The story of the Northern California experience typically begins with the California Gold Rush of 1848, which transformed It’ s a San Francisco from a small settlement into a metropolis in the course of a few years. Tens of thousands of gold seekers and immigrants from virtually every continent travelled to San Francisco, by land and by sea, and a new society came rapidly into being. The city attracted those who were willing to take great risks and soon established itself as a place—even if only in the public imagination—of unlimited opportunity, autonomy and self-determination.

A century later, in the 1950s k New Yor s S oci ety (ARS), R at and 1960s, San Francisco was s R i ght still a diverse, tolerant city, t

Trip, Baby t is attracting young people from all over the world with its promise of unlimited individual and aesthetic freedom. The arts precipitated another great westward migration, an F rancisco / A r t, S t, as post-World War ii coteries like the Beat poets took hold of the y Trus

One of the first groups to define the classic collective amil national imagination and drew to outsider mentality was the Rat Bastard Protective Association, San Francisco numerous young summoned into being by in 1950s artists, writers and filmmakers from around the United States,

San Francisco. Their distinctive stamp of approval was used s © 2016 C onn e r F eagerly fleeing the conservatism or k to unify a group of artists who felt alienated from mainstream and conformity (real or perceived) post-war us society. Anastasia Aukeman tells their story. of their own home towns. The poet Michael McClure was

one such poet, leaving his home e C onn r w B ruc town of Wichita, Kansas, and Opposite page: Holiday party at 2322 Fillmore Street with (l–r) , Jay DeFeo and , c.1958 moving in 1956 to a building in Above: Scavenger’s Protective Association transfer station, Chestnut Street, 1953 San Francisco’s Western Addition Right: Pressing of the “Rat Bastard Protective Ass’n” stamp, created by Bruce Conner, c.1957–58 that was already home to an array of artists, poets and musicians. Because a number of Bay Area figurative painters were living there when he arrived, McClure dubbed the simple four-unit struc- ture “Painterland”. Between the early 1950s and 1965, the building met as a boy in Wichita. Eager to after arriving in San Francisco that was most likely eager to consoli- boss’s “favorite cuss word was Rat located at 2322 Fillmore Street expand his artistic community in he was starting a collective of sorts: date his inclusion in the commu- Bastard. So I picked that up, and became the centre of the close- San Francisco, McClure wrote “I started a group called the Rat nity and saw the association as a Bruce picked that up from me.” knit communities, galleries and frequently to Conner, urging him Bastard Protective Association, way to achieve this end. He placed Many of the parties held at 2322 other alliances that formed nearby. to move to San Francisco. Conner sent letters out to Joan Brown and himself firmly at the centre of this Fillmore Street began as meetings. It was a latter-day, West Coast and his new bride, Jean Sandstedt, Manuel Neri and cohort of young artists by forming Conner once called for a meeting Bateau-Lavoir: home, studio and moved there on 1 September and Jay DeFeo and Art Grant a group and appointing himself its on the Golden Gate Bridge (for meeting place to a revolving cast 1957. The Conners lived at 2322 and Fred Martin and a few other president. which only Neri showed up). of artists, filmmakers and poets, Fillmore Street for several weeks people I can’t remember right Conner derived the name Rat “He instructed me to jump off

T ION, Be r ke l ey not unlike the dark, flimsy build- before moving to a three-room now. Told them that they were Bastard Protective Association the bridge,” Neri recalled with ings in the Montmartre section apartment around the corner on members of the organization and (rbpa) by combining the name of a laugh. of Paris that provided a fertile Jackson Street, a few doors from I was the founder and president, a San Francisco trash collectors’ Conner told the curator Peter o FOUNDA living, working and meeting place Wallace and Shirley Berman and and that they should pay their organization, the Scavengers Boswell in 1983 that the name y DeFe a for Picasso and his fellow artists their son, Tosh, since there were dues right away. The next meeting Protective Association, with an Rat Bastard was fitting because, in their early years. no vacant units in the Painterland was next Friday at my house and expression adopted by McClure, like the garbage collectors and

y of the J McClure was an especially building. that we would have meetings every who was then the district manager the rougher types of men who s

te close friend and mentor to the Despite being new to the scene, three weeks at a different person’s of a chain of Vic Tanny gyms in frequented gyms in those years, he

C our artist Bruce Conner, whom he Conner announced just months house.” As a newcomer, Conner San Francisco. He related that his and his friends saw themselves as

196 the JOURNAL the JOURNAL 197 “people who were making things bus they dubbed “Furthur” (or inclusion of small pouches). The with the detritus of society, who “Further”, depending on the day ceiling was done in fur. Another themselves were ostracized or and mood), for a drug-fuelled picture was a Clyfford Still parody alienated from full involvement road trip from California to New by Brown, a canvas painted with society”. The group played York City. (Tom Wolfe chroni- with peanut butter and jelly.” in jazz bands, ran alternative cled the trip Kesey envisioned Alvin Light’s expressive wooden galleries, and lived, worked as a re-enactment of the great sculptures were also included in and exhibited together in the western migration in reverse the show, as was a “big, beautiful Fillmore neighbourhood for the and called his Merry Pranksters red and green abstract landscape better part of a decade. Conner “the unsettlers of 1964, moving painting” by Neri, according to even designed what he called the backwards across the Great Villa, along a Villa coffin piece. “approved seal of the Rat Bastard Plains”.) They embarked on “The cat always slept in the Protective Association”, a rubber their journey— their “trip”—a coffin,” he recalled with a laugh. stamp to be used by members little more than a hundred Conner, Dave Haselwood, to sign their works. Villa recalled years after the California gold McClure, Neri and Villa also that Conner also used the stamp rush. Kesey was deliberately organized a Rat Bastard parade to signal his approval—of just reflecting and remarking on what through North Beach and all about anything. Like so much was becoming a personal and the way to the Spatsa Gallery to of Conner’s work, the seal was collective sense of disillusion- celebrate the show. According to multivalent: it signalled belong- ment and fragmentation among Conner, the parade was totally ing, it commodified, it spoke of young people in the post-war unannounced and included hubris and it was funny. Most of United States. But Conner and “banners and standards”. Conner all, the stamp was designed to his Rat Bastard friends had recounted how the parade grew: unify a group of artists who felt already felt this profound dis- “All of a sudden there were about alienated from the mainstream satisfaction with the status quo two hundred people walking and deprived of institutional in the 1950s, and the founding down Grant Avenue and across acceptance. of the group and its members’ Broadway. There was a poetry The name Rat Bastard artistic practices—continually duel between Philip Lamantia Protective Association itself was switching media to avoid being and some bullshit poet who “Scavenger” bringing his sacks of refuse to the truck, San Francisco, 1950s Below: Wallace Berman, Loveweed poster, 1963, offset lithograph, 38.1 x 25.4cm a slur—anti-social, with connota- pinned down, playing pranks had moved in from New York tions of garbage, clearly designed as a way to defy categorization, for about two months.” Several to offend. The formation of the dropping out of the art world but poets and artists led the parade, group and its feigned implied nonetheless making artworks— carrying the wooden coffin piece exclusivity was a parody of what reflected that discontent. by Villa. It was wrapped in red, Conner once described as the Conner also endorsed works white and blue parade bunting “in-crowd, art-world sort of thing, anonymously with the Rat Bastard that Villa had found on the street. where things did not depend on stamp. Villa recalled other ways Joan Brown placed on the coffin what it was you actually created, in which Conner used the stamp: a plaster wreath she had made but on what your pedigree might “He would look at signs on for it, with the inscription “He be or who had your work”. telephone poles and [say,] ‘God, died for love”. Neri was teaching The poet Jack Foley connected that’s a great advertisement.’ Brown how to use plaster that the rat bastard name to the act Clunk. Even the waitress with her summer, and the inscription was of self-mythologizing—except new black, blue, white leotards most likely a playful allusion, not that in the case of the Rat Bastard got stamped right on the ass. only to Villa’s coffin piece but also Protective Association, the Rat Bastard. He’d stamp tables, to a flirtation between the two of mythologizing was not self- menus, it was just this fantastic them; she and Neri began living aggrandizing but self-denigrating: piece that he was doing all the together not long afterwards. Bruce Conner, Venus, 1958, oil on canvas, “to see oneself as outcast, as waste way through.” Irreverent, wily The Rat Bastard parade was 137.2 x 106.7cm material.” Joan Brown addressed and audacious, Conner reflected the kind of spontaneous event this aspect of their practice when the tradition of San Francisco that came to define the San asked about her involvement: artists who embraced their role Francisco scene. Unlike other “The point was that there was as heirs to the Dada legacy. Now Bay Area groupings, such as really no point. That was the he threatened to go further by those who participated in Wallace attitude at that time. A lot of us abandoning authorship alto- Berman’s hand-printed, person- used rats in our images. I certainly gether, and he wanted to take his ally distributed literary journal unlike Jess and Duncan. geographically isolated from the War ii makes this period a fertile did. That went along with the friends with him. Semina or the poets gathered While an iconoclastic spirit vibrant commercial art market in area of discussion. literally ratty found objects that In the summer of 1958, the Rat around Jess and , characterized many of the New York and from immediate we all used.” Bastards had a group exhibition at the Rat Bastard Protective activities of the Rat Bastard access to European influences, “The Rat Bastard Protective There is also a strong ele- the artist Dimitri Grachis’s Spatsa Association was not organized Protective Association, the but they were part of a distinc- Assocation” exhibition, curated ment of the prankster in the Gallery at 2192 Filbert Street, not around a highly charismatic figure artists living and working in and tively close community that was by Anastasia Aukeman, runs at Rat Bastard name and in the far from Painterland. According or figures. Conner set the group around 2322 Fillmore Street were engaged in an interrogation of a The Landing in Los Angeles until 7 activities of the group. The Rat to one attendee, “Conner had in motion, but his personality deeply committed to their work larger aesthetic and social theory, January. Aukeman’s “Welcome to Bastards came together well hung some of his own ‘rat’ pieces differed fundamentally from that and, in most cases, aware of its with roots in historical traditions. Painterland: Bruce Conner and the before the year 1964, when Ken (of which there were many during of a quasi-sacral figure—which significance, though they were That their work developed in ways Rat Bastard Protective Association” Kesey and 13 friends boarded a that period, characterized by the Berman could not but be—and conflicted about the consequences that diverged from (what became) is published by the University of famous psychedelically painted use of scavenged materials and the he was too young to act as mentor, of fame. They may have been canonical modernism after World California Press.

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