Shut It Down: East Hampton's Efforts Against Art

The Town of East Hampton is once again on the warpath to block the creation and sale of art in that town. It’s an astonishing thing, considering the community’s long history as a center of the art world. Jackson Pollock did his best work here. So did Willem de Kooning. In the 1940s, the community of Springs became a gathering point for the Abstract Expressionist movement. Some said Springs had become the focus of the art world, having moved from Paris to New York and then to Springs.

Yet, in recent years, artists and sculptors have been hobbled by the town’s efforts to tightly regulate art studios where the painters and sculptors work. More about this later.

The immediate assault this week is intended to close the doors of a Montauk art gallery run by Max Levai, former president of the Marlborough Gallery in Manhattan. In 2020, Levai, having fallen in love with Montauk, bought a 26-acre sprawl of pastureland where, in the early 2000s, the town had purchased the development rights from the prior owner.

With the purchase of these rights, only agricultural use would be permitted on the property. But now, on the walls in one of two barns, the other still housing the animals, Levai was displaying art. Artsy people could purchase pictures there. This must be stopped. Town zoning inspectors noted this infraction and visited the gallery. And if Levai does not shut the place down, the court injunction, which the town could seek, could get the job done.

“They are basically running an art and sculpture gallery — exhibiting and selling art in the structures and on the outdoor spaces,” said Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc, according to 27East. “They are doing exhibitions … having events intended to attract buyers, they’re doing advertising.”

That barn still smells inside like a barn. There are bales of hay around. And animals nearby. One wonders.

What, for instance, can be made of a horse out in a pasture looking askance at a 20-foot-long sculpture of a giant creamsicle with a bite taken out of it created by artist Matt Johnson.

And if that is unsuitable for the horse’s taste, perhaps he (or she) might better like the other sculptures around. Or even better, the pictures on the walls in the barn.

The earlier attempt to make life difficult for artists is the law, still on the town books as ordinance 255-11-88, that requires buildings in the town’s residential areas used as art studios be prevented from having kitchen appliances or toilets.

The law, passed in 1988, says this is necessary to prevent an artist studio from being used as a guest house for family when they come out or, Gosh forbid, a second residence in a residential zone where only single homes are permitted.

And the law, as written, can be vigorously enforced. Inspectors are permitted to come to art studios, even on short notice, to see that said toilets and kitchen appliances, not visible from outside of the building, are not inside. If they are, they must be removed. And there are fines.

This law also requires that artists prove they are indeed artists. They must be named on the application for a permit, and they must show they’ve been vigorously painting and sculpting — the work must be visible — and there must be a gallery show in the recent past listed along with reviews and comments about the work, or an exhibit coming up. Permits are only good for a year. The following year, a new one must be obtained.

The ranchland east of downtown Montauk has a storied history not only in ranchland and agriculture, but also in the arts, politics and war.

During the American Revolution, a 74-gun English man-o’-war called Culloden, out looking to battle a French man-o’-war, ran into a storm and foundered along the northern part of what was then part of this property. The British sailors waded ashore, built a fire and spent the night, then had to be rescued by sailors from other ships of the Royal Navy as Culloden broke up.

In 1898, President Willian McKinley stayed at the ranch house, the only other structure on this property other than the barns, while visiting the American troops — 29,500 strong — who had come back from Cuba and the Spanish-American War to bivouac in tents in the rolling hills of this ranchland before being discharged to their homes around the country. McKinley visited and stayed at the ranch house.

And he sat with Col. Teddy Roosevelt at Roosevelt’s tent among those erected by the Rough Riders near what today is Ditch Plains, adjacent to the ranchland.

Sixty years later, when I first came to the East End, there were buffalo grazing in a pasture near the ranch house, a gift to the ranch from poet Hy Sobiloff, who had a summer home on a cliff at Ditch Plains. Inside the ranch house, displayed prominently on the walls art-gallery fashion, were framed photographs of the Spanish-American war era. The display had been up for years.

As for the arts — besides poetry — Andy Warhol bought a compound of buildings down on the ocean adjacent to this ranchland. Nearby were photographer Richard Avedon, adventurer Peter Beard, Abstract Expressionist Balcomb Greene and singer Paul Simon. The Rolling Stones rented Andy Warhol’s place one summer and rehearsed for an upcoming world tour at his house. They also wrote a song called “Memory Motel” about a Montauk establishment in town — still there — they had visited and been thrown out of.

Between 1990 and 1999, a series of annual Back at the Ranch concerts were held for charity on this pastureland. Millions of dollars were raised. Tens of thousands of spectators sat on folding chairs, on hay bales, or on blankets facing a stage that each year featured a different performer. They were Jimmy Buffett, Ray Charles, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Lyle Lovett, and Simon and Garfunkel.

I suggest that horses will become calm when looking at sculpture in a pasture. I suggest that horses looking at paintings on the walls in their barns will experience joy, even if they have to look in the windows at them from the outside. I suggest, therefore, that art is an accessory activity to farming.

Now get with the program, East Hampton.