| Here's how it was. This was way back in the | | | | what I think 'til I see what I say. I couldn't begin |
| very early seventies. I had recently arrived in Los | | | | to sort out my ideas and feelings until I had them |
| Angeles from Iowa, where I had been completing | | | | down in words. |
| a doctoral program and working in the Writers' | | | | So I sat down and began to write. And I wrote |
| Workshop in Iowa City. I was a poet. I had never | | | | and wrote. Judging prose, in those days, to be a |
| taken much interest in art-though I was educated | | | | little bit beneath a man whose lofty calling was to |
| enough, of course, to be aware of "modern" | | | | be a poet, I wrote it all as a poem, and the poem |
| artists like Picasso and Matisse. I had even, at my | | | | turned out to be some thirty pages long. Evidently |
| boarding school in England, enlarged a blue Matisse | | | | I found that I had quite a lot to say, and much of |
| flower cutout to reproduce as a mural on my | | | | it had to do with the growing realization that this |
| study wall-to the considerable consternation of | | | | "mess" of an art show curiously resembled how I |
| my "housemaster". | | | | felt about my life-and how I managed it-when I |
| But though I had lived in London for three years | | | | was seven years old. |
| in my early twenties, I had not stumbled across | | | | My life was all a difficult, impenetrable mystery. |
| anything that would qualify as "contemporary art." | | | | Nothing was as tidy as it was supposed to be, |
| Then at the University of Iowa, the Art | | | | not even my clothes. Nothing ever fit quite right. I |
| Department was, to my knowledge, mostly | | | | was clumsy, inelegant. I used to spill ink on the |
| traditional, under the firm hand of the lithography | | | | desk and smudge my fingers, and then the |
| master Mauricio Lasansky. | | | | exercise books in which I had to do my |
| Then... Los Angeles! The shock of the new! My | | | | arithmetic. |
| eyes were opened, first, by my soon-to-be wife, | | | | It was the struggle between the unruly, rebellious |
| Ellie Blankfort-she of the Ellie Blankfort Gallery | | | | reality of the inner self and the discipline that |
| fame, during those years in the very early | | | | others want to impose on it from without-the |
| seventies. Soon after we met, she landed a job | | | | classic struggle for individual freedom in the face |
| running the Art Rental Gallery at the Los Angeles | | | | of despised and feared authority. Eventually, it |
| County Museum, and she was meeting the | | | | proved to be a losing battle for the child and a |
| younger set of artists she was soon to represent | | | | victory for the teachers. Inky fingers and all, I |
| in her gallery. I, the poet, observed nervously | | | | was forced into submission to the rules. |
| from the sidelines, somewhat befuddled by the | | | | WHEN I WAS A SMALL BOY. This art was talking |
| strange things some of these artists were doing. | | | | about me! No wonder I was so angry and |
| I was not deeply offended, however, until the | | | | uncomfortable! |
| day we went out to see an exhibition at the | | | | Later, when the writing was done. I met the |
| Orlando Gallery in the San Fernando Valley. I | | | | offending artist, Gary Lloyd. (Gary, where are you |
| arrived there to find hand-made, primitive axes | | | | these days?) He loved the poem I'd written, and |
| protruding from the walls; books mutilated with | | | | proposed our collaboration on a book. We made |
| cuts and slashes, their pages stuck together with | | | | it-a cumbersome volume with a hatchet handles |
| unidentifiable goo; mysterious-but definitely | | | | for a spine, a battered aluminum cover, and |
| unpleasant-stuff growing in mason jars; and | | | | pages rendered illegible by layers of mesh and |
| Vaseline smeared unceremoniously on the white | | | | grease-proof paper, and smears of Vaseline. We |
| walls of the gallery. | | | | spent hours in Gary's Culver City studio putting |
| And then there was an inscription somewhere in | | | | this thing together. We even sold some copies to |
| bold, childish lettering: WHEN I WAS A SMALL | | | | respectable collectors. The County Museum has a |
| BOY, BOB WENT HOME. | | | | copy. |
| That was it. I was appalled. Appalled that | | | | So there you go. This was the great epiphany, |
| someone could create this kind of hideous mess | | | | for me, the initiation into the world of |
| and call it art. I went home angry to have wasted | | | | contemporary art. It came about through anger |
| my precious (poet's!) time on such frivolity. | | | | and indignation, a reaction so strong that I was |
| And yet I could not get it out of my mind. To | | | | unable to ignore it. It came about because I had |
| my distinct annoyance, the images kept playing | | | | the intuitive wisdom to listen to that contrarian |
| around in my head, refusing stubbornly to leave. | | | | voice and heed its challenge. In the months and |
| The indignation continued to rile. So I did what any | | | | years that followed, I continued making my first |
| writer does, I assume, when confronted with the | | | | few tentative steps into writing about art. I even |
| unknown: I started to write about it. | | | | discovered that prose could prove a satisfying |
| At the risk of irritating those who've heard me | | | | medium. I began to write pieces for Artweek, |
| say it a hundred times before, my guiding principle | | | | first, then for Art in America, Artforum... I had |
| as a writer is that old adage: How do I know | | | | found a calling. |