Perpetual Ripplets: On David Hammons

Yuko Otomo
June 2016

art at best is a dubious puzzle

unglove me in this velvety morning

– Guy Benning

Part One 

David Hammons: Rousing the Rubble; 1969-1990

@ PS1 Museum, 1991

Long Island City was still considered a postindustrial desert although the seed of gentrification had been sown already. For us Manhattanites, it was a big trip to go out there. But we were determined not to miss the exhibition. It was the first retrospective of his. By then, we knew his name & had encountered some of his work here & there over the years. But we had no idea of the whole scope of the artist & his history. Below is a translation of the February 7, Thursday, 1991 entry of the journal written originally in Japanese on the visit to PS1. It was still called PS 1 MUSEUM, Institute for Contemporary Art before it merged with the Museum of Modern Art to become MoMA PS1 in 2000.

 ***

We decided to go see David Hammons: A Retrospective at PS 1 Museum before going to the Knitting Factory (to see improv trios: Steve Beresford, Christian Marclay, John Zorn, Ikue Mori & guests). It was to end in a few days, so we decidedly planned to go to Queens so as not to miss it.

The first Hammons piece I saw was the “bottle cap shack” on the occasion of seeing Sun Ra & his Arkestra at Art on the Beach. Yet, I did not get connected to his world yet. Only my reaction to the odd “funniness” of the shacks stayed in my consciousness. A few years later, in 1989, my first serious encounter with his art took place when, after having accidentally pushed the wrong floor number on the elevator, I stepped into Exit Art on the 8^th floor of the building on Broadway. (Thelonious) Monk’s music was filling the space, a Blue Train (Coltrane, Coal Train) running. I recognized faces of musicians who happened to be hanging out there such as Jameel Moondoc & Roy Campbell. I got pulled into his world with such an intensity. Since then, my curiosity toward him & his art has become real. When one of my Jazz community friends told us about the opening night of the PS1 Museum retrospective, my curiosity became further intense.

We’ve never been to PS1 before & this was our first visit there. Although we’ve known of this institution, the fact that it is located in Queens has made our enthusiasm hang low. Yet, our determination not to miss the Hammons retrospective was solid. Instead of feeling bothered over the idea of a long subway ride, we tried to enjoy our excursion as a day trip of sorts. The rain that had started yesterday kept falling quietly to make the day a perfect museum day.  In the midst of Long Island City with its symbolic post-industrial America of old iron bridges, lampposts, piled up filth & chimneys stood PS1. It used to be a public school, as the name suggests. The musty smell particular to an old school building with paint-peeled walls & hallways intensified the quietness inside, mixing itself with the falling rain.

In the first room, we saw a stage where Jameel Moondoc’s Jus Grew Orchestra played music along with a video monitor showing scenes from the opening night in front of it. The stage looked something like one set up for a dance party by poor blacks in the south. On the wall, baskets for basketballs lined up. Bottle caps, a milk crate, a garbage can & a car windowshield… materials with highly charged socio-political contents & voices challenge the stereotypical idea of basketballs. Fun & Sadness. Every piece emanates the strength & beauty of found objects along with their inherent nothing-ness.

The following room displayed body-prints. The basic motifs of the works were somehow too lyrical to make them have solid characteristics. To suggest a political quality via an American flag was too typical although I understood its purpose. But, the door of Admission Office that stood in the middle of the room was beautiful beyond words with its immense political element.

As we moved from one room to another, we were exposed to the different sub-themes of the entire show. Now, we were in the room with his famed “hair sculpture.”  Parts of hair sculpture & rubber bands were linked together as if they were prayer beads hung on the naked wooden beam supporting part of crumbling ceiling of the space. They looked as if they were resting themselves in the middle of some hard work. As I tried to escape from the impact caused by being in the space, the immeasurable, unfathomable sense of nothing=everythingness blocked my way.  This sense of being blocked I felt was my own mental reaction while his work characteristically never showed any type of forcefulness. Kinky hair of the black person mixing with brown paper bags oil-stained by spare ribs brought out a form that allowed me to utter the word “beautiful.”

The following room was filled with many of his fetish pieces. Steve explained to me what the slang word “spade” meant. Hammons expresses the social content of being black in America using the shape & the terminology of the word. Some of the spades made of shovel heads  reminded me interestingly of Duchamp’s hardware piece. Yet, unlike Duchamp’s shovelhead, Hammons’ were mostly rusted, expressing a sense of destruction. Kick the Bucket (*I learned that the phrase means “to die”) made of glued, empty cheap bottles of Night Train apple wine in the same manner as the Blue Train in the Exit Art show…a combine of Coca Cola bottles & a cane… sculptures scattered on the wall showed a special sense of solidity. Lyricism was almost totally gone from these works. Black Swan. Bird. Passing through this room, going into another room via an entrance with a hanging thin cloth, we now stood in the midst of utter darkness & the blasting sounds coming from a ghetto blaster singing “Jesus is the Light” at a high volume. The shock of being thrown into utter darkness was something similar to the one I’d experienced recently in another gallery show that involved a monolith-like piece in the middle. But in this case, the blasting gospel music prohibited us from trying to indulge in the shock, but to be self-protective. Being swooped into confusion & fear, I became alert & tried to cling to something in the darkness. WHAT A SCENE!!! Countless Jesus: his crossed & persecuted body in a pale glow, floating in the darkness as if it were a dream. 100 tiny plastic florescent pale light green Jesuses quietly moved as our moves changed the flow of the air in the room. The impact was totally intense, very organic, affecting both body & mind as one. All the senses of guilt, hope & fear exploded inside us. This installation’s impacting power was limitless.

Leaving the room, shattered by fear, we entered the next room. Our senses were again challenged by Dark Clogs hanging on the wall & “Dutch settlement poem” stamped on the plastic. Yet, the feeling of being challenged was merely a result of the implosion of the ingrained hypocrisy inside us. Hammons’ work never shows off theory or words. They threaten us, the viewers, just by being there.  In the next room, there hung the controversial portrait of a white-faced Jessie Jackson: Will Ya Like Me Now? & semi-clear plastic bags stuffed with magazines reporting its controversy. In front of his portrait, you see a hammer, a national flag & an empty cigarette box of Lucky Strikes.

Going through this room, we now stood with the chicken wings on a carpet (* I forgot the title of this work) & another powerful sculptural installation: A Fan. A TV monitor with a loop from a Malcolm X speech, a white woman’s tête, a bouquet of dead white flowers & a lifeless fan made of palm leaves. (Steve had tried to listen to Malcolm X’s arguments in the 60s.) A few young African American males, probably students, showed some slight interest in the installation but passed by it rather fast as if their hearts were tightly closed. Roman Homeless. When you’ve finished the last room, you walk back to the starting point of the Basketball Room as if the whole journey were a board game of some sort. Do we have to express what had changed inside us at this point of the show? No. Everything was already internalized beyond logic. The Hammons retrospective greatly proved that the artist had sublimated the sociopolitical aspects of being black in this society without the accompanying heat of argument that usually comes with political art.

Part Two

David Hammons: Five Decades 

@ Mnuchin Gallery, NYC 

(March 15 – May 27, 2016)

1. how & where to present your art

Didn’t any museum, public or private, offer him an opportunity for a retrospective, I wondered. They must have, I assumed. If I’m correct, why did the artist choose to have it at a commercial gallery? If it’s intentional, then, what was his intention?

***

If you try to see Hammons’ work through an aesthetic or art historical point of view alone, you are already missing the point. Eventually you’ll get lost. & in most cases, you’ll be swallowed into the quicksand of your own confusions. What he offers is magic. The philosophical & intensely critical socio-political thoughts behind his work are beyond anything the usual sense of art can manage to categorize. At the same time, his art exemplifies one of the most complicatedly woven layers of the elements of “what art is.”

The alchemically processed, hidden discourses of the lyrical, subtle, but staggeringly symbolic spirit of his work attacks anyone who stands in front of it. He is a prankster of the highest degree of conscience & intelligence. Once you face it, you have no chances to escape from it; you are instantaneously made to be part of his magic yourself. His art determinately & fiercely rejects being dissected or logically analyzed. All you can do is be swallowed in its fatal, violent but clearly focused ambiguity. With no irony or satire involved, it challenges & puts our understandings of “what art is” under scrutiny & into question. Fur Coat, presented uptown in 2007, made me think of Picasso & his found object metal sculptures with their socio-political psyche. Damaged & assaulted, fur coats stood in the middle of the gallery, leaving us to run amok in our own bewildered amazement.

He once publicly expressed his sense of discordance with art by saying “I can’t stand art,” & he meant it. What is art? What is the role of an artist? Why do we do art? What does art mean to society & to humanity? Knowing the limitations of both the semantics of the word & its social effects, he challenges himself & ourselves equally. Art does not end with the finishing of making works in his case. Everything is a part of the whole. How the audience receives his art & its “How/Where/When & Why” are as important & integral parts of his creation as the “What.”

2. the encounter 

I had first seen the artist amid the Free Jazz scene in the mid 80s, before seeing his art. Then in 1985, I saw Delta Spirit with Sun Ra & his Arkestra at Art on the Beach. Shantytown shacks made of wood & bottle caps stood on the landfill dunes. It was in the days of innocence, so to speak, pre-Battery Park City/pre-911, with the twin towers of the WTC hovering high nearby. Soon I had another encounter with his art in a much fuller sense in 1989, I accidentally stepped  into Exit Art. There, Monk tunes filled the air, & various sculptural installations, highly charged with a strong symbolic power, occupied the space as I noticed the faces of musician friends. A mini-toy-train, coal, empty bottles of the cheapest wine & upturned piano lids… I got totally taken in. The whole thing blew my mind.  The unexpected impact of something unheard/unseen before, challenged me to examine my own awareness of the reality that I lived in.  Shocked, but strangely moved, I decided not to miss any more chances to see his art. 

3. east village, music, art & poetry

Despite its historic & creative significance as universal music born out of America, Jazz remains a marginalized genre as music in its own birthplace. The most progressive & avant-garde Jazz, generally called Free Jazz, is further marginalized in this already marginalized music. Its community is small & is nurtured by endlessly devotional & dedicated musicians along with their similarly devoted audience/listeners. Hammons is one of the dedicated supporters of this music. Whenever & wherever it is played, he is there: Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Butch Morris, Jameel Moondoc, Charles Gayle… the Vision Festival… His involvement with this music & with the musicians who play it is serious & profoundly deep. How many times have I run into him in the East Village & beyond at great music events!

His relationship to other artists & writers is also notable. Among them, 2 stand out. One is Steve Cannon of A Gathering of the Tribes & another is the late poet John Farris.

A Gathering of the Tribes, usually called “Tribes” by those who associate with it, is one of the most important art organizations in NYC & beyond, although it is not too well known to the wider world. Director Steve Cannon, a blind ex-professor Emeritus at CUNY Medgar Evers College, (*a blind guy as he calls himself), a guru of the Downtown art/poetry scene, never fails to welcome anyone who is open & creative, local or international, known or unknown. For more than 2 decades, he ran a gallery (*the only blind gallerist in the world & the history of art!) presenting numerous exhibitions & poetry readings, publishing books & anthologies through his Fly By Night Press & organizing uncountable music events including the Charlie Parker Festival (*unrelated to the more commercial annual festival in Tompkins Sq. Park) till he was forced out of the space at 385 E 3^rd St. 2 Fl. Quite a few amazing musicians played in his gallery space, & occasionally in his back yard, such as the Sun Ra Arkestra, Butch Morris, Roy Campbell, Billy Bang, Billy Harper, William Parker, Jason Kao Hwang & many more. Great pianists such as Connie Crothers, Matthew Shipp & Jason Moran have also played memorable solo performances on his, slightly out of tune, personal upright piano. Now, in the new location, Tribes still strongly continues its many faceted activities despite space forced limitations. The number of those who have been enriched by Steve Cannon’s relentlessly open-minded generous activities is literally uncountable. Tribes has been the epic gathering center for creative individuals locally, nationally & internationally ever since he opened his private space to the public.

Hammons has been a great friend of Steve Cannon & a dedicated, generous supporter of Tribes for many years. In the E. 3^rd St. space, a wooden chained banner reading “Introduce yourself” used to hang where Steve sat on his famed couch holding court. Behind & above him, there was a red & gold wall installation accompanied by a Hammons hair & wire sculpture. What a luxury it was to have such a special work so close to us in our everyday environment! There, art lived with us, not as a display in a gallery or a museum as an object of contemplation & worship, but as part of us.

Another important figure relating to Hammons’ generous support for other creative beings was the late John Farris, a poet who lived at Bullet Space, once an artists’ squat, across the street from Tribes. The artist invited the poet to write essays & poems in the catalogues of his early shows. When the poet passed away in late January this year, Hammons generously organized the superbly well-attended memorial tribute that took place at the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village in April to honor his friend. He sat gracefully & humbly paying his respects among many other enthusiastic friends & admirers without getting a spotlight of any sort. 

4. five decades

I walked through the airy, light-filled floors of the uptown townhouse building where his works were scattered; some on the floor; some on the wall; some framed & some exposed. No chronological order or thematic arrangement were on display. I saw some familiar works & some that I’d never seen before. Curiously, every piece seemed to co-exist without crushing the emanating internal power of each against the other. Once created, Hammons’ work keeps living as an organic entity that surpasses time/space. It absorbs the psyche of the time & the space it is placed in whether it is in galleries, museums or private spaces. His magical objects keep breathing spells.

Old, familiar or new, his work lives as now to show us the existence of spirits of the moment materialized & de-materialized. Did the significance of Basketball Pieces change? Or, has the intensity of Hoods shifted? Snowball, once sold in front of Cooper Union, is now a ball of glass that does not melt. Does this diminish the original purpose of its statement? No. His art keeps on living, disregarding the questions. This retrospective is not about the chronology of style & content shifts in his work over the years but to prove the solid sense of the continuation of his thought displayed as living art.

Deeply conceptual, philosophical, socio-political, metaphysical & committed, his five decades are like a river of time/space: one flow. With his sophisticated visual sensitivity, mixing light/heavy materials, the inherent symbolic significances & meanings, he gives us a brutal, but needed, genuine moment to self-reflect, in our own consciousness & conscience, over the prejudice, hypocrisy & injustice that we all carry inside us. Oftentimes assertive & cruel, but never satirical nor cynical, what I see in Hammons work is a fierce humanism.

Going back to the initial question I cast in the beginning of this writing, why did the artist choose to have his 5 decade retrospective in a commercial gallery rather than public institutions? Or did public institutions not invite him? Whatever your take on an answer would be, he’s given us a rare opportunity to meditate further on the unsolved, deep-rooted problems of our world through this retrospective. He is definitely one of the most poetic, existential & difficult artists of our time who rejects a categorization of any sort: a true heir to Duchampian approaches & aesthetics. 

post-script:

There is a mistake in the press release concerning the music played in the exhibition space. It says it is Japanese Court Music. But it is not.  Koto & Shakuhachi, much newer instruments, were never used in Court Music. Court Music has its own specialized, ancient instrumental arrangement.