Well-Heeled

"There's a special place in hell for women who don't help other women."
-Madeleine Albright

I had been living in New York for about a year when the show 2 Broke Girls first came out. In one episode, the character Caroline arrives in a chic uptown apartment building and promptly removes her flat boots, takes out a pair of shiny, white and gold platform heels and changes her shoes, putting the flats in her bag.

Her friend Max stands next to her, befuddled:"You always have those with you?"
Caroline responds: "Yes, I'm from Manhattan."

Though I haven't watched the show since then, I still think of it every time I bring a pair of heels with me somewhere. After all, in my old apartment I lived .75 miles from the train; in my new one, I live .8 miles away. I don't mind the distance in flats, of course, but heels are not an option unless I want to arrive at my destination a cripple. And I do like wearing heels personally, so I bring them along. In a city like New York where walking is an integral part of getting anywhere, it's better for your health this way.  Learning this is "the way" is also a rite of passage. You're taught by your foremothers (or sometimes your actual mother) that you pop your heels into your bag; I remember teaching a friend this who was staying with me and going on job interviews. We like to feel good in heels but we also need walk long distances, so this is how we do it.

Melanie Griffith changes out of her sneakers and into
heels in this scene from the movie Working Girl (1988).

Yesterday was another day of heels-in-the-bag, for a morning art gallery preview. It simply was not a time when I wanted to wear flats. The shoes I chose for today were terracotta wedges with a peep-toe and laces. Definitely not shoes in which I could walk long distances, but short distances, like around a gallery, are just fine. I changed into them on a bench in front of a French restaurant across the street from the gallery, gingerly stepping off of the curb, tottering across 10th Avenue, and tip-toeing across the crags of a Chelsea sidewalk. I even took out my headphones so I could concentrate on the task, much to the chagrin of the Amy Winehouse radio station I had previously been enjoying. You really don't notice how jagged and treacherous a New York sidewalk is until you're called upon by the fashion gods or just your own masochism to brave it in platform heels. Why bother with the heels at all? you might ask. Well, that's how I wanted to wear my outfit, and that's what made me feel good this morning.

Ultimately I arrived safely at the gallery and had a look around at the exhibition. Then found my seat for a discussion the artist would be having with a curator from a local museum.

I should mention the gallery preview was of a feminist artist who, in her 40-some-odd year career, has chosen to examine sexuality, gender, and power. Her new work on display featured nude paintings of men and women in a variety of footwear, many in high heels.

In the discussion, the artist remarked, perplexed and perhaps even disappointed, on the absurdity of young girls wearing heels. It was modern-day corsetry, modern-day footbinding, she said, self-imposed for the desires of men. She may as well have shaken her head and looked down in shame, worrying what to do about the younger generation. I stared down at my wedges, and caught the eye of a girl sitting across the aisle from me. She was wearing fabulous bright silver stilettos. We stared at each other and raised our eyebrows, smiling mischievously at each other in unapologetic bemusement. We were easily two of the youngest people in the room. I stared at the artist's shoes: black, rubbery clogs worn with green and black striped socks. I stared back at my shoes and then the girl's shoes. It was funny, I didn't think when I got up that morning I would be using my heels as a metaphor for feminism by lunchtime.

We could get into a lot of discussions here, about feminism; about personal style and taste; about the politics of fashion; about the practicality of fashion; about podiatry, and the list goes on forever. Each of these conversations has been beaten to death. At the end of the day, the thing I love about my favorite New York women is how tough and powerful they are in and out of four-inch stilettos. They conduct business meetings in heels simply because that's how they like to conduct meetings. They don't do it for men, they do it for themselves. And if you can be a CEO or an editor-in-chief just like a man can AND do it in high heels, doesn't that make you all the MORE powerful? Being a woman wearing rubbery clogs doesn't make one any less a tool of the patriarchy than being one who's casting judgment upon other women, especially for their appearance.

I gave the girl across the aisle a thumb's up. 

Later, on the street, I caught sight of myself in my heels in a glass storefront. Damn, I thought, I look good. And I carried on with my day, running my own business, as usual.

Galleries Three

“…where I shared so many cheeseburgers with my hustler husbands…”

Mx. Justin Vivian Bond’s feminine growl echoes throughout Participant, Inc., an arts exhibition space on the Lower East Side. The album is Dendrophile, the artist’s first, incorporating jazz and folk sounds with Bond’s cabaret-style vocals. A needle lays stiff on black revolving wax, making Bond’s voice a soundtrack to his exhibition, “The Fall of the House of Whimsy.”

Bond is a New York performance art and cabaret legend, notable for v’s (Bond’s pronoun of choice, preferring not to use either ‘his’ or ‘hers’) contributions to what’s known as a “radical queer” art culture. V does not so much play with gender as crumple it, rip it up and throw it in the shredder. Considering vself as neither man nor woman nor drag queen nor transsexual nor whatever, Bond simply is. V is a long creature with elegant, elongated features, a sharp, smooth jawline, and a rush of mahogany-auburn hair. Long-legged and glamorous, Bond has sung, acted, and performed all over the world, and was recently described by The New Yorker’s Hilton Als as “the greatest cabaret artist of (v’s) generation.”

Having read an intriguing article about Bond in New York magazine many moons ago, I decided to visit v’s exhibition, “The Fall of the House of Whimsy.” The exhibition is a small series of installations, photos and drawings all inspired by or featuring parts of Bond’s former loft on Second Avenue, which will soon be demolished. It is a flight of colorful nostalgia, all very personal. I felt Bond’s essence radiating through each book on display from v’s home, each ornate gold mirror, each plastic pot of makeup placed perfectly askew on various surfaces. Though I know I may never meet v, I know there is a person reflected in that space who has a penchant for a mixture of old-world meets new-world elegance and scandal—the Marquis de Sade’s Justine occupies the same shelf as books about Lillian Hellman, Weimar Berlin,  and Sextrology. A collage of intricate black and white cut-outs of campy, made-up figures, lithe feminine hands with perfect manicures, and witchcraft symbols are placed in the corner of a mirror. A chair is littered with a barrage of cosmetics the colors of which remind me of a 96-pack of Crayola crayons. Drawings of gender-unspecific faces on thick, textured white paper are drawn with a soft, light hand. An old, brown, scratched Acrosonic piano with “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” from The Sound of Music with Mary Martin as its only sheet music, with a silver, disco-like fabric sign hung on the back of it. After walking around the gallery, I feel like I have known Bond for years, but am walking around v’s house after v has died. There’s a sadness in the collection of objects that reflects what must be Bond’s mourning of leaving v’s beloved home. I just want to give v a hug and say it’ll be okay, that v’s next home will be just as lovely. Because any space that such a person as v inhabits will be full of life and color and beauty.

**

Walking along East Houston Street, my next stop was supposed to be Salon 94, but on my way down Stanton Street I was struck by a gallery whose front was outfitted by an iron gate made of a wild collection of objects, from old toy boats to sun figurines to bicycles. How could I not enter such a space? It was Lambert Fine Arts, a gallery which opened quite recently, in October 2011. Hung on the walls were works by artists Brandon Friend and Jason Douglas Griffin. Friend’s work featured various colored and patterned papers decoupaged into figures and scenes, my favorites of which were an astronaut-like figure assembled on a variety of MetroCards. Griffin’s work also featured scenes done with decoupage and paint, an especially cool one done to show a dj and breakdancer, entitled “Windmills in the City.”

"Windmills in the City" by Jason Douglas Griffin

A very helpful gallery associate named Jean also showed me some of his own work. Outfitted in smart black pinstriped pants, a black sweater, black scarf and black shoes, Jean, originally from Haiti, has lived in the U.S. for 28 years and says every trip to New York is breathtaking. His most recent stay inspired him to do a series of watercolors based on Harlem. Jean digs out a watercolor pad from his bag and removes his creations. Brightly colored and drawn in ink with a loose hand, they feature a character named Queeny, whose exaggerated physical features are meant to act as a critique on the physical representation fed to us by popular culture. Jean’s speech is laid thick with a French but actually Haitian accent (he pronounces his country of origin like saying the letters “I-T.”) It feels like a gift to go into an art gallery and see not only what you’re meant to see but what you aren’t meant to see. I thank Jean and continue on my way.

**

The next stop is Salon 94, a gallery on Bowery and Stanton, for a Marilyn Minter exhibition. Minter is one of my favorite artists, whose brightly colored paintings often feature lushly made up mouths and eyes, sharp stilettos or other figures related to and commenting on the female experience. My favorite in this exhibition, though, was the video she made entitled “Playpen.” In the video, a child of maybe three or four splashes about in pools of silver glittered paint in slow motion. The glittering metallic droplets fly in front of the camera, morphing and changing shape as they hit the floor, long strands of paint flying from the child’s hands and feet as it splashes. I sat there, entranced, watching the paint fly and spray and fall. Was it possible for paint to hypnotize? If so, I could have doubtlessly been convinced I was a chicken and clucked all throughout the gallery.

Something I think people forget is that access to art doesn’t have to cost anything. Galleries are a great way to see both the new and the old in any art form. Not only that, but an educated gallerist can always offer a one-on-one education in whatever you’re viewing. While a museum like Museum of Modern Art is a brilliant American institution, admission there now clocks in at $25 for adults, so attending all the time is not necessarily an option for those starving artists among us. But galleries are always free and abundant, so if there’s not something you’re interested in seeing in one, you can just pop into another and doubtlessly be inspired. Free art for all!