Jim Clark

Jim Clark Autobiography, Excerpts


Jim was born and raised in California. His parents were from Oklahoma.

Chapter 1: CALIFORNIA/OKLAHOMA (1943)

My parents were married sixteen days after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. It was just before Christmas, 1941, in a little town in Oklahoma. She was almost 19. He was barely 20.

Their first and only child, I was born in a hospital in April, 1943. It was Charles Baudelaire's 122nd birthday.

Since there were no little boys to play with in the neighborhood, I played with little girls. I crawled around under the house with the little girl across the street, and thought she was ever so nice.
Mother soon voiced her misgivings: "If you only play with girls, people will think you're a sissy."

I wasn’t interested in boy toys or girl toys, or gender-linked clothing and hairdos. No trains, trucks, guns, and dolls for me. I wanted LIVE toys. I’d never been occupied with the concept of “identity.” I was a spiritually independent entity, which felt no need to label itself.

I’d learned from Mother that “sissy” the S-word, was used to threaten, humiliate and indoctrinate children with impunity. How many sensitive, vulnerable young queers remembered the first time that word was used to undermine their self-esteem, or worse? I found it as insidious as the N-word, and especially damaging to children.

I was simply told I was a boy, and a Christian, and I tried to conform to their worldview, until it got in my way at puberty. Then it became a question of what I wanted, not what I was.

Beadwork, a classical post-Columbian Indian art form, was an arts-and-crafts fad in the late forties. I got a little loom and started producing watchbands, rings and amulets like crazy.
Already as a child, I had old hands - not only in appearance, but in practice. They always seemed to be under my control, unlike most of the children around me. "He's so patient," grown-ups used to say as they watched me busy at my beadwork.

I wanted to be an "artist" from a very early age. Expressing that wish to my parents one evening, Mother said, "No you don't, honey, artists are poor and live in attics."
That didn't prevent me from drawing. I was obsessive in my choice of subject matter. I produced a series of drawings of long-tailed fantasy birds I called "angel birds" - all virtually the same except for the color combinations.

Once, as I left Kindergarten alone, I was suddenly punched in the stomach by an aggressive older boy for no reason. At the time, the boy was referred to as a "pachuco," the only time I ever heard the word used. I think a pachuco was a kind of Mexican punk. It took the wind out of me, and it scared me. I was unfamiliar with wanton violence. Being an only child, I wasn't used to being attacked at all. Aggression and competition were not part of my play-package. For me, play was a solitary, investigative activity.

Back at school in California, I was working on another "series" in color crayons, of cowboys around a fire, for a long time, and understandably, the teacher wanted to see my talent directed towards something more interesting.
"That's very nice," she said, "but don't you think you should try something besides cowboys?" I wasn't used to being criticized, and I didn't like it. I did follow her advice, however. I went back into birds - but I never forgave her, even after I'd forgotten her. On my report card, she wrote:
“Jimmy is a very quiet cooperative boy. His interests are confined to one or two activities, but I believe first grade work will develop new interests. His artwork is far above his grade level.”

My first grade teacher, Mrs. Seals, wasn't critical. She gave me a bird book that was an endless source of inspiration, and wrote on my report card:
“His drawings and coloring are splendid. Jimmy is a wonderful reader. He has been a very quiet, studious boy this semester.”

An introspective child, I loved browsing through the encyclopedia. I found anthropology, botany, and zoology especially fascinating. I read romantic novels written from the point of view of various predatory animals, identifying with them in their righteous but hopeless struggle to survive in Man's world. I also read Nancy Drew mystery novels.

When the second grade ended in June, 1951, my teacher, Mrs. Hines, wrote:
“He is a bird lover and has been having a grand time drawing beautiful bird pictures. It has been so nice having Jimmy in my room this year. He will be a good third grader.”

I was probably nine when I had a memorable educational experience at school. The subject that afternoon was the history of Mexico. It was only one day's lesson, less than an hour, but it would stay with me for the rest of my life. I read how blackened priests cut the living hearts out of willing sacrificial victims on top of splendid pyramids. There were pictures of magnificent feather-headdresses and shields. The Aztecs predicted the date of their own conquest, and accepted it as their inevitable destiny. They knew the Plumed Serpent would return from the East, in the form of a bearded man, to destroy the world as they knew it, and create a new order.
I left the classroom for recess that day in a heightened state of awareness. The horror of human sacrifice, the pageant, the absolute OTHERNESS of the Aztec civilization had gripped my mind. It had MAGIC. The names were wonderfully evocative: Montezuma. Quetzalcoatl. Tenochtitlán. Mexico.

I was almost ten when Daddy went to El Paso, Texas, to do a training course, and Mother decided to spend the time in Oklahoma with her family. I could finish the fourth grade there. I would remember it as the happiest time of my childhood, if not my life.
It was there that I had my first taste of being a "foreigner," and I loved it. In that tiny farming community, somebody from as far away as California was a rarity, almost a STAR.

It was 1953, and there were still snowy owls hiding in thickets on Oklahoma farms. Once Dicky and I tracked one with our BB guns, but we lost it. Those guns, given to us to make us men, made us the scourge of the bird world that spring. Yet we loved the things we killed. I didn't shoot birds to kill them, but to "take possession" of them, much as some serial killers described their feelings towards their victims. I felt the stirrings of a pubescent conscience when I killed a little red, yellow, green, and blue bird, wondering if it might be the last of its kind. Regret, and increased identification with the victim, would come later. I was barely ten.

The teacher, Mrs. Christensen, wrote on my report card:
“Jimmy needs help in developing a more responsible attitude toward group activities. We would appreciate his contributions in group discussions, as he has good ideas and interesting hobbies. He needs particular help in developing self-confidence so that he can contribute in group discussions.”

We'd discovered a source of pleasure, and it surprised me how easily Tom could give it up. Parental disapproval would never have made me stop. Deception came more easily to me than abstinence. Why shouldn't I do what I wanted, if it wasn't hurting anybody? It all seemed to be a question of REPUTATION, and being "queer," like being a "sissy," was something to be ashamed of. I would simply have to be more careful.

It was becoming painfully clear, at eleven, that the bright future promised by family and church had a very big IF attached. If you denied your instincts, if you submitted to their will, if you lied, if you pretended, if you didn't get caught, you could win their approval - as a reward for your hypocrisy.

Suddenly I was an outsider. I began to question the ultimate answer, the ultimate authority: God.
I realized I was on my own, and it was just as well, since the God they worshipped would send me to hell. I knew there were other gods, all with their own instruction manuals, and proceeded to look for one who would embrace me as I was.

Zoroastrianism appealed to me. It was exotic, and I liked the idea of feeding the dead to vultures. It was a supremely ecological way of dealing with the deceased. It had more aesthetic appeal than burial, and was symbolically satisfying. Instead of confining the spirit in a dark, dreadful coffin, one helped it skyward in an act of ornithological largesse.

The "Beatnik" movement exerted a strong influence on Julie, and through her, on me. We took a pottery course at school and loved it. I even won a prize at a local arts fair for one of my creations - a big amorphic blob of clay posing as a vase, glazed and decorated with pink and blue curlicues. The best thing about it was its title (supplied by René - and it lived up to it): Etruscan Decadence.

Back in Vallejo, at lunch in the school cafeteria, Julie and I often sat at the "Black Table," and had friendly relations with a number of black students. At an age where clique-forming and social status took on obsessive proportions, our example of voluntary downward mobility was considered “weird.”

***
At the age of 16, Jim met R.C. Gorman who became a major influence on his artistic sensibilities and development.

Chapter 2: GORMAN (1959)

Although his name didn't sound very Indian, Gorman was a real Navajo, raised on a reservation. He spoke English with a slight accent. He had befriended Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Mexico.
Gorman painted obsessively, while I watched and asked questions, or painted myself. His comments and patient guidance helped me enormously. Every second with Gorman was a learning experience. Through him, the world opened up to me. I no longer felt like one of a kind.

…. Gorman introduced me to a multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-gendered adult world. A world of drag shows, alcohol, strip-joints and low-life. The world of ART.

***
In 1962, at the age of 19, Jim traveled to Europe, and ended up staying two years in Sweden. Then in 1964, he returned to the USA to study at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque.

Chapter 5: Albuquerque (1964)

On the way back to California, Mother and Doug deposited me at the men's dormitory of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
I felt totally alienated. I soon figured out who the other campus misfits were, and noticed they were all listening to Bob Dylan and discovering marijuana.

I was rendered ecstatic by the "discovery" of Arab dance music - later I would expand the experience to embrace different genres. Talking about music wasn't easy for me, but I was sensitive to it. I didn't know WHAT I was listening to, much less what chord it was in. It just felt good.
Indian music, however exotic, had something pure about it, and the melodies were familiar. But there was something I perceived as deliciously "dirty" about Arab music. The secret was probably in the half-tones, the sliding scale. Those "notes between the notes" gave me a frisson - maybe it was something like the “dirtiness” Arne heard in English diphthongs. Little did I know how much that culture would influence me later.

I would often ponder the relationship between racial preference and racism. I would relentlessly analyze my own feelings on the subject, and conclude that there was no hope for mankind. It required a high state of enlightenment to be capable of simply enjoying all creatures, without submitting to a system of preferences that excludes "undesirable" species as “weeds.”

***
In 1965, Jim was accepted to the University of Stockholm, where he stayed until 1966, when he moved for a short time to Paris.

Chapter 8: Paris (1966)

Artistically, I wasn't very active that winter. My thoughts were vacillating between pop and psychedelic. There was no money for material. I put pins in a large wooden board, and from every pin I hung a wrapper off a Swedish chocolate bar called "Pigall." The metallic blue and pink papers formed a shimmering surface that rippled in air currents, creating an almost kinetic effect.

As the psychedelic experience continued, I incorporated the popular influences of the sixties: art nouveau, Moghul miniatures, Tantric art. I painted my first circular mandala that year, in acrylic on canvas. I would paint eight during the ensuing years, and they would all sell.

***
In June of 1967, Jim returned to Stockholm.

Chapter 10: Stockholm (1968)

After that sumptuous meal we drove across town to one of Stockholm's most prestigious art academies, which had opened its doors to people who had nothing to do for Christmas. There, in addition to coffee and cakes, the guests were given art supplies to play with. There was even a room to sleep in, with mattresses on the floor.
I did a series of paintings in tempera, on paper, of models wearing outfits designed to look like condoms and genitalia. I was very pleased with some of them, but they were soon lost, and, try as I might, I couldn't recreate them.

That April I turned 26. The grand opening of Galleri Slum was scheduled for May 7th. It would feature work by Larry, Lee, Anders and myself. I'd done a quick portrait of Lee with her tongue sticking out, and glued a real fur collar onto it.
We plastered our posters all over town, and submitted one to the Modern Museum for its archives, announcing SLUM ART.
Sweden prided itself on the fact that it had no slums, so it was hardly surprising that Galleri Slum caused some controversy.

***
In 1970, Jim was forced by circumstances to leave Sweden. He fled to The Netherlands where he, like many others, sought refuge in Amsterdam. It was to be his home from then on.

Chapter 11: Amsterdam (1970)

I rarely had time for painting. When I did, I tended to glorify the obscure, as if probing the shadows of my world and my language - vacuuming the dark, dusty corners of my mind.
Later, I would require more light, and strive for clarity. My goal had never been, and would never be, to reach the "masses," since they didn't like me anyway. I didn't subscribe to the popular theory that they just needed more money and a better education to reach enlightenment. Of course, it would help.

***
After living at various addresses in Amsterdam, Jim finally found an environment that suited his needs and temperament: the old Wilhelmina Gasthuis (WG).

Chapter 32: WG (1983)

Apartments designed for families gave me the horrors. So did hospitals, but this wasn't a hospital anymore. It was an oasis of art, nestled among Victorian gardens that were designed to heal, … an artists' colony, and I would move in with a retinue of 17 mice, one pregnant, two tropical fish and a Japanese newt.
Our new home, a huge building housing about 100 artists and other misfits, proved to be very stimulating. On the front of the building, VROUWEN-KLINIEK was written in large letters. “Women’s Ward.” Because it was no longer true, it was Dada. I loved it.