Earlier Work: Drawings and miscellany
Anatomic Drawings —click view gallery (below)
The World Trade Center Puppies 1978
Around 1977-78 a group of us in NYC met to make spontaneous theatre. We called ourselves the WORLD TRADE CENTER PUPPIES akaThe Puppies. We met anywhere we could find space, and after a time the poet Edwin Denby lent us his loft for our rehearsals. At some meetings we set up tableaux vivants based on photos on the front page of the New York Times. We acquired steamer trunks with abundant costumes—top hats, wedding dresses etc.
Most of these meetings were flat-out hysterical but we also took ourselves very seriously, eventually deciding that we should share our hysterics through a single, invitation-only performance. We proposed a costume drama, THE LAST DINNER OF THE CZARS in Kelley English’s very old loft at the far west end of Canal street.. We had @ 9 players and 9 guests. Our historical research was sketchy and the relationship to real history was, at best, fantastic.
Planning for this performance was by a loose association of secret alliances, so-called “intrigues” or bursts of performance. For example, Dean Nichols and I were in a skit where he wore a long cloak and was seated on someone’s shoulders, wielding a hamburger spatula, and I was his southern daughter asking my daddy for “more barbecue”. We planned these intrigues at the Algonquin Hotel Oak Room, through notes passed to each other via the waiters, with lavish dollar! tips.
THE LAST DINNER OF THE CZARS was loosely structured around the meal courses. Our chef, Rob Lehman, prepared bouillon, roast suckling pig, a salad; no one recalls the rest of the meal. We kicked in $10 each for the expenses of the banquet, not an easy sum to raise then. Rick Brintzenhofe brought a case of champagne which he said was donated by a wealthy gentleman. Each performer had to change sex at least once during the evening.
Carol Mullins graced our group. Rick Brintzenhofe played Czar Nicolas in open-back chaps. A be-gowned Helen Berggruen played Anastasia. Jacob Burckhardt played a worried German financier. I was the inventor of Russian cinema. Candida Piel came as a Rasputin-like dance teacher for the hemophiliac Prince Alexei, (Paul Rudnick) who accidentally stabbed himself with a fork & fake-bled all over the dinner table. Rudnick’s version of this evening is included in I Shudder.
My face plopped into the soup when the news of collapse of the banking system arrived via telegram from Germany. Ellen Sabine and others played servants who stormed the fire escape while machine gun sound effects played on a Wollensack. Someone shouted “it’s snowing! (it was July). We all ran to the windows. Rick Brintzenhofe and Dean Nichols, in wedding dresses, twirled around on the cobblestones below, lit by peach colored streetlights. If there was a transcendent moment in this chaos, this was it.
As the event drew down, several Puppies with tube socks on hands and feet poured from the upstairs into the dining area, and lapped up champagne from the guest’s glasses. Lillian Keesler, a guest performing as Isadora Duncan, swayed to an incantation and strewed about ancient aluminum streamers. After the event she said we “ hung out all the sheets”.
We were not terribly concerned with documentation of the Last Dinner. However Jacob Burckhardt beautifully photographed several of our rehearsals (click on VIEW GALLERY, below).
Following this Last Dinner of the Czars we remained friends but ceased to exist as the Puppies, and never discussed that either.
Note--There were many acts that evening. Of any intrigues/players inadvertently passed over, please refresh me, and this may be added.
Rossellini's Kiss 1974
In 1974, I and about 200 other Yale students had the privilege and good fortune of having Roberto Rossellini as our professor. His films were shown one week, alternating with Rossellini lecturing every other week. My understanding is that he flew to and from Rome in the interim.
At this time, I was hyper-alert to ugly criticism of gays, and I saw it in his films--two examples come to mind-- (1) the mincing Nazi commandant and his nasty lesbian sidekick in Rome Open City, and (2) ridicule of transvestites in The Little Flowers of St Francis. Adding insult to injury was our assistant professor's claim to the "truthful realism" of his postwar films.
I cannot say where my nerve came from, but after one of Rossellin's lectures, my hand shot up and I began laying out these concerns. I also asked him why he didn't depict homosexuals in a better light when historical fact offered him that option--e.g. in his film Socrates. His response was that in Socrates this would be "too sensational". I asked him why portraying Nazi culture as smarmy gay culture in Rome Open City wasn't just as sensational. He blustered, got red in the face and became nearly apoplectic. Several people sitting near me shot me poison looks and told me to shut up. Not one in the room defended my comments.
Then the bell rang, so I left, indignant, with my face burning.
Later that day I had stopped by the art school's dean's office. I saw Rossellini coming up the stairs, lumbering and rushing--toward me. When he got to me, he looked me in the eyes and said "I've been looking for you everywhere. You are right, I am wrong and those films of mine are wrong".
Then he sweetly kissed my cheek. That's what I remember of that encounter.
Admittedly Rossellini didn't explain his backpedaling to the class. I think it is possible that his Catholic upbringing had influenced his delusions about virtue and sin and the cover up of errors. And people have a problem with the eroticism (and homoeroticism) of fascism, however the night of the long knives, and Paragraph 175 partially dispatched that. Pasolini did face that conundrum.
This brush with Rossellini was one of the more unforgettable experiences of my life. Very few people sincerely apologize about harm their work or speech might create, unless forced. However, I believe Rossellini sought me out to express a truth that he took pains to arrive at, and so I value the memory of that truthful kiss.
The Influence of Dada on Country Music 1973
In 1973 I graduated with the first class of women at Yale. My senior thesis addressed the influence of Alfred Jarry on Marcel Duchamp. Caught up in the spirit of pataphysics and anti-art, I ran some experiments to determine if dada was, in fact, dead—or could yet be resuscitated.These were heady times.
In early April of that year I commenced Dada week at Yale. This involved a few events and the dissemination of 800 xeroxed pamphlets and posters. These announcements (for example. "Reality Gone Flat? Come to Dada to be Embarrassed and Embraced") received the attention of the Yale Daily News and the New York Times, which provided amusingly distorted pre-event coverage. The Yale news received threat letters from the Red Star Hoodlums of the Left declaring that it was politically sinful to support Western society by propping up the stiffened corpse of dada. In contradistinction to that point of view, I contended that not only was dada alive and kicking, but to bracket it away historically was an attempt to defuse it. I argued that Dada is no more a historical phenomenon than Zen is.
Events during dada week--
—Being from North Carolina, naturally I cooked several gallons of quick grits and poured them into jello molds to cool. On March 7th I placed seven of these grit cakes in the form of a cross on the sidewalk at High and Chapel streets near the entrance to the art school. Click on VIEW GALLERY, below. These were worn as hats by some, and provoked scatological references due to their location under a construction chute. Eventually a class of art students lofted the grit cakes into the intersection where they were destroyed by trucks..
—Permission for a Dada Table was approved and then cancelled by the Pierson College master in reasonable anticipation of food throwing and wholesale chaos. However, 12 freshmen from another college arrived, bearing aloft a shellacked pizza, dressed as Swiss mountaineers, gun molls, and/or film projectors.They established a "non-dada" table and invited me to dine with them. The tops of our heads were then connected by gaffer’s tape, our hands were taped to our utensils, we rang our water glasses for impromptu speeches, and brushed our teeth with bananas. When water pistols were brandished, I departed to videotape my lecture for the following evening.
—I crashed a lecture given by Prof. Robert Herbert, who was my thesis advisor. I was wearing an inflated bra made of 2 balloons which were exploded at the front of the classroom. The students may have been surprised, but Prof. Herbert did pre-agree to this shenanigan, which reduced its dada score significantly.
On April 9th 1973 (Loretta Lynn's birthday) I presented a deliberately obnoxious videotape of myself in a kimono and red wig, lecturing on the Influence of Dada on Country Music, in the Great Hall of the Art History building. I read aloud (apocryphal) notes and telegrams from several country music singers (Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, Waylon Jennings) in support of the project. Hank Snow explained that he called his father "pappy", so that was not a lead for explaining dada.. All of these stars were invited, and not one declined to appear. The Dadas of the American Revolution wrote that they held us to their bosoms.
I explained that the artist Gris has a name very similar to Grits. And how about READYMADE grits? And how about the connection between Hans Richter and Tex Ritter? Or the fact that Picasso had just died the week before--yes, he’s not a dadaist, but had big-name recognition. Nixon had just declared country-music week and a relationship between Nixon and dada required no discussion. The coincidences were many, and not coincidental.
Well over 100 people showed up for the video lecture. Amongst the audience was a kazoo band, a violinist, a dragon, a rabbit, a dog, two judges, most of the art department from University of Bridgeport--and about 50 Yale students.. A woman ironed a mountain of clothes in the corner of the Great Hall. The Red Star Hoodlums of the Left showed up, with purported plans to kidnap me. I was delighted, but they chickened out when they realized that reconstituted postmodern dada was even crazier than their ideology. That's just as well--my bravura was phony. A lawless group arrived and drank up the wine, unplugged amps, shouted over the videotape, and were just horrid. I ignored them until I saw that they were eyeing the videotape equipment, so I warned them that I'd call the campus police (which back then would involve running down the street to a phone booth). Their counter was to ask "if I always arranged for police protection at my dada affairs". Their dada was so much more misbehaved than mine that I was genuinely non-plussed. They insisted on seeing Tammy Wynette (had I promised that?) and the chanting began WE WANT TAMMY! WE WANT TAMMY! I took the mike and explained the sad news that Tammy had been in an accident on her way to the event. The audience responded by pelting me with grits, eggs, and tomatoes for several minutes. I had previously made snacks for the event, but unwittingly I had armed my audience. I found this vegetable hail hilarious but in turns humiliating, so I chucked a frosted gritcake into their midst to establish a better dialog.
It eventually wound down. The crowd dispersed. The angry-men who claimed to be Marxist Hegelians smashed an art piece (mine) in the hallway as they left. This all was food for thought.
I had been concerned that Yale suffered from insufficient dada. It still does!. My intention had been to enhance the appreciation of aestheadaches. But did I succeed?
I cleaned up through that night into the next day. The next morning, uncharacteristic for a genuine dadaist, I apologized more than I ever had in my life--and paid for some damages, although I cannot imagine how. Despite all efforts to the contrary, Robert Herbert gave me an A. Hah!