thanks Norman

Federal authorities arrested a Colorado man who allegedly relabeled bottles of Gatorade with pictures of golf star Tiger Woods and his wife Elin Nordegren and the word “unfaithful” as part of a pop art stunt.

Federal prosecutors in Denver on Wednesday charged Jason Eric Kay, 38 years old, with misbranding and altering food labels.

“From the onset, our primary concern has been the safety of our consumers and the integrity of our products,” said Karen May, a Gatorade spokesperson.

According to an affidavit signed by a Food and Drug Administration criminal investigation agent, Mr. Kay, an unemployed artist, bought one-quart bottles of Tropical Mango flavor Gatorade at stores in the Denver area and relabeled the bottles with labels he created using a photocopier at Kinko’s. The bottles were unopened and the product inside wasn’t tampered with. The bar codes functioned. The new label contained a Yahoo email address to contact the artist. The bottles were put on store shelves in the Denver area.

According to the FDA agent, Mr. Kay said in an interview that he was trying emulate Andy Warhol, who drew attention with pop art pieces based on Campbell’s Soup can labels and other commercial products. Mr. Kay said he chose the Tiger Woods image because he wanted to “get people talking about how stupid the whole thing with Tiger Woods is,” according to the FDA agent.

According to the FDA affidavit, Mr. Kay contacted PepsiCo Inc., which produces Gatorade, to suggest working together. “This is the cheapest marketing campaign you could ever participate in,” Mr. Kay wrote in an email cited in the FDA affidavit. “It is good for Gatorade and good for art.”

Mr. Kay, in his contact with PepsiCo, provided his phone number and email address, which is the same one FDA investigators used to find him. Mr. Kay didn’t respond to a call seeking comment.

The members of the artist collective Bruce High Quality Foundation carry out some very entertaining pranks, from following Robert Smithson’s posthumous Floating Island around New York Harbor in a dinghy to hurling themselves, clad in football gear, at public sculptures in Manhattan. Their performances, though witty and weird, are serious critiques of institutions. Carrying this to the next level, in September the five anonymous Bruces, all graduates of Cooper Union’s art program, with the art-commissioning agency Creative Time, launched the Bruce High Quality Foundation University on West Broadway, in New York, whose first course is Bring Your Own University (B.Y.O.U.). The collective is also mounting its second solo show, to run from December 4 through January 23, at the Susan Inglett Gallery. It comprises work responding to the university’s curriculum, which includes lecture topics like “Occult Shenanigans in 20th/21st Century Art,” “What’s a Metaphor? The B.H.Q.F.U. Detective Agency,” and “Edifying.” Together, the show and the university undermine the commercialized and market-driven platform that art schools today rest upon.

Read more about the Bruce High Quality Foundation:

Art Market Anarchy at Paris Photo 2009 — Free Photos!

A surprise act of art market anarchy took place just outside the entrance to the exclusive gala VIP opening night at Paris Photo 2009 last week. While the crowd of well-dressed international art collectors began to enter the giant hall at the Louvre, dozens of pranksters quickly dumped thousands and thousands of anonymous vintage photos into a giant heap, and tossed handfuls of photographs in the air. “Free, free, free!”

Even in this art-loving socialist capital, this act caused a momentary cognitive disconnect:

Inside, a single rare photograph could fetch a price of 40,000 euros ($60,000) or more. Outside this heap of interesting (and potentially) precious gems were free for the taking. You just had to get down on your hands and knees and shuffle through the stack to find something that spoke to you. Nobody else assigned a value to any of these photos.

It was like a feeding frenzy. And it was quite evident that some people were torn between spending all evening crawling on the floor in search of some personal treasures — or going inside to sip champagne and look at some of the best work available in today’s official international art market.

The gleeful perpetrators recorded their “happening” for YouTube. Vive la France!

Flying in the Wind (Paris, France)

Related links:

Some artists will do anything to get their work shown in a museum.

Painter Mat Benote secretly hung one of his paintings in the Brooklyn Museum earlier this month – and it remained for two days before museum officials discovered it and snatched it off the wall.

“This is high-art graffiti,” said Benote, who lives in the city, but won’t say where. “It’s not really destroying anything.”

Museum officials declined to comment on Benote’s stunt, but a worker told the Brooklyn News the prank inflicted minor damage to a wall on the fourth-floor contemporary art gallery.

Benote’s escapade in the museum on Eastern Parkway was the final stop in a month-long tour.

He crisscrossed the country and secretly installed paintings at 11 other museums – and even slipped one past the guards at the Saatchi Gallery in London.

Officials at most of the museums discovered Benote’s addition to their collections almost immediately and took it down.

But in one case, a Birmingham, Ala., museum left Benote’s artwork up for four days.

Benote tried to put up one painting in each of the 12 museums that combine to make a large mural that says, “I seek” in Chinese.

“It’s a celebration of mankind’s unending search for knowledge,” said Benote, who wouldn’t say how old he is except to note that he was born after 1960.

Benote defended his actions, saying his painting was actually a “gift” to the Brooklyn Museum – a cultural institution he likes for its relatively low admission price of $10, compared to the steep $20 entrance fee at other city museums.

“So many museums have lost what they’re supposed to be about,” said Benote. “They’re supposed to inspire people.” The Brooklyn Museum, he said, “is still on the right track.”

Giving the gift to one of his favorite institutions turned into an excellent adventure for Benote.

“It gets your heart pounding with security and all the foot traffic around,” said Benote, who used double-sided tape to stick his painting in the contemporary art wing on Sept. 19.

He divided the painting into quarters and covered them with Plexiglas; hauled them on his back into the museum and hung them when the coast was clear.

But the recipients of his artistic gifts are rarely grateful for his generosity. Only the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha is considering adding Benote’s donation to its permanent collection.

Art fans visiting the museum gave Benote’s antics a mixed review.

Priscilla Vazquez, 23, from Bedford-Stuyvesant, applauded him for shaking things up. “It makes the museum more democratic,” she said.

Others said there are better ways for aspiring artists to get exposure.

“He could start his own gallery and select unknown artists to show their work,” said Aaron Schneider, 69, from SoHo.

Banksy has created a new street piece, this time somewhat off the beaten track in Croydon, Surrey, on the outskirts of London.

The piece depicts a punk struggling to assemble a flat pack graffiti slogan – purchased from IEAK – on the wall behind him. The piece obviously references the home furnishing store IKEA. The placement of the piece is well thought out, as is usual for Banksy. Over the wall you can see the distinctive twin towers of IKEA, Croydon, with their yellow and blue branding. Also, the piece is situated between two billboards.

The text on the box reads ‘LARGE GRAFFITI SLOGAN (some assembly required)’, a witty reference to off the peg anarchy. The punk character with his distinctive five pointed Mohican haircut was previously featured in a painting on display at the Banksy Versus Bristol Museum Summer Show called ‘Don’t Forget Your Scarf’.

More photos:

photos:
banksy_croydon: romanywg
Ikea & Don’t Forget: artofthestate.com

Touring an archaeological dig site, you generally expect a glimpse of antiquities a little more antediluvian than a television antenna, a seven-inch single, a tailfin and a rotary-dial telephone. But an odd excavation site that recently opened to the public on Governors Island purports to offer just that: artifacts not of the Mesoamerican but of the midcentury variety, about 1954.

That is the year, at least according to Geert Hautekiet, the man in charge of exhibiting the site, that the United States Army, which then controlled the island, ordered a small, obscure civilian community there to be evacuated during the approach of a dangerous electrical storm. All of the buildings and houses in the town, Mr. Hautekiet said, were then inexplicably buried under sand by the military, which later appeared to deny that the village had ever existed.

The town, known as Goverthing — which strangely has never appeared on any New York City historical maps or been noted by a single historian — is said to have been stumbled upon during recent demolition work on the island, which New York City and New York State have jointly controlled since 2003, seeking to develop it as a recreational, historic and artistic destination.

It was then, the story goes, that a team of Belgian archaeologists was summoned to uncover pieces of the unlikely — indeed, almost unbelievable — community that, before it was evacuated, numbered only 29 residents, many of Belgian and French descent, whose livelihood centered on a small factory in town that capitalized on a once-thriving international market for snow globes.

The archaeologist credited with supervising the dig could not be reached for comment this week, and the Web site of the Belgian university where he is said to work shows no record of him. But Mr. Hautekiet, who described himself as an exhibition specialist dispatched from Antwerp to oversee the display of the site — he has a long background in unconventional guerrilla theater and sly conceptual art in Belgium — recently showed a reporter some of the more unusual items recovered.

They included early, commercially unsuccessful snow globes, like one depicting a small boy being chased by two polar bears, and various implements that seem to have been used for protection against birds, which he said were at one time a scourge of the townspeople. (The label alongside one such item in the artifacts section of the dig — a metal scrotum cover for men — surmises that it was worn primarily around “aggressive ambulatory birds such as geese.”)

Mr. Hautekiet said that as the dig has proceeded, details of Goverthing’s history have begun to emerge. The town originated, apparently, in the 17th century, as a sparsely populated settlement just off the coast of Governors Island, on a tiny island that was absorbed in 1909 when the bigger island was greatly enlarged with landfill. (Goverthing’s first known white settler, Frederick Van Der Keylen, a Dutch ship hand accidentally left behind during an expedition, lived alone there as an “embittered hermit” until his death, Mr. Hautekiet said; the tiny island, he added, was later settled by northern French colonists.)

For visitors to the site, what appear to be the remains of a church and of the old snow-globe plant are visible, including the remarkably well-preserved tops of the factory’s silos, which are crowned by signs indicating that one was used to stockpile artificial snow, and the other the water used to fill the globes.

A gas station said to have been operated by a Spanish immigrant and his wife, a striking local chanteuse known at the Nightingale, is also visible, with a Wurlitzer jukebox still in working condition inside. The backs of three partly buried cars can be seen nearby.

The site also includes a number of sculpturelike apparatuses for scaring off birds, the result — according to what Mr. Hautekiet said the archaeologists have pieced together — of a troubling period in the town’s history in 1953 called the Plague of Birds. A monthslong infestation was apparently caused when the Spanish gas station owner, distraught that his wife had left him for a trucker, built hundreds of intricate and alluring bird houses and placed them around his business, where they can now be seen.

Mr. Hautekiet, 41, a large, friendly man with a seemingly endless supply of facts about the town, said that all attempts to locate former residents of Goverthing had been fruitless, though one — the tavernkeeper — had been found in a retirement home in Brooklyn, where he has refused for decades to speak of the town, its uneasy relationship with the Army or its demise.

Since the site was opened to the public — it is accessible Thursday through Sunday at $5 for adults and $3 for children, and has a Web site, archdig.wordpress.com — most visitors have said they found it fascinating, Mr. Hautekiet said, though some “skeptics” have questioned whether the dig is authentic, and how such a town could have completely escaped notice by historians for centuries. One entry in the site’s guest book says simply, “I’m confused.” Another says: “Fake cars. Don’t believe it.” Another visitor writes, defiantly, “I still believe.”

Asked whether anyone should doubt the exhibition’s veracity, Leslie Koch, president of the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation — which is promoting the New Island Festival, a Dutch performance and art extravaganza that wraps up on the island this weekend, though the dig continues through Oct. 11 — would say only that “many people have imagined the future for Governors Island, and we think it’s also wonderful to imagine the island’s past.”

What historical lessons might such an archaeological find impart to contemporary New Yorkers? Mr. Hautekiet seemed uncharacteristically at a loss for words when the question was put to him. Perhaps that life is always uncertain, a visitor suggested? Or, more specifically, that civilians should not trust the military?

“Those are both good lessons,” he said.

“And also, maybe, that you should never trust Belgians,” he added, smiling. “But that’s off the record.”

It might not sound like the crime of the century. But the theft of a box of pencils has reignited a bitter feud in the art world.

The pencils in question are actually worth £500,000 and form part of a £10million Damien Hirst art installation.

They were taken as a prank by a 17-year-old graffiti artist known as Cartrain, who claims he had no idea the ‘Faber Castell dated 1990 Mongol 482 Series’ were in fact rare and worth that amount.

He is currently on bail, and, if convicted, will be responsible for one of the highest value modern art thefts in Britain.

The incident took place in July when Cartrain visited Hirst’s Pharmacy exhibit at Tate Britain in Central London.

He apparently used the opportunity to take revenge on Hirst, who had reported Cartrain to the Design and Artists Copyright Society after he created a number of collages based on Hirst’s diamond-encrusted skull, For The Love Of God.

The online gallery selling the collages eventually surrendered the artwork and Cartrain was ordered to pay back the £200 profits he had made.

Having apparently swiped the pencils, Cartrain then made a ‘wanted’ poster, which read: ‘For the safe return of Damien Hirst’s pencils I would like my artworks back that DACS and Hirst took off me in November.

‘It’s not a large demand. Hirst has until the end of this month to resolve this or on July 31 the pencils will be sharpened. He has been warned.’

Cartrain said: ‘I went to Tate Britain and by chance had a golden opportunity to borrow a packet of pencils from the Pharmacy exhibit.

‘That same day I made up a fake police appeal poster advertising that the pencils had been removed from the Tate and if anyone had any information they should contact the police.

‘A few weeks later I went out and I returned home to find out that the art and antiques squad from Scotland Yard had called round with a warrant for my arrest.’

He is on bail until September 14.

Police also arrested his 49-year-old father on suspicion of harbouring the pencils, although he was subsequently released.

Cartrain, from Leytonstone, East London, started as a graffiti artist aged 12.

His distinctive ‘tag’ – stylised signature – can be spotted across the capital.

For The Love Of God, which was produced by Hirst in 2007, is a platinum cast of a human skull encrusted with 8,601 diamonds.

It cost more than £14million to make and sold at auction for £50million.

Three weeks after unveiling the sculpture, Hirst himself was accused of plagiarising its design.

John LeKay, a British artist based in New York, claimed he had been making similar jewel-encrusted skulls since 1993.

Hirst said at the time: ‘I hope it makes the people who see it feel good, that it’s uplifting, that it takes your breath away.’

Related links about Damien Hirst

Coinciding with the last week of his show at the Bristol City Museum which has seen crowds queuing for up to 6 hours to view the exhibition, Banksy has created a new piece on the streets – or should that be roofs – of London.

The ‘Highwayman’ as it’s been dubbed has been painted on one of 2 towers that sit on the roof of ‘Great Western Studios’, a building that up until recently housed 140 artists and creative businesses. The building was previously a railway warehouse. The ‘Highwayman’ is situated next to the A40(M) Westway, a major highway that runs through West London.

The image which is over 20ft tall depicts a rearing horse with a capped rider holding a paint roller aloft. He’s also wearing a hat and scarf that are the trademarks of the infamous English rogue and highwayman Dick Turpin. On the back of the tower the words ‘LIVE FAST DRIVE SLOW” have been written and the 2 towers have been daubed with pink paint including a love heart with an arrow piercing it, most likely applied by filling a fire extinguisher with paint. The best view of the artwork is from the Westway.

Banksy has used a similar image previously, which is referred to as ‘Roller Zorro’, as it’s derived from an image of Zorro holding his sword aloft on a rearing horse. Banksy’s version replaces his sword with a paint roller. It was first seen at his 2006 ‘Barely Legal’ show in Los Angeles as a small sketch displayed alongside other sketches.

It was then seen again in 2008 during an open day held by Pictures On Walls, the gallery that now produces and sells all of Banksy’s prints. The image was silk-screened onto t-shirts, cardboard and canvases brought along by visitors to the open day.

There’s also a version of the image on wood at the Bristol exhibition.

photos of Highwayman by Romanywg

The Head House!

Spy Emerson, D.H.R. Top Producer #1, has taken affordable artist housing to The Next Level. This is the ne’plus ultra in the working artists’ portable pied-à-terre domestic arsenal.

This coup d’état in chic urban living is perfect for the times when you either can’t make it back to your Cardboard Home or when you just need to take a break. With the Head House, you’re never far from home. And like its bigger sibling, it features a flexible floor plan, green construction, and passive heating!

The Head House is an earth friendlier and even more ecologically responsible alternative to the stately Cardboard Home. Think you can’t afford a Summer Home? Think again! This house makes time sharing a breeze. For instance, when not in primary use, this Head House serves as a shelter for at risk kittens, a nesting site for finches, a community resource center and playhouse for rodents, and at night, a cozy roosting place for bats.

Come, be a part of the exceptional lifestyle that cultivates creative thinking, now… contact any of our agents to purchase.

thanks Larry

Sated with free beer and wine, and plenty of it, the toga-wearing crowd flung microwaved tomatoes and morsels of baguette into the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park reflecting pool in Queens.

“Boats!” they yelled. “Boats! Boats! Boats!”

This was an art exhibition — a phrase that perhaps conjures a more subdued event. But the art, “Those About to Die Salute You,” involved moving humans, boats on water and those tomatoes. It was the creation of Duke Riley, whose work skews aquatic, fluid and unpredictable: He once built a wooden submarine, floated it too close to the Queen Mary 2, and was arrested.

Here was his vision for Queens on Thursday night: a Roman-style naval battle among representatives of New York museums. Teams from museums in four boroughs faced off, paddling in boats built from recycled materials like reeds and salvaged Styrofoam. They dressed in cardboard armor and painted their faces, wielding swords and shields.

At least, that was the general idea. There were no dress rehearsals; there was no script.

“I have no idea exactly what’s going to go on,” Mr. Riley said before the performance. “There’s a lot of variables and wild cards. I just hope everything goes smoothly and safely, and nobody gets too badly hurt.”

In the end, it was a sopping melee, very messy, and any visions of careful naval strategies quickly dissolved as the crowd let its enthusiasm run away with itself. But it was art. And nobody got too badly hurt.

The idea evolved over the course of a year, Mr. Riley said. He had been thinking for some time about naumachia, battles staged in flooded coliseums to entertain ancient Romans. When he was asked to do an exhibition for the Queens Museum of Art, which hosted the event, “everything just kind of clicked,” he said.

By Thursday afternoon, the reflecting pool was filled with 70,000 gallons of water for the first time since the 1964 World’s Fair. The teams, from the Queens Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Bronx Museum of the Arts and El Museo del Barrio in Manhattan, were putting on their war paint and cardboard armor. A museum intern had spent the day microwaving tomatoes, seeking to achieve the perfect consistency for throwing.

“It’s one of these things where you’re taking a certain degree of risk with a battle like this,” said Tom Finkelpearl, executive director of the Queens Museum of Art.

At the museum on Thursday night, wine and beer were flowing. Toga-wearing guests packed thigh-to-thigh were shouting over the rock band playing behind them. The party started just past the sign that stated, “No Food or Drink Beyond This Point.”

Spectators moved to the reflecting pool, sitting quietly at first. As the wait stretched to an hour, they grew restless. The tomatoes, in boxes waiting for the performance, proved too much of a temptation, and soon people on the two sides of the reflecting pool were throwing the microwaved tomatoes back and forth. A few onlookers unfurled umbrellas to protect themselves.

Then the audience began jumping into the pool as the Queens Museum of Art boat emerged. An announcer grabbed the microphone: “Let’s get it started!” he said.

But that ship, as they say, had sailed.

“Get out of the pool! Get out of the water!” he yelled, trying to regain order and using several expletives. “We’re not starting till you’re out of the pool!”

The ensuing battle resulted in the disintegration of most of the boats. The audience refused to stay corralled, jumping in the water to hurl tomatoes and climb onto the boats. A giant pig-shaped boat, representing Manhattan, emerged mostly unscathed. The Queens boat collapsed completely. The Brooklyn boat, a battleship, disintegrated. The Staten Island Ferry made an appearance.

The Queen Mary 2, Mr. Riley’s old target, was the last to emerge, and it was promptly set aflame, driving the spectators from the water. Then Roman candles began spitting, followed by fireworks. Some burst overhead; others seemed to land almost a little too close, and the audience ducked. The flames reached almost three feet high before the boat was tipped into the water and the fire extinguished.

“You never really know what’s going to happen,” Mr. Riley said after the performance. “Nobody got hurt, and I’m not in jail.”

Afterward, the audience appeared enthused but slightly shell-shocked. Some praised the participatory nature of the art; others were still recovering from the fireworks.

“It was radical, super radical,” said Catherine Harine Connell of Brooklyn. “The fact that it was in a public park in Queens. … It was free form, but still organized.”

Ms. Connell was euphoric; others were alarmed.

“That was wilder than I ever would have expected,” said Dorothy Trojanowski, who added that the event was “out of control.”

“The danger factor was,” she said, pausing, “stimulating.”

As everyone piled out of the pool, leaving debris from the boats behind, an announcer promised a Roman orgy at the museum afterward.

Given the night’s events, he might have been serious.

Last month, a mysterious Porsche shooting brake appeared on the Web. It arrived courtesy of a camera phone video, which showed what looked to be a test mule, clad in black primer, parked on the sidewalk of what looked to be an industrial area — of Germany?

Autoblog wrote:

Looking something like the product of a one-night-stand between said Porsche and either a Volvo C30 or an original BMW Z3-based M Coupe, the supposed mule is wearing all black, but apart from that, it appears to be undisguised. Of course, this could be a one-off made by someone with no official connection to Porsche (Rinspeed, anyone?), but then again, it could be a harbinger of a model to come.

The news spread like wildfire, reaching other enthusiast sites. Some were excited by the prospects of a Porsche wagon. Others were skeptical. “It also strikes us as odd that the only evidence comes in the form of an ultra-short video (the kids are doing crazy things with their computer machines these days),” wrote Jordan Brown of CarandDriver.com. “But if this is indeed Porsche’s doing, you can bet more sightings will follow.”

More sightings did appear. The first resembled a screen shot taken from the upcoming Forza 3 video game for the Xbox 360. The other image seemed to show the Porsche in the middle of a photo shoot, possibly for the Frankfurt auto show in September.

But there will be no debut at the show, just as there is no car. The Porsche shooting brake is a hoax — a parting gag gift created by TopGear.com America, which let go of its editorial team this week. According to Devin Johnson, a BBC spokesman, TopGear.com has migrated to BBCAmerica.com, and the company “is continuing to explore opportunities for a U.S. version.” The viral scheme was overseen by the site’s former editor, Jared Holstein, and was executed by summer interns.

The fake Porsche was designed by Matt DuVall, a digital arts student at Savannah College of Art and Design, using Maya, a 3D animation program. He pulled a 3D rendering of a Porsche Cayman off the Internet and modified it into a small two-door wagon, called a shooting brake.

“It’s definitely a polarizing design,” Mr. Holstein said. “Some people love it, some hate it, but we wanted it to feature enough cues from the Panamera’s design vocabulary to pass as a potential Porsche product. So we did spend a good bit of time on that part.” The Panamera is the new Porsche four-door.

Mr. Holstein said they were also fastidious with the details, applying Porsche development wheels, black tape on the front headlights and a front bumper that mimics other Porsche mule photos. Even the license plate number was selected to resemble proper Porsche development plates.

Eventually, the fake shooting brake was rendered in HD and then downgraded in size and quality to appear as if it were shot with a camera phone and output in FinalCut Pro. The video clip was shot in an alley in Brooklyn. An Italian soundtrack was added to give things a European twist. “Matt shot HDR to get the reflections right on the car, which meant shooting 360-degrees with a still camera with a fish-eye lens mounted and stitching it all together in Photoshop,” Mr. Holstein said.

Once the video was created, TopGear.com America planted the video, and that responsibility fell to another summer intern, Jon Masters, a master’s student in media studies at the New School in New York City. He placed links to the video in Porsche enthusiast sites, alerted sites like Autoblog and Jalopnik and inserted a fake screen shot from Forza 3 into the requisite fan forums. “It was originally posted on a Czech Forza fan site — in Czech to add a layer of deception and plausibility,” Mr. Holstein said. Christopher Gifford, an editorial assistant for BBC America, provided opinion on how well the strategies would work, and also pointed other Web sites to the images.

But why did they do it? “It’s never been done before,” Mr. Holstein said. “We love wagons. And we wanted to see what we could accomplish with a high degree of sophistication, but with only a conservative effort.”

Mr. Holstein also said that the project highlights a larger, evolving dynamic of the media environment. “Particularly the increasing — and often frightening — convergence of reality and simulation, especially the unlimited potential for its use/abuse in a hyper-mediated culture,” Mr. Masters added. “Is virtual reality an effective test bed for future design concepts, especially when married with the capabilities of future gaming software?”

While TopGear.com America didn’t fool everybody, it did fool some, and it did generate discussion. And for those who looked very carefully, there was a small clue in the video to hint at who was behind the hoax.

“There was also a little Easter egg that no one picked up on. There is a Stig helmet partially visible in the rear hatch at about the nine-second mark. Perhaps too hidden,” Mr. Holstein said, referring to the helmet worn by a character on the show.

Sour Grapes Obituary: How Karl Malden ruined my life
by Michael Dare

It’s completely personal. Between me and him. Karl Malden fucked up my life, he really did. No matter how much I dig his talent – and I certainly do, he’s a Strasberg acting God, and I studied with Strasberg in New York in 1970 where he was treated as such, so I know – Malden is still the premiere putz in my professional life. Or was. He’s dead now. Great. Now I get to be pissed off at a dead man.

I know you’re sick of celebrity obituaries in this horrible week of death and chaos, but this one’s different. At this point I’ve got to pin you to the wall like a drunk in a Hollywood bar, slurring my speech, hot breath in your face, “You don’t understand, no matter how good he was in Baby Doll, I’m glad he’s dead, that bastard…”

Luckily, I’m not that drunk. Here’s what happened 20 years ago:

The 80s was my decade as film critic for the L.A. Weekly. While trashing their films in print, I met most of Hollywood, and I considered it my duty to photograph and distort it all. In a storage locker in Desert Hot Springs there are thousands of ridiculous SX-70 Polaroid portraits of the famous, the insane, and the dead. They’ve never been published and rarely been seen by anyone except the subjects themselves – who usually expressed either glee or abject horror. Due to copyright law, or maybe just good old fashioned good taste, I’ve had an incredibly hard time getting my work shown in public.

In 1989 a horrible mistake was made and I was voted in as a member of the Los Angeles Film Critic’s Association. Meetings in the incredible homes of other film critics was truly inspiring. I was in a profession that could lead to the good life. One day, just for fun, I brought a book of my Polaroids to a meeting where it was eventually passed to Doug Edwards, who turned out to be the curator of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the ones who give the Oscars. I had no idea. He asked me if I’d like to have a show in their lobby. Holy shit. The Academy lobby leads to the Samuel Goldwyn Screening room, which is used almost every night for preview screenings and premieres of major films. It’s a perfect location to be seen by all of Hollywood. Total legitimacy at last. You bet I said yes.

We picked 250 images for a mammoth show. Fifty would be blown up to poster size, the rest displayed in eight groupings of 25 original Polaroids. My opening date was Sept. 18, 1989. I met with their PR firm and they drew up a press release.

The Polaroid Corporation agreed to sponsor the opening night party, and we expected the press to show up to photograph celebrities standing in front of their portraits. Entertainment Tonight, here I come. My career was made. The anti-Annie Liebowitz.

Then the Academy voted in a new president, Karl Malden, who took one look at my pictures, cancelled the press release, and said “Wait a minute. Do we have releases from all of these people?”

Of course I didn’t. I was a film critic for a local paper. The subjects of the show were public figures whose pictures I was literally invited to take at press conferences. I’ve been assured by the constitution of the United States that nobody needs permission to display a public figure’s image on their wall. Nevertheless, Malden decided that my pictures were weird and that some people might not like them. He declared that no pictures would be shown without signed releases from the subjects.

Okee doke. No problem. That week, the Academy sent out black-and-white Xerox copies of my pictures to all of the subjects themselves, along with a letter asking for permission to display the picture in their lobby. The Xeroxes were atrocious so I knew this was a bad idea, but I couldn’t stop it.

Some of my subjects know my work. I was sure that Emilio Estevez would say yes because one of my photos was once spied on his refrigerator. But I was concerned about people like Ted Turner or Hugh Hefner or Menachem Golan. To them, I would have been just another schmuck paparazzi who took their picture one day and disappeared into the crowd. What would they think when they opened their mail to find ugly Xeroxes of their faces distorted into hideous mutants, along with a letter asking permission for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to make an enormous blow-up of the monstrosity to display in a popular public place where all their friends went?

66 people said yes, 22 said no, and 72 didn’t respond. A lot of the answers surprised me. Hefner said yes! Golan & Turner both said no. Steve Martin and Whoopi Goldberg said yes.

Robin Williams said no, even though he’s handsome and not distorted at all in the picture.

Don Siegel said yes, Clint Eastwood said no, and they were both in the same shot! (Not this one.)

But what did it matter who said no. My reaction was “Great, let’s go. 66 pictures is plenty for a show.” When’s the last time you saw a gallery show with 66 goddam photographs. More than enough. Doug Edwards agreed and the blowups were actually ordered, but then the word came down from Malden. The whole thing was cancelled. 66 yeses somehow confirmed in his mind that the show must not go on. It was a question of whether the glass was half empty or half full, though 22 noes is only a third of the yeses. He was worried about the people who didn’t respond. (Huh? Maybe they wouldn’t like the ugly pictures of other people who gave their permission?) Also, some of the negatives were big negatives. Harry Dean Stanton not only said no, he threatened to sue the Academy if they displayed my picture of him. (On what possible grounds? Malicious surreal facial reconstruction of a celebrity in an artwork?) Here’s the shot.

In any case, Doug and I got the runaround. The Academy was enthusiastic about the show, they looked forward to doing it, some time, maybe the next spring, unless they got that new air conditioning system, which would mean the lobby might be torn up, so they might do the show in another location, or possibly later in the year.

Doug had a suggestion. “Let’s just wait for the Academy to vote in a new president,” he said.

Two years later, it happened, Malden was out on his ass, and Doug re-submitted the show to the new president, Robert Rehme, and he assured me it was a shoe-in, asking me to call the following week.

The very next Monday, I opened the Los Angeles Times and was stunned to read Doug Edward’s obituary. He had died of AIDS. I didn’t even know he was sick.

The Academy was in turmoil. Nobody knew who would replace him or where my portfolio was, and so I waited. On March 10, 1993, four years after the whole process got started, I got my portfolio back from the Academy along with the following letter.

Dear Mr. Dare,

I recognize your frustration in losing the chance for an exhibition of your work, but I’ve discussed the situation with Bob Rehme and Ric Robertson and we really don’t see a place here for your show. The problem isn’t just the anticipated emphasis on in-house-generated exhibitions in the near future. Call us Philistines, but the hard fact is that no one here but Doug had ever been able to generate much enthusiasm for your photos as a subject for the Academy’s lobby. With Doug gone, you’ve lost your only real advocate. However disappointing this news is, I’m hoping you’ll find a straightforward assessment of the situation more useful that one that might encourage sure-to-be disappointed hopes. I hope you’ll find another venue.

Sincerely,

Bruce Davis, Executive director

I could blame Bruce Davis or Bob Rehme or the Los Angeles Times for delivering the bad news. Harry Dean Stanton, you got some splaining to do. Hell, I could even blame AIDS. Stupid fucking disease that ruined my career. But I tend to blame Karl Malden because everything was fine till HE butted in his potato proboscis. Even though Harry Dean Stanton’s reply proved he was right in starting the vetting process, that’s no excuse for cancelling the whole show. You just drop the offending photo.

Somewhere in the Academy archives there are 66 signed releases from major celebrities giving the Academy, and ONLY the Academy, permission to display my pictures in public. Yeah, that’s right. I can’t even use them to get a publishing deal. Nobody else will ever be able to compile such a list. You got Baryshnikov’s address?

It’s not often you can point your finger at an individual who deliberately called your career as a celebrity dickwad to a grinding halt. Maybe that’s a stupid thing to aspire to, but I can’t help imagining the photos I’d be cranking out now if things had gone another way. Maybe I wouldn’t have gained all this weight. It’s Karl Malden’s fault!

Sorry Karl. Yeah, you were in On the Waterfront, and you and your method pals got me to New York for a whole series of adventures, but now when Marlon Brando says “You don’t understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody instead of a bum, which is what I am,” it’s got a whole other meaning. It’s me talking to you.

photos: Michael Dare

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