TR, Misc. on the artists, on being gay, on the times

[Mark Kohut]

This weekend I saw a couple of older (probably on DVD) documentaries
about art and related tied into a local Arts Festival...one, called Beyond the 
Fold,
I HIGHLY recommend. It is about origami artists, incredible, maybe one thousand 
folds
soon and unbelievable creations...animals with layers and layers of scales, 
centipedes, a Chinese
dragon longer than a dog  all enfolded with
an articulated cosmic connection----our DNA is folded; everything in the 
universe folds........


But the relevant documentary containing a recreated doc inside was of an 
experimental
film artist named Marie Menken [Notes on], billed as the mother of experimental 
film
which was not at all interesting----BUT, she came of artistic age hanging around 
with the American artists
of the postwar years......and there is one terrif scene, narrated by an older 
comtemporary 

artist (2003), straight, I think, who talked of the fact that the abstract 
expressionist
artists/movement in America in the 1950s was permeated/defined by 
'gays'.......there was
a clip of a movie called Narcissus, with very mannered, stereotypical gay guys 
and gals
in a bar...............she became one of Warhol's friends, married a gay guy who 
had male lovers, 

dueling bolexes scene, and Factory artist....

and this older artist said 'and no one [in society]  cared what any of the 
artists were doing in their art or life
except other artists'..................................