“Although androgyny is rooted in antiquity, it carries a powerful message for our own time. Spiritual perfection depends precisely on rediscovering one’s androgynous nature. Androgyny knows no boundaries. It leads us beyond the tyranny of convention. Androgyny may indeed be the guiding principle of the new age. It is the incarnation of totality.”
STEVEN ARNOLD
“We are just waking up to the new age and the ancient teachings. We can collect, cross-reference and compute these teachings into one ever-changing structure. Finding the forms to communicate our collections is the key.”
STEVEN ARNOLD
A still from Steven's film "The Liberation of Mannique Mechanique."
WHAT: SCREEN FROM BARCELONA FESTIVAL
WHEN: THURSDAY, JANUARY 19
WHERE: Palau de la VirreinaDESCRIPTION:
SESSION 4 : QUEER SURREALISM (I)
Presentation by James Boaden
Screenings: Steven Arnold, The Liberation of Mannique Mecanique, (1967,15 min., mute)
+ Luminous Procuress (1971,74 min., V.O.S.)
Taking as a starting point Cahun’s relation to surrealism, this session explores, what could be called “queer Surrealism” in the films of Steven Arnold. Photographer and filmmaker, Arnold created, in the early 70′s, movies with wild, bizarre and psychedelic worlds, in which the actors blurred the gender boundaries. Protected and influenced by Salvador Dalí (who invited the actors of the film at the opening of his museum in Figueres), his works share with Cahun the use of masquerade and the subversion of gender identities using sharply surreal resources. At the same time, the figure of Arnold links surrealism with the work of renowned contemporary artists like Mike Kelley and Ryan Trecartin. Proposed and conducted by James Boaden, this session meticulously weaves multiple references, materials and time frames.
Steven’s film Messages, Messages, which won him an invitation to the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes Film Festival, has been included in the DIRTY LOOKS, NYC Roadshow, as part of the exhibition Female Trouble, which explores gender identity on film using examples spanning 5 decades.
SHOW DATES FOR DIRTY LOOKS’ FEMALE TROUBLE:
2/12/12 SAN FRANCISCO, CA: YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS
2/16/12 LOS ANGELES, CA: HUMAN RESOURCES GALLERY
2/21/12 PORTLAND, OR: PACIFIC NORTHWEST COLLEGE OF ART
2/23/12 PORTLAND, OR: GRAND DETOUR
This San Franscisco Magazine cover, which could nearly pass for a modern day Lady Gaga article, was taken from Steven’s 1971 full-length surrealistic film Luminous Procuress, and features Pandora, Steven’s life-long friend, muse, and collaborator.
This rarely seen set of photographs, influenced by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, was created for After Dark magazine April, 1979. After Dark was an entertainment magazine that covered theatre, cinema, stage plays, ballet, performance art, and various artists, including singers, actors, and dancers, among others.
Steven directing San Franscisco gender-bending troupe, The Cockettes, for his feature film, Luminous Procuress.
Steven’s films The Liberation of Mannique Mechanique and Luminous Procuress are to be shown as a part of the ongoing Screen from Barcelona festival.
Below is a review of Luminous Procuress by film historian and critic Albert Johnson:
“The creation of a personal dream-world in cinematic terms seems to have been the aim of film maker Steven Arnold. Mr. Arnold studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and received an M.S. in Filmmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1970. His short films have all been beautiful, visual experiments in color and mysterious settings where mythological creatures are given a celluloid life of their own.
Mr. Arnold’s medium-length film, Messages, Messages, attracted a great deal of critical attention when it was shown during the New Directors section of the Cannes Film Festival, and it was linked by the French critics to the fanciful, cinema reveries of Cocteau or Fellini. If Steven Arnold admires the work of these filmmakers, his work does not imitate them, and his first feature, Luminous Procuress is an altogether extraordinary, individualistic phantasmagoria.
[Luminous Procuress] was filmed entirely in San Francisco over a two-year period, and describes the adventures of two wandering youths in San Francisco who visit the home of a mysterious woman, the Procuress. She is an elegant emblem of sorcery, her vivid features glowing under bizarre, striking maquillage, and one is not certain who she is or where she intends to lead the protagonists. Although the language she speaks is vaguely Russian, it appears that the Procuress has psychic powers. She discerns a sympathetic response to her on the part of the youths, and by magical means, conducts them through fantastic rooms, on a psychic journey. Through strange passageways, one voyages with the Procuress and her charges, glimpsing hidden nightmares and panoplied chambers of revelry, where celebrants, ornately festooned, dance and make love before unseen gods.
The youths are soon drawn into the sensuality of the Procuress’ spellbound kingdom, and one is reminded of the sorceress-neighbor to Guilietta in Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits. Only here, in Arnold’s film, the spectator is a willing participant in some unspeakably attractive but menacing ecstasy. The sexes become androgynous and one remains entranced by the wonder of such a film as Luminous Procuress.”
Luminous Procuress was first shown as a part of the San Franscisco International Film Festival in 1971, and was last shown in Barcelona at the Barcelona Museum of Modern Art (MACBA).
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Check out where you can see Steven’s art, and get more information on his friends and collaborators!
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“[My art] starts with Ludwig the Second of Bavaria meeting Woolworths and Barnum and Bailey over dinner with Louis the 14th in drag, then it just spirals out from there. I’m constructing a new mythology from the shards of the universe.”
STEVEN ARNOLD
This cover of Scanlan's Monthly features a still from Steven's film Luminous Procuress.
Scanlan’s Monthly was a short-lived political muckraking publication from 1970-1971. The magazine featured controversial political commentary, and news involving the thriving subculture. Scanlan’s is most well-known for publishing the first piece of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s “Gonzo” journalism, titled “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved.” The magazine was also investigated by the FBI for it’s controversial perspective on the hotbed of early ’70s political upheaval. This particular issue featured an article on underground film in San Franscisco, and a cover-image of Pandora from Steven’s full-length film Luminous Procuress.
“I want images to be complicated, not smart, designy little things. I’m bringing back density – pieces that take time to look at.”
STEVEN ARNOLD
This never-before-seen tableaux-vivant, is styled after the Austrian Symbolist painter, Gustav Klimt.
“In the right atmosphere, your creative dam will burst forth in a beautiful compassionate celebration. This will be the key to your success on all levels.”
STEVEN ARNOLD
“It will be my ability to get each subject, quietly and secretly, to unleash their creative powers, and in so doing, liberate them from their normal inhibitions, and into a state of trust, openness, and creative frenzy.”
STEVEN ARNOLD
Steven’s photograph, The Advantages of Modern Marriage, was chosen and is currently being exhibited as a part of ONE Gay and Lesbian Archive’s current three part exhibition Cruising the Archive: Queer Art and Culture in Los Angeles, 1945-1980.
The first part of the exhibition, titled WINK WINK, which features Steven’s print, is scheduled to show from now until April 1, 2012 at the ONE Archives Gallery and Museum. The show presents artworks that convey a particular emphasis on social scenes, queer humor, playfulness, and abstraction. Artists in Wink Wink include: Steven Arnold, Don Bachardy, Mitch Berman, B. Bow, Sidney Bronstein, Claire Falkenstein, Anthony Friedkin, Sister Corita Kent, Robert Legorreta (Cyclona), McAlister, Kate Millett, Robert Opel, Phranc, John Quitman, Don Sorenson, Anne Stockwell, and Patssi Valdez, and others.
Again, the exhibition can be viewed until April 1, 2012 at:
ONE Archive Gallery and Museum, 626 North Robertson Boulevard, West Hollywood, CaliforniaCruising the Archive is presented in conjunction with the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time initiative. This unprecedented collaboration, initiated by the Getty, brings together more than sixty cultural institutions from across Southern California for six months beginning October 2011 to tell the story of the birth of the L.A. art scene.
If you happen to be in LA, stop by the ONE Archive Gallery in West Hollywood, and show your support for this very influential, often overlooked, piece of art history.
“Nowadays, in our cities of steel, we still haven’t lost our need for ancient ritual. Our dances with masks and drum are alive in our bones. We are witch-doctors in designer jeans. The same sexual impulses rule our buying power, claw at our self-illusion. We get high, on whatever, and tune into our instinctual selves. We seek guides, need teachings. As we accumulate, we share, and thus we grow. The more evolved our sharing, the richer our growth.
Oh, beautiful evenings, when we truly share!”
STEVEN ARNOLD
Steven prepares ruth weiss for a scene in "Messages, Messages."
Of Steven’s third film, Messages, Messages, Michael Wiese has said, “It is a journey of the psyche into the world of the unconscious, influenced by Dali, Buñuel, and the German expressionists.” The film was well-received at Cannes Film Festival, being included as a part of the Director’s Fortnight. Pioneering beat poet ruth weiss, a close friend and a favorite subject of Steven’s, appeared in 3 of his 4 films. ruth recently published two masterpiece long-form poems under the title, Can’t Stop the Beat.
Throughout the mid-late 1960s and early 1970s, Steven regularly created flyers, posters, and graphic art for local San Fransisco performance venues and boutiques, including The Palace Theater, The Matrix, and In Gear. The above poster was hand-drawn for The Matrix, a famed psychedelic rock venue which was located in San Francisco’s Fillmore District. The Matrix hosted many up-and-coming groups of the time, including: The Doors, The Jefferson Airplane, and The Grateful Dead. The club was also a favorite haunt of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, among others. This particular example, from 1967, headlines the pioneering psychedelic rock band, Quicksilver Messenger Service.
A never-before-seen still from the play “Dragonfly,” which Steven and Kaisik Wong wrote, directed, designed, and performed in at Steven’s 17th Street studio in San Francisco in the mid 1960s. Steven is on the far-left, Kaisik is second from the right.
FUTURESCAPE
Great, extended use of the brain. Powers we can only sense now, will manifest and bring a magnificent age of clarity. The merging of the sexes becomes a force-field of creativity. Utopian satellite planets Food and energy for everyone. An age of humanism more passionate and conscious than we can fathom, If we wake up and listen to the universe.STEVEN ARNOLD
“I want to keep from violating my sincerity, which would be most destructive. I want total purity in my relationships with all of my friends, without draining my creativity. I want to believe in my friends so much that it teaches them to believe in themselves.’
STEVEN ARNOLD
“Don’t violate your own magic or water it down:
Trust intuitive forces within
Creative Madness must be free to flow
Spirits will guide – relax and recieve
Listen to the voices, emanate clarity
Allow the images to create their own meaning
Listen for Dalai Lama
Ancient wisdom will manifest
Go to your original vision and be true to it
No one can tell you how to create your own world
It is all within you
Follow the shapes and rhythms of nature
Let the film speak of awakening through love
Emit positive energy, compassion.”
STEVEN ARNOLD
” My drawings are my own language, voices from my subconscious – autonomic or automatic image writing. I draw directly on the paper with my pen without preconceiving anything – allowing the drawings to make themselves. Often I am surprised and shocked by what appears – sometimes I laugh. These drawings are strictly personal and not intended to entertain anyone. Many of the images come from my dreams. Sometimes when I am drawing, it’s as if forces are working through me, and I am only a medium. I like the results and learn about my other sides… I hang new drawings by my bed and look at them a lot before going to sleep. I find the more I draw, the stranger the drawings become, but also, they get better and better.”
STEVEN ARNOLD
Steven in the early 70s, before the stage musical “The Rocky Horror Show” (later made into the film “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”) made it’s debut, clearly anticipa…ting Rocky Horror’s anti-hero, Frank N. Furter. Styled by Nikki Nichols.
“ It was an old pretzel factory. When we walked through the doors there was this tremendous palace of ornamentation, and creative energy, and bits & pieces of theater sets that he had done. Certainly, it was like walking into the fourth dimension. Steven never got up before noon or 1 in the afternoon. He’d be sitting there, smoking his cigarette and drinking his coffee, while sketching in his book the dreams he had the night before – fantasies and visions. He had salons every day – you could always drop by for cocktails and wonderment. There would be a whole group of fabulous people, sitting around enjoying drinks and conversation. It must have been so similar to what took place in Montparnasse during the 20s.”
PAT COLE
” Steven’s salons, I would say, were sort of like Versailles – before the guillotine, please. There was a melange of people that got together – a naked man, a sex change, a drag queen – all talking to a lawyer. Comparing Andy Warhol’s evenings to Steven’s: Warhol’s were like Alcatraz, or Sing-Sing, but you were allowed to go in and out. One day we went to Steven’s studio and the doors were closed. It was a very sad day for Los Angeles, because all of those creative people, all of a sudden, didn’t have a place to go. We all scattered like the Twelve Tribes of Israel – I guess we’re waiting for another Steven to come along. I am definitely, and I’ll wait.”
HOLLY WOODLAWN
When New Line Cinema First started their distribution company, two of the first films that they chose to release were Steven Arnold’s “Luminous Procuress”, and John Waters’ “Pink Flamingos.” New Line has continued to distribute many successful films including the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.
