In an era of New York in which it has become increasingly difficult to find anyone left who truly loves, truly appreciates not just what it “represents,” but what it still is (or even could be, if people didn’t play so easily into its revolving door nature), Roz Chast’s retrospective of work at the SVA Chelsea Gallery for its current Masters Series reminds us that we don’t have to feel terminally cliche for liking New York. Shit, even loving it.
Often, it is the true New Yorker–the one who was born here–that can tend to be the most embittered of all about the town and what it has become (evermore a mutant version of the class disparity elucidated in American Psycho). Not so with Chast. Born in Brooklyn, it would seem that her mixture of cynicism and ardor for the city has blended into the perfect instance of the complex relationship any enthusiast of NYC has with it. That is to say, one that occupies taking a healthy grain of salt with all the terrors that come with its often stingy sources of enchantment.
Covering all the many mediums that have housed her very specific brand of humor (the kind that can only come from being a native Brooklynite)–ranging from hand-dyed pysanky a.k.a. Ukrainian Easter eggs to embroidery–Chast’s illustrations and cartoons frequently accent the quotidian, emphasizing inanimate objects such as lamps, chairs, signage and, increasingly, technology (her The New Yorker cover featuring Venus de Milo being photographed with smartphones on the beach comes to mind, or one of her most recents of a matriarch serving Thanksgiving dinner to a tableful of technological apparatuses). Throughout the thread of the exhibit, however, is this underlying aforementioned zeal for New York, perhaps best elucidated by the second room of the gallery, highlighting her illustrations from 2017’s Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York. Emphasizing that it is not a “guide book” or a source for “insider information” (the kind Lena Dunham claims to have), Chast instead illustrates the nuances–those which comprise the core uniqueness of a town that could birth everyone from Donald Trump (alas) to Notorious B.I.G. (RIP)–of New York as she sees them. This means that which is everyday and commonplace is accented, like the varied storefronts (wigs, sewing machine repair, chess boards, dresses–the gamut) that have managed to evade conversion into Starbuckses (or even Starbucks Reserves) and Duane Reades.
As she introduces her love letter, Chast explains, “I feel about Manhattan the way I feel about a book, a TV series, a movie, a play, an artist, a song, a food, a whatever that I love. I want to tell you about it so that maybe you will love it too. I’m not worried about it being ‘ruined’ by too many people ‘discovering’ it. Manhattan’s been ruined since 1626, when Peter Minuit bought it from Native Americans for $24.00. Now my kids are grown ups. The city has changed since I was 23. Things have happened. Some good, some bad, some very bad. But I still love it more than anyplace else, and hope you will too.” And so we do. For how could we not when studying these detailed and earnest depictions, so rife with love and hate as they are? The best of times, the worst of times–as is the case with most experiences you can never forget.
Addressing some of those “very bad” things that have happened as time rages on in the city where a million dollars seems to be tantamount to a penny, one image finds Chast outside of “The Stupid $30,000 Purse Store,” with the caption, “New York is cleaner now, which is good, but also fancier. And I’m not such a big fan of fanciness.” Neither are many artists still lingering in a city that it has become decreasingly “cool” to admit to still being fond of.
With one of her everyman characters come to life as a large cardboard cutout in the first room, his sense of defeat is particularly manifest as he waits at a bus stop that informs us it’s going “somewhere rather slowly.” This is where we all tend to be going in our committed state to the draining art unto itself of “being a New Yorker,” which, of course, often entails frequently feeling obliged to defend why or how you could love such a monster. Maybe only Belle could understand.
In her exploration of a city–largely Manhattan, for the OG New York lover will forever see this borough as the epitome of what NY “is”–Chast delves into the history of affection expressed for the town, referring to E.B. White as she notes, “In 1949, E.B White wrote one of the best books ever written about New York City called Here Is New York. In it, he wrote that there are essentially three New Yorks: first, there was the New York of the person who was born here, who ‘takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable.’ Secondly, there is the New York of the daily commuter who arrives for work every morning and leaves every evening for home in the suburbs. You will almost never see this New Yorker wandering around aimlessly or sitting on a park bench. The commuter gives New York its ‘tidal restlessness.'” As for the third New York, well, it is of course the one derived from the exodus of transplants–as White put it, “The settlers give it passion.” This, in part, is what makes Chast’s work so unique, for she has the passion of a settler with the non rose-colored glasses of the New Yorker born into the tumult. She both takes it for granted and reveres the fact that there can never be a place as good. A place that is the most shining light of, for all intents and purposes, a one-stop candy shop where all of your needs and wants can be met. Or can at least get as close to being met as the human incapability of satisfaction will allow.
Iterating in the video that commences the exhibition that she couldn’t be paid to illustrate something she’s not interested in–that her talents are too highly specialized for such prostration–it is quite apparent that the thing that drives her to create the most is New York, still an inspiration to artists pursuing all mediums who will allow it to be without balking at the increasing and absurd influx of bro culture that has NYC poised to become Donald Trump Jr.’s ultimate playground. But then, hasn’t it always been a large enough playground for the likes of him and Patti Smith?
In any case, it’s okay if you love New York. It’s okay if you hate it. But the fact that it evokes no in between reaction is indicative of it persistent ability to agitate in the most irony-tinged punk rock way possible.
P.S. Chast now lives in Connecticut, so maybe, in part, this is how she has sustained her love–by becoming a commuter contributing to the “tidal restlessness.”
