The San Fernando Valley in 1984 could not have been further from Swinging London in the 1960’s but for myself and few close friends it might as well have been the same thing. From 1984-1986, I belonged to a small but dedicated subculture of Southern California Mods centered in and around West Valley cities like Woodland Hills, Calabasas, Northridge and Reseda. We hung out at places called Moby Disk (records), Antenna (haircuts), and Phases (dancing). While the other kids in my neighborhood were into Heavy Metal, my friends and I wore suits and skinny ties to school that we ordered from Carnaby Street in London.

We liked bands like The Jam. The Specials and The Untouchables. I formed a band and published a fanzine. My favorite movie was Quadrophenia. For me personally, being a Mod was much more than a fashion statement. It was a way of life. I tried everything in my power (to the point of obsession) to live as much of the time as possible in some kind of styled-out British fantasy. Looking back I can’t believe how totally awkward we must have looked during the summertime, walking down the streets of my suburban tract community in 100-degree heat wearing suits and big army parkas. It’s no wonder we caught so much shit from the jocks out there. But at the time, it seemed perfectly logical and there was a growing scene in Los Angeles that supported our dream.

Aside from music and fashion, no self-respecting mod could hold his head high without the possession of the final mod accessory…a scooter. I begged my parents for one. I scoured the Recycler every week for cheap Vespas and Lambrettas. On my fourteenth birthday my dream came true. Out in a trailer park in Chatsworth I found a rusted out LI 150 Silver Special and my parents bought it for me as a present. I think it cost 300 bucks. I obviously wasn’t old enough to drive the thing, so the deal was that I could only restore and clean it. My folks cleared a little area on the side of our house for me to work on it. The bike barely ran, so I had my work cut out for me. I would spend every day after school until the time I had to go to bed taking the engine apart piece by piece; cleaning it and putting it back together. After a few months my scooter kicked over like a charm.

The following summer my family and I took a vacation to Europe and I made sure to hit every scooter shop I saw. I returned from England with crash bars, fog lights, backrests, luggage racks and Stadium mirrors (the “official” mod mirror). When I got home with this stuff I really got to work. I painted the bike two-tone black and white, covered the seats, spare tire and cowlings with leopard print faux-fur and installed the accessories. Finally my bike was complete, but there was one problem. I was only fourteen! How could I not ride this thing? I started sneaking it out of the yard while my parents were asleep, meeting up with my friends down the hill and riding to Hollywood to go clubbing.

There was no better feeling than riding in a group of scooters down Ventura Blvd. at midnight. We felt like we owned the world. If I squinted my eyes the streets could even look like London sometimes. The next year I got my learners permit and began to ride the bike with more frequency. I eventually drove it into the ground. Many of the mod friends I had either moved away or had gotten into other things. I was becoming interested in girls and felt the need for a car (partly because I could sleep in it). The scooter sat covered for a long time until I sold it to my neighbor for $100. These photos are some of the last remaining images I have from that time. A time when all I needed to be happy was a three-button suit and a vintage Lambretta.

I recently came across an essay I wrote in 2006 for Modern Painters magazine called ‘The Quarterlife Crisis’. It looks back at a moment when the art world was captivated by a new generation of then twenty-something artists. Dan Colen, Ryan McGinley, Dash Snow, and others, as they made the transition from the downtown scene into museums and the broader art establishment.

Reading it now, it feels like both a time capsule and a reflection on how quickly the art world creates (and consumes) its own myths.

On a recent Friday night throngs of New York City hipsters, hangers-on and art aficionados crammed into Jeffrey Deitch’s downtown gallery for a viewing of a new piece by an artist named Dan Colen. Mr. Colen, whose works have already been shown at the Saatchi Gallery and are currently featured in the Whitney Biennial, could be considered an official “one to watch” in Manhattan art circles. The work was showing that night to celebrate its sale to an important Los Angeles collector. At first glance, the piece on display, obscurely titled, Secrets and Cymbals, Smoke and Scissors (My Friend Dash’s Wall in the Future) (2004-2006), looks very much like any disgruntled twenty-something’s bedroom wall. Upon closer inspection however, one notices that each individual element affixed to the wall has been in fact painstakingly painted and the piece is actually an exact photorealist replication of what it originally seemed. It turns out that the work is a reproduction the bedroom wall of Dash Snow (another young New York artist in the Biennial).

The work is quite epic, technically impressive, and there is no doubt the artist worked painstakingly to create it, but it still seems to me that people are missing the most incredible and outrageous point about it. Dan Colen is only twenty-six years old! He hangs out with skateboarders and graffiti artists, trolls around the Lower East Side with slouchy pants and a nonchalant attitude and resembles much more a baby-faced kid than an exhibiting international artist. But that point doesn’t really seem to faze people these days. In fact, one could almost say it’s to be expected in today’s art world. Also in attendance at the opening that night was twenty-eight year-old Ryan McGinley, (a photographer and also Mr. Colen’s roommate who is currently preparing for his second solo exhibition at the Whitney) as well as a host of other young guns with paint splatters on their jeans and fire in their eyes. So what is it about these young kids that so spark the art establishment’s interest? Has it gotten to a point that we could even consider it the “Youth Quake of 2006?”

This might sound to some like an ironic criticism, but I assure you it is not. It is merely an observation of a phenomenon that seems worthy of discussion. As an independent curator I have witnessed it first hand. An exhibition titled Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture that I curated has been touring the world’s museum circuit for the last two years. Beautiful Losers is a survey show of works by artists influenced by the worlds of skateboarding, graffiti, punk rock, and hip hop. The exhibition includes works from artists such as the aforementioned Mr. McGinley as well as Barry McGee, Chris Johanson, Margaret Kilgallen, and Shepard Fairey among others (both Johanson and Kilgallen were also featured in the Whitney Biennial two years ago). Beautiful Losers is a large, expansive show spanning multiple rooms and almost all of the primary artists in the exhibition are currently in their twenties and thirties.

When we originally approached the curators of the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in Cincinnati to mount the exhibition we were met with interest, albeit with a somewhat weary glance. I myself had been working in various capacities with artists whose works derive from and/or are inspired by the world of “street culture” for some time now and I was used to having doors slammed in my face. Although the situation seemed promising, I expected the same here. Somehow, however, call it luck or fate, our exhibition proposal was accepted and Beautiful Losers opened to great acclaim in March 2004. Post opening, the CAC museum staff reported our exhibition drawing crowds 33% above the museum’s usual attendance. The exhibition traveled to San Francisco next and the opening party at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts drew over 10,000 visitors. The throngs were so huge that at one point security had to lock the front doors to keep the masses out which in turn sparked a near riot of people pushing on the glass to force their way inside. I distinctly remember looking at what was going on and finding it hard to believe that all this mayhem was about an art installation!! The scene resembled something more akin to the Rolling Stones at Altamont than something happening in a museum.

I must admit that even though I stood at those massive openings with a sense of awe and satisfaction as we watched these legions of young kids with skateboards and funny haircuts flow through the museums’ turnstiles, something about it gave me a strange feeling. On the one hand I was thrilled to see so many young people attending an art museum. The fact that we had built an exhibition that promoted skateboarding, street culture and graffiti, creative acts that most city governments still find illegal was and still is, in my opinion, an amazing coup and a real sign of positive change. On the other hand however I noticed a certain gleam in the museum staff’s eye that was slightly unsettling. While I was more than pleased with the turnout, still something inside me felt a bit ill at ease with all this institutional support.

It made me wonder…why now all of a sudden? Had we all been invited to this exclusive party based on our accomplishments and talent or could it be possible that there were other more sinister forces at work? If you really look closely, all these additional visitors flocking to the museum represent not only a successful show and good curatorial decisions, but also significant revenue for an institution. After all, each and every one of those kids pays the admission fee. Additionally, for many of these visitors, these exhibitions could represent their first (and perhaps only) time stepping foot in an art museum. A good majority of contemporary works shown in museums these days hold little or no relevance to the general public (especially the youth), so exhibitions of works that relate to young people will without a doubt attract the attention of new patrons, some of whom may have never thought to go to an art museum before. I would imagine that museum halls full of young hearts, minds and bodies looks quite good to potential funding sources, not to mention the good marks from the museum’s board about bringing minority groups into the institution due to a particular exhibit’s “street” attitude.

I realize that all this might sound a bit jaded, but as I said before I’ve witnessed it first hand. Maybe that’s just the price of doing business? Yes maybe. But I can’t help but notice all of a sudden this immense interest in the youth culture. It seems every week I hear of a new exhibition being mounted in some major institution or another focusing on works of art inspired by the street. Some of these exhibitions are indeed valid and persons with a genuine interest in the work are mounting them. But for all too many of these productions this isn’t the case and motivations are perhaps less than honest. I experienced a bit of that the other night at Dan Colen’s opening. While I was genuinely happy for the artist and I sincerely believe that he created that piece with passion, there was something about it all that to me just seemed a little bit insane. When hot new trends hit the art world (or any other creative medium for that matter), sometimes things get out of hand and expectations (and accolades) are showered on an artist before he/she has had time to fully develop a true sense of who he/she is. You could call it the “Quarterlife Crisis”. I’ve seen it happen time and time again in many fields, but never to the extent to which I see it happening currently in the world of fine art.

I’ve always believed that so much of an artists’ journey has to do with that wonderful sense of wild abandon that is felt in those early years of one’s career. Those years are a time for experimentation and discovery. A time when an artist can make mistakes without fear of retribution later. That valuable energy should not be wasted on concerns of the market or longevity. When that starts happening you run the risk of wiping out the very essence of what originally made the work exciting. This is unfortunately what I see happening all too often now. Yes, the museums and galleries are packed with kids, but at what cost to the very talent that gets them there? We should all be able to enjoy this wonderful time where so many new ideas are surfacing from our peers. But we must remember to nurture our young at the same time, lest we destroy that which we all feel so excited about. The future lies in the hearts and minds of these young artists. Let’s try not to annihilate them before they get there.

The Lower East Side is not generally known for being a fashionable destination. Populated primarily by seedy bars, nodding junkies, and boarded-up storefronts, the thought of anything even remotely related to fashion happening here is pretty hard to believe. In fact, the only reason anyone from another neighborhood would even step foot on the street would be if they were looking for illicit substances. That said, here on Ludlow Street just below Houston, nestled between two vacant storefronts and a few doors down from a seedy bar called Max Fish, lies a small hub of underground culture. Last week on a chilly Saturday night, denizens of both the fashion and art worlds came out in force for a major downtown event. Alleged Gallery, a little unknown art space and TG 170, a cool fashion boutique for young girls came together as one for a cultural event that left the Puerto Rican neighbors scratching their heads.

Ladies and gentlemen…57^th Street this is not. Alleged is a modest space that seems more like a living room than a business. In fact, from the looks of it, most days the clientele is more than likely comprised almost exclusively of cretins, criminals and dirty skateboarders. Last week, however, the walls of the space were covered almost entirely floor to ceiling with artworks. Thus transforming the space into a massive colorful and visually stimulating collage. The various artists included in the exhibition are all almost completely unknown, but most offerings show much promise. Take the simple drawings by a young artist named Tom Sachs. In his works, the Japanese cartoon character Hello Kitty is rendered in sharpie marker on small scraps of paper stamped with the statement “Made in Switzerland.” Another young artist, Phil Frost has wheat-pasted one side of the gallery with photocopied drawings and found objects. On top of this he has hung canvasses of various sizes depicting creepy cartoon faces along with graphic renderings of hearts, all executed in correction fluid. Mike Mills, an emerging graphic designer who creates album cover art for many local bands (as well as identity work for TG 170 next door) shows a series of 1960’s inspired posters in neon colors. West Coast based artist Mark Gonzales displays a series of ink drawings on different colored typing paper. Some feature characters and others are just text. One work in particular shows a ghost-like figure with the simple inscription, “I’ve Got A Mind Like You Wouldn’t Believe.” This one sells for the outrageous price of twenty-five dollars.

At the time of this writing the piece was still available. Other artists of note include wall paintings by tattoo artist Daniel Higgs, Photographs by Tobin Yelland and Joshua Wildman, canvasses by Ed Templeton and a series of silly drawings by a 20 year-old film writer named Harmony Korine, whose Larry Clark-directed script, Kids, has recently finished shooting in the neighborhood. In fact, as we wandered outside and into the boutique next door, many of the cast members of the film seemed to be hanging around here tonight. After a sip from a tall bottle of malt liquor in a brown bag, I carefully positioned myself out on the sidewalk in front of the shop windows of TG 170 where a fashion show was about to start. Terri Gillis, the owner of the small boutique has been open for business in this space for a few years. However, except for a patronage of mostly local young girls (and a few “in the know” others), the place has gone virtually unnoticed by the fashion world. The shop features collections by young and mostly local designers, many of whom create their lines specifically for the boutique. Tonight it seems like that might change. The runway for this evening’s show is actually in the front picture windows of the small boutique…and the hundred or so guests who have assembled were quite excited. The designer showing her wares was a young downtowner named Wendy Mullin. Her fashion line, Built By Wendy, began with a line of custom guitar straps, and has now grown to be a full fledged collection. Because of her organic ties to music, her line has reportedly become quite the hit with the underground scene.

The attending crowd is evidence of that. There amongst the throngs for the evening’s festivities were none other than Tatiana Von Furstenberg, daughter of fashion designer Dianne Von Furstenberg, young up-and-coming actors Liv Tyler and Robin Tunney (who also modeled in the show), legendary graffiti artist Futura 2000, Melissa Auf Der Mar of the rock group Hole, indie-musician Chan Marshall who performs under the name Cat Power, also in attendance were Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and film director Jim Jarmusch. As the fashion show started, the windows lit up and the crowd was riveted to the models. As rock music blared from stereo speakers installed in the shop’s entrance, the mass of onlookers grew until the small street was almost completely blocked to traffic.

The downtown art scene mixed in with the Spanish locals all trying to get a glimpse of the spectacle. The fashions were a perfect mixture of girly and indie-rock cool. As the last model left the window, the sound of police radios could be heard as the crowd was urged to disperse by New York’s finest. The crowd filtered back into the gallery or into the bar where a party ensued that lasted into the early hours of the morning. Some who were lucky enough to attend this magical evening will undoubtedly mark it as quite a memorable downtown event. Others might never hear of it or the artists exhibited in the gallery nor the clothing on display. In this writer’s opinion, it is most certainly their loss. Whether or not the seedy Lower East Side will ever catch on as a trendy destination is probably open for debate, however last weekend, if only for one night, it was most certainly the place to be in New York.

Her oeuvre encompasses paintings, drawings, collages, videos, sculptures, objects and publications. While she was considered a contemporary of early feminist artists such as Judy Chicago and Sylvia Sleigh who sought to counter sexism with a distinctly feminine aesthetic, Iannone has charted a different path. Her work is deeply personal and unmistakably feminine yet seems blissfully unconcerned with dismantling the trappings of patriarchy. Rather, in her world, women and men are both governed by the dictates of erotic passion. I had seen examples of Iannone’s work before, but never in such broad context, and I would most certainly consider this discovery life-changing. While still in Berlin, I immediately got on the phone and attempted to secure an interview with her, however due to her increasing age, she politely declined my request. Of course, this was a major blow. It is not often that I feel such a need to meet a person directly and pick their brain. Unfortunately she passed away not long after that. However, undeterred, I decided to do the research myself. I needed to write something about this fascinating artist. The words following here contain a somewhat abridged account of the wonderful life and work of Dorothy Iannone. This is only the beginning. I did the best that I could, but I highly suggest you research further.

Dorothy Iannone was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1933. She is the only child of an Italian-immigrant widowed mother, who worked in a chocolate factory when Dorothy was young. In the early 1950’s, she attended both Boston University and Brandeis University, choosing to study English Literature. In 1958 she married the Abstract Expressionist painter James Upham and the couple moved to New York City. The following year, when she was 26, after a visit to her husband’s studio, she began to paint alongside her him. She has described her early works as “finger paintings”, and she did not necessarily take the works very seriously, yet something was born in her during that time. Even then, she was no stranger to controversy. In 1961, Iannone was arrested by US Customs for importing the banned novels of Henry Miller, and subsequently won a court case against the authorities. Her actions led to the government lifting the ban on all his novels in the USA, and overturning the censorship of many other authors. In 1963, Iannone and Upham opened the Stryke Gallery, an exhibition space on 10^th Street. At the time, 10^th Street was the center for avant garde art galleries in New York City. Together, they ran the gallery when they were not traveling and working on projects in Europe and Asia. It was during one of these travels, in 1967, after a cruise to Reykjavik, Iceland, that she met the German artist Dieter Roth. She claims that Roth was “waiting for them on a pier, holding a fish.” Iannone and Roth quickly became lovers, and after a brief return to New York, she and her husband separated. She quickly moved to Dusseldorf to be with him. They remained companions until 1974, and lifelong friends until his death in 1998. During their time together they were immersed in the vibrant Dusseldorf Fluxus scene, although she would later inscribe on a piece: ‘I am she who is not Fluxus.’ Iannone often painted Roth, her self-declared muse, depicting both him and herself as active lovers, comfortable with their desires and pleasures. She removed self-consciousness from these works, and in doing this, dispelled the taboo that so often surrounds sexuality. The works becoming elevated to an act of both bodily and spiritual union. Between 1968-1969 Dorothy Iannone made a series of 27 drawings depicting her life with Dieter Roth while living in Germany, France and Iceland. Dorothy described this period as “always immersed in the beloved.” She called this series of drawings Ta(Rot). In them, Dieter Roth was also known as Dieter Rot. The drawings are beautiful, romantic, and personal.

Today, Dorothy Iannone’s œuvre, which now spans more than fifty years, includes paintings, drawings, comics, sculpture, autobiographical texts and films. Since the 1960s she has been seen as a pioneering spirit against censorship, for free love and autonomous female sexuality. The paintings, visual narratives, texts and books by this pioneer of women’s sexual and intellectual emancipation draw uncompromisingly on autobiographical themes. They are for the most part delightfully direct celebrations of women’s sexual power. As the result of that, Iannone’s art has been frequently censored because of allegedly pornographic content. Yet her depictions of the sexual union between man and woman have an unmistakably mystical dimension rooted in the spiritual and physical balance of opposites. This anchors her visual universe within cultural history and lends a modern, personal interpretation to Eastern religions, including Tibetan Buddhism, Indian Tantrism and Christian ecstatic traditions like those of the seventeenth-century Baroque.

She has been described as a priestess, matriarch, and sex goddess. As a self-taught painter, her works are as disconcerting for their shrill blend of the both the naive and the hippyish. She creates scenarios in symbolic settings, in which she also consistently celebrates a playful handling of her subject matter. One can also certainly see influences of Gustav Klimt, tantric art, comic books and pop, all packaged with a certain revere for folk art. However all of her work defies falling into any of these direct trappings. The first thing you notice when viewing her works is that there are words everywhere. In a drawing about her sexual rites of passage, she writes: “Domesticity is dull and deadly, the thing to realize is that everyone knows this.” She goes on: “Try living mostly alone. Maybe you will learn to be more connected to people.” Often, to really appreciate her work, you have to get up close, to squint and peer, and read more than you look. There’s a nice plainness to the calligraphy and the way everything is drawn. In Iannone’s idiosyncratic visual language, breasts are usually represented as circles within circles, genitalia often appear atop people’s clothing and a woman’s swollen labia can be as large and round as testicles. The depictions of sex organs in Iannone’s works come in all shapes and sizes, yet somehow, all this sex neither arouses nor titillates. It is repetitive, I suppose in the way most sex is. I don’t think she intends her work to turn us on. Unlike other artists whose works have fallen into the “feminist” realm, Iannone’s work celebrates matriarchy and men as well as solitude and togetherness. She believes art and living should be considered exercises of freedom. In a turn that’s quite difficult for any visual artist to pull off, and she depicts herself in her work as both powerful and submissive, the goddess and the whore. Her art is more childlike and innocent than forceful or dogmatic.

In her 1972 work, “Think You There Was…”, a woman bends over backward as a man penetrates her. The woman’s bright red nipples, which jut upward, are the same shape as the man’s penis and almost as long. As the two bodies fuse in an indeterminate space, the man appears to be behind the woman, but his genitals float flatly on top of the painting. It’s hard to say who is penetrating whom. Additionally, in an early series of small wooden cutouts from 1966, which she simply titled “People”, Iannone featured a cast of famous names and mythological beings including among them Charlie Chaplin and JFK, Henry VIII and Jackie O Kennedy. In the works, genitals poke through their clothes and the men look like they’re wearing strap-ons. The figures, rendered crudely with felt tip pens on cut out cardboard, were cheeky, funny, comical and thereby critical of the subjects they portrayed. In 1968, Iannone was invited to exhibit alongside Deiter Roth in an exhibition called “Friends” at the Kunsthalle Bern. Harry Szeemann, the curator of the exhibition, along with some of the other artists in the exhibition found the clearly identifiable images in Iannone’s paintings a bit too drastic. In response to this, before the opening, the artsist covered the genitals with brown tape. This is quite amazing considering this was the age of the sexual revolution. After some argument though, the artists realized that they were foolish and decided to remove the tape, but the museum held firm. They requested that the offending paintings be removed from the exhibition. This led both Iannone and Roth to remove all of their works from the exhibition, creating a controversy throughout the art world at the time, and eventually causing Szeemann his job. While some could consider her works crude, even pornographic, she is simply portraying the basic facts of life. A body reduced to sexuality, whose intimate parts and actions have been made public. A portrayal of a simple, naked, sexual being, doing the things that take place in private, away from the public eye, the stuff of her bare life. Sex.

In Iannone’s works, erect penises wave, buttocks burst from the surface and breasts bulge, vaginas are proffered and everyone’s at it. They reflect the life and loves of the artist in all its glory. If these works were being created by a young artist today, you might call them post-feminist. But she made them in the late 1960s and early ’70s, when the first wave of feminism was cresting. Interestingly, Iannone maintained a respectful distance from emergent Feminist theory and its protagonists. In a fascinating way, they combine apparent submission on the part of the woman and obvious self-objectification on her part, but with a clear sense that this artist is firmly in control of her story. In fact, she painted herself having intercourse decades before Jeff Koons documented his sex life with his porn-star wife, La Cicciolina, and in 1967, Dorothy Iannone made an artist’s book naming all the men she’d ever slept with, decades before artists like Tracy Emin made similar works, to similar controversy. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Iannone continued to create works with even more graphic subject matter well into the 1970’s. In a work titled, “Let me Squeeze Your Fat Cunt” from 1971, the sexual attributes of her subjects are reversed. The female character in the painting says, “Let me touch your fat cunt” as she touches the crotch of the male character. Pushing it even further, it seems as though the female character, not the man, has the big heavy balls in the picture.

In her well-known multi-media installation, “I Was Thinking of You”, a video monitor is contained in a painted box. Inside, we watch Iannone’s face in close up as she giddily masturbates. When it was exhibited in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, it was considered on of the most transgressive works in the show. Not bad for a woman in her 70’s at the time. The extravagantly decorative video-sculpture was originally made in 1975 and updated in 2006. On its exterior, the hand-painted wooden box depicts a man and woman in flagrante sexual positions. A cutout where the woman’s face should be holds a video monitor displaying a loop of Ms. Iannone’s face, where she proceeds to pleasure herself. On the sides of the box, a cryptic text urges men to surrender. While it is obvious that she is masturbating, there is something subtle about the work. It does not feel pornographic. Iannone has said that in this work she tried to capture the “soul passing over the face,” and as her eyes flash at the climactic moment you can almost see it happen. Another video work, Follow Me(1977), takes the form of a three-panel black and white work with a video monitor built into it. The video shows the artist’s face as she sings one of her texts, which is also drawn out on the panels. The front is ornamented with her self-portrait as a naked, opulent goddess beside her lover. In another from 1980, titled, The Heroic Performance of Pastor Erik Bock, the artist fixed her camera on her then lover, a sexy preacher man, who awkwardly delivers an hour-long sermon on Christian love and community. The painting on the box looks like a free-love nudist colony.

Now living in Berlin, the 80-year-old American artist’s work is still as raunchy as ever it was. She is still a poster woman for the depths and possibilities of erotic art. By all accounts something of a bohemian “grande dame,” Iannone has a colorful and varied biography peppered with intense friendships with male artists and writers, all of which are integral to an appreciation of her art, particularly because her personal mythology, experiences, feelings and relationships are often the subjects of her work. One can only applaud. But we should celebrate these works for more than just an artist’s stamina. There are lots of other ways one wants to celebrate a woman like this. Most importantly, she has been fearless in her pursuit of personal freedom. She has devoted her life to unconditional love. Even though she is perhaps most well known for her works depicting her relationship with Dieter Roth, in the context of her oeuvre, this becomes only an episode. Even though she sacrificed her marriage for him, they did not hesitate for a moment to break up and let go of one another for each to follow their own creative path. For both, their life design, which was their art practice, always came first.

For more than half a century, Dorothy Iannone’s work has illuminated a journey of ever-increasing sexual, political and spiritual awareness and a life perpetually in search of union with the beloved, the viewer, her listeners and the world. But the real spirit at work is Iannone’s infectious blend of playful seduction, iconoclasm and a particular brand of sexual liberation. Something that, even though we’re now decades later, in this writer’s opinion, is still very much needed. One could say that the intention in most of her works, and she’s maybe even speaking for all women, is to liberate men and lead them back to a somehow lost version of love. She aims to free them, through her works, from their sad, earthly existence. These words taken from her work “Follow Me” should be read and considered closely, “Follow me, it’s not too late to remember who I am.

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Val Kilmer passed away last week at the age of 65. He will be missed.

The story of art is littered with preposterous narratives. One could venture to say, that the more academics have tried to figure out exactly what makes art “great”, the more their didactions are almost always completely incorrect. This is of course why the understanding of the artistic process has continued to bewilder our society, but also what makes the whole adventure so wonderfully enjoyable. The visual works of Val Kilmer fit neatly into this conundrum. It cannot be denied that Kilmer is widely recognized as an actor, and as the result of this, his oeuvre in this medium has undoubtedly been emblazoned into our collective psyche. However, those achievements have been based on Kilmer’s ability to interpret other artists’ characters, and he is most certainly a master of this. What sets apart his works in the realm of visual art is another story completely. Here we don’t meet Val Kilmer the actor. We are instead introduced to a man as himself…an emotional nascent being maneuvering through the struggles of the soul as any other working artist would attempt.

Kilmer’s visual practice is diverse, ranging from paintings, photography, print-making, sculptures and works of collage. Sometimes figurative and other times abstract. While at first glance this approach may seem somewhat schizophrenic, with a closer look it’s easily understood that there is a continuing narrative throughout. The roots of these works exist in beautifully constructed scrapbooks created by the artist as one-of-a-kind editions. Painstakingly crafted and layered with drawings, ephemera, photography and collage, they tell the story of an artist’s life. Delving at times into his work in the movies, but more often than not exploring greater themes dealing with the understanding of the human condition. In fact, it’s entirely possible that as the result of Kilmer’s long history of playing narrative roles, he brings a completely unique approach to the realm of visual art. After all, what is the primary duty of an artist? Isn’t it to interpret the world in creative ways so that we as a society can have a better understanding of who we are?

If broken down, the creative process is essentially the same across mediums. All great art starts with a sketch…in Kilmer’s instance, a scrapbook. The sketch is then expanded, revised and edited into various forms until a solid through-line exists that delivers a message in the most powerful way possible. If we look at Kilmer’s work through this lens, then we start to understand that the old saying, “Jack of all trades, master of none” is an outdated trope. An artist’s experience is his and his alone. All of the experience a particular creator brings to the table is what makes his or her voice unique. Val Kilmer’s work most certainly checks all those boxes. Like all great artists, Kilmer looks at the world through a kaleidoscopic field. Opportunities to interpret this cornucopia come to him naturally and without pretense. His effort is real. His vision is pure.

Val Kilmer spread from ANP Quarterly Magazine.

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This piece was originally supposed to be included in the Magic Issue of Purple Magazine, however due to unforeseen circumstances it wasn’t published. In a time when the world around can us seem quite ominous, I thought it would be nice to release it here as my first piece for Substack. Enjoy!

For the last few years I’ve been working on a memoir about my time in New York City during the 1990’s. The book tracks my adolescence, having been deeply involved in the subcultural scenes of 1980’s, then through my career as an artist, curator and gallery owner in lower Manhattan during my twenties. As so much happened during those decades, it’s a complicated story to say the least. While searching for a through-line to make sense of the tangled web that was my life in those days, my mind kept coming back to a personal practice that started when I was a teenager. I call it Cosmic Poker.

When I was seventeen, I ran away from home. I was living in a welfare hotel on Skid Row in downtown, Los Angeles. Playing guitar in an acoustic punk band called Cat Furniture, I was frequenting the seedy bars and dingy clubs in an area that is now called the “Arts District.” Jobless and broke, I spent my days wandering the boulevards alone, writing mediocre poetry and drawing funny designs in my sketchbook. As I walked those sordid streets, I always looked down at my feet, which eventually led me to notice a strange phenomenon happening beneath my stride. Almost every day I would find random playing cards on the sidewalk. Sometimes there was a single card lying alone in the gutter and at other times groups of them were strewn across my path. I ignored them at first, but then the sheer volume forced me to take closer notice. I began to pick them up and put them in my shirt pocket. At the time, I supposed this could have all been random. Yet, I started to realize that with playing cards, if you take a single card out of the deck the entire game is ruined. How were these cards getting there? I began to ruminate on the idea that maybe something deeper was going on. Something spiritual. Something magic.

What if these cards were actually messages from the cosmos? Could they be talismans sent from another dimension to guide me along the treacherous path of teenage life? Incredibly, at that young age, notions like that made perfect sense. But how would I figure out the meanings? I figured out that playing cards were derived from the ancient Tarot, so I went in search of answers. One afternoon in a used bookshop, I found a tattered paperback on the Tarot and began to carry it around in my bag. When I found my cards, I’d immediately reference their meanings in the book. Surprisingly, the results were always remarkably telling and relevant to my experience. The nine of hearts signaled a wish come true. The ace of spades a rebirth. Three of clubs showed that one must forge a new path. Once I was able to accept the fact that I was being cosmically guided, so many other things in my life began to make sense as well. I began saving each card I found in a small drawer near my bed. Sometimes, late at night, I would pull them out and randomly choose one. I’d close my eyes and ask a question and in turn the card would tell my fortune. This went on for years and over time I had amassed almost enough examples to create an entire working deck

Finding cards on the street, which has since become even more frequent over the years, no longer mystifies me. Instead I find them strangely comforting. Rather than the vast, mysterious universe being a source of intimidation, it has instead, on most days, become my partner in crime. Early on, beyond the mystical qualities of my found cards, and being that my collection had grown so large, I also became enamored with the artwork on each one. I had never paid much attention to the designs of playing cards. I’m not a gambler, so the creative legacy of card-making occupied only a peripheral place in my vision. Then one night in New York City during an LSD trip that all changed. I sat on my bed in my fourth-floor walkup on West 14th Street. Just as I started to trip, I pulled out my cards. Rather than reading the fronts and looking for meaning as I usually had, this time I focused on the backs. As the acid took full effect, the artwork began to explode outward from the cards and animate the walls and ceilings of the room. Soon I was swimming in super graphics and ornament. I had made the transition from the realm of the real to the universe of Cosmic Poker.

As though it were imparted to me as a divine gift, I understood then and there that I needed to paint these designs. It was not a desire. I felt it was a duty. The next day I went out and bought art materials and executed my first piece. I sprawled out on my floor and laboriously rendered a large work of acrylic on paper based on the Ace of Spades. The painting was rough around the edges, but I had discovered something that has become a central part of my artistic practice ever since. I understood that being a Symbolist Painter was my defined genre. Not in the 19th Century France sense (though I do love Baudelaire), but more of a modern take on it. Understanding that graphic symbols are perhaps the modern world’s most omni-present tool of communication, it made sense to me that I should speak in that language through my art.

Over time, my work has developed. I no longer paint playing cards, yet the same basic premise has continued throughout my career. At times, I’ve tried to hide my inspirations, assuming that my peers wouldn’t take my work seriously and relegate my paintings to the realm of “visionary art.” Ascribing magical influence to artworks can be a huge faux-pas in academic circles. For me, however, the power of Cosmic Poker has never been stronger. I still continue to find cards on the street. Now they seem to come in waves as opposed to the constant barrage of my youth. Yet, just as before, I’ll be strolling along casually, turn a corner and there they are, beckoning me from the pavement. I’ve never been able to ascertain exactly who is sending them to me. It’s actually not that important. When people ask me I tell them it’s the universe. Just me and the stars in a casual conversation, playing an intimate game together for which only we know the rules.