Arthur Secunda lived in Los Angeles off and on. He was there in the 1960s during the Watts Riots, and was friends with Noah Purifoy. The two walked the city collecting objects left from the destruction of the violence to construct into art. Some of Secunda's work during this time is part of the permanent collection at the LACMA. It is mind-bending to know the diversity of Secunda's work, from oil to collage to woodcutting to found object art and beyond.
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This is a picture of Joseph Breton driving. It is also a picture of Joseph Breton not driving. Welcome to the world of Arthur Secunda, and the making of a documentary about Secunda and his art.
Arthur Secunda and Henry Trettin see each other for the first time in about 20 years. Henry was a film producer, working out of London, Los Angeles and New York. Arthur and Henry were childhood friends in New York City. The dialogue of this moment was as follows, "Henry?" "Yes, Arthur?" "You're stepping on my toe." Beautiful friends. Both Henry and Arthur spent a lovely day together talking about old times, old friends, and drinking lattes.
Al Secunda, jazz pianist, shows his "Secunda" tattoo. From dailies from the documentary on his father, Arturo Secunda.
Al Secunda speaks about what he learned from his father. Al Secunda is a jazz pianist. Arthur Secunda was a jazz pianists, playing in New York City and Paris, FR.
I came across a photograph of a woman standing next to Arthur. I asked Arthur who the lady was. "Adele," he said. "She was an opera singer." There were thousands of questions that shot through my head to ask him about the exotically beautiful woman. But the day was late and Arthur was getting tired. Above is Adele, painted by Arthur Secunda in 1953. This painting demonstrates a totally different side of Arthur's work, more figurative than his later work. Arthur was 26 years old when he painted this piece. Interestingly, Arthur's son, Al, is in town this week. He is a few years younger than Arthur was when the portrait of Adele was painted. On camera, Al, Arthur and I spoke about jazz music, since Al is a jazz pianist. He mentioned that what he learned from his father was that when you master a technique, a style, it is important to move on, to develop new, unchartered territories (new for the artist). In the context of Arthur's later works of only a few years we can see this forward movement in technique and form. In the painting of Adele we can see fine detail, the delicate line. Later, we see rough, large brush strokes, until, in the last (the third below) we see a quasi-abstratc figure.
Arthur asked me to go through his personal computer archive yesterday to pull images that I might find useful for the documentary or for research purposes. On his computer's desktop he had folders in folders in folders. Everything labelled and well organized. I did not look through every item in every folder but when I found a few interesting images in a folder I copied it in its entirety to my thumb-drive to make sure I did not miss anything. I was surprised at all the files he had saved. Letters, snaps-shots friends had sent him and thousands of digital files of his artwork.
As I peeked around the archive I came across a catalogue called A Brief History of Me: Letters to Art which included Correspondence Art The pieces were part of an international exhibition of original letters and artifacts mailed by and to Arthur Secunda from 1943 – 2013. Apparently in 2000 I sent him the collage above in the mail. I had totally forgotten about it. This collage must have been inspired by the interviews I did with Arthur about Correspondence Art and his friend Ray Johnson. Ray Johnson and Arthur Secunda had mailed Correspondence Art to each other throughout the years as young adults and adults. At the time of these interviews I did with Arthur, he was interested in doing a documentary with me on his friend Ray Johnson. This documentary never come to be but it did allow me to shoot hours and hours of conversation with Arthur about the subject of Mail Art. Furthermore it inspired me to send this collage to Arthur in 2000. It is composed of some of my caricatures, photographs, and even a short snippet of 16mm reversal film, as well as fragments of a Rumi poem. I was honored that he kept it for so many years and included it in his Brief History of Me: Letters to Art exhibition. A Brief History of Me: Letters to Art was an international exhibition of original letters and artifacts mailed by and to Arthur Secunda from 1943 – 2013. Featuring over 100 letters and objects expressing influences of the NY Correspondence School, Fluxus, Dada and Surrealism, as well as personal eccentric graphic humorous and historical documents. The contents of this exhibition have been donated by the artist to the archives of the Arthur Secunda Museum at Cleary University. Here in an image from the documentary, Secunda works in his studio in Boulder, CO. This painting is the piece on the shooting of Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney which I wrote about in a previous post. The original piece was commissioned by C. Edward Wall, the co-founder and curator of the Arthur Secunda Museum. Originally Secunda was going to create a work based on the Watts Riots however he has decided to create a work on a contemporary subject. When I asked him how he decided on the subject of Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney , he replied, "Because it angered and saddened me." Much of Secunda's artwork deals with social and racial issues. Some of it can be seen in LACMA's permeant collection.
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Matteo Marchisano-AdamoWriter, Producer, Director Archives |