...for her misguided misinterpretations of and insidious rhetoric

against respected artist Eric Fischl's homage to 9/11 victims, "Tumbling Woman", and her ignorant, arrogant diatribe on behalf of sanitized, meaningless, gutless, passive, inconsequential, unprovocative, uninspiring, inane, vacuous public art devoid of ideas or content.

Now, we're NOT talking publicly funded art here, but art exhibited in public places, private public places, i.e. ROCKEFELLER CENTER, none-the less!

Writes Ms Peyser on 18 September 2002 in the New York Post:
"A violently disturbing sculpture popped up last week in the middle of Rock Center's busy underground concourse -- right in front of the skating rink. It depicts a naked woman, limbs flailing, face contorted, at the exact moment her head smacks pavement following her leap from the flaming World Trade Center. The worst part about the piece is that you can't miss it. Even if you try. Titled 'Tumbling Woman', the sculpture is by 80's darling Eric Fischl."

She continues: "Fischl...was not in Manhattan, but way out in the Hamptons September 11 last year, and, despite the moronic poem ( written by Fischl in tandem with the sculpture ), he did not witness the scene his work exploits."

She begins: "Is this art? Or assault?" IS THIS JOURNALISM??? Without doubt it is you, Ms Peyser, and the likes of you who, with your harrangs and rabble-rousing, further victimize and exploit the unfortunates of 9/11. To what end? Agitprop towards some sinister political agenda? Maybe. To sell a few more copies of a two bit scandal sheet, a rag that doesn't appear to deem it offensive to show a popular young actor puking in living color (see NY Post 29 Sept., P.25) and gain some momentary notoriety that hopefully will keep you employed? Certainly!

Had she bothered to look, she might have seen what, in and of itself, appeared to be a beautiful piece. Had she bothered to listen, she might have felt Mr. Fischl's undoubtedly real pain, the pain of all New Yorkers, absent or present on 11 September 2001.

In what safe and comfortable office were you watching TV while 9/11 was playing out and those bodies were falling from the sky? Did you feel less because you weren't there on the scene? Did you rush downtown or to your keyboard? Where were you venting your spleen, spewing your habitual toxic blather? I had a clear and perfect view from my porthole window on the 9th floor of 55 West 13th Street. I could see the tiny people-specks flying from the towers. I helplessly watched from the corner of 16th Street and 6th Avenue as the second tower collapsed in REALTIME. My wife had emerged from the subway and was walking to her office at 40 Wall Street when sprayed by debris from the second impact. For four months I could smell the burning refuse in my Chinatown studio. Is my experience of that day any more valid than yours?

Just where do you come off condemning with such sacrosanct authority one man's expression of pain?

Sacrosanct derisiveness from the most ornery of editorialists, a petty inconsequential demagogue of the Jerry Springer / Ricky Lake variety feeding her frenzy of inadequacy to an ignorant, vulgar, equally inconsequential herd.

Not content, the ornery Ms Peyser resumes her tirade, boasting of her triumph, in her 19 September turd: that Tishman-Speyer Properties buckled and had the statue removed. Triumph of what? Ignorance? Fear? Political Correctness?

Should art be a palliative? Insulating? Are we to be condemned to a terminal Rococo? To live in a culture of frivolity and vulgarity? Like mindless cattle driven by obsessive megalomaniacs to mantras of Osama-Castro-Sadam-Khadaffy-Bin Laden and "family values" as carrot? Where there are no interpretations but her own? Would she think for others?

It might be a leap of faith on my part to assume that she knows who or what I'm talking about but, what would she make of creativity and imagination? What would she make of the historical novel and history painting? Should Rodin have been in Calais to sculpt his Burghers? Should Tchaikovsky, absent from the battlefield, have penned the "1812 Overture"? Must Velázquez or Rembrandt or any of the great Baroque masters have been present at the crucifixion to paint it?

Unfortunately, this trend is not new to an American society always insecure and suspect of artists and intellectuals. It is endemic and pervasive!

Within days of the Fischl brou-ha-ha New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey (right) goes after "poet laureate" Amiri Baraka (left) because HE doesn't like something Baraka said in a poem. What? Mr. McGreevey's afraid of losing a few Jewish votes if he doesn't pipe in with calls of anti-Semitism? The REAL outrage here is that Baraka's poem be considered poetry at all. The REAL outrage is that, according to Gerald Stern, member of the selection committee and former "laureate" himself, Baraka was not named for his poetry at all but because Stern "thought it was important for the black community to get recognition", i.e. because he was black. Now, that's a standard for "poet laureate" if there ever was one!!!!

During these vary same days Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurasmaki cancelled his own appearance at the New York Film Festival because INS officials turned down Irannian director Abbas Kiarostami's visa application saying they had to "investigate" him further...

The din can still be heard over Chris Ofili's "Madonna" in The Brooklyn Museum and then Mayor Rudi Giuliani's rantings. This time it was all very anti-Catholic. Whatever happened to that Art Posse, the "Decency" Board, the one with luminary art experts like Curtis Sliwa whose main qualifier seems to be wearing a red beret?

Ofili

Giuliani

The OUTRAGE was all about elephant shit IN the painting, not that it was a shitty painting and had no place in a museum to begin with.

In 1993, French vintner Château Rothschild chose Balthus to honor the label of their Mouton Rothschild, a practice started in 1923 of commissioning famous artists to design their labels. But in that year some Californians were "deeply distressed" a nude 10-year-old adorning their wine bottle labels. All 30,000 bottles bound for the American market were pulled and replaced with bottles sporting a blank label where the offending drawing had been. As for the titillating originals, Americans were buying them up from Paris to Tokyo. Mine I finally drank with friends and my wife after the NY Marathon on 3 November.

The examples are endless. Who can forget Jesse Helms' egregious attacks on Robert Maplethorpe, Andrés Serrano's "Piss Christ" and the National Endowment for the Arts (now 'manqué' )? Does anyone remember the white-washing of Diego Rivera's "Man Controller of the Universe" from the very same Rockefeller Center "Tumbling Woman" was evicted? I'd say Eric Fischl is in EXCELLENT company. As a recent ad for Americans for the Arts aptly put it: "No wonder people think Caravaggio is a guy from the Sopranos!"

Ms Peyser is obviously not quite done yet. High in her laurels victorious, she renewed her attack on Mr. Fischl in her Post column of 29 October titled "Sept. 11 sculptor stole my 'Woman', artist says", now accusing him of plagiarising the image from Californian Bruce Edelstein. Supposedly, Fischl must have see an image of a similar piece by Edelstein on a show invitation from Chelsea gallerist Denise Cadé. I can't claim to know anything about Mr. Edelstein, of whom art connoisseur Peyser says "possesses Fischl-size talent -- but not his provocative streak" but, if either he or Mr. Fischl owe anything to anyone, it is to August Rodin. One look at Rodin's "Fatigue" or any of his reclining nude female sculptures and we all know who Mr. Fischl, at least, might be indebted to.

As to Ms Peyser, that she may learn something about artists and art, I leave with the following quote from Elizabeth Murray on 9/11

You're inadequate. Stick to political gossip and leave the art to us.

- RC