Clayton Patterson:
Response to Estera Milman
(2005)
I must apologize for taking so long to respond to Estera’s inquiring mind. I have been very busy, with promoting the art show, putting together a reading for this weekend, finishing a book for a publisher, and a lot of other nonsense. I needed this to spend my time on this response like I needed a new hole in my head. The newspaper is still on the street, and I must send the article out to the waiting public.—Thanks Clayton
On Monday, February 28, 2005 19:59 Estera Milman wrote: Although professional courtesy makes it impossible for me to author the solicited "letter to the editor," I would, nonetheless, like to thank Clayton for sharing David Katz's article and to offer the following "inhouse" response to his own well intentioned, albeit short sighted, attempts to "get [Boris Lurie] a little recognition in America," and to Katz's "Boris Lurie: Uneasy Visions, uncomfortable truths [sic]." First, I would like to remind Clayton that his use of the word "America" is somewhat less than politically correct, as such seasonal shifts in PC fashion go. Even loosely described, the Americas encompass (at very least) two continents; one in the Northern hemisphere, the other in the Southern. "North America" is composed of the United States and Canada. Despite the unabashed provincialism that has long informed the world view of many New Yorkers (including some Manhattanites of the counterculture persuation), truth is, the boundaries of the United States, in turn, are drawn with a brush somewhat broader than Greater New York City; even the location of the shifting epicenters of the US artworld are contested, from time to time. For example, sometimes there is LA, Chicago, or even Miami, Saint Louis, Houston, and/or Milwaukee (to cite but a few of many such undisputed power bases) to take into account.
I see the professional courtesy of not responding, as weakness rather than having any ethical or moral standing. I see it as someone afraid and burrowed in a deep hole in the system, with no commitment to the NO!art cause. A ruse to hide. Give me a break with this professional courtesy crap. What nonsense.
And I accept your thank you for sharing your thoughts. But what should I do about the sarcasm? Sing humbly - a long.... I thank you back.... hohohohoh thannnnnnnk youuuuu, for what? The courtesy of - not criticizing me in public. Please. Save me from your PC grace. I love a good fight for the right reason. I have spent my life fighting people who eat and sleep with the sheep. This fight is not even a slight problem for me.
I show Boris because he is an outsider, because his work has been rejected, because he has no other roost to sit on, because I love him and what he does. I admire Boris and what he stands for. Boris is not a fat plump insider, protecting the fascist vault to the so-called art world. I am an outsider. I forge my own trial and Boris is one of my hero¹s. I do not care what you think, what you write. Spew your guts to the whole world of my ignorance about the so-called artworld. Do not save me from your poison pen. I am here. Waiting.
Boris has suffered and he was one of the first to break the mould by talking about the holocaust through his art. His work is still too strong for America, and yes, I mean America. Boris is a misunderstood genius. But what do I know? I am only an artist, an activist, a street fighter, a questioner of authority, a maker of art who may never crossed the threshold of your Ivy league Castle. I am maker of trouble for those too comfortable with their iron clad protection of the system, and all of the rot that it represents. I am not a PC. I am not a Kerry fan - he and his PC’s are weak people. We are the outlaws of your decadent society.
For me Boris is no meal ticket, as he was for Estera. Estera got paid. I never have. Estera had institutional money and backing or she would have done nothing, just as she has done nothing since she stopped getting paid. She cannot even write a small concise letter. Good excuse professional courtesy. Even an idiot could find a way to write a positive, informative response to David’s article, rather than a negative in house secret rant. Estera can take this fight outside the house. Or if she does not respond to me, since Estera wants to attack me, David, and my efforts, then I can take this inside fight outside the house. Lets get crazy. I know a lot of art people, outsider aesthetic experts, book writers, article publishers, and just plain aesthetic warriors. In fact I am just finishing a political book that I edited; this little fight will certainly fit in. My work is starting to get published. I have no problem defending were I stand. Bring it on I say. I am not John Kerry who took a dive as soon as he was hit by Bush. It will not take me 3 months to get off the mat. I will not take a dive. You will have to kill me to stop me. Go ahead take your shots. Bring it on. Respond, explain yourself or I will go outside the box. Outside the box is a place where I have spent my whole life. I am not one of your willy-nilly conformists.
Some people who I can include in this fight, are people who Estera will know and respect, and others who Estera will not. They may not all be up to the high standards of what¹s her name? Estera, but hey, we do the best with what we have. We work with what we have. I make my own shit art. I have been branded many things, been called many names. It means nothing to me. Estera is a shill for the system. Tell Estera to bring it on. And I do have the ability to fight. Tell Estera to make no mistake about that--Estera, my dear. Boris and I share a lot of common qualities. I too am a survivor, but of a different kind of war. Like Boris I am no victim, another reason that Boris and I get along. We both understand this part of the battle. I have no problem making my positions and efforts in this No! art struggle, taking it to the public. Believe me, I can make this a dynamic, International battle. Open up the house.
For the most part, I have been more successful, in my 16 and counting years in court, all because of my critically incorrect political actions, my documenting the wrongs of the system, than Estera has been with her court struggle. I have been called an aesthetic terrorist by a Judge in Manhattan’s US Federal Court. Make my day. Correct me if I am wrong in this, I think that Estera pulled out of her own fight. And from what I was told by Boris, the show was hung as the university wanted, so the court action was for not. I am still doing my uncouth political questioning of the system. I am still here. I have not moved, ten feet or been forced out. I support NO!art and what Boris stands for. I have not retreated to a cosy country abode to watch the squirrels.
What do you call my support? Ranting spews, or what should I call them? Pseudo information?
I have gotten Boris attention - in America and even in Europe. Estera knows nothing of my work, who I am, or what I do. Estera only speculates. Estera is no expert in where information about Boris has gone, to what corners. When I was touring East and West Germany, and all over Austria, over several years, I spread the word, showing the NO!art books as part of my display. I went to Stuttgart and bought a box of ►NO!art books from Eckart and distributed them to people in Israel, to libraries in Germany and Canada, as well as planting book seeds in Austria. True, Estera is an insider, I guess. Institutional I would say. Estera represents the dead academy, the same dead academy as it was at the end of the 19th century. I have no idea who she is. And I am an outsider - no doubt. But as far as spreading correct NO!art information, Boris has included me in all of the shows since he has been activated in Europe. I was included, in the ►NGBK, NO!art show. I am in the NGBK NO!art book. I was one of the 4 people in the show curated by Boris at the Janos Gat Gallery. I am a part of the NO!art website. I have shown Boris several times. I interested Ami making the ►NO!art Man film, a big decision for him. It became his special project, that he had to invest all his money in. Ami used my footage in his film, and yes, it was expensive film. I gave my opinion on his editing. I put ►John Strausbaugh, Boris and Gertrude together, for John¹s long, sorry, newspaper, but excellent article about NO!art.
It is Estera, the academic (sic), who is intellectually dishonest. She never included any of the exhibitions that I did with Boris in her bibliographies of NO!art and Boris. Could she not read the NGBK, NO!art book? DO not tell me that Estera did not have that book, or maybe the cost of the book scared her off. It was not just past shows in her writings about NO!art; Estera included the later German shows in Estera’s pork pie. Estera completely, in a dishonest way, took me out. Thankfully I am obsessive about documentation, photographing and video taping, and making cards that I have all of my actions and the more modern No! art history recorded.
Estera could not get Boris to attend her NO!art show. When Boris was healthy he came to my shows. I even got Boris, difficult as it was, to go to Buchenwald, where I recorded him throughout the whole trip. Buchenwald was fine, friendly, not spooky at all for Boris. It was our trip to Dora that made Boris very depressed and things got dark. It was after Dora that Boris got sick and I saw depression, roll across his eyes as he sank into darkness. I was a witness to this. I documented this trip. Dora revived Boris’ Infories of the smell, the filth, the sink. Boris shines his light into the darkest corners of mans’ psyche. This is the essence of his NO!art. I have the most video documentation, and certainly a large photo history of Boris from the later years. Dietmar the paper archivist has an extraordinary, meticulous, wonderful, and well groomed collection of paper and ephemera relating to NO!art. I would be surprised if Estera is even in contact with Dietmar. She is not a part of the website. Why not? Arrogance? Estera knows it all? Estera is a genius?
And Estera should be aware, that this in house attack, is being recorded for the history of NO!art, by Dietmar. Dietmar is equally as obsessive about saving NO!art material, as am I. At one time I purchased a NO!art piece from a gallery, and although it was not expensive in the art world sense, it was a burden for me. I support the movement, in whatever way that I can and I do what I can with what I have. It may not be much, but it is the most that I can do. Estera, should be careful with her poison pen: that Villager article has legs, as her rants, also equally have legs. Fear is not a part of this equation
I accept the point and criticism of not being politically correct. In fact, one of the reasons that Boris and I shared so much in common is our shared appreciation of our lack of politically correctness. Please save me from the PC's. I am not a part of this clique. Not now. Not ever. I realize that you are, or were, an academic (sic). Please, in your enthusiasm to make everything politically correct, do not, make more offerings of correcting NO!art. The death of the movement is slow enough without getting into the sewer of the slaves to these politically correct atrocities. Boris is still too strong for America.
I know that Estera and her husband made an uninformed attempt at placing Boris into the middle of the pack, in an exhibition in Spain. The way that they went about it, shows a complete distain and lack of understanding of the movement and Boris’s intensions. As far as all this insider business that Estera is bragging about read the David Katz article, not for information on Pollock, or the rest of that CIA funded movement, read in Boris’ own words, what he said in the Villager article. Patronizing, yes, we love Boris and his NO!art. I am not suggesting that I am objective in this. NO way. Sorry if you think that I am going to find a writer to objectify Boris, like a piece of meat on a table of some hack butcher. I do not believe that Gertrude even went to the Estera conference either. Gertrude was very upset with the feminist direction the conference took, which she felt had nothing to do with NO!art. She rebelled and said no way. Fuck that. Tell Estera get a grip—
Estera in all of her love and support of the movement and Boris, cannot even visit him? Where is Estera or her side of this debate in supporting Boris? Is Estera writing grants? Or applying for money or trying to make a career, as Gertrude says, on the back of NO!art?. Tell Estera to keep telling her lies, about the fact that I have not been a part of this movement. I will prove her to be intellectually dishonest.
Furthermore (and perhaps more importantly) Lurie and Sam Goodman were very real players in the cultural politics of the early 1960s New York artworld and, believe it or not, received much more than "a little" recognition in "America," even within the discourse of the 1960s and 70s. Both of these two aforecited misperceptions are evidenced in David Katz's uninformed and (perhaps, inadvertently) patronizing narrative.
And it is Boris who pulled me into the family of NO!art. None of us were there in the 60's, certainly not me or Estera. I have a lot of documentation on Boris and our conversations, so my naiveté, is from hours of talking and documenting Boris.
In reference to the latter, I am not here simply criticizing Katz's misspelling of Jackson Pollock's name or his ahistorical, sloppy reference to de Kooning (who, even by the late 1940s was already very much a pivotal figure in the so called, "Abstract Expressionist" circle, right alongside Pollock); far more serious (although perhaps less embarrassing for the author), is Katz's representation of of NO!art as "visceral reaction to Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art."
Listen to the tape and the interview with Boris, before you bring out your tiny dull axe. This conversation came from Boris’s mouth not David’s imagination.
Leaving the relationship of NO! to Abstract Expressionism aside, there is little question but that, at the outset, NO! and Pop were parallel phenomena; it was not until Pop became the artworld's self proclaimed anointed successor to Abstract Expressionism that NO! assumed an oppositional (that is not to say "reactionary") stance. If, as Katz has done, you cut the historical legs out from under something, you marginalize it. Both Patterson and Katz are doing Lurie (and NO!) a great disservice by deliberately not building on things that preceded their own personal involvement and agendas, and by not honoring and respecting the very things they should be building on.
Oh please show me where this invisible Estera is coming from. Show me the Estera commitment to the movement or Boris, or Estera’s real academic understanding of the historic roots of Boris’s painting. Does Estera really believe that this art is coming from a study and a deep relationship to American painting of the period? Please. And Fuck Dada. Estera is a Johnny-come-lately to the movement. Make no mistake there are people in the protest movement of today who are slowly becoming familiar with NO!art through my promotions and exhibitions. Tell Estera that at least David and I got a message out to the world. Show me the feedback from Estera’s work. Outside of getting paid for her NO!art project, she is doing nothing. If you work on something everyday, you make a few mistakes but you move forward. You lose a few battles, but the war continues. Instead of Estera trying to be a mentor, she thinks that she is a hit man, or a monster. Go ahead. We will exchange shoots. Estera could have written a letter and included her educated comments and thereby making the NO!art movement larger. Estera could have done something positive. NO, she has some sort of internal need to think that she owns, controls, or understands NO!art. Instead of helping, Estera, in using some excuse of PC correctness and has attacked. Good. We are outsiders. We welcome your attacks. I mean really, what does that serve? It is more intelligent? For Estera’s information. David wrote a newspaper article. He is a newspaper writer. He is not in the Whitehouse Press core, sitting, listening to the same people everyday. Look up some newspaper writers ask them about covering an event. Newspapers are deadline, get the work done and in. I am very pleased that I got David to do the piece. His whole contact with NO!art, is from books that I showed him, and art work, and from the exhibition at my place. He is not a specialist in No! art. He only met Boris one time. The information that he used is from Boris’ mouth. Criticize Boris for the historical inaccuracies. Boris only lived the life. What does he know? We are spreading the message of NO!art and Boris Lurie. We are moving the movement forward. David is a journalist. I agree now with Gertrude when she says Estera is just trying to build a career on NO!art. There seems to be a controlling, angry, devious person hiding under all those leaves in Connecticut. What is Estera trying to do here? Other than build a career, being academically dishonest with Estera’s facts of the modern history of NO!art, what is the Estera agenda?
As an aside, it is interesting to note that in 1961 de Kooning became the much lauded, paradigmatic progenitor of "assemblage," and that the broader subset "assemblage, environments, and Happenings" (within which NO! served as one important component) were all simultaneously discounted/marginalized by the New York artworld in the mid-sixties based on their then understood relationship to "old Europe." If Lurie had, in fact, singled out de Kooning by the mid-40s (as Katz suggests), I would sincerely like to know.
Why didn’t Estera send an intelligent letter to the editor? Estera is claiming to be an art history expert. Why could she not have expanded the consciousness of the newspaper readers towards NO!art. NO! instead she personally attacks me. Good.
In all the mailings I have received that presented themselves as updates on Boris' health but in effect were vehicles to disseminate information about the group show at the Clayton Gallery & Outlaw Art Museum, I have not gleaned even the slightest acknowledgement of, or even nod to, the pivotal role the Gallery Gertrude Stein (New York) played during NO!art's historical collective period or in the more recent past; nor have I noted even the whisper of a deserved credit line to the Janos Gat Gallery (Madison Avenue) which (as I understand it) generated the very prints Clayton is marketing and, not too long ago, successfully facilitated some very substantial "recognition" for Boris in Artforum. Having said that, I would like to move on to Milman.
First of all, since Estera did not have the decency to ask, this was a newspaper article about the present art show. Only so much information can get into a newspaper. Neither Gertrude nor Janos has seen the show. The article is about getting people to an exhibition and giving information about a show, with as much content as possible about Boris. It is not a Ph.D. thesis. For anyone who has done press, I was very lucky to get two pages in the Villager, a paper that incidentally, has been around for 100 years. Newspaper articles are very helpful and I am most thankful that David did the most he could do. How could I ask him to do more? Hey, David, take a couple of years off, take a class from Estera, then write rewrite this article. Letters to the editor can further promote the show. It is a chance for others to get involved. Janos could have written and said he made the prints, or that he has also shown the work. What is the big deal with that? Get involved. Janos has still not seen the exhibition. Why then, would David include him in the article. Matthias wrote a letter. So did Gertrude, even though she is not inclined right now to push NO!art, but rather her Russian show.
On Friday, February 25, 2005 23:44 Lincoln Anderson wrote:
Subject: FW: russian diaspora
Clayton, This woman responded to Boris article.
LincolnOn Thursday, February 24, 2005 18:02 Gertrude Stein wrote:
To: news@thevillager.com
Subject: russian diaspora
after seeing the article about Boris Lurie who I showed in the 60's you might like a follow up article about the other Russian diaspora artists. Access my website for the exhibition now at the gallery <http://www.gallerygertrudestein.com>On Friday, February 25, 2005 23:45 Lincoln Anderson wrote:
I asked her if she thought woman's butt in front of corpses was too intense for our readers.
LincolnOn Thursday, February 24, 2005 18:17 Gertrude Stein wrote:
To: lincoln@thevillager.com
Subject: Re: russian diaspora
absolutely not. It was a serious article about a serious artist, but a show of the other Russians who left the Soviet Union would be a good follow up.
Gertrude Stein <http://www.gallerygertrudestein.com>
O I hope that this answers Estera’s question about Gertrudes opinion of my NO!art show. Gertrude keeps telling me she is no longer interested in NO!art. Matthias, letter I emailed out to a lot of people. I included Matthias that way. I include Dietmar.
Why would David write about art form in his newspaper article? Interesting, Estera has heard of the NGBK catalogue, nevertheless she obviously never reads about the Boris exhibitions at the Clayton Gallery.
Methodologically speaking, Katz's lengthy citations from his interview with Lurie are difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish from the author's own voice. (Incidentally, the Archives of American Art does not even make transcripts of interviews with living artists available, on site, to the general public without first allowing the artist being interviewed to review, modify and/or approve or reject the transcript.
Please, we are talking about a newspaper here. We are trying to get recognition for NO!art, which has never been recognized by your art world inner circle. I do not aspire to be a part of that world unless something radically changes with the leadership. This is a new millennium, a new century, so things, hopefully, will change and we are expecting to be a part of that change. From the outside, not from the cozy inside. But It baffles me how Estera is so ill informed as to the actual reasons for NO!art’s very existence. Has Estera never talked to Boris. At the very least actually read the dam Villager article. If nothing else Boris is clear in that article. Boris’s statements to me about the show in Spain are clear. Estera wake up. Get Estera’s nose out of other people’s ideas, in the brotherhood of academia protection, with the repeated same thoughts and ideas in the brotherhood books. If Estera is not going to listen to Boris, then tell Estera to make an original analyses. But it would be better to understand what the horses mouth said. What Boris is saying. Read that dam newspaper. Boris is radically opposed to everything that Estera is talking about. Doesn’t Estera get it? Stop trying to sanitize, clean-up, PC and neuter all of Boris’s work. It is not Steven Spielberg. It is not Popllack. Boris’s work comes from the soul. From a deep dark place that is too scary for Americans to visit. Stop with this need to comfort yourself, in American art history relationships.
Since Katz's blurring of boundaries between his voice and Lurie's and his decontextualization of Boris's statements as these purportedly appeared on his notes/tapes are highly problematic, I would caution him to follow normal protocol prior to the appearance in print of his "more comprehensive interview" in the London-based Jewish Quarterly.) Embedded in Katz's narrative are propositions that are directly (albeit naively) appropriated from my own 2001, National Endowment for the Arts-funded publication "NO!art and the Aesthetics of Doom (copyright, the author and The Northwestern University's Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art). While, as a much published historical theorist, I cannot help but be somewhat amused by Katz's assumption that my argued propositions (with which Boris initially did not agree) are "truths," I nonetheless find his blind appropriations to be unethical.
Talk to Boris about this. David is a newspaper reporter. He got his facts from Boris. I am sure that David has never heard Estera’s name.
Conversely and from an historiographic perspective, it is just possible that he himself did not have access to my catalogue essay (and thus could not cite it, as is normal practive) and instead simply appropriated these propositions as they were recounted to him as "truths" by Lurie himself.
True. All came from Boris. I am not even sure that Boris has Estera’s catalogues. I have never seen or heard him reference them.
If, in fact, the conceptual armature of my work has entered the everyday consciousness of one of my historical subjects, I would very much like to know. The blurring of boundaries between primary and secondary literatures is not to be taken lightly by anyone whose life's work is the analysis of the history of the authorship of our histories.
I have no idea who Estera is. I am not a part of that world, not do I aspire to hang with these people.
Back to Clayton. As Clayton is well aware (and despite what I know is his anger toward Northwestern University) "NO!art and the Aesthetics of Doom" was the first comprehensive, historical retrospective exhibition of the collective's historical period, to be mounted in the United States.
On behalf of David, he at least spoke to Boris and got a first person account. After our initial meeting Estera has never spoken to me. Estera obviously has a complex group of ideas of what I think about Northwestern University. I could care less about that institution. It means nothing to me. My malcontent came from Estera’s dishonest history of Boris. She excluded anything I had done with Boris. My first person account of the show was from Gertrude who told me that the Estera’s conference was way off base, and that Gertrude would not attend and thought that Estera was making a career on Boris’s back. My last first person account, was from Ami, who felt that most of the people who attended the show /conference were up tight. Ami interviewed some people at the show who felt that they had no connection to the movement, but were happy to be in the show. I documented a number of people who were considered part of No! art. I will not get into that here, but I will bet Estera is out to sea on a number of these people, and where they stand in the movement. How dare Estera talk about what I like and dislike without ever asking me what I think. Where is Estera’s questioning mind. I never made an attack on Estera’s about Estera's show.
When the show opened in the Greater Chicago area immediately following the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, The Chicago Tribune (read, The New York Times of the Midwest) singled out the exhibition as the antitheses of "comfort art" and as representative of an art that "stimulates [and] rouses.. art as provocation... as the nation girds itself for a long a difficult struggle against terrorism" (November 4, 2001). In addition, on January 4, 2002, the Chicago Reader (read, the Village Voice of Greater Chicago) published a full page, laudatory review of the NO!show describing the exhibition as "one of the best [Chicago area] exhibits of 2001." Critic Fred Camper writes: "Indeed, much of this work registers as a call to action -- those these artists admitted they had no solutions." Neither the "Trib" nor the "Reader" felt it necessary to play what Ami Eden (Senior Editor of The Forward) recently called "the Holocaust Card" (see "Playing the Holocaust Card," The New York Times, Op-Ed. January 29, 2005). Nor did Lurie, Goodman, Stein, Gat, Reichelt, and Milman.
I have played the holocaust card. One of the claims of NO!art was to be the first group of holocaust artists. Not to play that card is like taking the pop out of pop art. Look at the Hundermark book, the NGBK book. Have someone translate some of Boris’s poetry. Does Estera honestly believe that the holocaust is not a part of Boris’s psyche. That the dismembered woman is about making a perfect painting? The yellow working with the red? A de Kooning look alike? The chains around the rose and the shoes is only about anti-Greenberg aesthetics? Thankfully the Germans talk about the holocaust. It is intellectually dishonest to make all of Boris’s work into anti-abstract expressionism. That response is only an academic’s insecurity, and a need for a reference. A vehicle to fit in. Go to Dora with Boris and talk about abstract expressionism, or pop art. Boris is screaming to be hear. He has a message of demons, and evil, and dark angels. A message of death and tragedy. A message of insanity and social mental illness. A message of sheep. Boris is a reminder. A tortured soul. Boris is the carrier of the burden for all of us. He is a giant among men. A true warrior. An outlaw. A renegade. A pure artist of the highest order. Boris is an original. Fuck all those CIA sponsored abstract expressionists. Listen to the screams, look at those haunting paintings.
Tell Estera to get her face out of mega paraphrased art books and start to really look and think about what she is looking at. These paintings are about some of the darkest moments in human art. Boris is a champion of the people. Forget about abstract expressionism. Tell Estera to stop polluting the content of the movement. Boris deserves his own room in any museum. He also deserves his own museum.
One of the reasons why I was going to distance myself from Boris even though Boris and I fight about a number of positions is that he is weak right now. I can see the vultures, the watchers of sickness and poor health swimming around the outside. This birds of prey are too weak to come into the chamber, but circling around and around. One can smell those demons, gawking in the window, but afraid to come in. Never visiting but just waiting for the clock to turn. Boris is going to fool you. He will be back. And we are just taking a break, from each other- big deal. And again in Estera’s dishonesty, suggesting that I only promote my shows on the in house board. What crap. Do I promote my show? YES. Did I think that the NO!art supporters would have an interested in the NO!art movement? Boy was I wrong about Estera. She could care less. Did Estera personally ask me about Boris and his health? Yes. Did I tell Estera in an honest and straight forward way how Boris was doing? Yes. Did Estera in Estera’s political correctness, and social niceties, ever thank me for the updates? NO. Estera only used me. Did Estera ever thank Kim for all her very important supportive work for Boris? I will bet not. Estera appears to only be a user. How boring. How tiring it is when the yuppie types intrude into one’s space. It is always for the wrong reasons, and they always get it wrong. It is not that the outsiders never want to be inside, there is just no honest vehicle to get there. It is usually only about narcissism, using and stealing. Tell Estera to build her fantastic, self impressed image somewhere else, until she wakes up. But I have little hope that it will ever happen or that Estera will ever understand NO!art, or be honest about the NO!art history.
I was hoping to get out of this political fighting. I want to move on, but it is always impossible when dealing with the establishment. They never listen, they just cannot hear or see, and it takes a long, long, long time, before any door opens. Estera is a perfect example of the dog at the door. Who wants to get past this vicious creature?
And as I side note I notice that Estera did not even acknowledge the Jan Herman article, which is more mainstream fine art reporting. Estera slams David, but does not include him in Estera's email rant—how honest is that?
Thanks Clayton.
Mail passed around on February/March, 2005
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ABOUT CLAYTON PATTERSON: Born in 1948, in Calgary, Canada. Studies of art and design at various universities.—Fights against the injustice of state-authorities. Since 1977 exhibitions in USA, Europe and Asia.—In 1994 he organized the first NO!art show in his gallery after 20 NO!years. Took part in the NO!art-box multiple at Edition Hundertmark in Cologne, 1996, and in the NO!art-show at Janos Gat Gallery in New York in 1998.—Works as Documentary-, Anarcho-, and Tattoo-artist in New York together with his wife Elsa Rensaa and various social groups.—Owns and runs the most voluminous and important NO!art video-archive.—Lives in New York. ►more
