My father brought home FBI WANTED POSTERS his friend, the agent, gave him. I spread them out on the bed and frightened myself with aliases, previous crimes, and last known locations. What is white slavery? He has a bazooka? The square inked fingerprints looked like Neolithic patterns connected to the criminal’s inner mind. Photographs were specific yet vague. He could be at the music store, in line at the Frozen Dairy stand. If a car slowed down, surely one of the most wanted had followed me – possibly for hours.
Something connected these two works spatially and visually in my imagination. Maybe at first the subtle earth tones. I must have made three dozen digital collages for the GIF. Used many.
Pottery Vessel in the Form of a Ram, Unknown artist, Western Iran, 1350-800 B.C., Ceramic Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Juan Gris, 1912, Still Life With Flowers, oil on canvas, 112.1 X 70.2 cm Museum of Modern Art
I thought the gallery in Yorkville might be a good fit with my work. The owner wore a sophisticated black dress. Maybe ten years older than me. European. People told me my work was European. She told me to spread it on the floor. She sat in the only chair. After an hour and a half – of what I thought, seriously I did, was a meetings of the minds – she said, ‘Of course, you know you’re not a fine artist.’ I walked out of Yorkville more than a bit shaky – but dazzled by the timing of her coup de grace.
When I was a boy the radio played a country music song called Big John.
A song about a large miner. He was both ominous and mysterious.
He did not spend decades designing for the theatre.
One day deep underground Big John saved many miners when timbers collapsed.
Through the dust and the smoke of this man made hell Walked a giant of a man that the miners knew well Grabbed a saggin’ timber, gave out with a groan And like a giant Oak tree, he just stood there alone, Big John
He did not save himself.
Like a giant oak tree he stood there alone.
Singer songwriter Jimmy Dean performs Big John on live TV. Note the social realism stage design.
Big John was popular when the folk music revival was reaching its crescendo.
Country music and folk music both express blue collar or working class themes.
Nobody confused Big John with anti-fascist, anti-war German Dada artist & creator of photomontage, John Heartfield.
Heartfield survived the war and spent decades designing for the theatre.
Stage Set Design for David Berg’s ‘Mother Riba’ (Berlin, 1955)
The johnheartfield.com website is both exhibition and biographical historical document.
Heartfield moved through artistic phases and spent decades designing for the theatre.
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