Duchamp's Urinal? Maybe Not!

Fountain by R. Mutt
Photo: Alfred Stieglitz

I recently read an LA Times article about a public feud between artist Damien Hirst and British art critic Julian Spalding, the latter of whom had written a short book, Con Art - Why you should sell your Damien Hirsts while you can. I thought it might make an interesting blog topic, so I downloaded and began reading Spalding's book, a no-holds-barred polemic on contemporary/conceptual art.

When about half way through I read this:

"[Duchamp's] apotheosis was consummated in 1999 when the Tate Gallery bought his urinal, called Fountain, for $500,000, to celebrate the century of art they thought he'd done so much to create. Unfortunately for the Tate, the urinal wasn't his. The latest research . . . has now proved beyond any shadow of reasonable doubt -- that the urinal wasn't submitted to the Society of Independents exhibition in New York by Duchamp but by the redoubtable Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven." [emphases mine]

Wait . . . What?? Forget the Hirst/Spalding spat! Who the heck was Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven? If what Spalding claimed was true, why wasn't that the headline? I needed to dig deeper.

Spalding cites two sources to back up his claim, Irene Gammel and Dr. Glyn Thompson. I immediately ordered a copy of Gammel's 2002 cultural biography Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada, and Everyday Modernity and began to read about this amazing, overlooked artist and poet who was light years ahead of her time.

Born Elsa Plötz in 1874, the future Baroness arrived in Berlin in 1893 ready to experience life in the extreme. Gammel writes:

" In a dazzling odyssey of sexual roles and experimentations she now began to armor her personality, emerging as a tough sexual and artistic warrior in her conquest of the modern city. Her ambivalence as androgyne allowed her to test a stunning range of erotically charged positions -- young ingenue, female flâneur, erotic art worker, priapic traveler, chorus girl cum prostitute, actress, cross-dresser, lesbian, and syphilitic patient -- all in a span of just a few years."


Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven

The flamboyant Elsa eventually follows her second husband to America after faking his suicide to escape creditors. When he leaves her in 1913, she makes her way to New York City, the same year as the Armory Show in which Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase becomes a succès de scandale.

Now 40 years old, Elsa Plötz Endell Greve marries Leopold Karl Friedrich Baron von Freytag-Loringhoven (a short-lived union) and the Baroness is born. On the way to the wedding Elsa finds an iron ring on the street and calls it Enduring Element, her first piece of found-object art. This is a full two years before Duchamp and Picabia arrive in New York and Duchamp coins the term "ready-mades."

Elsa plunged headfirst into New York's avant-garde artistic circles. When she met Duchamp, 13 years her junior, she immediately fell in love and began her pursuit of him. Duchamp resisted her advances, causing her to refer to him as her "platonic lover." The two lived in the same apartment building for a time and were well acquainted.

The key piece of evidence in Gammel's compelling case for why the urinal may have been Elsa's is a letter Duchamp wrote to his sister in April 1917 in which he states:

"One of my female friends who had adopted the pseudonym Richard Mutt sent a porcelain urinal as a sculpture; since there was nothing indecent about it, there was no reason to reject it." (When he speaks of not rejecting the urinal, Duchamp is referring to the fact that he was a board member of the Society of Independent Artists who chose work for the exhibition.)

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Is this the smoking gun? Gammel stops short of saying so, careful to point out that final, conclusive evidence is missing, but "there is a great deal of circumstantial evidence that points to her [Elsa's] artistic fingerprint."

As for Spalding's other source, Dr. Glyn Thompson, I wasn't able to find anything published except an online PDF of a 2008 doctoral thesis for the History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds School of Fine Art, titled Unwinding Duchamp: Mots et Paroles à Tous les Étages.

It is well beyond the limits of my time to read Thompson's entire thesis, so I tried keyword searches ("urinal," "fountain," "baroness," "elsa," "freytag-loringhoven.") to see if I could find the corroborating evidence Spalding cites. I couldn't.

Given the urinal's enormous influence twentieth-century art, I would very much like to know Spalding's further substantiation that "has now proved beyond any shadow of reasonable doubt" that the Baroness, and not Duchamp, was responsible for the iconic urinal. If you know of this evidence, you can email me at jane@offrampgallery.com and I'll report it in a future column.

Is Spalding right when he claims "Duchamp stole the idea from, of all people, a woman to cement his reputation. He then commissioned a set of replicas to sell -- cast of a copy of a found object! They sit like thrones in the major collections of modern art around the world." If Spalding is right, how does this alter your view of Duchamp and his legacy?

Upcoming at Offramp Gallery

 

May 6 - June 3, 2012
Chuck Feesago: Retention

Opening Reception: Sunday, May 6, 2-5pm

May 6 - June 3, 2012

D. Jean Hester: A Rope Let Down From Heaven

Opening Reception: Sunday, May 6, 2-5pm

May 19, 2012
Joe Santarromana: The Rememberers
Special Screening: 7pm

June 24 - August 5, 2012
Lou Beach: Stories & Pictures

Opening Reception: Sunday, June 24, 2-5pm

"Strapless:" The Scandal that Rocked the Nineteenth Century Art World

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It was the era of the parisienne, the professional French beauty, famous world-wide for her looks. Whole lives were devoted to it. Some went so far as to have their skin painted or enameled, a practice which sometimes led to facial paralysis, blood poisoning and even death. One social observer noted, "In Paris, half the female population lives off fashion, while the other half lives for fashion."

In the late 1870s a stunningly beautiful parisienne, Amélie Gautreau, dominated the social landscape. Madame Gautreau was born Virginie Amélie Avegno in New Orleans to French Creole parents. After her father was killed in the Battle of Shiloh, Amélie's mother moved her young daughters to live in Paris. Amélie began her ascent into Parisian society after marrying the wealthy Pedro Gautreau in 1878.

Amélie captured the imagination of many young aspiring artists, chief among them John Singer Sargent, who became obsessed with the beauty and pursued her relentlessly in hopes of painting her portrait. He knew a successful portrait of Gautreau would result in future commissions from the rich and famous of Parisian society.

Deborah Davis's 2003 dual biography, Strapless, plots the course of the lives of two people whose stories will be forever woven together in this story of art, celebrity and scandal. The cast of supporting characters includes Richard and Cosima Wagner, Henry James, and Oscar Wilde. Davis vividly paints her own picture of life in nineteenth century Parisian society and the scandal that rocked that world.

After getting her to agree to sit for the portrait, Sargent struggled for months with what he called "the unpaintable beauty and hopeless laziness of Madame Gautreau." Eventually, "he condemned Amélie, who hated remaining motionless, to one of the most tortuous poses in art history. He had her stand with her right arm leaning tensely on a table that was just a little too short to be a comfortable source of support. Her face turned sideways to draw attention to her remarkable profile, while her body pointed to the front. The muscles of her neck strained to keep her head at its awkward angle."

John Singer Sargent, Portrait of Madame X (Madame Pierre Gautreau), 1884, oil on canvas, 234.95 × 109.86 cm (92.5 × 43.3 in), Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sargent finished the portrait in time for the 1884 Salon, the most important art show in the world, with thousands attending daily. He had painted the famed beauty in a chic black dress and had no idea of the scandal that was about to erupt over his depiction of a strap dangling off Madame Gautreau's bare white shoulder. 

Nudes were everywhere in the 1884 Salon: "though highly idealized, even the most 'classical' nudes must have seemed erotic to Salon audiences. Women in the nineteenth century tended to cover their flesh in public with layers of clothing, from buttoned-up gloves to floor-length hems. Salon exhibitions provided easy access to sexual images that were not part of daily life. And artist knew that their nudes, however sanitized or decorous, were titillating. they placed them liberally in their paintings, often in such settings as forests and courtrooms where it made no sense for their subjects to be naked."

So why the scandal over a mere fallen strap? According to Davis:

"The public's judgment was loud, quick, and definite. What a horror, people exclaimed. She looked monstrous and decomposed, some said. The painting was indecent. Amélie's exposed white shoulders and décolletage -- without a breast in sight -- disgusted them. And that fallen strap! Was it a prelude to, or the aftermath of, sex?"

John Singer Sargent, in his studio with his painting Portrait of Madame X, black and white photographic print, 21 x 28 cm, circa 1884, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian, photographer unknown.

Sargent's career would go on to survive the scandal, while Amélie's reputation would never fully recover -- she was no longer the "it girl." As soon as the Salon ended, Sargent took his painting back to his studio and repainted the strap in its upright position. Many years later in 1915, when Sargent sold the painting to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he requested that Amelie's name not be associated with the portrait. That is when it officially came to be known as the infamous Portrait of Madame X.

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Upcoming at Offramp Gallery

March 4 - April 15, 2012:
John M. White: Recent Works
Opening Reception: Sunday, March 4, 2-5pm

May 6 - June 3, 2012
Chuck Feesago: Retention
Opening Reception: Sunday, May 6, 2-5pm

May 6 - June 3, 2012

D. Jean Hester: A Rope Let Down From Heaven

Opening Reception: Sunday, May 6, 2-5pm

June 24 - August 5, 2012

Lou Beach: Stories & Pictures

Opening Reception: Sunday, June 24, 2-5pm

A Photography Book that Captures the Zeitgeist of Los Angeles

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This week I want to spotlight a book that dovetails neatly with the current zeitgeist in the Los Angeles art world, a spirit of time and place that I believe is largely a result of the Getty's city-wide Pacific Standard Time initiative. Taschen's fabulous photography book, Los Angeles, Portrait of a Cityfleshes out the cultural identity of the city, before and after the 1945-1980 focus of Pacific Standard Time, and is nothing less than a joy to own.

So get comfortable in your favorite chair and give yourself at least two hours to take in the over 500 photographs that range from the first known photograph of Los Angeles, a largely pastoral scene taken in 1862, to a portrait of the founder of Forest Lawn surrounded by prints of big-eyed Jesuses, to recent landmarks such as Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Hall.

You’ll travel through time with highlights of the city's cultural, political, industrial, and sociological history. A 1927 photograph by Cliff Wesselman shows pistol-packing police chief James “Two-Gun” Davis. The caption reads: “Adopting a tough-on-crime stance, he announced that he would ‘hold court on gunmen in the Los Angeles streets; I want them brought in dead, not alive, and will reprimand any officer who shows the least mercy to a criminal.’” Yikes!

Copyright: University of Southern California/Regional History Center
Caption: 339 Anonymous: Spectators join police at the aftermath of a shootout, 1953.

One photo shows German American Bund picnickers in 1938 raising a large 3-D swastika in La Crescenta’s Hinderburg Park. Another shows the bottom of Marilyn Monroe’s lifeless foot sticking out from a under a blanket in a morgue refrigerator. We see a young Ronald Regan modeling for a sculpture class at USC (hated his politics, but what a bod!), a group of female impersonators arrested in a raid in 1927, and Faye Dunaway posing for a post-Academy Award portrait by the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Copyright: Jim Heimann Collection
Caption: 271 Dick Whittington: Simon’s drive-in, Wilshire Boulevard andFairfax Avenue, c. 1939.

Architecture, from kitsch eateries to Case Study Houses, is abundantly represented. A photo of the Spruce Goose being transported to Long Beach Harbor seems a precursor to the recent media-blitz over LACMA's much ballyhooed rock. I was surprised to learn that there was once an elevated bike path that ran from Pasadena to Los Angeles (Anyone want to start a movement to bring this back? Even I would ride a bike to LA if the path were completely free of cars). 

Copyright: Getty Images
Caption: 336 Slim Aarons: Rita Aarons, wife of the photographer, swimming in a pool festooned with floating baubles
 and a decorated Christmas tree, ca 1955.

Riots, earthquakes, fires and floods, rock stars, movie stars, O.J. Simpson carrying the Olympic torch on Pacific Coast Highway, John Belushi’s lifeless body being removed from the Chateau Marmont, an Angelyne billboard (I spotted her last week in her pink Corvette in Hollywood) and Joni Mitchell leaning out the window of her Laurel Canyon home are all included. 

Essays by Kevin Star, copious captions, blurbs from books and movies about Los Angeles, and maps of the area as it grows, round out this portrait of the city. You don't have to live in Los Angeles to appreciate this book and the huge cultural impact Los Angeles has had on the rest of the world.

Click here to buy from Amazon.com


Upcoming at Offramp Gallery

March 4 - April 15, 2012:
John M. White: Recent Works
Opening Reception: Sunday, March 4, 2-5pm

Sunday, March 25, 3pm:
Betty Ann Brown reading & book signing
from her new book, Afternoons with June: Stories of June Wayne’s Art & Life

May 6 - June 3, 2012:
Chuck Feesago: Retention
Opening Reception: Sunday, May 6, 2-5pm

Short Takes: Animated Masterpieces

Heironymous Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights,
El Prado Museum

What happens when Heavy Metal meets Hieronymus Bosch? Watch avant-garde musician and songwriter Buckethead's Spokes for the Wheel of Torment video below and find out. Based on several of Bosch's masterpieces, it's not for the faint of heart.

Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory, 1931.Oil on canvas, 9 1/2 x 13" (24.1 x 33 cm).
© 2007 Salvador Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí
Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Destino was originally conceived as a collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvador Dali. It was storyboarded by Disney artist John Hench and Dali for eight months in 1945-46, but the project was shelved due to financial problems. In 1999, Walt Disney's nephew, Roy E. Disney, unearthed the dormant project and decided to bring it back to life. It was subsequently released in 2003.

Guernica by Pablo Picasso. 1937.
Oil on canvas. 349 cm × 776 cm.

This next video is an animated sequence from the rarely-seen 1969 film The Picasso Summer, starring Albert Finney and Yvette Mimieux, and based on a short story by Ray Bradbury. A young couple strolls through what appears to be an underground grotto, illuminating Picasso paintings on the walls and ceiling by candlelight. The actual animation begins at 2:05.

M.C. Escher, Ascending and Descending, 1960
lithograph, 35.5 cm × 28.5 cm

Ending things on a lighter note is this animation based on M.C. Escher's endless staircase from his work Ascending and Descending. A lesson in frustration.





Upcoming at Offramp Gallery

March 4 - April 15, 2012:
John M. White: Recent Works
Opening Reception: Sunday, March 4, 2-5pm









Sunday, March 25, 3pm:
Betty Ann Brown reading & book signing
from her new book, Afternoons with June: Stories of June Wayne’s Art & Life

May 6 - June 3, 2012:
Chuck Feesago: Retention
Opening Reception: Sunday, May 6, 2-5pm

Lou Beach's "420 Characters," a Perfect Marriage of Creativity and Media for the 21st Century

Click here to buy from Amazon.com 

Lou Beach's 420 Characters is the perfect book for today's multi-tasking, time- and attention-challenged, media-gorging, art and literature lover (like me). Limited to 420 characters (including punctuation), each of Beach's very short stories started life as a Facebook status update. Vividly distilling experience into a haiku-like framework, Beach's stories are narrative gems -- evocative, surreal and dreamlike -- the opening scene of a movie by your favorite director as you sink into your seat in the darkened theater:

"We were on a tour boat in Boston Harbor. A candy wrapper escaped from some kid's hand, scuttled our way across the deck. Russell pinned it with his boot, bent over, picked it up. A gust of wind snatched it from him, sent it out over the water. An old woman said: 'Shame on you, littering.' My brother's neck went red. He got that look that could clear a barroom in Quincy. He sighed, winked at me. 'Yes, ma'am,' he said."

Infused with atmospheric depth and populated with myriad characters, Beach's stories range from comedy to irony, tragedy and surreal montage:

"Shot by a monkey, Elsa leaned against the banyan, held a bandage to the wound. They'd entered camp just before dawn, made off with a pistol, some candy bars, and a Desmond Morris book. We counted as six shots rang out, one of them finding poor Elsa's arm. Relieved that the simian was out of ammunition, we packed up. On the way out of camp we noticed a monkey on the riverbank, hammering at a snake with the gun."

The handsome hardcover book is in and of itself a small treasure. Designed after a vintage volume in Beach's personal collection, the red cover is embossed with a gold leaf monogram, the stories printed on heavy paper and illustrated with surreal collages by Beach, also a well known artist and illustrator.

Lou Beach, The Fall, collage

Lou Beach, World of Men C, collage

Audio recordings of the stories by Beach's friends, actors Jeff Bridges, Ian McShane and musician Dave Alvin, are available on the book's website.

The book was chosen as one of Amazon Best Books of the Month, December 2011. In the following video, Beach is interviewed about 420 Characters for the series, Author Interviews @ amazon:

Don't hesitate to buy this book! Whether you read it all in one sitting or pick it up occasionally to savor a story or two, 420 Characters fires on all cylinders -- fine writing, fine art, beautiful design -- and will not disappoint.

Click here to buy 420 Characters from Amazon.com

Upcoming at Offramp Gallery

March 4 - April 15, 2012:
John M. White: Recent Works
Opening Reception: Sunday, March 4, 2-5pm









Sunday, March 25, 3pm:
Betty Ann Brown reading & book signing
from her new book, Afternoons with June: Stories of June Wayne’s Art & Life

May 6 - June 3, 2012:
Chuck Feesago: Retention
Opening Reception: Sunday, May 6, 2-5pm

Artillery Editor Tulsa Kinney's Last Interview With Mike Kelley

Like most of the art world, I was stunned when I learned of artist Mike Kelley's suicide last week. The most recent issue of Artillery magazine, with the strange close-cropped photo of Kelley on the cover, had been on my coffee table for a couple of weeks, Kelley's piercing blue eyes staring out at me, almost daring me to ignore him. As soon as I heard the news, I immediately sat down to read editor Tulsa Kinney's interview with Kelley, an interview that would turn out to be his last. Did the article hold any clues of the tragedy to come?

From the first line, "EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! ART STAR STOPS MAKING ART!" the interview was eerily prescient. Kinney writes: "It got quiet toward the end of our interview, and if I didn't know better, I might even say he seemed a bit melancholy that late morning." In hindsight, it almost reads like a case study in depression. These things are always so much clearer in hindsight.





Mike Kelley was an artist who enjoyed success beyond what most dare dream of. He was beloved by an almost cult-like following. Why would he do the unthinkable? What had brought this popular, talented, and sensitive man to that darkest of all places?

Having been through the suicide of a close family member, I know all too well the agony, grief, anger and guilt that survivors often feel. I hoped Tulsa's story might shed some light on those questions for those Mike Kelley left behind.

Tulsa and I sat down on Saturday afternoon in Pasadena to talk.

JC: When did you first decide you wanted to interview Mike Kelley? You said you felt an "urgency" to have him in the February issue, even though you said you didn't really have a hook for the interview at that point.

TK: I had wanted to interview Mike for a long time. Usually when you do a feature on someone, there's something else happening and that's why you write about them. But when I decided I wanted to interview Mike, he didn't have anything major going on that could be considered a hook. I just felt like I wanted him on the cover. I felt like it was time. A few of my staff members were very unenthusiastic about it.

JC: Why?

TK: One of the younger staff members thought that he was too old-hat, and that nobody knew who he was. Even my husband was kind of a naysayer. But I held my ground. I don't have really any other reason for wanting to do it, I can't explain it, I just wanted him on the cover this issue.

JC: Did it have anything to do with that issue of Artillery being your first national one?

TK: No, not consciously.

JC: But you finally found a hook for the article?

TK: Yes, right before the magazine came out, Kelley got accepted in the Whitney Biennial, and it was for the eighth time! So it was perfect.

JC: When and how did you approach him about the interview?

TK: I emailed him around the first of November, but I didn't hear from until a couple of days later. And when I did hear from him, he presented me with a whole laundry list of reasons why he hated my last issue! He said he was still going to do the interview, because he was a person of his word, but he was pissed off!

He said there was a lot in that last issue that interested him (this was the one with the burning bank on the cover), but he was not happy with the Detroit article and he was not happy with the Ed Ruscha article that John Tottenham wrote that was critical of Ruscha's recent show at the Hammer. He was very upset about that.

At the end of the list, and I think this was what he was unhappy about the most, was the gossip column. My gossip columnist had written some not-so-nice things about Mike. I usually don't mess with that content, because if I go in there and whitewash everything, then we don't have a gossip column. The gossip columnist called him a "paragon of perv" and some other things and Mike was really pissed off about that. What Mike wrote to me about it, his rebuttal, was hilarious, and at the end he said "Tulsa, how can you print such crap? Cancel my subscription."

So I was very nervous and I thought I wasn't going to get my interview. I could tell he was hurt. He's a real sensitive guy. That was something that I learned about him.

JC: When did the interview take place?

TK: November 14

JC: So many things in the interview seem to foreshadow this tragedy. I'm going to read a couple of quotes and ask you to react: "It got quiet toward the end of our interview, and if I didn't know better, I might even say he seemed a bit melancholy that late morning."

TK: Right. I really held back in my copy. I was really concerned, I've been around mental illness and I could see that he was very depressed. In my original notes I had written "he seems deeply depressed" and there were other notes that I didn't even want to put in.

JC: Again, reading from your interview: "When I asked him if he ever believed in Heaven and Hell, he responded deliberately, in his deep, gravelly Detroit accent, 'No. I never believed in anything.' He seemed sad when he said that, with a faraway look in his eyes."

TK: We were seated on either side of an L-shaped couch and he just looked straight ahead and answered me in monotones, "yes, no, I never believed in anything, it was a load of shit." He seldom looked at me and it was very eerie, very sad.

JC: In the letter to your readers that you wrote shortly after his death you wrote: "I needed to wrap up our interview as I felt I was taking too much time from Mike. Out of nowhere, he just blurted out that he was going to stop making art."

TK: Afterwards my husband said "why didn't you talk about that? That's your story." But the whole interview was so emotional, and he dropped that bomb just as we were wrapping up, and I just had to stop. He went into a lot of personal stuff with me that I was not really expecting. I knew I was going to ask probing questions, but I didn't know he was going to cooperate so much. And then he had been so pissed off at me, I thought he was going to be an asshole, which he wasn't. It was more like he was resigned. It was like "just take me, take whatever you want." It was way too heavy. I didn't know him that well.

Before we started the interview that day he said he wanted to see a draft before it was published. And I said, "Mike, no, come on, you know I'm not going to agree to that." He said "well I want to see the quotes. I really want to see them. I don't want to come off looking like an idiot." I wanted to say no, but I felt like I had to give him something because he was so pissed off about the gossip columnist. So I said okay.

That interview was so intense, and what was really sweet of him was that he had two books for me, one was a catalog for his Kandors exhibition and the other was his Destroy All Monsters book. I was so touched -- this guy was so pissed off at me and then he's giving me the interview of my life and he's giving me these books. I just looked at him and thanked him and apologized again for the gossip column. Tears actually welled up in his eyes and said, "that really hurt my feelings. That really hurt." That's when he told me he was having problems with his girlfriend and that he didn't need that kind of shit. Then I said "I'm so sorry, what can I do?" to which he replied "you can retract it! That's what I want! I want you to retract it!"

I said "Mike, if we have a feature on you, a cover and then a retraction, it's going to look like I'm kissing your ass." But then I reluctantly said okay. I felt I had to, so I worked it into the story.

I had a lot of trouble writing this piece. His staff kept contacting me saying Mike really needed to see the quotes. So I finally sent them to him around December 22 and he read them, of course, very out of context. He was livid. He said "Tulsa, I had no idea you were going to print all this. I just told you that to give you an idea of where my art comes from. I can't handle this, this is way too much." He even said "I'm not a fucking movie star or a personality, I trusted you, I had no idea this would be so raw. No way about the Gagosian stuff, why would I allow my career to be jeopardized?" And that's kind of interesting, because at that point he was still thinking about his career.

So I let him fix the Gagosian quotes, because I didn't want to jeopardize his career either. We went back and forth, but in the end, when I got the quotes back, he had hardly touched them. I was astounded. I thought I was going to have to rewrite the whole article. He left in the stuff about his dad disowning him, he left in the part where he said he was going to quit making art and he made sure that I added the stuff about the Detroit project. And then one thing that was really strange, in the passage where he talks about having to get out of Detroit or he would go insane, he added "I had a nervous breakdown." He added that.

JC: Skipping forward, a month later, to the photo shoot in December. You said he was more upbeat that day?

TK: Yes, he was kind of charming, cute. I was joking around with him, asked him if he gotten a facial, his skin looked brighter, he was laughing. He seemed very giving and had a great sense of humor.

JC: I want to ask you about that cover shot. It's an unflattering shot and very intense. Why did you do it that way?

TK: Tyler Hubby is the photographer and he was very excited to shoot Mike Kelley. Mike insisted that we were just going to do headshots. Mike didn't want to smile, he was just staring right in the camera, and I did say to Tyler "get up close, get a close one." I don't know, I just wanted that option. I like close-ups. When my art director, Bill Smith saw it he said "this is clearly the favorite. It's terrifying, but it's intense and that's what you want." To look at it now, it's heartbreaking, just fucking heartbreaking.

JC: After the article was published, did you hear from Mike at all?

TK: I was very, very worried, of course, because at that point I know he's ultra-sensitive. I emailed him and told him the magazine was out and did he want me to bring some copies by. I had them delivered the next day and I was just waiting and waiting. Finally he wrote back, just one line: "Tulsa, I got the mags. Thank you. I read the article, it reads good, my cover photo looks like a mug shot."

That's all he said and I really couldn't tell if he liked the article or not. I was hoping for a little bit more from him, but it was very perfunctory.

JC: Was that your last contact with him?

TK: Yes.

JC: And that was early January?

TK: Yes, around January 9th.

JC: How did you hear the news of his death?

TK: I got a phone call from a good friend and he just said "Mike Kelley's dead. He killed himself." I was shocked that he was dead, but I wasn't surprised that he had killed himself. This was Wednesday around noon.

JC: You mentioned that you'd felt something like survivor's guilt, "If only I'd done this or if only I'd done that."

TK: Right. You always feel like you're the person who maybe could have done something. I had heard he was at an art event in Eagle Rock on Sunday, and I thought maybe if I had gone there I could have cheered him up a little bit. I'm not thinking I could have saved Mike Kelley. But I thought, maybe I should have reached out to him. I could tell he was really depressed.

JC: Ultimately, it's no one's fault. Suicide is how you die from depression, just like a stroke is how you die from high blood pressure. But it's common to feel that way.

TK: Right. With me it was more of a fleeting thing, maybe I didn't do as much as I should have done. He was really depressed.

JC: I assume you will you be covering his death in your upcoming issue.

TK: I am hoping to tap into a lot of his close friends and give them each about 200 words to write about him, instead of one big obituary.

JC: Anything else you'd like to add? It must feel strange to find yourself in the position of having done the last interview with Mike Kelley, an artist you admired so much.

TK: I don't think I've really processed it. I had to go right to work, answering the phone, putting something on the website. I went right into work mode and that's what I've been doing ever since.

Click here to read Tulsa Kinney's interview with Mike Kelley.

Upcoming events at Offramp Gallery

Through February 12, 2012:
Bianca Kolonusz-Partee: Countries of Origin
Closing Reception & Artist's Talk: Sunday, February 12, 2-5pm

Through February 12, 2012:
Megan Madzoeff: Cut it Out!
Closing Reception & Artist's Talk: Sunday, February 12, 2-5pm

March 4 - April 15, 2012:
John M. White: Recent Works
Opening Reception: Sunday, March 4, 2-5pm

Sunday, March 25, 3pm:
Betty Ann Brown reading & book signing from her new book, Afternoons with June: Stories of June Wayne’s Art & Life

May 6 - June 3, 2012:
Chuck Feesago: Matter of Perspective
Opening Reception: Sunday, May 6, 2-5pm

Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge

Click here to buy Prints and the Pursuit
of Knowledge from Amazon.com

Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe is the catalog from a recent eponymous exhibition at Harvard's Arthur M. Sackler Museum. (The exhibition is currently on view at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, through April 8, 2012.) Weighing in at a hefty 6.5 pounds and sporting an embossed reproduction of the head of Albrecht Durer's Rhinoceros on the soft-bound cover, this catalog delivers a fascinating look at the scientific technology of the sixteenth century and the celebrated artists who participated in it.

In her introduction, Prints as Instruments, curator Susan Dackerman describes her vision for organizing the exhibition:

“This project emerges from the tradition of Bildwissenschaft, the German branch of visual studies that encompasses images and objects across art-historical hierarchies of subject and media, without a predisposed notion of high and low art forms. Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge treats images and objects that have been neglected in the art-historical discourse because they were considered in aesthetic terms with little attention to their content, or were relegated to such other fields of study as cartography, astronomy, or the history of medicine – even though most were created by recognized artists who also produced work in genres considered more legitimate by art historians.”

In the following video, Dackerman provides further insight into the exhibition:



Exhibition Overview: Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe from Harvard Art Museums on Vimeo.

The flap prints by Heinrich Vogtherr the elder referenced in the video above were undoubtedly the high-tech anatomical representations for their time. To view them in a contemporary context, you can download a free app for your iPad or iPhone. The app lets you tap the image to reveal each of the flaps and provides an English translation for the text. For instance, if you tap on the "Matrix" flap you will learn that "the uterus is a vessel specified by God the Lord, in which the small children are received, nourished, and formed into a human body."

There are prints in the catalog that make you happy you live in the 21st century, such as Hans von Gersdorff and Hans Wechtlin the elder's Instruments for Use in Cranial Surgery, shown below.

Hans von Gersdorff and Hans Wechtlin the elder, Instruments for Use in Cranial Surgery, in Gersdorff, Field manual for the treatment of wounds, Strasbourg: Hans Schott, 1540. Book with woodcuts with hand-coloring. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Purchased with the SmithKline Beckman Corporation Fund, 1949-97-11. Photo: Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Other things haven't changed that much from the 16th century. The Invention of Copperplate Engraving image takes me back to my printmaking classes at Otis, the main difference being the clothing and the absence of women.


Unknown engraver, after Stradanus (Jan van der Straet), Invention of Copperplate Engraving, from Nova reperta (New inventions and discoveries of modern times), c. 1599–1603. Engraving. Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Houston, BF.1998.9.9. Photo: Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Houston.


Among the most beautiful of the prints is Albrecht Durer's woodcut Rhinoceros. The following video explains the appearance of the fanciful second horn on the creature's shoulders.


Object Discussion: Dürer's Rhinoceros from Harvard Art Museums on Vimeo.

The 442 page catalog contains over 100 reproductions of woodcuts, engravings, and etchings; maps, globe gores, and globes; anatomical flap prints; and paper scientific instruments used for observation and measurement, each with accompanying text. Hours of delight, discovery and illumination are guaranteed.

Click here to buy Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge from Amazon.com


Upcoming events at Offramp Gallery

Through February 12, 2012:
Bianca Kolonusz-Partee: Countries of Origin
Closing Reception & Artist's Talk: Sunday, February 12, 2-5pm

Through February 12, 2012:
Megan Madzoeff: Cut it Out!
Closing Reception & Artist's Talk: Sunday, February 12, 2-5pm

March 4 - April 15, 2012:
John M. White: Recent Works
Opening Reception: Sunday, March 4, 2-5pm

Sunday, March 25, 3pm:
Betty Ann Brown reading & book signing from her new book, Afternoons with June: Stories of June Wayne’s Art & Life

May 6 - June 3, 2012:
Chuck Feesago: Matter of Perspective
Opening Reception: Sunday, May 6, 2-5pm

Short Takes: "Art" Videos

On those maddening days when I get blog-block and can't come up with a suitable topic, I often go to YouTube and type in "art" (but only after I've watched a few Doc Martin bloopers or cute animal videos). It never fails to lead me on a strange and wonderful journey. Today's meanderings took me through food art, hand art, and healing arts.

This first video combines two of my favorite subjects, coffee and art.



Staying in the food art category, watch as Phil Hansen paints the "Mona Greasa" with burger grease.



I hope that didn't "grease you out!"

And now for some hand art.



This amazing video of shadow hands is actually a VW commercial in praise of the hand-made.



One of the search results that always comes up for "art" is Dr. John Tsoi, "the acupuncturist, the herbalist, and of course, the artist." He has hundreds of these videos online and in many of them he does his artwork blindfolded. I always end up wondering if this guy is for real!



But this artwork of Dr. Tsoi's has to be my favorite. (The video is almost unwatchable at over nine minutes long, but you'll get the idea in the first minute or so.) MFA programs, take notice!




Upcoming events at Offramp Gallery
Through February 12, 2012:
Bianca Kolonusz-Partee: Countries of Origin
Closing Reception & Artist's Talk: Sunday, February 12, 2-5pm

Through February 12, 2012:
Megan Madzoeff: Cut it Out!
Closing Reception & Artist's Talk: Sunday, February 12, 2-5pm

March 4 - April 15, 2012:
John M. White: Recent Works
Opening Reception: Sunday, March 4, 2-5pm

Sunday, March 25, 3pm:
Betty Ann Brown reading & book signing from her new book, Afternoons with June: Stories of June Wayne’s Art & Life

May 6 - June 3, 2012:
Chuck Feesago: Matter of Perspective
Opening Reception: Sunday, May 6, 2-5pm

More on Artists and the Future of Books: An Interview with Kirk Pedersen, Founder of Zero+ Publishing

Zero+ Publishing founder, Kirk Pedersen (standing) at
Photo LA, January 2012, with Anna Mendoza and art critic
Peter Frank (seated).

Last week I talked about some amazing ways artists are repurposing books. Some of you were upset that anyone would cut into or alter a book, even to transform it into a unique work of art. The sad news is that libraries and bookstores are throwing out, burning and otherwise disposing of books by the dumpster load. (You can read about it here and here.)

The good news is that the future of books, having lost their monopoly as conveyors of information, lies in aesthetics. There will always be a market for interesting, beautiful books -- and artists are, of course, leading the way. Zero+ Publishing, an art book publisher located in Claremont, CA and founded by artist Kirk Pedersen, is collaborating with artists, making limited edition books that push the definition of what a book is or can be.

I caught up with Kirk Pedersen at his booth at Photo LA last weekend. Besides running a publishing company, Kirk is also an artist and Professor of Fine Arts at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, CA. I asked Kirk how he went from being a painter and teacher to starting his own publishing company.

KP: In 2004, I went to Bangkok, southern Thailand and Cambodia, primarily for a vacation. I didn't go there as an artist or as a photographer. I went back to Bangkok in 2005, and on one particular day I had an epiphany and knew that I would create a photo book and it would be called Urban Asia and it would be in two volumes -- that was all very clear to me. It wasn't until I started working on the second volume in 2009 that I decided to publish other artists' work. So the intention with my first book had nothing to do with the idea of publishing for other artists.

JC: How many titles does Zero+ have now?

KP: Close to 15, each in a limited edition of 1000. With all of the titles we have some sort of packaged smaller edition option, such as a clamshell box, or a deluxe box, that is signed and numbered by the artist.

JC: How do you select the artists whose work you publish?

In most cases the choice of subjects is curated by my vision of this company, but there are other ways, like in the case of street artist Above who a friend introduced me to in Portland. I wasn't familiar with his work, so I googled him, liked his work, and decided I would like to work with him. We sat down to talk and he said he really liked everything we talked about in terms of design and ideas, but he had two publishers in New York who were already interested in working with him. He subsequently met with both, then called and said he wanted to work with me. The difference was that I told him we would print 1000 copies total, using the best paper we could get and that he would have a lot of control over what the end product would be. Most publishers give the artist no control.

That's one of the things I love about publishing. You're working collaboratively with artists and there is a flow of creativity. It's a great process. As an artist you're often working in your studio in isolation, but as a publisher you're constantly in communication with other artists. I like that very much.

BLAINE FONTANA: AMALGAMATE DELUXE BOXED EDITION (Edition 10 / 2 AP)
Box was hand-made by the artist with reclaimed wood and the cover has a CNC routed logo with cast resin – signed/numbered. 14 x 14 x 4.5” (35.5 x 35.5 x 11.43cm) / 14lbs. (6.35kg) Contents: Signed/numbered/embossed book - 11.25 x 11.25" (28.6 x 28.6cm), Hand-finished signed/numbered six-color silkscreen print – 11 x 11” (27.94 x 27.94cm), Vannen/Fontana watch, 6 – 6 x 8” postcards, Mini wood sculpture (signed/numbered) – approximately 9” tall (22.86cm), Retired brush cast in resin box, Giclee print (signed/numbered) – 11 x 11” (27.94 x 27.94cm), COA

JC: You've created quite a buzz at Photo LA with your deluxe boxed editions, especially Blaine Fontana's Amalgamate. I've watched you put on your white gloves and reveal the contents to many fascinated fair-goers. I've even seen a few take out their wallets and purchase the remaining copies of the edition, as well as the artist's proof.

What was the inspiration for making these custom box sets?

KP: I'm a book collector and I've purchased a lot of books that come in special packaging -- books that have prints or some element of surprise to them. So I wanted to up that idea even more by having these be unique handmade boxes, something that very few people in the publishing world have done. I'm a collector and ultimately I wanted make deluxe editions that I would want to own.


Deluxe Edition Amalgamate Box Set Process from Blaine Fontana on Vimeo.

JC: What other deluxe editions do you have coming up?

KP: I have a book coming up with LA street artist Cryptik -- he works with a lot of eastern images, Buddha, Gandhi, etc. Inside the box will be incense, an incense burner and candles that are custom carved by the artist. Each box will have the artist's script on it. All of the contents will be customized by the artist. I don't know everything that will be in it yet, but because of the overwhelmingly positive response of the fair, I have a lot of new ideas that I don't want to talk about at this time.

JC: So you're being cryptic about Cryptik! I guess we'll just have to wait.

Thanks for taking the time to talk about Zero+. We'll be eagerly anticipating your future projects.

Click here to learn more about Zero+ Publishing.

Upcoming Events at Offramp Gallery

January 20, 2012
Offramp Gallery Director Jane Chafin will be participating in a panel discussion at the 17 Annual LA Art Show at the LA Convention Center on Friday, January 20 at 4pm: A MATTER OF DEGREES -- MFA, PhD in Art: Is it all BS?, sponsored by Artillery Magazine. Other panelists include: Betty Brown, Tucker Neel, Austin Young and Anuradha Vikram.

   January 8 - February 12, 2012
   Bianca Kolonusz-Partee: Countries of Origin
   Closing Reception: Sunday, February 12, 2-5pm

January 8 - February 12, 2012
Megan Madzoeff: Cut it Out!
Closing Reception: Sunday, February 12, 2-5pm