An unconventionally presented course appropriately ended with an unconventional final exam. Kurt von Meier believed real and valuable education meant a working relationship with the subject and material, not rote memorization of dates, names and places. His tests were not tests about facts, because for Kurt facts were easily gathered from books. He wanted his students to demonstrate the ability to think and feel. As he says at the bottom of the exam, education "cannot be justified unless it results in a bona fide aesthesic experience, helping to make one a more beautiful human being--that is to say, important only in so far as it involves art." An important lecture for this course can be read here.
Censorship in the Arts
As an art historian, Kurt was deeply concerned about censorship, and ways in which a state attempts to enforce morality. In this lecture at UCLA in 1966, assembled from notes, Kurt reviews the issue of obscenity--both past and present--and the attempts by the State of California to prosecute poet Steve Richmond on charges of obscenity for his publication Earth Rose. "The Superior Court," states Kurt, "has indicated that the standard of "customary limits of candor" should be based on a National rather than local level. The establishment of a National standard against which material should be tested is nearly impossible to establish."
Henri Matisse Retrospective - UCLA 1966
In this article for Art International, Kurt von Meier reviews an exhibition of the paintings of Henri Matisse at UCLA in 1966, and covers the exhibitions at a range of galleries in the Los Angeles area. He also makes note of the impact of public opinion on exhibitions, stating, "There appears to be a slow but distinct shift in the function and status of professional people in the world of art. Directors, curators, installers, art historians and critics are all having their positions modified, for better or worse, by the expanding power and influence of the patron and, in both the good and the bad sense of the term, the dilettante."
The "Yarn" about Walter Hopps and Marcel Duchamp
Kurt's friend Walter Hopps, museum curator and director, was a particularly close friend of Marcel Duchamp, and Hopps reportedly had been allowed a glimpse of the object hidden inside a ball of twine in Duchamp's Ready-made sculpture, A Bruit Secret - With Hidden Noise. In this paper, presented in the fall of 1986, Kurt indicates that Walter Hopps tipped-off Kurt as to how he could "figure out" what the hidden object was. Kurt's exploration of the secret ultimately resulted in his 350,000-word ebook "A Ball of Twine" but his basic methodology is revealed in this concise and much shorter 9,300-word paper.
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 AND SECRETS
Kurt's 1991, 500,000 word masterwork about a sculpture by Marcel Duchamp (edited down to a mere 350,000 words by Clifford Barney) required a life-time of study and three years to write; it was not published (online) until 1997. This document from 1991 presents the preliminary working title of the book (later changed), and in typical fashion examines the words and structure of the proposed title itself. It also anticipates and encourages the concept of hyperlinked books and resources online, of which this website is a current example.
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."
Rock & Roll and the Avant Garde
Kurt felt that Rock & Roll--and popular arts overall-- were grievously neglected by academia and cultural historians in 1968. "...there is still no course in TV watching that could provide us with even the minimum equipment for cultural self-defense. So we and our children will continue to be victims of media such as TV — until we at least begin to try to make some sense out of what the hell these media are, what they mean, and what they are doing to us in all our pretentious ignorance. And there is no course in the history of rock and roll or rhythm and blues." In this article in the June, 1968 edition of artscanada magazine, he makes his case.
Psycho-Tag
A whimsical essay about the game of tag slides into a discussion of time, space, mathematics, astrology and the I Ching; so goes the mind of Kurt von Meier. With reference to games, Kurt states, "...what lifts such contests from the polarized, adversary dualism characteristic of mercantilist economy and the self-help of nation states at war, is some supervening awareness of the process of the interaction, a consciousness of the game itself as a game...In more formal terms this can be described as the deep-level oscillations of an imaginary value in mathematics."
America's Number Two Art City
The May, 1966 edition of Art International contained another of Kurt's "Letters from Los Angeles," in which he explores the growing influence of Los Angeles on America's fine art scene. In discussing the landscape paintings of artist Alan D'Arcangelo, Kurt notes, "Any traditional landscape image could now be made to look perhaps more natural for Americans by running a four- or six-lane divided highway down its middle." His criticism of the Los Angeles Museum of Art is more pointed: "...unless the entire structure and outlook of the Museum's non-professional directors and controllers change radically, it will become just another house of death-of-the-spirit and archive of pretty things."
The Fourth Order
Kurt's immersion into Vajrayana Buddhism provided him with another modality for examining the "real." Polymath that he was, he brought everything to the table, and the "spice" of Buddhist teachings extensively flavored his writing during the 70s. In this written meditation, Kurt explores how we know what we know, the various ways knowledge is transmitted, how what was "'outside' is brought within, perceived, woven into the on-going working model of the world we each, like Atlas, carry on our shoulders."
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."
A Discography of Rhythm & Blues and Early Rock n' Roll
"All the real truths," Kurt often said, "are in the tunes." He played hits of the 50s and 60s during his first classes when teaching at UCLA, and his final lecture at Sacramento State University 40 years later consisted of the same. Though his History of Rock and Roll ended up being published by his friend Carl Belz, Kurt never lost his love of music. Here's a discography found in his archives, clearly from the period he was writing his book. For the music lovers among you, well, it's one great list!
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.
A Thematic Book List - 1995
Here is an example of the rigor Kurt brought to his teaching: a thematic book list from 1995 for Art 110-American Art, at Sacramento State University. The compilation of books referenced in this document were all contained in Kurt's personal library, and he had absorbed every one of them. He urged his students to read books, although as his years of teaching accumulated, each successive year's students read fewer books, not more. Nonetheless, he persevered. "What, then, is a truly 'original' thought or "creative" idea?" he asked.,"is 'originality' an essential quality of either scholarly or artistic activity?"
GADDO GADDO
Nowadays Indonesian food is fairly common in California, but when offered at Kurt's Diamond Sutra Restaurant back in 1970 it was quite rare. Here's Kurt's recipe (via his alter-ego Jose Que, the fourth-world dishwasher at the Diamond Sutra) and treatise on GADDO GADDO, (sent to Helen Civelli Brown, Food Editor at the SF Examiner newspaper), a traditional, Indonesian, chile-infused peanut sauce that's tossed with greens. His discourse veers into matters distinctly non-recipe, including the avenue of Tantric enlightenment.
ARCHETYPES
Sometimes Kurt's mind just flew--a multi-cultural cascade of free association rushing forth like water in a rain-drenched creek, overflowing its banks. Most often, he captured these moments in his blue-lined notebooks, but every so often he'd sit at a typewriter and bang it out. Herewith is one such example from 1982; the line breaks, punctuation and spelling are just as he typed it.
Houston: Six Painters
This article published in the May, 1966 edition of Artforum, reviews an exhibition at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, TX. The works in the exhibition were created by six artists, all chosen by the contemporary composer Morton Feldman. It's a straight-forward critique touching on the subject of Abstract Expressionism: "The Abstract Expressionist artists," says Kurt, "were sort of like heroic rats, trying to fight their way out of the maze of Fine Art.
