks but with our ingenuity, which is a hell of a lot more work, but also a hell of a lot more interesting. In fact, I'm not sure why, but in every medium I can think of, the greatest ideas always seem to be germinated in a void of privilege. I'm convinced that money is the antithesis of creativity. Find the cheapest rent districts in any urban area and you'll find the best art. Go to any ghetto and you will find amazing style. The best club in New York was once in the basement of a church. Independent anything turns out better than corporate everything. Our culture is created, nourished, and pushed forward not by hype and money, but by beliefs, ideas, and fearlessness. The do-it-yourself qualities that are abundant underground are rare in mainstream culture, which fears experimentation and change.

Lately, I have been feeling quite melancholic about my hometown, New York City. Gentrification ("progress") has made it impossible for folks fresh out of art school to rent an apartment for 500 bucks a month and contribute preposterous, bold new style, art, and ideas to the creative soup that used to be New York City. The kids that move here now must somehow be able to afford Prada shoes and $1,300 a month for a studio on Avenue C. The ecology of New York has changed before my eyes. When I first moved to SoHo in 1976, the landscape was vibrant. The restaurant FOOD on Prince Street served the only decent meal below Houston. FOOD was both run and patronized by artists. They were pierced, tattooed, beyond eccentric and, oh yes, uniquely label-less and stylish in a way that only true creative types can pull off without a cent, mixing ethnic clothing with thrift-shop items (wearing lots and lots of black, of course). In those days, downtown was a ghetto that made uptown types feel uncomfortable. To moneyed Upper East Siders, going east of First Avenue or below Canal Street was dubious, if not a bit scary. Alphabet City was dangerous turf, with dope sold in anonymous-looking bodegas and local kooks like Adam Purple, an aging, bearded Loisaida hippie homesteader who rode around on a lavender bicycle, his purple robes streaming behind him as he preached about how the dangerous gentrification of the Lower East Side would eventually destroy his purple gardens on Forsyth Street, where he squatted. (It did.)

I didn't know anyone with a lot of money in those days. Most of my friends were like me, art students who moved to New York to be—bull’s-eye—at creative ground zero, to tackle this mecca. We were driven here to make our mark in the most amazingly creative city in the whole wide world. The visual style of native downtowners was experimental and nonconformist. We all shopped like mad in thrift stores, from the huge Salvation Army in the West 40s to the tony Upper East Side Kips Bay thrift shop. We adored Screaming Mimi's (on the Upper West Side in those days), mixing its vintage pieces with the mad rags of our struggling East Village designer friends who were living in storefronts and sewing avant-garde clothes in the back. We didn't spend a lot of money on clothes, but everyone I knew looked incredible and had their own personal, eccentric style. Big time. It was an inspirational-style circus. There were performance artists dressing up like birthday cakes or aliens, plus punkers, rockabillies, and fashion victims. We all religiously converged each Sunday morning (still up from the Mudd Club the night before) at the Canal Street flea market. The only uptowner who noticed was passionate photographer Bill Cunningham, who gleefully captured it all, running around the downtown streets to document what was going on. Last month, I visited Seattle for the first time and noticed that it was filled with the sort of hardcore creative types | used to see when I first moved to New York. I was dining in a hip Seattle restaurant called Cyclops (downstairs from the homey new Ace Hotel, where we were staying) when I found myself in a nostalgic trance as I stared at the busboy: a rather large, bald man with an Aunt Jemima-style bandanna on his head and full makeup. He shuffled dirty dishes while wearing a drab, midcalf peasant skirt; an apron over his T-shirt, which was decorated with a gigantic Hebrew letter; black socks; and heavy boots. Our waitress told me he was an artist. Yup, he was the real thing: inspiring and inspired. I felt sad when I couldn't remember how many years it had been since I'd seen anyone like him in my hometown. Now this is where style comes from.

I get the creepy feeling lately that the "real thing" may not gestate in New York very much anymore. The city has been co-opted, mallified, and filled with superstores. Label whoredom has won out over improv and guerrilla creativity. Cash has won over art, with Giuliani's Disneyland reign pushing its way over the edge. What will become of New York now that all the cheap apartments are gone and the struggling artist has become an endangered species? I dare not imagine, but I can't give up. They'll have to drag me out of here kicking and screaming.