Home again, home again jiggety jog . . .
July 27, 2010
I don’t know where this silly line comes from, but my father would say it sometimes when he would come home. It expresses how I feel now with Taiyuan a long way from home. It feels good to come home and have the furniture adjust itself for my comfort like Harry Potter’s furniture that knew just how he liked it. That’s the way everyone’s bed feels when we come home. I am far gone enough after a long trip to think that my cats as well as Buck, Billy and Molly (resident ducks in the stream next to the house) all offer a smile and a deep sense of relief when we return.
The show in Taiyuan was a resounding success. Now we wait for the unsold items to return. We begin to think of planting some more eggplant and onions in the garden. My gardener offered to plant the new fan palms in the front, so at least I am relieved of the duty of digging holes for them. All I am saying I suppose is that coming home makes the mundane extraordingary.
I talked to Ed Hardy yesterday and began the process of preparing to have a show of his work. We had a show for him several years ago, before he became the international celebrity that he is now. Of course he is the pope of Tattoo now. The man who by dint of his sophistication, elevated the corny heart with an arrow through it to the level of pop ART. Of course Duchamp did this clever elevation of conceptual art when he signed his name R Mutt on a porcelain toilet. Ed’s work is founded on a profound understanding of Asian Art. He is able to joke, visually, with the scholar’s taste of China and Japan. I think it is based on the simple reverence for the art of another artist. His Tatoos are, in a sense, tattoos for tattoo artists. The clothing line that features his designs has spread around the world and has given him the freedom to take common tattoo forms and find new messages for new people. When we have his show in November we’ll have several paintings of tigers, this being the year of the tiger. We’ll also be showing his newest work, contemporary porcelains with his glazed paintings. He is also letting me put one of his tigers on my old Porsche. My son Tusha immediately asked, “How old are you?”
The correct answer is that, in Shakespeare’s terms, “the ages of men are seven”; so I am free at last, free at last. Being in the seventh age means that you are free to be as you wish yourself to be.
