PETER VON ZIEGESAR
Internationally renowned artist Ross Bleckner is famous for two things: his lyrical paintings and glamorous social life. Welcome to the downtown loft where he creates glorious canvasses and throws parties for the likes of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
When a buffed, slightly balding Ross Bleckner, in a black T-shirt and jeans, opens the steel door to his Tribeca loft, he looks like the consummate New York artist which is exactly what he is. Bleckner lives and works in a six-story converted warehouse that he purchased with his father's help back in 1974, and it 's where he's created the opulent, obsessively detailed abstract paintings that, under the guidance of 80s powerhouse art dealer Mary Boone, have found their way into museums, corporate boardrooms, and top private collections all over the world. "Do I ever think about moving out of New York? Always!" says the characteristically frank artist, who was born and raised on Long Island. "But when I consider what it would be like to live somewhere else, who I would have to interact with, I thank God I 'm here."
Bleckner takes me up a flight of stairs and into his second-floor office, where he continuously paces and interrupts himself with thoughts, digressions, and new discoveries. I later realize that it 's not unusual for him to turn a corner in his loft, pick something up, and declare, "What 's this!" Today his energy is flowing, even though he 's fighting jet lag after having traveled to openings in Sweden, Italy, and Australia, where he developed an appreciation for the art produced in the aboriginal village of Warlayirti. "The whole town paints together," he enthuses, holding up a small, brightly colored painting in which hypnotic dots and patterns echo his own work. "It 's un-be-liev-a-ble!
Bleckner deftly manipulates an industrial elevator, and we ride up to the next floor. Through one door is his painting studio, where the ceiling is nearly 30 feet high because a floor was removed during a 1989 renovation. Later Bleckner shows me his weight room (possibly one of the best-equipped you could find outside of a real gym), which is situated on the floor above; the contrast between the two spaces the high, shadowy reaches of the studio versus the inert, heavy workout equipment of the weight room reminds me of one of the essential features of Bleckner 's work: the harmonious coexistence of the ethereal and the earthbound.
Although an abrupt stock market drop brought New York City’s overheated gallery scene to a halt at the end of the 1980s, and many of Bleckner’s contemporaries were subject to early critical reassessment, Bleckner himself escaped the purge. "He’s an artist, like Roy Lichtenstein, who’s been able, in an organic, aesthetic way, to stay current with developing issues;" says Boone. "The work that was appropriate in the ë80s, with issues of public health, like the AIDS paintings, have become quite timely in the ë90s. He always transcends the subject matter."
Blackener’s 1995 Guggenheim retrospective solidified his position at the apex of the New York art world. (That show was capped by his "prettiest" paintings: romantic, hugely magnified blooms with cascading petals that convey a deep melancholy.) His superstar status wasn’t hindered by his reputation as a social butterfly. In 1994 The New York Times ran an article about Bleckner headlined BACHELOR OF ARTS: ROSS BLECKNER, GAY POWER BROKER AND UBIQUITOUS PARTYGOER, IS LOOKING FOR LOVE. (Full disclosure: It was also in the early 1990s that Bleckner became a backer of OUT.)
"Ross doesn’t find it a problem to mix in with the social set," explains Boone. "Plus, he combats the stereotype of artists as uncouth clods, who, if you invite them over, are going to pee in your fireplace." When asked to respond to this description which refers to the infamous whiz Jackson Pollock took at Peggy Guggenheim’s place, Bleckner flashes a roguish grin and says, "Oh, I for sure won’t pee in the fireplace. Unless the host is into water sports." For the record, Bleckner is no longer "looking for love": Although there are few signs of him, Bleckener’s boyfriend, painter Eric Freeman, moved into the loft in 1995.
Bleckner is still a society player. Besides his association with Velvet Mafioso types like Sandy Gallin, he also packs them in for charity events: In
December he donated use of his building to a high-profile, $1,000-a-plate fete to benefit Hillary Rodham Clinton’s nascent senatorial campaign. And he’s thrown countless bashes for Community Research Initiative on AIDS (known as CRIA), the AIDS research charity he helped to found and now heads.
Bleckner’s high-profile social life makes the quiet, almost monkish order of his loft that much more compelling. In his studio, he remarks, "This is my sanctuary," and rubs his hands together while surveying the scene: cold, pervasive light; paintings, awaiting final touches, leaning against a wall; a stack of books on a shelf, the titles of which testify to Bleckner’s interest in medical minutiae: Essentials of Radiologic Imaging, Atlas of Functional Histology, and a book of a different kind, Gerry Spence’s How to Argue and Win Every Time, which Bleckner says he uses for "talking to myself." "Painting is my vacation, when I feel most comfortable," he says. "When I go back to my life that’s work!"
Science plays its largest role yet in Bleckner’s current canvases. His recent "cell" paintings magnified ropes of protein coil on fields of scarlet blood platelets; jelly-like cell structures orbiting, spiraling, or hanging weightlessly in midair, evoking space travel were inspired by a visit from his father, who, prior to his death from prostate cancer in 1998, showed his son electron-microscope photographs of cancer cells. "Some of the truly terrifying aspects of life become less terrifying if you can reorganize them for yourself in more palatable ways," Bleckner says. "I don’t really understand science, but I do understand visual terms. I can interpret scary things like AIDS and cancer by recasting them in my own visual language. That’s the bottom line." Bleckner views his studio as an "amateur laboratory," where he can investigate and analyze, on a microscopic level, the properties of things that interest him. On one table, bathed in winter light, are a white laboratory smock, rows of brushes of various sizes, and Tupperware containers filled with pigments and labeled with scientific-sounding names such as "Protein and Cells" and "Silver With Heavy Pigment." It’s all neatly laid out and waiting for his attention.
After showing me the studio, Bleckner takes me to the top floor, where I’m not surprised to see that the artist’s living quarters are as immaculate and orderly as his studio. Everything here is hushed tones, and muted light falls into the room from recessed skylights. Outside, on one wall of a small stone terrace, is an Italianate-marble wall fountain. In the spartan living room hangs an untitled flower painting from the mid '90s, which Bleckner says was hung there as a "practical matter"; normally he hates looking at his own work unless he’s in the studio. His other furnishings were chosen with help from an interior design firm. "I don’t like to accumulate a lot of things in my space," he explains. "Basically, I don’t like the idea of decor. Shopping makes me nervous, to put it mildly."
Vanity Fair writer and friend Bob Colacello contends that this floor of the loft accurately reflects its owner. "Ross’ living quarters remind me of an apartment in Romeóvery cool, very neat, but never in a flashy way, like Ross himself." Bleckner is indeed a cool presence, but, amidst the perfect order of his surroundings, he can still be effusive and down-to-earth. When asked to name his favorite objects from this space filled with sleek choices, he runs instantly to the tiny palette where his two miniature dachshunds, Maria and Mini, sit, with expectant looks on their faces, and scoops them up in his arms. "The dogs!" he sings out. "The dogs!"