Art + Design 
18 July 2019
Various Artists, photographs of Bruce Conner (four works) - Image 1 of 2
Various Artists, photographs of Bruce Conner (four works) - Image 2 of 2
Art + Design 
Various Artists, photographs of Bruce Conner (four works) - Image 1 of 2
Various Artists, photographs of Bruce Conner (four works) - Image 2 of 2
242

Various Artists

photographs of Bruce Conner (four works)

USA, 1968
photographs 8 h × 10 w in (20 × 25 cm)
estimate: $300–500
result: $228
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Additional work measures: 9 h x 7 w inches.
Stamped signature to verso of one work ‘Copyright Edmund Shea Photography 2760 Sacramento Street San Francisco, CA. 94115 (415)929-9281’. Stamped signature, title and date to verso of one work ‘Photo: Baron Wolfman Bruce Conner 1968’. Stamped to verso of one work 'Please credit photo by Annie Leibovitz 2619 Laguna Street San Francisco, Calif, (415)391-8292' and numbered '7050-23A'.
provenance: Collection of Natasha Nicholson

print

Bruce Conner: It Wasn't All True

The present work comes from Natasha Nicholson, an artist who was close to Bruce Conner from 1967 to 1972, a productive period of transition (among many) for Conner, one where he was creating some of his now most notable collages, films and drawings. 

Nicholson first met Conner when she was twenty-two, in an evening class Conner was teaching at the Art Institute of San Francisco. The class was titled "For Women Only" and in the first session, Conner went over to the door, locked it and told the students: “we’re staying here all night. If anyone is uncomfortable, you can leave now.” Nervously, a few women left, but Nicholson stayed. She looks back now, saying Conner was one of the most brilliant teachers she has encountered: “mentally demanding” and able to “get you to go somewhere you had no intention of going...powerfully but quietly...into an unfamiliar realm.” 

Nicholson and Conner circa 1968

They spent the next five years together, collaborating, learning from the other’s artistic practice and navigating the nascent, somewhat ungainly west coast art scene.  This time was particularly difficult for Conner, as he struggled to move away from the assemblages that had gained him recognition, avoid the label of “film-maker” and maintain gallery support as he withdrew from the art world. “Everything broke the rule from the last time,” Nicholson says of Conner’s work, and he was always concerned with “yes and no, black and white, positive and negative—all of the contrasts that could be between something.” 

Stills from the film Vivian, 1965 (L, R) Portrait of Bruce Conner, 1968 (center)

Conner’s enigmatic, passionate and imperious approach to art making is evident in this collection, which includes a rare, early abstract painting, dense, metaphysical "all-over" prints and drawings, letters and ephemera, small collages and assemblages and a stunning 16mm reel of nine of his pioneering films, compiled by Conner himself.

In recent years Conner’s massive and varied body of work has come to be seen as one of the most important of the twentieth century, simultaneously embodying and shirking the mainstream and counter-cultural fluxes of the era. Conner approaches the tragedies and ecstasies of the century with a roving, sympathetic eye, an iconoclastic smirk, and above all, an unwavering commitment to artistic integrity in the face of “art as commodity.” 

Nicholson characterizes Conner and their relationship as complicated, noting that “he had an enormous capacity for caring about people,” but could also be his own (and others’) “worst enemy.” She has held this collection for nearly forty years and as retrospectives of Conner’s work have recently appeared at major institutions, she claims that “it wasn’t all true,” but he was a “remarkable artist and a remarkable person” made of many disparate parts, often obscured, that “would change constantly.”

still from Cosmic Ray, 1962

This work is from a significant collection that offers a rare glimpse into the interior life of an artist of astonishing output and curiosity, who has often been referred to as a “cosmological artist,” concerned with the anxieties of existing as an individual, obligated to being consigned to the world. “I think that happens with certain people that are so, to use a word from one of his movies, ‘cosmic ray,” says Nicholson, "they hold this universe inside of them…they are a sole source of power and fury.”

"I haven't called very many people brilliant in my life, but he truly was. Everything he did, he could do any medium, anything and the passion that he brought to it was amazing."

Natasha Nicholson on Bruce Conner

We confront this total unknown entity in the world...I like to re-create that moment, the moment when you are confronted with something that is a surprise. It is a delight, a mystery, maybe an unsolvable mystery. Unsolvable mysteries are much more attractive to me.

Bruce Conner

I am an artist, an anti-artist, no shrinking ego, modest, a feminist, a profound misogynist, a romantic, a realist, a surrealist, a funk artist, conceptual artist, minimalist, postmodernist, beatnik, hippie, punk, subtle, confrontational, believable, paranoiac, courteous, difficult, forthright, impossible to work with, accessible, obscure, precise, calm, contrary, elusive, spiritual, profane, a renaissance man of contemporary art and one of the most important artists in the world.

Bruce Conner

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