DINING AT ZANZIBAR
A shining example of one of the eccentric realities Steven created in the old pretzel factory that he transformed into Zanzibar Studios. This dining room followed a long tradition of elaborate dinner settings, which Steven pulled off with great panache.
Michael Wiese reminisces about a dinner in the early days when the two were making films together in San Fransisco: “I’ll never forget the night he invited me over for dinner. We were both very poor and exhausted from our week’s work together. He said, ‘Come over, dahling, for dinner tonight. I’ll cook for just the two of us.’ I went and the table was set so visually elegant, a’ la Liberace, with beautiful candelabras. Then he proceeded to open up a can of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and served it with cheap Campari.”
“He’s the only person I’ve ever seen eat a donut with a fork and knife,” recalls Joseph Zacarella, star of Messages, Messages. “He did it with total seriousness. He knew I was breaking up inside. Every move was just so beautiful.”
DRESSED FOR DALI
“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
LA GRANDE DAME OF THE UNIVERSAL OPERA
- An original, never-before seen etching from the mid-sixties.
“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
LET THEM EAT CAKE
“[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
GESTATION
“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
KLIMTESQUE
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
HUNGER FOR THE MARVELOUS
“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
THE ADVANTAGES OF MODERN MARRIAGE
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.
DISPLAY
"Dislplay" is a never-before-seen tableaux-vivant.
“[This is] the reinvention of art in America, free of the vices of ambition – insist on yourself.”
STEVEN ARNOLD
Rock Poster for The Matrix, 1967
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.
Dragonfly: A Collaboration with Kaisik Wong
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.
INVITATION TO YIN YANG
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
NEW BIRTH OF VENUS
“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
Self Portrait, Oil on canvas, 1974
“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
Steven Drawing Dreams
” 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
BEFORE “THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW”
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.
Desire for Extravagance
“Less conventional thoughts, breaking into more creative mind, expanding into vast new realms, leading into a whole new struggle-less melting and architecturing -leaving behind doctrines ever so absolute in all forms of expression – soaring up and into unexplored kingdoms.”
STEVEN ARNOLD
Theatre of Atlantis
“Travel through Europe in a wagon with a troupe of occult clowns
Wear long black capes navy wigs powder
Iodine falls – rings of coal around the eyes
Red patent leather platforms
Leather jumpsuit with studded gauntlets
Don’t speak for weeks, pretend you can’t hear
Live in drag at age 70
Long chocolate nails ropes of emeralds
Make insane secret unshowable films
Build a secret underground garden
Learn hypnosis cast spells
Expand psychic powers write volumes sculpt
Crude primitive jewelry and diamonds
Live in a vast cave and mural every surface
Sleep in a giant clam
Eat only off silver
Wear insufferable amounts of perfume
Click your tongue hiss and stare
Use fame and fortune to highest zone advantage
Let poverty teach.”
STEVEN ARNOLD
Pandora’s Offering
“My Sorceress,
Your devoted servant has been reading: Siddhartha, Journey to the East, Steppenwolf, The Prophet – the madman leaves for his enchanted journey on September third. First Rotterdam and Amsterdam, then London, Paris, and off to the Mediterranean. He has sold flowers on the streets of New York, lunched at the Plaza, made masks and costumes for an off-Broadway play, exhibited drawings in a Sheridan Square gallery, and now this wiser wizard is off into the mist to explore and learn. With him everyday, he carries the memory of his magic sorceress who lives among the flowers and the trees.”
STEVEN ARNOLD
