While doing a coronavirus spring cleaning in March, I found the
audiotape of an interview I had done with Floriano Vecchi, an artbook publisher
and painter in 1998. Floriano had passed away in 2005 very suddenly, so it was
surreal to hear his rich Italian accent again. I transcribed the tape this week.
In 1998, I was working on a profile of Tobias Schneebaum, the
sexual anthropologist and painter, for the New York Observer. Tobias gave me
the name of Floriano Vecchi, an art book publisher and painter, who was one of
Tobias’ oldest friends.
I met Floriano in his glorious apartment on West 11th
Street, which had 12-foot ceilings and leather-bound books on the shelves. There
was modern abstract art on the walls. Floriano told me his story of coming to
New York from Italy in 1952, barely speaking English. He fell in with the New
York intelligentsia, including the second-wave Abstract Expressionists like
Jane Freilicher and Grace Hartigan, as well the poets Frank O’Hara and Kenneth
Koch. He and his work and life partner Richard Miller set up the Tiber Press in
1953, named after the river that runs through Rome.
In 1954, Floriano was approached by the writer Vance Bourjaily to produce
a book called The Girl with the Abstract Bed. The artist was a painter
named Tobias Schneebaum. This project led to a 50-year friendship between
Floriano and Tobias.
The same year, Tobias went to Peru and wound up walking into the
Amazon jungle. He disappeared and was listed as missing. Tobias reappeared
eight months later, after living with a cannibal tribe in the jungle. Tobias
later wrote about the experience in his 1969 book Keep the River on Your Right.
In 1960, the Tiber Press did one of its greatest projects, pairing
four young poets with four young painters, printing the poetry with artwork in
glorious color plates. The poet Frank O’Hara was paired with painter Mike
Goldberg; poet James Schuyler was paired with painter Grace Hartigan; Kenneth
Koch was paired with Alfred Leslie, and John Ashbery was paired with Joan
Mitchell. The four volumes now sell as a set for $15,000.
The bread-and-butter business of the Tiber Press were
silk-screened Christmas cards, which sold at high-end places like Bergdorf
Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue. Tobias would work at the Tiber Press for months,
then would travel the world, going to such far-flung places as Afghanistan, the
Philippines, Burma and South America, writing about their sexual cultures and
his own interactions with men in these countries.
Floriano shutdown the press in 1977. In 2005, I made an
appointment to interview Floriano for my Last Bohemians photo-and-text exhibit.
A few days before our interview, Floriano called me in great agitation, saying
he had to cancel because he had tremendous back pain. He died two weeks later at the age of 84.
In our interview, Floriano was a gracious host. A compact,
handsome man, Floriano talked about the great cultural explosion in the New
York art world in the 1950’s and his everlasting friendship with Tobias
Schneebaum.
FLORIANO VECCHI: I’ve
known Tobias since 1954. That’s quite a few years, 43 or 44 years. In these
days, I had just come from Italy. I was struggling. I opened a little place,
which I named the Tiber Press. I didn’t know what I was doing. Eventually,
after one year, I was doing silkscreens. It was fascinating.
One day a writer, a friend of
a friend who was rather well known called Vance Bourjaily, he came to the Tiber
Press with a manuscript to be published. It was simple and funny, but no one
wanted to publish this this little book. I had a friend, who was a kind of
partner in the press, who loved the book. I saw the illustrations for the book,
which were very suitable for the silk screening. We said yes and we published
it, The
Girl in the Abstract Bed. The artist was Tobias Schneebaum. That’s how
I met him.
A few months later, Tobias
made his first trip to Peru. We became good friends. We keep writing each other.
It was like a journal. I used to get all these letters throughout the trip. It
took a long time. It was like hitchhiking, all the way down to Peru. He saw all
these terrible things, then he disappeared. After eight months, he resurfaced
one day in Lima. I began getting some letters, then he came back. Our
friendship was established and we saw each other a lot during the years.
Tobias always loved to
travel. He used to work at Tiber Press when Tiber Press could afford a helper
during the Christmas season. At that time, I was making my money by printing
Christmas cards and related things. Tobias would work for a month or two,
helping us. He’d make enough money, then he would go every place in the world.
His passion. He went to Africa, all over the place, and the Libyan desert. He
went all the way down to Ethiopia and Somalia, then he went down to South
America. He went to Mexico. Once he went to Greece and that area including
Israel and Turkey. He started going to the Orient. He fell in love with New
Guinea. New Guinea became his love. He’s been there many, many times. He still goes there.
DYLAN FOLEY: When did Tobias start writing Keep the River on Your Right?
FV: I had a house in Tuscany.
It was after many years. It was in the early 1960’s. He came and spent one
month or maybe more, at my house in Tuscany. He decided to start writing that
book, Keep the River on Your Right.
He had a very old, funny-looking typewriter. Every day, he’d work on it. He’d
write three or four pages, five pages. I read those pages right before I went
to sleep. I read that book in installments. He finished it and he went back to
New York and it was published.
DF: Tobias had amazing but very violent experiences in
Peru. How do you compare the Tobias who returned?
FV: It’s written in the book.
That made a huge, huge impression on him.
For so many years, he was totally unable to put it down on paper. He
finally felt that he had to write it.
That’s how he wrote the book.
I got to know Tobias after he
came back. Through his letters and the great enthusiasm and huge curiosity to
meet these people and they were so wild and he loved these people.
In Italy, going through some
old things, I found a group of portraits. He took photographs of them. When I
sold the house, I put them in storage.
DF: It took 15 years for Tobias to write the book. Did
you discuss Peru with him?
FV: He talked a lot about the
people. He had a friend, a great writer named Isabel Bolton. She wrote under
two names—Mary Miller and Isabel Bolton. She wrote a book with Tobias for
children called Jungle Journey.
DF: Do you think Tobias was ever able to exorcise the
demons of his cannibal experience?
FV: He was forced, but he was
always willing to enter the community, to be one of them.
DF: Do you think he was traumatized by Peru?
FV: I don’t think he was. He
took it as an incredible experience not to be traumatized. He was made better
to learn something unusual in life.
DF: As a child, Tobias was traumatized by his father
and others over his appearance. Do you think by searching for wild men through
the world he was looking for alternative kinds of beauty?
FV: Yes. He wrote about how
everybody thought he was ugly when he was young. He thought he was ugly. The
people in Peru just adored him. They thought he was a very beautiful man. He
had a lighter skin than they did. The kids [in the jungle in Peru] thought that
he had painted himself lighter. They accepted him because he was totally
innocent. He was like someone who had come from the sky.
DF: What was the social life like in your intellectual
circle in the 1950’s?
FV: I was very lucky when I
came to America. I was a very, very simple Italian man, not sophisticated. I
didn’t speak one word of English. I happened to fall in among this group of
intelligent, sophisticated young people, writers, painters and poets. There
were parties. They liked me, they loved me, they thought I was very handsome.
They thought I was very unusual. I had an accent that they loved. The adored
me. Tobias was one of them. He was slightly outside. He was a loner because he
was always away. He was not totally well known by these people.
DF: Do you think Tobias is a shy person?
FV: He might give the
impression that he is shy, but he is not shy. He is probably the most
outspoken, honest person that I know.
There was a group everybody knew.
I worked with them more than Tobias. They loved success. If you were a painter,
your painting had been bought by a museum. If you were a writer or a poet, your
story or poem had been bought by the New Yorker or another magazine. Now
they are either dead or very famous, like Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch, Norman
Mailer. Norman Mailer was a very close friend of Tobias’. It was once Tobias’
birthday. This was the ‘50’s. Norman and Adele were throwing a little dinner
party and he could bring two friends. Tobias brought me and another friend.
Norman Mailer wasn’t really that famous at that time. He had The
Naked and the Dead. That
evening, Norman had found out that Hollywood had bought the rights to his
novel. They had given him what we thought was the greatest amount of money,
$30,000.
DF: What was the social mix like in the 1950’s?
FV: There were a lot of homosexuals.
It was a fabulous mix of straight people and homosexuals. They all really
respected and loved each other. The art society was just like that. New York
was the same size as it is now, but for the artists, there were only 10
galleries.
DF: Who were some of the painters?
FV: There were the old
timers. They were already famous, like de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Franz
Kline and many others. This was the first generations of Abstract Expressionists. The younger
painters, they hung around with the poets, Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch, James
Schuyler, John Ashbery and many others. Ed Field was one of those poets in
those days.
DF: Where were the locations for this scene?
FV: It was all over. It was
Greenwich Village and uptown. The young painters, the group, included Joan
Mitchell and Grace Hartigan. She was the most famous of the younger painters.
Grace was young and beautiful. By the late 1950’s, every great museum had
brought paintings by her. She was very close with Frank O’Hara. Jane Freilicher
was the darling of all the poets.
(Frank O'Hara, Larry Rivers and Grace Hartigan at the Five Spot jazz club)
Tobias was a little out of
it, for he was never here in New York. For 3-4-5 or 6 months, he’d be away. If
he was here, he’d always be at my house, for I gave little parties.
At that time, the Tiber Press
was almost in Yorktown, 3rd Avenue and 82nd Street. I
gave that up about 15 years ago.
DF: Did you push Tobias to write Keep the River on Your Right?
FV: I might have told him
that he had to write the book. I was responsible for the publication of it. I
knew that Tobias wanted to do it. It went very quickly.
It went to publishers and
they didn’t want to publish it. The subject was rather unusual, to say the
least.
DF: In 1969, Tobias did not write about having sex
with the tribesmen himself.
FV: The relationships are all
very clear in the book. Tobias almost
died himself, trying to bring his friend to the jungle mission.
I am in total agreement with
you. If you are not gay, you can’t catch all of that. In all the other books,
he has been totally honest.
(Tobias Schneebaum in the 1950's)
Keep the River on Your Right is almost in the form of a novel. All the rest of his
books are totally autobiographical. He became more assertive himself and the
world became more different. Nobody is afraid to say, “I’m gay, I’m out.” It’s
accepted. It is better for the writing to say what one feels like.
DF: How did the social life change in the 1970’s and
‘80’s?
FV: More people came to New
York and everything changed. People moved out of New York. They grew up. Some
of the struggling first great artists became very, very rich. They moved out of
New York and bought homes in the Hamptons. Some of them died. Some of the
younger artists were part of the influx that started Pop Art. Pop Art put an
end to all the Abstract Expressionism. Pop Art was more aggressive and more
successful. The writing just developed by itself. John Ashbery became one of
the most important poets in the United States. Frank O’Hara died and he became
a cult figure. A beach taxi [on Fire Island] killed him.
Six or 10 galleries in New
York became 500 galleries. It all began with Andy Warhol.
By the way, Andy Warhol was
part of the Tiber Press, because I taught him how to silkscreens. I gave him
the paint, I gave him the silkscreen. He became the most famous artist of this
century.
[Editor’s note: Floriano Vecchi’s New York Times obituary
on June 9, 2005 confirmed the account…Warhol showed up with a hand-drawn dollar
bill. Floriano had Warhol redraw the dollar bill on Mylar, then showed him how
to silkscreen it.]
DF: How did your social life change over the years?
FV: It was more intimate in a
sense. He and I selected different people. We became more selective. Tobias and
I spent a lot of evenings with Isabel Bolton, a beautiful woman. Tobias
depended very much on Yaddo, the artists’ colony. When he wasn’t traveling, he
was at Yaddo. We saw each other constantly.
DF: In his book Wild
Man, Tobias wrote about having a sexualized infatuation with the Wild Man
of Borneo, a Coney Island sideshow, as a child in Brooklyn. Did this inspire
his rough, often dangerous travel to the jungles of Peru and New Guinea?
FV: The Wild Man of Borneo. I
have a friend who was obsessed with King Kong since he was a child. He had an
orgasm, but since he was a little boy, all he could do was piss his pants.
That is the kind of thing… as
a child, it can be a dream, it can be an image, it can be something that you
can relate to, to the point where you can fall in love with a monster. Then you
spend your whole life looking for something. He goes to the jungle because
there is something that holds him there. He is most happy when his feet are in
the mud. When you see something that is totally different than your life in New
York, yet something similar.
(Tobias in New Guinea)
DF: Were the men Tobias slept with and wrote about his
ideals of masculine beauty?
FV: Romantic, certainly, for
he relates to wild people, wild in the sense that they are in their wilderness,
which is beautiful, pure and innocent, a world that hasn’t been spoiled, which
is genuine. There is respect for their customs, their way of living. Tobias
admired that and he would long for that.
DF: Do you think he was motivated by his unhappy
childhood?
FV: This thing about an unhappy childhood and everything…
Tobias is a very happy person. He has found happiness within himself. I don’t know anything about gurus, but the
idea of a guru would describe Tobias.
DF: The novelist Allan Gurganus said “I don’t believe
in shamen, but if there were to be a shaman, it would be Tobias.”
FV: Exactly. Everytime
something wretched happens, all you have to do is talk to Tobias, and he has a
beautiful reason to put you at ease.
DF: Tobias has a very pleasing voice and you feel that
nothing will disturb him.
FV: I’ve heard that voice for
so many years that it has become part of my head.
DF: How did Tobias respond to the AIDS epidemic in
Greenwich Village?
Tobias had a lot of friends
that died. With great sympathy, I met the first man with AIDS at a small party
at Tobias’ home. I felt so moved. I got up and embraced him before he left. He
was so emaciated. I cannot tell you how many times he was in the hospital. He
never, never, never left people alone. He was always there to keep the [dying] men
company.
DF: How does Tobias support himself?
FV: Some angels up there. When he runs out of
money, there is always something that happens. Now he jokes about it…someone
giving him a Sunday dinner, someone giving him a beautiful gift. He knows how
to live in the most frugal way without suffering at all. All his friends pitch
in.
DF: Tobias also battled cancer?
FV: Cancer took all his
family. Most of his family died of cancer. Over 30 years ago, he had cancer of
the colon. Two hip replacements in the same hip. Climbing up those mountains
and being in the mud all that time didn’t do any good for him. He was operated on a second time and it
didn’t go very well. He had the third operation and it was very good. Now, he’s
not perfect, but he can walk without a cane.
He has a beautiful way of
walking. Thirty or 40 years from now, there won’t be anymore Tobias
Schneebaums. It is the end of that kind
of gentleman.
DF: Do you think that Tobias’ gentleness is dying out
in society?
FV: The world is becoming so
chaotic. I hope not. I’m getting old and I’ve lived a long life. I’ve seen so
much. What I see is not that encouraging. It has to be that way. I am sure 70
years ago, someone was talking that way.
DF: In Where the
Spirits Dwell, Tobias’ book on New Guinea and the Asmat tribesmen, who
writes about their way of life being decimated by modern society.
FV: They say destroyed, but
it is just changing. The civilization is there, if you see it. The ruins are still there.
DF: Floriano, are you painting?
FV: I am a painter. I do
paint That is what keeps me alive.
DF: What kind of painter are you?
FV: Ask Tobias what he thinks
of my painting. I hate to talk about my
painting. What I paint is what I feel. It’s not abstract, obviously. It’s
realistic.
DF: How has Tobias changed since 1954?
FV: He was much taller than
me, but as he becomes older, he becomes shorter. We all do that.
Tobias’ face is much more
interesting and beautiful now. When he was young, he wasn’t as unattractive as
he said. He was a very nice looking man.
What I feel is a great deal
of tenderness. We took the F train on Sunday, to visit a very good friend of
ours named Paula Fox. She is a novelist and very famous for her children’s
books. This was on Clinton Street, not far from the river in Brooklyn.
Her husband Martin Greenberg
is the brother of the late Clement Greenberg, the most influential art critic
of the period. I kept looking at Tobias as I was sitting across the table.
Tobias is extraordinary. He makes the world beautiful. There should be more
Tobiases.
DF: You have a very peaceful apartment here.
FV: Everybody who comes to
this place feels at peace here. I feel at peace myself. When I am away, I long
for this place.
I don’t feel like an Italian
anymore. I lived long enough here that I feel this is my home.
When you leave a country in
your twenties, it is already done. You will never lose your accent. The “H” in
every word is difficult. I was formed in different country.
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