Fine Art

Christen Clifford reports from the New Museum and her close encounter with Karen Finley. Cover Image: Photo of Karen Finley by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders She was in the NEA 4.  She was “the chocolate smeared woman.” She was one of the reasons I wanted to move to New York. Conservatives called her work “filth,” but she was proof to me that there were sexy, uninhibited, wild, angry, beautiful women making performances, dances, plays and videos–and I wanted in.  Fast forward 20 years, and I am a professor of performance art and a curator at Dixon Place and I could not resist the New Museum’s installation/performance Sext Me If You Can, an opportunity to sext with Karen Finley. For $200 (paid online, in advance) I was given an appointment at the New Museum.  I showed up late (Babysitter!) and was given a card with an order number and format, with a phone number written on the back.  I was to text the number and wait for instructions.  There was also a bright yellow handout of “Sexting Tips”, which I personally found hilarious, but also understood. “#5 Ease into it. Manwhore.com reminds men that you must ‘penetrate her mind before you penetrate her body.’” When I first started sexting I read online forums about how to do it, too. But then, just as I was ready to start, I realized my phone battery was about to die, and having a bit experience with sexting, I knew I would need more juice. (Har.) The curator, Travis Chamberlain, (who, full disclosure, I have met before, he’s a friend of a friend, but I don’t know him) kindly offered his phone. “But I want to use my phone!” I whined. He said, “You can delete them!” So I took his as a back-up. I received a coy text, “Meet me at the top of the stairs.” My “Sext Worker” led me downstairs and into a small private room with two guards outside the door.  I later realized why- there were no locks on the door.  I joked with guards that I would be thinking of them when I was inside.  I mean, how uncomfortable for them to be sitting outside that room knowing what was going on in there?  One of them smirked at me, but kindly.  I think he felt sorry for me; that I would buy into this hoopla. It was a small, white walled dressing room, with one chair and a mirror and a small sign with the shows title and another phone number.  I was informed that I would have ten minutes in the room, and that if I went over they would “send someone”. “How many sexts can I send?” “As many as you can in ten minutes, and if you have trouble with reception, you can finish upstairs.” I took my dress off and posed myself on the desk area in front of the mirror in my special underwear (earlier I had felt like I was getting ready for a date). I took some close up vagina and anus selfies, some kissy faces, some breast shots, as well as some artier ones of my strappy bra from behind, and of my arched back on the tabletop.  The chair was in the background so, feeling naughty, I just kicked it over, knowing it would make a loud noise and the guards would wonder what I was doing in there.  (#9 Set the scene for a good photo. Make sure you are the star by removing any distractions.) Christen Clifford Self Shot Sending them was rather antiseptic however. Texting them into the ether as participation in an art project, not to a human that I genuinely knew and wanted to arouse, was, well, a little desolate.  With time it became a sensual experience.  My partner was out of town so I starting imagining forwarding these texts to create a triangle between me and the artist and my love; I was intrigued by the erotic space between Finley and me, she was just across the room, I have admired her for so long, was I trying to seduce her? I started adding text to my photos, “Missing you.”  “Hi Karen, this is for you.  I’m thinking of your mouth on me.” “This is making me hot –you are across the room.” Christen Clifford iPhone Sext Screen Shot I was the unrequited lover, of course, because Finley doesn’t sext back. After I had texted “Done” to

While stationed in the Pacific Theater in the 1940s, Jack Fogarty wrote letters to his best friend’s wife in Queens, NY, and illustrated the envelopes. All photos courtesy of the National Postal Museum Jack Fogarty and John MacDonald served with the Army’s 98th Evacuation Hospital in World War II’s Pacific Theater from 1944 to 1945, where they spent “many an hour sitting around in a jungle clearing,” according to Fogarty, who is now 92 and living in Teaneck, New Jersey. The two soldiers developed a tight friendship as they worked and relaxed together. Fogarty became close friends, too, with John’s wife, Mary MacDonald, who remained home in Queens, New York. Fogarty had met her before he and John shipped out, and he struck up a correspondence with her that lasted until he and John returned home. An amateur artist, Fogarty illustrated his envelopes to show Mary daily life around the camp—jungle hikes, beach swims, evenings in tents under gaslight. “My drawings were an expression of love for the MacDonalds,” says Fogarty. “I loved them and they loved me in the best of terms.” The letters sealed a lifelong friendship between Fogarty and the MacDonald family. Mary MacDonald died in 2003; her husband in 2007. Meg MacDonald, one of the couple’s four daughters, recently donated 33 illustrated envelopes, eight letters and a watercolor made by Fogarty to the National Postal Museum, which is currently exhibiting them online. We spoke with Fogarty recently about his time in the War, his art and his enduring friendship. An excerpt of our conversation follows. Many of Fogarty’s illustrations depict daily life around the evacuation hospital. When did you first meet Mary? I met Mary in 1943 when John and I were stationed in an evacuation hospital in the Yuma, Arizona desert. She came to visit John in the first few months we were there. All the soldiers went into town whenever we had time off, so I bumped into John with Mary in town one day. John introduced us and that began our friendship. I started corresponding with her after we went overseas, and she was very loyal, a very good friend. Since I was so close with her husband, she liked hearing about my relationship with him and our time in the service. What made you decide to illustrate the envelopes you sent her? I’ve always drawn—all my life I’ve had a talent to paint. I had another dear friend from high school, a cartoonist, and he and I exchanged letters when we both joined the service. He would illustrate his envelopes, so I would do the same. That started it. Then when I was in the South Pacific Islands in World War II, John started a weekly bulletin just for the 217 men in the evacuation hospital. He did the editorials, and I did the artwork on a mimeograph machine. That got me doing more illustrations, so I started drawing on the envelopes to Mary. Tell us about the illustrations. They illustrated what was happening at the time. They showed the places we were at, the fantasies we had. They were an outlet, and I had the talent to make them. And they meant so much to Mary, because they showed her husband’s life while they were separated, and she loved him so much. It’s funny, too, because a lot of the drawings would be considered chauvinistic now—you know, jokes about women and so forth. What was your relationship like with the MacDonalds back then? It’s difficult to describe, because it’s such an important part of my life. It’s a love relationship. John and Mary were just wonderful, wonderful people. They were friends, and friendship is very important to me. We had the same values, as far as our faith and our family. And John was a mentor to me. I’m a little slow in my growing up, shall we say—I’m still a little naïve. John was a married man, and worldly. He had been a reporter before he joined the service. We would just discuss everything, discuss all the topics that young men would discuss at the ti

Artist Parade Marks Hong Kong's Fair Week With S&M, Mock ProtestPublished: May 24, 2013HONG KONG — A woman in a scarlet dress walks along the waterfront in Hong Kong while being whipped with belts by men dressed in black. We are at “Paper Rain,” a parade organized by musician Arto Lindsay in collaboration with various artists for the launch of Art Basel in Hong Kong on May 23.  The parade route followed the waterfront path from Central pier to the government headquarters at Tamar Park. The woman would was voluntarily undergoing corporal punishment during the performance is Hong Kong artist Angela Su, known for her high pain threshold — she previously underwent a procedure for an elaborate ink-less tattoo on her back for her series “The Hartford Girl and Other Stories” (a portrait of her marked back is on display at Hong Kong Eye). During the parade, Su marched along with the procession while being subjected to humiliating and punishing acts. At one point the artist held out her arm for her “lover” to put out his cigarette on it. Su hardly flinched from the pain. All this took place while contemporary dancers tumbled in the background and a rickshaw puller danced along to the beat of music blasting from boomboxes. The effect was a surreal and rather melancholy parade, dwarfed by the grand setting of Hong Kong’s waterfront and the monumental government headquarters buildings, a sensitive location for a parade as many political protests take place around here. “This is the dead skin of a protest,” Lindsay told BLOUIN ARTINFO. “What we’re doing is like a political demonstration without content. It is a husk, like when the insect sheds its skin.” The musician held his first parade at Carnival in Brazil in 2004, a collaboration with artist Matthew Barney that became the first of a series of artist parades that Lindsay has since organized around the world. Living and working in Brazil for many years, Lindsay is informed by the procession of trio elétricos that roll through the streets of Bahia every Carnival. Like the floats of Brazil, the artists of Hong Kong’s “Paper Rain” created performances that connect allegorically. Nadim Abbas fabricated foam barricades for his section. Modeled after actual barricades from the streets of Hong Kong, the jokey, oversized blocks were strapped to the backs of participants who enacted choreography, their color scheme (red and white) echoing with Su’s tragic scarlet-clad protagonist in an uncanny contrast of subjugation and subversion. João Vasco Paiva conducted a loudspeaker orchestra, improvising a noise soundtrack from the squawkish feedback of the loudspeaker and his own muffled mumblings. Nearby, an old woman with purple hair moved a pushcart carrying posters for artist Korakrit Arunanodcha.  Most iconic of all are the red and green rickshaws chosen to transport Shane Aspegren’s “Roaming Boom Boxes Sound Tracks.” The choice of this tired symbolism was borne mostly out of necessity, according to Lindsay. Motorized vehicles are not allowed along the route of the parade, so the next best thing was to hire out the rickshaws. He is also exploring the commercialized imagery of Hong Kong as a perfect meeting of history and modernity. “I like this painful postcard image of Hong Kong, and not making it this cool thing,” says Lindsay. To see images of “Paper Rain,” click on the slideshow.

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