American Ego, 1984 – collage & foto by Smith

Tonight, Friday October 22 at 7 pm, Lady K and I will be the opening featured poets at the Lix & Kix monthly reading at the Bela Dubby coffee shop art gallery & beer bar at 13321 Madison Ave, Lakewood, Oh, 44107, 216-221-4479. We’ll be followed by Elyria poet Alex Nielsen and NYC poet Puma Perl, winner of the 2009 Erbacce Prize for Poetry. Lix & Kix is celebrating its second anniversary of monthly readings and is co-hosted by Dianne Borsenik and John Burroughs (aka Jesus Crisis).

Next Friday, October 29th, Lady and I each have a piece in the 19th annual Peoples Art Show at CSU — Cleveland State University, Art Building, 2307 Chester Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44115-2214, 216.687.2103. I was in the first two People’s Art Shows back in 1984-85. The first year I won Most Outrageous Piece in Show, and the second year I won Most Original Use of Materials.

The first year I also was the subject of this Plain Dealer column by James Neff due to the titillating nature of my piece. When Neff first called me, he was hostile and sarcastic; but by the time we finished, he was warm and friendly.

Must Be Profound
James Neff
The Plain Dealer
December 3, 1984

Gracing our city are many profound examples of modern art. I know they must be profound because I do not understand them.

Take, for example, Isamu Noguchi’s sculpture “Portal” at the Justice Center. “Portal” still befuddles some citizens. It looks like a piece of a giant pretzel. The modern sculpture weighs 15 tons, stands 36 feet high and cost $100,000.

Art experts such as Sherman Lee called it “one of the best monumental sculptures produced in the world since World War II.”

To the untrained eyes of those who pass “Portal” each workday, it seems useless, just a giant pretzel. They might feel differently if they could snack on it.

Most of the modern art around here, however, is displayed indoors. That way, it won’t scare the horses.

At the Cleveland State University Art Gallery at E. 23rd ST. and Chester Ave., 172 area artists are displaying 335 creations, probably the largest such exhibit outside of the May show.

One such work certainly must be the most unusual work of so-called art to be put on display in our town.

The CSU gallery is full of paintings and sculptures you might enjoy. Abstract paintings full of interesting colors and shapes. A beautiful clear glass bowl. An oil portrait of a pretty woman in a pastel dress.

One sculpture is a chessboard; instead of the usual black and white pieces, the artist made them into Browns and Steelers football players.

Right when you come in, about 15 feet down on the left wall, is a work called “American Ego.” It is a collage of 12 snapshots, some of them splattered with tiny drops of paint.

The day I visited the gallery and witnessed “American Ego,” a group of CSU students in a beginning design class were checking the local artworks as a class exercise.

The class was mostly made up of women in their late teens, along with several young men.

When the students happened upon “American Ego,” many of them made comments. They did not remark about its composition, balance, vibrancy or classical execution. No, here is what they said.

“Gross,” said a young woman.

“That is embarrassing,” said another.

“Oh my God, it’s disgusting,” said a student named Janel Leurienzo. Then she added with sarcasm and a smile, “But, hey, it’s art.”

The 12 snapshots were arranged in a four-by-three grid. They were taken by Steven Smith. They were nude photos of himself.

This being an art gallery and all, you probably expect the photos to be the sort of classical pieces we associate with Greek art.

Oh no, this artist doesn’t mess around. The snapshots were of the real thing: close-ups of the guy’s, uh, groin area.

There were some different poses, to be sure. One was the guy’s private zone draped with a plastic fish.

Another was of a view of his bare buttocks. In this snapshot, rising up and proudly flying from between his upper thighs was one of those little American flags on a stick that you get at political rallies.

One photo treated us to a view of the artist’s personal part wrapped in Old Glory. The 12 photos were sewn onto what looked like those small, thin, square pillows you toss on your couch.

So there it was, an expression of modern art, hanging on a wall at a university for our appreciation.

The male student looked at “American Ego” from about three feet away and moved on. Many of the females looked much closer, maybe a foot away. Then moved on. Later, some of them drifted back alone for another, more private peek.

In their design class, the students discussed what they had just viewed. They liked most of it. Not surprisingly, they had a lot to say about “American Ego.”

A student named Tracy said, “It was different. They usually just show women.”

A young man named James said, “I thought it was funny.”

“I don’t think it was art at all,” Christie Gungl said.

Their teacher, Mary Stokrocki, an associate professor said after class, “I took it as pornographic. I think the university shouldn’t hang something pornographic. If I was curator for this show, I wouldn’t let people get away with that. There are certain things that are not art.”

The creator of the controversial piece, Steven Smith, was given a call. By day, he is a computer programmer out in the suburbs. By night, he lives in a warehouse downtown and makes things that hang in galleries.

“How did you get the idea for “American Ego,” he was asked.

“I was taking Polaroids of myself to get something going.”

“How often do you do this?”

“There’s very little nudity in what I do,” Smith said. “I think I’ve only had four pieces.”

“But what is ‘American Ego‘ supposed to mean?”

“It suggests the impotence of American foreign policy,” Smith said. “The false manhood, the macho thing, like in Grenada. Since we are all impotent in one sense, we try to overcome it. I don’t think we are living up to the American spirit when we tell people how to live.”

“Do people think you’re strange?” he was asked.

“Yes they do. I don’t fit in anywhere. Some artists in Cleveland are some of the nicest people I’ve met yet.”

Profound too. I know they must be profound because I do not understand them.

~ ~ ~

As I wrote in Criminal:

The pieces that got me my initial notoriety began late at night when I was drunk and wrapped my penis in small American flags, draped dead dried fish around, and snapped Polaroids. I felt the penis went with the flag because of our American Military might-makes-right philosophy, while the dried fish was a sly reference to the fish vagina smell of lore. I arranged 12 of the photos in a three by four grid, collaged the white areas around the Polaroids with torn strips of the American flag, splattered fluorescent paint on, glued down a large dried fish and some art glass scraps and titled it American Ego.
Then I took Polaroids of Masumi nude in an open shirt mom had made me out of old 48-star American flags. I arranged six of the photos into a cross, collaged the white area around the Polaroids with cut up bible pages, attached fringe to the bottom edges of the cross, pounded rusty nails into the photos, and titled it Cross Breeding.
Masumi was teaching art at CSU at the time, and John, a fellow instructor who had just begun, had brought the Peoples’ Art Show concept with him from Detroit. The idea, at least for the first few years, was no piece of art would be censored—the people could show whatever they wanted; everything submitted would be displayed. I contributed a couple interesting pieces I was proud of, but they weren’t shocking. John knew about my more controversial stuff from Masumi and mentioned to her he was hoping for something edgier to help jump start the show, so Masumi passed the word on to me and I gave him the two genitalia / American flag / dead fish pieces instead. They worked quite well, definitely jump started things.
Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist James Neff called me up during the show’s run and was quite hostile; he asked me “Why would you do such a thing?”
I told him it was a metaphor protesting America’s foreign policy–we’d just invaded Grenada illegally–and I explained my “American Ego” – “American Eagle” pun. By the end of the conversation, Neff was quite friendly and wrote a wry, fairly nice half page column.
My shock art is actually a pretty small percentage of what I do, especially anymore—usually I create stuff that’s odd, eccentric, weird, funny, beautiful, tender, political, social, serious or surreal, sometimes all at the same time. The scoundrel-sage Gurdjieff said people are asleep and often must be shocked awake to jumpstart their souls. Sometimes laughter’s enough; sometimes you can lure folk to new mindsets through intelligence, reason or beauty; and sometimes you just have to poke them with crude cattle prods to get their attention.
When Neff asked why I used nude male genitalia, and my own at that, I joked I was cheap and easy and available at the time; but mainly it was out of a sense of fairness. Respectable art and unrespectable advertising have always used naked women liberally. I dearly love naked women, often use them in collage. But I’ve also this large fairness complex, so to balance society’s and my nude female use, I used naked male me, myself and I.
There’s nothing wrong with shock. As Mae West said, “Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.” There are an endless number of paths to the same place. Everybody thinks it has to be A or B, but in reality, it’s A and Z and everything in between. It comes back to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle: it’s all true all at the same time–it’s only lack of vision that reduces life or art to dichotomies.

Cross Breeding, 1984 – collage & foto by Smith