Forging ahead in the past

Actual work, photographed 1990,

destroyed 1992

Huge and heavy, about 7 feet wide.

Destroyed circa 1996

Digital variation,

printed 5 feet x 6.

(thanks Lajos)

     Getting ahead of myself a bit in the chronology of events in my own personal art history, here I attempt to describe my art school experience in more detail than I usually can in person.  Graduate school in New York. I moved there to Hells Kitchen, wondering 'This is new York???', -WTF, tranny crackwhores and such all around when we moved to Hell's Kitchen. My studio on West 42nd street (in between Covenant house —ie. displaced trouble teens and Port Authority Bus Terminal- sort of known as the asshole-magnet of NY) in apartment we had near only one diner (Munson's) got me and my roomates from Texas thinking we needed to move on somewhere else. Three months on 59th Street paying a fortune for a fake dorm before my roomie Mark Allen "discovered" the East Village for us & we promptly moved. In hindsight, it was the perfect setting for my introduction to living in The Big City.

I presented this (top work only) and others mentioned (undocumented, lost/destroyed) works in this vein, for critique.  My first Graduate class in Hunter College, NY.  I had decided that the new trend/rage/so-called movement of the time, appropriation, was ready to be dead. The concept in my mind was such that those upon the scene in NY were shams.  As it was, many well known contemporary art figures (almost figureheads of the time) were making reproductions/aka forgeries of Modern Masters and calling for the critics to believe that the state of art was at a dead-end.  At that moment (maybe extended to the present time as we are here now) the phrase "art is dead" was bandied about as if it may really be at it's end.  Arguments relating to the end of Modernism have been an ongoing dilemma in the artistic community for some time, not to mention Post-Modernism coming into a realm of a kind of a stillborn movement that it has shown itself to be from my own personal perception.

In my grandiose self-thinking at the time, I felt as if I could end such an argument by doing the ultimate self-deprecating act of pseudo art making.  It was the act of replicating artists of now and alive. Other appropriationist contemporaries had been making book in similar fashion revisiting or creating redux versions, usually their favorites/heroes etc. Nearly all were safely done with the appropriate time limits of copyright infringements, or permissions etc, so that no gallery would be in financial peril allowing such artists in. The term appropriation actually should have been more attributed to an unknown artist, whose work is on view in various public Lobbies around Manhattan in the name of Elaine Sturtevant -(if you know of any places where her work resides please post or email me about such if possible). My discovery of her was only from extensive searching at the archives in the Museum of Modern Art in NY. Some of the un-named artists still to this day make a living 'creating' facsimiles of Pollock and other simple to reproduce Modern Masters.  Sturtevant is still relatively unknown in the annals of contemporary art history in an undeserving manner, although making somewhat of a recent emergence.

It was a pinnacle in my artistic endeavors at the time. I was still stupid, and waiting to strike at the correct moment.  Here I was, newly arrived in NY and I had decided to push the concept after keeping it mum in Texas, until now.  The Professor I had at the time had an opening right at that time, and he had work showing in this group show.  Out of that show he was in, I chose a work done by a Canadian art collective called General Idea (as if I needed to make things more convoluted).  I copied a nice large piece on raw canvas, approximately 6-7 feet wide, and with a ziggurat design.  Carefully copied the dimensions at the gallery, I stepped off what I thought was the actual size of the work, all without actually putting a yardstick up to the work in question (see above, fluorescent paint on raw canvas).  Lacking proper funds I scrapped together broken pallets for the frame, a fete worthy of note that was more difficult than any other process of re-creating the piece (no insult to the original artists, this meaning if i had any part of the stretcher wrong, it would be blatantly obvious and a disaster no less).  First attempt, I ruined one untreated canvas in the process and had to re-stretch and staple another purchase of canvas (ie. entire day lost restretching, repainting etc)—the non color parts are raw cavas.

Finally as it was up for critique, I savored the moment to come, which had rules.
This particular Professor had the rule of the artist showing, keep silent for the first hour so as to let the class interpret what this persons work is about.
Raw, smartly moderated criticism form the smarter students, expected lunacy from the uneducated. On the right and left of the fluorescent painting pictured above, was a group of Allen McCollum blank paintings (usually done on plaster, but done on paper also because of no budget) and the third work in the room, a reproduction of contemporary artist David Diao, whose work using a Malevich photograph of an installation done from that period.
Two appropriations of appropriators and the piece above.

Only two people (that I knew of at the time) there truly realized what I had contrived, the Professor and one classmate named Joan. As class began, I waited while usual expected complementary comments about formalism were tossed out as Joan began stating that "you guys don't get it...", "this is not what this is about,..." and even to the point of, "this isn't his work".  Growing uncomfortable, my Professor Bob started to say that he thought I should explain a little bit about the work we have here.  I reluctantly did so as I remember Joan stating that maybe I shouldn't be allowed to speak, which was overturned by Bob.  As quickly as I could, I stated that each work was not my own, and were in fact forgeries of people showing in Soho at the present time, one now presently in a group show with our professor here.  Much of the class became enraged, some irate , thinking or preconceiving that I had done so to "get one over on them".  I vividly remember seeing more than one wanting to actually attack me, as if I was duping their whole sensibility of what art (class) should be, which was kind of my intention.  Joan came to my defense as our professor had problems taking it all in and under control (in my own recollections). The best part of it all was the realizations from a fellow student had during the uproar. He was especially perturbed and sitting in front of me as I sat in the back next to the door (not because i wanted to escape, although it may have come to that). This fellow classmate had finally understood through the critique and realized exactly what I had.

    Talk of what was to become of such work was the topic afterwards ie. marketing/showing etc. Things I had never throughout the making of it all. Some suggestions of crating it, leaving it or documenting what became of it along the way seemed most interesting.  This dead ended black hole of a concept kept me from having any feeling of catharsis that accompanies most art making in any traditional sense.  I had become incredibly depressed about the concept even before starting any of the work which began before my move to NY.  In Texas, the appropriations I had created, were not actually forged, but rather a pseudo-appropriation (simulacrum) of works by Haim Steinbech, whose work I had helped hang in the gallery at North Texas State before 1990.  The Steinbech wedges seemed easy and I was in the regular habit of thrift shopping with friends at the time.  One had 2 troll dolls and a toy microscope, titled "looking for Haim's wife", and another shown above, was an eccentric vase with coiled hand exercisers on the left (later destroyed for lack of storage space, probably should have given it away).

Some sense of angst then, was somewhat contrived on my part as an artist.  Although I learned lessons from it, I now believe there is never a pure re-creation of any original whenever such a thing is attempted/created in any form. People are re-inventing the wheel all the time.  This was a concept I was glad to 'get over with' because of the complete emptiness it evoked.  Personally, I have always enjoyed sitting back and acting like I didn't make the art in question where total strangers get to tell me what they really think.

The life of Elmyr de Hory is also someone who I was greatly influenced by at the time after reading Clifford Irving's book Fake, before my move to NY.  There are countless forgeries all over after the advent of Modernism that many do not want to acknowledge/admit. Orson Welles' documentary "F is for Fake" has more information about Elmyr and on the general subject of what I was attempting to orchestrate.

As one Psychotherapist said of me,

"...(said subject) is prone to hyperbole".

"Art is noble through being useless"

Jacques Barzun, The Use and Abuse of Art.

Extra special thanks to Ed for Roof access at the
Voorhees Graduate Studio
during my Manhattan experience.