The 1960s were a period of transition in court decisions pertaining to obscenity, free speech and artistic expression. In February of 1968, Kurt testified as an expert witness at the obscenity trial of Steve Richmond, a poet and former student at UCLA. Richmond's one-page publication the Earth Rose included a provocative cover with the words "FUCK HATE" and a reverse side that featured poems by Charles Bukowski, a fellow-poet and friend. He was charged with a violation of Penal Code Section 311.2, distributing obscene material, a misdemeanor. Kurt prepared a written statement for submission to the court in advance of his testimony in support of the defendant, Richmond. Court testimony included a protracted discussion of the use of the word "FUCK".
John Lilly's Sensory Deprivation Flotation Tank
Kurt was a longtime friend of researcher John C. Lilly, and in 1975 decided to experience time in one of John's sensory deprivation flotation tanks for himself. In his typical fashion, Kurt completed a type-written report of his time in the tank for his records, which we share with you here.
Female Warriors: Memorial remembers women at war
When Kurt found out that applications were being accepted for the design of a memorial dedicated to female warriors in the military, he jumped at the opportunity to make a submission, and enlisted a number of senior students to help with the application. His efforts received newspaper attention, and though his design concept was not chosen, he and his students had the opportunity to delve deeply into symbolism, mathematics, memorials and design.
The Auto da Fe of Jose Que
As provocateur stand-in for "artist-revolutionary" Jose Que, Kurt lit up the UCLA campus and the local press when as part of the Festival of Experimental Arts he set a tower of books on fire before a crowd of students. Of all his public acts as a professor, it was undoubtedly the most dramatic; a flood of commentary followed and the event may well have contributed to the non-renewal of Kurt's teaching contract. It's a fascinating story filled with mystery, creativity and confusion.
Kurt responds to SF Chronicle columnist Leah Garchik
Always curious, Kurt poured over the daily paper, what he sometimes referred to as the San Francisco "Comical." He read the news articles, but also read the funnies and the "Personals" column by Leah Garchik. Above is her reaction and response to Kurt's remarkable and pithy commentary on her snippet referring to Sandra Day O'Connor (Supreme Court Justice) caught on camera giving "bunny's ears" or "horns" to a fellow justice. His entire commentary is available here and well worth reading, as Leah's reply amply indicates. Web links have been created for the varied references in Kurt's epistle.
The AUM Conference at Esalen - 1973
The Pacific Sun newspaper published an article by Clifford Barney about the AUM Conference. This illustration is by Tom Cervenak, and appeared on the cover; Brown is depicted in the center, Alan Watts is to the right and John Lilly is to the left.
G. Spencer Brown's book Laws of Form fascinated and preoccupied Kurt and his close friend Clifford Barney for years. One outgrowth of that was a conference held at Esalen, featuring von Meir, Barney, Brown and a gathering of distinguished scientists, gurus, health professionals, mathematicians. Articles and transcripts followed.
Disney's "Artistic Eye" Project
In 1981, Walt Disney Productions and CBS Entertainment enlisted Kurt to help them in a project to connect the world of fine art to children, "to demystify art and make it relevant to our young audience...." Specifically, Kurt (along with other contributors) prepared remarks under the title "Turning youngsters on to art".
Standards of decency for The Daily Bruin at UCLA
Kurt occasionally wrote for The Daily Bruin, the student newspaper at UCLA, the five-days-per-week newspaper started in 1925. From time to time, the content of the student-run paper caught the attention of the university administration which objected to the content or style of the paper. The photo above was found in the Archives of von Meier, and includes a typewritten list of words not meeting a "standard of decency." To the typewritten list additional words have been scrawled all over the sheet, raising the total to at least 154 words. Kurt and the students obviously turned the matter on its head. Ronald Reagan is number 143.
Kurt and Andy Warhol
Kurt understood Andy Warhol earlier than most in the art community. Warhol skillfully fulfilled Marshall McLuhan's dictum that "the medium is the message" by utilizing everyday objects like a can of Campbell's Tomato Soup and returning an image of that object back to the culture from which it originally emerged, as Art, à la Marcel Duchamp, another of Kurt's favorites. The artistry, of course, included Andy's mastery of the art world itself, as well as his willingness to break rules both socially and artistically. Andy dropped in on Kurt's classes at UCLA. Obviously, this photo found in Kurt's files was not taken in the classroom and no, that is not Kurt sitting next to Andy.
And below is an entertaining little snippet about Andy and Kurt's appearance on a local Los Angeles TV show in 1967. Kurt is not mentioned by name, but is referred to as a "savant" UCLA professor there as an "interpretor" [sic] of Warhol's "far-out language".
This was not Kurt's only television appearance with Andy Warhol; they both appeared on Station KHJ-TV's "Nine on the Line" program on 3-21-67. No record of that appearance seems to exist, but a letter of complaint was sent to the head of UCLA (with copies to Governor Ronald Reagan and Max Rafferty, State Superintendent of Education.
A Ball of Twine: Marcel Duchamp’s “With Hidden Noise"
An object was placed within the ball of twine in Marcel Duchamp's sculpture With hidden noise by his friend Walter Arensberg; now both Duchamp and Arensberg are dead.
Kurt spent several years working on an analysis of western art through an exploration of a ready-made sculpture created by Marcel Duchamp in 1916 called "with hidden noise" (shown below). The "hidden noise" emanates from an object placed within the open core of the ball of twine when it's turned upside down. Speculating on what the object is, Kurt's 350,000-word opus (edited by his close friend Clifford Barney) is the culmination of a lifetime of scholarship and learning, knitting together art, history, culture and society into a well-woven fabric.
You can read Kurt's "Pretext" here or...
The entire work resides on a server at Sacramento State University; here's the link.
L.A. PARTY 1968
A former student of Kurt's recently provided this poster announcing a Kurt von Meier event at the Douglas Gallery in Los Angeles in 1968, entitled "L.A. Party". It's a classic Kurt conception of its time; the L.A. riots and student anti-war demonstrations were all over the news, and the title "L.A. Party" is simultaneously ironic social commentary and invitation. Close inspection of the poster shows strong horizontal scan lines, like the enlargement of the image on a black and white television tube. Kurt appreciated Marshall McLuhan's take on media and TV - "The medium is the message" - and his poster doubles down on TV coverage of riots, wars and demonstrations as a form of "entertainment."
A semiotic analysis of the image, and Kurt deeply appreciated semiotics, reveals three L.A. cops in helmets "man-handling" a petite woman, who is faceless in the image. The cop on the right is looking at the cop on the left somewhat anxiously, who (stripes of authority on his uniform) seems to be either directing the activity or interceding; the expression on his face shows some amusement. Meanwhile, "the kid," probably a rookie not much older than the young woman, is doing the work of handcuffing. To the left of the young woman's hair one can see a small image of a black woman, hands cuffed behind her back, being walked down the sidewalk by two helmeted policemen. If he were present, Kurt might remark on the way some things never change.
The image, Kurt would have noted, also displays a classical composition employing diagonals forming a triangle; the young woman is a the lowest point of an inverted triangle in the center of the image, and the two older cops each occupy the corners of the upper points of the triangle.