Looking back on my youthful, burgeoning interests in the art world, I see that the encouragement of radio monologist Jean Shepherd significantly opened my mind to deeper observation and contemplation. It allowed me to explore–to quest, to wonder, to accept. To be open to the unexpected and what at first seems inexplicable.
* * * * *
Dick Higgins at about the time
I had my unique event with him,
around 1964.
We were both born in 1938,
so we would have been in our
mid 20s. He was immersed–and
I would have just begun to encounter the surface of
such manifestations as underground film and Fluxus.
* * * * *
Intermedia, Fluxus and Something Else Press
Selected Writings by Dick Higgins– by Steve Clay (editor), Ken Friedman (editor):
Dick Higgins and his Something Else Press epitomized the riotous art of the ‘60s.
There are few art-world figures as influential―and as little known―as Dick Higgins (1938–98), cofounder of Fluxus, “polyartist,” poet, scholar, theorist, composer, performer and, not least, the publisher of the legendary Something Else Press. In 1965 he restored the term “intermedia” to the English language, giving it new dimension to recognize the dissolution of boundaries between traditional modes of art-making and the open field for new forms that cannot be compartmentalized. His own contributions to intermedia are many―as a participant and instigator of happenings, as writer and composer straddling traditional and vanguard forms, among others―but it was Something Else Press (1963–74) that redefined how “the book” could inhabit that energized, in-between space.
Something Else Press also published for the first time in America, the complete edition of Gertrude Stein’s The Making Of Americans; works by Merce Cunningham; John Cage; and Richard Meltzer’s The Aesthetics Of Rock.
* * * * *
I think of Dick Higgins as akin to
Leonardo da Vinci–
both had such wide interests and accomplishments—
sort of like ARTSY FARTSY masters.
For decades I cherished a New Yorker cartoon, but now it’s displaced somewhere in my voluminous files. It shows da Vinci’s studio—unfinished “Mona Lisa” on an easel, flying machine model in one corner, many other inventions scattered around. A visitor says to da Vinci, “Leonardo, don’t you think you’re spreading yourself too thin?”
da VINCI BOOK PAGE and HIGGINS DIAGRAM.
* * * * *
One evening–maybe in 1964–I attended some sort of Fluxus-type happening on the north side of Canal Street in an empty upstairs room where I and couple of dozen other attendees sat on folding chairs while staffers entwined around us, string attached to the walls, as though we were being trapped in a spider’s web. Afterward, each attendee was given a small cardboard box filled with shards of broken wallboard (I suppose we were to contemplate the uniqueness and esthetics of each arbitrary shape and maybe muse on the social ramifications of these remnants of now-lost habitations). We were offered for sale, signed Ay-O finger boxes. I still have my two. On top of each is a slit in the paper cover through which one can stick a finger, deflowering it, encountering a soft, malleable foam–in which one may (pleasantly?!) snuggle one’s digit.
My Finger Boxes.
I believe it was then that Dick Higgins (a person I had not heard of at the time) announced that he was going to lead an event (somewhere south of 14th Street?), and invited people to gather at some hour or other on a sidewalk location I can’t remember. I arrived and waited with Higgins. We waited and were not joined by anyone. Embarrassed for him, I commented that it was too bad no one else had shown up. He responded to the effect, “That’s okay, the important thing is to do it.”
And we did, walking along, he offering occasional obscure comments about our surroundings, I not understanding. Bewildered, embarrassed, I could think of nothing to say. Though I’ll always cherish that I alone participated in a meeting/happening/performance by Dick Higgins. I wonder if he remembered me. Had he given a name to our unequal but joint enactment?
The ARTSY FARTIEST guys I ever heard of:
da Vinci & Higgins.
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shepquest 