Poetry in Motion

American Poetry Review, The, Jan/Feb 2005 by Yau, John

AT ONE POINT OR ANOTHER, MANY OF US have been stumped by the Zen koan that ends with the question, "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" The purpose of this perplexing question is to provoke us into thinking outside of the familiarity of our habits, to make an imaginative leap and achieve satori, a state of enlightenment. It is as challenging to answer this koan as it is to answer the question, who is Bruce Conner? In 1959, he had an exhibition, Works by the Late Bruce Conner, at Spatsa Gallery, San Francisco. In 1971, he subverted the viewers' assumptions about authorship by titling his exhibition The Dennis Hopper One Man Show, Volume 1 at Reese Palley Gallery, San Francisco. After he "retired" in 1999, other artists have appeared, including Emily Feather and Diogenes Lucero, both of whom sign their works, have their own styles and biographies. A heteronymic artist, capturing Conner is like trying to lasso a beam of sunlight. He eludes us by remaining right where he is.

Conner first began exhibiting in the mid 19503, and, since then, he has become enormously influential as well as completely inimitable. Formally meticulous and decidedly innovative, he has broken new ground in virtually every medium he has ever worked: painting, drawing, film, collage, prints, light shows, music, dance, photography, photograms, sculpture, assemblage, tapestry, and performance. His visual lexicon ranges from the juxtaposition of disjunctive images to extremely concentrated abstractions; from found materials to invented forms. Even the polymorphic Picasso didn't explore nearly as many different mediums as Conner has over the course of his career. In a recent conversation with the artist Philip Taaffe, he pointed out that Conner is the one postwar artist for whom the appellation "Renaissance Man" actually fits.

Rejecting the ideals associated with style, Conner creates distinct bodies of work in different mediums, and then goes on to discover a new territory which he quickly and decisively makes all his own. In whatever medium he chooses to work, he has repeatedly demonstrated an astonishing ability to seamlessly synthesize formal issues with his own values and concerns. His diverse, multifaceted oeuvre stands as one of the unparalleled achievements in postwar art history.

Possessed by an intellect that is restless and resourceful, Conner is committed to not repeat himself. It is within that context that we should see this group of about one hundred offset lithographs published in 1970 and 1971. They range from small single sheets to suites of seven prints to a book of fifteen prints (BOOK ONE), counterfeit currency (MONEY HONEY) and a set of twenty-five cards that is a collaboration with the poet Michael McClure, (CARDS). Largely unknown until now, this marvelously varied, scrupulously conceived body of work adds to our current understanding of the artist's lifelong preoccupations. As he himself stated:

All of the lithographs were originally made as drawings with felt tip pen on paper. The pens used were Pentel and Flair watercolor pens, as well as the so-called "Permanent" felt tip marker pens. I was aware that the permanence of the ink had not been researched and archival information was not available. It was assumed that the watercolor inks would be comparable to current watercolor media in regards to fading or color change in artificial and direct light. In at least two instances, I gave a "Permanent" marker drawing as a gift along with instructions to place it in direct sunlight, which would cause it to fade until it became a blank sheet of paper. The originals were framed using UF-3 Ultraviolet Filtering Plastic glazing. The series of lithographs were initiated as a means of documenting and preserving the images of the drawings should they prove to be light fugitive. They were also a means of reaching a larger audience by way of multiples.1

A relatively new, widely available and inexpensive commercial product, the watercolor felt-tip pen, enabled Conner in the igoos to thoroughly investigate the graphic mark, and all the issues attending to it: the relationship between the figure and ground, light and dark, geometric and the retinal, odeliberateness and chaos. He makes us rethink any assumptions we might have about the nature of both drawing and mastery. While his skill is immediately evident, it is executed with an instrument that had never been associated with either mastery or the artist's hand. As used by Conner, the unique qualities of the watercolor felt tip pen are: immediacy and irrevocability.

Conner appears to have never allowed the felttip pen to cross a pre-existing line or shape within all the drawings. Each mark has its own boundary. It is not surprising to learn that he titled one of his , 1965 watercolor felt-tip pen drawings, MAZE DRAWING. The drawings are obsessively incremental, the result of working very long hours at a time. It is worth remembering that, for at least part of the time that he was working on these drawings, he was also working on light shows at the Avalon Ballroom. While both of these sequential activities demand a very different kind of attention, both require the artist to respond to the action or mark that preceded it. Finally, Conner seems to have been the only artist to recognize that these two disparate mediums are connected by an underlying affinity, light.