Sunday, February 10, 2008

MailArt


I'm encouraged by the news that at long last a publication like the New Yorker magazine has a story about a well known and established artist exploring the inconvenient truths as to his own sexuality and making art that is 'pornographic'. (The reproductions that I had placed here were excised / deleted. The image of Curran the artist and the painting in question was too objectionable be permitted.
A [?] was placed where my images were placed. This is censorship. Performed anonymously and without my consent).

This past month I've been assembling my own vintage and recent work, making a limited edition. My difficulty is in deciding how much 'pornography' to include in what will become a series of postings of 'mailart'. I'm about to begin an accounting of where my art has been -and where I believe it is heading: more autobiographical.

This doing 'mailart' is to revisit my beginnings, decades ago (the 1970s and onward to the later 90s.) Having perceived making of comics and erotic drawings as transcending the porn genre, (the intentions I believed I had at the time,) I saw myself as having actually made 'art' with it. As an 'artist/pornographer', I was replicating it with posting this work in my mailart!
Now here is John Currin, profiled in the January 28th issue in the New Yorker, going through a like experience, finding himself a kind of sleepwalker, immersed in mysteries a bit beyond his ken. And his only course is to stay with it till he gets to the hear of the matter and beyond. That is if there is a 'beyond'.


It was more than about being horny or sex acts, or even that it is naughty, taboo, a denigration of ... It was about hidden selves, identities.... aspects of selves we know not who. I did not know about my own.... and have come to understand that the drawings were my only clues. The other unknown selves were encyphered in this my 'pornography as art'.

The images I've scanned here and placed on this page, I've scanned from the pages 56 and 57 of the 2/28 issue. It is of John Currin and his recent painting-in-progress. The Photographer, Elinor Carucci allowed the layout people of the New Yorker to split the picture across a gully of two pages. I hope that she and the editors forgive me for the liberties I've taken. -Considering that this man and I are 'kindred spirits'.

The same [?] appears now and another image was deleted. anonymously and without my consent) The replicating of my own drawings during the decades of making my book art entailed my using the copier, the computer, the scanner, my editing and making mutations using computer software, making of them collages and assemblages. It is the work I have been doing. Plus the penning of drawings...'drawings about drawing'.

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