WHAT A DUMP by Jarrett Earnest - David Zwirner
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WHAT A DUMP by Jarrett Earnest
Perhaps I have loved the shadows that lay
hidden behind his radiant forehead and his
shining glance. Can you distinguish between
loving roses and loving the scent of roses?
—Yukio Mishima, Madame de Sade1
I
In his first session at Black Mountain College’s
summer art institute in 1945, seventeen-year-
old Ray Johnson studied with legendary designer
Alvin Lustig, who revolutionized book publisher
New Directions’ aesthetic in the 1940s.2 That
year, Lustig was in the process of creating a
cover for Louise Varèse’s translation of Arthur
Rimbaud’s Illuminations. The name “rimbaud”
sits at the center, the source of an explosion
of nested, jagged star shapes, redolent of
Clyfford Still, in cream, yellow, and crimson,
pulsing against a blood-red ground, while
scratched along the bottom “ILLUMINATIONS”
tingles like electricity. The cover, among
others by Lustig, channeled the full force of
abstract expressionism to convey the quasi-
mystical charge of its contents: a sacred book
of modernism.
After moving to New York in 1949, Johnson
did commercial design work, including a few
jobs for New Directions. In 1956, he was
tasked with redesigning Illuminations for an
expanded paperback edition, published in 1957.
The aesthetic decisions of Johnson’s cover
have become so deeply absorbed into our visual
culture as to now appear all but fated, pre-
saging a new sensibility that would become
“pop.” Johnson’s cover features a tight crop of
Étienne Carjat’s 1871 portrait of Rimbaud when
he was a seventeen-year-old from the provinces,
terrorizing Paris’s poetry scene. Johnson
upped the contrasts of the black-and-white
image, enlarging the halftone screen to empha-
size the inherent qualities of photomechanical
translation. The effect is spectral, masklike,
2 WHAT A DUMP 3 Jarrett Earnestas though the image of the poet is and isn’t escape together.”5 In 1967, when Smith moved
there, a face seen on the surface of Mars. to New York to become an artist, that copy of
The closer the eye gets to the printed surface Rimbaud’s Illuminations came with her, its worn
the more the features recede, dissolving into cover tacked over her writing desk for years.
a mist of coagulated dots. The title and Ray Johnson was already making collages
author’s name are blocked out in thick, ribbony saturated with popular imagery, blurring high
script at a bias, alternating between black and and low, with a special fixation on movie stars,
white mid-word, to contrast with the shifting long before the attitudes that became pop
background. “R. Johnson” is hand-lettered in art cohered into anything recognizable as a
the upper right corner, a hieroglyph as much as movement. In the mid-1950s, he was appropri-
a signature. Johnson’s design was the first to ating pictures of Elvis Presley and James Dean
utilize Rimbaud’s image in this way, fusing from advertisements to make cryptic collages
the poet’s portrait into the public imagination pasted with logos from Lucky Strike brand ciga-
as an icon. rettes. Around the time Johnson was designing
Within the rising counterculture of Illuminations, one collage pairs an identi-
the 1960s, this edition became ubiquitous. cally sized photograph of the recently martyred
Its cover foregrounded the teenage cipher of “rebel without a cause” James Dean with the
outsiderness, characteristic of the young original Carjat portrait of Rimbaud, pasted
French poet, who, as one of his biographers vertically on a blackened board. The Dean
put it, “has been treated by four generations headshot (top) is heavily striped with trans-
of avant-gardes as an emergency exit from the lucent hot-pink ink, almost entirely covering
house of convention.”3 In ways that are de- the image, while Rimbaud (bottom) has the pink
monstrable but incalculable, Johnson’s cover bands only over his eyes, nose, and mouth.
contributed to this proliferating influence. The collage identifies an unmistakable affinity:
Sixteen-year-old Patti Smith is merely the two artists with passionate intensity and
most famous of innumerable teenagers who knew aberrant sexualities, hostile to the mores
nothing of the poet but grabbed the book of their time. Johnson equates Dean’s violent
because of Rimbaud’s “haughty gaze,” which in death at twenty-four from a speeding sports car
her case peered out from “a bookstall across crash with the force of Rimbaud’s renuncia-
from the bus depot in Philadelphia.”4 It was tion of poetry at the age of twenty. The visual
on this visual evidence alone that she stole logic suggests transposing the features from
the book that changed her life. She would one onto the other, blurring them together,
have likely passed over Lustig’s elegant star- while retaining a vague distinction between
burst if it were the edition on the stand the actor, known for playing characters, and
that day. Smith described the effect of the book the poet who once proclaimed that “every being
on her: “His hands had chiseled a manual of seemed to me to be entitled to several other
heaven and I held them fast. The knowledge lives.”6 The hot pink underscores their twinned
of him added swagger to my step and this could roles as queer icons — a fantasy couple whose
not be stripped away. I tossed my copy of images evolved into potent sites of identi-
Illuminations in a plaid suitcase. We would fication for gay men as that subculture began
4 WHAT A DUMP 5 Jarrett Earnesttaking shape. What might at first seem an arbi- identical cartoon faces. By way of his robust
trary, even capricious juxtaposition of a poet network, a swarm of Rimbauds were soon set
and a movie star takes on the clarity of a loose upon the world, moving among the various
formula when seen within the larger mathematics audiences of the international art magazine,
of queer desire. some returning to Johnson glamorized or brutal-
This image of Rimbaud continued to pro- ized, often both.
liferate in Johnson’s collages and mailings In the case of a photographic image,
until the end of his life, becoming a personal there are essentially two operations for its
emblem. And like Rimbaud’s poetry, the struc- transformation. The first is additive: ink,
tures of Johnson’s work undermine any single glitter, other images, sundry stuff can be put
or coherent sense of an internal “self,” onto the picture like a cosmetic, an invitation
inverting identity outward through seemingly to put the young Rimbaud in drag. Many respon-
endless chains of slippage and dispersal. In an dents gleefully understood, returning burlesque
issue of Arts Magazine in 1971, Johnson repro- versions of the poet’s visage. The second is
duced the Rimbaud portrait, filling a page of deconstructive: to cut the image up, allowing
the magazine with the life-sized face. “FOLLOW the parts to be rearranged and collaged with
INSTRUCTIONS BELOW” was printed on the opposite pieces of other images. In each case, the effect
page, with a number of corresponding options of “defacement” brings both a joyous freedom
acted out by his trademark wide-eyed “bunnies” and lurking violence to the subject, one
for how Rimbaud could be altered. “Detach along perfectly suited to Rimbaud’s poetry and biog-
dotted line ... participate by adding words, raphy. When Paul Verlaine left his wife for
letters, colors or whatever to face ... & mail Rimbaud — according to the account of one
to Ray Johnson, 44 Seventh St., Locust Valley, Constable Lombard of the Brussels police, who
N.Y. 11560” (his home address). In 1971, this had been tracking the young poets — Verlaine
was only the latest incarnation of Johnson’s not only exclaimed “We love each other like
interest in participatory art making and circu- tigers!” but also “bared his chest in front of
lation via the postal service. As early as the his wife. It was bruised and tattooed with
mid-1940s, Johnson was mailing heavily illus- knife wounds administered by his friend
trated letters to friends, which became a fully Raimbaud [sic].”7
elaborated artistic mode by the mid-1950s. In In 1978, the twenty-four-year-old David
1962, artist Ed Plunkett named the phenomenon Wojnarowicz took advantage of a short stint
of Johnson’s eccentric mailings the “New York at an ad agency in Manhattan, using their
Correspondence School,” which Johnson shifted photostat machine to make an enlarged copy of
to spell as “Correspondance,” crystallized Johnson’s cover of Rimbaud’s Illuminations,
by the iconic direction stamped on each parcel: which he then cut out and burned eyeholes
“PLEASE ADD TO AND RETURN TO RAY JOHNSON.” with a cigarette to create a life-sized mask.8
The playfully shifting network was visualized Wojnarowicz felt a profound connection with
by Johnson’s ever-updated series of “seating the poet, who turned the extremity of his
charts” — grids detailing the names of various alienation and hostility toward society into a
artist friends and celebrities, beneath almost poetics that fused sacred with profane. Like
6 WHAT A DUMP 7 Jarrett EarnestRimbaud, Wojnarowicz would pursue a similar moments throughout the twentieth century, such
“derangement of the senses.” Envisioning as a shot of James Dean in a black leather
Rimbaud transposed into 1970s New York, jacket, cigarette hanging from his lips,
Wojnarowicz photographed various friends and captioned “RIMBAUD ’55” — a gesture parallel to
lovers wearing the Rimbaud mask in the places Johnson’s collage from around 1957. Cooper’s
that embodied such derangements in his own homage encapsulated Rimbaud’s contradictory
experience: cruising for sex on the West Side appeal: the desire to elide one’s identity with
piers, beside porn theaters in Times Square, a figure who sought to disperse identity itself,
in the Meatpacking District, on the subway. to be multitudinous rather than singular.
When the black-and-white Rimbaud mask was pho- Cooper recognized that same impulse at work in
tographed on black-and-white film, it harmonized Wojnarowicz’s Arthur Rimbaud in New York photo-
the face with the wearer and environment in graphs and included a portfolio of them in
such a way that the mask’s dislocation remains Little Caesar #11 in 1980.11 Along with their
legible as collage and creates a crosscut publication in the pages of the SoHo News a few
between past and present that is arrested, months earlier, these were the first appearances
but never resolved, by the image. Whether they of Wojnarowicz’s now iconic series, and it
are understood as depictions of his various is critical to understand them first as ephemera
friends beneath the mask of Rimbaud or of in circulation, sometimes xeroxed and mailed
Wojnarowicz himself is beside the point. What to friends, long before they were remade by
is important above all else is the way each the artist as gelatin silver prints for gallery
of these identities is made to slide from one exhibition in 1990.12
to the next within the work.9 The fact that Johnson designed the cover
That same year, on the other side of the that Wojnarowicz used to fashion his mask, most
country in Los Angeles, Dennis Cooper turned an likely without knowing who the “R. Johnson”
issue of his literary magazine, Little Caesar, was at the time, indicates deeper structural
into a fanzine about Rimbaud with a degenerated resonances between their two evocations of
version of the same Carjat portrait printed the poet. The impulse suggests an affinity at
on its cover. Cooper, who was in the midst of the level of something as ineffable as a “queer
developing his own literary genre at the inter- aesthetic” or sensibility, as it was transpir-
section of violence and gay sex, prefaced ing in and around New York City in the 1970s.
this issue in his own handwriting: “When I was Examining Johnson and Wojnarowicz under the
fifteen I wanted to be Rimbaud, and I still do, sign of Rimbaud provides a case study of this
though now I’m too old for the part. Who needed precisely locatable and intangible historical
Jagger, Lou Reed, Hendrix, bla, bla. He had phenomenon, traced at the level of feeling.
everything and was farther away than the stars.
No chance to disappoint me. I wanted to look
like him and made a pathetic attempt — short
hair in a long hair era — a fool.”10 The issue
of Little Caesar is populated by pictures
dubbed incarnations of Rimbaud at particular
8 WHAT A DUMP 9 Jarrett EarnestII
In the May 1968 issue of Artforum, Ray Johnson
read about Michael Morris’s painting called
might see Michael Malce, who owned a shop spe-
cializing in items from that period — the shop
where Tony Curtis had once purchased a Mickey
Mouse watch strap.... We talked of London,
Shirley Temple, Canada, and Ray mentioned his
interest in the Dionne Quintuplets.”15
Morris suggested Johnson take part in
The Problem of Nothing (1966), an enigmatic Concrete Poetry, an exhibition he was curating
image built of hard-edged abstraction. The at the University of British Columbia Fine Arts
curator Alvin Balkind, himself a gay man, used Gallery the following year, in 1969. On his
the painting to summarize the twenty-six- first trip out of the country, Johnson went to
year-old artist’s sensibility in his review Vancouver, bringing collages in his luggage
of Morris’s work: “To Michael Morris, the and crashing on the young artist’s couch. In
best art today is a put-down; it is deliber- the catalogue for the show, Morris wrote a text
ately subversive, utterly useless, consciously explaining Johnson’s New York Correspondance
caught up in its own time, seriously intent School (NYCS): “Ray allows the School to
upon producing monuments to nothing. Among function as a highly sensitive monitor, quick
his monuments to nothing, Morris is producing to recognize in others the concerns that
many which contain a theatrical bow to the relate in some way to its instigator’s inten-
thirties in general, and to Busby Berkeley in tions. There is always an intensely selective
particular.”13 The description stood out for process at work, both in choosing members and
several reasons, foremost because Johnson deciding on the nature of activities the school
himself had been staging public performances shall undertake.”16 On this visit, Morris and
he called “nothings” since 1961, a playful his lover and collaborator Vincent Trasov told
negation of Allan Kaprow’s “happenings,” which Johnson about an idea they had for a Vancouver-
coalesced that decade’s social attitudes into based hub for mail art activities, called
form. Morris’s slippery antagonism, paired “Image Bank,” inspired in part by Johnson’s
with his devotion to the camp fantasias of Correspondance school. When Morris and Trasov
Busby Berkeley musicals, also signaled kinship sent out their first “Image of the Month”
and Johnson promptly sent the young artist a mailings a year later, Johnson supplied them
letter, care of the Vancouver Art Gallery, with the addresses of his network.
which owns The Problem of Nothing, explaining Through this initial connection with Image
that he too had been involved with “the problem Bank, Johnson entered into a decidedly queer
of nothing” for some time; Johnson invited subculture within the emerging Canadian art
him to be in touch.14 Morris happened to be scene. Then in his forties and twice the age
visiting New York shortly thereafter, phoned of most of these new associates, Johnson became
Johnson as directed, and they met at a bar. a kind of mascot who had initiated an explo-
Morris recalled: “When I spoke of my interest ration of subculture and self that the Image
in Busby Berkeley and the sense of style in Bank collaborators would elaborate in their own
thirties film production, he mentioned that I directions. Call-and-response, with directions
10 WHAT A DUMP 11 Jarrett Earnestto alter and pass along, were strategies and Jack Tims, AA Bronson’s parents, at the
pioneered by Johnson’s Correspondance school very top.
and adapted by many artists’ networks around In spring 1972, Johnson sent General Idea
the world in the subsequent years. Mail art sixty-eight pre-addressed envelopes containing
structured exchanges between those who may or mail art with instructions to send them on.
may not have known each other, or knew each General Idea decided to keep them, and instead
other only through slippery personae, creating sent along their own messages to the intended
an arena that intentionally blurred private recipients, explaining that they had hijacked
and public, art and life, self and other. Johnson’s correspondence in a move they titled
Morris’s Toronto friends Michael Tims, Ronald Ray Johnson Split Project (1972). That same
Gabe, and Slobodan Saia-Levy, who renamed year, General Idea debuted FILE Megazine,
themselves AA Bronson, Felix Partz, and Jorge with a format and logo adapted from LIFE as a
Zontal, formed General Idea in 1969.17 By then, parasitic assault on copyright and corporate
Bronson was already experimenting with mail identity. FILE was the first publication of its
art through a sequence of chain letters, such kind to harness mail art activities, blending
as his Massage Chain Letter (1969): “Give the artists’ directories and image requests
someone a massage. If you don’t know how, take from Image Bank with the results of their own
lessons. Copy this letter 5 times. Send it to experiments and art projects. On the cover of
5 friends.”18 In 1970, General Idea put out a the first issue, Vincent Trasov is dressed as
call via mailer, containing an image of Zontal his alter ego, Mr. Peanut, usurping the snappy
in a contorted position above a text titled mascot of the American snack company Planters,
“MANIPULATING THE SELF”: to pose in front of the Toronto skyline. In
their first editorial, General Idea explained
The head is separate; the hand is that FILE makes tangible “the invisible network
separate. Body and mind are separate. that binds the world,” listing a handful of
The hand is a mirror for the mind — wrap key figures including Ray Johnson who had pio-
your arm over your head, lodging your neered this method of ongoing collaboration.
elbow behind and grabbing your chin General Idea then concluded: “We are concerned
with your hand. The act is now complete. with the web of fact and fiction that binds and
Held, you are holding. You are object releases mythologies that are the sum experi-
and subject, viewed and voyeur.19 ence of artists and non-artists in cooperative
existence today. Every image is a self image.
This text was followed by instructions to Every image is a mirror.”20
send photographs in this position to General FILE heralded a new sensibility: a defiant
Idea in Toronto. They then published a pamphlet and playful mapping of a society created by
collecting one hundred and twelve of the re- collaboration, outside the mainstream art world
sponses, the photos reproduced as squares in of galleries and museums. The provocation was
a stacked grid, two by three. Johnson appears met almost instantly by an angry editorial
on the first page, beside his artist friend in Vancouver’s alt-weekly: “They have paraded
May Wilson, just below the photos of Kitty Tims their homosexuality as though that in itself
12 WHAT A DUMP 13 Jarrett Earnestgave the mag some bizarre status within the Daisy chains of self-reference provided
enigma of the alternative society. Instead an organizational force and means of propul-
the problems of homosexuality as an actual sion for FILE’s form and content. The cover
way of life recede into the pageantry of camp of the second issue, published May/June 1972,
parody.”21 The condemnation accurately, if shows artist Marsha Carr, a respondent to
unwittingly, pinpointed the stakes of General their earlier “Manipulating the Self” mailer,
Idea’s play with gay representation, attempting a double-jointed contortionist wrapping her
to undermine and complicate an identity that arms behind her so that her hands clasp improb-
was swiftly becoming all too legible, seeing ably beneath her chin. She smiles placidly,
the rising politics of respectability as an large doe eyes slightly out of focus. The first
inescapably conservative force. page of the following issue in December 1972
Dubbed their “Daddy Dada,” Johnson, features a full-page photograph of Johnson
whose pictures, drawings, and letters bounced holding the May/June issue. The woman’s face
through early issues of FILE, was a premade on the cover is cut out with Johnson smiling
cult figure for General Idea’s unfolding case through the hole, hands gripping the sides
study of micro-celebrity and artistic persona. of the magazine: “HERE’S RAY JOHNSON LOOKING
Johnson was one of those called during General THROUGH THE LAST ISSUE OF FILE.”22 The following
Idea’s radio-based performance piece Club issue opens with the photo of Johnson, only
Canasta — FILE’s Filathon Telephone Canasta this time a tongue protrudes from a cut-out in
Party, recorded at the CBC in 1972. After gid- the image of Ray’s face and the caption:
dily ringing him at Max’s Kansas City, club- “HERE’S AA BRONSON LICKING THROUGH THE LAST
house for New York’s art world, to no avail, ISSUE OF FILE.”23 This mise en abyme literal-
General Idea reached his friend May Wilson at izes FILE’s editorial promise; by courting the
home, who laughingly strips out of her night- intentional fluidity of persona, “every image
gown upon their request and informs them is a self image,” and every self is someone
Johnson is at a dinner party. Finally, Bronson else too.
III
and the gang get Johnson on the phone, giving
him updates on the other calls, catching up
on gossip and playing coy games:
Bronson: What are you wearing?
Johnson: I am wearing a paintbrush.
Bronson: Where?
Johnson: Where — In my ear. To mark his graduation from the University
of Georgia in 1972, twenty-two-year-old Jimmy
They ask Johnson to come see them in Toronto: DeSana self-published a boxed portfolio called
“We’ve been telling everyone that you’re 101 Nudes, comprising staged photographs of
already here visiting us.” Before getting off his friends striking incongruous poses in
the phone, Johnson promises to send them his suburban interiors. After coming across issues
“Rimbaud postcards.” of FILE, DeSana sent a copy of 101 Nudes to
14 WHAT A DUMP 15 Jarrett EarnestGeneral Idea, entering into their rich network. become a celebrity within the Canadian mail
When AA Bronson visited New York for the first art scene via a typically circuitous chain of
time in the 1970s, he connected with many of events. John Jack Baylin had started the “Bum
the people he had corresponded and collabo- Bank” as a spinoff of Image Bank, dedicated to
rated with but up until then had never met in the collection and distribution of ass pics,
person, including Johnson and DeSana. Embracing which spawned the “John Dowd Fanny Club” once
his Daddy Dada role, Johnson planned a night Johnson introduced Dowd to a group from Image
on the town for their first meeting, intro- Bank when they all came to New York in 1972.
ducing the two younger gay men to New York’s In a letter beneath two cartoon bunny heads
thriving leather bars and outdoor cruising labeled “Frank Stella” and “Barbara Rose” —
sites. Johnson’s letters, especially those with New York’s reigning heterosexual artist-critic
other gay men, make frequent reference to his power couple — Johnson assured Baylin:
trips to the Anvil, Spike, Mineshaft, Eagle,
and other places that specialized in leather, As per your request, I will attempt to
S-M, fisting, and watersports. Bill Wilson, May obtain for you a genuine photo of J.D.’s
Wilson’s son and another of Johnson’s younger bum.... At the Anna May Wong Meeting
gay friends who would become his chief chron- yesterday, John Dowd was there with a
icler, once recalled Johnson stealing his little baby Dowd and at one point after
bathtub that was decorated with painted flowers the Meeting he was bending over talking to
from his home; Johnson then brought Wilson someone and the exposed backside above
to the Anvil to see his personal tub now on his trouser belt was seen and had hairs on
display in the bar, a young man sitting in it, the said backside. We will go all the way
being pissed on by the other patrons.24 for the cover photo. I am sure J.D.
Bronson describes that first meeting in will cooperate.... Please trust me to
New York as a tailor-made Johnson event, one follow through on your photo request and
of his “nothing” performances, equal parts pray and light candles I push the right
pedagogy and pleasure. After midnight the three buttons when John Dowd is pants-lowered
met downtown and started the trek up to the saying cheese.
Spike on Eleventh Avenue; taxis would not dare Most sincerely yours,
take them there, Johnson told them. Once they Barbara Rose25
reached Eighth Avenue, he advised they walk
in the middle of the street, away from where In the end, Johnson enlisted DeSana’s help for
anyone hiding in doorways could launch surprise the photos. The pictures show Johnson at the
attacks. Johnson remained wary of street edge of a room looking at Dowd, who faces a
violence after being mugged at knifepoint in window wearing a black T-shirt, hands on hips
1968, which occasioned his move from Manhattan and cutoff shorts around his knees. In another,
to the Long Island hamlet of Locust Valley. Dowd smiles widely over his shoulder at DeSana
After some time at the Spike, the three headed as he bends to lift his pants. A commercial
to the Eagle where they met everyone’s favorite designer by day, Dowd eventually toured Canada
leatherman and bartender, John Dowd, who had participating in “bum signings,” appearing at
16 WHAT A DUMP 17 Jarrett Earnestmeetings of his fan club. He also collaborated photograph of a lean DeSana wedged diagonally
on the high-design mail art publication Fanzini across a narrow New York foyer, cantilevered
with Baylin. The resulting “official” image over messy piles of books with one forearm flat
of the Fanny Club is captioned: “JOHN DOWD SHOT on the wall, the other curling a dumbbell
BY JIM DESANA IN THE ROLE OF RAY JOHNSON” — up to his shoulder. Shirtless, donning aviators
Jimmy DeSana playing the part of Ray Johnson and billowing wide-leg bell bottoms and black
photographing John Dowd for John Jack Baylin, socks, the caption below announces “DESANA
as promised by Barbara Rose. UPTOWN opens sept. 1,” though no further
After the bars, in the early hours of the gallery information is listed — you’d just have
morning, Johnson led Bronson and DeSana to- to know. Following “Ripoff Red, Girl Detective,”
ward the dilapidated industrial zone along the a story by Kathy Acker, is “New York’s Ten
West Side Highway to the piers, where men Best Dressed,” a photo-essay by DeSana, pictur-
converged for anonymous public sex. Daddy Dada ing New York artists and dealers across a
gave them advice, not only on how to navigate two-page spread.26 An accompanying text by the
the treacherous debris, but also how to safely Canadian performance artist Dawn Eagle charac-
cruise by sticking to the more populated areas; terizes the more-or-less nondescript outfits
violent crime was common, and more likely if of the list: “[The subjects] have chosen to
they were to be caught alone in a secluded slip away from this form of promotion without
area. Before the cruising commenced, Johnson even taking recourse to the safeguard of an
led them to an ideal viewing point to see a exquisitely esoteric or expensive accessory ...
recent intervention by the artist Gordon Matta- a restraint that is admirable ... which is not
Clark cut out of one of the piers, the holes to say that total image cultivation is not
framed against the larger void of the night also admirable.”27 The captions drive home the
sky. Then, as dawn approached and everyone deadpan satire: “RAY JOHNSON (Artist) wears
had had some space to have whatever sex they t-shirt, Levi jeans and jacket, work boots” —
wanted, Johnson reconvened with his friends, he stares as if frozen in a three-quarters
bringing them to the open area over the water. profile, denim jacket draped off one shoulder,
He had choreographed the entire evening for holding a headless and armless doll in his
this moment, to see the sun rising over the hand. DeSana’s “Ten Best Dressed” portrait of
skyline, illuminating the murals painted Johnson had a long afterlife; Johnson cut his
on the walls of the piers — urban decay and face out of one print and created countless
glittering water. copies. DeSana’s image of Johnson then rolled
Soon DeSana’s photographs permeated FILE through many subsequent collages and mailings,
as thoroughly as Johnson’s letters had and nestled within untold visual configurations
often appeared with them in tandem. A special throughout the rest of his life.
1976 issue of the magazine, featuring a photo Dressed in simplified butch drag, Johnson’s
of “FILE NYC” spelled out in studs on black “Ten Best” outfit belies his later play with
leather on the cover, details General Idea’s clothing as part of his ongoing performance.
gossipy misadventures during a temporary relo- For example, Johnson painted his black leather
cation to Manhattan. This issue opens with a jacket with multiple neon-pink Mickey Mouse
18 WHAT A DUMP 19 Jarrett Earnestfigures, a symbol of macho masculinity made based sister zine, a parody of a parody.
flamboyantly “girly.” This game of dress-up William Burroughs saw the erotically disturbing
was captured by a piece of mail art designed photograph of DeSana’s pale, naked body
by Robin Lee Crutchfield in 1976, which shows hanging from a noose in a doorway, sporting an
Johnson’s smiling face pasted on the crude erection. Burroughs had a friend track down the
outlines of a body with the text: young photographer. DeSana had started seri-
ously reading Burroughs as a teenager in the
THIS IS YOUR OFFICIAL RAY JOHNSON PAPER late 1960s; the intensity of the queerness
DOLL. CREATE YOUR OWN WARDROBE FOR HIM, and artistic experimentation, hostile to every
KEEPING IN MIND THAT HE SEES NO NEW TRENDS facet of the suburban world of his childhood,
IN FASHION AND HIS IDEAL WARDROBE IS A was an early and continuing influence. Burroughs
MONGOLIAN GERBIL NAMED CHIN. HE DESCRIBES wanted to talk about autoerotic asphyxiation
HIS CLOTHING AS “LUCKY,” AND THE ONLY and pulled out a file of his own research he
COMMENT HE HAS TO MAKE ABOUT CLOTHES IS had collected over the years.29 It was an image
“CHARLES MANSON.” that recurred with graphic force across his
writing, the hanging man dying at the point of
DeSana’s “Ten Best” list aligned with his orgasm. Burroughs stayed in touch with DeSana,
growing centrality within the downtown scene, who took his portrait several times. When the
photographing friends at parties in his rough book of his S-M photographs Submission came out
black-and-white style that would define the in 1980, it was introduced by Burroughs, ending
gritty glamour of the New Wave/No Wave scene. with the questions: “The very word ‘submis-
Often DeSana came home and made prints from sion’ contains the paradox of wanting and not
a night out, stamping them with his name and wanting. And this ambivalent position can only
logo — disembodied hands holding a flashing be maintained by a double ignorance of not
camera — before dropping them in the mail. knowing what you want to do and not knowing
This was DeSana’s version of mail art, which what you don’t want to do. Can this ignorance
he took seriously enough to add the following survive the impersonal click of the camera?
line to a chronology he compiled, under the Can such a paradox exist in an age of total
year 1975: “Opens world’s smallest art gallery, confrontation?”30
IV
a P.O. box called DeSana, which sends out
mailings as shows.”28 His portraits of culture
heroes, everyone from Yoko Ono to Debbie Harry,
began to circulate outside the scene, appear-
ing on the front of the SoHo News and album
covers, like More Songs About Buildings and
Food (1978) by Talking Heads and Exterminating
Angel (1980) by Dark Day, Crutchfield’s band. Burroughs was the black sun of the counter-
In 1973, DeSana took a nude self-portrait culture, and his ideas around language and
that was later published in an issue of FILE social control radiated at the intersections
and on the cover of VILE, the San Francisco– of violence, queerness, sex, and death. His
20 WHAT A DUMP 21 Jarrett Earnestmission was to combat the hypocritical forms of dominant culture and binary thinking:
of domination that saturated every word and “It is unfortunately one of the great errors
image of postwar America’s consumer culture. of Western thought, the whole either-or propo-
Beyond his string of influential novels, sition.... Either-or thinking just is not
his single most important contribution was accurate thinking. That’s not the way things
his articulation of the “cut-up” as a tool, occur, and I feel the Aristotelian construct is
an aesthetic and philosophical framework for one of the great shackles of Western civiliza-
collage that sought to disrupt the internal- tion. Cut-ups are a movement toward breaking
ized circuit that linked each individual with this down.”32 All forms of division — gay/
the wider world. While cutting a stack of straight, male/female, good/evil, self/other,
newspapers, Brion Gysin “discovered” cut-ups live/dead — had to be deconstructed and recon-
by noticing the accidental collisions of word figured; these structures lived in the body and
and image that created new, unexpected and more mind, and altering them necessitated violence.
complex meanings, and seemed to reveal under- Rimbaud frequently appears in Burroughs’s
lying cultural “intentions” normally disguised explanations as the prototypical artist as
by the syntax of logic. Gysin and Burroughs queer terrorist:
began to experiment with different procedures,
cutting a text into quarters, rearranging Poetry is a place and it is free to all
or folding pages in half, and retyping straight cut up Rimbaud and you are in Rimbaud’s
across for a new text. What was radical was place.... Cutting and rearranging a page
not the methodology per se — artists had been of written words introduces a new di-
self-consciously cutting things up since Dada — mension into writing enabling the writer
but the force of their theorization, with to turn images in cinematic variation.
its social and sexual valences, was an inno- Images shift sense under the scissors
vation of the practice. By taking preexisting smell images to sound sight to sound sound
texts from the world, the cut-up was a col- to kinesthetic. This is where Rimbaud was
laboration in which the artist was only partly going with his color of vowels. And his
in control, an escapee from the prison house “systematic derangement of the senses.”33
of the singular self into the “third mind,”
something distinct that emerged from Burroughs Burroughs’s writing was an express influence
and Gysin’s separate selves within collabo- on both Image Bank and General Idea as inter-
ration. Gysin offered this description of the ventions into media circulation; the mail art
cut-up: “Word symbols turn back into visual system in Burroughs’s terms could be thought of
symbols — tilted back and forth through this as a transnational cut-up machine. Quotes
‘me,’ my very own machine. Every thing, at that from Burroughs appear in FILE editorials and
moment, is one. I am the artist when I am open. statements from the beginning; eventually,
When I am closed I am Brion Gysin.”31 Burroughs became a contributor to the magazine.
Not only a call to liberate writing, Bronson later recounted that having experi-
the “third mind” was articulated by Burroughs enced the political failures of the 1960s,
as an assault on the philosophical foundations General Idea shed their “hippie backgrounds
22 WHAT A DUMP 23 Jarrett Earnestof heterosexual idealism” and sought out “the and electric connection with both of them.
queer outsider methods of William Burroughs, Their ideas added a new framework to the heady
for example, whose invented universe of sex- mix of his friends’ pop appropriations and
mad, body-snatcher espionage archetypes provid- performances, joining Johnson’s Correspondance
ed the ironic myth-making model we required.”34 school as a model for Giorno’s own ambitions
He then quoted a significant passage from to circulate poetry in unexpected ways via new
Burroughs’s cut-up novel Nova Express (1964): media. Giorno and Gysin soon became lovers and
began collaborating on sound recordings and
“We need a peg to hang it on,” he said. audio collages. While apart Giorno sent Gysin
“Something really ugly like virus. Not for cut-up love letters, growing bolder in finding
nothing do they come from a land without an explicit poetics for gay sex. In September
mirrors.” So he takes over this newsmaga- 1965, Giorno wrote his breakout “Pornographic
zine.... And he breaks out all the ugliest Poem,” made from excerpts of a “found” erotic
pictures in the image bank and puts it story, which reads in part:
out on the subliminal so one crisis piles
up after the other right on schedule.35 At one point
they stood
When Burroughs happened to be in Vancouver in around me
1974 during Mr. Peanut’s performance-art run in a circle
for mayor, with the slogan “P for Performance, and I had
E for Elegance, A for Art, N for Nonsense, U to crawl
for Uniqueness, and T for Talent,” Burroughs from one crotch
was asked to lend his support and to give his to another
endorsement at a “campaign event”: “I would sucking
like to take this opportunity to endorse the on each cock
candidacy of Mr. Peanut for Mayor of Vancouver. until it was hard.
Mr. Peanut is running on the art platform, When I got all
and art is the creation of illusion. Since the seven up
inexorable logic of reality has created nothing I shivered
but insolvable problems, it is now time for looking up
illusion to take over. And there can only be at those erect pricks
one illogical candidate: Mr. Peanut.”36 all different
In January 1965, in the midst of the lengths
collaborative work that would become The Third and widths
Mind (1978), Burroughs and Gysin returned to and knowing
New York after ten years abroad. The capital that each one
of American media appeared to them as a citadel was going up
of corruption with enormous appeal. One night my ass hole.37
at a party they met the poet John Giorno,
a generation younger. Giorno felt an instant
24 WHAT A DUMP 25 Jarrett EarnestAt the same time, Giorno was becoming frustrat- that began the following year. In May 1971,
ed with the fact that his friends and former the Fluxus artist Geoffrey Hendricks shaved all
lovers — Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, the hair from his body from the neck down,
Jasper Johns — did not use any explicitly gay collecting it into jars that he labeled and
imagery in their art. They were professionally gathered in one of his sculptural reliquary
closeted, keeping any reference to their boxes. He described his motivation as “an act
queerness at the level of submerged code.38 of ‘shedding a skin,’ and consciously or
Giorno and Burroughs also became increas- unconsciously giving form to my awareness of
ingly close. In 1968, after a conversation with being a gay man, and confronting my changed
Burroughs over the telephone, Giorno envisioned identity.”39 This was followed in June by the
the phone as a medium for poetry, able to reach performance of “Flux Divorce,” the symbolic
people all over the country and of different separation from his wife Bici Forbes (later Nye
walks of life. He started work on his famous Ffarrabas) on their tenth wedding anniversary,
“Dial-a-Poem” (1968), a telephone number anyone during which they cut in half their marriage
could call to hear one of a rotating selection documents, bed, household objects, and, wearing
of poets reading their work. Furthering this overcoats sewn back to back, were pulled —
vision, his nonprofit record label Giorno Poetry Hendricks by a group of men and Forbes by a
Systems began to release LPs in the 1970s, group of women — until the coats ripped apart.
starting with a compilation of the Dial-a-Poem It was the beginning of new social and sexual
audio tracks. Burroughs was often central identities for each, and for Hendricks
to these releases, appearing on anthology a rebirth as an openly gay man.40
albums, reading alongside Giorno or poets like However, there remained a nagging feeling
John Ashbery and Anne Waldman. Giorno Poetry about the beard. Hendricks wondered if he
Systems’ You’re the Guy I Want to Share My should have shaved it off during the private
Money With (1981) brought Giorno and Burroughs 1971 performance, and if by keeping it he was
together with the performance artist Laurie unconsciously clinging to the straight world,
Anderson. Jimmy DeSana’s portraits of all three passing in his public face while invisibly,
of them are on the record’s cover. beneath his clothes, he had marked a transfor-
V
mation. Still bothered by 1975 Hendricks talked
about all this with his good friend Ray Johnson
on a street corner in SoHo, and the two decided
there should be a petition to resolve this
“unfinished business.” Johnson, in a typical
gesture, forwarded Hendricks the shaved beard
of a young RISD student named Scott Mednick,
Many of the artists in this tight-knit scene a seemingly random piece of mail art that
were asking questions about gay identity and Johnson used to connect Hendricks and Mednick.
visibility in the 1960s and 1970s, a dialogue In a flurry of postcards, the newly introduced
catalyzed by the Stonewall riots in 1969 and friends began to plot a performance. In the
the “Christopher Street Liberation Day” march meantime, Johnson assembled a petition: “WE,
26 WHAT A DUMP 27 Jarrett EarnestTHE UNDERSIGNED, REQUEST THAT GEOFF HENDRICKS Johnson via the Image Bank mail art network.
SHAVE HIS BEARD.” It was signed by Johnson’s On his first visit to New York, Johnson brought
established art-world friends including Schuyff along on his tried-and-true fetish
Arakawa, Suzi Gablik, and David Bourdon, as bar itinerary. At the Ninth Circle, the steak-
well as younger gay figures who would populate house turned disco turned hustler bar in
the New Wave downtown scene, such as Robin the West Village, the two talked with another
Lee Crutchfield, David Ebony, and Duncan Smith. man who was about Johnson’s age. When the
Mednick came down to New York to assist with gentleman went to the bathroom, Johnson asked,
the performance, in which the audience took “Do you know who that is? Edward Albee!”
turns cutting off portions of Hendricks’s beard. Schuyff was dazzled. Many friends remember
Hanging out afterward, Mednick got to talk joining Johnson on these rounds, which was
with his heroes about semiotics; Johnson something of a Saturday night routine after
explained his spelling of “correspondance” spending the day visiting galleries in SoHo.
because he thought of the exchanges as a kind Having come of age in the 1940s, Johnson
of performance — a pas de deux. was now witnessing a transformation in gay
The beard petition was also signed by bar subculture, a kind of renaissance. With
twenty-one-year-old Brian Buczak, who had met post-Stonewall organization and activism,
Hendricks at a party after moving to New York younger gay men, like artist and musician
from Detroit earlier that year in 1975. Almost Robin Lee Crutchfield, entered the scene in the
instantly, they became lovers and collabora- 1970s, blurring gender boundaries with their
tors. Buczak had already been corresponding clothes and affect — the first time Johnson
with Johnson through the mail art network ever met Crutchfield, he was wearing clusters of
since he had been a student at the Detroit colorful plastic earrings. However, as gay
Society of Arts and Crafts. Johnson’s letters identities were becoming more public, there
to Buczak and Hendricks were full of playful, was a corresponding stabilization of behavioral
erotic allusions. In one, a can of Crisco — codes. On one particular night, Crutchfield
popular in the S-M scene as a lubricant for fist was refused entry at Mineshaft because he was
fucking — emerges from a gray xerox haze, with wearing a red velour jacket instead of the
“For Brian & Geoff” written along the bottom, requisite leather or denim. Johnson convinced
below a rubber stamp that reads “COLLAGE BY RAY the bouncer to let them in if he checked it
JOHNSON.” In another letter, Johnson writes: at the door. Within this changing underground,
“Brian, I went to the Anvil very late the other there was a frenetic attention to “gay semi-
evening after our visits to Edit DeAk and the otics,” as San Francisco photographer Hal
Twilight Bar and checked my leather jacket & Fischer jokingly dubbed it in his series of
got the number 123 and talked the man out of 1977, which diagrams the signifiers, acces-
giving me the tabs so I could send one to you. sories, and archetypal media representations
Ray.” The coat-check ticket is taped below, and of homosexual men.41 This new generation’s
again proclaims it a COLLAGE BY RAY JOHNSON. experience is succinctly captured in artist
Around the same time, a nineteen-year-old and cultural critic Duncan Smith’s essay
Canadian named Peter Schuyff connected with “Reflections on Rhetoric in Bars.” Smith begins
28 WHAT A DUMP 29 Jarrett Earnestby meditating on the slippages between sign and constellation of signs, rather than something
referent before explaining that: that could reside within the boundaries of a
singular or static “representation,” and it
Gay people are implicated in this rhetor- is no accident that it is the dynamics within
ical play. They might call themselves the physical space of a gay bar occasioning
“gay,” but by so doing they fall prey to these reflections. Queerness is thus a desire to
referential, denotative straightjacketing. work against fixed “identity” and instead seek
Gay culture prides itself on its irony, the ambivalent freedoms of a contingent self.
its exuberant “lying,” hence making the Smith’s other widely associative writing —
designation “gay” or “homosexual” a pos- which includes a complex deconstruction of
sible lie, a rhetorical play, an ironic Elvis Presley’s image and anagrammed analysis
figure. To make homosexuality into a of famous names — provides a parallel model
referent, as does “gay liberation,” seems for Johnson’s own prototypically queer method-
false in terms of the idea of a “gay ology. Similar to Johnson, Duncan was obsessed
sensibility” with its ironic and aesthetic with celebrity mystique, creating a series of
trademarks.... deconstructed image-text collages. One shows a
Does gay liberation now mean that glossy black-and-white glamour shot of Gloria
gays can no longer lie about their Swanson with vertical rips down her nose
sexuality? Does it mean that language and throat with “TEAR ME IN TWO” repeated on
henceforth will entirely consist of refer- each cheek. Another uses a colorized produc-
ents adequate to their signs, intentions tion still of Elvis Presley on the set of a
to their expressions, thoughts to their film, guitar in hand, behind a movie clap-
utterances? Does it mean the death of lie? board, with “PHOTO ME CRUEL” painted in gold
No matter what happens, access to language over the scene. When Smith altered a copy of
is contingent on our capacity to lie. Crutchfield’s “Ray Johnson paper doll” mail art,
Inasmuch as gay liberation desires to have the figure was drawn into Vincent Trasov’s Mr.
the courage to speak the truth, it will Peanut costume, sliding one mail art persona
not be able to control those situations into another.
where a lie will preserve life and live- The complete run of FILE Megazine spanning
lihood. Why should one be a referee of the years between 1972 and 1989 is a primer
one’s sexuality if there’s the possibility on these queer modes of reading. The layouts
that honesty could cause one’s death? As themselves are usually overlapped collages,
long as there is oppression and adverse with no standardized design, able to switch
legislation, gays will be forced to lie. visual language completely from one article
From the referent “gay” to the figure, lie to the next, from one side of the page to the
or ironic posture of “straightness” is other. For the September 1973 edition, the
the oscillation a “gay” still endures.42 logo’s letters have been rearranged as IFEL for
the “Special Paris Issue.” Inside is a two-
Smith models queerness as a multivalent, page spread of “The Letters of Ray Johnson.”43
oppositional mode of reading within a fluid Two letters, layered in Johnson’s manner, are
30 WHAT A DUMP 31 Jarrett Earnestreproduced with columns of text in the maga- never resolved — is understated by comparison.
zine’s voice written along the outer edges. Indeed, part of the pleasure is the parallel
The letter on the right proclaims in scratching incongruity between glamorous Bette Davis as
script “Ray Johnson’s new book ‘What a Dump’ the housewife in the “modest cottage” and glam-
send for your free copy” above a crude cari- orous Elizabeth Taylor as a boozy wife of an
cature of Bette Davis in a large hat, mascara associate history professor in a small college
running, cigarette smoking between teeth, town. Playing against type, the causes of their
and issuing a comic-book-style word bubble: discontent are self-evident when run up against
“What a dump!” their real-world personas. The line pilfered
The opening of Edward Albee’s 1962 play from a play written by a closeted playwright,
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? has Martha “What a dump” became an acidic slogan for
stumbling into her home to deliver the camp queers, an indictment of the gender roles of
line “What a dump,” a reference to Bette Davis a straight world in postwar America. Entwined
in a film she can’t recall. She harangues her with Johnson’s “What a dump” illustration in
husband George into helping her remember which FILE is also his typed letter, which concludes
“goddamn Warner Brothers epic” it was. He “if you take the cha cha out of Duchamp you
halfheartedly suggests “Chicago. It’s called get what a dump.” In the 1990s, the younger
Chicago.” and Martha launches in: mail artist Mark Bloch recalls Johnson calling
him to tell a variation on the joke: “What
Oh, good grief! Don’t you know anything? did Bette Davis say when she looked at Étant
Chicago was a thirties musical starring donnés? Answer: What a Duchamp!”45
VI
little Miss Alice Faye. Don’t you know
anything? This picture, Bette Davis
comes home from a hard day at the grocery
store.... She’s a housewife. She buys
things. She comes home with the groceries
and she walks into the modest living
room of the modest cottage modest Joseph
Cotten set her up in.... And she comes “Duchamp” plus “What a dump” is a typical
in and she looks around this room and she Johnson equation, an associative free play that
sets down her groceries. And she says, carries his words and images along their trans-
“What a dump!” She’s discontent. What’s formations with a touch of camp irreverence.
the name of the picture?44 There is no question that the gender-bending
persona of Marcel Duchamp, who famously created
In 1966’s blistering film version, Elizabeth the feminine alter ego Rrose Sélavy, presages
Taylor as Martha enunciates the line as a camp Johnson’s own deconstructions of the Artist as
parody of Davis’s movie star persona, waving elusive celebrity. Importantly, he adds to that
her cigarette in circles with a shrug. The construct the artist as fan, with an iconog-
bitchiness of Davis’s actual delivery in 1949’s raphy encompassing a comprehensive pantheon of
Beyond the Forest — the movie in question, but twentieth-century gay icons, from the immortal
32 WHAT A DUMP 33 Jarrett Earnestclassics Mae West, Greta Garbo, Jayne Mansfield, they portray (just as the roles Joan Crawford
and Judy Garland to the fresher faces of Bette played are all subsumed into and indistin-
Midler, Liza Minnelli, Cher, and Sharon Stone. guishable from the encompassing image of the
Johnson went so far as to send reinvented camp composite Goddess). The worshipful attitude of
queen and Pepsi-Cola executive Joan Crawford queer men toward these commodified stars was
a letter in 1971, inviting her to see a collage so well established within popular culture
dedicated to her. Famously responsive to fan that it forms the foundation of Gore Vidal’s
mail, Crawford sent Johnson a reply on her Myra Breckinridge (1968), a novel whose main
personal stationery: character, herself a synthesis of Hollywood
trivia and quotation, is hard at work on a
Dear Ray Johnson, study titled Parker Tyler and the Films of the
Thank you very much for sending me an Forties, through which Vidal pays sarcastic
announcement of the exhibition of your homage to Tyler, the gay film critic whom
“Joan Crawford Dollar Bill” collage at Breckinridge quotes like scripture.
the Aldrich Museum. I’m so sorry I won’t Movie star fan clubs and fan mail were an
be able to get to see it before the existing popular-culture phenomenon, markedly
19th of September, as I’ll be out of identified with young women, that Johnson
town on my travels for Pepsi, but it was could seamlessly incorporate into the New York
kind of you to let me know about it. Correspondance School ethos. Johnson started
Bless you and all good wishes to you. fan clubs for important older artists, placing
them on the same level as the ones he launched
Johnson answered her letter, informing her of for his favored idiosyncratic starlets, like
the collage’s new whereabouts and garnering Anna May Wong, making rubber stamps to desig-
another reply: “I am delighted that the ‘Joan nate various mailings and collages as part of
Crawford Dollar Bill’ was sold to America’s the ODILON REDON FAN CLUB, MAX ERNST FAN CLUB,
Leading Art Collector, Joseph Hirshhorn. I SANDRA BERNHARD FAN CLUB, or SHELLEY DUVALL
hope that you had a magnificent Christmas and FAN CLUB, to name just a few. In effect, the
will have a beautiful new year.” Facsimiles of whole of NYCS was a fan club for the character
Crawford’s two notes to Johnson were cycled of “Ray Johnson,” by turns self-effacing and
into mail art, distributed far and wide within self-aggrandizing, with people all over emulat-
NYCS networks, marked COLLAGE BY RAY JOHNSON. ing his style and iconography and impersonating
The idealized package of classic Hollywood him. Eventually, he added a FAKE COLLAGE BY
actors was the result of meticulous construc- RAY JOHNSON stamp to his repertoire. In the
tion by studio publicity departments; careful late 1970s and early 1980s, Johnson became so
placement of stories in magazines invented fascinated by the critiques of authorship and
an altogether new kind of audience relation: representation formulated by what would become
movie fandom. The unbridgeable distance between the Pictures Generation that he often peppered
star and fan opened up a space for both pro- Peter Schuyff with questions about these new
jection and identification; the self of the artists, especially artist Sherrie Levine, who
star could be dissolved into the characters wanted nothing to do with Johnson. Despite,
34 WHAT A DUMP 35 Jarrett Earnestor because of, her resistance, Johnson was soon Warhol consciously bewigged and omnipresent,
sending out mail stamped COLLAGE BY SHERRIE with Johnson’s progressively willed obscurity
LEVINE, a return volley in the game of under- and removal of his person and art from public
mining the myth of singular genius. appearance, beyond friends and highly orches-
It is useful to contrast Johnson’s star trated events.
images, as emblems of fame, with those of his This paradoxical attitude toward his own
friend and mirror image Andy Warhol. Born a celebrity is encapsulated by Johnson’s visit
year apart, in 1927 and 1928, respectively, to General Idea in Toronto in the mid-1970s,
the queer sons from industrial cities, each the second and last time he left the US. What
arrived in New York City in 1949 to become could have been a journey into the very heart
artists. Both pursued work as commercial de- of the scene where Johnson would relish in
signers for many of the same magazines and his own fame as the almost mythic forerunner
publishers, including New Directions. By 1956, of General Idea’s artistic and intellectual
the two were friends and shared many cultural pursuits instead witnessed his arrival with a
obsessions; Johnson’s early use of Elvis and strip of silver electrical tape over his mouth,
Marilyn actually predates Warhol’s, which as though he’d been trussed up by criminals,
would go on to define the era. The work of both and a note explaining simply that he could not
artists evinces a mania for personae, gestures talk. For the entire long weekend, whenever
that evacuate the “self” to displace it with he was with General Idea, his mouth remained
the image of another, thereby creating a chain taped shut. He was excluded by his own efforts,
of identification, where Warhol could be played hanging out during meals but not partaking,
by Candy Darling in an interview, and Jimmy simply watching everything, and remaining
DeSana could photograph John Dowd’s butt in present. AA Bronson imagined that when he went
the “role” of Ray Johnson. Their twin obses- off by himself during the day, he took the tape
sions with celebrity increasingly manifested in off to eat and drink, but they never saw him
opposite directions: Warhol created an orbit break the performance.
VII
around himself and his image was amplified expo-
nentially through mass media, while Johnson
dispersed into the fluctuations of the network,
letters delivered one at a time, then passed
along altered in ways beyond his control.
Even their physical headquarters reflect their
differing directions: Warhol’s factory in Lower
Manhattan was host to partiers and collabora- On April 20, 1976, Johnson had a friend hold
tors flowing in and out, while Johnson rarely a gooseneck table lamp a few feet from the
let anyone visit his Long Island home. Through left side of Warhol’s face while Johnson traced
the 1970s and 1980s, Warhol’s canvases became the slightly larger-than-life shadow onto a
ever larger, emptier surfaces, while Johnson’s sheet of paper on the wall. The whole proce-
became smaller, increasingly dense. Their dure only took a few minutes and once it was
personas similarly contrast hypervisibility, over everyone left. However, the process
36 WHAT A DUMP 37 Jarrett EarnestYou can also read
