Fire in the Belly - Act 4: I Discover Urban Archeology
I still remember the day that I really started working with found objects. I had collected them before, converting them to bookends and paperweights, but I had never really crawled inside their meaning or potential. I remember the day because it was April 15th, and I got off the O’Hare train at the Wicker Park station. The walk from the Damen, North, Milwaukee intersection to the studio at Cortland and Mendel is about a mile and a half, and it was a beautiful day. I’d gotten off work early in order to get my tax return in the mail at the Post Office downtown. In those days the downtown station was still housed in the hulking WPA era building which straddles Congress and the Eisenhower Expressway. I walked down Jackson to the subway and got on the O’Hare train. It probably would have been easier to take the Howard up to Armitage, but that train would have let me out in Lincoln Park, and I really don’t like it there.
So I went out of my way. As a result I stumbled upon a small trove of urban treasure in the form of an old three flat which had been gutted and stood open. Inside were industrial objects both large and small, representing processes both muscular and chemical. Dirty puddles covered most of the floor, but I just walked right in. Leaning against the wall was an old wooden dresser. The paint, which was the color of a hooker’s lipstick, was worn away on all sides, revealing the grain and providing an intriguing figure/ground composition. Before long I had collected together a mound of objects, not too close to the door, but close enough to get at easily.
I filled my arms and started walking. By the time I got to Ashland I was exhausted; I’d been exhilarated by a rush of ideas, and completely unrealistic about the distance I would have to carry these objects. I didn’t really have enough money for a cab, so I set my loot down and I rested. Within five minutes I was back on my feet and moving north on Ashland. I dumped my stash under the Kennedy overpass, and bolted up Cortland for The Belly. I grabbed an old shipping cart from the hallway and made for the elevator. By midnight I’d made the round trip, bringing back everything from the building on North Avenue.
What followed was an almost obsessive search for objects everywhere I went. I even borrowed a friend’s truck and drove up to the North Shore for their annual Haul Anything Away day. Sometimes, while scouring the streets of Chicago, I’d see other people walking in a manner I thought I’d invented, eyes to the ground, and I’d wonder if they were my competition. Most of them were homeless.
How could I have missed it? These objects were practically readymades, and Chicago is a veritable found object factory. Since that day in April I’ve become a savvy urban archaeologist. For example, all variety of under-carriage car and truck parts can be found at busy intersections and freeway ramps just after the snow melts away. And you can still find places where people just dump, like at Division and Halsted, across the street from Cabrini Green.
Each of these found objects has a physical beauty and cryptic history all it’s own. Sometimes I’ll stare at an object for hours on end, pondering it’s possible pasts. Roger was a little intrigued by these objects, and he was politely interested in the pieces which they produced. But I never got the impression that he really respected this direction much.
“I mean, really,” he said, “where do you go with this stuff?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
He smiled at me and punched me on the shoulder. “Buddy, come on, lighten up! Ev’y little thing gonna be alright.”
I pursed my lips. Roger had changed over the winter. He was getting a fair amount of attention from dealers, as well as other artists. There were always people visiting the studio, and they were never there to look at my work. He had figured out that some of the classic rock he held so dear was acceptable amongst hipsters. Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin; it was cool to be old school, as long as you could back up your musical esthetic with something current. He blended in just fine, but how could he lose? He bought a copy of every cd I played for him, and never once found fault with even one of them. What’s that about? He was so busy jumping my train that he didn’t stop to think about how obvious this aping was. I was appalled, and felt violated. He glommed onto a music esthetic that had taken years to develop, and they had been tough years to be different. You try telling some linebacker in your senior class that you’re going to see a band called The New York Dolls. I earned it, not him. I stopped bringing in new music.
Melanie was marginally more supportive. She was a big fan of absurdism in general and Marcel Duchamp in particular. Her gallery represented people like Donald Lipski and Dennis Oppenheim, as well as artists like Martin Puryear and Robert Ryman. We saw these shows together, and we spent many hours gazing into Joseph Cornell boxes at the Art Institute.
For all her comprehension of the art historical soil my work was rooted in, for all her stylistic acumen, and her ability to connect the dots of influence, I never trusted her instincts, and never detected that she got the deep connect with my work. I saw how she got excited about Roger’s new pieces. She responded much differently to mine.
“Your styles are about different thinks.”
“Different thinks?”
“Yea,” she replied, “Roger’s work is more like music, or dancing. Your work is more like trig.”
“My work is like trigonometry.”
“His work lives in the Kingdom of The Soul, and your work exists in the Kingdom of The Intellect.”
“I get it,” I put a finger to my fore head, “you’re saying my work has no groove.”
She kissed me on the neck. “Don’t be shtoopid.”
I know now that she was right. I was so dug in to the conceptual qualities of found objects in particular, and Form in general, that I couldn’t see the value in any other way of thinking. Formalism can be freeing in it’s rigor, but it can get dogmatic, too. I ranted at both friends and neighbors that painting was dead. I held forth to all who would listen on the primacy of sculpture as an art form.
“It boils down to creating reality.” I’d insist. “Painting is reliant upon the canvas, a substraight of little or no relation to the meaning of the object, and as a result painting is dependent on something outside itself for it’s meaning. It’s derivative.”
Blah blah blah.
It all made sense, to me at least, but anyone who listened would just get pissed. “Go read Plato’s Republic.” I’d sneer. No one cared.
And that’s the funniest part of it - all that escetic crap didn’t mean anything real. These ideas made sense on their own, for one person, but they had nothing to do with the process of connecting to others. It was just too personal. That’s ironic, really, because my militancy was a result of an insistence on meaning, and a belief that significant meaning is the glue between people.
“Everything means something.” I’d say to Mel.
“Nothing means anything.” She’d volley. We’d go around and around on that one.
How do we measure meaning, anyway? Isn’t it about the fact that more than one person interprets things the same way? Agreement is a necessary ingredient, at least for starters.
Roger offered an answer, of course. He had a response whenever he felt one was needed.
“What is art, anyway, y’know man?”
“You’re looking at it.” I said.
“I mean, is art a lens, or is it a hammer? On the one hand it’s a mirror, but it’s also a scalpel. It’s weird.”
“That’s not the kind of meaning I’m talking about, Roger.”
“Are you sure, dude? Are you really sure?”
“Yes, dude, I’m really sure.”
See what I mean? I’m pretty tolerant - this guy was just too much.
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Next week: The World as Viewed From The Water Tower
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