[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 2] [Extensions of Remarks] [Page 1779] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]A TRIBUTE TO DR. LITA HORNICK ______ HON. BENJAMIN A. GILMAN of new york in the house of representatives Tuesday, February 29, 2000 Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Speaker, I regret to call to the attention of our colleagues the recent death of Dr. Lita Hornick, a truly remarkable woman, and a former resident of my constituency in Rockland County, New York. Dr. Hornick was a prominent figure from the 1960's to the present day. Her efforts in the worlds of art and literature are legendary, encouraging the advancement of the avant-garde and ``beat'' poets, who struggled for recognition, but survived with the dedication of Dr. Hornick. She spoke her mind, and she never hesitated in furthering the ideals in which she so fondly believed. Additionally, she founded the avant-garde publication Kulcher Magazine, published over forty-two art- illustrated manuscripts of poetry and writing, and she became know as the ``Kulcher Queen,'' the title of her 1977 autobiography. During her life, Dr. Hornick collected several fine pieces of 60's art and selflessly gave many of her major works to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), including self-portraits painted by the famous Andy Warhol and Alex Katz. She also sponsored several poetry readings at MoMA, which gathered poets and artists alike in support of their crusade in advancing education of modern art and poetry. Dr. Hornick was extremely involved with the St. Mark's Poetry Project and Columbia University, where she recently donated her archive of papers and writings. Dr. Hornick received her B.A. from Barnard and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia. An evening poetry reading memorial will be held at MoMA later this year in her honor. Mr. Speaker, I wish to insert into the Record a biographical article written by Dr. Hornick's family entitled ``Lita.'' Dr. Lita Hornick will be sadly missed, and I extend my thoughts, my condolences, and prayers to the Hornick Family. LITA Sometimes you meet people who just don't add up, alluring characters who somehow are not what they ought to be. At first sight Lita Hornick is a charming and urbane Park Avenue doyenne who has devoted her life to her family and her collection of contemporary art. This in itself is interesting enough, but immediately you recognize something quite different behind the smile, quite naughty behind the look. For Lita is also the Kulchur Queen, champion of the irreverent ``beats'' and of avant-garde poets and artists ever since. Behind that demure face are locked the secrets of a life led at the vortex of this counter-culture, that she releases in sharp, tantalizing tidbits, well aware of both their value and her ability to shock. ``The paradoxes in my life have been quite deliberate,'' she admits with endearing honesty, ``since they arose from a conscious effort to escape the stereotype, my background and my culture.'' This path took Lita out of her taffeta-lined social groove into the kaleidoscopic world of avant-garde literature where she has reigned for three decades as publisher, editor, writer, critic and patron. Like her friend Andy Warhol, she was an observer of that frenetic era between the late 50's and the early 70's. She was the admirer of such notable ``beats'' as Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac--a group once characterized by the media as ``the most vicious characters in America''. And throughout it all she gave a steady, supportive voice to the avant-garde movement through her Kulchur Magazine, Press and today's Foundation. Yet Lita, although intimately involved in this other world, was never a part of it, preserving instead a steadfast individualism. ``I am not a leftist politically and I have never joined the anarchist pacifists,'' she states emphatically, alluding to the flower generation. Nor was she a member of her inherited social group; ``my work'' she says with understatement, ``was alien to my class.'' For Lita refuses to be pigeon-holed, preserving her independence through a defiance that is generously directed everywhere at once--though never malicious and always with an unfathomable sense of humor. She smiles, ``I just like people who spit in the face of authority, any authority!'' It was this rebelliousness that impelled Lita first to do her Ph.D. thesis on Dylan Thomas--``because he was persona non grata at the time''--and later to search out those revolutionaries who were instigating change, typically not from the top but from the grass roots of society: the avant- garde poets, musicians and artists. The poetry has been perhaps the greatest claimant on Lita's considerable talent and energies, appealing to her as she says, parapraising Swift, ``because it raises the human race out of this pernicious gutter.'' Whatever the reason, Lita has altruistically devoted herself and her dollars to Kulchur--promoting poetry to a small, though significant core of supporters around the world. Why? Because she thought the work important and, although not commercially viable, it deserved recognition. Lita boasts proudly of her part in breaking down the pornography laws and attacking the civil rights issue, but considers her greatest accomplishment to be the forty-two poetry books published by Kulchur Press, ``each of which,'' she says, ``is like a child to me.'' As for music, Lita is equally enthusiastic, calling it ``the purest form to which all art aspires.'' And yet she isn't referring to the classic composers as one might expect. In this, as with everything else, Lita is contrary and ever- adventurous. She specifically means those contemporary musicians that rocked the social foundations and her parties during the Sixties. Instead of the usual Park Avenue dinner at eight, Lita recalls with obvious glee those wild evenings spent with her flock of avant-garde friends, loud with the sounds of Nico and the Velvet Underground, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk and a punk rock band called the Stimulators. Further evidence of Lita's derringdo is her patronage of contemporary art. In the early days this was another activity frowned upon by her family and society friends, ``until it started appreciating,'' she says with a twinkle in her eye. But for Lita, who sees a connection between all the arts, it was a natural extension of her love for avant-garde poetry to collect its equivalent in visual art. Today her collection reads like a list of celebrated names, totalling over five hundred pieces. It ranges from a multiple portrait of herself by Warhol, a sofa modelled by Man Ray after the lips of his famous, though unfaithful, mistress, Kiki, twenty-two Jo Brainard drawings in her bedroom alone, to a fifty-six foot high Alexander Lieberman sculpture. Not to mention the sculpture garden at her country house and the works donated to the MOMA, the Whitney and the University of Pennsylvania. ``In the Sixties I collected hard-edged abstraction; in the Seventies, pattern and decoration pieces,'' she explains, ``then in the Eighties, I started going all over the lot, getting very pluralistic, from landscapes to neo pop-art.'' But again typically atypical there is that other side to the Kulchur Queen. Throughout her outrageousness and despite her zest for the shocking, Lita also played the sedate role of mother, grandmother and wife. Morton J. Hornick, her late husband, was far removed from his wife's adopted world being the successful CEO of a draperie and curtain manufacturing company that had been in his family since 1917. Morton slowly became absorbed in Lita's avant-garde concerns, until he was working actively as a fundraiser for the poetry readings and an art collector. Although Lita recalls fondly, ``I don't think he ever read anything I ever published.'' Lita gives out these golden glimpses of her past like jig- saw pieces whose only consistency seems to be their inconsistency. Then suddenly, you stumble across a consistent thread that helps make sense of the final picture: for her whole life Lita, the maverick, has been having fun, outrageous fun! She has been laughing at herself, at her class, at the system--at everything. ``It takes strength of character to amuse yourself,'' she explains, briefly shining a light deep into the serious depths of her character, ``most people are taught not to amuse themselves--that's the whole purpose of civilization.'' ____________________