an abundant harvest of sun...

some images of a small 1950 catalog of the work of lee mullican, from his first new york show, at the willard gallery. the essay was written by fellow dynaton painter and publisher of dyn, wolfgang paalen... here are some excerpts from his text:

...it has been a fecund year for mullican, an abundant harvest of sun... one of the most inspired of these pictures is called 'ascension'. it makes me think that there ought to be an angel for painters. not a guardian angel nor the final one of the very last judgement; in any case, this angel would not carry a trumpet. for all i know, he might not even be on the very best of terms with the high brass of heavens - and i would believe him equally indifferent towards the run of the mill saints and sinners. he would travel ever incognito, a kind of 'eminence grise' of the spirit. some evening, he might be seen in a silent country, looking over the shoulders of men who sit around the late glow of dying embers. when the embers crumble, one of the men, without a word, would let drift an eagle-feather into the warm air over the ashes, where it would stay afloat for an unforgettable moment. and i dare to think the angel would smile in his wisdom, how well this gesture weighs on the scales of eternity... that angel might also be seen walking in and out of certain paintings, at dusk and dawn.

there's a great interview with mullican here.

when cicadas sound like ragas and ragas look like cicadas...

yesterday, a friend of mine sent me a link to a website related to the sound of some red wing grasshoppers we had encountered in marfa, in september. (they were some of the most beautiful insects i've ever seen). while the site had some incredible sounds, there was also an image of a spectrogram of a chorus of cicadas recorded in arizona.(this is the top image)

when i took a look at the spectrogram, it immediately reminded me of some of the later paintings of lee mullican, one of my favorite painters, who i've written about before. of course, the connection seemed a kind of visual coincidence until i discovered a painting of mullican's from 1962 called evening raga, in which mullican has pulled out all the stops in trying to represent the spectral qualities of indian music. certainly it is not much of a stretch to suggest that the sounds of crickets, grasshoppers, and/or cicadas are equivalent to an evening raga, perhaps not in strict musical terms, but certainly in terms of a listening experience.

the bottom image is another of mullican's paintings, this one called guardian of the modern, from 1979. mullican's work seemed to become more and more fragmented and hallucinatory in the mid-late 70's, and again the multiplicity of tiny parts spread out over a field seems almost a map-like as a kind of topographical image of insects in a field, sounding.

in the caption for the spectrogram, the scientist says that "some are singing and some are just clicking... they emit their sounds over a very broad band and at high volume all along that spectrum. This no doubt accounts for the almost painful nature of their trilling. Very high frequencies coupled with very high volume leaves my ears ringing!"

on many levels mullican's paintings could be viewed similarly, as having such an extraordinary visual quality of intense color in high volume and a density of tiny lines, reflecting a kind of visual equivalent to high frequency sound.

a sad day for small music...

"when i went to a garden in okayama, a crane landed and suddenly gave a loud cry. i was surprised that a sound like that could exist. and then the silence afterwards: in complete harmony in the space. then i understood the beauty of japanese gardens."
rolf julius, 1992

life and death are certainly strange things. last weekend i picked up a copy of a recent cd release of rolf julius' music for the ears and small music no. 1 - both ecordings from 1979. on monday, i spent the entire day in the studio painting, with the cd repeating for about 10 hours. every time i took a break from painting, i sat and listened to these stunningly beautiful and simple works in their entirety, and i realized how much his work has always inspired me.

when i first started to make "sound art" i wanted to be rolf julius. the first time i met him, for a small festival in berlin, i ran into him in a hallway, where it had looked a bit like he had dropped a small suitcase on the floor and all of his gear had fallen out of it in disarray. he was standing there bent over looking at the small speakers, wires, and small cassette players as if reading a map. after standing next to him for a few minutes, i realized that sound was also present, barely audible, and that this was his installation. it was a wonderful first meeting, like being kids and looking for small colorful insect in the grass.

his work always had this natural feeling of happenstance on the surface, and then it started to work its immersive magic on you. it was the least pretentious work i've ever encountered - certainly more "lower case" in terms of its presence than i could ever achieve; and as an artist and human being this humility was also always present. he was incredibly generous to me, not only over the years that we exhibited together, but most importantly when i was just beginning, and he simply treated me like an another artist.

monday, immersed in these two early pieces of his, i spent a lot of time sitting and listening. at one point i went over to my desk and started to write him a letter, as i realized how long i had been listening to his work in its various forms, marveling at his drawings, his writings, and just how hugely inspirational his work has been to me - not only since the beginning of my making sound works, but continually, still, now. i wanted to tell him that his work was like a beacon to me - like the painters myron stout, alfred jenson, arthur dove, lee mullican, who always kick my ass and push me forward, julius' work is always there as a kind of measuring stick, something to live up to. unfortunately i never finished the letter.

these early works of his contain the core of everything he would do from that point forward, and i wanted to thank him for the continued tactile nature of his sound, its fragility, its presence and absence, its repetition and abstraction, but mostly its minimal presence and some undefinable quality of the organic and natural, as well as how composition too can be humble. so many times rolf called his work "small music" and it wasn't bullshit artspeak... he really meant it...

so, this morning when i received some emails of rolf's passing, my mind went to those little pieces i remember first hearing at e/static, small tea cups with little lids and tiny speakers inside - so one could sit with the object, and with the lid off the sound barely audible but constant, and then to place the lid on the cup to silence the sound. its a very sad day for sound art, and it is a very sad day for ears.

i hope anyone who is unfamiliar with rolf's work will use this sad day to discover his quietly magical world, and for those of us who were lucky enough to know him, i know we will all continue to be inspired by the works he has left behind. his sound works will continue to grow ever more present, while his physical presence will certainly be missed.

that berman tug...

every year or so i find myself gravitating back towards the work of wallace berman, spending, once again, a few weeks looking at images and trying to understand why his work continues to resonate so deeply. i can't remember the first time i saw the work, but it was most likely in the early-1980's, and it is also likely that my response to the verifax works had something to do with them being an obvious precedent for the xerox aesthetic of the punk zines and fliers that were already a major part of my world (and in fact, one of my first projects in art school circa 1982, was a series of surrealist and dada influenced xerox collages, using images of walruses and elephants, guns and military images, comic books... and porn... what do you expect... i was 18!).

the recent (and incredibly excellent) berman/heinecken show at the armory center in pasadena, speaking in tongues, pushed my view of berman's work to a whole other level (and similarly, as i hardly knew heinecken's work beforehand, the discovery of his work was also a revelation). not since the 1996 semina culture show at the santa monica museum, had i been able to see so much of berman's work in a single space...

as may rolled around, that annual "berman tug",  had me returning to the 1992 exhibition catalog "support the revolution", which contains a bunch of wonderful texts, all of which i re-read. the two paragraphs below are from a much longer text by eduardo lipschutz-villa, and they place some of berman's concerns within a number of areas that i feel connected to:

"... it has been said that his [berman's] work deals in codes pertaining to the kabbalah, an occult theosophy of rabbinical origin transmitted verbally through generations. the kabbalah is based upon an esoteric intrepretation of the hebrew scriptures. it follows then that berman's work is often nonsensical when one tries to read it as hebrew. and yet, it's difficult to say; kabballah is not something you just learn. extracted and distilled from lengthy discussions held among spiritual experts concerning the writings of the talmud, one cannot simply learn the kabbalah over a period of years. however, there are two important considerations we can discuss here. one is the use of typography as a formal mode of expression, which could in fact relate to the yetzirah, a doctrine stating that god created the universe through letters, that the world is rooted in language, thus in alphabet systems. learning and understanding these alphabet systems is essential if one wishes to get closer to the essence of being. berman stated many times, "art is love is god".

the other consideration is that berman understood the basic concept of kabbalah and used it as a point of departure. his interest in it probably stemmed from early investigations into the occult. in the fifties, berman was involved with the california occultist cameron. his personal attraction to mysticism is clear. at the same time, he was uncomfortable with negativity associated with occultism. as though recanting his early involvement, berman searched for the positive side of to mysticism. i believe this is what led him to encounter the kabbalah. without fully understanding it, he embraced it conceptually and devised his own codes. understandably energized by this new system, berman launched his crusade."

of course, there's a ton of departure points in the excerpt, and of course, a relationship to language and systems (or language systems) and codes is, obviously, something that has fueled my work for years; but there is, of course, more to it. in the late 80's i met with a rabbi for the first (and only) time and while i spoke to him about my work, he offered me some insight into the kabbalah and some of the ways that letters and numbers came together (in ways that seemed, at least to me, like a kind of word alchemy). it was a brief conversation, but like the best talk, rather than offering me a clear path, it opened the door towards fumbling experiments, wonder and wandering... and so i began to experiment with words, letters and numbers more deeply.

when villa says that the kabbalah is "not something you just learn. extracted and and distilled from lengthy discussions..." it sounds very much like something one could say about zen - and how in both cases although words do have built-in distinct and specific meanings - they also remain slippery, unfixed and most importantly, open always to interpretation, and hence, there is no true end point... and it would seem that such situations are about extending the conversation, rather than reaching a fixed destination.

i don't know about berman, but for myself, this is the way that an artwork offers most, and my aspirations for my own objects would be to offer some of the same... to create works that have the ability to reveal and deny continually, so that conversation and experience evolves through both a generous and rigorous path (for both the maker AND the audience) and has the ability to transcend an end point - or a specific interpretation. when villa says "understanding these alphabet systems is essential if one wishes to get closer to the essence of being", again, i am struck by the idea of "getting closer" as a state of mind rather than a definitive truth.

when i was making paintings with visible letters and words, i was very interested in the idea of offering an object with a perceived meaning or statement, but which would not resolve into a kind of anticipated dead end. it was a constructed situation where language would suggest specified meaning, but that meaning would not resolve comfortably, and so one would need to re-think it - or more appropriately, to re-look it... to be in the work, rather than to stand outside of it and try to figure it out. i was not after an experience that simply offers a meaning, as much as i was trying to instigate a meaningful experience.

certainly, berman's works exploit concrete and recognizable images, although it would not be a stretch to say that many of the works themselves are certainly abstract - even the radios (like stepping stones) are a fixed framework for a series of images (or situations) - and much like poetry, are a framework for a series of experiences, interpretations, inventions, conversations.

i'm not sure why it has taken me years to think about berman's work in relation to jasper johns; and i'm kind of surprised that i haven't seen anything that connects their works. certainly in terms of graphic language rauschenberg would be a better match (especially in relation to graphic presence and multiplicity of images), but in terms of personal iconography, cultural artifacts, image power (and baggage) as well as personal narrative/biography, johns' work, especially from the 80's onwards, seems to embrace a similar hermetic and personal path... at least more so than rauschenberg's; and like berman, johns used images that were icons - and in that i mean using single images of cultural power that can also speak deeply personal/private way, in spite of the baggage. rather than offering puzzles to be "figured out", it seems to me that both berman and johns are taking charged objects or images and making them their own - shifting from the general to the private, and by somehow owning the image, remaking the image anew - and offering a multitude of new interpretations and relationships that such objects seemed incapable of owning. most of all i love how both of their works can be generous (opulent for eyes and minds) and hermetic (stubborn in terms of reveal) at the same time; and both artists' works seem to question the concrete end, as they seem to continually subvert expectations.

i suppose it is the mechanical reproduction in berman's work that has sporadically brought warhol into the conversation, yet i believe that much of that conversation revolves around the fact that warhol had an exhibition of soup cans at ferus, and both berman and warhol reveled in the repetition of images. but even though peter blake put berman into the collage on the cover of sgt. pepper, i find it difficult to see berman as a pop artist, in the same way i find it difficult to see ruscha as a pop artist (a much longer discussion). sure, the visual languages are compatible, but clearly berman's concerns and warhol's were coming from vastly different places - and perhaps the two extremes have a lot to do with the difference in the art cultures on the east coast and the west - warhol coming out the culture of advertising and pop, while berman being part of the jazz scene and the beats. (and i would love to see someone do a comparison of some of warhol's publications and berman's semina  - as well as their respective posters and book/record covers - as i think it would accentuate the different scenes tremendously).

i'm also a bit surprised that while the duchamp show at the pasadena museum is mentioned often in relation to berman, i haven't read anything about berman's relationship or knowledge of kaprow, who also had a show at the pasadena art museum at a time when berman could've known him. while kaprow seems to have been interested in spectacle (at least at that point in his work/life), berman's work always had an element of quiet (radios only existing in image, so that the images remain a grid of silences.)

last week, bill stern gave a great talk at lacma about california design called "what's so california about california design", and what was really interesting about the his take, was that he offered less of a timeline of great designer's greatest hits, and spoke more about how certain designs and aesthetic decisions were the products of specific local conditions and histories - exploring the reasons why design evolved in los angeles so differently than in new york. while reading about berman over the last few days, i began to think about some of the artists that berman didn't work with, but who also seem compatible with some of berman's ideas/concerns, and i started to think less about the beats (whom he knew of course) and serial imagery, and more about lee mullican and the other dynaton artists (whom, of course, i am a geeky fan of); but how, like berman, these artists made works that were also clearly an attempt to imbue on object with a deep belief in mystical experience... berman's and mullican's works are evidence of a belief that the making of an object (or the creation of an artwork) is both an ordinary act and a spiritual act, so that the human is, at times, the shaman; and the the shaman is also, at times, the human...