RAY JOHNSON - HOW TO DRAW A BUNNY
Ricardo MadGello
Ricardo MadGello
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303348/
'How to Draw a Bunny': Portrait of the Artist Ray Johnson as an Aging
Prankster
For every Jackson Pollock, there are thousands of Ray Johnsons. They
work in obscurity, deferential to the Art World, yet suspicious of its
requisite politics. "Success" in the materialistic sense eluded Ray Johnson
since he never reached the Art Star pantheon of contemporaries like Andy
Warhol or Ray Lichtenstein. Now, however, Ray Johnson has been memorialized
(and even given minor league immortality) through a highly entertaining
documentary film called "How To Draw a Bunny" (Palm Pictures 2004) by John
Walter and Andrew Moore.
Mousy looking and unassuming, Ray Johnson had the stereotypical avant
garde credentials. Black Mountain College. Andy Warhol's Factory. Manhattan
Art Scene 101. However he was best known as a collage artist and the
originator of so-called "mail art," which he named the "New York
Correspondence School." It was a Johnsonian pun on "school" as an art
movement, as well as the ubiquitous mail order drawing classes popular in
the 1960s.
When accused of being a Pop artist, Johnson would say -- I do not make
pop art; I make chop art. And he did -- cutting up his artwork and mailing
it off to friends around the country.
A proto-prankster, Johnson relished his role as a provocateur/
performance artist. One sequence in the film describes how he dropped hot
dog links over Long Island and had it paid for by the Feigen Gallery. A
bemused Richard Feigen tells the story on camera.
When Johnson drowned (himself) in Sag Harbor in 1995, the film shows
newspaper headlines announcing "Pop Artist Ray Johnson, 67, Mysterious in
Life and Death" and "Mystery Death in Sag Harbor." His address book showed
his acquaintance with Art World luminaries like John Cage, Bruce Conner,
Chuck Close and the Christo(s).
Johnson's artwork typically used images of All American icons like
Elvis, James Dean and the Lucky Strikes bulls-eye cigarette logo in a series
of collages on similar themes. The dada flavor of his art is unmistakable --
tweaking middle class standards of taste and beauty in order to arrive at
another destination (and definition) of aesthetics.
An elfin-like and highly proficient bullshit artist, Johnson obviously
loved toying with his (would be) collectors. In a fascinating interview with
NewYork literary agent Morton Janklow, the film records his recollection of
the negotiation for the price and artwork, which Johnson also considered to
be part of the art. This is evidently called "process" art, since the
"negotiation" of price was part of the "work" itself.
"How To Draw a Bunny" has wonderful interviews with Norm Solomon, Jim
Rosenquist, Ray Lichtenstein, Judith Malina and the Christos who describe
their relationship with Johnson. The film itself is structured like a
collage flirting with the obvious questions about the enigmas of life and
death. It's also like a jigsaw puzzle, trying to assemble the disparate
pieces of what is known about Johnson's long strange trip through life.
In terms of art history, Ray Johnson fits best in the Fluxus movement.
Art critic Robert C. Morgan in "The End of the Art World" writes that "those
associated with fluxus generally preferred the ephemeral over the permanent,
the concept over the form and the event over the object. They preferred
absurdity and wit to the seriousness given to expressionist painting or to
the more fashionable emergence of pop art."
Like Yoko Ono, Johnson's work was part of this movement, since as
Morgan points out "there was a certain elegance to all of this, a certain
refusal to conform to what the museum wanted as official art or what the
history of art seemed to dictate as the next logical step in the progressive
linearity of modernism."
After all, Richard Feigen and Frances Beatty had to wait 14 years for
the death of Ray Johnson -- before they could finally get a show out of him.
"There are inner directed artists and there are outer directed
artists," Morgan continues. "Inner directed artists deal purposefully with
what they have to say as artists. Outer directed artists pay a lot of
attention to what is in the mainstream and what is acceptable, before they
show. We are talking about careerism: Making the right moves in the right
places and if the art catches the fancy of the right dealer or the right
critic, then a career is born. Art simply becomes the vehicle for one's
career rather than the other way around."
The lack of an art world career did not stop Ray Johnson. "How To Draw
a Bunny" is a superb case study showing that art world fame and fortune,
though certainly desirable, are not as important as leaving a good looking
body of work. That was the ultimate cosmic joke of Ray Johnson's life and
certainly his death.
* Uri Dowbenko (http://www.uridowbenko.com) is an artist and the
author of "Hoodwinked: Watching Movies With Eyes Wide Open" (2004)
(http://www.conspiracydigest.com).
For more information, "How To Draw a Bunny"
http://www.palmpictures.com/videos/howtodrawabunny.html
Copyright © 2004 Uri Dowbenko. All Rights Reserved.
* URI DOWBENKO is one of Alternative Media's foremost writers and media
analysts and the author of "Bushwhacked: Inside Stories of True Conspiracy".
A distinctive voice of modern American journalism, he is also the founder of
Alternative Media websites: Conspiracy Planet.com, Al Martin Raw.com,
Steamshovel Press.com, and Conspiracy Digest.com. His latest book to be
published in Spring 2004 is called "Hoodwinked: Watching Movies with Eyes
Wide Open", the most politically incorrect movie reviews ever published. He
can be reached at u.dow...@lycos.com
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occupant
Ricardo MadGello wrote:
> http://www.rayjohnsonestate.com/exhibition.php
>
> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303348/
>
> 'How to Draw a Bunny': Portrait of the Artist Ray Johnson as an Aging
> Prankster
WHOA! I just changed my "myspace" pic this morning to Ray Johnson!
w-e-i-r-d...fitting for Ray though, he wouldn't have had it any other
way.
Ricardo MadGello
"occupant" <djocc...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1156369645.4...@m79g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
Tha's ssooommmmeeeeee
fudged-up shit, mawghn...
you wanna hit?
George_W_Bush
> http://www.rayjohnsonestate.com/exhibition.php
>
> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303348/
>
>
>
Bob Ross will teach you how to draw a bunny. And a happy cloud too!
Ricardo MadGello
"George_W_Bush" <G...@I.lIkE.2.bIke> wrote in message
news:IQ6Hg.8948$w7....@bignews5.bellsouth.net...
THAT??? ain't no bunny...
http://www.bobross.com/art/how-to/little_imp/little_imp-02.jpg