The Bad Art Cafe

an old fashion daguerreotype

". . . .diane arbus never admitted to being influenced by the photographer robert frank. indeed, her..formal portraits of eccentrics & extremes, taken with the primary tonality of an old fashion daguerreotype, bear no resemblance to frank's abstract powerful set pieces of midwestern highways, and bleak automobile graveyards.  but in the beginning diane did copy his abrupt framing process before going on to a more elaborate one."

patricia bosworth, diane arbus, page 141

The Bishop's Charisma, text & black & white photos by Diane Arbus, unpublished, 1964

Biship Ethel Predonzan of the Cathedral of the Creator stands with her arms open, in full length white damask robes, a crown, a sheer white silk scarf with beatific smile signally her heavenly visions. She holds a Styrofoam cross, with smaller jewel crosses inside of it.

“The best photographs are often subversive, unreasonable, delirious."

“‘Until I studied with Lisette (Model) I’d gone on dreaming photography rather than doing it. Lisette told me to enjoy myself when I was photographing and I began to, and then I learned from the work. Lisette taught me that I’d felt guilty about being a woman. Guilty because I didn’t think I could ever understand the mechanics of the camera. I’d always believed that since painters rendered every line on a canvas, they experience the image more completely than a photographer. That had bothered me. Lisette talked to me about how ancient the camera was and how the light stains the silver coating of the film silver so memory stains it too.’”

-Diane Arbus, quoted in Diane Arbus by Patricia Bosworth

Two Ladies Walking in Central Park, N.Y.C., 1963

Baring down on you, the viewer, two ladies in Central Park are shot in perfect focus. Centered in the frame of the photograph and in Central Park, walking towards you like a march in a parade. An apt description from the novel Diary of a Mad Housewife by Sue Kaufman (1966) comes to mind: “ . . . . that New York phenomenon, the Widow of a Certain Age . . . always formidably equipped against the onslaught of the cruel world with intricate make-up, dyes, and expensive clothes . . . . “

The Work Speaks for Itself

Patricia Bosworth, biographer of Diane Arbus, published in 1984, first met the photographer as a model in the 1950's when Allen and Diane Arbus were husband and wife collaborators as fashion photographers. Most people like to forget that Arbus actually came from a fashion empire (her father and grandfatherwere furriers and owned a huge 8 floor department store in New York). Allen and Diane worked together until one day late in the fifties, she became so depressed that she walked away from it all.

Patricia was John Robert Powers model, and was wearing falsies, crinolines, a waist-cincher, and pancake make-up the day she arrived at Arbus's studio for her first big photo shoot as an eighteen year old fashion model. Diane greeted her at the door in barefoot and pulled her into the studio, "oh good, you don't look like a model, that's why we hired you," she told Patricia.

Years later when Bosworth became a journalist, she would often run into the little woman with intense eyes who was completely absorbed in what you were saying. Once Diane told Bosworth she had just won a Guggenheim that paid her to photograph a beauty contest at a nudist camp.

When Bosworth started to work on Arbus's biography, she was told by Doon Arbus, Allen and Diane's oldest daughter that she could not contribute to any biography that touched on her mother's life - "that the work speaks for itself."

like giving a hand grenade to a baby

Norman Mailer once said about the devoted wife and mom that "giving her a camera was like giving a hand grenade to a baby". She once described herself, as a kid, as a "crummy princess" when she went shopping with her mom at the 7 floor department store owned by her family that chiefly sold furs to kept women.

There must be someone out there who wants to make a movie about this middle aged woman who divorced her husband, the true love of her life, whom she married when she was 18. She divorced her husband, and went on to adopt a camera and a way of taking pictures that gave Norman Mailer cause to complain. She became so obsessed with images, that in order to get a picture (one of her most famous) of a Jewish guy over 7 feet tall, she followed him around for years, and one day photographed him at home with his parents. She called a friend up later that same day and said, "you know how every mother worries that their baby will be a monster? Well, I think I got that look on film."

Artists: Some all-time favorites, (of author Scott Heim):

Artists: Some all-time favorites, (of author Scott Heim):
Vincent Van Gogh,
Egon Schiele,
Caravaggio,
Francis Bacon
Cindy Sherman,
Henry Darger,
Alberto Giacometti,
Diane Arbus,
Oskar Kokoschka,
Andres Serrano,
Larry Clark,
Sally Mann,
Gilbert & George,
Edward Steichen,
Bernd & Hilla Becher,
Andy Warhol,
Jules Bastien-LePage,
Andrew Wyeth,
Frank Hurley,
Jean Debuffet,
James McNeill Whistler,
Julia Margaret Cameron,
James Ensor,
Max Beckmann,
Gerrit van Honthorst.

This Ho Ho Ho Business

Santa Claus School in Albion, New York, 1964. It’s a Diane Arbus picture of 4 guys (in one of a series) who are dressed up like Santa Claus after graduating from the Santa Claus school. They have big red coats, full white beards, black boots; they look authentic, but as usual, in an Arbus picture, scary, weird, and even unwholesome. She posed them outside a shack like looking structure and they’re at different angles, all at different heights. Nothing symmetrical about the picture. A plain cement path cuts through the picture, and the only snow that appears in the picture is fakey Alpine snow on sharp tapered roof over a short flight of stairs. And a sign that reads: “Santa’s Sleigh Stables Workshop”. Only 2 of the Santas are actually making eye contact with the camera.

Soothsayers

In Glamour magazine in January & October 1964, Diane Arbus published an article
titled: The Soothsayers, What's New: The Witch Predicts.

Text & photographs both by Diane Arbus.

There are four soothsayers profiled, in a black and white full figure portraits, and in short text. The first soothsayer is Doris Fulton. She's 83, and Arbus posed her in front of her living room couch with a set of tarot cards in her hands, a heavenly glance upwards, and a kind of corsage pinned to her droopy dress. She looks like a great grandma. A white woman, she says "the Navajo Indians taught her to read fortunes from cards they gave her which are small and pink with a sort of comic book pictures drawn on them in ink." Her clients call her back in three days to tell her something wonderful happened to them. Her psychic ability comes from an "awareness" she has.

Dr. George Dareos is the next soothsayer, and his claim to fame is, he told Jayne Mansfield not to marry Mickey Hargitay. Arbus posed him in his garden, unsmiling, a big heavy old guy with his arms hanging by his side. In the text she writes, "He has a century plant in his garden which bloomed last year." Dr. Dareos is an expert on reincarnation and can tell what incarnation a person is in just by looking at their stride. All the Hearsts love him.

The only young guy, Leslie Elliot is an astrologer who fasts until he is "suspended above the world, floating and weary, and he will be ready to die on fifteen minutes notice." He's pose, faded, bright eyed, on his couch sitting down, smoking a cigarette, looking surprised that this bossy lady photographer is telling him how to pose. The background nice and static looking (four rectangular pictures are over his head, a lot of squares in the space around him). "People who are really addicted to him require a chart to ascertain the auspiciousness of every move they make."

Madame Sandra is almost 80, and she is standing in her front hall, another great grandma type, only skinnier with harlequin glasses. She is holding her crystal ball, and her figure stands out against the dark background with her white print dress. "On her door it offers Numerology, Astrology, Cards, Crystal, Handwriting, Spiritual, Psychic, Clairvoyant, Tarot, Palmistry, but she doesn't know how she does it; it just comes to her." Sandra does not predict death, because people need to be encouraged.