How to Draw a Bunny | Ray Johnson (VIII), Gerald Ayres

How to Draw a Bunny | Ray Johnson (VIII), Gerald Ayres | How to Draw a Bunny

DVDs:

How to Draw a Bunny

	How to Draw a Bunny Ray Johnson (VIII), Gerald Ayres Palm Pictures / Umvd, 2004 average customer review:based on 13 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

How To Draw A Bunny explores the fascinating often hilarious and always enigmatic world of artist and underground icon Ray Johnson. A "Pop Art mystery movie" the film is framed by Johnson's mysterious suicide on Friday January 13 1995 the puzzling circumstances of which left both his intimate admirers and the general public wondering if this was a final "performance." Little has been written about him yet the man who many have dubbed "the most famous unknown artist" was considered a genius whose career spanned nearly fifty years and whose collages have been exhibited in major museums around the world.System Requirements: Running Time 90 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DOCUMENTARIES/MISC. Rating: NR UPC: 660200309725 Manufacturer No: PALMDV3097

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Forever an Enigma

This is an fascinating documentary that I have watched countless times. It is a very entertaining attempt to portray the art and life of the singular collage artist, Ray Johnson. I describe this film as an "attempt" because no one really knew what made Ray Johnson tick. He was one obtuse individual. To this day, no one knows what drove him, what inspired the incredibly quirky way his ran his life and art career or the motivation for his suicide by drowning in New York state's Sag Harbor at the age of 67.
As a native New Yorker, I could not help but be nostalgic watching this documentary because it shows how artists in the 60s could comfortably live below poverty level, producing their art, commiserating with other artists in their community while enjoying New York City rents of well under a $100 a month! Highly recommended!
Siouxie Sayles, Brooklyn, NYC

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How to Draw a Bunny

This movie is just the thing that fits inside you and never goes away. I first heard of this movie at the Museum of Fine Arts. It was playing there and I missed it, but it looked interesting. So I ordered it on Netflix and then promptly forgot what it was about or why I ever wanted to see it. So I kept sliding it down on the list (trust, mistrust) until, finally, I forgot to manage my list and it came to the house. That can happen, as you know.
John Waters and Andrew Moore put together a film about the artist, Ray Johnson, that leaves you wondering which is better--Ray Johnson--or the movie? The answer is --both. Okay, Ray Johnson was, well, Ray Johnson. The movie is a Ray Johnson motico. On one level it plays as a retrospective of Ray's live and his art. On another level it plays out as a totally noir B detective movie. More like a noir detective documentary. (Remember Dragnet?) It's Dragnet in an exquisitly "Ray" way. Ray Johnson was not an outsider artist. He knew everyone in the arts, and everyone knew him. But in an important sense he was an outsider artist. He was outside of everything. Hilarious interviews with friends who tried to buy some of his art work. The negotiations over the sales became bigger than the art. And the art is stunning. Film footage of Ray at a suburban garden party-episodes and also on his "foot" period. He drew and collaged feet for a long time. Finally he rented a helicoper and dropped "foot-long" hot dogs over Long Island. What a fabulous movie this is.

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Portrait of a fascinating enigma

More than one person interviewed in this fascinating documentary states that no one really knew Ray Johnson. The film certainly does nothing to dispel that notion. Through interviews, archival footage, photos, and shots of his art, Johnson is presented as the ultimate man of mystery. We get as great sense of what Johnson looked like simply because he seems to have loved being photographed and the film shows hundreds of photos taken of him by various friends. Today, he might have put up a webcam in his living room so as to expand the number of viewers of his life. And indeed, one of the suggestions of the film is that Johnson was always performing. The most disturbing issue raised is whether Johnson drowned himself as part of a bizarre piece of performance art. The film ends with no definite conclusion, but the possibility definitely looms in the end that he did.

Some other reviewers talk of whether the film will restore (enthrone?) Johnson among the pantheon of American artists. I hope not. I find pop art and the collagists interesting, but apart from Joseph Cornell, who was a major inspiration for them, I don't find many of them to be truly great artists. Their actual works of art seem geared more toward starting conversations and debates than an actual engagement with their productions. Nothing that I saw of Johnson's art made me feel that he was a major artist. Interesting? Yes. Fascinating? Indeed. But his art is too opaque to enjoin the kind of interaction you can get from artists like Jasper Johns or Mark Rothko or the aforementioned Cornell.

Nonetheless, while I don't view Ray Johnson as a major artist he clearly was a well known figure among the New York art scene and it is clearly good to know more about him. But if anything, rather than proving why Johnson was a major artist, I think the documentary shows why he was not. He simply did not seem to connect emotionally with people. He did not some across as warm or especially engaging. In the video segments in which he appeared, he seems almost aggressive in keeping the viewer at arms length. And the video scenes from his house at the end reinforce all this. His home consisted of nothing but shelves holding an enormous number of items boxed up. His books were not on shelves, but stacked on top of each other against walls. He had no furniture to speak of and his walls largely devoid of artwork, strange for an artist.

In the end, Ray Johnson emerges as a unsolvable puzzle. Did he kill himself as performance art? I have no idea, though I would not dismiss the idea as impossible. It does, however, make more sense than the simple suggestion that he committed suicide because he was unhappy. But in the end, who knows?

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Interesting

This is an interesting documentary on a fascinating subject, but I nearly had to stop watching several times because the music/drums on the soundtrack are completely irritating. At one point I could barely hear the interviewee because the drums were so loud and distracting. I wish I could watch this piece without the music soundtrack.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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