'I, Mark Morrisroe pledge to coldly use and manipulate everyone who can help my career. No matter how much I hate them I will pretend that I love them. I will fuck anyone who can help me no matter how aesthetically unpleasing they are to me.'-- Mark Morrisroe, 1985
'Mark Morrisroe was an outlaw on every front—sexually, socially, and artistically. He was marked by his dramatic and violent adolescence as a teenage prostitute with a deep distrust and a fierce sense of his uniqueness. I met him in Art School in 1977; he left shit in my mailbox as a gesture of friendship. Limping wildly down the halls in his torn t-shirts, calling himself Mark Dirt, he was Boston’s first punk. He developed into a photographer with a completely distinctive artistic vision and signature. Both his pictures of his lovers, close friends, and objects of desire, and his touching still-lifes of rooms, dead flowers, and dream images stand as timeless fragments of his life, resonating with sexual longing, loneliness, and loss.'-- Nan Goldin
'Mark Morrisroe’s biography bears the tenor of a tragic, love- and fame-driven star doomed to fizzle too soon for the likes of those standing awed and breathless beneath it. A teenage hustler and a prostitute, he spent the second half of his years with a bullet in his back, flirting with his spine. Dauntless, he made it to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He palled around with Nan Goldin and David Armstrong, and eventually moved to New York, in the mid-1980s, where he pursued a brief yet scintillating career as a photographer and an artist. He died of AIDS-related illness in 1989, at age 30.'-- Matt McCann
'I never met the notorious Mark Morrisroe, but I must have seen every one of his shows, beginning in the mid-’80s, at Pat Hearn’s now mythic galleries in New York’s East Village. In ’85, it was a works-on-paper group show at her slick Avenue B storefront, featuring Morrisroe, Donald Baechler, George Condo, Philip Taaffe and others. In ’86, it was a solo at her imposing 9th Street space (between avenues C and D), where she presented a full range of Morrisroe’s photography: "sandwich" prints (as he called them) in big dark frames, small prints from Polaroid negatives, and “early darkroom experiments” using found materials—from gay porn magazines and such—printed in negative.
'Morrisroe’s work became better known after his death, as Hearn, his devoted old friend from Boston, staged a series of memorial shows, in 1994, ’96 and ’99. Hearn, who inherited his estate and more than anyone else shaped, curated and pushed his work, also died young, at 45, in 2000; and, like that of so many artists whose lives and careers were cut tragically short by AIDS, Morrisroe’s work was put in considerable risk. When Pat’s husband, the maverick dealer Colin de Land—who had been trying to place the estate—died at 47 in 2003, it seemed like the two dealers’ engaged and unorthodox way of working was going to disappear.
'Role-playing and gender-bending youths -- artists and others -- populate Morrisroe’s photographs: 20-somethings getting naked, donning high heels and wigs, trying on identities. This is the culturally specific world of Boston in the late ’70s and early ’80s, when high punk ruled and Morrisroe and his friends from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (where he got a scholarship) were cutting up, living on the edge and documenting each other’s every move. Among them were Hearn, Nan Goldin, David Armstrong, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, and Doug and Mike Starn, who with Morrisroe and others were dubbed the “Boston School” of photography in a show at the city’s Institute of Contemporary Art in 1995.
'Morrisroe, by all reports, was the most out-there and diabolically ambitious of them all. “If Mark didn’t have art he would have been a serial killer,” remarked his friend Pia Howard, one of many choice quotes printed large on the wall at the entrance to the Winterthur show. Indeed, as we read in Gruber’s biographical essay, Morrisroe’s mother was a severely depressed alcoholic, and his father was absent. The artist often claimed that his father was Albert De Salvo, the Boston Strangler (who was in fact his mother’s landlord and lived nearby). As a precocious teenager who changed high schools and left home early, Morrisroe styled himself “Mark Dirt” and worked as a hustler in order to raise enough money to get his own apartment; he also found time to graduate from high school. At the age of 17, he was shot in the spine by one of hisclients; after several weeks in the hospital, he willed himself to walk again, though with a noticeable limp.'-- Brooks Adams
'It kills me to look at my old photographs of myself and my friends. We were such beautiful, sexy kids but we always felt bad because we thought we were ugly at the time. It was because we were such outcasts in high school and so unpopular. We believed what other people said. If any one of us could have seen how attractive we really were we might have made something better of our lives.'-- Mark Morrisroe, 1988
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Manifesto
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Video works
'Between 1981 and 1984, Mark Morrisroe made three films on Super-8 sound—underground home movies filled with thrift-store costumes, cheapo gore, trashy dialog, and gratuitous nudity, starring himself and his friends as performers. The Laziest Girl in Town features the transvestite antics of Morrisroe, Stephen Tashjian (Tabboo!), and Jack Pierson, culminating in an obscene sequence reminiscent of John Waters' Pink Flamingos. The trio continued two years later with Hello from Bertha, loosely based on a one-act drama by Tennessee Williams about a prostitute dying in a fleabag bordello, played out in a Boston bedroom with spotty Southern accents and loose wigs. Morrisroe's longest film, Nymph-O-Maniac, tells the story of a portly phone sex operator and her insatiable girlfriends, one of whom comes to a grisly end at the hands of two sadistic young toughs. Considered together, these works illuminate the social milieu of Morrisroe's early life as an artist, but also locate the development of his creative sensibilities at the historical juncture of camp and punk.'-- Artists Space
Excerpt from "Hello from Bertha"
Excerpt from "Nymph-O-Maniac"
Excerpt from "The Laziest Girl in Town"
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Dirt
'You hear what we hear’ – the thoughtful, reassuring motto that opens the inaugural issue of Dirt, a photocopied fanzine that ‘dares to print the truth’ – is a good metaphor for the bare-all philosophy of Mark Morrisroe’s work. The tongue-in-cheek irony (‘Advertise in the magazine everybody reads’), fake news reports, irreverent hearsay, celebrity clippings, blind-item gossip and guest editorials that grace Dirt’s cut-and-pasted pages live up to its guiding principle to keep its readership informed. Co-edited by Morrisroe together with Lynelle White from 1975–6, and titled after the name its primary writer used when he hustled – Mark Dirt – the indelicately collaged pages of alternately typed and hand-written ‘exclusives’ express an individual aesthetic which was driven by editors happy to exploit their readers; generous submissions of personal photos were strongly encouraged, for example (‘nude ones especially welcome’), while entreaties to divulge any unconfirmed gossip (‘Slander your friends!’) were every issue’s back page. Dirt was a small, short-lived, but confidently written operation. Like his later output, which includes thousands of gum prints, silkscreens, Polaroids (often either of himself or of young friends unclothed or in drag), it served as a modest means for a young Morrisroe, then aged 17, to gain attention from the world around him.'-- Frieze
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Photographs
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Ephemera
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2 lectures
José Esteban Muñoz'Mark Morrisroe: Neo-Romantic Iconography and the Performance of Self'
Collier Schorr'Mark Morrisroe: Photographic Process and Psychic Structure'
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Further
Mark Morrisroe @ Wikipedia
'Viewing Mark Morrisroe: Whimsy in the Face of Danger'
'Mark Morrisroe: From This Moment On'
'9 pm to 5am: Underground Boston and Mark Morrisroe'
'Love From Bertha: Queer World-Making In The Art Of Mark Morrisroe'
'Exposed for Eternity: Mark Morrisroe’s Walk on the Wild Side'
'Mark Morrisroe's Self-Portraits and Jacques Derrida's "Ruin"'
Video: 'FOTOGRAFIE: MARK MORRISROE'
'All the Cat Photographs in Mark Morrisroe's 2011 Publication'
'The Tragi-Comedy of Mark Morrisroe'
'Moving images that belie their brutal undertones'
CINDY SHERMAN 'Untitled (In honor of Mark Morrisroe)'
'Mark Morrisroe's Battered Brilliance'
'Emotional Metaphors – Discourse on Animals in the Work of Mark Morrisroe'
Jameson Fitzpatrick 'Morrisroe: Erasures'
Mark Morrisroe books @ Amazon
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p.s. Hey. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. I think you've had the coveted 'get Dennis before his coffee kicks in' slot before, no? I'm too minimally coffeed to remember. The day-off turned out to be only a slightly less 'on' day, but it went okay. Your Berlin gig is this weekend, isn't it? Kick wild ass, if so. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Oh, okay, ha ha, happy to be cuddly. Anytime, you name it. Have a good weekend! ** Dom Lyne, Hi, Dom! The launch got delayed, right, but I still won't be able to be there, dang. The zine will be beautiful, no doubt. Cool about the book release post. Yeah, just send me stuff when it's time on your end, and we'll get it set up. Great! And a poetry eBook! Superb, man. And, you know, hugs about the deep time in your friend's light. I think I know how that is. God, I hate death. It's such a fascist. Love, me. ** David Ehrenstein, 'Rashomon' is a good one, god knows. ** Sypha, Hi. You working for the police. That's a trippy idea. I mean, hm, why not, I guess, I don't know. I don't think I could do that. I'd feel like an enabler or something. Cool about Oscar's new artworks for your book! hope I'll get to see them in person the next time I'm over at her at Kiddiepunk's pad. Looking for publishers, yeah, no fun with a capital N and F. ** Grant maierhofer, Hi, man. 'Foxcatcher': that title is so familiar. I must have read something about it. Huh, sounds curious. Often when films play at Cannes, they open right after that in France, so maybe I'll get to see it sooner than later. I'll watch the trailer when I get back to Paris today. The internet where I'm staying barely has the strength to open Blogger at great length, so I dare not click that link while ensconced here. I think I've liked all of Anderson's films, but I still have never seen 'The Master'. It just kind of slipped by. Weirdly, I think 'Punch Drunk Love' is my favorite of his. I don't think that's considered to be up there among his big fans. I haven't seen 'Only God Forbids'. Another one that passed me by despite a jones to see it. Cool that you'll be doing posts. Yeah, for sure, let us know over here when there's new stuff. Definitely need to get over there for that. Fingers crossed re: the wisdom of the editors lucky enough to have your novel pieces on their plate. Cool, take care, Grant. ** Kier, Kier! Up? Up for me is getting to go home today. It's been super-productive here, but, man, I am fried, albeit for good reasons. Oh, that's so cool that you were drawing a lot yesterday! Did that result in those fantastic drawings I saw on FB this morning? Amazing! Hooray! I hope the fruitfulness digs in and locks the floodgates in an open position. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Wow, is the referendum finally happening? What are they saying is going to happen? I haven't seen any polls or predictions or anything. Yes seems like the way/vote to go, no? It sure does in theory and without detailed understanding. ** Steevee, Hi. Oh, cool, about the auditions. Zac and I start our next round of auditions for our film on Monday and Tuesday. We're seeing six interested potentials, I think. I've read about Sleaford Mods, but I haven't heard them yet or watched any videos or anything. Okay, I'll dive in. Thanks for the tips, Steve. ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris! Really great to see you! Glad you liked that story, yeah, it's beautiful. Everything's great and busy with me. Just slightly too busy or over the limit of my ability to be really busy at the moment, but I'm working on my accustoming skills. The novel goes really well, I think, I hope. I'm very excited about it. Mm, we'll see, but I'm think that it will be the first book in a cycle, yes. That's the thought, the wish, and even the plan, I guess. So, I guess my idea is that the cycle, if it happens, and however many novels it would involve, which I don't know yet, would be my last novels, and the one I'm working would be its starter. When I'm working on novel, I try to at least open the doc and reread it or fiddle with it every day, even for a few minutes, if that's all I have. And I'm always using my free brain cells to develop and evolve it in my head. So I guess, yeah, it's constant, but, for instance, right now when I'm juggling so many projects, I don't get to dig into it and really write more than maybe one or two days a week. I've never set schedules to work on novels or anything. I let them grow the way they need to at whatever pace, but I just make absolutely sure that I don't forget about them or let myself not work on them, meaning they're always in the top spot in my imagination, and then the page gets as much of that brain work as time and energy and inspiration allow. I'm really glad to hear you're writing! That's really important! ALG is a lot of constraint work, or it sure seems like it would be, and maybe you'll gradually find the balance. Like I've said here before, it took me a long time to figure how to do the blog and write a novel at the same time. Like at least a year to get that figured out. Time management is important, absolutely, but I think instinct is really important too, like a combination of those things. And not worrying about not being able to work on something as much as you'd like. Like knowing it's not going to die if you have to leave it alone for a while. I don't know. It's a weird process. It feels really subliminal or something. Nope, still haven't read Bolano. I almost started on the Argentina/Antarctica trip. I decided that if I could find a Bolano novel in one of the English language bookstores that Zac and I were checking out, I would. But I didn't. But, yeah, I'm ready to crack Bolano, and I probably will soon. It would be good, it seems, to read him before reading Blake's new novel. I think I'll use that as a deadline. Cool about the magazine being almost ready. I saw the cover on Facebook. Really awesome cover. I'm excited! Thanks a lot, Chris, and I hope your weekend has a huge payoff in a style that totally suits you. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff! Thanks about the posts. Action Books does seem like it's been on a serious roll lately, it's true. Great that the play is finally going to debut, and, oh, I wish I could be there for it. Everything about it completely intrigues me. Let me pass on that info. Everyone, Chilly Jay Chill aka Jeff Jackson has an important alert for all of you who are in or near the NYC area. If you are, please pay close attention to the following announcement in his words: 'After much backstage drama, I can finally can announce that my play THE DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER: PERFORMANCE FOR A SLEEPING AUDIENCE is opening in Times Square. It opens May 9th and runs through May 17th in the Brill Building. It's a durational piece where the audience can come and go as they please as long as there's room. We've got 40 beds for people to nap or zone out and the play happens around them. Weekday performances from 4-12 pm and two overnight weekend shows from 6 pm - 6 am. Inspired by LaMonte Young's Dreamhouse sound installation and Werner Schroeter's early films, plus the Chinese novel of course.' Be there, for totally sure! The new theater piece goes really well. It's massive work, but in a great way. It's completely unlike anything we've done before, so it feels like building something from scratch. It's hard/good for me because there's an absolute ton of text in it. It's by far the most text heavy piece we've done, and we're working in this new way whereby I wrote out the structure and characters and the arc of the piece, etc, and some suggested texts, and now the eight puppeteers who are our performers are improvising off the texts I wrote, and we're recording everything, and then I have to go through all the transcriptions and rebuild, refine, edit the text they rebuilt out of mine, and then they'll learn and perform it in rehearsal, and we'll see what works and doesn't and what needs to be improved again through their improvisations, whereupon I'll again go through the news transcripts and write the final version. That's really challenging, but very interesting. So, that's a complication, and, also, all of the performers are German except for Jonathan Capedevielle, so they're working in German, which I don't speak, so the translation issue is complicated. And they're all highly respected puppeteers, the most respected ones in Europe, and they're having to work in any entirely new way for them, so there's a lot of learning on their part and on ours as we try to use their gifts in a new way that's totally in league with what they do best. A lot of complications. It's very exhausting, but I think it's going to be really good, I hope. Thrust: eight ventriloquists gather at a big ventriloquism convention and have a kind of workshop that goes kind of crazy. That's too simplistic, but it's hard to characterize. Anyway, it's very cool that you're interested, man. Thank you. ** Misanthrope, I don't envy you that drive, man, yikes. Maybe that guy was using a dummy so he could drive in the 'fast lane'? In California you can only use the fast lane if there's more than one person in the car, and I've seen people driving with dummies quite a few times. ** Okay. We begin the spate of new posts with a gallery show of Mark Morrisroe's stuff. Hope you find him and his art as interesting as I do. Or at least find something in there to work with and think about and bounce off. Have excellent weekends, and see you on Monday.