The "least known best known artist of the 20th century" is how curator Laura Hoptman describes Bruce Conner in a discussion about the retrospective of his work at MOMA: Its all True. Roberta Smith in a recent New York Times article says Bruce Conner is "one of the great outliers of American art" and Barry Schwabsky, in a 2012 book review of Looking for Bruce Conner, begins with a quote that refers to Conner as an artist "long known only to cognoscenti". All this is to say that despite Conner's prolific artistic output, very few people in the mainstream have heard of him and this is in part due to the artist's lack of desire for notoriety. Schwabsky writes that Conner felt  "the personality of the artist is a limiting factor and focusing on it amounts to a digression from what he considered the main purpose of the work to be."

There is a particular rawness to Conner's approach that makes his vision unique. He assembles materials as they are, letting the qualities of whatever he uses stand on their own. Unlike Rauschenberg who often added paint to his "combines", Conner lets the materials be whatever they are. His work, which often contains copious amounts of nylon stockings, ranges from abstract compositions as in Arachne (image above), to darker political commentaries such as in Child (left). The use of stockings gives an intense visceral feel, verging on revulsion, to these pieces. Child was inspired by the execution of Caryl Chessman and is thought to be a protest against capital punishment. A slightly different interpretation of this piece can be heard on the podcast by the Art Bros (be warned: there is an ear-piercing scream at the beginning of this audio). Although these guys seem somewhat irreverent towards contemporary art, I appreciate their attempt to decipher this multi-leveled work, and it is good to hear different points of views on how art is seen. Their conclusion is that the work was a statement against the idealization of the family perpetrated by advertising and in the television shows the early 60s.



One of the great things about researching artists for this newsletter, is the discoveries made on the way: Conner also did a series of tapestries based on a dramatic reinterpretation of the Gospel. These intricate works used a series of Conner's collages as their source; here the traditional technique of jacquard weaving meets with the contemporary process of collage. I also came across a series of enigmatic ink blot drawings made by Conner, one of which can be found in a fascinating 2011 drawing exhibition called Drawn/Taped/Burned: Abstraction on Paper.