Make Me Famous: who was artist Edward Brezinski?

REVIEW by Drew Rowsome - Photos courtesy of GAT PR

14 JAN 2023 -

There will always be another artist who's struggling, who has something to say.

Edward Brezinski is not a famous artist. Certainly not on the level of his 1980's contemporaries in the East Village art scene. Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf and David Wojnarowicz are all household names, as are many other icons from Robert Mapplethorpe to Debbie Harry to Madonna to Klaus Nomi, who show up in Make Me Famous. Brezinski knew everyone and according to the film was an ambitious, hard-working and hard partying artist. He attended every gallery opening and converted his own living space—a third floor walk-up in a derelict building on 3rd Street across from a notorious men's shelter—into the Magic Gallery where he showcased his own and his fellow artist's work. He was an integral regular at Ann Magnuson and John Sex's Club 57, that was an art world hub. A tragic, or cathartic, irony closes Make Me Famous, when Brezinski finally gets recognition in a MOMA exhibit themed on the club's habitués. 

We see a lot of Brezinski's work during the course of the film and while it is intriguing—I was particularly taken with his reinvention of religious iconography and a scathing portrait of Nancy Reagan—it is, as one of the numerous catty interviewees decrees, "Typical." While what is dubbed East Village Expressionism includes a multitude of artists and techniques, Brezinski didn't have work that stood out or defined a personal style. As the same catty interviewee remarks, "Art is only great if you say 'wow.'" And when the art world focus shifted on to "conceptualism and then back to minimalism," painting itself fell out of favour and Brezinski's art had even less of chance of achieving him fame or financial success. The death knell was the rise of artists like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst who are sneeringly referred to as the "art school business graduates." Brezinski did not have a business sense, what money he made was invested in paint, canvases and alcohol.

Brezinski did have one fan, a waiter who worked at Lincoln Center who Brezinski picked up in a bar. Lenny Kisko became a muse, possibly a lover, and a collector of Brezinski's work. Make Me Famous is, like the '80s, slick and entertaining. Though there is a lot of filmed documentation and many people eager to talk about their tangential, or close, relationship with Brezinski, we learn very little about him. Very little beyond his being gay, determined to be a famous artist and an alcoholic. The interviewees, especially the imperious queen David McDermott who I hate to admit I was ignorant of and who is well worth a google, love to gossip and tell tales of the glory days. They are hilarious and are edited to reinforce or undercut each other. Brezinski's life is almost an excuse to get all these gregarious artists and gallerists, all of whom could also title their autobiography Make Me Famous, on film for posterity. 

Berzinski did have two brushes with fame, both art world scandals and little to do with his art. The film does a delightful job of approaching both events from multiple angles, making any attempt of mine to summarize superfluous. Suffice to say they involved a poisonous doughnut and a famous gallery owner being doused with wine. The talking heads are interspersed with animation, photographs and footage, but the secret weapon of Make Me Famous is Berzinski himself. With boy next door good looks and a charisma that jumps off the screen, it is easy to see how he became a vital part of the scene. And how his sexuality, of which we unfortunately learn little (it was the '80s), and magnetism facilitated that. More than two-thirds of the way into the film, there is an attempt to ferret into Berzinski's childhood and history but that too remains mainly mysterious. The AIDS epidemic arrives, inspiring some of Berzinski's most powerful works and eliciting some heartbreaking interviews, "There was a point where your social scene was funerals." 

And then Make Me Famous takes another u-turn with a trip to Nice, France where Berzinski died in mysterious circumstances. Or did he? The investigators—director Brian Vincent, producer Heather Spore, and artists and Brezinski contemporaries Marguerite van Cooke and James Romberger—posit that faking his death might have been Brezinski's last ditch attempt at fame. But Make Me Famous isn't a true crime exposé any more than it is a conventual portrait of an artist. Or a re-evaluation of a lost artist's legacy. The film is a fascinating and somewhat freewheeling deep dive into a moment of time as seen from the present. A time when the art world, and the world, exploded with creativity and social connections. And then imploded to become a business. And Brezinski was a crucial part of that process, seemingly everywhere, before winding up essentially forgotten except in the memories of those who survived. Except that now, four decades later, Make Me Famous makes him famous.