{"id":118442,"date":"2017-11-27T11:00:22","date_gmt":"2017-11-27T16:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=118442"},"modified":"2017-11-28T17:31:17","modified_gmt":"2017-11-28T22:31:17","slug":"eileen-myles-jeremy-sigler-see-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/27\/eileen-myles-jeremy-sigler-see-show\/","title":{"rendered":"Eileen Myles and Jeremy Sigler Go to an Exhibition"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Jeremy Sigler and Eileen Myles at \u201c(Re)Appropriations,\u201d Tibor de Nagy Gallery. Photo: Andrew Arnot<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Not long ago, I found myself reading Jeremy Sigler\u2019s 2009 interview with Eileen Myles<\/em>\u00a0in\u00a0<\/em>The\u00a0<\/i>Brooklyn Rail.\u00a0The occasion was a new book by Myles, but the conversation opens with banter\u00a0about clothing\u2014\u201cI\u2019m pretty critical of the J. Crew catalogue, which I have to confess I love looking through\u201d\u2014as though the pair had met for a drink\u00a0<\/em>instead of an interview. And then, toward the end of their time together, Sigler mentions Larry Rivers\u2019s famous nude portrait of Frank O\u2019Hara: \u201cI think this is my idealization of the poet,\u201d he says; Myles\u00a0calls it \u201ccollaborated outrageousness.\u201d Earlier this fall, Tibor de Nagy Gallery<\/a> opened a small survey of Rivers\u2019s work, including the O\u2019Hara painting\u2014an opportunity, in other words, for Myles and Sigler to continue their conversation, wherever it may lead. (With gratitude to Andrew Arnot, owner of Tibor de Nagy Gallery.) \u2014Nicole Rudick<\/em><\/p>\n

MYLES: I guess we maybe want to start with the famous one.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Yeah. I\u2019ve never seen this painting in person, actually. Have you?<\/p>\n

MYLES: I feel like I have, but that may or may not be true.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I\u2019ve seen the drawing that was on the cover of one of O\u2019Hara\u2019s books.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Right.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Which Andrew said is missing\u2014the drawing is actually gone, he said.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Who said?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Andrew.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Really?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Yeah.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Gone from where it was? Where was it?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: A collector who owned it said it was stolen.<\/p>\n

MYLES: From where? From their house?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Yeah, something like that. But this is \u2026 this is really something else.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Yeah. I think it\u2019s kind of a good painting.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Yeah. I mean, look at that cinder block.<\/p>\n

MYLES: I know, I had the same feeling. The hair on his chest, too. And, of course, Frank\u2019s dick.\u00a0<\/p>\n

SIGLER: It\u2019s front and center.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Larry\u00a0Rivers, O\u2019Hara Nude with Boots<\/em>, 1954, oil on canvas, 97 x 53 inches. Courtesy Tibor de Nagy Gallery \u00a9 Larry Rivers Foundation \/ Licensed by VAGA<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

MYLES: He\u2019s sort of boundaryless, which is amazing, like he\u2019s sitting in time in this fuzzy, profound way.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: It\u2019s effortless, too\u2014the painting just sort of comes right out. It\u2019s brushed right on there. I mean, of course that\u2019s what painters do, but he makes it look easy.<\/p>\n

MYLES: It feels drawing-ish.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Yeah.<\/p>\n

MYLES: But look where we are. One, two, three, four, five\u2014five chicks, five ladies, and this is the only male nude. There is something feminine about it, too. The face seems to me very androgynous, but when I say androgynous<\/em>, I\u2019m used to saying androgynous<\/em> when I mean \u201ca woman who looks masculine.\u201d But this is about a man who looks feminine\u2014he could be a lady at the court.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: He seems to understand the psychology of being naked.<\/p>\n

MYLES: \u201cHe\u201d being Larry?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Larry, yeah. Well, both. It\u2019s an exhibitionistic painting\u2014Frank obviously knew what he was getting into here.<\/p>\n

MYLES: He agreed. It was hanging in MoMA originally, right?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

MYLES: I think so. I think there was a bit of a scandale<\/em>, because you couldn\u2019t have somebody who was working at the museum have a nude portrait of themselves.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Conflict of interest.<\/p>\n

MYLES: This could be fake history, but I seem to remember this.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I mean, think about today, how politically correct you have to be in an office situation. If you\u2019re not allowed to tell a joke\u2014<\/p>\n

MYLES: Well, that\u2019s the story, but it seems to me that we\u2019re constantly encountering contradictions. The whole Harvey Weinstein thing\u2014like, how many guys just routinely invite females into corners and jerk off? And then years pass.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: This \u201cmassage me\u201d thing, \u201ccome over and give me a massage.\u201d<\/p>\n

MYLES: Well, that\u2019s even further down the road. Most recently she was just in a little cul de sac and then he started jerking off.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Really?<\/p>\n

MYLES: Yeah. That was his thing. But let\u2019s not give him so much time. The thing that\u2019s outrageous about this, continually, is that O\u2019Hara\u2019s male. That\u2019s the thing that\u2019s completely unique about that.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I mean, it has to be the greatest nude male portrait. I can\u2019t think of anything that rivals it.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Until you get to Mapplethorpe.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Yes. It\u2019s a beauty. How do you feel about the sexuality of it?<\/p>\n

MYLES: What do you mean, \u201cHow do I feel?\u201d<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I mean, is it provocative to you?<\/p>\n

MYLES: Well, yeah. I think it\u2019s provocative to everybody, isn\u2019t it? I mean, it\u2019s a little bit softly demanding, seems to me.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: It\u2019s intimate.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Yeah. It\u2019s not a nude\u2014he\u2019s naked.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Oh, can we talk about the boots? We have to talk about the boots.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Sure. That\u2019s him giving Frank his butchness, I think. He kept his boots on. Then we have him as somebody who is a man fucking somebody. That means that he has some purchase on power. But tell me what you\u2019re thinking.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I like the way we were talking about it a few years ago. Somehow we got into the concept that a poet should stand naked in his boots. I think you said that you identified with that idea, as a poet, that the metaphor of being naked and still having the boots on is like Duchamp traveling with his toothbrush\u2014you\u2019re ready to go.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Exactly. I think it means that you can run. All you need is to throw on a shirt\u2014otherwise you\u2019re female.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: So it\u2019s a pretty important detail.<\/p>\n

MYLES: It\u2019s a really important detail. How did they negotiate that? Did Frank say, Let me keep my boots on? Also, was this planned? Had they had sex and Larry said, Let me paint you? That\u2019s the implication here. I don\u2019t know if I think that\u2019s true, but it sort of seems like an announcement that they\u2019ve had sex. It\u2019s all this abstraction business over here. The abstraction part of it is pretty good. I feel that about a lot of the paintings\u2014the abstract parts are actually pretty great.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Well, he studied with Hans Hofmann, so it\u2019s almost like he just took that method of brushing a little this way, that way, up and down, across\u2014these big, bold brush marks. And then he started putting objects and figures into the painting. Early Pop.<\/p>\n

MYLES: It was someplace where you had Jane Freilicher, on the one hand, and de Kooning, on the other. And Pop is where it\u2019s going, but it\u2019s not quite there. It\u2019s sort of in the hallway, and I think that\u2019s probably why he\u2019s not so famous now, because he was \u2026 What do you call that?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: He was ambiguous?<\/p>\n

MYLES: No, there\u2019s a name for something that\u2019s in between.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Equivocating? Something like that?<\/p>\n

MYLES: Yeah, but it\u2019s a something figure?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Oh, literally in art?<\/p>\n

MYLES: Yeah, or just in theory. Like an object that wasn\u2019t the thing you were really thinking about, but it\u2019s sort of holding the space.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: These pinup girls are not as interesting, are they?<\/p>\n

MYLES: No, I don\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Is it that there\u2019s no tension? Or there\u2019s no intimacy?<\/p>\n

MYLES: For me, there\u2019s no ownership. I don\u2019t feel the feeling. I feel like he wanted to use different materials and do something else. Maybe this colored one I like the best, for some reason.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: But they don\u2019t have any of that tenderness.<\/p>\n

MYLES: They remind me of a piece \u2026 What was his name? Lindner? Pop Art\u2014the guy that did phone booths and these kind of techno beings? It was this cold-ass part of Pop Art.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: When he\u2019s painting on canvas and there\u2019s this shimmering light, but also this nervous scratchy feeling in the line, it\u2019s almost like the soft light mixed with his anxiety, with his nervous system.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Look at the drawing. He could really draw.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: He also was a musician. I don\u2019t know how good he was at sax\u2014was he any good? Did you ever hear him play?<\/p>\n

MYLES: It was just part of being a poet. Larry Rivers and all the old guys would get up and\u00a0play their jazz. It\u2019s like an old guy thing\u2014I\u2019m gonna have a band now.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Right.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Doesn\u2019t Paul Muldoon do it? Anne Sexton did it! It\u2019s something I always meant to do.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: You could be in a band.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Yeah, let\u2019s not go there.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: But I read that he was also friends with Miles Davis.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Wow. But it doesn\u2019t mean anything about how he played.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: No, but it kind of gives him some cred. It has to be said that he\u2019s an uneven painter\u2014 that\u2019s sort of the point. It\u2019s hit or miss, right?<\/p>\n

MYLES: So often I feel like his style is trying everybody else\u2019s style.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Yes. And he\u2019s also painting other people\u2019s paintings, literally. There\u2019s a Matisse in this one. There\u2019s a de Kooning.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Did he have some sort of a career as a graphic artist? I think he might have had some commercial gig. Because this is like Jane Freilicher 3-D, right?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Yeah.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Is this the Matisse?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: This is the Matisse, yeah. But then he does a cheesy thing, like put a Matisse back there. Is he caught up in the moment or\u2014<\/p>\n

MYLES: Just for the sake of the recording, I\u2019ll say it\u2019s this yellow, cloudy shape, which is part of a garment, and it has these dark orange streaks in them, and there\u2019s something really satisfying and cool about it.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Right, but he must also be feeling very audacious as he\u2019s doing it, because he\u2019s appropriating. Because I feel like if he\u2019s painting it, he must be getting some kind of kick.<\/p>\n

MYLES: When you paint in somebody else\u2019s style, that\u2019s actually not appropriation, is it?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Not really, no. It\u2019s more like an homage.<\/p>\n

MYLES: I like the flowers, too. It\u2019s almost like it\u2019s a number of things that I would like alone. It seems like the art of removal.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: He has to fill every part of the canvas. He made a lot of work, and in the early work he left large expanses untouched. He played with letting light in.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Yes! This one makes me nuts, because all I can think of is a side of beef, and the kind of restaurant that would let you know the cut you were getting. And what we\u2019re looking at is a female figure with nipples pointed out, and it says \u201cSutek.\u201d I guess we\u2019re getting a language lesson. Is it Polish? I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: The sexism of the unabashed macho-male-testosterone quality of the work is offensive.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Or simply the woman, as with the others, is what is there to be painted. It\u2019s a little bit up there with the \u201cjust grab the pussy.\u201d Maybe that\u2019s true, maybe everybody does.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: What about this one? This one is really \u201cgrab the pussy\u201d right there.<\/p>\n

MYLES: I like it, though. I think it\u2019s really kind of a great painting. Well, what do you mean, \u201cGrab the pussy?\u201d Nobody\u2019s grabbing a pussy right there.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Uh, it\u2019s close.<\/p>\n

MYLES: You have the spread eagle, you have two girls hanging out together. It\u2019s strange. It\u2019s a little bit censored. I think it\u2019s kind of beautiful.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: This painting seems honest, to me. He has this one side of him that\u2019s inquisitive and curious, and then the other side is arrogant and in-your-face, like blah blah blah.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Well, this seems like it\u2019s between a sketch and a painting. And it\u2019s also the thing you were just saying\u2014there\u2019s an emptiness here. And this is a kind of Cy Twombly emptiness. And this\u2014I don\u2019t know why I assume it\u2019s a bed back there, but whatever that is, that bright, hard pattern thing.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: No one\u2019s gonna know what we\u2019re talking about.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Well, that\u2019s why I\u2019m trying to throw in a little description.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: You\u2019re doing great.<\/p>\n

MYLES: But over here too, they\u2019re both whited out. I don\u2019t know what that means, but it\u2019s interesting, because he knows that he\u2019s presenting a pussy, and then he\u2019s somehow bandaging it in white.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Isn\u2019t that maybe underwear?<\/p>\n

MYLES: Well \u2026<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I mean, I don\u2019t think he\u2019s bandaging it.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Bandaging<\/em> isn\u2019t the right word, but I don\u2019t know how else to put it.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: It\u2019s sort of gauzy.<\/p>\n

MYLES: It\u2019s like he\u2019s over-painting or repainting, but he didn\u2019t do it, and so, again, it\u2019s an in-between object.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: It\u2019s hard to tell what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n

MYLES: And I like that. There\u2019s something literary about this one. This is the one, if I were to buy, I would take this. It has this kind of notebook drawing with flowers up here on the top, and this is kind of a weird collage.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: It is nice. It\u2019s a little bit like Jean-Michel Basquiat.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Yeah. This a very interesting thing, and it\u2019s the most in-between Larry that hits that note.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: The line never lets up.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Larry\u2014was he an immigrant?<\/p>\n

SIGLER
\nYes, I think so.<\/p>\n

MYLES: And was Basquiat?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I don\u2019t remember. I think so.<\/p>\n

MYLES: We\u2019ll have to do some research. We have to tell Nicole to include a note.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Footnote.[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

MYLES: There\u2019s so much pattern in this one. These little elbow marks down here, the stripes here and all the scribbles up here.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: It\u2019s dirty.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Yeah, it\u2019s dirty.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: You feel that everything, at some point, got tossed on the floor of the studio or thrown around a little. He was not as careful with his materials as I think so many artists are these days. It\u2019s refreshing just to see him work, to do stuff. I don\u2019t think he had a master plan.<\/p>\n

MYLES: It\u2019s a little bottley.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: A little what?<\/p>\n

MYLES: Bodily. The scale of it feels like you can feel the artist making choices and dancing and moving in front of it.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Let\u2019s talk about this Camel. This is essentially the most abstract pack of Camel cigarettes that you can possibly have, right?<\/p>\n

MYLES: Right.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Larry\u00a0Rivers, Cream Camel<\/em>, 1980, acrylic on canvas, 50 \u00bd x 39 inches. Courtesy Tibor de Nagy Gallery \u00a9 Larry Rivers Foundation \/ Licensed by VAGA<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

SIGLER: You can feel the nicotine, you can feel this sense of him burning up. I know he was a speed demon on his motorcycle, and he seems to have had I don\u2019t know how many wives, drug habits. It\u2019s like he\u2019s burning the candle at both ends, and my impression is that he must have been a heavy drinker.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Though he\u2019s one of the interesting characters that endured. You don\u2019t hear those stories about Alex Katz\u2014whatever his life was or is, I never heard about him being a wild man. Larry seems to be one of those who was endangered when he was young but made that decision to invest in a future\u2014and probably the work changes then, too.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: You mean like a survival ability?<\/p>\n

MYLES: Yeah.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: If he had been a poet, and not an artist, he probably would have died younger, one imagines.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Because he wouldn\u2019t have had any money? Is that what that means?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: He seems to have been industrious, is what I mean. He used art to its fullest.<\/p>\n

MYLES: And you mean poets are not industrious?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Yeah. We can\u2019t make work. You feel like he could fill a studio with work, and it could all feel like product, on some level.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Yeah. We don\u2019t have work to do, and he did, and also he had a place to do it. Again, this is all based on the fact that he had a career, and he had gotten to a certain place, because lots of painters have no place to do it, or torture the people in their lives by making inappropriate places to do it, and everything else has to be subjugated to them, because they didn\u2019t become successful enough.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Was he always successful?<\/p>\n

MYLES: Pretty early on, I think. There was something called The $64,000 Question<\/em>. Do you know this story?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: No.<\/p>\n

MYLES: It was a TV quiz show that he was on, and won. He had this weird life. Everybody said this about him, always\u2014he was lucky. Talented and charismatic, but also, just, stuff happened to him.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: That\u2019s what I was sort of saying\u2014charmed in some way. It\u2019s not like he was burning out, though he was burning the candle at both ends. You think with Basquiat\u2014Basquiat burned out pretty fast. I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s a fair comparison.<\/p>\n

MYLES: But it\u2019s a fact. There also is the different way of being in the world as a big, tall white man, and not a smaller black guy, who was so wildly successful so young. They\u2019re just different human beings. Do you like the Camel?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I\u2019m not so sure that it\u2019s a completely resolved painting, but I like that he painted a cigarette pack. I like that it\u2019s there. I feel comfortable in front of it.<\/p>\n

MYLES: It makes me think about still lifes, which is to say that when I think about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century painters in the studio, I think of skulls and flowers and female nudes and bones and apples and dead fish. But they didn\u2019t have \u201cproducts\u201d as such. Maybe they did, but you never see labels.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Well, I suppose the Dutch still lifes are filled with fishes and all the things that you\u2019d bring back from markets.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Yeah, but the market wasn\u2019t a brand.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: No. Well, there was no packaging, really.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Yeah. It\u2019s the art of advertising\u2014I guess that\u2019s another American flag, in a way. The Pop thing that you said earlier is really true. This is like, again, Pop abstraction. I\u2019m embarrassed to say that I didn\u2019t get it was a Camel right away. And I like that\u2014it feels like fuzzy photography.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: When you put Warhol and his Campbell soup cans next to this, it\u2019s another animal, right? He took it to the point of\u2014<\/p>\n

MYLES: It is that.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Yeah. It is that.<\/p>\n

MYLES: A little more Duchamp. And this is a little more Abstract Expressionist.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I\u2019d like to see a hundred of them. I\u2019d like to see him just do another one.<\/p>\n

MYLES: And then another, and then another.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Just keep it going.<\/p>\n

MYLES: That\u2019s really great. But I feel like just the fact that you say that is a critique. It seems to me that when you have somebody who continually has to do a new thing, another novelty every time \u2026 There are moments of his art that we really love, but because he had this compulsion to keep being new, you see the wages of that in certain ways.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I think that\u2019s what I was saying before. I was hinting at that when I said the whole point is being uneven, that it\u2019s hit or miss. I think your way of putting it is much nicer, because if in fact you have that love for novelty and you\u2019re always quickly moving onto the next thing, you\u2019re going to make a lot of bad choices.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Right. And it\u2019s a little bit American. It\u2019s Pop in a different way. It\u2019s sort of like you\u2019re very mode of industry is American\u2014serial production is something different. I wonder if I\u2019m going to ruin our recording if I answer a text. What do you think?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Let\u2019s stop.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Really? Don\u2019t stop. I don\u2019t think we should stop.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Okay. I\u2019m just saying pause it.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Can you pause? I don\u2019t know if you can pause.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Oh\u2014it\u2019ll start a new recording.<\/p>\n

MYLES: I think so. You\u2019re recording, right?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Yeah.<\/p>\n

MYLES: I just have to say yes to somebody. I just have to meet Felix at two.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I have to say, this is a real dud. This is a problem.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Well, yes and no. I mean, it\u2019s a de Kooning rip-off. Look at that face\u2014crazy.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: All right, I\u2019ll get really personal\u2014I don\u2019t like the way de Kooning looks in the painting.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Larry\u00a0Rivers, Bill and Elaine de Kooning and \u2018Woman I\u2019<\/em>, 1997, oil on canvas on sculpted foam board, 55 \u00bd x 65 x 7 inches. Courtesy Tibor de Nagy Gallery \u00a9 Larry Rivers Foundation \/ Licensed by VAGA<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

MYLES: Is that de Kooning?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Yeah, that\u2019s supposed to be de Kooning.<\/p>\n

MYLES: So that must be a late de Kooning.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Yeah. I like the way his painting looks in the painting, but I don\u2019t like the way he made Bill look.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Why?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: He looks a little awkward, maybe a little pudgy, a little overweight. He doesn\u2019t look handsome the way de Kooning looked.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Well, he probably knew de Kooning, so he probably knew a lot about de Kooning\u2014maybe it\u2019s drunk de Kooning. I thought it was a diorama, which is really funny. It\u2019s like an art-world art history. He\u2019s doing de Kooning\u2019s painting, and then he puts de Kooning in it. It\u2019s like a funny anthropological take on his own culture. Yeah, I\u2019m not crazy about it, but then there\u2019s something about the 3-D-ness of those figures that, I don\u2019t know, I feel amused or entertained, or slightly delighted. It\u2019s like Madame Tussaud\u2019s\u2014it\u2019s so wrong that it starts to \u2026 it\u2019s like the flowers. They start to jump out at me.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: That\u2019s what I was thinking before about Pop in general. Putting this sort of bland banal object on the wall\u2014is that an expression of interest in being obnoxious or irreverent?<\/p>\n

MYLES: I think it\u2019s a gleeful Marxism that loves cash nonetheless. You\u2019re seeing that this is a labor that we\u2019re doing, making this incredibly well-designed can of soup. It\u2019s like social realism.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Right, but there\u2019s also some way in which the Pop artists were trying to outdo one another with the banal. Like, okay, I\u2019m going to even out-banal you.<\/p>\n

MYLES: But every time they landed on banal, it wasn\u2019t banal. It ended up being profound. Because you made the machine stop for a second. Who did the cartoons, the comic strips? Lichtenstein. Some of those are amazing.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: They\u2019re amazing.<\/p>\n

MYLES: And then he does some landscapes that are just cartoons. Have you ever seen those? I love those. He\u2019s doing what Larry Rivers is doing, in a different way. He\u2019s sort of laughing at the history of art in a Pop way. I guess Larry\u2019s the king of the intermediary object\u2014that\u2019s the word.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: It\u2019s true. He\u2019s on the cusp of Happenings, and that whole culture as well. I don\u2019t think he ever, like Rauschenberg, performed in intermediate Fluxus-type events.<\/p>\n

MYLES: But he would have, if he were a minute younger.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: That\u2019s where the sax comes in, and the jazz of the whole experience. He\u2019s sort of living in his own movie.<\/p>\n

MYLES: But he\u2019s too messy for that, too. In a Happening, everybody is conscious of the nature of the experiment, in this kind of awe. You\u2019re just doing your thing, but you\u2019re letting everybody else do their thing, too, whereas I feel Larry was on everybody else\u2014more dominant. A lot of this is like a mouse crawling up an elephant\u2019s leg with the intention of rape. There\u2019s some hubris.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: You could say this whole room is hubris. This moment we\u2019re living in\u2014the Trump moment\u2014is hubristic. You just feel like, Where are we headed?<\/p>\n

MYLES: It\u2019s gallows hubris.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: It\u2019s unbelievable. Even just his statement yesterday\u2014\u201cThis is the calm before the storm,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

MYLES: And he\u2019s playing with the news cycle. He\u2019s playing with us. It was like, I have the power to push the buttons, and I might do it, I might do it tomorrow, and you don\u2019t even know why. Andy told me a story just moments ago about Tibor and Larry, and that they would come in together, and they were these unlike guys from different class backgrounds, and they walked away, and Tibor was like, I love Larry, and Larry was like, I love Tibor. And his hubris was somehow \u2026 He was like the dog jumping up on you, but you would allow it because he was sort of adorable. People loved and were charmed by this man.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I don\u2019t think it would be fair to compare him, the way we are, to Trump in that sense.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Though I think the women in his life might have a different \u2026 that\u2019s where the Trump comparison might start to be accurate.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: There was a lot of womanizing, right?<\/p>\n

MYLES: Yeah.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Like here, is the woman and her pubic hair, for example, the brunt of a joke?<\/p>\n

MYLES: I don\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: But that\u2019s kind of vulgar, right?<\/p>\n

MYLES: Yeah, but I think vulgar is not necessarily bad.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I\u2019m just curious if this painting functions as a bad joke, the way de Kooning gets a lot of flack for his\u2014<\/p>\n

MYLES: Woman paintings?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Yeah. I could see a bunch of men standing around in the fifties laughing at this painting. It\u2019s kind of a grotesque.<\/p>\n

MYLES: I wouldn\u2019t go that far with it.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I like the painting, actually.<\/p>\n

MYLES: See, I think maybe I don\u2019t like the painting.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Well, it\u2019s all about the legs and the underwear, right?<\/p>\n

MYLES: There\u2019s a heaviness, and it\u2019s all about what\u2019s going on in there.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: But he definitely gets those big expanses to work, in the sense of a Hans Hofmann or a de Kooning\u2014you can feel him still being, in many ways, an abstract painter.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Oh yeah.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: This little hairline\u2014<\/p>\n

MYLES: That\u2019s really my favorite thing in it. It\u2019s great.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: New Jersey. It just says New Jersey in there. Hey look\u2014there is another Camel. He didn\u2019t give up on it.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Yeah. It\u2019s so weird\u2014the Camels just remind me of the covers of poetry books and poetry magazines.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I guess he and Jim Dine were probably two painters who could do lettering that looks great on the cover of poetry books.<\/p>\n

MYLES: And now they completely date those poetry books.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I guess Ted Berrigan has a few.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Yes!<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Kenneth Koch, definitely.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Right. So sometimes it\u2019s hard to even see them as paintings. But that labeling strikes me as not accidental. They\u2019re literary paintings, in a way.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: We should talk about the fact that we\u2019re standing in Tibor de Nagy and it\u2019s really historically the hub of the New York School. You came to New York, you once told me, and you really wanted to locate O\u2019Hara. The poems themselves were like a map of New York City for you.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Well, I came to New York and he was gone, so I was understanding this poetry community and characters like Larry Rivers all in relation to this absent poet.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: And of course Larry gave the eulogy at his funeral, which was apparently very moving, very heavy.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Weirdly, my new book is sort of based a little bit on that, because I understood that that was an artist\u2019s gesture, to say the most dramatic, horrendous thing as an homage.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: What did he say?<\/p>\n

MYLES: He talked about, literally, what O\u2019Hara looked like in the hospital bed, dying, with tubes in and out of his body, and his head swollen. He painted it in words. It was an amazing gesture. It struck me as, Is that performance art? Is that poetry? Is that painting? Is that sculpture? What is that? And the effect that it had had on an audience. So when I started thinking about a dog\u2019s dying, I thought of it really as an homage to that.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: So it\u2019s really on your mind right now\u2014<\/p>\n

MYLES: In this funny way. But isn\u2019t it true that as poets we know Larry Rivers as Frank O\u2019Hara\u2019s lover and friend? That\u2019s what defines him now.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Certainly. It\u2019s nice to be dealing with his art. I feel really happy that we have the paintings here to look at, and we\u2019re not just talking about him as a hipster or just a cool guy who was around a sort of mythologized figure, because his contribution is potentially very lasting, very permanent. I have a funny feeling a lot of this work, while it is kind of going in and out of being dated and not looking so good anymore\u2014you wonder whether it\u2019s coming back.<\/p>\n

MYLES: That same thing! That it\u2019s in and out of focus.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: He represents not only the New York School, but he\u2019s also a Beat character, right? So in a sense you can look him the way we might look at Robert Frank, or some people of that generation.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Well, the New York School was a little Beat. It was sort of coeval. What was that thing O\u2019Hara said? I\u2019m a little too square for the hips, and too hip for the squares. Again, I would say that that was the case for this guy.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Right. I think that\u2019s what you were saying before about this\u2014it\u2019s almost like he\u2019s a little too square here because he\u2019s actually being precise in a funny way about\u2014<\/p>\n

MYLES: It\u2019s all there. There\u2019s an absence of removal.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: It\u2019s so uncool. It\u2019s a totally uncool painting.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Yeah.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: And yet the cigarettes\u2014that\u2019s cool, right? In a James Dean way, that\u2019s almost like, Check it out, I\u2019m painting a cool pack of smokes.<\/p>\n

MYLES: But it\u2019s not cool, it\u2019s kitschy. Look at this one\u2014\u201997.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Whoa!<\/p>\n

MYLES: I know, right? I just saw that.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: That\u2019s hilarious.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Holy shit! So this is ancient history, it\u2019s not contemporary. It\u2019s really funny. It\u2019s an homage to de Kooning, which we always knew, but it\u2019s one that de Kooning never saw. I can\u2019t remember when de Kooning died, but if he was alive, he was so wet-brained.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: He may have still been\u2014no, \u201997, no, I don\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n

MYLES: How do you know? When did he die?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Maybe \u201993.<\/p>\n

MYLES: I don\u2019t want to stop our recording.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I feel like we\u2019ve done it.<\/p>\n

MYLES: I think we\u2019ve done it\u2014we\u2019re in our final waltz-through. Love this. Amazing.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: We\u2019ve got to make sure we get a picture of that.<\/p>\n

MYLES: An elegant, perfect little painting. I love the lesbian couple. The way that I love that he loves women is this\u2014he was absolutely the kind of man who would just love dykes, because it would be, like, more! More naked women! Women on women! I wouldn\u2019t disinclude him from being one the guys who would say, Hey, let me join in. But there\u2019s also a kind of awe at the\u00a0party he can\u2019t be a part of but is excited about.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: His bisexuality comes through, right?<\/p>\n

MYLES: Yes, exactly. This feels like a bisexual gaze. Though this feels very heterosexual Polack.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I guess that is his bisexuality\u2014on one side, a very heterosexual gaze, and then on the other, a very homosexual gaze.<\/p>\n

MYLES: I think there\u2019s a great lesbian in him.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I love thinking of it as a great lesbian painting.<\/p>\n

MYLES: I do, too. Let\u2019s talk about that.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Let\u2019s try to nail this down, First of all, how cheesy is it that he puts the name O\u2019Hara there? I mean, that\u2019s cheesy in an audacious way.<\/p>\n

MYLES: But it also weirdly defines it as a historical painting. I feel like that makes it be a general\u2014there\u2019s a triumph of some war won here. Even the hat is Napoleonic. It\u2019s a three-cornered hat.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Oh yeah, you\u2019re right.<\/p>\n

MYLES: It\u2019s like a woman with a dick.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Yeah. I guess that would pretty much define it. But do you think he captured a side of Frank that he saw or that came out of their relationship, or was this the Frank that everyone knew?<\/p>\n

MYLES: I think this is the Frank of history. It\u2019s intimate and loving, but then the face is a little general.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: It\u2019s a little too soft.<\/p>\n

MYLES: I was just talking with a\u00a0 friend, a painter named Larry Collins, and he does portraits of guys who died in Vietnam, and he makes a point of the fact that it doesn\u2019t look like them, because that puts it more on the edge of Greek and Roman style. It\u2019s an idealized portrait. This is a little bit like that. It\u2019s almost why he had to say \u201cO\u2019Hara,\u201d because that face seems a little timid.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: It\u2019s such a great painting.<\/p>\n

MYLES: It\u2019s such a great painting.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: It\u2019s really ahead of the others. No pun intended.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Ahead of the others\u2014where\u2019s the pun?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: The head.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Oh. I think we should take pictures.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I mean, it\u2019s a painting about giving head, right?<\/p>\n

MYLES: I wouldn\u2019t have necessarily thought that, but you\u2019re right\u2014it\u2019s an invitation.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Especially with his arms up like that.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Right\u2014so it\u2019s an offering.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Yeah.<\/p>\n

MYLES: What\u2019s interesting is that he\u2019s\u00a0making an offering of his\u00a0lover, but kind of to history.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: If I compare it to every other thing we looked at in the gallery, it seems like it\u2019s on another level, another plane\u2014maybe because we love Frank O\u2019Hara so much, too.<\/p>\n

MYLES: But I do think the suggestion is that if you look at a poet in your life, if you paint him, you will become a legend, too. Because that\u2019s what this painting did for Larry Rivers. He saw the poet and the poet saw him, and he became part of something maybe even bigger than his own art career.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: It seems like an impulse to record not just one\u2019s self but the whole scene\u2014like that John Jonas Gruen book I was showing you before, all those portraits up in the Hamptons, of Jane Wilson, Leonard Bernstein \u2026<\/p>\n

MYLES: It\u2019s that impulse to make us history, to say \u201cour thing\u201d and \u201cour crowd.\u201d<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I think you have that as a poet. I don\u2019t feel like I quite have that, because maybe I feel like I didn\u2019t spend enough time at the Poetry Project when I was in my thirties or something.<\/p>\n

MYLES: You didn\u2019t come with a gang.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Yeah. I don\u2019t feel like I have a strong sense of poetry community.<\/p>\n

MYLES: You mean that you think it\u2019s in my work?<\/p>\n

SIGLER: Yeah, I think it just comes across in who you are and your work, don\u2019t you?<\/p>\n

MYLES: I think the community gave me my work. It wasn\u2019t an M.F.A. program\u2014it was that church, that crowd, that whole way of making things.<\/p>\n

SIGLER: I see that as very much an extension of this.<\/p>\n

MYLES: Yeah, you\u2019re absolutely right. It all came in the absence of this guy, so again, we\u2019re all sort of implicit in this painting.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a>. Neither Rivers nor Basquiat were immigrants. Rivers was born in the Bronx to immigrants from the Ukraine. Basquiat was born in Brooklyn; his father was a Haitian immigrant. \u2014N.R.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Eileen Myles is the author, most recently, of <\/em>Afterglow (a dog memoir)<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Jeremy Sigler is the author, most recently, of <\/em>My Vibe<\/a> and is\u00a0coeditor of <\/em>Carl Andre: Sculpture as Place 1958\u20132010.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Not long ago, I found myself reading Jeremy Sigler\u2019s 2009 interview with Eileen Myles\u00a0in\u00a0The\u00a0Brooklyn Rail.\u00a0The occasion was a new book by Myles, but the conversation opens with banter\u00a0about clothing\u2014\u201cI\u2019m pretty critical of the J. Crew catalogue, which I have to confess I love looking through\u201d\u2014as though the pair had met for a drink\u00a0instead of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31848],"tags":[7675,31845,5365,27499,971,31847,31846,17901,12023,15698,28899,8522,31842,25228,31844,5090,16381,67,3684,165,31843,13833,395,34,6718,1183,18503,4748],"class_list":["post-118442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conversation-starter","tag-anne-sexton","tag-bisexual","tag-eileen-myles","tag-fluxus","tag-frank-ohara","tag-hans-hofmann","tag-heterosexuality","tag-homosexuality","tag-jane-freilicher","tag-jane-wilson","tag-jeremy-sigler","tag-jim-dine","tag-john-jonas-gruen","tag-kenneth-koch","tag-larry-collins","tag-larry-rivers","tag-new-york-school","tag-painting","tag-paul-muldoon","tag-poetry","tag-poetry-project","tag-pop-art","tag-robert-frank","tag-robert-mapplethorpe","tag-robert-rauschenberg","tag-ted-berrigan","tag-tibor-de-nagy","tag-willem-de-kooning"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nEileen 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