Call me crazy, but both of these images sort of remind me of Orson Welles… maybe it’s because Wednesday is Sun King day on TCM (The Stranger at 8 and then some weird stuff). It was an interesting evening at the Metropolitan last night… a sort of occaisonal family reunion I get to have with the long lost wing of my family from my mother’s side. Tony Oursler, the video artist, and I share a great grandfather… infact he is named after him: Fluton Oursler. He was a very successful writer in his day and is now remembered for only one book, however, that book is called The Greatest Story Ever Told. So, I suppose if only one story is going to be remembered Kekorian (see pillowman), it should be the greatest one… only his is not about a green pig, but rather Jesus Christ Superstar.
Here is a poor quality image from Tony’s studio installation at the Met. It is either a picture of a green pig, or God… Who can tell? The guards were on my digiass and so I can only smuggle a few images to you… I suppose I could kull some of the web, but I’m sort of enamored of the hand made quality of the blog up till now… besides, they didn’t care at all if I shot the classical sculpture… I’ve never much gotten into classical painting… always seemed like a bag of liars tricks (F is for fake)… However, sculpture is another ball of lost wax entirely. A well made bronze or marble is a sight to behold. I suppose the guy who really snapped my mind on this point is Auguste Rodin and his great Gates of Hell and The Burgers of Calais, and Later his Balzac. Rodin sort of stands at some pivot point betweenn that greek Orson and That Tony Oursler Orson (of course Orson is big enough to stradle the classical and the modern… one reason among many to love him). But enough about Orson, more about Rodin:
I first really got Rodin in Paris at his perfect little museum. As I understand it, Tony did this show as a residency at the Pompideu (or Beauxborg as most French seem to call it). I wonder if he really got to live in Paris for six months, the lucky bastard. In one of the weird coincidances, Paris is the theme on TCM this morning leading up to Orson. Tony’s dad was amazed that Tony had invited me (I’d gotten an e-mail at 2:30 in the morning). “That Tony would do that,” his dad said. “Is what I call magic!”
He then proceeded to introduce me to the rest of the family (some of whom I have never met… I only met Tony about ten years ago at his first or second show at Metro Pictures back when SoHo existed)… He introduced me as the guy who gave the best wedding toast ever! Turns out we disagree on politics, but agree on Orson Welles, so I gave him the little drawing from Immortal Story entry because I love this guy’s eyebrows and Orson has similar eyebrows in the drawing and Immortal Story seems to echo the title Greatest Story… so that’s what I call magic. Here’s father and son photo (blog theme redux):
To read up on the nature of why I never met that wing of the family till Tony started rebuilding, or maybe just building the name Oursler in his own right, William Oursler wrote a pretty good book about the battle over the family fortune that more or less squandered it: Family Story, Oursler, W., (1963), New York: Funk & Wagnalls Co. (I’m sure it’s out of print, but maybe in the Library) This is the second book I read after Bucky’s Critical Path following my Brown breakdown. It seems some kind of cautionary tale… you know, you write a story about Jesus and end up causing your family misery as it battles over the scraps… Money changers in the Temple, in deed… Sad really, but very happy that all that is more or less the problem of an earlier generation and ours is to look to the good and heal old wounds… Jesus, I sound like Dr. Phil, or something. But family stories are strange beasts and I was delighted and freaked to realize that The whole wing of my mother’s family is sort of Witchy and obsessed with connections and accidents. For instance, the drawing I gave Tony was of a coiled snake with the motto: Don’t Tread On Me. It was the last page in my sketch book that I’d drawn only that morning as a response to the SLA snake. There in his installation is a flag of a snake bisecting the globe (the image of circle and line from Heroes, my Paris novel) with the motto: Don’t Tread On Me. Weird. So Father and son got their little ITINs and I got to drink Vangogh Gin (did Vincent ever drink gin?… I doubt it…Absinthe for him… but a very pretty bottle and Vincent once winked at me as a bronze statue in a Cemetary in Arles, or Les Beaux, or something when I was three and had just been finally baptized in Basel). Speaking of Witchy: I guess Tony’s gig was to hang out in his Paris studio and have people visit him… like David Bowie and Sonic Youth and his family and all… in the manner of (I forget… wait for research). I could swear this is Mick Fleetwood…and if so he was there, but it could be someone else {everyone there looked like some one else: Paul H.O. looked like George Condo, Some guy looked like Robert Altman, etc.).
Eventually they cut the head off the party and we all got to wander through the lonely ancient greeks. There is really something grand about being alone at night in those great rooms… with nothing but the sound of your own foot steps on marble surrounded by marble. Here’s a tender little moment as Tony guides his father past ancient faces… I looped one step series and then played with it. It was the nice gesture of Tony’s hand on his dad’s back that caught my eye.
The city seemed on fire as I crossed back over the river towards home:
