A a fully-tenured professor at Sacramento State University, Kurt took advantage of the opportunity he was given after each seven years of teaching for a year off at reduced salary--a sabbatical. Being granted a sabbatical required submitting an application one year in advance, and this request was submitted in 1997 for the fall of 1998. His intention, as outlined in his request, was ambitious; "Historians are beset by vexing problems about any roles Alchemy may have played in prompting the goldsmith Johann Gutenberg's metallurgical innovation of casting moveable type. Yet, conventional art history is virtually silent about this, as about the nature of the ink used by early Western printers."
Dear President Gerth
During 1994, two students sent letters to the Chair of the Art Department, Dr. W, expressing concerns with Kurt's classes and style of teaching; the letters were added to Kurt's personnel file. When he learned of this, Kurt complained that the Chair and Dean's actions were inappropriate, and he appealed the matter to the University President, Donald Gerth. Kurt's letter (excerpted) is characteristically erudite and forceful, speaking not only to his teaching methods and the intent behind them, but also the unfortunate tendency of the then Art Department Chair to attempt to force Kurt to use teaching methods which in his opinion "seeks to impose its elitist, sexist, racist views by claiming for its authoritarian methods the only academic validity: indoctrination with names and dates of the canonical works of art as memorized by rote."
Kurt plays the Shenhai
Kurt majored in Middle Eastern Studies while pursuing a major in International Relations prior to changing his major to Art History. He studied Persian, and Islamic culture and later traveled to Afghanistan. Somewhere along the way, he acquired a shenhai, a Pakistani wooden, double-reed wind instrument similar to an oboe. This recording takes place outdoors, with students in attendance. Of course, to properly invoke the magic, Kurt must arrange his blanket first. The year is likely in the early 1970s. At the end, ask yourself: is that Kurt von Meier or John Coltrane?
Unity and Alienation in Art & Letters
In this short essay, a book report if you will, Kurt writes about casting the I Ching and two books on his work table at that time, Kenneth Rexroth's More Classics Revisited and Wendy Steiner's The Scandal of Pleasure: Art in an Age of Fundamentalism. He gathers his comments together under the umbrella of "unity and alienation," a recurrent theme in his writing and teaching, and a set of feelings that spurred his personal interest in esoteric practice.
On Breaking into Art Criticism
In 1965, the young, brash and mostly unpublished UCLA Assistant Professor of Art, Kurt von Meier, was anxious to get into print. He walked into the offices of Artforum magazine in Los Angeles, and walked out with an assignment to review "Art Treasures from Japan". "For me," Kurt recalls, "that was something of a big Chutzpah ploy--although it would have passed for next to naught in the cannibalistic New York context." In this frank, personal, irreverent, and until now unpublished recollection, circa 1967-68, Kurt provides a sense of the feelings, difficulties and challenges he faced breaking into the world of art criticism.
Some Noise about Hidden Noise
The mystery of Duchamp's With Hidden Noise rattled around inside Kurt's head for decades, as this biographical account reveals. That this was so also reveals something about Kurt von Meier--that finding the source of the "hidden noise" within himself became something of an obsession. It's displacement into an object of sculpture cannot disguise the intent of his meticulous record-keeping and documentation of his own life, a strand of yarn stretching back over many decades.
The Curious Case of Annette
While Kurt was teaching at UCLA, a young woman named Annette became obsessed with him. In today's terms, we would say she began to "stalk" Kurt, sending him dozens and dozens of letters, leaving messages, even moving close to where he lived in Venice, Ca. Kurt knew it was a situation fraught with complications, and even danger; at one point he became afraid for his life. The art historian in him, however, realized that he should keep and document the missives Annette had sent, and sometime later (circa 1970) he reflected upon the meaning and content of her various communications. A portion of his 123-page document is included here. "I have not forgotten Annette," Kurt writes. "Nor have I burned her notes, never thinking that the distances of history and memory had to be obliterated. What follows is a description and transcription of the flotsam of Annette's mind as it concerned me."
Art 110A Lecture at UCLA - 1966
Some students, faculty members and administrators at UCLA were puzzled and dismayed by Kurt's teaching methods. His undergraduate art history lectures were wildly popular, and by 1966 upwards of 400 students were in attendance. He played rock and roll, brought in guest lecturers, and taught in a very unconventional style. In this lecture (drawn from word-for-word class notes) from December, 1966, he directly addressed criticisms he'd heard, and took pains to explain why he was teaching in the way he was: "This approach involves fundamental issues; it involves keeping open the live questions. This is very dangerous; it unsettles a lot of people; you keep the door open, you inevitably let the draft in...it gets very uneasy. You also inevitably let the light in, and that's another point."
The Ethics of Grading Students
Turns out Kurt kept personal notes--not exactly a diary--but a spotty record of how he felt about what he did and why. This particular snippet is circa 1968; he was still teaching, but was no longer employed by UCLA. "Now I give all my students "A"s automatically," he writes, "They like it."
Professore Dottore Jose Goldophin Que y Porque
Here's yet another article by Kurt on the nature of good food, but this one--written over several days in July of 1984--is highly self-referential. There's an extensive explanation of the derivation of Kurt's alter-ego Jose Que, the impact of the Diamond Sutra Restaurant, recipes and examination of the roots of "California Cuisine." He sagely predicts the coming of celebrity chefs, "Both the ink and the electronic attention given to California cuisine in the last few years prove that it is perhaps THE leading domain of cultural, artistic expression. And why not? The arts--the so-called fine and fancy arts--so seldom make the stuff of any real conversation these days."
Kurt's Bio - 1975
This bio was prepared during 1975 by Kurt to accompany the submission of Omasters (his book collaboration with Clifford Barney) to the book publishing world. In keeping with the style of the book, this bio is not your typical academic-style curriculum vitae. It does reveal yet further details of his life, some previously undocumented.
Letter to a Fellow Arican
Kurt, always drawn to spiritually mystical traditions, became a student in the Arica School founded by Oscar Ichazo. This followed his studies of Sufism, Buddhism, the Tarot, and the teachings of Hopi elders. In this 1982 letter to a fellow Arican, Kurt describes his meeting with the Sharmapa, of the Kagyud-pa lineage of Tibetan Buddhists, to whom he explained the work of the Arica School. Kurt also shares some of his personal history, displaying humor, humility and warmth.
Audio: Local Color
When he moved to the Napa Valley in 1969, Kurt sank his roots deeply into the Valley's rich heritage. In this 15-min. reading of his prose-poem "Local Color" (1982) one hears his reverence for the land, its original inhabitants, nature and its bounty.
The text is included so that as Kurt reads you may read along.
On Audio: UCLA Campus Rally in Support of Kurt von Meier - 1967
Highly popular among his many students, the non-renewal of Kurt's teaching contract at UCLA in 1967 created a storm of protest. Found among the unlabeled reel-to-reel tapes in the Archives of von Meier is this recording of a campus rally in his support.
Kurt makes some remarks to the assembled students, who are then urged by another speaker to confront the school administrators; at that point the recording ends. The recording documents an inflection point in his teaching and professional career. Find additional information about Kurt's dismissal here.