Epiphany: Or How I Stumbled Unawares Into the Strange World of Contemporary Art

Here's how it was. This was way back in thewhat I think 'til I see what I say. I couldn't begin
very early seventies. I had recently arrived in Losto sort out my ideas and feelings until I had them
Angeles from Iowa, where I had been completingdown 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 neverand wrote. Judging prose, in those days, to be a
taken much interest in art-though I was educatedlittle 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 myturned out to be some thirty pages long. Evidently
boarding school in England, enlarged a blue MatisseI found that I had quite a lot to say, and much of
flower cutout to reproduce as a mural on myit 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 yearswas seven years old.
in my early twenties, I had not stumbled acrossMy 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 Artnot even my clothes. Nothing ever fit quite right. I
Department was, to my knowledge, mostlywas clumsy, inelegant. I used to spill ink on the
traditional, under the firm hand of the lithographydesk 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! Myarithmetic.
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 Galleryreality of the inner self and the discipline that
fame, during those years in the very earlyothers want to impose on it from without-the
seventies. Soon after we met, she landed a jobclassic struggle for individual freedom in the face
running the Art Rental Gallery at the Los Angelesof despised and feared authority. Eventually, it
County Museum, and she was meeting theproved to be a losing battle for the child and a
younger set of artists she was soon to representvictory for the teachers. Inky fingers and all, I
in her gallery. I, the poet, observed nervouslywas forced into submission to the rules.
from the sidelines, somewhat befuddled by theWHEN 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 theuncomfortable!
day we went out to see an exhibition at theLater, when the writing was done. I met the
Orlando Gallery in the San Fernando Valley. Ioffending artist, Gary Lloyd. (Gary, where are you
arrived there to find hand-made, primitive axesthese days?) He loved the poem I'd written, and
protruding from the walls; books mutilated withproposed our collaboration on a book. We made
cuts and slashes, their pages stuck together withit-a cumbersome volume with a hatchet handles
unidentifiable goo; mysterious-but definitelyfor a spine, a battered aluminum cover, and
unpleasant-stuff growing in mason jars; andpages rendered illegible by layers of mesh and
Vaseline smeared unceremoniously on the whitegrease-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 inthis thing together. We even sold some copies to
bold, childish lettering: WHEN I WAS A SMALLrespectable collectors. The County Museum has a
BOY, BOB WENT HOME.copy.
That was it. I was appalled. Appalled thatSo there you go. This was the great epiphany,
someone could create this kind of hideous messfor me, the initiation into the world of
and call it art. I went home angry to have wastedcontemporary 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. Tounable to ignore it. It came about because I had
my distinct annoyance, the images kept playingthe 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 anyyears that followed, I continued making my first
writer does, I assume, when confronted with thefew 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 memedium. I began to write pieces for Artweek,
say it a hundred times before, my guiding principlefirst, then for Art in America, Artforum... I had
as a writer is that old adage: How do I knowfound a calling.