Novelette, June 29 2005

Some of your success may not be based on your work per se but on whom you know. An artist spends at least as much time bullshitting about it as in making it, a fact that could take some getting used to. Some of us just aren’t that good at it, while others are a natural. Decades went by before I understood this and also, before I realized I could be good at it.

Instead, I spent years trying to decipher all of the mixed signals. What the hell were they really interested in? It was only in retrospect that I could see clearly that basically they just wanted to fuck me and that was about it. And no, I don’t think that is some great compliment.

Wow, this person is so into you and your art is so great, blah blah it’s all so special. It’s really not though, not all that special. There’s another sleaze-bucket right around the corner, you wait.

Recently some artists were telling me about all the opportunities this one young woman had, all of the offers coming her way: to appear naked here and there, all the porn movies she could make and so on. Wow! That’s really unusual! Getting a woman naked on the picture plane, imagine that!

What bothers me is not that they saw me as some sexual opportunity. Alright, fair enough. What bothers me is how they used my art to get at me. They consistently used the one thing I cherished the most, would hold out for, would sacrifice for. Like any real predator, they knew where my weakness lie.

I’m not saying I’m unusual either or that it’s only an ordeal for females – clearly not. But if I collected all my stories of casting couch curators alone, it would not be a post in this diary but a novelette.

simpleposie wants to know, June 27 2005

I just thought I would let you know that Jennifer McMacken of the website simpleposie asked me to give her some questions. If you aren’t familiar with this site, you are in for a treat. simpleposie is functional, sincere and from Toronto.

Georgia, June 27 2005

A friend was wondering if every female artist had a thing for Georgia O’Keeffe -- and was it sexist to suppose so? This might apply to an older generation more than a younger one. Sometimes it almost seems like Cindy might be the Georgia for the younger ones…

I think it's one of those "it is what it is" situations. You just can't get around her, especially if you're an American female and a painter of any sort. I was with TJ Norris the other night and he went off on how important O’Keeffe was for him -- I was actually relieved to hear it.

Sometimes it feels like she became a guilty pleasure, something you might not admit to, of just how important she was for you. And I’m not really talking about the paintings per se.

I felt her a lot when I first arrived in New York. We were the same age when we first moved there – 29. And we both went to the Art Students League. But there, the similarities must end, for it became my own private joke that I never found my Stieglitz.

I’m not alone there. Who else has the story of Georgia O’Keeffe?

From what I've read, it's probably the last concern of Ms. Georgia's, whether she affects us or not. And that, precisely, is why I dig her so. She said she just wanted to have her say, unattached to gender.  Another friend told me that: “… Georgia paved the way for us.” Lord knows it's true, but it doesn't really go with the grain of O'Keeffe's take-no-prisoners stance. The woman---the artist---was truly out for her self, let the rest take care of themselves.

And like I say, I like that. Almost brutal, I like her fierce independence, despite her attachment to Stieglitz -- a need so great it must have felt like a monkey on her back.

What was sad to read was how much men could still run her life, or attempt to, years later. Juan Hamilton, a man decades younger who took up with her in the 70s, controlled her in many ways. It was terrible to read about it and I hope it’s a lie. Something tells me it’s not though.

Gee’s, June 27 2005

Next month Elizabeth Leach will show Gee’s Bend quilts. I am really looking forward to this show. I read about it from afar as it traveled to various museums. The quilts remind me of some of my favorite products of Modernism, namely the organic Minimalism of Jean Arp. The above image is very Laws of Chance. All said and done, he has probably influenced me more than any other artist (Warhol aside of course. That man is inescapable.)

Arrangement according to the Laws of Chance, 1916-17

       with Paul at my opening at Augen in April

Paul Fujita, June 23 2005

When I was putting together a collection of images for a public art project on the Interstate Max Line, I needed to come up with something for the Expo Station. The theme behind this station was the fact that it has been an internment camp for Japanese Americans during WW2. It was the local curator James Archer who turned me on to Paul Fujita as a possible contributor. I don’t think he even knew that Paul’s father had actually been interned there.

I knew of Zeitgeist, the gallery he co-founded with Tyler Klein. I liked stopping by this place, which reminded me of galleries on the lower east side (a little bit of the spirit of ABC NoRio). But I was not familiar with his art work, which is an intense combination of gel medium transfers, drawing, painting, graffiti-like bits and pieces on broken up skateboards.  

Paul makes a lot of artist books too. For Expo I chose just an open book, photographed.

I was over at Zeitgeist the other night, checking out what he is up to lately. The above is an assemblage I took home and put on the scanner for you. He says it’s not finished and it is definitely clean for him. But he let it go, so he must have felt OK about it! I really like it. And I plan on showing him at Chambers with another collage artist I’ve already written about here: Eunice Parsons. It will be a nice mix of the old and the young, and showing how varied montage can be. It’s interesting too because what Eunice does with paper and posters, Paul does with skateboards. This will be the first show at Chambers.

Oh Yoko, June 21 2005

A friend of mine recently forwarded to me the Oxford address Yoko Ono gave this year. I am always impressed with her consistent message of peace and elegant, simple style. Her letter to an editor about ageism was even smarter.

From the moment I learned about Yoko, I got her. My mom was an artist and had a gallery with three other women in the 60s: so a woman who was creative, entrepreneurial and was her own person was not foreign to me. Whatever her relationship with a Beatle, I paid attention because she was a woman artist.

I loved the bed-ins, the white piano, the all white clothing – I think that all came from her. Check out her art objects. And most of all, the ‘yes.’ But writing something positive about her is like being a defense attorney of an unpopular client!

Sure I listened to Ram before I was old enough to understand Sometime in New York City, but soon enough, some of my fav Lennon stuff was from Plastic Ono Band. She had a lot to do with that. Conceptual art pieces she created long before the song Imagine use the word often.

As I got into mail art in the 70s, I met cool, older artists along the way who loved Yoko like they loved Fluxus. She was not just John's appendage. She did weird films before Warhol did weird films and that is saying something.

It's been intimated that he needed dominance and married his mother. Having had a father for only seven years of my own life, I completely understand. It’s possible I married mine. Whatever gets you through the night!

The white thing is something I think of terms of my own art. There was a time I used a lot of it in painting and if it weren’t for my interest in color, I would return. You never know. Life is long.

Internal painting, June 19 2005

My friend just got hypnotized to quit smoking. I’ve had my own experiences in hypnosis, and through it, I learned a sort of meditation. Not to get into it too deep, but I had some real physical pain in my life, sometimes mysteries to be solved. I finally turned to hypnotism to deal with the pain. This hypnotist taught me how to take a journey to the center. This was a place where you could turn the pain dial off and I practiced this journey many times. But I also had a couple of really vivid, unique experiences the hypnotist took me through, never to be repeated. And you wouldn’t want to.

This business of waking up and not remembering, well, that wasn't her way. I vividly recall it all and hung on for dear life. She was really very smart and I wish I could thank her again.

We did several things together but what was the most interesting was how she was able to use my relationship with art to get to the core of things. She told me to paint a picture of the pain, in my mind's eye, and describe the whole thing as I went along. I was yelling and screaming by the end of it all. This was painting I never made in real life – maybe it’s not even in me to create such a work – but what a process!

Pecking order, June 15 2005

You can be hot and still have really bad days. And lots of people really despise success when it is not their own. In the art world at least, you are constantly reminded of the pecking order. 

Just the other night I was at a party with my mate. Generally there is one artist in particular who is always friendly to him, but this time, it was like he was invisible. He even used those words with me later: “I was invisible.” But my man happened to be talking to an artist maybe even more famous than that other on-the-move artist and he was trying to get at him. Gangway!

He just wasn’t used to that. Welcome to the art world, Honey. There will be times you will just disappear. I’ve got a stupid encyclopedic memory on who likes me now but earlier did not even register my existence. My mate probably thought I was crazy to keep all of that garbage in mind, but I think now he gets it.

I was also thinking about ‘success’ lately as regards Ed Ruscha, our man for Venice. Online and elsewhere I’ve read how he was not the best choice, blah blah.

Well, I like Ed Ruscha. A lot in fact. I like his work and also, just how he looks. He’s getting older but is as hot as ever. So he didn’t win the big award. Barbara Kruger did. I still like Ruscha more. The fact that he is a west coast artist (sorry to have to make such a stupid distinction) and for the most part, so clearly independent, makes me even happier for the choice. I sure wish I could be there to check it all out. Maybe next time around.

Painting VS photography, June 13 2005

In her interview, Jacqueline Ehlis spoke of her experiments with paint and then, with the camera. She said she wanted to see if paint was still a valid medium in the 21^st century. She found that the camera could not capture what paint could, or indeed what our own eyeballs can. Paint can get closer to our eye than a photograph. “Paint won,” she said.

James Lavadour said similar things on the radio. He spoke of paint as providing an absolute truth and experience that photographs could get nowhere near. Paint was like a scientific fact and real event for him.

Hearing all of this got me thinking of my own relationship with paint and photography. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I never saw either as some kind of absolute truth or fiction. The biggest ‘event’ for me, whether it is paint or print, is however I read it, whatever it does for me, and in that time. It’s a picture, but this is not to say that the picture can’t change, as I do, as everything does.

This could be due to that fact that I grew up with both, had an intense relationship with both in childhood. I sensed even then that photographs were a fiction, not a fact, while paint, as absolutely necessary as it was, changed with the wind.

As a child I loved old issues of Life and magazines like True Confessions, which my neighbors had held on to since the late 50s. They were filled with photographs which were in no way facts of my life.

When Interview came out around 1970, I was comfortable, as the emphasis was not so much on the now as people might think. People these days tend to think Pop art was all about today, but a lot of it was about yesterday. Part of the mystique was that it was already past. Warhol loved nostalgia and had repeat images of Rita Hayworth and the like sprinkled in the pages, often in nonsensical ways which made complete sense to me. Because I loved the random image. A fictional past was the best kind of glamour and that was all about the photograph. The fact that he painted them only emphasized their lack of ‘truth.’

So I guess I never really thought of the photograph as any kind of fact and I wasn’t out looking for them. And even though I am not making a lot of photomontages these days, the images are being stashed away, as a mental joy if anything; as art first and foremost, as a fiction for a later date.

As to painting, sure it’s a truth – mine are my truth, anyway. The real challenge is to get others to see it, to get a bit closer to it and then find their own.

That interview with Jacqueline ought to be finished tomorrow.

My succulents, June 8 2005

In the Sunday Style section of the New York Times are small features of various personalities with things they love or collect. Recently Murakami was the focus, with photographs of his cacti and succulents. He loved the ‘thingness’ of these plants, which seem as much like sculpture as they do flora.

There’s nothing like a point of view, June 7 2005

A long time had passed since Mark Kostabi had posted his last advice column on Artnet and finally a new one appeared not long ago. I look forward to these columns faithfully – they are entertaining and sometimes quite smart. I really have no idea how ‘successful’ he is and don’t really care. As I’ve recounted before in these pages, I met him once in his studio, seen him several times in my ‘hood afterwards when he had Kostabi World, and he was always a gentleman, if a little strange.

His latest column has the line: “There’s nothing like a point of view.” These words are golden to me and coincide with something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Just call it style I guess. I think it’s very much worth cultivating. Mark goes on to say: "Confidence and decisiveness will conquer wishy-washiness."

I remember when a certain gallery closed here about five years back. One dealer told me how all of the other galleries felt compelled to take in those homeless artists and that this was why he was not showing me, or so many of the other new artists arriving daily.  

I just couldn’t follow that logic. If it shows once (or many) times, does it always follow out that it must show again? And why would you feel compelled to show someone else’s taste, as a matter of course? Because it has been, it must be again? Someone before you has approved and so you feel safe to do it as well, that’s what I’m hearing.

This kind of choice, I found, was not so interesting to me. It’s more entertaining to create style, than to adopt another. And yes, you are doing that to some degree when you consistently lasso in the familiar.

My head swam with artists and their images which had been not exposed at all or way too little or not in the right way. It wasn’t some direct, thought-out game plan, but I vaguely felt that if I had a gallery, I would want to spring some surprises or maybe even some old truths, but definitely not the same truth you just saw last year.

(Of course there are exceptions. Some artists you’re just crazy about, no matter how many of their shows you’ve been to. Tom Cramer immediately comes to my mind.)

Taking the art out of art history, June 5 2005

Several times here I have observed how history is being taken out of art history. This applies to dates, processes or actual mediums – they don’t matter. I actually had a history of photography course at PSU where the Prof stated that since we might not remember the dates later, why bother learning them now?

The Prof also felt that whether it was a gelatin silver print or albumen did not matter. After all, she didn’t know that much about that stuff either. It was much more important that I look at a photograph pretending I am Roland Barthes.

But I’ve also had art history classes where the art is taken out too! A contemporary art history class focused on personalities via films. For weeks all we did was watch films. We learned much more about who showed where than anything they actually made. In fact we never had any tests with slide ID at all. I never had to learn an artist’s name.

While I went into the class aware that I already knew a lot, being a living artist who spent years in New York and all, I still looked forward to learning. After all, I had huge gaps when I stopped reading Art Forum and didn’t hang in Chelsea. But I did not come out of that class with any new names at all.

Through the onslaught of films which sensationalized the art world and its personalities, we learned over the ten weeks of that course how to hate artists and the entire gallery system. “So what do you think of the galleries?” asked this Prof. “If it were up to me I would burn them all down.” This must be a person who has faced his own rejections and he is not alone. I’m older than him and probably have even more of those rejections under my belt. But when I offered the prospect of starting your own system and finding power in that, this did not sound like nearly as much fun to the kids as pouting and whining.

When it came time to create our own projects involving the public and contemporary art, most of the students wanted to take it as far away from the Pearl District as possible, as though this was novel and a brave new world. From their perspective, maybe so. Gee, where were they when I had a show at hair salon? At a real estate agent? At a church? Obviously ‘alternative’ is only appealing when it’s still at the right kind of space or part of town.

One project was a sculpture on the beach. The class seemed to love the fact that only about ten people saw it and also, that they were not art world people.

Another group spoofed the films we watched, by making one themselves. They played artists and curators and it was pretty funny. They said in their summation that they were making fun of all those artists they had seen in the film (indeed, the only thing they were even exposed to in this class), especially ‘those guys.’

‘Those guys’ were the duo McDermott and McGough. I remember the names well – not that they were ever used in this class – because those names came across the screen at the start of the film – and I was familiar with their art. In the films, these artists ramble on about the current culture while sporting 19^th century style dress. They sing opera, come off as nut-jobs, give quite the performance. They did say one thing I found unforgettable, which I’ll discuss some other day.

Like I said, I knew of their work. I lived in New York during the time they showed and while they might not be my favorite artists, I am sure they made more substantial works than anyone in this class, how about that. Never met them, never knew their trip, just the art object. And I think that is something, an achievement of its own, when you consider the haze which is New York art viewing, and that I had over a decade of it.

No one in this class ever found out about it, or even cared, they were so full of venom against artists in general and the art system. The art object was beside the point. The students never even bothered to learn their names, calling them ‘those guys.’ But no wonder the students hated it all, having never been exposed to anything but the spectacle of the personality.

So no wonder these students disliked my BAAAC idea. It was not just this idea they challenged, but the whole prospect of Artstar Radio in general. After all, I interview artists. I validate them and their egos. I don’t think the ego is a terrible thing, though god knows a few have bulldozed over mine. I asked these students if any of them were artists themselves? Oh yes, they were all artists – just not like them.

Art snob, June 3 2005

Not long ago I was helping Justin Oswald by sitting at Gallery 500 for the day. In walked a journalist for a local paper who told me how he had previously visited that exhibition with a friend.

This friend was much more critical of the show than he was. He liked it; I guess she did not (we never did go in to what the friend said, as the artist was also sitting right there). He said that she was an art snob and in this case, he was glad that he didn’t have so much education. He felt that all of that exposure might ruin the experience and give you a closed mind.

Sure, there’s that side of it. But I countered that with the fact that many other mediums are much more familiar to a great group of people – like films or music, for example. I’ll bet he knows his movies, at least to some degree, and this gives him perspective, but does not necessarily make him a snob. He’s seen Taxi Driver or Gone with the Wind and all of that gives him perspective.

But he hasn’t seen what might be the Taxi Driver or the GWTW of art. And until he has, he might not really be able to place this artist – not just in his mind’s eye but in the context that goes way beyond that.

Immediately he got it, but by way of a music analogy. He couldn’t stand certain bands, he said, because he had listened to the Clash way back when. He knew an original from a copy. Gee, maybe he was a music snob. But he was happy to be one of those.

     Lunar Disc by Mark Zirpel

Mark Zirpel

.....Speaking of interviews, lately I’ve been working on the one I did with Mark Zirpel at the end of 2004 and it’s available here. He had that fantastic, rave review show called Celestial/ Terrestrial which was at Bullseye Connection Gallery.

It’s not easy editing these things down. There is a certain amount of banter, but sometimes that banter is fun and is telling about the artist. I figure in the end I can’t print a 15 page interviews though and something’s got to go.

More recent entries:  May 2005

                                       April 2005

                                       March 2005

                                       February 2005

                                       January 2005

                                       December 2004

                                       November 2004

                                       October 2004

                                       September 2004

                                       August 2004

                                       July 2004

                                       June 2004

                                       May 2004

For a list of Diary Topics, read here

For information about the diary, read here

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