REQUIEM FOR THE SHADOWS: POETRY, SPIRITUALITY, AND FUTURE MEMORY IN THE LIGHT STRINGS OF FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES A thesis submitted to the College of the Arts of Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of the Arts by Shawn Diamond May, 2016 Thesis written by Shawn Diamond B., Kent State University, 2014 M., Kent State University, 2016 Approved by _____________________________________ John-Michael Howell Warner, Ph., Advisor ____________________________________ Christine Havice, Ph., Director, School of Art ____________________________________ John Crawford-Spinelli, Ed., Dean, College of Arts iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………….58 APPENDIX: FINAL SOLILOQUY OF THE INTERIOR PARAMOUR………….66 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers), (1987-1990)……. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (Last Light), (1993)……………………………. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (A Couple), (1993)…………….
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (March 5th) #2, (1991). Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (Leaves of Grass), (1993). Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (A Love Meal), (1992). Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (North), (1993)…….
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (America #1), (1994)……. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (Lovers – Paris), (1993). Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (Toronto), (1992)……. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (Ischia), (1993)……….
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (Miami), (1992)…………. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (Rossmore), (1992)……. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled”, (1991)…………………………………………………. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (Arena), (1993).
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (America), (1994)………………………………………49 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To Lily. Who has been there through it all – when I was at my best and my worst, I thank you for standing my side in your unfaltering love and support. To John-Michael. Who has condensed a lifetime’s worth of life-coaching into a single extraordinary year.
His incredible ability to show me that what we create in any medium, be it writing or light, can reflect ourselves and the lives we set for ourselves has strongly impacted my desire to continue forth expanding my studies and myself. I thank you, John-Michael, for the confidence and understanding of myself and my work that would have never come forth were it not for your facilitation and encouragement. My endless gratitude to those who got me through my first year of graduate school – Andrea, Jenna, and Leann and those who were there for the second – Sarah, Sam, and Jonathan. For sharing (or putting up with) my passions and sharing their own while pushing me to continue forward and realize how much one can grow academically and personally in the course of a year as long as they are surrounded by intelligent, supportive, and compassionate persons.
In equal amounts I thank the accompanying art history professors at Kent State – Albert, Gus, Diane, Fred, and Carol –for creating a department that taught me the rules of the field and gave me the courage to push them in the future. I am grateful to my family for their constant support of a lifestyle that promises financial hardships, sleepless nights, stressful days, and few career opportunities – but one that also offers a world of endless beauty and complexity through the arts. And finally, to those whose presence is felt through the shadows. vi This thesis will be constructed upon the artist’s statement that all of his artwork was made for an audience of one – his lover, Ross Laycock.
“When people ask me, ‘Who is your public?’ I say honestly, without skipping a beat, ‘Ross’.” -Felix Gonzalez-Torres1 1 Robert Storr, “When This You See Remember Me,” in Felix Gonzalez-Torres, ed. 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Someone tried to console me the other day, saying it would get easier – I hope it never does. I hope and pray that it will always hurt this much, and anger me this much, and that every AIDS death that follows is just as painful to me. I never want to get used to something this horrible.
-Paul Hill1 Beating in synchronicity to the second, their bodies touch. They do not embrace – instead they remain entirely self-contained. Yet, the gentlest of touches connects the two, uniting the separate forms to create a symbol of eternity. The identical bodies are nothing extravagant – instead they are simple forms which might easily be overlooked as they often are only discreetly present in the corner of a room.
The symbols infiltrate, harnessing a message of the times. The beautiful representation, although simple in its form, is complex in its thought. The bodies at once expresses the archetypal hope of many and the often unspoken fear of many more, for it is understood that the time-keeping heartbeat will eventually fall out of synch. One will eventually slow before the other.
Although connected by their touch they are, after all, still separate beings. And as one slows and dies the other will inevitably fall out of their perfect beating pulse and reach the same ending – utter stillness. 2 Felix Gonzalez-Torres conceptualized “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers), 1987-1990, (Figure 1) — simultaneously clock and metaphoric body — to memorialize the love he shared with Ross 1 Joe Brown, ed., The Names Project: Book of Letters (New York: Avon Books, 1992), 40. 2 The artist stated that the clocks should always be in synchronicity and in working order.
The work is to be ‘restored’ should any of the mechanics begin to fail. Felix Gonzalez-Torres wished the ticking pulse of the clock to always continue. However, it should also be noted that a difference lies in artist’s intent and practicalities, especially in regards to future memory (as will be discussed in chapter four). The clocks, after all, continue their life as an artwork after Felix’s life ends.
Felix created an edition of three of these clocks with a single artist’s proof between 1987 and 1990, a time when the artist’s lover was infected with AIDS.3 The literalness of “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers) is what makes it so moving and beautiful in its meaning: two store- bought-clocks used as symbols of the 1980s and 1990s AIDS and queer experience, as well as an homage to the artist’s lover. The clocks encapsulated the artist’s greatest fear: “Time is something that scares me… or used to. The piece I made with the two clocks was the scariest thing I have ever done.”4 From the moment of his lover’s diagnosis, their every moment together must have felt as sand being pulled to the bottom of an hourglass. Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ artistic beginnings were rooted in social movements and grassroots organizing.
In 1983 Felix Gonzalez-Torres was an unknown artist living in New York City. At the age of twenty-six the artist had yet to find his place in the contemporary art world.5 The future for Gonzalez-Torres was to be a story of sublime romance and profound pain. In 1987, the young artist was at the popular New York gay bar, Boybar, when he first saw a twenty four year old equally handsome student. Upon introduction, Felix Gonzalez-Torres learned the name of this stranger – Ross Laycock.6 We can assume both Felix and Ross entered Boybar not knowing it would be an event that would forever alter their lives – signifying the ending of their time as entirely separate forms.7 3 In 1991 he would revisit the clocks when he created another work also called “Untitled” Perfect Lovers, 1991.
4 Robert Nickas, “All the Time in the World,” in Ault, 45. 5 At this time he was a member of the very politically based artist collective ‘Group Material’. 6 Joe Clark, “Ross Laycock,” OutWeek, March 27, 1991, accessed January 13, 2016, http://www.net/pdfs/ow_91. ; For the remainder of the thesis I will refer to Felix Gonzalez-Torres simply as Felix and Ross Laycock as Ross following the model set by Nancy Spector and, more significantly, to acknowledge and reflect the personal nature of the artist and his oeuvre.
7 As much as Boybar served as a free space for same sex desire and ‘cruising’ – in this instance the bar proved a location of a more permanent alteration in lives. 3 “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers) came to represent when Ross and Felix were bonded through shared struggle and the beginning of their time with one another.8 Following their initial meeting at Boybar, Ross moved back to his home country, Canada, and to study English and biochemistry, following his interests in both logic and poetry – interests that also presented themselves in Felix’s art. Throughout this separation the two men remained devoted to one another.9 Three years passed in this fashion before Felix and Ross would finally move in together. Unfortunately, this union came under most grim circumstances.
The couple’s relationship was shaken in 1988 when Ross was diagnosed with AIDS.10 His failing health forced him to quit his job at a reputable restaurant. Two years later the couple moved to Rossmore Avenue in Los Angeles.11 Many aspects of life seemed to turn quickly against the queer community of this period, including, and most importantly, time. By 1987, the same year as the first iteration of “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers), 36,058 people in the United States had been diagnosed with acquired immune deficiency syndrome (commonly abbreviated as AIDS) and 20,849 were already deceased.12 For many who were already diagnosed there seemed little hope. The disease was mercilessly taking 8 Despite being made before Ross was clinically diagnosed with AIDS, it is likely that he was already showing many of the effects of HIV.
9 Clark, “Ross Laycock,” 1991. 10 In 1988 The New York Times published an article that the most recent life expectancy from an AIDS patient (diagnosed in 1985) was 374 days. Gina Kolata, “15% of People with AIDS Survive 5 Years,” New York Times, November 19, 1987, accessed January 23, 2015, https://partners.com/library/national/science/aids/111987sci-aids-2. 11 Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Felix Gonzalez-Torres (New York: A.
Felix chose to live on Rossmore Avenue for the name of the street, alluding to the wish that he could somehow have more of Ross. Ann Goldstein, “Untitled,” in Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Russell Ferguson, editor (Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1994), 38. Despite overwhelming social and political tension, this painful time was treasured. The unimaginable reality was, in effect, what gave Felix and Ross their memories.
It was a single moment in time, the juncture when they first spoke to one another as strangers and the instant in which their murderer was passed through an act of love – dictating all the time they had left. 12 Randy Shilts, And the Band Played on (St Martin’s Press: New York, 1988) 596. When italicized and included in parenthesis after the work’s untitled name, such as Untitled (Perfect Lovers) I am regarding the artwork, in the form of the two clocks. When not italicized and simply capitalized such as: Perfect Lovers, I am referring to the theme or idea of Perfect Lovers as it appears conceptually through Felix Gonzalez-Torres ouevre.
Sean Straub, a California political activist, writes in his memoirs of the time, “Several times, I went to the AIDS ward at St. Vincent’s Hospital without intending to visit anyone in particular, knowing there would be someone I knew who was there.”13 The transmission of HIV/AIDS was feared and often stigmatized by the Reagan administration, housing authorities, and even some community healthcare clinics as well as brothers, sisters, and parents. Straub writes: “I also feared stigma. Some families were already refusing to allow gay male relatives to join family holidays or to hold young nieces and nephews.
Those who tested [positive] and were sometimes welcomed to holiday meals on the condition that they use disposable utensils. People known to have AIDS lost their jobs or apartments. […] Funeral homes wouldn’t take the bodies of those who died of AIDS or charged exorbitant extra fees to do so. There was serious talk of quarantine, and by the end of 1985, an effort was under way in California to put such a measure on the ballot.”14 In this moment of crisis and fear, Felix created “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers): circles that touch one another in the most gentle and 13 Sean Straub, Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival (New York: Scribner, 2014), 151.