(Note: This piece is about making my needlepoint collaborations. You can see some of them in person this August in the HOMEGOODS show at Foltz Fine Art, and THE BIG SHOW at Lawndale Art Center .)
In making my needlepoint pieces, I’m explicitly drawing on works created by other artists. I don’t deny it. I make no bones about it. I’m doing it on purpose, and I hope I always give credit where credit is due.
I like to think that I’m “collaborating with” them. I prefer that term, “collaborating with,” instead of “stealing from,” which sounds so dishonest. It’s a fine line, I know, since in almost all cases, those other artists are dead, so can’t explicitly consent to our collaboration. But then, they can’t object either, which is a definite plus. So far, not one of them has ever called me up or emailed (or even Ouijaed) to say, “DON’T DO THAT!” A non-communication which I interpret as consent.
And you know what? Most of them would be on shaky ground even if they did say, “NO!” Because, guess what? Many of them did it too!!
For instance, Picasso.
Oh, no, Pablo, you’d best not try to steal-shame me. Yes, I did stitch your drawing of ballet dancers, which I saw in the exhibition Picasso The Line, at the Menil Collection years ago. And – shock, horror – I even added color to your black and white. But don’t you dare try shaming me for stealing your lines – because I know where you got them. Yes, you’re outted. That ballet publicity photo, the one with your wife, Olga Khokhlova, there in the middle. So don’t you give me any crap. (See more of my Picasso needlepoint collaborations.)
And as for my colorizing his drawing, well he actually did a version to which he added a bit of color himself - so I’m off the hook there too.
And, Andy, you neither.
Andy Warhol, that is, inventor of the artistic APPROPRIATION (yet another euphemism for stealing, some might say). Sure, I stitched the delightful ditty he did for the book jacket around Clyde Miller’s (also delightful, no doubt, though I’ve never read it) novel, The Summer Dancers (New York: MacMillan, 1961). But do you suppose he really thinks I don’t know where he got it?
And though I’m certain (almost certain, anyway) that my old pal and fellow Houston artist, Gene Charlton (1909-1979), wouldn’t object to my stitched version of his beautiful Venetian church, if he did, he’d have some explaining to do when I produced the tourist photograph he “collaborated” from.
So when I came to make another piece in collaboration with Gene – my Manhattan On the Bayou (After Gene Charlton) - that one at the top and bottom of this post - I had no qualms, especially since I was not just appropriating his image for this one, but adding some conceptual transformation as I made it one of my Naughty Boy Needlepoints.
Charlton made his piece, a watercolor he titled simply Manhattan, in late 1937 or 1938. He entered it in the Houston Annual Exhibition of 1938 at Museum of Fine Arts Houston.
Gene and his partner in life and art at the time, Carden Bailey (1911-1997), returned to Houston via New York City after a fall 1937 trip to Europe. Perhaps that return to New York City, where he had lived for a few years in the early 1930s, inspired him to make his painting.
It seems obvious to me that his life as a young gay blade about town – even about the world, since he’d just been to “those parts” of Paris – infused it. It’s no accident that that building right in the center of his watercolor, above Central Park, is the Astor Hotel, then a well known meeting place for boys “like that.” So well known that Cole Porter (yes, another boy “like that”) included a reference to it in the lyrics to his famous 1939 song, “Well, Did You Evah!”
“Have you heard that Mimsie Star
Just got pinched in the Ass-tor Bar?”
Mimsie’s would not have been the a** that anyone would expect to get pinched at the Astor!
I think it’s not unlikely that seeing the work of John Marin, either on that return trip or earlier, inspired his style for the piece.
So here we have it. A Naughty Boy Needlepoint in which four artists collaborated – Me, Gene Charlton, Cole Porter, John Marin – maybe even five, if we imagine Carden accompanying Gene to the Astor (or the park!), and joining in on the art action too. Who can object to that?!
Needlepoint collaborations can be such fun – especially when they’re Naughty Boys.
These are such wonderful needlepoint pieces! And yes, inspiration can be found anywhere. I really enjoyed your art history lesson!