“New York is the only place where a girl can graduate from the Scarlett O’Hara School of Business and build an art empire held together with Aqua-Net” --Patti Astor, New York Magazine, 1983.

I always say that the day that I met FAB 5 Freddy was the day that the FUN Gallery really started. At the time, downtown East Village was the place to be and Fred saw all of this and came down from the South Bronx one night to check out one of my movies, Underground U.S.A., which was playing at the St. Mark’s Cinema as a midnight cult film. One manic night, at a weird party to celebrate the 100th birthday of the poet Mallarme, FAB walked up to me and said: “Patti Astor, you’re my favorite movie star.” He then asked me if I’d autograph a paper cake plate for him and I said, ‘Sure. You must be my new best friend!” And he was. The queen of ‘downtown’ had met the king of ‘uptown’. A whole new world was opened up to me that night.

In 1980 no one downtown had heard of graffiti art, rap music or break-dancing—nothing. Soon enough word got out and the party started. The unique FUN Gallery audience of downtown artists and hipsters, beat-boys, rock movie and rap stars kicking it with neighborhood kids and the established art world of museum directors, curators and uptown collectors with their mink coats and limos began to build. Our tiny tenement space turned into what People magazine would end up calling, “the most famous art gallery in the world.

Right after opening the FUN gallery, I heard through the grapevine that Charlie and Fred were planning to do this movie but that they didn’t want to give me the part of the reporter because they thought that the role should be played by somebody more ‘mousy’. But I was determined and dragged a bunch of my Mudd Club buddies all the way up to Harlem on the subway for the 2nd Annual Sugar Hill Rap Convention dressed in a white satin jumpsuit—I ran into FAB and Charlie, dogged a few bullets and got the part.

I grew up in a family of strong women where nothing was impossible. My maternal grandmother joined the civil service in 1905 and journeyed out to New Mexico to become the first woman officer in the US Army. My paternal grandmother had her own radio show in Binghamton, NY, and my Aunt Snick rode the rodeo. My mother became a physician in 1949 when only seven percent of the doctors in the country were women. I learned early on that while you can easily grab fashion off the rack, true style comes from within. My mother was from the South and from the age of four, made sure I never went out without black patent leather Mary Jane’s polished with Vaseline, and matching hat and gloves.”

When it comes to fashion I guess you can take the girl off the street but … I still love to cruise 14th Street, lower Broadway and Canal Street for the ghetto styles and all those outrageous knock-offs—in a way they always seem to possess more panache than the originals, you know a sense of humor that seems to have been thrown in as well.

Well, you’ve just got to love Banksy—his Wild Style logo on the cow is the kind of crazy thinking that makes real art, as opposed to the all too common attitude these days of ‘what will sell’. I am also gratified but not surprised to see that many of the artists from back in the day who persevered when the spotlight momentarily faded have successful careers today. When artist SHARP tells me, ‘Patti, thank you for giving me my first exhibition—you changed my life’, all the struggle just falls away.

I have to confess, I’m a sucker for Eminem—he just doesn’t care what people think of him! He has a lot in common with my original FUN artist, Zephyr, in that they both share a definite ‘up against the wall’ sensibility.

‘Miss Lilly’, ‘A diminutive, perfectly coiffed Hungarian grand damn who spoke seven languages, was my facialist at the Georgette Klinger salon and instructed me. “A lady never leaves the house without lipstick” I never have.

It’s always better to leave the party before it’s over. You don’t want to end up lying on the floor, passed out among the filled ashtrays and empty glasses!

Well, you can check out the promo for our upcoming documentary, “Patti Astor’s FUN Gallery” on YouTube and—you read it here first—I’m excited to announce that FUN Gallery will have it’s own space in Jeffrey Deitch’s first major exhibition at L.A.’s MOCA, “Art In The Street” in April of 2011. The FUN’s not over yet!

 

   Tweet