Continue reading FEEBLE PAINTING (Hamann/Brandl Feeding Frenzy Cartoon).
MS Brandl installation

(being of a heritage and era where exact birthdates were often obscure). I loved Joe Shapiro, his passion for life and art, and the obvious sustenance he drew from art. I even loved his undisguised delight in and appreciation of “the fairer sex” (which disturbed many) and felt it was a privileged view on a courtly time that was fast disappearing rather than some sort of rude affront to my gender. Joe did not disguise that he loved to lunch with “his harem,” mostly curators and other museum people — female of course — at those dreary sorts of middlebrow restaurants that sprang up in the 1950s and 1960s, i.e. The Homestead in Oak Park. Very few of these places exist today and thus can exist in some sort of rosy glow of nostalgia. In reality they were pretty awful. When invited, however, I always attended, and when I had business with Joe, as I often did, I would bring along other female MCA staffers who had not heard his repertoire of humorous stories which would slowly wind into the realm of bawdy jokes if his listener(s) seemed comfortable. Of course it wasn’t so much that he enjoyed the food at these restaurants. It was the company and conversation that he craved, and it was as much sustenance to him as the daily special. He was an esthete who could converse on the highest levels about art, yet what really tickled him was to author an advice column for the MCA staff newsletter titled “Joe Sez” (which was compiled, incidentally, into a bound volume and presented to Joe, who is often called the “father” of the Museum of Contemporary Art in appreciation for all he did).
