Isser Aronovici:
Surviving Nazi
Postscript to "Partnershit"
Now I have shot my mouth off and I have said so many horrible things about the March Group people, mostly about Sam and Boris, but enough about Stanley Fisher who was a real sadomasochistic kook and therefore could not be hurt or reasoned with in any way, he liked equally much to dish it out as to receive a beating, and how he was fucking twelve year olds in his mind I already told you; but he also copied both Boris and Sam, and did it in such an uncanny flash that his copywork was ready even before the original ideas of Sam and Boris had jelled into their disgusting art; anyway Fisher developed ideas that were his own and put it into his work, and his work was still disgusting, like Sam's and Boris', but it became his own, but after Sam and Boris kicked him out of the group without trial or hearing he slowly stopped moving his scissors so in the end he got involved with some kooky ideas about the collision of the worlds and was homing it up on quest television shows where often he had real smart things to say.
Now the real trick in all their work was that they managed to make it so disgusting that nobody would buy or even take their stuff, and nevertheless in the same time keep producing, running a gallery and putting on countless ever changing shows, and that is quite a trick, for they did not get reviewed either, and none but their cohorts and underlings even came to see the lousy shows. To keep producing that shit for years, not to sell, and not to be written up to at least become famous -even without making any dough - that is quite a trick, especially in view of the fact that any kind of shit sells in this art racket, and not to sell or be able to give anything away, that must be virtue, for the simple logical reason that all other work that sells is obviously very bad; so they must have had some kind of gimmick not be able to sell, and truthfully I don't know what that gimmick was, though I can imagine that they must have put some secret ingredients in their work, and any intuition tells me, it was the Nazis who had been encapsulated in the work and people just sensed it though they could not see them.
Why should encapsulated Nazis keep people from buying the art work they are encapsulated in? A very erudite question, particularly since we in America are really the Nazis of this day - and the red-communist bastards, may the red come spouting out of their mouths, I am sure that though all their theories are a bunch of nasty lies - for them to become famous and make money - but in this case I think they may be right, especially in view of all the atrocities they say our SS troops are committing against the Jews of Vietnam. Anyway my theory is that as you know it is the Jews who run the art in America and who as in everything else are the biggest speculators in art, but the Jew-speculators prefer to come on 100% American and to buy the work of Johns who come from Montana or some other god-forsaken place and who ride into town on horseback after having corralled the cattle entrusted to them, and look all-American though in reality they are children of immigrant-bastards, Polacks and such other riffraff, and sometimes even hidden Jews and Nazis, but their names must absolutely always have the all-American ring, because the Jew-speculators - may they lose all their money in their dirty game -would not invest in any one if he has a foreign name, and certainly not a Yiddish name smelling of the ghettos these all-American collector-speculators had just themselves escape from. They would certainly invest in an American Nazi's work, if he is all-American, and has the proper American sounding name, but nevertheless believe me they would not buy the work of anybody, including an American Nazis if they can sense real encapsulated Nazis inside the work.
Boris and Sam and the others did have the magic ingredient to make art that does not sell at all - and such quality must be today the only criterion to judge and acclaim good art by - because so the one ounce of health and intelligence in my otherwise totally sick mind tells me. And yet, at a certain point they almost lost this great quality: because when Sam and Boris put on the Shit-show, being convinced that that show will forever and for all time establish and confirm before all men their reputation for not being able to sell any of their work - and that such confirmation would irrevocably establish for all the time that they are genuine geniuses - at the very time of their Shit-show things started coming down bad for them, and the Jew-speculators led by Wop scouts started coming down the Gertrude Stein Gallery basement and smelling around the shit exhibited there, and could not let go, the smell got them so excited, and wanted to take some of the shit home even though they had to pay for it; I truly cannot tell if it was for speculative or investment purposes that they wanted to buy their shit, I am rather inclined to state that those mother fucking speculators just could not resist the smell of the shit because it reminded them of the smell of their own shit, and since they loved their shit more than themselves - I would even say that deep down they hated themselves for being speculators and Jew-bastards - but their shit they loved, but of course would not admit to it, and when confronted with Sam and Boris' shit, the smell of the shit reminded them of the smell of their own shit, and shit they just felt compelled to buy the shit.
But during a sales conference held at the hour of Dracula at the Stein Gallery in which Gertrude Stein (it is not the Gertrude Stein from Paris) also participated, and the head of the Jew-speculators and his Wop scout and adjutant as well as Sam and Boris were present, during which conference works to be sold to the Syndicate had to be selected and prices fixed, the Jew-speculator gave Boris an argument about his work - thus trying to knock down Boris and build up Sam -and besides was talking such disgustingly dirty language that Gertrude Stein -just separated from her conservative economist husband and not acquainted as yet with the language used at the highest summits of the art world - had to blush and swallow and shut up in confusion, though of course she was dying to sell the shit, being a Jew-dealer herself and not being able to resist the opportunity to make a sale of such a large amount of genuine shit; so Boris -who has a good brain for understanding people's motivations, though he is as shitty an artist as they come and never sold enough paintings to even make a modest living, just like Sam, though they were hustling like crazy - but Boris understood the Pop art speculator and his Wop scout were trying to drive a double wedge between Sam and Boris, and another wedge between Boris and Gertrude Stein, and Sam and Gertrude Stein, though they did not know that there was no need to drive a wedge between Sam and Gertrude Stein, because she was madly in love with Boris.
In any event, Boris perceiving this imperialist strategy of breaking up a genuine people's coalition attacked the Jew-Pop-buyer and Wop scout with such verbal vehemence that the walls of the basement reverberated with the accumulated anger and frustration he had suppressed from his own days as a prisoner-Jew in a concentration camp, so his verbal attack came out with such vehemence that it was as if the six million dead Jews killed by the Nazis had all together started roaring in attack of their murderers, and the basement vibrated with fury, and the house vibrated with fury and even the Empire State building which usually vibrates because it is so tall vibrated a little more at that moment.
The sales conference was about to turn into a flop, when the Pop-speculator, being a smart Jew and having had experience in legal conferences and things of that sort because the insurance racket was his racket, but being a smart Jew, and being aware that six million dead Jews had roared at him, threatening him to attack him, via Boris' voice, he withdrew all the bad things he had said about Boris, and conceded that Boris was convinced about doing his thing and not listening to anyone, though he said that Boris and Sam listened to him, they both would have been in the Pop-group and famous already and consequently rich as well. So the conversation after his blow-up with six million and one person roaring, took a quiet turn and everything was chummy-yummy and pleasant, and when the conference was over, everybody shook hands, and another conference was to be held on another day to select the Shit-sculptures and set prices, and all but Sam, who had been quiet all the time not getting himself involved in any arguments, and resigning himself to the unavoidable fact that this time the Shit had to be sold, all but Sam had shaken hands with the visitors, and he had not spoken at all during the conference, but when he shook hands with the Pop-speculator he said to him:
"I shit on you, too!"
So nothing was sold and neither Sam nor Boris became famous to this day, but the reputation of their work was upheld to the end; it had almost gone down the drain after all; it must have been the six million dead Jews too, who made Sam say such a nasty thing to the rich speculator, and in such a way accomplished the task of saving his and Boris' reputations at the brink of irreparable disaster.
Source: Lurie, Boris; Krim, Seymour: NO!art, catalog, Cologne 1988
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ABOUT ISSER ARONOVICI: Born in 1932, in New York. Since 1950 studies at High School of Music, New York, Cooper Union, New York, and Phoenix College, Arizona. Founder of the Cooperative Phoenix Gallery in New York, 1958. Edited 1966 the magazine Scab News. Founded 1972 the Happy Lands Gallery of Romance and Fun in New York. Since 1954 different one man shows and performances. 1954 Earth art, Apache Desert, Arizona and Grand Canyon. 1973 performance and dance at Unaworld Gallery, New York. Took part since 1960 at the Cooperative Galleries at Tenth Street, March Gallery and Gertrude Stein Gallery. True New York Art-Underground artist and writer of unusual talent and unique single-mindedness.—Suicide 1994. ►more
