KIM JONES
Untitled, 1980–2003, acrylic and ink on paper, 46 x 61 cm. Photo: Alan Weiner. Courtesy the artist and Pierogi, Brooklyn
Jones recovered in due course. One of his legs is a little shorter In an essay in the catalogue for the Kim Jones retrospective that’s
than the other, he tells me, but that doesn’t stop him walking. Nor for currently on show at the Luckman Gallery in LA, Kristine Stile claims
that matter did it stop him enlisting as a Marine in 1966 and going to that by burning the rats ‘Jones materialized the underlying cultural
Vietnam a year later. If you were an artist looking to perform a radical psychosis related to the Vietnam War’, to which the only sane response
and perverse gesture in mid-1960s America, this was about as good is, “Oh no he didn’t”. Clearly Rat Piece is concerned with suffering; it
as it gets. “I wanted a very friendly reaction”, he says, “but the one I got may indeed be concerned with the war in Vietnam – setting fire to
from peace-loving friends was horror.” rats was apparently regarded as R & R by some of Jones’s cohorts in
I’m not sure whether Jones had a good or a bad war. We know the Marines. But the objection is surely not that the piece is ‘about’
that it involved doing a certain amount of walking, or at least marching, suffering, but that it actually causes suffering, and OK, yes, animals and
but his main job was delivering mail. That meant he wasn’t involved indeed humans die in worse ways every day, but I don’t think it’s being
in front-line action, and although some people might regard that as a a hopeless bleeding heart to think that the entreaty ‘do no harm’ might
lucky break, a dedicated soldier might equally regard it as a failure and apply to artists every bit as much as it does to doctors.
frustration. Nevertheless, the war provided him with images for his art. When I asked Jones whether, with hindsight, he’d still burn the
Mudman looks like a combatant but also like a war victim. It also gave rats, he said, “Yes I would. Smell is very important. You do not forget
Jones material for his performance called Rat Piece (1976). smell. You can talk about death. You can write or draw a picture of it, but
The things that bring attention and notoriety to a young artist I gave them [the audience] the smell and the choice. They could have
have a tendency to come back and haunt him or her in mid-career; think stopped me. Of course some people didn’t want the experience. Fair
of Karen Finley, the yam and her bottom. In 1976 at the Union Gallery enough. They ran out or were very angry. Also fair enough. But I had to
on the California State University campus in LA, Jones, dressed as do it. I had to try to get through.”
Mudman, poured barbecue lighter fluid over three caged rats and Later, softening just a little, he added, “I have no need to kill rats
ignited them. The rats screamed and Jones screamed right along with now. I like rats.”
them, but only the rats burned to death. A more salutary consequence of Jones’s time in the military
There were some predictable and not unreasonable is his ‘war drawings’, works on paper that look like maps or battlefield
repercussions: Jones was prosecuted for cruelty to animals and diagrams, perhaps places where Mudman might walk. They depict
wisely pleaded no contest, the organiser of the performance was fired a conflict between two opposing factions, Xs and dots, and Jones
by the university, there were the usual declarations of support and has been working and reworking them over the years, sometimes for
condemnation, and for a short while Jones was persona non grata in the decades, making erasures, tracking, as it were, troop movements and
Los Angeles artworld. changing battlefronts.
eight.linnine.lin ARTREVIEW
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