Requiem for a Golden Age
Requiem for a Golden Age
Chemo does funny things to your head, Short term memory falls off a cliff and the long ago distant past appears readily available.
I had moved to New York city in the early seventies, the most fertile and rich place to be if you were a struggling artist. Rents were cheap. I lived in a 2 bedroom apartment on east 11th st and paid $190. This city, at this time allowed you the freedom to stretch, to ignite, reach deep and express. This place was artist heaven. No Disney facade here, it was still funky and was, “ this dirty city “. My apartment was around the corner from where Scorcese filmed the iconic scene in Taxi Driver where Deniro Shoots up the sleezy hotel where the Jody Foster character did her tricks. Yes this was the NYC I loved. It was a time when Patty Smith did readings at Saint Marks in the Bowery . I was friends at the time with Rev Frank Morales , the radical priest who ran the place and an amazing stand up guy if you ask me. Like most artists I had to have a “ second job”, you know, to pay the minuscule bills, so I started a moving company. I needed of course helpers , no problem because plenty of other artists were always looking to earn a couple of bucks to support their art. I became fast friends with Phillip Glass the great composer who at the time was driving a cab. He worked for me a few times then made the smart move to start his own moving company. I became Phillip’s roadie for a couple of years in NYC as he was becoming more well known. Unfortunately I never took Phillip up on his invitation to go up to his place in Nova Scotia to write and play. He was and probably still is a warm honest man.
One of the most memorable ( out of many ) moving jobs I did was in the summer of 1974 with my friend Mark Jenkinson. Mark was new to NYC and going to Cooper Union studying photography, and now is an accomplished photographer in his own right. The man we moved had to be the most intriguing individual I have ever met.
His name was Hans Heinz Luttgen. Unbeknownst to us Hans was part of the Bauhaus movement , and was an important architect and illustrator . He had belonged to the circle of “ Cologne Progressives “, Max Ernst, Franz Wilhelm Seiwert, August Sander and Heinrich Hoerie.
During the moving job I was told there were important boxes of photographs , very important. They were all original prints of Hans’s buildings in Germany by his friend and now iconic photographer August Sander.
You see almost all of the buildings that Hans designed were destroyed in the war and these were the only documents of them , in a way the irony is the photo’s themselves were iconic. As Mark recently related to me that he considers August Sander to be one of the five greatest photographers of the 20th century. It would have been tragic to lose them.
Today the prints would be worth in the six figures or better yet, priceless.
That night was a typical NYC hot muggy night and still not unusual to see people sleeping out on the fire escapes.
Mark and I finished what we thought was a job well done. Back at my apartment I received a frantic call from Hans’s wife Renee. “ We are missing the boxes of photo’s “ !!! Of course I panicked thinking of the worst possibilities.
Fortunately for all involved the boxes of August Sander’s photographs of Hans’s work were in the back of the truck which was locked.
Mark and I went back that night and returned the boxes and were met by Hans who looked at us sternly and shook his finger and then asked us to sit down and experience the “ greatest beer in the world “. Pilsner Urquel.
That was Hans Luttgen and that night branded into my soul. I was invited over 2 more times by Hans before he passed away in 1976.He spoke freely and open, about his ideas and past, and was curious and open to know my ideas and past. I was so fortunate to have this window open .My short interaction with Hans gave me so much and the influence was key to who I was becoming.
Hans Luttgen and his wife Dora ( 1926 )
Photographer: August Sander