One consequence of writing posts like this for the past 19 years is the blossoming into familiarity of previously unknown subjects. Such has been the case with the work of Steven Arnold (1943–1994), an American artist/photographer/film-maker whose photographs I hadn’t seen until I was pointed towards the Steven Arnold Archive by a reader in 2009. (Hi Thom, if you’re out there!) Since that brief post I’ve logged the occasional appearance of Arnold exhibitions and, more recently, the blu-ray release of Arnold’s sole feature film, Luminous Procuress.
Steven Arnold: Heavenly Bodies is a feature-length documentary by Vishnu Dass about Arnold and the circle of friends and collaborators who helped create his films and photographic tableaux. The documentary was released by the Steven Arnold Archive in 2019, and is now freely available for viewing at Vimeo. (The “Mature” tag means you need to either log in or create an account to watch it.) Dass presents a collection of video interviews with Arnold and his associates, together with more recent interviews with surviving friends and enthusiasts, to supply the biographical detail behind Arnold’s extraordinary endeavours. Angelica Huston narrates the film which also includes poignant testimony from Arnold’s close friend, Ellen Burstyn.
The interviews chart the artist’s progress: education in Oakland and San Francisco; his early experiments with film; his experience as a member of Salvador Dalí’s circle of hippy acolytes; the creation of all those beautiful black-and-white photographs in his Los Angeles studio. Arnold is revealed to have been a pioneer even by the elevated standards of San Francisco in the 1960s; he was taking acid in 1964, and at the height of the psychedelic era was cultivating with his friends an attitude of glamorous, polymorphous sexuality and gender play that went beyond the out-gay status of the Beats. In one of the interviews he talks eloquently about his concept of androgyny, which he regarded as an almost spiritual state, an attitude the alchemists of old would have endorsed. Arnold was the founder of San Francisco’s midnight movie shows in 1967, the same shows which saw the birth of the Cockettes, an anything-goes performing troupe who turn up later in Luminous Procuress. I didn’t know that Arnold’s midnight shows (for which he designed the posters) were taking place three years before the screening of El Topo in New York, the event which is usually cited as the origin of the nationwide Midnight Movie trend.
Luminous Procuress was the culmination of his time in San Francisco, and the film that caught the attention of Salvador Dalí when it too was screened in New York. The film is a rare example of Arnold arranging his tableaux in full colour. When he moved to Los Angeles he was living among vividly coloured fabrics and decorations yet all his photographs are high-contrast black-and-white creations. I was hoping we might hear more about the reason for this. Arnold does refer at one point to enjoying the directness of the black-and-white image, and monochrome no doubt made his tableaux arrangement easier if he didn’t have to worry about harmonising colours. But he doesn’t explain the choice in any detail.
This is an inspiring documentary, and a valuable record of a thread of San Francisco’s cultural history which is seldom acknowledged in recountings of the psychedelic era. It’s also a dispiriting portrait when you’re watching another creative life cut short by the AIDS pandemic. When considering histories like these it’s easy to fret over the loss of unrealised works. Better, I think, to appreciate anew the work that remains. (Thanks to Larry for the tip!)
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Liberation of Mannique Mechanique
• Luminous Procuress
• Flamboyant excess: the art of Steven Arnold
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