The Occidental death of Jason Rhoades.

Danilowicz, Nathan

"ARTIST'S DEATH RULED ACCIDENTAL" (1)

JASON RHOADES'S DEATH was not accidental--it was "Occidental."

For the brief period that I worked for Jason Rhoades, I called him Jason. But now that he's dead, and being written about, am I expected to call him Rhoades?

For the sake of this "autopsy" (from the Greek autopsia, "seeing with one's own eyes"), one could say as a rule that the experience of death involves a process of collective transference, though for certain artists it is usually doubly so, affording a seminal moment of artistic fulfillment--especially when the integration of art in life has played such a decisive role in their identity (and death). Thus, Rhoades's death could be considered Occidental in a double sense--that is, peculiar to Western (American, capitalist, secular, urban) culture and lifestyles (the death drive as the other of art in the life/art equation), but also to some multilayered, not-quite Manichean vacillation between East and West, Apollo and Dionysus, Eros and Thanatos, thanks to which the Orient seems forever beyond reach.

An Occidental death is debatable, mysterious, suicidal (but not necessarily entailing suicide)--a premature, yet somehow not untimely passageway, beckoning toward the East in order to establish some kind of integrity that Western experience lacks. It is the ultimate attempt to partake of the universal life force or jouissance. To die Occidentally--"to OD"--is to leave behind one last grand puzzle.

In Rhoades's "OD" (the autopsy report and its implications), I too will attempt to riddle up a puzzle--what or where is my jouissance? One obviously can't help transferring onto the life, death, and career of Rhoades (among numerous others), and in the process explore one's own "art-death." At a stretch, the following inquiry aims to lay bare what dying as an artist means today in the West, and where the specific orientations of this prospect might lead.

OCCIDENTAL, CALIFORNIA

IN SONOMA COUNTY, located at 38[degrees]25'16"N and 122[degrees]57'17"W, some 103 miles WSW of Newcastle, California, lies Jason Rhoades's birthplace, the village of Occidental. Such personal details can easily be researched on the net, similar to those hyperlink elements from which Rhoades strung together his numerous installations. As MOCA chief curator Paul Schimmel says, "The amalgam or juxtaposition of seemingly arbitrary elements, which Rhoades was so adept at exploring and then quickly stockpiling, exemplifies the experience one might have while surfing the internet." (2) In other words, where Duchamp, say, used string or chess, Rhoades chose the web.

Timothy Leary's "Law of Latitude" identifies certain privileges of Western culture--those same libidinal freedoms that Rhoades so busily pursued in his art and performative life.

 The further east you go, the less individuality, the less
 freedom, the more tradition, the more violence, the more
 authoritarian and the more worship of the past. And the
 further west you go, the more sense of intelligence, virtuous
 access to the future. The West, throughout human
 history--from Athens fighting Persia to today, which
 is basically L.A. vs. the east coast--the West has always
 been the frontier--where individuals, where visionaries,
 where freedom-loving people have always assembled--because
 that's as far away as you can get from the man
 who controls things, and that's certainly true today--attitudes
 towards drugs,
 attitudes towards space. (3)

Coroner's reports, with the presence of so many scribbled notes, checked boxes, and diagrams, are unsettling. But despite unforeseen blandness, Rhoades's report does manage to sort out what kinds of drugs were involved, that it was not his taking them that was "accidental," but the ensuing death. A contributing factor to his demise is also listed as "atherosclerotic heart disease" (roughly translating as a coronary occlusion caused by a porridge-like accretion on the walls of the heart). But whatever the prognosis, I think Rhoades would be tickled over the "erotic" part of his official cause of death.

Many press statements from colleagues, family, and friends deny that his drug use was unusually deny that his drug use was unusually excessive: "The image of a drug addict did not jibe with the Jason Rhoades they had come to know." (4) Whatever the truth of the matter (art world types often selectively remember what best canonizes the deceased party), this collective disclaimer could either be an attempt to play down his drug use (which is more likely in Rhoades's case) or glamorize it. Rhoades excelled at playing up to this bad boy image, a game also substantially sponsored by art patrons and institutions.

The behavior of most "artist-users" is commonly excused for its beneficial effect on creativity, or because of humanitarian arguments, those concerning the well-known detrimental effects of criminalization on productivity and sociability, leading to a reduction in inner harmony and contact with the outside world. In other words, what precisely saves artists from social condemnation is their efficiency or payload. Be that as it may, artists have always been more or less expected to challenge society, giving them a certain degree of immunity. These are the kinds of social pressure and libidinal release consistently facing artists like Jason Rhoades.

Whatever the difference is between "hard" and "recreational" drug use, and the person's individual psychological makeup, in all these untimely deaths something approximating a generic (and artistic) death wish seems to be lurking--and Rhoades was hardly exempt. Even had the art world wanted to get to the bottom of Rhoades's "OD," the truth would now be hopelessly entangled in his cosmic and institutional macrame, like trying to figure out if a particular thread was either a lasso or fundoshi (Japanese male loincloth).

When Rhoades was alive, his adoption of "Eastern" cultural influences, unabashed display of machismo, and (some say insensitive) identification with non-white races, was both criticized and celebrated. These charges notwithstanding, it is fair to say that Rhoades's commercial success had as much to do with his irascible charm as the fact that he was white, educated, male, young, and straight. Perhaps this is why he wanted to test the limits of his position, stir things up. In lots of ways, his search for artistic identity became indistinguishable from drug taking, excess virility, cultural diversity, and extreme idolization of other artists--diversification by association, I suppose.

Now that he has gone, it may seem pointless or even in bad taste to want to focus less on celebratory conditions of Rhoades's work than on purely "expository" or anatomical ones, but in another sense this would be very much in the spirit of his living will. This is not another eulogy. THE JAPANESE VIDEO game Katamari Damacy, first released in 2004, recounts how a tiny prince sets out on a mission to rebuild the stars, accidentally destroyed by his father, the King of All the Cosmos, while on a bender. His son does this by rolling a magical, highly adhesive ball called a katamari around the Earth, collecting increasingly larger objects until the ball grows large enough to become a star. In Japanese, katamari means "clump" or "clod," and damashii (the rendaku form of tamashii) "soul" or "spirit." According to Wikipedia, Katamari Damacy roughly translates as "clump spirit" (in the sense of "team" or "school spirit"). Similar to the Prince of All the Cosmos, Rhoades also could be thought to wield his kinetic katamari, collecting and balling up commodities from previous installations into new ones, including vaginas, Dream Catchers, Pontiac Fiero car parts, hookahs, neons, IKEA furniture, dictionaries, "PeaRoeFoam" (his patented concoction of dried peas, salmon roe, and Styrofoam balls), inflatables, and cocktails.

In all likelihood, Rhoades knew that his work and life would be posthumously subject to wild mystification and distortion. After all, hadn't the word of mouth on his exhibitions always spread across the art world like a game of telephone, the story changing with each telling and obscuring the truth? Had there been an actual car crash? An orgy? Coke binge? Whatever the truth was hardly seemed to matter, not while the myth's momentum increased with each new interpretation, forever gathering up and growing like the katamari, in constant pursuit of star status.

OCCIDENTALISM

OCCIDENTALISM DESCRIBES HOW the East sees the West; it is the flipside of Orientalism, its stereotypical other. The West can be differentiated in positive or negative cultural terms, but also more recently as the reverse (and systematically suppressed) repository of non-Western traditions and inventions. This last goes a long way toward explaining the "Oriental" (Chinatown, drugs-and-prostitution) myth of Los Angeles, as well as the puzzling dilemma of Jason Rhoades. Certainly, however childlike or naively, Rhoades worked hard to incorporate counterintuitive discourses into his work.

This tangled myth of Los Angeles, like the untimely death of the artist, also eludes a decisive postmortem, and as such is endlessly clouded under the guise of pretense. "[Rhoades] was an American artist not of the East Coast--he was a California artist with an interest in architecture, popular culture, county fairs, extremes of lifestyle, sports, entertainment, music." (5) In other words, artists are at once valorized through art--the only occupation in the known world (other than the CIA, etc.) where you can be paid for flaunting the rules--but also limited by the market place. Ultimately, therefore, absolute artistic freedom is a technical and material illusion. As Rhoades said, "Art is a fucked-up job. In a way you have to succeed, and to do that you have to be mediocre. You can't be extreme." (6)

According to Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, the West can be narrowly characterized by a complacent mediocrity resulting from conspicuous consumption and leisure time. (7) Rhoades too was not only an artist in this Western, pioneering sense, he also indulged in "Oriental," debauched, useless/user activities. Once when explaining his "Law of Latitude," Leary recounted how New York "city slickers" have always tried to impose imperious authority over the "Wild West" through "dodgy contracts" and reverse psychology (the transposition of Occidentalism to the East coast). Nineteenth-century America, with its exploration of new frontiers and still-unconquered indigenous regions, represented a wedge in the latitudinal alignment between Orient and Occident. Such stereotyping of other peoples--"them" or "those"--traverses the grand cultural divide, with random spikes crisscrossing the planet like the psychedelic patterns of a "Dream Catcher" (in this fascinating Native tradition, the feathers are thought to catch negative dreams, allowing the positive ones to slide through a hole in the cosmic dreamscape to the sleeping person below). Whether it is Tokyo, Beijing, Dubai, or Bangkok, places long categorized as Oriental have clearly adopted Western-style industrial, military, and secular customs by now. Rhoades also operated such a wedge.

The contemporary art world, too, acts as an expanding katamari of astronomical traces mined through the procession of distant artists and bodies, whose chiefly European precedents can be traced back through modernism and before (in this light, the Pompidou's recent celebration of L.A.'s "birth as an art capital" is akin to Buffalo Bill's Wild West extravaganzas of an already vanished breed). Added to this, at the level of stereotype, is the East's supposed acceptance of mortality as a form of cyclic awakening or enlightenment, something that the West tends to ignore or suppress, in favor of the gratifications of existence--here death is perceived as a one-off reward or punishment, the always forestalled conclusion of one long capitalist binge (shop till you drop!). Dionysian Rhoades, who was always untangling spider webs, concerned himself very much with bucking the cowboys of bare obsolescence.

Such aspects of Rhoades's out-of-timely death fall into either category and so are not easily defined as either Occidental or Oriental. For example, the thorny issue of alleged secularism hinges on how you evaluate his inappropriate "appropriation" of Eastern religious rituals. From this perspective, the spiritual side of Rhoades's gliding, feathery transit could be attributed to his fascination with world religions, all of which were thrown into the melting pot. "I think [his] work is an autobiographical search for wholeness." (8) Keep in mind that idolatry is defined not only as worshipping the wrong god but also worshipping the right god in the wrong way.

Of course, the setting of the sun--the end of days--occurs in the west. The Latin root of occidentalis suggests a "setting" or "falling down," whereas its counterpart, orientalis, infers a "rising up" or "appearing from below." The immediate origin of these words is related to sublunary stellar movements, rising above and below the horizon line--their cultural associations only accrued much later.

LUST IN THE DUST--but who isn't lost? There's more anecdotal evidence pointing to extreme-to-moderate deferral of immediate gratification, under thrall of the reality principle. Had Rhoades become a backseat driver on the Dionysian racetrack, driving the death drive forever in reverse?

In Freudian psychology, the ritual reenactment of traumatic events is not only to forge acceptance of them, but also to build up tolerance to the original trauma. This attempt by the mental apparatus to retrofit or reboot itself, to reduce the charge of anxiety to zero, occurs via a "temporary toleration of unpleasure as a step on the long indirect road to pleasure." (9) The drive in and beyond death is the desired return to the origin of life, that of achieving an unconscious state of inorganic being.

If the circuit(ry) of Rhoades was itself "driven" in this way, at once hitched to and overtaken by the death drive, then what's the point of going on and on about his legendary "repetition compulsion"? Too Western, too laid-back in a way to fit the agonistic mold--unlike, say, Jean-Michel Basquiat (whom he idolized), and whose constant demons were displayed in his paintings for all to see--Rhoades had more of a masochistic streak, evasively recontextualizing his demons, turning them into pure theater. Ringmaster of his own life-and-death's course, Rhoades conjured diverting pileups of his (and our) multiple selves. But since the whole mess leaves you feeling rather empty, audience desire to witness fatality and trauma--death's high-speed limo wreck--comes across as a mere prurient projection.

Irrespective of whether Rhoades's katamari style conceals some kind of fundamental trauma, it's still possible to see him as a true Prince of All the Cosmos, increasingly being engulfed as his cumulative creation grows ever larger. Thanatos's guiding motor is the Nirvana Princ(e)iple, whose "aim is to conduct the restlessness of life into the stability of inorganic life." (10) To adopt Freud's standard formula of masochism, Rhoades's relentless accumulation of violent materials in his art was a way of "extinguishing, or at least of maintaining at as low a level as possible, the quantities of excitation flowing into it" (11)--similar, perhaps, to what occurs in the birth and death of stars.

Why not, instead, take the off-ramp to an other, "Oriental" neck of the cosmic woods, karoshi--death from overwork, directly linked to Western industrialization. Now classified an epidemic in Japan, karoshi relates to a rash of stress-related heart attacks and strokes among workers in their twenties and early thirties. Rhoades, too, was addicted to making art. "Work hard, party hard" is not only the law of Hollywood, West Chelsea, and Madison Avenue, for artists like Rhoades it also offers a convenient escape route, into the lore and lure of dense, hyper-erotic Thanatos--the black (pussy) hole.

Yet however untimely or out of time Rhoades's exit may have been, one just has to consider how long his katamari could have kept up the pace before crashing and burning. At what point does the creative standoff between Eros and Thanatos begin to break down or apart, dragging the heavens down to earth? Should death by suicide be defined as a final curtain call, or can the urge systematically accumulate over time until one day this mortal balancing act collapses?

SELF-IMITATION OR BUKKAKEPHOUS POLYSPERMY

 I always imagine all these nymphs will come in and stay so I
 can become a polygamist and just live in the strange fucked-up
 world that I have. I just think of something, and have it become
 reality. (12)

RHOADES'S INSTALLATIONS ARE Dionysian orgies where outlandish machines and props do what they aren't designed to do, namely become sexually charged organs. Donuts are made but not eaten, leaf blowers give "blow-jobs," a drill is turned on but nothing happens, turning into something else. Rhoades injected his rebellious instincts into useful, yet used-up objects, making them his tools of liberation (in Greek mythology, Dionysus and Eros were both occasionally referred to as the Eleutherios or "liberator"), but also, in another context, "queering" them, inverting and re-inflating the habitual uselessness of things. Just like an orgy in the dark, doing what and whom you are not supposed or even want to be doing, using/sharing/being used--thanks to a host of incubi, familiars, or other uplifting vehicles.

On many occasions, Rhoades complained about the constant demand for "finished" work, deeming it unnecessarily arbitrary, as presenting an enormous psychological challenge. Curiously, the German critic Gustav Freytag's famous triangle, describing the customary rise and fall of Western narrative structure (first published in his book Technique of the Drama in 1863), can easily be applied to the career of most artists. A reworking of Aristotle's concept of organic unity (a whole has a beginning, middle, and end), Freytag's Triangle is also modeled after the male orgasm--a steady arousal building to a climactic burst and inevitable drowsiness. For instance, being on the rise (desis) in the art context is equivalent to youthful experimentation and group shows, the high point (peripeteia) to solo blockbusters and mid-career retrospectives, while the downturn (denouement) reflects tragic attempts to revive sliding reputations either through self-imitation or the empty leanings of success. However, what occurs most frequently in the art world is being branded middle-of-the-road, partly because this makes for a more profitable career and because there is less risk involved.

Following this Freytagian model, Rhoades's career path seems to have delayed the descent by prolonging the elevation. He indulged, contrarily, in a form of artistic coitus reservatus--remaining on the edge for as long as possible, tentatively surfing between rising and falling. Just before his death, Rhoades held one of his renowned "Black Pussy Soiree Cabaret Macrame" dinner parties/exhibitions at his Filipinotown studio in Los Angeles, "the closing chapter in a grand trilogy that began five years ago [and included] Meccatuna and My Medinah." (13) The intended unveiling of this final chapter in the form of a photography book and coinciding exhibition at David Zwirner Gallery in New York late last year was shaping up to be a career-defining moment for him.

By never "finishing," neither in art nor the board (bored or bawdy) room, Rhoades further challenges the relevance of Freytag's orgasmic model. During Black Pussy (as it's now called), Rhoades encouraged polymorphous activity, allocating a huge bed with pearly white sheets for the purpose of social intercourse. Also available was one of his strap-on "Spukakki" machines (think bukkake, involving a woman being ejaculated on by a group of men) that shot scalding wax all over the floor, and assorted throw rugs, furniture, photographs, wide-eyed visitors, and miniature ceramic donkey carts supporting freshly scented homemade candles, alluding to a kind of bestial bukkakephous polyspermy. These Dionysian love festivals were underscored by an open bar and delicious food, while the so-called Johnny Cash Gallery, acting as narthex to the main room, was used as a showroom for selected artists. Wildcard guests, such as Mexican workers from an adjacent warehouse, filled out the largely art-savvy retinue. Rhoades said that Black Pussy enabled him to expand his social circle, but it was also meant as a Warhol provocation. Whether the ambiance of Black Pussy turned perfect strangers on, or its loud music, neon lights, pussy vulgarity, and intimidating star power turned them off, is difficult to say.

Knowing what actually went on at these highly ritual affairs is not important, but understanding what he wanted them to achieve certainly is. There is a sense that the basic idea wasn't catching on, as people only loosened up to the degree that he seemed to demand it. Maybe the Apollonian expectations of his audience dampened the Dionysian spirit, or his model of desire was not encompassing enough or too personal to bring about a genuine fusing of competing identities. There may even have been a correlation between the effectiveness of his simulation and the amount of capital required to pull it off. As Warhol once quipped about JFK, "Death means a lot of money, honey. Death can really make you look like a star."

UNDER AND OVER THE STARS

IN LOS ANGELES, nobody ever stargazes at artists. Sprawling (actually sloping, from east to west), fractured, "solarized" (negatives-are-positives, overexposed, etc.), everyone in this city of moving stars takes a back seat to the sublunar/sublingual others, who are generally far easier to spot and identify than the more over-the-moon underdogs of art. So, for Black Pussy, complex system of "slave" units (one camera flash setting off battery of additional ones) was used to create the appearance of a red carpet event, since photographing people like budding starlets tends to refer them to the status of detritus, the sidereal dust of yesteryear.

Rhoades used to be a big fan of stars in heaven, like Elvis--and even his more terrestrial Jewish impersonator, "Jelvis." Today, Rhoades also has been added to the list of heavenly bodies whose time is now up, extinct, extinguished: Jim Morrison of The Doors (of Perception, the 1954 druggie book by Aldous Huxley), Kurt Cobain of (the) Nirvana (Principle), mail artist Ray Johnson, Diane Arbus, Marilyn Monroe, Martin Kippenberger, and Bas Jan Ader (who became lost at sea "In Search of the Miraculous" in 1975). Of course, Rhoades's idolization of Basquiat and his prophetically similar "OD" makes their deaths easily and eerily comparable.

Just weeks before his death, Rhoades had his picture taken by photographer Jason Schmidt, in which he mimics a 1985 image of Basquiat sprawled across two retro designer chairs in his studio. The juxtaposition was deliberate: Rhoades, on cheap whicker, white man in white Egyptian linen suit; Basquiat, black man in black Armani suit. Rhoades is at once dressed up and down; Basquiat looks immaculate. Rhoades is wearing no shirt or tie, his potbelly exposed. "Happy trail" is his body attire; he's happy, belly full (sign of prosperity in the East). He obviously ate more than Basquiat. The latter is clearly pissed.

In retrospect, both artists were about harvesting, appropriating, stealing from the East (Haiti, Puerto Rico, the Ivory Coast). Africans are "Eastern," African Americans "Western," including most rappers (except perhaps for the Wu-Tang Clan). Typically, Rhoades is glamorous like a rapper, but couldn't do it. Basquiat, on the other hand, is a poet, coining new words and phrases in Creole fashion (the mutt of Spanish, English, French, African, and Islander influences--though the orbit of Rhoades included the Philippines twice removed). And while Rhoades seems to be camouflaged (despite the ivory suit) among the surrounding clusterfuck, Basquiat is rattling his demons at us (one of which is standing to his right, looking for all the world like the true monster he felt he was). Rhoades, for his part, shows a lot of stuff by revealing hardly anything. And where Basquiat is naturally stylish, staring down the camera, it seems to look straight through or beyond Rhoades. Basquiat exposes attitude, Rhoades either doesn't want to strike a pose or can't be bothered.

Even if Rhoades had originally taken the academic path (he had an undergraduate degree from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from UCLA), you wouldn't know it from this photo. Yet Basquiat entirely looks the part, despite his skin color--meteoric critical success for Basquiat, while Rhoades's is merely "hypothetical"; black/bull market/New York versus white bread/over-bearish/Los Angeles. Basquiat has all the appearance of being exploited, while Rhoades is just playing the game (learning from the black artist's mistakes). Hasn't this image the look of death about it, art's ultimate career move? But though Basquiat had accumulated more money and died much younger than Rhoades (28 as compared to 41), neither was economically disadvantaged. Basquiat was the bigger star, of course, shining all the brighter for the darkness of his skin. He was expected to fall, or so everyone thought, turning himself into one of the walking dead (the New York art scene is like an East coast Hollywood). Still, both artists were more in touch with white culture than with the black (though Basquiat adored the likes of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Joe Louis, and Sugar Ray Robinson). Basquiat loved Warhol because he was NOT a tortured artist. Rhoades loved Basquiat because he WAS a tortured artist.

In the long run, both artists look to be in a state of arrested development--just a couple of barefooted kids. Talking of feet, at one particular Black Pussy I remember seeing Rhoades rolling around on the large white bed with a couple of barefooted women, asses raised. Suddenly Jason grabbed one of their feet and brandished it in the air, so others could see the track marks, as if proudly displaying his composite fetish for feet, bare bottoms, and drug culture.

It is not coincidental that Rhoades's studio ended up resembling the basement in Annina Nosei Gallery, where Basquiat used to paint and snort coke like a madman. (14) Back then collectors flocked to see him in action, as if to witness the mythic presence to which they themselves aspired to contribute, causing Basquiat great annoyance. Rhoades, on the other hand, encouraged an open studio approach (however selectively). His chosen metier was the art of driving or consuming things to death--shopping, performing, cars--anything in fact that fomented the myth of art-death. A Rhoades installation was always a perpetual rollercoaster, a sadomasochistic peepshow. For Basquiat, however, a line seems to have been drawn in the sand between life and art (one paints a canvas, sells it, buys heroin, etc.). (15)

Once again, comparing Freytag's Triangle to the trajectory of their independent careers is salutary (and a total bummer). Basquiat's popularity quickly climaxed in 1985, when he was only 25 (ejaculatio praecox), after which he descended down the path of self-imitation until his death in 1988. His tragic story ends in something like induced burnout. Rhoades, on the other hand, had still to reach his zenith--he never did "finish." Basquiat wasted himself early on. But Rhoades had yet to get up a full head of steam.

The katamari promise or lure is that of subliminal (sublunary, sublingual) star status at the risk of total karoshi. Barring a quantum mechanics "information paradox" and other recent cosmological conundrums, a massive star always has the potential to spurt forth into supernova or collapse backwards into a black hole (like a pussy). For a brief moment, the untimely or out-of-time supernova produces memorable shockwaves, briefly outshining its entire host galaxy. Likewise, one cannot ignore the fact that by dying young, stars like Basquiat or Cobain only amplified their posthumous notoriety--dying later probably wouldn't have made them burn more brightly. But in the case of Rhoades, something like a combined black hole and supernova occurs, at once illuminating and obscuring the skies. What on the one hand sucks us in, his hysterical, unfinished work/life, turns out in the next breath to be a revolting rummage sale of random refuse and gross misinformation.

ASSUMING THE POSITION

IN FEBRUARY LAST YEAR, I got an email from the UCLA photography department forwarded by Rhoades's longtime friend Joshua White. Rhoades was looking for someone with black-and-white darkroom experience to assist at some kind of performance event in Downtown. Since I had experience in both areas, I responded asking for more information. He emailed back, saying that the position required me to be naked. I was a bit hesitant, but thought it wouldn't hurt to go see him.

I was to meet Rhoades at his Beverly Boulevard studio at 1pm, but he was late/ hung over. His warehouse studio was in a sketchy area, the back alley entrance littered about with makeshift homeless furnishings and fecal matter. When he finally arrived, he apologized and showed me around a dilapidated darkroom, inquiring if I could make it work again. These, then, were to be my tasks--to help with the Black Pussy events as well as tend to the darkroom, buy photography supplies, and make prints of previous Black Pussy negatives.

For half the day they would leave me alone while I made prints from whatever negatives I chose. Rhoades would occasionally come in, or his assistant Paco, to see how things were going. Rhoades suggested that I print various image types, experiment with chemicals, paper, and exposure, and most importantly, make a large number of prints. I presented him with test prints at different exposures and densities each with a variety of tonal range, which he seemed to like more than the final prints. Mostly I spoke with Paco, and Rhoades's other assistants, Rick and Sarah. (16) It was all very casual, and if I happened to miss the odd day, that was fine too. Unfortunately, I was out of town during the last Black Pussy.

Once in a while, Paco would ask me for help with sculptures or other tasks. A few times, I had to drive out to the Rosemead studio and work. One of the worst jobs I ever had in my life was scrubbing a giant inflatable swimming pool in the shape of a liver.

A RED HERRING?

ADRIAN SEARLE, in a Guardian review of Rhoades's "The Black Pussy ... and the Pagan Idol Workshop" at London's Hauser & Wirth in 2005, argues that Black Pussy was intended as part of a trilogy of installations, beginning with Meccatuna at David Zwirner (2003) and My Medina: In Pursuit of My Ermitage ([sic] 2004) at Hauser & Wirth, St. Gallen. "All three allude," he goes on to say, "to Muslim culture. For Meccatuna, Rhoades wanted to take a live bluefin tuna to the holy city of Mecca, and have it circumnavigate the Ka'bah. This proving impossible--as well as dreadfully unwise, not least for the sake of the fish--someone was dispatched from Saudi Arabia to Mecca, where he bought a case of tinned tuna, which was dispatched to New York...." Searle continues:

 This triumvirate of shows was apparently inspired, in part, by
 Moustapha Akkad's 1976 movie The Message, starring Anthony
 Quinn, about the life of Muhammad (Akkad went on to produce
 the Halloween movies) and also by Reza Aslan's [2005] No god
 but God, a fascinating history and analysis of Islam [that explains]
 the complex interrelationships of the various competing religions
 found in the Near East during Muhammad's lifetime.

 [According to Aslan,] idols and images relating to "polytheism,
 henotheism, monotheism, Christianity, Judaism,
 Zoroastrianism, Hanifism, paganism in all its varieties," were all
 deposited in the black cube of the Ka'bah in Mecca, as a sort of
 repository for the gods, until Muhammad's revelations caused
 their removal. "If Muhammad was right," writes Aslan, "then the
 idols in the sanctuary, and indeed the sanctuary itself, insofar as
 it served as a repository for the gods, were utterly useless."

 For Rhoades, then, we might take the gallery as a sanctuary
 for useless fetishes, unless, that is, art really does contain a
 message, the message being more than a smokescreen for the trade
 in art as a commodity. Black Pussy presents the antithesis of the
 gallery as a quasi-spiritual space, where succor may be sought. (17)

(UN)FINISHING

PRESERVATION WILL REMAIN a constant concern for the institution in regard to Rhoades's legacy. However much artists try to hold off their creative "bloom," it always peaks and ebbs away. But Rhoades, endlessly driven to sample life's experiences, repressed the (Eastern) desire to sustain his climax, getting caught up instead in a (Western) race to top himself. In other words, his hyperkinetic, katamari urge to gather up everyday shrapnel came into collision with the cosmic forces of immanent destruction and renewal.

Yet doing nothing is still doing something. Boredom, for instance, is a reaction against the capitalist mandate of constant productivity and being in or on time. At Black Pussy, I was active, but also bored, biding my time and my energy in a storage-closet-turned-darkroom. I became like the inkjet printers or metal polishers in Rhoades's Perfect World (2000), repeatedly touching up or terraforming my own installation. Standing naked in a darkroom, surrounded by power tools and paper towels, I effectively transformed a disused black hole into a useful red-light (safelights) womb/wound, the resulting wet traces of which were then hung, impaled, and sculpted throughout the rest of the installation. Naturally I felt hyperlinked to a Rhoadesian fantasy of making out in a darkroom, and drank a lot of Stolichnaya and Red Bull.

One evening I heard rumors that escorts were in the house. I suddenly became nervous. Later that night, three women and a man came into the darkroom, and a lot of pictures were taken. It was dark, of course. We had all been drinking--at the very least. I thought to myself that if I got it over and done with, that is, "finished," my part of the performance would be over. Had these people entered the darkroom to have a real sexual encounter, or were they only simulating an encounter? Had they been paid? Did Rhoades pay them? His gallery? Did I have to pay? Is there an ATM nearby? Where are my pants? All I will say is that though many people came in the darkroom that night, nothing came of it.

I worked sporadically for Rhoades over a period of four months. All of my conversations with him were brief. If I had to compile all the words he ever uttered to me, and thus contravene the Western taboo against speaking for the dead, they would read something like this:

 Hello. Hi. How are you? Nice to meet you. Can you do it? Can
 you get the darkroom ready? Looks great. Keep printing more.
 Just print more. All kinds. Will it be ready? What do you think?
 Yes, go ahead. Are you going to be naked? It's part of the concept.
 Yes, have a drink--that makes it easier. Can you be here?
 OK. Are they wet? Just, like, put them everywhere. Do it when
 they are wet. You can sculpt them onto things. Impale them. I
 like that. Hang them all over. Yes, I like that one. You can't do
 this with digital. Use the fiber paper. Use both. Let's see. OK.
 I have this thing. Know anyone at the studios that would want
 this? Oh yeah, we have a few people around. She left this? These
 flowers? Can you bring me that CD? Do you have a MySpace
 page? Thank you. Thanks for coming. OK. That was great. See
 you later. See you next time. In about a week or two. (18)

(1.) From www.arnet.com, October 19, 2006: "The death of Los Angeles artist Jason Rhoades, who died at age 41 on August 1, 2006, was caused by accidental drug intoxication and heart disease, according to the Los Angeles County coroner's office. The determination was made by an autopsy conducted on September 8, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. A spokesperson for the coroner's office said that it had not yet received a list of medications that contributed to the artist's death, and also said that Rhoades was suffering from atherosclerotic coronary heart disease."

(2.) Paul Schimmel, quoted in Diane Haithman, "Obituaries," Los Angeles Times (August 3, 2006), B-13.

(3.) From an interview with Jim Parker, Drug Survival News (Do It Now Foundation, September--October 1981), 12-19.

(4.) Diane Haithman, paraphrasing Rick Baker in "He left Behind One Last Puzzle," Los Angeles Times (August 18, 2006), E-1.

(5.) Paul Schimmel, quoted in Diane Haithman, "Obituaries."

(6.) See Michele Robecchi, http://www. contemporary-magazine.com/interview81.htm.

(7.) Many of the ideas contained in this section come from Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, Occidentalism: A Short History of Anti-Westernism (New York: Penguin Press, 2004).

(8.) Robert Farris Thompson on Jean-Michel Basquiat, in Phoebe Hoban, Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art (New York: Viking Penguin, 1998), 81.

(9.) Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, ed. & tr. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1961), 4.

(10.) Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Death_instinct.

(11.) Freud, Standard Edition XIX, pp. 159-60.

(12.) Jason Rhoades, in Heimir Bjorgulfsson, "Charisma Catcher," http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/ features/bjorgulfsson/bjorgulfsson8-23-06.asp.

(13.) See Black Pussy's "About Me" on http://profile.myspace.com/index. cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&frie ndid=64322534.

(14.) "He quickly became a commodity: 'come and watch the artist perform.'" Don Rubell, quoted in Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art, 83.

(15.) We may never know why Rhoades so admired Basquiat. Although Paul Mooney was possibly right when he said (in one of his "Ask a Black Dude" sketches on Chappelle's Show), "We have style, we got flavor, we got rhythm. The black man in America is the most copied man on this planet, bar none. Everybody wanna be a nigger but nobody wanna be a nigger." Chappelle's Show, Comedy Central, Episode 5, Season 1, 2004.

(16.) It was a pleasure and honor to work with all of Rhoades's assistants, as it was with Rhoades himself.

(17.) Adrian Searle, "Sex Gods," Guardian Unlimited, September 20, 2005 (http://arts.guardian.co.uk/critic/ feature/0,,1573994,00.html).

(18.) I would like to thank Andrea Fraser and Robert Summers for assisting me with early drafts of this essay.

NATHAN DANILOWICZ is a 2007 MFA candidate at UCLA in the New Genres Department.