The reclusive figure spent decades filling every surface of her apartment at the legendary New York hotel with artworks that rose in teetering piles. Some are now on display for the first time in Glasgow
When the artist Yto Barrada stepped through the door of room 503, up on the fifth floor of New York’s Chelsea Hotel, she was overwhelmed by what she saw. Every inch of the walls was plastered with Xeroxed word art, graphic reproductions of geometric sculptures, hundreds of photographs of passersby in the street below and collections of leaves laid out in grids. Piles of cardboard boxes and crates, full of yet more artworks, prints, books and maquettes, created teetering canyons through which Barrada had to turn sideways to navigate. Every visible surface was covered with sculptural forms in brass, marble and wood. In the midst of it all, on a small daybed surrounded by this aggregation of 40 years of fervent work, was Bettina, as the resident artist of the famous New York landmark was simply known.
“One sees Bettina and understands that some disaster has taken place, long ago,” writes Barrada in Bettina, the book she edited with the designer Gregor Huber, published by Aperture in 2022. Barrada was one of only a handful of people the reclusive artist had permitted to enter 503 since she moved into the Chelsea in 1972. Despite the bohemian buzz around the hotel, with neighbours including Patti Smith, Bob Dylan and many of Andy Warhol’s entourage, Bettina chose to lock herself away, devoting her life to conceptual works that seemed to flow unstoppably from deep within, a creative impulse she likened to a divine energy.
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The reclusive figure spent decades filling every surface of her apartment at the legendary New York hotel with artworks that rose in teetering piles. Some are now on display for the first time in GlasgowWhen the artis...
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