Battcock, Gregory - Top of the Pits: A Screenplay –– Locatione (sic) 1 to 10

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Gregory Battcock.
Top of the Pits: A Screenplay –– Locatione (sic) 1 to 10.

New York: Gregory Battcock, undated.
Unbound facsimile of typewritten sheets. 
57 sheets. 

Very good.  
Light edgewear and creasing. 
Minor soiling to cover page. 

Unknown Gregory Battcock screenplay.

The owner of the Continental Baths, Steve Ostrow, is hiring a piano accompanist for a show and Michael, a perhaps closeted young Juilliard student, snags the job. 

Not present in Battcock's papers held in the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art collection.

Joseph Grigely, editor of "Oceans of Love: The Uncontainable Gregory Battcock", and a savior of Battcock's papers has said he is not familiar with this screenplay. 

 


"Gregory Battcock (1937–1980, US) was a New York–based artist who gave up his practice as a painter to become an art critic; he wrote on Minimalism, Conceptual art, video art, and performance, and generally championed artists pushing the boundaries and definitions of contemporary art. On Christmas Day in 1980 Battcock was found stabbed to death on the balcony of his holiday home in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The murder remains unsolved.



In 1992, Joseph Grigely was exploring the recently abandoned facilities of a storage company in the same building as his studio when he found Battcock’s archive of manuscripts, photographs, and correspondence strewn throughout the space. After making copies of some of the material, a bulk of the collection was donated to the Archives of American Art. In making the exhibition The Gregory Battcock Archive, Grigely created a labyrinth of vitrines in which photographs, manuscripts, letters, and postcards, are juxtaposed in a way to construct portraits of both Battcock and the 1970s New York art world. The publication Oceans of Love: The Uncontainable Gregory Battcock, expands on this material, and includes a lengthy introduction by Grigely that investigates Battcock’s biographical history and his contributions to art criticism.

"

- https://www.printedmatter.org/catalog/45597/


"The Gregory Battcock papers were donated in 1992 by Nancy Mahl, an artist who occupied a studio in Jersey City, N.J. that had formerly been leased by a moving and storage company, and who came upon Battcock's papers in the building. The papers had been shipped to the Jersey City building without the knowledge of Ron Whyte (executor of Battcock's estate) and the Rev. Paul William Bradley, who had arranged to have Battcock's papers stored after his death. Additional papers were donated 2003 by Rev. Paul W. Bradley, who inherited the papers after the death of his partner Ron Whyte.

Gregory Battcock (1937-1980) was an art critic, writer, educator, and painter from New York, N.Y. He attended Michigan State University, the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, and Hunter College for his undergraduate and graduate studies before receiving his Ph.D. from New York University in 1978. His dissertation was titled "Constructivism and Minimal Art: Some Aesthetic, Theoretical and Critical Correlations."

Battcock was a prolific writer and wrote numerous articles as a correspondent for Art & Artists and Domus magazines. His column, "The Last Estate," appeared in Gay magazine as well as other publications. In 1977, Battcock co-founded the short-lived magazine, Trylon & Perisphere, with his close friend, playwright Ron Whyte. Even though only three issues were printed, the magazine exhibited Battcock's predilection for art society gossip, and provocative imagery and prose. E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc. published several of Battcock's books including Why Art: Casual Notes on the Aesthetics of the Immediate Past, Breaking the Sound Barrier: A Critical Anthology of the New Music, and Idea Art: A Critical Anthology. In addition to his writing career, Battcock taught fine art at William Paterson College of New Jersey, was art critic for New York Free Press from 1967 to 1970, Editor-in-Chief of Arts Magazine from 1973 to 1975, and appeared in the Andy Warhol films The Illiac Passion, Horse, and Batman Dracula.

Battcock was murdered in Puerto Rico on December 25, 1980. At the time of his death he was working on "The Story of Film," which remains unpublished, and The Art of Performance: A Critical Anthology, which was published posthumously in 1984."

- https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/gregory-battcock-papers-10960