Last year at this time I was helping curate a gallery show of artwork that’s funny and has handwritten text mixed in with the images. The show included work by Raymond Pettibon, Shel Silverstein, Maira Kalman, David Shrigley, Leonard Cohen, Tucker Nichols, and tons of others. Among these artists was George Schneeman. All his life, Schneeman, who was described by The New Yorker as an “unfairly obscure” painter, collaborated (examples here, here, and here) with poets like Ron Padgett, Frank O’Hara, Alice Notley, and Ted Berrigan. So in January 2007 I called him up–he didn’t do email–to find out if he was fine with us using his work in the show. When he answered the phone and started talking, I thought he must be standing at the top of a windblown tower shouting joyfully through a tincan with a string attached. I kept my tincan to my ear. I listened like it was a conch shell. He was one of those people you enjoy hearing talk, no matter what it is they’re talking about. He told me about France, and pigeons, and life in the East Village, and the way it’d been raining in New York–but it didn’t bring him down, he said–for a week. All the while, he was searching the studio for the art I was asking about. I heard clatters and things shuffled around. He found some of what we were interested in, but other pieces he shrugged about, saying he couldn’t say what had become of them. And he kept talking. His talk was wistful, generous, and he strung ideas together with disjointed glee. Much like his artwork. Schneeman was in France when the show opened last April and so I didn’t get to meet Schneeman in person. I’m certain, though, that we’ve lost a gem. Last week John Updike, yesterday George Schneeman. The old masters, folks. They’re quietly leaving us. Read The New York Times obituary for Schneeman here.
-Jesse Nathan