CAMH1: Christopher Knowles: In a Word
There are huge blind spots in my knowledge. I’m perfectly
willing to admit this. But when it involves events and artists contemporaneous
to me, I am astounded at what I’ve missed.
In 1977, Philip Glass came across my radar with North
Star. My friends and I were in thrall and decided this was among the most
horizon-expanding music we’d yet heard (in a year that boasted Bowie’s Low
and “Heroes”, Elvis Costello’s My Aim is True and plenty more).
In 1978, I got to see Glass perform the suite (it was marketed and packaged as
a collection of pieces, but I tend to think of it as a suite) and I was hooked.
It wasn’t long before the name Robert Wilson permeated our brains
and Einstein on the Beach became a holy grail of sorts. We heard the “Knee
Plays” over time and bits and pieces here and there. I confess that I’ve never
seen it staged but I’ve seen much of it in different videos and have heard most
of it (I’m not sure I’ve heard all five hours); but it’s a major work of huge
influence on dramaturgy, music, literature, and more.
In any case, by 1980, I was sufficiently overwhelmed by
Glass/Wilson’s work and Byrne/Eno’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and Laurie
Anderson’s output that I found myself writing percussive poetry and digging
deeper into the notion that it’s not just the content of words that matters; very
often, it’s the sounds of those words that carry emotional weight and act
on other parts of consciousness. Still, I was fascinated by the found verbiage
of Steve Reich, the aforementioned Byrne/Eno, and much of the lyrical content
of Einstein.
One name that continued to appear was Christopher Knowles. I
took it for granted that he was Wilson’s collaborator and an established poet; “Pre-Maturely
Airconditioned Supermarket” is utterly out of this world, for example. But I
had no clue about the man and I don’t recall seeing any works by him published
on their own. His name faded from my memory by the end of the 80s; but then it
resurfaced recently, in Houston.
The Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston has been a treasure
of often cutting-edge art. I think of CAM as Houston’s first “alternative space”
before that term was coined. Installations and performance art events are de
rigueur and supported by utter curatorial expertise. Nothing is ever presented or
mounted without a sense of context. Christopher Knowles: In a Word is no
exception and as with many an exhibit, I’ve been exposed to an expansive retrospective
of a major artist’s work.
His installation “The Sundance Kid is Beautiful” is remarkable. The photograph below doesn’t do justice, because you
can’t hear the recording that fleshes out a work of layers of synchronous
sound, speech and sound, original and found. Additionally, it's actually a scene from a poetry/dance piece; I would love to see the performance. The type-writer poems and images,
the Lego U.S. flags, the newer paintings and ceramics are the result of a
fertile fountain from a young man’s mind. He may be in his late fifties, but
his work is still fresh.
Knowles met Robert Wilson in 1973 and began collaborting with him soon thereafter. They continued to work together till 1987. There’s an affecting video of
Wilson reading some of Christopher’s poems from 2011 that rather opens up the
timelessness of Knowles’s work (as well as copious excerpts from Einstein on
the Beach from a performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music).
“In a Word” is a sequence of five paintings that work both
horizontally, growing in size from left to right (or diminishing from the right
to left), and vertically, reading up from down the words “Low” to “Severe” (or
vice versa). These could be terrorist alerts, weather warnings, or maybe even
just references to the internal turmoil we face when we encounter the uncomfortable
or unpredictable.
I suspect Christopher has encountered his share. He was diagnosed
early on as being on the autism spectrum and was enrolled in “a program that
endorsed close associations between physical exercises and spoken words” and it’s
just this that adds substance to his collaboration with Wilson, but also, the
physicality of his works.
Apparently, Wilson himself had issues with wondering if he
was exploiting Christopher early on, but also apparently, Christopher may not
have seen it that way. Moreover, as Wilson himself recounted: “I
went upstate to observe him…and I thought, ‘Why are they trying to correct his
behavior when he’s obviously intelligent?’ The challenge was being allowed to
enter his private kingdom.” 1
Indeed, as a response to critic John Simon’s raking
Wilson over the coals for this issue, Knowles painted a work: “John Simon,
Pollute Your Hate”, as well as a ceramic plate more recently, that made me
guffaw aloud when I saw it. On the top portion was “John Ashbery Good” and on
the bottom, “John Simon Bad”. I’m not a fan of Simon’s, either.
Does Knowles’s autism set him up as an object of curiosity?
How does it affect the interpretation of his work? Should it? Does it? I’m
inclined to not bother about it. The work speaks for itself and much of it is
strong, playful, and evocative. His intelligence is upfront, but there’s a joy
of exploring the rhythmic nature of language, of words as phonetic rather than
lexical or semantic units. As for the visual aspect of how the works are
presented, that same kind of curiosity shows itself; there’s a thrill to seeing
what he comes up with in these different media and what he sees and responds
to, while at the same time, finding his choice of what he’s sharing an
invitation to a dialog.
I’ll be going back to this exhibit a couple of times before
it comes down. If you’re in Houston, I recommend you do the same. It’s challenging
and an overdue retrospective of an artist whose name should be better known.
“Christopher Knowles: In a Word is organized by the
Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), University of Pennsylvania and is curated
by ICA Chief Curator Anthony Elms and guest curator Hilton Als, writer and
chief theater critic for The New Yorker. The presentation at CAMH is
facilitated by curator Dean Daderko.
Notes
1. https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-christopher-knowles-art-star
Further reading:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Knowles
2. https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-christopher-knowles-art-star
3. https://www.houstoniamag.com/articles/2017/12/18/christopher-knowles-in-a-word
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