Glimpsing a Quickly-to-Vanish Surrealist World in Chelsea

In a former industrial constructing in Chelsea, Tom Shivers donned a silver sequined masks to greet a customer. Much like the costumes he and his husband, the gallerist Neil Zukerman, wore usually on the Carnival of Venice, the glittery masks acted as each a coronavirus precaution and a becoming introduction to the astonishing world the pair created of their 3,200-square-foot house. It’s a world that may quickly be largely dismantled, with some works headed towards a museum of fantasy and surreal artwork.

From 1992 to 2009, Zukerman, who died of most cancers in August at age 81, was the proprietor of CFM Gallery on Greene Avenue in New York. He was additionally an avid collector of artwork and books by Surrealists, magical realists and fantasists.

“Surrealism Beyond Borders,” the brand new exhibit on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, reveals off artwork by a considerable variety of ladies — together with Dorothea Tanning and Leonora Carrington. Zukerman got here to befriend one of many main lights of Surrealism, Leonor Fini (1907-1996) — who seems within the exhibition’s catalog — throughout the closing 18 years of her life. And he collected her work in a means that few have rivaled.

As Shivers, 78, a licensed public accountant and jewellery designer, walked down the lengthy middle hallway of the floor-through house accompanied by Addison, a black cocker spaniel, he identified Finis displayed alongside work by different artists from the CFM Gallery stable, together with Anne Bachelier, Michael Parkes, and Frederick Hart, whom Shivers describes as “steeped in their very own worlds.” Sphinxes, dragons, unicorns, and angels are properly represented.

The Argentine-born Fini definitely occupied her personal distinct sphere. Although she was near, and exhibited with, Surrealism’s main figures, together with Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst (considered one of her lovers), she herself disliked being labeled. Her profile pale through the years, however these days she has had a renaissance.

In 2018, the Museum of Sex in New York mounted a retrospective of her work, with its typically erotic material, and in Paris that very same 12 months, Fini impressed the Spring Couture Assortment at Christian Dior. April 2021 noticed the publication of the catalogue raisonné of Fini’s work, which Zukerman co-authored, and at Sotheby’s in Might, Fini’s 1938 portray, “Autoportrait au scorpion,” drew a document worth for her work at public sale — $2.3 million.

Zukerman lent quite a few Finis to the Museum of Intercourse exhibition. As a collector, a researcher, and a pal of the artist, he served as an necessary useful resource for the museum’s curator, Lissa Rivera. “Fini was Neil’s fundamental ardour,” mentioned Rivera. “He labored very onerous to share her work all through the years.”

Rivera speculated that Fini’s extremely sexualized material could have precipitated an “unfair valuation” of her work. That perspective has modified, and Fini’s nonconformist method to gender and sexuality make her particularly well timed. “In the event you’re not taught in universities or included in artwork historical past books,” Rivera mentioned, “you then could be edited out of historical past. Once we did the exhibition in New York, individuals had been shocked to see simply how related and prolific and the way embedded she was in tradition.”

Shivers and Zukerman moved into their house, beforehand a manufacturing facility wherein eyeglass instances had been made, in 1980 after promoting a spot on the Higher West Facet. Greater than 40 years later, hardly a sq. inch of wall, cupboard, door, and even ceiling is untouched by artwork, collectibles, and, in some instances, simply issues.

On the far finish of the house is an ethereal “backyard room,” with a mosaic ground designed by Zukerman and product of 80,000 particular person tiles. “The person who put in it retired when the job was completed,” Shivers mentioned. The view of downtown Manhattan by the room’s 9-foot-high home windows is partly obscured by sculpture, vegetation, a chook cage, stained glass, and a forest of plastic flowers introduced again from Thailand, the place lots of Shivers’ bold jewelry designs are fabricated. (Southeast Asia holds one other attraction: “Our dentist is in Bangkok,” mentioned Shivers.)

A toilet’s mirrored ceiling and partitions replicate a portion of Zukerman’s massive assortment of classic fragrance bottles, many from the Nineteen Thirties, together with Fini’s design for Elsa Schiaparelli’s “Stunning” scent. When Rivera first visited the house, it was “like being in a jewellery field,” she mentioned.

And the house has its personal 9-seat movie show, designed by Theo Kalomirakis. Zukerman collected film posters and foyer playing cards, too, together with something involving Marilyn Monroe. And books, a few of them revealed by CFM Gallery, together with editions of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “The Phantom of the Opera” with ethereal illustrations by Bachelier.

When Shivers met Zukerman in 1968, on the Sweet Retailer, a homosexual bar on West 56th Avenue, Zukerman’s career held no trace of his future; he was working as assistant to the president of a metal extruding firm. Within the late Nineteen Seventies, Shivers gave Zukerman a present he longed for: a lithograph of “Sphinx: Ilaria” by Fini, now hanging of their bed room. Zukerman grew to become fascinated by the artist and her story: her life, as unique as her work, featured many lovers, together with two males she lived with for many years on the identical time. On a visit to France, Zukerman discovered Fini listed within the Paris telephone guide and known as her.

She “may very well be a curmudgeon,” Shivers mentioned, “however she took a liking to Neil.” Finally the couple paid a go to and bonded over their pets.

In 1992, at 112 Greene Avenue in Soho, Zukerman mounted a pop-up Fini exhibit, his first curatorial effort. Quickly he discovered himself working CFM Gallery in the identical house. (CFM initially stood for Artistic Fiscal Administration — the couple’s monetary consulting enterprise — however ultimately they joked that it meant, “Cost Far Extra.”) When their lease expired after 17 years, the gallery transferred to West twenty seventh Avenue. However and not using a avenue degree house, the brand new location didn’t appeal to the identical visitors. Designer Stella McCartney took over the 112 Greene Avenue location and CFM now exists on-line.

Shivers and Zukerman, who formally married in 2012, lived out loud, internet hosting massive events of their house and marking milestones with elaborate celebrations in unique places. Shivers plans to remain of their house, however with fewer possessions. “In the event you go searching,” Shivers mentioned, “You haven’t any place to place issues.”

He’s in talks with a serious college to donate Zukerman’s assortment of books associated to Fini, together with a number of of the oversize, restricted editions created by the artist containing her illustrations of principally provocative literature, like Baudelaire’s poetry. Based on Rivera, a favourite method was decalcomania, wherein moist ink or paint is unfold on sheets and pressed collectively; others exhibit Fini’s drawing prowess.

Shivers can also be promoting many works, together with a fantastical Fini, “Rasch, Rasch, Rasch, Meine Puppen Warten” (roughly, “Hurry, Hurry, Hurry, My Dolls Are Ready”), a 1975 oil portray. “It’s an important portray of Fini’s,” mentioned Rivera, “as a result of she’s trying again at her childhood and analyzing her personal life and need to play make-believe that she carried along with her all through her life.”

“This can be a piece of artwork we created collectively,” Shivers mentioned of the house, “nevertheless it’s a little bit of a burden to tug the cart alone.”

Earlier than Zukerman fell sick, he had been working with Ailene Fields, a sculptor and longtime pal, to start out the Skylands Museum of Art in Lafayette, N.J., 55 miles west of New York Metropolis, on a property she owns, with a give attention to surreal and fantasy artwork. He donated items by a number of artists, together with Fini. Fields is continuing with their plans and hopes to open in 2022.

“I don’t need it to be a museum the place all the pieces is sterile,” she mentioned. “I would like it to appear to be their house.”