(excerpt from a possible publication)

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Willis Potter and I were in NYC in 1981 picking up work for the Tom Styron’s Crimes of Compassion show (at the Chrysler Museum) from various galleries and art studios. At Soho’s Phyllis Kind gallery, I almost lost my life. The prescient Kind was an early champion of ‘outsider’ artists Martin Ramirez, Hanry Darger, as well as Alison Saar, Robert Colescott, and Jim Nutt. We were there to pick up Mark Greenwold’s large painting Bright Promise (for Simon), a charged portrayal of lust, decadence, kitsch, and what lies beneath. The gallery was located on Spring St in Soho on the 4th floor. 

When we got there, we found the large painting wrapped but not professionally folded (as paintings that size normally are when the elevators are small). Its not uncommon to walk large works down stairwells or find studios with slots cut into the walls to get works out/in. When I inquired about setting up to begin the folding process, I was told that it wasn’t necessary; that the work was to ‘ride down above the elevator’, just as it arrived. “We do it all the time!” Calling the Chrysler to express my reluctance to proceed safely, it was discussed and agreed by all parties to move forward w/ the gallery’s method, carefully. Here’s the scenario: Two of the gallery assistants familiar with the process joined the effort. The elevator door opened, and Potter and one assistant entered. The elevator was then lowered, whereby the other assistant joined me in inserting the painting vertically in the shaft, on top of the elevator, wedged diagonally between the large cables/hardware that held the elevator in place. I didn’t feel good about it: there was clearance but not much. 

Large stretchers that support paintings of this size are usually fabricated with 1 x 4 sections of wood, joined by ‘mending plates’—long plates of thin steel with multiple rows of screws holding it in place, joining the wood together. It’s a good system, strong. It can also be easily taken apart.

 

Mark Greenwold, (Bright Promise (for Simon), 1971–75, oil on canvas
 

Once everything was in place, we tell the assistant to start the elevators’ decent. The two of us riding on top hold the painting in place, constantly looking to make sure that everything is safe. But as we approach ground level, I look down the corner of the shaft and saw a brick ledge that protruded out further than the rest. I yell for the operator to STOP the elevator and as it slowed, the corner of the painting caught the ledge and the painting torqued; violently ripping one of the large metal, multi-screwed mending plates and two adjoining pieces of the wooden stretcher support away that slam into the shaft, taking a chunk out of the brick wall, directly at my head level but just opposite of it. Had it hit my head, it would have easily crushed my skull. In 1971, rigger Ray Johnson was killed installing Richard Serra’s Sculpture No. 3 at the Walker Art Center. Accidents do happen and I nearly became another New York Times statistic that day. We opened the outside doors to remove the painting and upon inspection, there were only three hairline cracks that a conservator later fixed. It was as lucky as I was. 

Our next stop was Leon Golub and Nancy Spero’s studio. Leon painted on almost stage-curtain sized pieces of upstretched canvas. His massive scratched and raw paintings depicted scenes of horror: brutal beatings and torture, larger than life, in your face, where we are not only the witness but co-conspirators. The painting we picked up was easily twice the size of Greenwold’s, but was rolled and easily moved, carried, stored. A first-generation feminist who helped pave the way for all the women who followed, Spero pulled from historical, religious, and mythological sources in updating the plight that women around the world face. One of her two works in the exhibition, Murder Hope of Women, (1979) crudely and blatantly reference Oskar Kokoschka’s 1909 play, Murderer, the Hope of Women and the inherent violence women continue to face.

Remarkably, neither artist had gallery representation at the time. Upon hearing what I had just experienced, Nancy asked me to please sit for a while and fixed a pot of calming chamomile tea, helping to ease the shock and trauma I was unconsciously but physically experiencing. After that life-threatening experience, I spent the new few years painting on upstretched materials before giving up on painting and using materials I could build with.

(See https://hyperallergic.com/506386/mark-greenwold-looks-in-the-mirror-and-does-not-flinch)