His friends sadly mourn Donald Baechler. I met Donald at one of Keith Haring’s openings at Tony Shafrazi’s gallery, either 1982 or ‘83. I had already seen his work in a 1981 group show at Grace Borgenicht gallery, at 724 Fifth Avenue, an exhibition that also introduced me to the work of Walter Robinson, Mark Tansey, and Ida Applebroog. Reviewing the show in the New York Times Vivien Raynor observed:
The character of ''Episodes,'' a group show by seven relatively unknown artists at Grace Borgenicht (724 Fifth Avenue at 57th Street) is uncommon, to say the least. The paintings, all figurative, are visually quite plain - none of the rococo paint effects now in vogue -and they are often spiked with tart humor. . . . As chosen by the gallery's assistant director, Curt Marcus, the painters seemingly have in common the urge to avoid cant. Moreover, there flickers in some of them a spirit - not punk exactly, but ''punkoid'' - that in the visual arts has been more evident at the scene's edges than at its center.
Donald was handsome, intelligent and cool. And very serious. I always enjoyed the conversations we had, at all the usual places: art galleries, nightclubs and the streets of the East Village and SoHo. In 1985 I was working on the East Village Eye: my assignment, as a very junior contributor–just out of high school–was to fill ¼ and ⅛ spaces with little articles on anything cool. In September that year Donald was having a show at Ascan Krone gallery in Hamburg and I pulled together this little story on Donald and Madoka Takagi, a winsome and very serious photographer from Japan who was living in New York at that time. My brother Charles and I became friendly with Madoka and were photographed by her, participating in several of her conceptual photography projects. She photographed Donald in her series of portraits of artists from whom she requested a statement on photography. Donald complied with a handwritten declaration that someone could write a dissertation on some day:
PHOTOGRAPHY IS A CHAIR WITH THREE LEGS
PHOTOGRAPHY IS A SPECIAL BRAND OF RICH MAN’S GILDED BOLSHEVISM
PHOTOGRAPHY IS THE DEMON PROGRESS OF THE NEW PAMPHLETEER
PHOTOGRAPHY IS THIS GUY WHO FOLLOWS YOU INTO A REVOLVING DOOR AND HE COMES OUT FIRST
When I was making art myself for a few years, in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, I traded art with Donald. He chose a large abstract black-and-white photocollage by me and I chose from him a beautiful painting on paper of a rose (we Rosenbergs love roses).
Donald’s 2015 exhibition of “Early Work 1980 to 1984” at Cheim and Read, (with a catalogue essay by David Rimanelli) really solidified his position in the first rank of that generation, as important a figure to painting as Julian Schnabel or Sigmar Polke. Sadly his friends will no longer receive the Christmas cards Donald designed and sent each December: I treasure them.