(Note: On the evening of Tuesday, November 16, 1999, I delivered a lecture-cum-performance as part of the program celebrating Robert Heinecken's retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, "Robert Heinecken: Photographist." The talk interspersed with slides of photographs by Luke Batten showing me performing various actions in the MCA after closing hours, and audiotape segments -- as indicated -- of dialogues between Heinecken and myself. This was a one-time-only presentation, I suspect, since it was so specific to the occasion. A CD-ROM or DVD version of it has entered the planning stage. -- A. D. C.)
(As people enter the auditorium, Willie Nelson is singing "On the Road Again" over the sound system, and the videotape Spectacular Implosions -- showing the destruction by dynamite of large buildings -- is playing on the screen. Audio fades as the lecture commences.)
Since we're nearing Thanksgiving, let me start by giving thanks. Thanks to Robert Heinecken for producing the extraordinary body of work and related activity that's the subject of this Museum of Contemporary Art project, for inviting me to participate in it in several ways, and for allowing me to put words in his mouth, as I'm about to do -- a first, I suspect. Thanks to Lynne Warren for her deep commitment to Robert's work and her tireless curatorial and organizational effort on its behalf, and for her willingness to work with a sometimes intractable writer. Thanks to Robert Fitzpatrick and the MCA for sponsoring this extremely important and long overdue retrospective exhibit and catalogue, and for doing it right on all counts. Thanks to Michael Sittenfield and the museum's exhibition and publication design and installation crew for physically giving birth to this fine survey in its several forms. Thanks to Emilia Garcia Romeu of the MCA for arranging my visit here this week and handling assorted logistical matters connected with this talk. Thanks to Luke Batten for making the images that will accompany my presentation tonight. And thanks to Rich Norwood and Dennis O'Shea of the MCA's A-V department for helping me to actualize the collage that will follow. Can I ask you all to join me in giving these folks a round of applause?
Before I begin, let me remind you once again that there'll be a reception and book-signing right after the lecture, for which we hope you'll stay. Let me also explain that the videotape you've been watching represents, for me, the purest form of criticism in action -- and also one that, enviably, draws crowds who stand around and cheer the act of critical destruction.
The title of my talk tonight is "The Message in a Bottle is the Medium is the Message: or, On the Beach with Robert Heinecken in Y2K."
(Videotape off.)
Let's face it, people: The next two years look to be pretty much a wash. Don't expect to get a whole lot of work done, and you best bring a lunch. The folks who can't count assume that the present millenium ends at the very stroke of midnight this coming December 31st. Many of them also believe that the much-ballyhooed Y2K computer problem will initiate the collapse of civilization as we know it, which is to say western civ, so that ravening mobs of the people who don't count and don't care a fig for Dead White European Males and the received canon will overrun the world -- looting electronics stores, stealing high-end still and video cameras and TV sets and VCRs and boom-boxes and tape recorders and stereo tuners and mixing decks and laptop computers and other media accoutrements the way we all know they like to do (because television tells us so). Appropriating the highest technological achievements of western civ without so much as a by-your-leave, having themselves one big multimedia orgy, and not playing a whole lot of Schubert quartets, you betcha. That's irony for you.
If that scenario proves out, and no one ends it all by dropping the big one now (as some anticipate), and the messiah confounds all predictions by not showing up for some global Judge Judy All-Souls event (as still others hope and pray will happen), then either the National Guard and the paramilitary police forces will take over and try to maintain order or we'll descend rapidly into barbarism . . . or, confounding all estimations of their capabilities, the dreaded mongrel hordes will somehow keep the new world order's industrial infrastructure going and thereby maintain and control the communications networks. In which case we can be sure that they will not only forgive all Third-World debt but, as is their wont, will doubtless revise the canon -- or at least the play list -- so that instead of dead white European males like Enrico Caruso singing Puccini on your FM receiver the airwaves will vibrate with the music of dead African American women (Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Billie Holiday, let's say), and that would be just terrible, I'm sure you'd all agree.
They might even (oh, the horror! the horror!) miscegenate them DWEM, continuing their ingenious rap and hip-hop elaboration of Cubist and Dadaist strategies by sampling poor Johann Strauss and mixing him in with who knows what -- Celia Cruz, Ravi Shankar, Jimmy Yancey, Ludwig von Beethoven, and other people of color -- till the little children get all confused and no one can tell what's pure true haute culture any more. A matter of grave concern to us all, I'm sure, since Caruso and Puccini have so much more to say to us here in these United States right now than Lady Day and Duke Ellington and my uncle Ornette.
Of course, they may just be off by a year, those premature millenarians, since technically the millenium doesn't exactly end till January 1, 2001, a little over 13 months hence. We have to cut The Artist Formerly Known as Prince some slack here; "Party like it's 2000 or 2001" just doesn't have the pulse of "Party like it's 1999." But he's done his share of contributing to the confusion over just when this act of the drama ends and the next one -- if there is a next one -- starts. Still, the fact that we function within a base-ten mathematical system probably derived from counting on our fingers clearly escapes most of the citizenry, and we can't blame that on Mr. Symbol, now can we?
Remember the "give us back our 10 days" riots over the institution of the Gregorian calendar in 1582? Of course you do. In any case, the way I figure it, taking into account various calendric revisions during the past two millenia, plus the social obligation of allowing everyone a little wiggle room out of courtesy and on principle, the failure of the apocalypse to materialize will not actually begin to become really embarrassing to its prophets and proponents until the tail end of 2001. That's when some explanation will become increasingly obligatory, and rationales for the persistence of same-old same-old will proliferate like bunnies.
Myself, I plan to give the survivalists and televangelists till the post-Christmas white sales of 2002, two years and six weeks hence, and I urge you all to show them the same consideration. Meanwhile, no harm in erring on the side of caution by keeping a few spare gallons of spring water and a supply of extra canned goods in the cupboard, plus enough Sterno for a week or so and some fresh batteries for your portable TV and radio and cell phone and laptop, just in case all hell -- or all heaven -- does break loose. Couldn't hurt.
Finally, of course, the doomsayers may all be dead wrong. Could be that nothing much will happen next New Year's Day except a surge of calls to computer-repair shops and a leap in income for those savvy ones that choose to stay open on the holiday and charge triple overtime for house calls. Even if your credit card account gets electronically bollixed and some traffic lights fail to work, the oppressed multitudes may not suddenly break their bonds and sally forth in search of the bloody revenge to which they're surely entitled. And conceivably no one will descend from on high for a last reckoning -- though the kindly-faced gent in the purported photographic portrait of Jesus made with a camera obscura circa 30 A.D. and recently discovered by anthropologist Dr. Bradley Durbin1 looks inclined to let everyone off easy.
Maybe none of that will happen -- not this New Year's, not the New Year's after that, nor even the one after that. Maybe you'll end up drinking the bottled water, putting those "I Survived the Millenium" T-shirts and "Who's Afraid of Y2K?" gimme caps into mothballs for the eventual delight of your retro-fashion-conscious grandchildren twenty years hence, and giving the canned ravioli to some local shelter for the homeless, whose lot will not be noticeably improved by any of the above scenarios. In other words, we may find that two years down the pike it's business as usual, no accounting to face except the one that confronts us every single day. That's going to be really hard on some people. As I put it in a recent poem, "It's now the year 2002; what's a poor millenarian to do?"
Those of you heading off post-Christmas to your underground shelters and mountain cabins should consider packing a copy of C. P. Cavafy's poem, "Awaiting the Barbarians," with its poignant conclusion as the woebegone citizens of an unnamed city-state discover that they won't be overrun by the anticipated barbarian invaders for whom they'd prepared an elaborate ceremony of welcome and surrender. "What are we to do now?" Cavafy wrote. "At least those people provided some kind of solution."2 And remember, too, another great sage and soothsayer, Walt Kelly, whose Pogo told us decades ago that we have met the enemy and he is us.
Meanwhile, we've got the next two years to get through. I find myself thinking of On the Beach -- or, more precisely, of two works that share that title, and another that refers to its imagery. The best-known -- or am I dating myself here? -- is the 1959 film by Stanley Kramer, based on the 1957 novel by Nevil Shute, Hollywood's first grim imagining of atomic apocalypse, a melodrama of the outbreak of nuclear war as seen through the eyes of the crew of a U.S. Navy nuclear submarine. The second, probably less familiar, is another Hollywood product, the transplanted Canadian Neil Young's 1974 album, whose title song conjures an ominous but less specific, perhaps entirely interior devastation. "I went to the radio interview," Young sings, "but I ended up alone at the microphone. Now I'm living out here on the beach, but those seagulls, they're still out of reach. The world is turning; I hope it don't turn away." Finally, there's the closing scene of yet another dream from La-La Land, Franklin J. Schaffner's 1968 film Planet of the Apes, with Charlton Heston grieving on his knees before a shattered Statue of Liberty half-buried in the sand on the balmy shores of what was once New York Harbor.
I see some of you wondering, "Where is this all going?" Well, my talk tonight is meant to both honor Robert Heinecken and address his work. I didn't want to just read my catalogue essay at you; you have easy access to that, and it was written more for the page than the stage in any case. And I find it hard to imagine spending forty minutes up here reviewing Robert's career highlights and/or singing his praises while he sits there in the audience; the very thought of that, as I told him back in July, gives me the willies and probably makes him feel vaguely dead. Those of you who know Robert know exactly what he'd do in this situation: something experimental, something decidedly weird and possibly even outrageous, something with a potential for complete, irredeemable, and embarrassing failure. Mortification is good for the soul, as Robert's preacherman forebears would surely attest. So I decided to prepare something special for the occasion, something in his spirit, based on ideas pulled from Heinecken's work, around the theme of post-millenial culture and media education for the citizenry.
Can we have the lights down, please?
Here's the premise: Robert Heinecken spent a lot of time in Los Angeles, near if not on the beaches, but he's a full-fledged Chicagoan now. Chicago too has its beaches, of course. So I decided awhile back to ride out the first days of the miscalculated millenium prequel and the imminent attack of the Millenium Bug "on the beach" here and in the company of Heinecken, who combines a highly refined sense of the ironic, unusually acute cultural-predictor instincts, and the once finely-honed survival and combat skills of a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, with an almost complete innocence in regard to the computer.
I set up my visit with him and got here as planned, only to discover that Robert and his long-time accomplice, Joyce Neimanas, are nowhere to be found. Their place on Wabansia is locked up tight as a drum. Perhaps they've fled the crowds of worshipful pilgrims who've gathered around an apparent portrait of Jesus that's somehow materialized on the wall of their building. Anyhow, I was planning to stay at their house, by invitation. Now every restaurant and hotel is booked solid with millenium parties. I can't get in anywhere. The hawk is on the wing, so the streets are freezing cold and deserted. Even the cows that so recently thronged the streets have all been auctioned off.3 I'm completely on my own in this toddling town.
Now, right this moment as I start this, it's Friday, December 31, 1999 -- New Year's Eve six weeks from tonight. Cautious by nature, finding myself alone and homeless in Chicago, I've decided to squirrel myself away right here in the Museum of Contemporary Art -- the very last place that an anarchy-crazed underclass is likely to come looking for fun, trouble, or anything worth good money on the street. The museum's security staff figures it the same way; the Dobermans they normally unleash to prowl this place after hours are kennelled for the holidays. So I've hidden from the guards at closing time, sequestering myself in a small storage area to one side of Robert's exhibition, keeping mum and holding my water until everyone has gone and the doors are locked. I've brought in some take-out from TGIFriday's, which has renamed itself TGI-the-end-of-the-world for this occasion; after this, I'll make do with whatever's in the kitchen of the museum's restaurant -- probably baguettes, gâteaux, and such -- you know, art food.
Once I'm sure everyone's gone home I slip out and check the place over carefully to make sure I'm alone. Sure enough, the coast is clear. Due to popular demand, this Heinecken retrospective has been held over for a month. So all the work that's upstairs today is still up on the walls; and here I am, on the beach (near the beach, anyhow, if you'll grant me some poetic license) with Robert Heinecken's work. There's worse places to watch the odometer roll over, believe me. So I'm not unhappy at the way things have gone.
Then as I sit there, chomping on some buffalo wings, it starts to talk to me -- the work, that is. At first it's just a low murmur, barely audible over my tinnitus, a ringing in my right ear that's grown in volume over the past several years, now loud enough that I have to compartmentalize it to keep it from dominating my sensorium. I first assume it's just ambient noise. But then I realize that it's a voice, saying, over and over again, in varying tones and inflections, as if practicing, ". . . develops out of a synthesized facture, rather than an analytic one. . . . develops out of a synthesized facture, rather than an analytic one."
I think, this is crazy. But I seem to recognize the voice. So I turn on my tape recorder, just in case. And manage to record, for posterity, the He:/Me: dialogues. The sound quality isn't great, some problems with the signal-to-noise ratio (that's analog equipment for you). So I've transcribed most of them. But you'll hear a few, including the very first.
(Go to audiotape version.)
He: . . . develops out of a synthesized facture, rather than an analytic one. . . . develops out of a synthesized facture, rather than an analytic one. . . . develops out of a synthesized facture, rather than an analytic one.
Me: Robert? Is that you?
He: . . . develops -- Allan? What are you doing here?
Me: Don't you remember? I thought I'd hang out with you till Y2K blew over. I was hoping you'd be my spiritual guide and bodyguard combined. But you weren't home, so I came down here. Where are you?
He: Up on the wall -- in the "Shiva," the one with the rum and the playing cards.
Me: Figures. How'd you get in there?
He: I just came by to chat with the work a bit, and suddenly I was on the inside looking out.
Me: How long have you been there?
He: Since Wednesday afternoon.
Me: Can you come back out?
He: I haven't found the way yet, if there is one. But I can move laterally within my body of work, from piece to piece, just by remembering the process of making whichever one I want to occupy for awhile.
Me: Sounds a bit like checkers.
He: Not quite. You can't jump.
I know that Robert often revisits earlier ideas and expands on older work, but this takes that concept to an extreme. So I'm non-plussed, to say the least. Moreover, as a working critic I always seek to detach from any relationship with the artist and get myself alone with the work while coming to terms with it -- which you certainly can't do with the artist hanging around, and especially not when the artist is actually hanging there on the wall inside it. Very bewildering. As Robert's work has often done, this forces me to reconfigure my critical method and ask a new and different set of questions.
(Go to audiotape version.)
Me: Can you switch to any piece you choose?
He: No, I'm stuck with the curatorial sequencing. I think that's what sucked me in to start with. I have to follow the arrangement of the pieces as they're installed, and can only move one piece at a time in any direction.
Me: Isn't that constraining?
He: Well, it's not the way my mind usually works. But it's a challenging system to engage with, very rigorous -- chess, not poker. And it's heightened my awareness of Lynne Warren's thought patterns; she's made connections I wouldn't have considered. So it's an adventure.
Me: Does it hurt being in there?
He: No. But I'm glad I made some of these things three-dimensional. Flat gets really claustrophobic after awhile.
Turns out he's quite at ease, not hungry, not thirsty, doesn't need to go to the bathroom or any of that. He's peeved that his image gets to hold a bottle of Mount Gay Barbadian rum while he can't even have a glass of it, but that's about the worst for him in that regard. He misses Joy terribly, and worries; she must be out looking for him somewhere in the city, he's convinced, and doesn't suspect he's here. I've no idea where she is; I tell him that if the world doesn't end by morning I'll locate her and find some way to sneak her into the museum.
You might think I'd be self-conscious talking to a work of art on the wall as if its maker were imbedded in it, but actually I do that all the time; it started when my parents stood me before Tchelitchew's "Hide and Seek" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City when I was ten. I just learned early on to keep my volume down and my lips still. So this is nothing new for me. I have some fried mozzarella and we continue chatting.
He: Have you been traveling again?
Me: Just got back from Prague. I'm quite fond of the Czechs.
He: I prefer cash.
Me: They have a way with symbology. The last dumbheads who attempted to intimidate them with cult-of-personality idols -- the Soviets, who erected the world's largest statue of Stalin there in the 1950s -- learned a bitter lesson.
He: Which was?
Me: Some anonymous citizens of Prague simply blew it off its pedestal in 1962.
He: That's deconstructionist criticism for you.
Me: They tried to hush it up, of course . . .
He: Fifteen tons of concrete and a dynamite blast?
Me: . . . but word got around.
He: Word tends to do that.
I tell Robert he'd like Prague, and the Czechs; they understand the cultural nuances of images, words, music. They'd enjoy his show, and his strategies. When I drove in to the heart of Prague from the airport in the summer heat of July 1995, I reminisce, I found myself confronted by an enormous billboard for Michael Jackson's HIStory: the King of Pop portraying himself as a totalitarian monument, dressed in military garb and carved in stone, looming over a presumably conquered city. Historically illiterate, he'd chosen Prague, of all places, to kick off his world tour for that album. This prompts Robert to shift himself into the standing self-portrait in Air Force garb, after which he asks:
He: How did the Czechs react to that jackboot imagery?
Me: Piece of cake for them. The smaller versions of Jackson's poster that I saw on walls all around town the day I arrived were completely plastered over with other posters 24 hours later.
He: Paper wraps stone.
Me: As a maker of works on paper, you've been wrapping stone for a long time.
I finish eating and, excusing myself, get up to carry my leftovers out to the museum restaurant's refrigerator. Robert says he'll take the opportunity to slip into something less comfortable. Poking around in the compact little kitchen, I can see I won't go hungry for awhile: there's bread and cheese and bottled juices and waters, plus some real food -- pilaf something and ratatouille and quiche, eight varieties of quiche. But they're all in the freezer, in packages with the Bird's-Eye and Swanson logos on them, and little icons that say things like "Museé line" and "Chef-d'oeuvre specialités," with microwave instructions on the sides of the boxes. The quiches all say "Pour L'Homme Qui A Faim," which translates as "hungry man." I didn't know all that fancy, expensive museum-café food was frozen and nuked -- did you? I sure don't get this stuff at my supermarket.
Anyhow, I snag myself a blueberry muffin and make myself a double cappuccino. It's going to be a long night, I can tell. Robert told me he didn't mind if I ate in front of him, but I know he misses coffee, so as a courtesy I finish my dessert at one of the restaurant tables, and then go back to the galleries, where I browse around a bit until I hear:
He: Allan -- I'm on your left, in the Are You Rea offset lithograph.
Me: That's how we first met, in San Francisco, winter of 1965. You were showing an earlier version of that idea in slide form -- little snippets of newspaper and magazine images inserted into slide mounts and projected as found photomontages.
He: Yeah, I was starting to look for the messages imbedded in mass-media imagery.
Me: Do you remember that guy Wilson Bryan Key, the one who wrote the book Subliminal Seduction, who claimed --
He: -- that they were airbrushing the word "sex" very faintly into advertising photos for Ritz crackers? Right.
Me: You don't sound convinced.
He: They don't need to be that subtle. We're not that smart.
He's silent for a few minutes, and there's this odd sound, kind of a thwoop, like a slip of paper getting sucked into a vacuum cleaner.
He: Okay, now I'm in the "Cliché-Vary" piece. By the way, you've got a few crumbs on your chin.
Me: Thanks. (Dabbing at myself.) Does that mean you can see me as well as hear me?
He: Yes. All the other senses are shut off, except maybe the sixth.
Me: So you've seen everybody who's looked at whatever piece of work you've been in for the past two days?
He: Not exactly everybody. I'm not as young as I used to be, so I've taken some naps.
Me: Naps? Inside your own work?
He: Where would I feel more secure and relaxed?
It turns out that when a viewer is standing at the proper viewing distance from whatever piece he's in, Robert can see and hear the person clearly; otherwise, both visually and auditorily, they're to a greater or lesser degree unclear. And there's an absolute drop-off point, about halfway across any of the galleries.
(Go to audiotape version.)
He: it's really eerie. My eyes actually seem to follow them around the room.
Me: Very funny. What's it like to be looked at as a work of art?
He: There's a transaction I wouldn't have expected. There's no way I could have observed this when I was in my body, no matter how unobtrusively I behaved toward people who were engaging with my work.
Me: How does it differ?
He: From here I can actually see the effect of the work on them, it's visible, like a dance of physical accommodation to the encounter, an erotics.
Me: Is that one-way?
He: No. The work transforms too, I can feel it adjusting itself around me as it absorbs their attention. I'd assumed that was true in an abstract way, but it's actually palpable.
Me: As a sensate work of art, do you find you prefer to be looked at by men or by women?
He: Women. Some things don't change.
I convey to Robert the greetings and good wishes of Candace Perich, who's a first cousin once removed, or a second cousin (she's not quite sure). Robert attended Candace's christening, it seems. Candace lives in Katonah, New York, an hour north of Manhattan, where she runs an eponymous photography gallery. I discovered this unexpected connection when I went up there in early November to lecture on Nordic photography at the gallery. She's a photographer herself, and is married to the artist and ‘zine publisher Anton Perich, who took me into his studio after the lecture to show me a Rube Goldbergesque digital-imaging system he'd cobbled together in the early 1970s and still uses today to make photographically derived portraits on canvas.
Candace's mother, who also showed up for my talk, used to run a gallery in L.A. where Robert would come to hang out. I learned from her and Candace that there were something like eleven Lutheran ministers in Robert's family, not just the two he's mentioned to me. This may explain something about the thread of excess and transgression that runs through Robert's life and work. Perhaps it also illuminates a certain level of feral cunning in his projects, crafty strategies for evading the traps of media and culture -- what one of the "she" characters in his dialogues describes as his "free animal" aspect. This leads me to ask:
Me: Robert, suppose you can't get out?
He: I've got a plan. If the world doesn't end tomorrow, tell Joy when you call her to bring any small piece of my work with her when she comes. Even one of the little bookworks would be okay.
Me: What good will that do?
He: My theory is that, contrary to ideas about the death of the author, my physical proximity to any work of mine, plus my love for Joy, trumps the magnetic pull of curatorial order. The work knows me, we've exchanged ions, even if Duchamp is right and I've become just another member of its audience. And Joy and I have been together for a very long time.
Me: Therefore . . .
He: I'm betting that if Joy stands close enough when the guards aren't looking I can slide from whatever piece I'm inside of into whatever she's carrying. Then she can bring me home and we can take from there.
Me: But, even so, what if you're stuck forever inside your art?
He: At least I'll be at home with Joy, and the work. Nothing lasts forever. And photographs and works on paper are notoriously ephemeral. Like artists.
This reminds me of my earlier visit to their home -- the seeming apparition on the wall, the hordes of devotees, the candles and flowers and dollar bills and other offerings, the prayers and hymn-singing and sermonizing that went on. So I have to ask:
(Go to audiotape version.)
Me: Did you know that there's a huge image of a bearded man's face on the outside wall of your house?
He: Sure. I painted it there.
Me: Didn't anyone notice you doing that?
He: I just did a few bricks a day, and didn't complete the pattern till the final session.
Me: What's the source of the image?
He: it's the Shroud of Turin, manually digitized by using bricks as if they were pixels.
Me: What reaction did you get?
He: Crowds started to gather. After a few days we made the evening news.
Me: And?
He: Joy was not amused. She made me explain to the media that it was an art experiment, and then she told me to scrub it off.
Me: But now it's back. And the crowd fills the street in all directions. They're actually praying to it.
He: "He" works in mysterious ways, doesn't "He"?
I decide to make a pit stop and reconnoiter a bit. Robert promises to meet me in the next gallery a little later. Nice washrooms here at the MCA; I'm hoping I can find a real towel somewhere, maybe take a sponge bath in the morning if I'm still alive. I make the rounds, locate various important appliances and a soft couch -- in the ground-floor lobby -- on which to spend the night. In one of the offices I use the phone to call Joy. I've never been good in these situations; I don't quite know how to tell her that Robert has somehow vanished into his own work, perhaps for the duration, but is in excellent spirits and apparent good health (if that concept still applies), and sends his love.
I get their answering machine, and settle for telling her that we're both safe and staying overnight at the museum and we'll call her in the morning, if the phones are still working and it's not Armageddon outside. (I'm figuring that Robert can move himself into one of the lighter works and I can carry him to the office and prop him up by the speaker phone; that way he can explain it all to her himself.) Before I hang up, I remember to tell her to bring along a copy of Robert's He:/She book -- it's pocket-sized -- when she comes to meet us, for a project he's working on. Just a little white lie. Why worry her unnecessarily?
When I return this time, Robert's shunted himself into his installation, "Waking Up in News America." He gets to move around really fast in this one, he informs me, zipping from element to element, because it's his most three-dimensional work. Apparently it's a mix of amusement park and fitness center for him in this altered state. So I sit down to join him, but there's a lot of thwoop-thwoop-thwoop and not much chance for conversation. Eventually he slows down enough that I can get a word in edgewise. I tell him about my call to Joy, and my plan for later that evening. He finds it all acceptable -- not that he has much choice in the matter.
I decide to try an experiment. I've brought along my little Walkman, and some music. I know that Robert's a Willie Nelson fan -- in fact, a number of people have noted both a physical and attitudinal resemblance between Robert and Ol' Willie. So I get Robert to work his way over to the smallest of the standing floor figures -- a bright-eyed, crawling baby in diapers -- slip in a tape cassette, and clamp the headphones onto the support brace for the piece.
(Go to audiotape version.)
He: Fantastic! (Singing) "On the road again! I just can't wait to get on the road again! The life I love is making music with my friends, and I can't wait to get on the road again! On the road again, like a band of gypsies going down the highway . . . "
Me: Robert, this may be the most bizarre moment in the entire history of karaoke.
He: I just love his music. This is the soundtrack of my courtship with Joy. And I know I've always identified with his outlaw status in his own field. Plus he's right on the money about the erotic fallout from that.
Me: Meaning what?
He: Ladies love ‘em. Men too-- even lawmen, if they're honest with themselves.
Me: Why do you think that is?
He: Something in us all wants to find out what it's like to go over the top, beyond the edge. If we can't do it ourselves, we do it vicariously through others -- through real people and via fictional characters in the mass media.
Me: You've always courted disaster in your work -- and, from what I know about you, in your personal and professional life as well. But aside from some head-on collisions with radical feminists -- like being carried out bodily from that meeting of the women's caucus of the Society for Photographic Education -- and that little legal contretemps with Susan Sontag, you haven't had too many smash-ups. Of course, I can't speak to your private life; but, overall, how do you feel about your lifetime averages?
He: Something you learn early on as a fighter pilot: a high risk of failure is one thing, a high rate of failure is something else entirely.
Me: Therefore . . .
He: I take pride in my stats. I'm still standing. So is the work. And so are the people I've loved.
Robert takes off for what he calls a brief "jaunt," and I wander around, copping a feel off Elvira, petting her tabby, chatting up Pamela Lee. Then Robert gives a whistle -- he's occupying Cosmo Kramer from Seinfeld at the moment. We start talking about teaching. I've been away from the university classroom for several years, except as an occasional visiting lecturer; and Robert retired from his professorship at UCLA in 1991. We discover we have several things in common: we miss the dialogic context of the classroom, and we think of all our work as forms of teaching. Robert even believes he's best assessed through his contributions as an educator.
He: it's been really terrific watching the docent tours that come through here.
Me: What's the best part?
He: These docents really work hard -- they're very dedicated. And they're basically everyday people trying hard to make sense of the work for themselves and communicating that to others out loud -- so I get to hear how the average person responds to all this. And of course the people on the tours discuss things with the docents. It's another form of criticism.
Me: What about the younger viewers?
He: They seem to get it very quickly. They're extremely attuned to media -- a lot of the music and art and literature made by young people today incorporate elements of media critique. I actually think that they're more accustomed to playing around with mass-media messages, contradicting or subverting or parodying them, than people of their parents' generation.
Me: Your work is known mainly to an adult audience. From what you say, it's accessible to adolescents. Have you ever thought of doing a project of media criticism aimed at litle kids?
He: What do you think this whole show is?
Me: Well -- a number of the comments in the museum's guest book for the show call it pornographic, and scandalous, and unfit for the young. You and I have both been parents. Any reservations about exposing a child to this work?
He: None at all. There's nothing here they won't have seen by the age of 10 or so -- at the newsstand, at home, at a friend's house, on the Internet, on TV. The little kids who do come in with their parents seem to have a great time.
Me: if you were going to reconfigure this retrospective specifically for an audience of children under twelve, what would you do differently?
He: Hang a lot of the work considerably lower. And change the title.
Me: To what?
He: Rainy-Day Fun! One hundred projects you can do with only scissors, glue, and old newspapers and magazines you already have lying around the house.
The fact remains that many people have found Robert's work disturbing, and for many reasons. His calling himself a photographer -- or even a paraphotographer -- while recycling found mass-media iconography and maintaining a Duchampian hands-off attitude to cameras and darkrooms upset many. His anti-war, media-critical interventions irked others. His choices of tools, materials, and processes perplexed still more. The fact that substantial chunks of his work can be read as a contribution to the feminist discourse on the male gaze and the representation of women in western culture ticks off not a few, especially as it emanates from a devoutly and unapologetically heterosexual male who delights in looking upon the opposite gender. Not to mention other, unpredictable disturbances, such as that of the anonymous Pakistani gentleman who left a message on Robert's answering machine declaring a Salman Rushdie-like fatwa on Robert's head for sacrilegious behavior toward the Hindu deities in the "Shiva" pieces, or whoever punched a hole in one of them.
In short, Robert and his work have served as burrs under a lot of saddles. He's truly functioned all these years as a critic -- making trouble, becoming an irritant, like the grain of sand the oyster surrounds with nacre to form a pearl. I find myself wondering about how the audiences of the future will make meaning from his work. Will they see only the pearls, or will they recognize the invisible but necessary presence of the annoying grain of sand at the core of each work?
He's now made his way over to the Susan Sontag parody, which leads me to inquire:
(Go to audiotape version.)
Me: Kenneth Burke proposes a polarity between the aesthetic and the anaesthetic -- that the aesthetic shocks, provokes, and forces us to reevaluate established reference points, while the anaesthetic soothes, calms, and corroborates our established reference points. Do you see that applying to your work?
He: It's a useful apposition. Obviously, I tend toward the aesthetic side of that polarity.
Me: But work doesn't always stay in the same position, in my experience; it's a sliding scale. For example, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring shocked people when it was first performed in Paris --
He: -- and now it's a warhorse in the concert repertoire.
Me: And the Group f/64's work was once radical --
He: -- and now it's looking more and more like wallpaper.
Me: Right. So have you considered the possibility --
He: That in fifty years I could be the Ansel Adams of paraphotography?
That brings up a question I've pursued but never resolved. Robert can't recall when he first started calling himself a "paraphotographer." I found a citation from a 1978 dialogue, so we settle for that as an approximate time fix. He made the term up, so I ask him to define it:
Me: Does it relate at all to your flyboy phase? As in parachute?
He: Actually, I never got to use one, and that hadn't occurred to me. I thought it up around the time they began using that prefix in relation to various kinds of professionals --
Me: Paralegals, paramedics, paramilitary . . .
He: Right; people who take care of things in emergencies until the real experts show up.
Me: Then I could call myself a paracritic. Could we apply that concept in other spheres, such as the private?
He: You mean like --
Me: Paraparent, parachild, parasibling, parahusband, parawife . . .
He: Paramour?
Robert takes off on another stroll -- seems he's as restless when he's disembodied as he is when he's corporeal. I spend some time getting physically close to some of the work, almost integrating myself into it, but nothing happens like what got Robert. Probably just as well -- though it sounds like the adventure of a lifetime.
At 11:30, we're in curator Lynne Warren's office. To my delight, as I discovered on my scouting expedition, she has a portable TV tucked away in one corner. Robert has shifted himself into John Wayne, another of the standing floor pieces, and I've carried him up with me under my arm. I set him down by Lynne's desk and take her swivel chair. A click of the remote, and:
(Go to audiotape version.)
Me: The Millenium is being televised.
He: What would the Last Poets say about that?
Me: I remember them from the '60s. Gil Scott-Heron . . . Didn't they end up designing pants with built-in codpieces?
He: No, that was Eldridge Cleaver . . .
Me: Beaver Cleaver's dad?
He: . . . before he found Jesus.
I start nosing around in Lynne's desk. Normally I wouldn't do something like that; I'm very polite and respectful of other people's property. But these are unusual circumstances: it's New Year's Eve, after all, I'm in good company, and the whole world could shut down in less than half an hour. My intuition tells me that -- yes! There in the bottom drawer, behind the Recent Acquisitions forms, in the museum curator's customary hiding place for it . . . a fifth of fine French cognac. And the usual pair of snifters beside it. (Next time any of you artists in the audience find yourselves in a museum curator's office at 5 p.m., be sure to ask them for a "deaccessioned snort"; it's a grand old tradition, and they'll thank you for invoking it. A word of caution: with museum directors, wait till they offer.)
I pour one for myself and, even though he won't be able to drink it, one for Robert, plunking it down in front of the Duke. I really hope Lynne doesn't find out about this; the last thing I want -- assuming that the world doesn't come to an end, of course -- is to royally piss off a museum curator by drinking up her expensive hooch.
Now it's almost midnight. I put my arm around the Duke's shoulders, pump up the volume on the tube, graze the channels until . . .
(Go to audiotape version.)
He: There you go. It's Times Square. They're getting ready to drop the ball.
Me: The whole world is watching.
He: Could be that the very last image that everyone on earth will see . . .
Me: Is the face of . . . my God! . . .
He: Yep. Dick Clark.
Here it comes. Join the countdown if you want.
(Go to audiotape version.)
Voices (RH and ADC counting down): 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1! Happy New Y --
(Dark slide. Complete blackout of the auditorium. Pause -- 30 seconds.)
And good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.
(Dark for 30 seconds more. Then bring up the house lights.)
Thank you. I'll be happy to answer any of your questions now.
(After the q&a, cue Willie Nelson and the Spectacular Implosions videotape again as people leave.)
1. See Randy Jeffries, "Ancient Photo of Jesus Found! Primitive 'camera obscura' captured Christ's image in 30 A.D.," in the Weekly World News, Vol. 21, no. 7 (Nov. 9, 1999), pp. 24-25.
2. I was quoting, from memory, a translation I read long ago and have been unable to locate. In Rae Dalven's version, titled "Expecting the Barbarians," the closing lines read, "And now what shall become of us without any barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution." See Dalven, Rae, The Complete Poems of Cavafy (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961), pp. 18-19.
3. This is a reference to an outdoor display of some 130 artist-decorated fiberglass cows that opened in Chicago in June of 1999 and ended on November 9, 1999 with an auction thereof to raise funds for charity. See Kevin V. Johnson, "Cows on the mooove for a good cause," USA Today, November 9, 1999, p. 1.This is the complete text of a lecture delivered at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago on the evening of Tuesday, November 16, 1999, in conjunction with the exhibition "Robert Heinecken: Photographist.")
© Copyright 1999 by A. D. Coleman. All rights reserved. For reprint permissions contact Image/World Syndication Services, POB 040078, Staten Island, NY 10304-0002 USA;T/F (718) 447-3091, imageworld@nearbycafe.com.
