2 3

art glamourrock and roll

kansas citymax’s

R

Edited by Steven KasherContributions by Lou Reed, Lenny Kaye, Danny Fields, Lorraine O’Grady, and Steven Watson

AbRAmS ImAGe, NeW YORK

2 3

art glamourrock and roll

kansas citymax’s

R

Edited by Steven KasherContributions by Lou Reed, Lenny Kaye, Danny Fields, Lorraine O’Grady, and Steven Watson

AbRAmS ImAGe, NeW YORK

4 5

4 5

6 7

ThIS pAGe Brigid Berlin and Mickey

Ruskin, ca. 1968

OppOSITe pAGe Andy Warhol and Nico,

ca. 1968

6 7

ThIS pAGe Brigid Berlin and Mickey

Ruskin, ca. 1968

OppOSITe pAGe Andy Warhol and Nico,

ca. 1968

98

bombastic pronouncements about the seriousness of art. by the time max’s opened, new movements were coming helter-skelter, one after the other, often within the same year. There was Op Art, earth Art, Conceptual Art, minimal Art, postminimal Art, and oth-ers. And all of their practitioners were at the bar at max’s.

There was Larry poons with his dots and ovals in many colors, offering an American version of Op Art. The minimalism of Donald Judd could be seen in a work hanging over the bar—the math-ematical, impersonal view embodied by Sol LeWitt and others whose work resolutely avoided expression of subjectivity. At one end of the bar stood Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Kosuth, and John baldessari, whose works marked the energy of Conceptualism, where the idea overrode painterly skill, in the long line descend-ing from marcel Duchamp. As Chuck Close said, “It was really a heavy-duty life-or-death struggle for the soul of art—an incredibly heady intellectual experience.”

Robert Smithson held forth each night, loquaciously engag-ing artists in big questions by throwing out issues and generating responses. Rude and sensitive, he loved to engage in conversa-tions, and the respondents included a heterogeneous collection who battled in words. “Carl Andre, Robert Smithson, Richard Serra, and John Chamberlain all had completely different ideas about what to do,” recalled art critic Ted Castle. “but they were all there in the same boat and respected each other a little bit. These arguments have long since gone up in smoke.”

The discussions that took place in the front of max’s often found their way into print, especially because several regulars, including Donald Judd and Robert Smithson, wrote in Artforum; John perreault grappled with new forms in the Village Voice; and Jill Johnston described the vital crossover of art and perfor-mance introduced by happenings and the Judson dancers in the Voice. Other critics included Gregory battcock, stopping in before heading to the gay bars, and David bourdon, who wrote for Life. before Artforum became weighted down with its often impenetrable

Jutting out over the sidewalk was a black awning on park Avenue at Seventeenth Street, above a huge plate glass window that got broken every six months. In white lowercase letters were the words Max’s Kansas City. There was selected entry, and it made all the difference in the social mix at max’s Kansas City. Deciding who came in was owner mickey Ruskin’s way of “curating” people. Andy Warhol described the result: “max’s Kansas City was the exact place where pop Art and pop life came together in New York in the sixties.”

There was nothing fancy about the establishment, and the neighborhood was not chic. Upon entering, one saw a long room with low light, and tables with red tablecloths, and Formica booths. On the long, curved bar were bowls of chickpeas and two piranha-filled fish tanks, leading to an alcove with booths.

The decor immediately announced that max’s was a place for art and artists. On view were a John Chamberlain smashed-car sculpture, a Donald Judd box, an Andy Warhol soup can, a Dan Flavin light sculpture, and a plate glass window sandblasted by michael heizer. Over the cash register was a changing series of photographs. At first it was brigid berlin’s blown-up polaroids, and later, Anton perich put up a new photo each week, always por-traits of the people who came into max’s—especially the people in the back room, which perich considered his personal photography studio. A Frosty myers clock contraption hung over the bar, but perhaps more famous was his light beam installation. The beam started in myers’s studio, shot out from his window and into the night, and bounced off a mirror that sent it down park Avenue and then to another mirror that sent it through the plate glass window of max’s. The beam hit a small mirror glued to a jukebox, the speaker making the beam vibrate in random patterns deter-mined by the music, and then zoomed just over the heads of the customers, assuming visible form in the smoke-filled room. The laser beam looked like a halo over the people in the back room. An automatic timer turned it on each night at 8:00 p.m. and off at 4:00 a.m. Those were the golden hours at max’s Kansas City.

The bar in the front was dominated by artists during a period when the art world was evolving at a frenetic pace. The scene at max’s wasn’t defined by Abstract expressionism or pop. During the late sixties, the art world was as heterogeneous as the previous era had been monolithic. The front area of max’s inherited some of the older generation, but it was dominated by younger artists, and it embodied their style of heavy alcohol consumption and

The Art of Max’sSteven WatSon

OppOSITe pAGe Andy Warhol, Marilyn,

1967. Collection of The Andy War-

hol Museum, Pittsburgh, © 2010

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the

Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights

Society (ARS), New York

98

bombastic pronouncements about the seriousness of art. by the time max’s opened, new movements were coming helter-skelter, one after the other, often within the same year. There was Op Art, earth Art, Conceptual Art, minimal Art, postminimal Art, and oth-ers. And all of their practitioners were at the bar at max’s.

There was Larry poons with his dots and ovals in many colors, offering an American version of Op Art. The minimalism of Donald Judd could be seen in a work hanging over the bar—the math-ematical, impersonal view embodied by Sol LeWitt and others whose work resolutely avoided expression of subjectivity. At one end of the bar stood Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Kosuth, and John baldessari, whose works marked the energy of Conceptualism, where the idea overrode painterly skill, in the long line descend-ing from marcel Duchamp. As Chuck Close said, “It was really a heavy-duty life-or-death struggle for the soul of art—an incredibly heady intellectual experience.”

Robert Smithson held forth each night, loquaciously engag-ing artists in big questions by throwing out issues and generating responses. Rude and sensitive, he loved to engage in conversa-tions, and the respondents included a heterogeneous collection who battled in words. “Carl Andre, Robert Smithson, Richard Serra, and John Chamberlain all had completely different ideas about what to do,” recalled art critic Ted Castle. “but they were all there in the same boat and respected each other a little bit. These arguments have long since gone up in smoke.”

The discussions that took place in the front of max’s often found their way into print, especially because several regulars, including Donald Judd and Robert Smithson, wrote in Artforum; John perreault grappled with new forms in the Village Voice; and Jill Johnston described the vital crossover of art and perfor-mance introduced by happenings and the Judson dancers in the Voice. Other critics included Gregory battcock, stopping in before heading to the gay bars, and David bourdon, who wrote for Life. before Artforum became weighted down with its often impenetrable

Jutting out over the sidewalk was a black awning on park Avenue at Seventeenth Street, above a huge plate glass window that got broken every six months. In white lowercase letters were the words Max’s Kansas City. There was selected entry, and it made all the difference in the social mix at max’s Kansas City. Deciding who came in was owner mickey Ruskin’s way of “curating” people. Andy Warhol described the result: “max’s Kansas City was the exact place where pop Art and pop life came together in New York in the sixties.”

There was nothing fancy about the establishment, and the neighborhood was not chic. Upon entering, one saw a long room with low light, and tables with red tablecloths, and Formica booths. On the long, curved bar were bowls of chickpeas and two piranha-filled fish tanks, leading to an alcove with booths.

The decor immediately announced that max’s was a place for art and artists. On view were a John Chamberlain smashed-car sculpture, a Donald Judd box, an Andy Warhol soup can, a Dan Flavin light sculpture, and a plate glass window sandblasted by michael heizer. Over the cash register was a changing series of photographs. At first it was brigid berlin’s blown-up polaroids, and later, Anton perich put up a new photo each week, always por-traits of the people who came into max’s—especially the people in the back room, which perich considered his personal photography studio. A Frosty myers clock contraption hung over the bar, but perhaps more famous was his light beam installation. The beam started in myers’s studio, shot out from his window and into the night, and bounced off a mirror that sent it down park Avenue and then to another mirror that sent it through the plate glass window of max’s. The beam hit a small mirror glued to a jukebox, the speaker making the beam vibrate in random patterns deter-mined by the music, and then zoomed just over the heads of the customers, assuming visible form in the smoke-filled room. The laser beam looked like a halo over the people in the back room. An automatic timer turned it on each night at 8:00 p.m. and off at 4:00 a.m. Those were the golden hours at max’s Kansas City.

The bar in the front was dominated by artists during a period when the art world was evolving at a frenetic pace. The scene at max’s wasn’t defined by Abstract expressionism or pop. During the late sixties, the art world was as heterogeneous as the previous era had been monolithic. The front area of max’s inherited some of the older generation, but it was dominated by younger artists, and it embodied their style of heavy alcohol consumption and

The Art of Max’sSteven WatSon

OppOSITe pAGe Andy Warhol, Marilyn,

1967. Collection of The Andy War-

hol Museum, Pittsburgh, © 2010

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the

Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights

Society (ARS), New York

11The ART OF mAx’S10

jargon of “artspeak,” the discussion was lively, raffish, combat-ive, and erudite. For those who didn’t want to plunk down the hefty price for the magazine, they could hear much of it firsthand at max’s.

In the midst of these testosterone-driven conversations were several female sculptors, painters, and dancers: marisol, Doro-thea Rockburne, Lucy Lippard, Carolee Schneemann, Sue hoff-man (aka Viva), and brigid berlin. Were they taken seriously as artists by their male contemporaries? Not likely at this early point in their careers. but these women were not just girlfriends; they had their own identities and their own careers, and some were on the cusp of feminism. At one point, several of the women became pissed off about the inadvertent male chauvinism that thrived in the art world. Spurred on by brenda miller, who helped form the Art Workers Coalition, a group instituted a table of female artists at max’s, which often included sculptor Jackie Winsor, landscape artist mary miss, and performance artist marjorie Strider.

Just ahead of the front bar, scattered among the tables and booths, was the celebrity mélange. At max’s there were many sightings of celebrities—from Jean paul belmondo to Tuesday Weld. Cary Grant eating steak, mel brooks talking Yiddish, Den-nis hopper looking dangerously cool, Janis Joplin depending on Southern Comfort, musician David Amram talking animatedly to pop-evangelist marjoe Gortner, deathly pallid Julian beck with his wife, Judith malina, who together founded the revolutionary Liv-ing Theatre. but it was gauche to pay too much attention. Frosty myers remembered only one moment when the room became still: when bob Dylan walked in. That silence gave recognition to the messiah of the time.

Fashion was arguably as important as art at max’s. Sixties couture exemplified the swiftly changing lifestyle of the moment. As Andy Warhol observed, “max’s became the showcase for all the fashion changes that had been taking place at the art open-ings and shows: Now people weren’t going to the art openings to show off their new looks—they just skipped all the preliminaries and went straight to max’s.” max’s was a hangout for people in the fashion industry as well. There were the photographers and many fashion stars: Apollonia van Ravenstein, Donna Jordan, Dan-iela morera, pilar Crespi. After the second floor opened for music, punk fashion first became widely visible. One evening photogra-pher Oliviero Toscani posed everyone at the entrance to max’s be-fore a white background and began taking pictures. published in L’Uomo Vogue, this shoot became one of the best summations of the fashion of the era.

moving ahead inside max’s, past the tables and booths, there was a four-foot-wide hallway, with a waitresses’ galley and a bowl of prescription amphetamine pills to help get them through their long hours. Opposite this were two bathrooms flanked by phone booths that looked inconspicuous but frequently became sites for sex, both hetero and homo. mickey Ruskin later said, “I’d like to have a nickel for everyone who got fucked in my phone booths.”

The hall led into a back room that was about thirty feet by thirty feet, with red booths on each side, backed by Formica pan-

eling, and round tables in the middle. When max’s opened, this functioned as a room for overflow crowds, the least desired place to be. but then Andy Warhol and his Silver Factory cohorts took over, and it acquired the status of a VIp room.

For Andy Warhol, going through the front section of max’s was like running the gauntlet—he was considered superficial, and his nickname was Wendy Airhole. When he saw brigid berlin and Viva hanging out in the front, he wondered why they weren’t in the back room, perhaps considering it a breach of loyalty. he felt comfortable only when he reached the back room, where he was the kingpin instead of the pariah. even at max’s, the denizens of the back room were called “freaks.” They didn’t feel comfort-able with the people in the front area, and vice versa. Warhol sat at the biggest table, known as the “Captain’s Table.” even after Valerie Solanas shot him in June 1968 and Warhol experienced his first “death,” his presence was felt through his Silver Factory cohorts, who still made it their headquarters. Around this time Danny Fields, a record producer, became a more important back-room ringleader, bringing musicians and music industry people, and when max’s upstairs began throwing concerts, the back room became a greenroom for the bands.

Just as alcohol fueled the front of max’s, speed fueled the back room and helped determine the raucous tone of what went on there. It was hell on the waitresses—speed didn’t induce eat-ing, so the tips were lousy, and the games and performances were sometimes out of control. being assigned to wait tables in the back room was like being sent to Siberia. The room was bathed in the glow of red light from a Dan Flavin sculpture. There was no velvet rope denying entrance, but those with any social sense knew whether they could go in. “It was not the kind of place you could buy your way into,” said Lou Reed. “You either belonged or you didn’t belong.”

Anything could happen there. And it did. brigid berlin stood up and poked herself with speed—thus her nickname, brigid polk—and loudly announced, “I’m up!” eric emerson stood on a table and stripped off his leather hot pants. Andrea “Whipps” Feldman, an early suicide, sang “everything’s Coming Up Roses,” and performed sex with a Coke bottle. battling contingents at different tables staged chickpea wars. Taylor mead rambled his ersatz poetry, often on quaaludes. The back room show of exhibi-tionism was the cheapest and most spontaneous in town, and its informal postmidnight name was “Showtime.”

max’s back room was perhaps the first place outside of gay bars where transvestites were welcomed—ranging from the glam-orous Candy Darling and holly Woodlawn to the trashy personas of Wayne County and Jackie Curtis. Anton perich, who made the back room his studio, recalled that “there was this enormous grav-ity there, holding all these angels grounded. At any other place in the world they would simply detach and fly away into the starry night.”

The back room shenanigans, pushed to the limits, could never have happened if owner mickey Ruskin set any rules. by steering clear of the back room territory, he provided a kind of nonjudgmental safety zone. betsey Johnson observed that it was a rec room, but free of mom and Dad. “max’s was allowable,” Abbie hoffman once said. “All the worlds could meet there, and I guess you were kind of gooop [gossip] proof. Whatever happened there was off the record, so there was a certain amount of protection.”

The ART OF mAx’S

OppOSITe pAGe Neil Williams, Garden

(detail), 1968, courtesy of Spanierman

Modern

11The ART OF mAx’S10

jargon of “artspeak,” the discussion was lively, raffish, combat-ive, and erudite. For those who didn’t want to plunk down the hefty price for the magazine, they could hear much of it firsthand at max’s.

In the midst of these testosterone-driven conversations were several female sculptors, painters, and dancers: marisol, Doro-thea Rockburne, Lucy Lippard, Carolee Schneemann, Sue hoff-man (aka Viva), and brigid berlin. Were they taken seriously as artists by their male contemporaries? Not likely at this early point in their careers. but these women were not just girlfriends; they had their own identities and their own careers, and some were on the cusp of feminism. At one point, several of the women became pissed off about the inadvertent male chauvinism that thrived in the art world. Spurred on by brenda miller, who helped form the Art Workers Coalition, a group instituted a table of female artists at max’s, which often included sculptor Jackie Winsor, landscape artist mary miss, and performance artist marjorie Strider.

Just ahead of the front bar, scattered among the tables and booths, was the celebrity mélange. At max’s there were many sightings of celebrities—from Jean paul belmondo to Tuesday Weld. Cary Grant eating steak, mel brooks talking Yiddish, Den-nis hopper looking dangerously cool, Janis Joplin depending on Southern Comfort, musician David Amram talking animatedly to pop-evangelist marjoe Gortner, deathly pallid Julian beck with his wife, Judith malina, who together founded the revolutionary Liv-ing Theatre. but it was gauche to pay too much attention. Frosty myers remembered only one moment when the room became still: when bob Dylan walked in. That silence gave recognition to the messiah of the time.

Fashion was arguably as important as art at max’s. Sixties couture exemplified the swiftly changing lifestyle of the moment. As Andy Warhol observed, “max’s became the showcase for all the fashion changes that had been taking place at the art open-ings and shows: Now people weren’t going to the art openings to show off their new looks—they just skipped all the preliminaries and went straight to max’s.” max’s was a hangout for people in the fashion industry as well. There were the photographers and many fashion stars: Apollonia van Ravenstein, Donna Jordan, Dan-iela morera, pilar Crespi. After the second floor opened for music, punk fashion first became widely visible. One evening photogra-pher Oliviero Toscani posed everyone at the entrance to max’s be-fore a white background and began taking pictures. published in L’Uomo Vogue, this shoot became one of the best summations of the fashion of the era.

moving ahead inside max’s, past the tables and booths, there was a four-foot-wide hallway, with a waitresses’ galley and a bowl of prescription amphetamine pills to help get them through their long hours. Opposite this were two bathrooms flanked by phone booths that looked inconspicuous but frequently became sites for sex, both hetero and homo. mickey Ruskin later said, “I’d like to have a nickel for everyone who got fucked in my phone booths.”

The hall led into a back room that was about thirty feet by thirty feet, with red booths on each side, backed by Formica pan-

eling, and round tables in the middle. When max’s opened, this functioned as a room for overflow crowds, the least desired place to be. but then Andy Warhol and his Silver Factory cohorts took over, and it acquired the status of a VIp room.

For Andy Warhol, going through the front section of max’s was like running the gauntlet—he was considered superficial, and his nickname was Wendy Airhole. When he saw brigid berlin and Viva hanging out in the front, he wondered why they weren’t in the back room, perhaps considering it a breach of loyalty. he felt comfortable only when he reached the back room, where he was the kingpin instead of the pariah. even at max’s, the denizens of the back room were called “freaks.” They didn’t feel comfort-able with the people in the front area, and vice versa. Warhol sat at the biggest table, known as the “Captain’s Table.” even after Valerie Solanas shot him in June 1968 and Warhol experienced his first “death,” his presence was felt through his Silver Factory cohorts, who still made it their headquarters. Around this time Danny Fields, a record producer, became a more important back-room ringleader, bringing musicians and music industry people, and when max’s upstairs began throwing concerts, the back room became a greenroom for the bands.

Just as alcohol fueled the front of max’s, speed fueled the back room and helped determine the raucous tone of what went on there. It was hell on the waitresses—speed didn’t induce eat-ing, so the tips were lousy, and the games and performances were sometimes out of control. being assigned to wait tables in the back room was like being sent to Siberia. The room was bathed in the glow of red light from a Dan Flavin sculpture. There was no velvet rope denying entrance, but those with any social sense knew whether they could go in. “It was not the kind of place you could buy your way into,” said Lou Reed. “You either belonged or you didn’t belong.”

Anything could happen there. And it did. brigid berlin stood up and poked herself with speed—thus her nickname, brigid polk—and loudly announced, “I’m up!” eric emerson stood on a table and stripped off his leather hot pants. Andrea “Whipps” Feldman, an early suicide, sang “everything’s Coming Up Roses,” and performed sex with a Coke bottle. battling contingents at different tables staged chickpea wars. Taylor mead rambled his ersatz poetry, often on quaaludes. The back room show of exhibi-tionism was the cheapest and most spontaneous in town, and its informal postmidnight name was “Showtime.”

max’s back room was perhaps the first place outside of gay bars where transvestites were welcomed—ranging from the glam-orous Candy Darling and holly Woodlawn to the trashy personas of Wayne County and Jackie Curtis. Anton perich, who made the back room his studio, recalled that “there was this enormous grav-ity there, holding all these angels grounded. At any other place in the world they would simply detach and fly away into the starry night.”

The back room shenanigans, pushed to the limits, could never have happened if owner mickey Ruskin set any rules. by steering clear of the back room territory, he provided a kind of nonjudgmental safety zone. betsey Johnson observed that it was a rec room, but free of mom and Dad. “max’s was allowable,” Abbie hoffman once said. “All the worlds could meet there, and I guess you were kind of gooop [gossip] proof. Whatever happened there was off the record, so there was a certain amount of protection.”

The ART OF mAx’S

OppOSITe pAGe Neil Williams, Garden

(detail), 1968, courtesy of Spanierman

Modern

1312

There is a reason that the photos in this book are by only a few people and most of them are shot in the back room. paparazzi would have loved to shoot throughout max’s, simply for the high celebrity quotient. but mickey Ruskin allowed only a few trusted people to take photos—Anton perich, Leee black Childers, brigid berlin, Danny Fields. Others would be thrown out for an inva-sion of privacy. max’s was a protected space, and mickey was, in perich’s words, “the guardian of the souls.” perich had an espe-cially intimate perspective because at one point he’d worked as a busboy. (mickey called him the worst busboy ever, but nonethe-less appreciated his other abilities.) perich remembers, “At that time I was just shooting, not looking at the photos much, not even looking through the viewfinder of my camera. It was always the eye contact. I was shooting nonstop. Some people thought that I had no film in my camera.”

In Ruskin’s ability to be a benevolent ringmaster of the zeit-geist, he posed many of the same contradictions as the era’s other social sculptor, Andy Warhol. Ruskin had little native charisma, and didn’t depend on personal attractiveness or fancy clothes. he was skinny, had jet-black hair and a chipped gold tooth, and wore whatever he felt like—maybe a sport shirt, black pants that were too short, and red socks. Ruskin was self-trained, a workaholic with little time devoted to a personal life. Although max’s was a center for sex and drugs and rock and roll, mickey steered clear of drugs in those days. (Ruskin’s eventual fatal overdose was from a combi-nation of heroin and naïveté about its effects.) his intuition about people was acute, and he trusted it completely. he threw out the usual standards that the well dressed were the ones who gained admittance—a suit and tie was usually counted against a custom-er, as were flashy indications of wealth. he didn’t want the social vibe of businessmen in max’s. most important, Ruskin deflected attention from himself to those around him. he made no rules for his patrons and gave no direction about the manners of the estab-lishment. Like Warhol’s unedited and unscripted films, he chose the performers and the rest was up to them. Ruskin operated on a simple and absolute principle: “If I liked somebody, as far as I was concerned, they had an absolute right to do whatever they wanted.”

mickey Ruskin grew up in a middle-class family in New Jersey. his father was a lawyer, and it was assumed mickey would follow in his father’s footsteps, taking over his legal practice. he went to Cornell, and one of his fraternity brothers recalled him as a physi-cally awkward undergraduate: lonely, tongue-tied with women, and determined to be unlike others—to be special. mickey gradu-ated and passed the New York bar exam and tried practicing law. but the suit-and-tie office life didn’t fit. he tried premed school, and earned good enough grades to gain admittance to a topflight medical school. but he knew this wouldn’t suit him either. In 1960, he had a sort of nervous breakdown epiphany and discov-ered what he wanted to do. he came upon an advertisement in the Village Voice: ReNT OR OWN COFFee ShOp. The space was small—ten feet wide by twenty feet deep—but it offered a beginning. he worked days as a law clerk and nights as a coffee shop manager. he soon brought poets to his coffee shop and arranged readings, which attracted their artist friends. Ruskin was off and running.

Chronology of Mickey Ruskin’s Establishments

The Tenth Street Coffee HouseLocated between Third and Fourth avenues. Launched with a thousand dollars and equipment from an existing café in 1959, and shortly abandoned for a larger café.

Les Deux MagotsOpened in 1960 on Seventh Street between First and Second avenues. This place was owned jointly with a partner, and due to internal differences was sold to that partner in 1961.

The Ninth CircleOpened in 1962, also owned with one partner, and located on Tenth Street and Greenwich Avenue. This became mickey’s first “art bar,” attracting many patrons from the recently closed Cedar Tavern and Dylan’s. Once again mickey sold it to his partner, in 1964, and went to europe for one year.

Max’s Kansas CityOpened in 1965. It was his longest-run establishment in the bar circuit, despite three fires and an ultimate bankruptcy caused by unpaid back taxes. During its eight-year life, mickey opened two other bars.

The Longview Country ClubOpened in 1968. It was located on the corner of Nineteenth Street and park Avenue South. Its name was changed to Levine’s and was closed down after being open for two years.

Max’s Terre HauteOpened in 1969, it was located at Seventy-third and First Av-enue. This was Ruskin’s only uptown bar, and despite efforts at promoting uptown business that included free shuttle service from max’s Kansas City, it closed in 1971. max’s downtown existed for another two years, but finally passed into different ownership in 1973.

The LocaleOriginally named the Local, it opened in 1974. mickey co-owned it with one partner.

The Lower Manhattan Ocean ClubLocated on Chambers Street, it opened in 1976. Shortly there-after, mickey and his partner separated, his partner taking over the Locale and mickey running the Ocean Club. Ahead of its time and the influx of Tribeca residents, this restaurant closed its doors in 1978 due to a lack of business.

Kipling’s Last Resort Opened in late 1978. Located at One University place, replac-ing a deserted Chinese restaurant, this enterprise was an im-mediate success. Continuing without accident or failure until September 1979, it was closed due to an explosion and fire in which a cook lost his life. Three weeks later it reopened, on October 12, 1979, as the Chinese Chance.

(benno Friedman, Artifacts at the End of a Decade, 1981)The ART OF mAx’S

OppOSITe pAGe Larry Zox, Green

Diamond Drill: Keokuk (detail),

1968, courtesy of Stephen Haller

Gallery

1312

There is a reason that the photos in this book are by only a few people and most of them are shot in the back room. paparazzi would have loved to shoot throughout max’s, simply for the high celebrity quotient. but mickey Ruskin allowed only a few trusted people to take photos—Anton perich, Leee black Childers, brigid berlin, Danny Fields. Others would be thrown out for an inva-sion of privacy. max’s was a protected space, and mickey was, in perich’s words, “the guardian of the souls.” perich had an espe-cially intimate perspective because at one point he’d worked as a busboy. (mickey called him the worst busboy ever, but nonethe-less appreciated his other abilities.) perich remembers, “At that time I was just shooting, not looking at the photos much, not even looking through the viewfinder of my camera. It was always the eye contact. I was shooting nonstop. Some people thought that I had no film in my camera.”

In Ruskin’s ability to be a benevolent ringmaster of the zeit-geist, he posed many of the same contradictions as the era’s other social sculptor, Andy Warhol. Ruskin had little native charisma, and didn’t depend on personal attractiveness or fancy clothes. he was skinny, had jet-black hair and a chipped gold tooth, and wore whatever he felt like—maybe a sport shirt, black pants that were too short, and red socks. Ruskin was self-trained, a workaholic with little time devoted to a personal life. Although max’s was a center for sex and drugs and rock and roll, mickey steered clear of drugs in those days. (Ruskin’s eventual fatal overdose was from a combi-nation of heroin and naïveté about its effects.) his intuition about people was acute, and he trusted it completely. he threw out the usual standards that the well dressed were the ones who gained admittance—a suit and tie was usually counted against a custom-er, as were flashy indications of wealth. he didn’t want the social vibe of businessmen in max’s. most important, Ruskin deflected attention from himself to those around him. he made no rules for his patrons and gave no direction about the manners of the estab-lishment. Like Warhol’s unedited and unscripted films, he chose the performers and the rest was up to them. Ruskin operated on a simple and absolute principle: “If I liked somebody, as far as I was concerned, they had an absolute right to do whatever they wanted.”

mickey Ruskin grew up in a middle-class family in New Jersey. his father was a lawyer, and it was assumed mickey would follow in his father’s footsteps, taking over his legal practice. he went to Cornell, and one of his fraternity brothers recalled him as a physi-cally awkward undergraduate: lonely, tongue-tied with women, and determined to be unlike others—to be special. mickey gradu-ated and passed the New York bar exam and tried practicing law. but the suit-and-tie office life didn’t fit. he tried premed school, and earned good enough grades to gain admittance to a topflight medical school. but he knew this wouldn’t suit him either. In 1960, he had a sort of nervous breakdown epiphany and discov-ered what he wanted to do. he came upon an advertisement in the Village Voice: ReNT OR OWN COFFee ShOp. The space was small—ten feet wide by twenty feet deep—but it offered a beginning. he worked days as a law clerk and nights as a coffee shop manager. he soon brought poets to his coffee shop and arranged readings, which attracted their artist friends. Ruskin was off and running.

Chronology of Mickey Ruskin’s Establishments

The Tenth Street Coffee HouseLocated between Third and Fourth avenues. Launched with a thousand dollars and equipment from an existing café in 1959, and shortly abandoned for a larger café.

Les Deux MagotsOpened in 1960 on Seventh Street between First and Second avenues. This place was owned jointly with a partner, and due to internal differences was sold to that partner in 1961.

The Ninth CircleOpened in 1962, also owned with one partner, and located on Tenth Street and Greenwich Avenue. This became mickey’s first “art bar,” attracting many patrons from the recently closed Cedar Tavern and Dylan’s. Once again mickey sold it to his partner, in 1964, and went to europe for one year.

Max’s Kansas CityOpened in 1965. It was his longest-run establishment in the bar circuit, despite three fires and an ultimate bankruptcy caused by unpaid back taxes. During its eight-year life, mickey opened two other bars.

The Longview Country ClubOpened in 1968. It was located on the corner of Nineteenth Street and park Avenue South. Its name was changed to Levine’s and was closed down after being open for two years.

Max’s Terre HauteOpened in 1969, it was located at Seventy-third and First Av-enue. This was Ruskin’s only uptown bar, and despite efforts at promoting uptown business that included free shuttle service from max’s Kansas City, it closed in 1971. max’s downtown existed for another two years, but finally passed into different ownership in 1973.

The LocaleOriginally named the Local, it opened in 1974. mickey co-owned it with one partner.

The Lower Manhattan Ocean ClubLocated on Chambers Street, it opened in 1976. Shortly there-after, mickey and his partner separated, his partner taking over the Locale and mickey running the Ocean Club. Ahead of its time and the influx of Tribeca residents, this restaurant closed its doors in 1978 due to a lack of business.

Kipling’s Last Resort Opened in late 1978. Located at One University place, replac-ing a deserted Chinese restaurant, this enterprise was an im-mediate success. Continuing without accident or failure until September 1979, it was closed due to an explosion and fire in which a cook lost his life. Three weeks later it reopened, on October 12, 1979, as the Chinese Chance.

(benno Friedman, Artifacts at the End of a Decade, 1981)The ART OF mAx’S

OppOSITe pAGe Larry Zox, Green

Diamond Drill: Keokuk (detail),

1968, courtesy of Stephen Haller

Gallery

14 15

John Chamberlain, Miss Lucy Pink,

1962, courtesy of John Chamberlain,

photo by Eleanor P. Labrozzi

a bar or restaurant became the hangout for like-minded groups of people. The Greenwich Village tradition can be traced back to polly’s, a basement coffeehouse that started in early 1913, at 137 macDougal Street. It attracted the leftist bohemians of the day, Wobblies, artists, and poets. It offered proletarian food at long trestle tables, served by polly’s lover, an anarchist named hippolyte havel, who declared, “Greenwich Village is a state of mind—it has no boundaries.”

That state of mind continued at the San Remo, started in 1925 and reaching the height of its popularity during the 1940s and 1950s. Just a stone’s throw from polly’s, on the northwest corner of bleecker and macDougal, it attracted a new social type in the years after World War II: the hipster. The term derived origi-nally from hepi, a Wolof word for “to see,” moving to the jazz term hep and hepster and then to hip and hipster. Norman mailer later made the term famous in his essay “The White Negro,” describing hipsters as “the first wind of a second revolution in this century.” The hipster wore dark clothing, often smoked marijuana, loved jazz, and was an iconic, disaffected outsider. Allen Ginsberg used the term subterranean, and Anatole broyard described the hipster as “the illegitimate son of the Lost Generation.” homosexuals also frequented this mixed environment—far different from the ghet-toized penny-loafer gay bars known as the bird Circuit along Third Avenue in the fifties. The sensibility at the San Remo combined existentialism, marijuana, Franz Kafka, Charlie parker, Lord buck-ley, Lenny bruce, and MAD magazine.

The most famous of the Village artists’ bars was the Cedar Tavern at 24 University place. During its heyday, in the 1950s and early 1960s, a regular crew of Abstract expressionists gath-ered there, and it was the immediate predecessor of max’s Kansas City. The titans were Franz Kline, Jackson pollock, and Willem de Kooning. They drank heavily and talked loudly, usually about the meaning of art. They were joined by the New York poets, who often were the most prescient critics of the period’s painting—Frank O’hara, John Ashbery, James Schuyler, barbara Guest—as well as the grand panjandrums of art criticism, Clement Greenberg and harold Rosenberg, who shaped the critical discourse about Ameri-can art from the late forties through the fifties and early sixties. plenty of macho behavior was exhibited—testing whether a fellow artist could handle slaps, or flat-out slugs, without flinching, and vomiting in the bathroom. The Cedar Tavern era ended by the early sixties, partly because it was overtaken by wannabe acolytes, and partly because the titans were now gone. Jackson pollock had died young, de Kooning stopped drinking, and Franz Kline provided the nail in the coffin with his unexpected death in 1962. Incipient mortality loomed, and the presence necessary for the heroic art-ists’ hangout disappeared.

One could sum up these essential New York hangouts, forerunners of max’s Kansas City, with a few snappy equations:

polly’s = bohemian ideology. The San Remo = hipster nonconformist lifestyle.The Cedar Tavern = macho artist buddy hangout.

but the social equation for max’s Kansas City is more complicated:max’s Kansas City = sixties aristocracy + hipster/hippie bohemian ideology + downtown visibility + fashion + art + music.

“I found very quickly,” he said, “from the first coffee shop I had [that] if I followed my instincts and didn’t let in the people I didn’t like and only let in people I did like, I could make a living, learn, and really have fun.”

mickey’s instincts led him from the Tenth Street Coffee house to Les Deux magots to the Annex and the Ninth Circle. poets and artists became prime clientele, and by the end of 1964 he profit-ably sold out his establishments to partners. by the end of 1965, mickey Ruskin had been out of the bar business for a year, and he was eager to get back into the fray. When he sold the Ninth Circle and the Annex, he signed a noncompetition agreement that barred him from opening a new place within the Greenwich Vil-lage precinct for two years. The Village, both east and West, was Ruskin’s home turf, so this posed a problem. “I couldn’t imagine having a place anywhere but the Village,” he said. Ruskin found a solution when he saw a former pharmacy turned restaurant for sale, just over the precinct line, at 213 park Avenue South. The area had zero charm, but the cost was right. Ruskin put down a little money for a long-term lease on two stories of the building and immediately began renovations, under the supervision of a carpenter named Tex, to turn it into a steak house.

The artists and poets he had befriended from his earlier string of establishments didn’t mind the noise going on around them because they liked Ruskin and thought they were taking part in the birth of something exciting. Ruskin’s artist friends included Frosty myers, Donald Judd, Neil Williams, and the three Larrys—poons, bell, and Zox (sounds like a legal firm). When one con-siders the art on display at max’s, it would appear that mickey Ruskin had blue-chip, cutting-edge taste. In the current market, this combination of names would bring in tens of millions of dol-lars. but Ruskin’s taste was based on personality—if he liked an artist, he assumed he would like their art, so the works and the friendship synchronized in this one spot.

To decorate the walls, Neil Williams and Frosty myers ar-ranged for artists to donate artworks in exchange for a free tab, exclusive of liquor and tips. From 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., mickey laid out a free buffet of chili and chicken wings, attracting artists and spurring them on to buy drinks. “It was not part of the grand plan,” Ruskin recalled, “but it turned out to be one of those fantastic co-incidences.” The free tab and the free buffet encouraged artists to make max’s their hangout. Ruskin worried that he couldn’t lure his old regulars out of their usual Village circuit—the San Remo, Dylan’s, the Cedar Tavern, and the Ninth Circle—as evening drink-ing routines die hard. but on the night that max’s Kansas City of-ficially opened, on January 15, 1966, Ruskin estimated that over a thousand people came through the doors. Some were skeptical that it could last, but the golden umbilical cord of a free tab for favored artists provided a nucleus, so the club grew and grew. Lawrence Weiner observed that “one of the keys to success in running a restaurant or bar is to attract two kinds of people: art-ists—because artists drink, usually right to their income, whether they are rich or poor—and fashion models.”

The name came easily, thanks to poet Joel Oppenheimer. In his mind the first thing he associated with steaks was Kansas City, and he then proceeded by his own logic: “If you’re looking for an M name and want a restauranty kind of thing, ‘max’s’ comes to mind.” Ruskin’s cohorts liked the sound of the name, so it stuck.

max’s Kansas City followed in a common New York tradition—

The ART OF mAx’S

14 15

John Chamberlain, Miss Lucy Pink,

1962, courtesy of John Chamberlain,

photo by Eleanor P. Labrozzi

a bar or restaurant became the hangout for like-minded groups of people. The Greenwich Village tradition can be traced back to polly’s, a basement coffeehouse that started in early 1913, at 137 macDougal Street. It attracted the leftist bohemians of the day, Wobblies, artists, and poets. It offered proletarian food at long trestle tables, served by polly’s lover, an anarchist named hippolyte havel, who declared, “Greenwich Village is a state of mind—it has no boundaries.”

That state of mind continued at the San Remo, started in 1925 and reaching the height of its popularity during the 1940s and 1950s. Just a stone’s throw from polly’s, on the northwest corner of bleecker and macDougal, it attracted a new social type in the years after World War II: the hipster. The term derived origi-nally from hepi, a Wolof word for “to see,” moving to the jazz term hep and hepster and then to hip and hipster. Norman mailer later made the term famous in his essay “The White Negro,” describing hipsters as “the first wind of a second revolution in this century.” The hipster wore dark clothing, often smoked marijuana, loved jazz, and was an iconic, disaffected outsider. Allen Ginsberg used the term subterranean, and Anatole broyard described the hipster as “the illegitimate son of the Lost Generation.” homosexuals also frequented this mixed environment—far different from the ghet-toized penny-loafer gay bars known as the bird Circuit along Third Avenue in the fifties. The sensibility at the San Remo combined existentialism, marijuana, Franz Kafka, Charlie parker, Lord buck-ley, Lenny bruce, and MAD magazine.

The most famous of the Village artists’ bars was the Cedar Tavern at 24 University place. During its heyday, in the 1950s and early 1960s, a regular crew of Abstract expressionists gath-ered there, and it was the immediate predecessor of max’s Kansas City. The titans were Franz Kline, Jackson pollock, and Willem de Kooning. They drank heavily and talked loudly, usually about the meaning of art. They were joined by the New York poets, who often were the most prescient critics of the period’s painting—Frank O’hara, John Ashbery, James Schuyler, barbara Guest—as well as the grand panjandrums of art criticism, Clement Greenberg and harold Rosenberg, who shaped the critical discourse about Ameri-can art from the late forties through the fifties and early sixties. plenty of macho behavior was exhibited—testing whether a fellow artist could handle slaps, or flat-out slugs, without flinching, and vomiting in the bathroom. The Cedar Tavern era ended by the early sixties, partly because it was overtaken by wannabe acolytes, and partly because the titans were now gone. Jackson pollock had died young, de Kooning stopped drinking, and Franz Kline provided the nail in the coffin with his unexpected death in 1962. Incipient mortality loomed, and the presence necessary for the heroic art-ists’ hangout disappeared.

One could sum up these essential New York hangouts, forerunners of max’s Kansas City, with a few snappy equations:

polly’s = bohemian ideology. The San Remo = hipster nonconformist lifestyle.The Cedar Tavern = macho artist buddy hangout.

but the social equation for max’s Kansas City is more complicated:max’s Kansas City = sixties aristocracy + hipster/hippie bohemian ideology + downtown visibility + fashion + art + music.

“I found very quickly,” he said, “from the first coffee shop I had [that] if I followed my instincts and didn’t let in the people I didn’t like and only let in people I did like, I could make a living, learn, and really have fun.”

mickey’s instincts led him from the Tenth Street Coffee house to Les Deux magots to the Annex and the Ninth Circle. poets and artists became prime clientele, and by the end of 1964 he profit-ably sold out his establishments to partners. by the end of 1965, mickey Ruskin had been out of the bar business for a year, and he was eager to get back into the fray. When he sold the Ninth Circle and the Annex, he signed a noncompetition agreement that barred him from opening a new place within the Greenwich Vil-lage precinct for two years. The Village, both east and West, was Ruskin’s home turf, so this posed a problem. “I couldn’t imagine having a place anywhere but the Village,” he said. Ruskin found a solution when he saw a former pharmacy turned restaurant for sale, just over the precinct line, at 213 park Avenue South. The area had zero charm, but the cost was right. Ruskin put down a little money for a long-term lease on two stories of the building and immediately began renovations, under the supervision of a carpenter named Tex, to turn it into a steak house.

The artists and poets he had befriended from his earlier string of establishments didn’t mind the noise going on around them because they liked Ruskin and thought they were taking part in the birth of something exciting. Ruskin’s artist friends included Frosty myers, Donald Judd, Neil Williams, and the three Larrys—poons, bell, and Zox (sounds like a legal firm). When one con-siders the art on display at max’s, it would appear that mickey Ruskin had blue-chip, cutting-edge taste. In the current market, this combination of names would bring in tens of millions of dol-lars. but Ruskin’s taste was based on personality—if he liked an artist, he assumed he would like their art, so the works and the friendship synchronized in this one spot.

To decorate the walls, Neil Williams and Frosty myers ar-ranged for artists to donate artworks in exchange for a free tab, exclusive of liquor and tips. From 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., mickey laid out a free buffet of chili and chicken wings, attracting artists and spurring them on to buy drinks. “It was not part of the grand plan,” Ruskin recalled, “but it turned out to be one of those fantastic co-incidences.” The free tab and the free buffet encouraged artists to make max’s their hangout. Ruskin worried that he couldn’t lure his old regulars out of their usual Village circuit—the San Remo, Dylan’s, the Cedar Tavern, and the Ninth Circle—as evening drink-ing routines die hard. but on the night that max’s Kansas City of-ficially opened, on January 15, 1966, Ruskin estimated that over a thousand people came through the doors. Some were skeptical that it could last, but the golden umbilical cord of a free tab for favored artists provided a nucleus, so the club grew and grew. Lawrence Weiner observed that “one of the keys to success in running a restaurant or bar is to attract two kinds of people: art-ists—because artists drink, usually right to their income, whether they are rich or poor—and fashion models.”

The name came easily, thanks to poet Joel Oppenheimer. In his mind the first thing he associated with steaks was Kansas City, and he then proceeded by his own logic: “If you’re looking for an M name and want a restauranty kind of thing, ‘max’s’ comes to mind.” Ruskin’s cohorts liked the sound of the name, so it stuck.

max’s Kansas City followed in a common New York tradition—

The ART OF mAx’S

16 17

Back Room Regulars

Candy Darling (James Slattery) An actress and mythi-cally beautiful blond transvestite who appeared in the Warhol film Flesh and in many fashion magazines.

Eric Emerson musician, actor, and dancer discovered at a Velvet Underground performance at St. marks place. he appeared in the Warhol film Chelsea Girls, stripping in a psychedelic episode. he worked as a maître d’ at max’s. he proposed marriage to Jackie Curtis in the summer of 1969 and didn’t show up for the wedding.

Gerard Malanga Warhol’s primary silk-screening assistant during the Silver Factory years, also a poet and filmmaker. he appeared in several of Warhol’s films and danced with the exploding plastic Inevitable.

Taylor Mead poet, beat, eternal child. mead starred in Warhol’s first long film, Tarzan and Jane Regained…Sort Of, and then went to europe for a few years, returning in 1967 and starring in several other Warhol films, including The Nude Restaurant and Lonesome Cowboys.

Paul Morrissey Warhol’s office manager during the late 1960s and a film director. Some of the films identified with Warhol, such as Flesh, Trash, and Heat were actually directed by morrissey.

Billy Name (Billy Linich) Key photographer at the Silver Factory. he designed the interior and worked as its overseer. he appeared in several Warhol films, including Haircut #1 and Lupe.

Nico (Christa Päffgen) A singer who came into the Warhol circle in late 1965. She sang with the Velvet Underground dur-ing their first year, before singing on her own for many years.

Brigid Polk (Brigid Berlin) An artist who appeared in sev-eral Warhol films, notably a segment of Chelsea Girls, in which she appeared as a speed dealer.

Viva (Susan Hoffman) A painter discovered by Warhol in August 1967. She appeared in the Warhol films The Nude Restaurant, Lonesome Cowboys, and Blue Movie. her smart, neurotic, and nasal talk was perfect for Warhol films. She mar-ried videographer michel Auder.

Andrea Whipps (Andrea Feldman) An actress who appeared in Warhol’s Flesh and Trash, both directed by paul morrissey. She committed suicide in 1972 at the age of twenty-four.

Holly Woodlawn (Haroldo Santiago Rodriquez Dan-hackel) A Warhol superstar best known for his starring perfor-mance in Trash.

Visiting the current site of max’s Kansas City is an eerie experi-ence. It requires great imagination to transport oneself back to a time when it was the epicenter of pop culture. Where people once made their way to the back room now stands a long salad bar and steam tables with everything from plantains to chicken fingers, with a counter on one side dispensing wrapped sandwiches and grilled panini. In the back, a few green tables sit on fake stone tiles, and the legendary back room is now used for storage.

When mickey Ruskin died in march 1983, the New York Times ran only ninety-six words in his obituary. michael b. Ruskin was identified simply as a restaurant owner—it was a sudden end to a very long story. In contrast, he received an unexpected and more befitting tribute from another source. On the day of his death, a group exhibition called Artifacts at the End of a Decade was being installed at Franklin Furnace in downtown manhattan. One of the forty-four participating artists, benno Friedman, felt the best way to commemorate the seventies was a piece devot-ed to mickey Ruskin’s string of restaurants. “Throughout history there have been specific environments (private homes, salons, cafés, etc.) which have provided a meeting place, a greenhouse for the growth of ideas, ideologies, and revolutions,” Friedman wrote. “Within the last two decades, mickey Ruskin’s name and conspicuous presence have been associated with a number of establishments that have been unofficial centers for individu-als and movements in the artistic/aesthetic/political arenas. For many, in friendship and with generosity, he has provided support and supper during periods of creative exploration and of financial insolvency. For others it was simply a place, an oasis where one felt welcome and wanted.”

The ART OF mAx’S

OppOSITe pAGe Forrest Myers, Max's

Laser Piece, 1967, courtesy

of Forrest Myers and Friedman

Benda

16 17

Back Room Regulars

Candy Darling (James Slattery) An actress and mythi-cally beautiful blond transvestite who appeared in the Warhol film Flesh and in many fashion magazines.

Eric Emerson musician, actor, and dancer discovered at a Velvet Underground performance at St. marks place. he appeared in the Warhol film Chelsea Girls, stripping in a psychedelic episode. he worked as a maître d’ at max’s. he proposed marriage to Jackie Curtis in the summer of 1969 and didn’t show up for the wedding.

Gerard Malanga Warhol’s primary silk-screening assistant during the Silver Factory years, also a poet and filmmaker. he appeared in several of Warhol’s films and danced with the exploding plastic Inevitable.

Taylor Mead poet, beat, eternal child. mead starred in Warhol’s first long film, Tarzan and Jane Regained…Sort Of, and then went to europe for a few years, returning in 1967 and starring in several other Warhol films, including The Nude Restaurant and Lonesome Cowboys.

Paul Morrissey Warhol’s office manager during the late 1960s and a film director. Some of the films identified with Warhol, such as Flesh, Trash, and Heat were actually directed by morrissey.

Billy Name (Billy Linich) Key photographer at the Silver Factory. he designed the interior and worked as its overseer. he appeared in several Warhol films, including Haircut #1 and Lupe.

Nico (Christa Päffgen) A singer who came into the Warhol circle in late 1965. She sang with the Velvet Underground dur-ing their first year, before singing on her own for many years.

Brigid Polk (Brigid Berlin) An artist who appeared in sev-eral Warhol films, notably a segment of Chelsea Girls, in which she appeared as a speed dealer.

Viva (Susan Hoffman) A painter discovered by Warhol in August 1967. She appeared in the Warhol films The Nude Restaurant, Lonesome Cowboys, and Blue Movie. her smart, neurotic, and nasal talk was perfect for Warhol films. She mar-ried videographer michel Auder.

Andrea Whipps (Andrea Feldman) An actress who appeared in Warhol’s Flesh and Trash, both directed by paul morrissey. She committed suicide in 1972 at the age of twenty-four.

Holly Woodlawn (Haroldo Santiago Rodriquez Dan-hackel) A Warhol superstar best known for his starring perfor-mance in Trash.

Visiting the current site of max’s Kansas City is an eerie experi-ence. It requires great imagination to transport oneself back to a time when it was the epicenter of pop culture. Where people once made their way to the back room now stands a long salad bar and steam tables with everything from plantains to chicken fingers, with a counter on one side dispensing wrapped sandwiches and grilled panini. In the back, a few green tables sit on fake stone tiles, and the legendary back room is now used for storage.

When mickey Ruskin died in march 1983, the New York Times ran only ninety-six words in his obituary. michael b. Ruskin was identified simply as a restaurant owner—it was a sudden end to a very long story. In contrast, he received an unexpected and more befitting tribute from another source. On the day of his death, a group exhibition called Artifacts at the End of a Decade was being installed at Franklin Furnace in downtown manhattan. One of the forty-four participating artists, benno Friedman, felt the best way to commemorate the seventies was a piece devot-ed to mickey Ruskin’s string of restaurants. “Throughout history there have been specific environments (private homes, salons, cafés, etc.) which have provided a meeting place, a greenhouse for the growth of ideas, ideologies, and revolutions,” Friedman wrote. “Within the last two decades, mickey Ruskin’s name and conspicuous presence have been associated with a number of establishments that have been unofficial centers for individu-als and movements in the artistic/aesthetic/political arenas. For many, in friendship and with generosity, he has provided support and supper during periods of creative exploration and of financial insolvency. For others it was simply a place, an oasis where one felt welcome and wanted.”

The ART OF mAx’S

OppOSITe pAGe Forrest Myers, Max's

Laser Piece, 1967, courtesy

of Forrest Myers and Friedman

Benda

1918

Unidentified, Tony Masaccio, Forrest

Myers, and David Budd, 1971

1918

Unidentified, Tony Masaccio, Forrest

Myers, and David Budd, 1971

20 21

AbOVe AND beLOW John Chamberlain

and Andrew Wylie, 1971

AbOVe John Chamberlain in his truck

outside of Max’s, ca. 1972

beLOW John Chamberlain and a

Cockette, 1971

20 21

AbOVe AND beLOW John Chamberlain

and Andrew Wylie, 1971

AbOVe John Chamberlain in his truck

outside of Max’s, ca. 1972

beLOW John Chamberlain and a

Cockette, 1971

22 23

Larry Poons, 1974

22 23

Larry Poons, 1974

24 25

Neil Williams and Jackie Rogers,

1972

24 25

Neil Williams and Jackie Rogers,

1972

26 27

ThIS pAGe Ray Johnson and Ruth

Kligman, 1973

OppOSITe pAGe Willem de Kooning,

1971

26 27

ThIS pAGe Ray Johnson and Ruth

Kligman, 1973

OppOSITe pAGe Willem de Kooning,

1971

28 29

AbOVe Rene Ricard and Yvonne Sewall

(Ruskin), 1973

beLOW Earl McGrath and Larry

Rivers, 1974

AbOVe Unidentified and Bebe Buell,

ca. 1974

beLOW Tony Pink and Gerard

Malanga, ca. 1973

28 29

AbOVe Rene Ricard and Yvonne Sewall

(Ruskin), 1973

beLOW Earl McGrath and Larry

Rivers, 1974

AbOVe Unidentified and Bebe Buell,

ca. 1974

beLOW Tony Pink and Gerard

Malanga, ca. 1973

1