This week, the Bridgehampton Museum opens an exhibition that highlights the work of not just a single artist, but many, as represented in the impressive collection of a truly unique resident of the hamlet.
Lana Jokel, who has lived in Bridgehampton since 1991, has had a long and industrious career as a filmmaker. She spent more than 50 years making documentaries about influential artists of the late 20th century, and in the process, developed close ties with many of her subjects. As a result, Jokel’s 250-piece art collection is a “Who’s Who” of renowned artists who have lived and worked on the East End — many of them subjects of her films — among them, John Chamberlain, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Ed Ruscha and Andy Warhol.
“I’ve had a long history with these artists, and I’ve been collecting for five decades,” Jokel explained. “They were friends, and I have many anecdotes about the pieces. I also bought works from Hamptons artists at art fairs and galleries. I don’t have a husband, so they became my family. But no one’s seen them.”
Just last summer, Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris acquired Jokel’s entire documentary archive — a total of 22 films and videos, 18 of which focus on contemporary art and artists.
Now 85, Jokel has also decided it’s time she shares her art collection — or at least a good portion of it — with the wider East End community. Some 90 works from Jokel’s collection go on view this week in “Lana Jokel: Echoes & Nostalgia,” an exhibition that will be on display throughout the first floor of the Bridgehampton Museum’s Nathaniel Rogers House.
The show, which is curated by Jokel and the museum’s collections manager Tim Malyk, opens with a reception from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, August 21, and remains on view through September 21. In addition to the opening, Jokel will also be at the Nathaniel Rogers House on Sunday, September 14, from 4 to 5 p.m. to share stories and anecdotes about the artwork, the artists who created it and how certain pieces came to her.
For Jokel, the recent transformation of the Nathaniel Rogers House into a museum space was a total and pleasant surprise. She only discovered the renovation when Mark Wilson, curator of “I Say Potato,” a June art exhibition that paid tribute to Bridgehampton’s favorite tuber, stopped by her home to pick up two potato-themed pieces by Sven Lukin that Jokel has in her collection.
“I didn’t realize they had renovated this space a year or so ago,” Jokel said. “I fell in love with the rooms.”
That’s a reaction that Malyk has been getting a lot lately.
“When people see the space, they kind of fall in love with it. For years, everyone asked, ‘What are they doing there?’ It was half falling down,” Malyk said. “Now it’s alive with shows, artwork and people. This place lends itself to these kinds of exhibitions — intimate shows. Collectors and artists come. It’s an environment where it’s all encompassing and it feels like a home.
“We’ve been putting together smaller shows, and people have begun to take notice. Like Lana. Mark came in with Lana, and we hit it off.”
After they met, Jokel told Malyk about the work in her collection, adding that she wouldn’t mind showing it at the museum since most people haven’t had a chance to view it.
“I asked Tim what he thought of my inventory. He looked at it and felt it was great,” said Jokel, who had the pieces in mind that she wanted in the show, but invited Malyk to come see the work in person at her Bridgehampton home as well as at her home in New York City. “I thought he would be good, because he’s worked at auction houses and galleries, and he knows a lot about the older artists of ’60s and ’70s who a lot of people don’t know. I chose works and he agreed. It was very easy.”
“It was incredible,” Malyk confirmed. “Being out here, we’re meeting the people in the community as much as we can. Realizing Lana is our neighbor with this incredible collection we can share with her friends and the community was amazing.”
Also amazing is Jokel’s own journey to the East End. Born in Shanghai, China, Jokel’s family moved to Hong Kong when the communists arrived in 1949. The family relocated to Brazil, where Jokel was raised. Educated in France and the United States, she earned degrees in French and Spanish and attended the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School.
But her career in film really began when she moved to New York City in 1968 and met documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker at Max’s Kansas City, the Manhattan hangout for musicians, poets, artists and others in the creative fields.
Soon, Jokel was entrenched in the film business, working for Pennebaker and other New York filmmakers, including Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey, whose 1972 film “Heat” was edited by Jokel.
And it was from Warhol that Jokel acquired the very first piece for her collection.
“The Warhol piece came about because after I edited his film, I decided to do a documentary film of him,” Jokel recalled. “He said, ‘Why don’t you have a baby with your boyfriend, and we can have a Factory baby, and I can be the godfather?’ I said ‘No, how about instead, you be my film baby in my first documentary that I direct myself?’ He said, ‘Gee, OK.’
“He gave me the artwork as a present,” she continued. “It’s a lithograph of a soup can — green peas. I said, ‘I don’t like anything that small or little round things,’” recalled Jokel, who was, nevertheless, happy to have the artwork.
“Andy Warhol was the first. From then on, I didn’t start collecting out here till the 1980s. Terry Elkins, Brian O’Leary, I was one of the first to buy from them,” she said. “I like to encourage the community artists. I have a very specific eye for what I like. It’s only really living artists that I collected.”
Of course, many of those artists have since died — making Jokel’s films and her art collection a testament to their work and legacy.
“Having seen the collection — and with Lana sharing it — it’s a portrait of her through these artists,” Malyk said. “She’s had experiences and interactions with them. The feel and energy of the artists surrounds it.”
For his part, Malyk is thrilled to have pieces by some of his artistic heroes on view at the Nathaniel Rogers House.
“I went to school at one point to be a sculptor. John Chamberlain is an artist I have admired since I was a teen,” Malyk said. “Knowing Lana did films with John Chamberlain and Ed Ruscha, in the contemporary art world he’s at the apex.”
“The fact she also has work by all these people who live here — Nathan Slate Joseph and Steve Miller, Terry Elkins, Jack Youngerman and all these other people who are here, some of whom are no longer with us. It’s such an incredible group that reflected the area.
“Part of the goal here is doing exhibitions that reflect local history and culture,” he added. “To be able to have these artists and someone like Lana who has lived here and is so much part of the community is great.”
When asked to share a favorite story about a piece in her collection, Jokel tells the tale of how she obtained a work by Willem de Kooning. It was during the making of the 1972 documentary “The New York School” by director Michael Blackwood. Artist Larry Rivers was going to de Kooning’s studio to get some footage of him, and Jokel asked if he would bring her along.
“In those days, we had 16 mm cameras and Larry had the first video camera,” Jokel said. “It was raining, and we were in the kitchen talking, and Bill said, ‘Why don’t you come to the studio, we can talk and see some works.’ We got in there and sat and talked, he was so charming. I was shooting 16mm without sound, but it was important to get him on camera.
“As we were leaving, he said, ‘Why don’t you choose a work?’ There were all kinds of drawings, small and big,” she continued. “I saw two small charcoals with ink, it reminded me of a part of a body of a woman or like Mt. Fuji, me being Chinese, I thought something Asian was appropriate.
“He said, ‘Perfect. I was watching ‘Rashomon’ in Japanese and I did these,” Jokel continued. “Then he said, ‘I want to write your Chinese name on it.’ This was the first time I met him. When we were leaving, Larry said, ‘How stupid. He offered you to choose anything, and you pick this little drawing?’ I said, ‘I chose what spoke to me. Besides, I didn’t want to be greedy.’”
That de Kooning work, and many other pieces by renowned artists who have a very personal connection to Jokel, will now be on view at the Nathaniel Rogers House for the wider community to see and enjoy.
“I think that’s what’s going to come across from the show,” Malyk said. “You’ll pick it up from the works and the feel and from Lana. It’s instilled with that energy. I love that de Kooning painting, but knowing that story brings things together and people will really take to it.”
“I think I chose very well,” Jokel said. “I’m happy I can be part of the community of artists. They were my big family. When it’s all up on the walls, that’s going to make my heart pound.”
The Bridgehampton Museum’s Nathaniel Rogers House is located at 2539 Montauk Highway in Bridgehampton. For more information on “Lana Jokel: Echoes & Nostalgia,” visit bridgehamptonmuseum.org.