BRUCE CONNER AT MOMA!

August 8, 2016

A recent post on Facebook.. by gallery owner/TV star, Mat Gleason, mentions an art critic who came to his gallery, Coagula, in Chinatown (Jake). One of Mat's 'FB friends' mentioned that the unnamed reviewer might be NY Times Art Critic, Roberta Smith.  The wonderfulness of the net is that finding Roberta was easy and this review of the current retrospective at MoMA in NYC of the work of Bruce Conner popped up.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/arts/design/review-bruce-conner-its-all-true-moma.html?_r=0 

I met Bruce years ago and we spent an afternoon just hanging out up in Felton, California. (Home of CapriTaurus Dulcimers and now the Bigfoot Discovery Museum)  I was (and am) starstruck, having seen some of his films and learning that he was pals with the poet/playwright, Michael McClure, who sometimes collaborated with The Company Theatre. That made him  really special.  It was simply a pleasant day.  I never really knew him, but did get to know many of his works of art that are, undoubtedly, in the MoMA show.  

I so admired the guy and wish that I'd found a way to really be a pal.  Last time I saw him was in 2002 at a MoCA lecture that featured Bruce and one of his well known collectors, artist/actor/director Dennis Hopper.  MoCA had presented a retrospective to Bruce.  Some of the MoCA retrospective was interactive.  It was really a great show.

It's so much fun to be on the periphery of greatness like the brief connection to Bruce Conner.  We gain insights from the folks who have 'made it' and hope to find our own pathway to do or make something that matters.  One of Conners' pieces that I love is a print from Tamarind Press where he worked for a while.  The 'rule' was that there should never .. EVER.. be a fingerprint on a lithograph that they produced there.  Serious Business!  Bruce was expelled from the atelier for making a print that was ONLY his finger print.  I have reflected that idea (that was also part of Ed Kienholz's ouvre) on the piece that I will have in the Open Call show at the LA Municipal Art Gallery: 8/17 through 9/17 Thursdays through Sundays from Noon to Five.  

I like the idea of resistance to what the rules are.  Sometimes the 'rules' are, to me,  like the tail that wags the dog.  ...  I got in trouble one time at the Brand Gallery here in Glendale a few years after I'd had my own show there. I was on a visit with other local artists to just take a look at the space.  The main gallery is a large rectangular room with a big skylight and windows at one end. The space was virtually empty.  I have an idea that calls for bouncing super balls (yet to be realized..) and while we chatted with the person showing the group the gallery, I tossed a super ball to the far wall.. about sixty or eighty feet away.  It bounced like anything!  Super!  The others were mortified that such an invasion of this hallowed hall had been so sullied.  I loved it.  

There's more!!  The beauty of the "event" was that whether or not those other 'artists' realized that they had experienced an art action or not.. they most certainly had. Their emotional repercussions were the art and my subsequent 'debriefing' by the founder of the group.. which was also part of the art..  led to my realizing that the 'art' that these folks made had nothing to do with what I think is important.  To leave an impression with the person/people who experience the goings on is my goal.  

Now that I've recalled that incident, I am sorry for the other members of the group who want to make nice art.  Making 'nice' is polite.  Making art is sometimes more important!  Really.  It really is!  A nice landscape to go over your mantle or your new sofa is decoration.  The image below either painted or enlarged to four feet by five feet would be my idea of a good time.  Slightly out of focus. Texture in the background.  Saturated color and an iconic logo.  No accounting for taste! : o )

Michael Sheehan
August 8, 2016