\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Theknologies <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n During this Great Recession, which comes with an art slump as well as an economic one, it is clear that during the last decade, not only did so-called theory not pay off, but that art sank, as did aesthetics. What I now call the tragic academic — fourth generation neo-CONceptualism, neo-Pop,\u00a0 <\/span>and re-inSTALLation art — is a bore. Painting is still in hiding. Sculpture, dead. Bloggers lament that there are no more art movements. Theorists cheer, not realizing that now they have nothing to deconstruct.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n There have indeed been other periods in history that produced little great art and perhaps no great art at all. We comb the Middle Ages and find — literature! And perhaps a tapestry that might have survived. An altar<\/span><\/p>\n here and there. Architecture. Wish we could have similar results now, but look, dear friend, at The New York Review of Books. It will really make you weep. Look at the art in Chelsea galleries, and, alas, most museum shows of living artists.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n But the good news is that this very same slump allows a long-required revision of the cannon, of those rankings created by commerce rather than aesthetics, of art history determined by (yes) commerce. So depleted has art become in this past decade that just to keep the wheels rolling and the machinery oiled, revisionism has become the one and only trend. The vacuum must be filled. Not all such efforts will succeed, but much-needed revisionism in art (perhaps the arts, plural)\u00a0is\u00a0coming\u00a0out of The Big Slump. What have we unfairly cast aside? What have we scorned, misinterpreted?\u00a0 <\/span>What have we avoided.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Until “Paul Thek, Diver” opened this fall at the Whitney (to Jan. 9, 2011), only in outdated textbooks would you know of Thek. And then for his meat boxes and The Tomb<\/i>. Most of his European sojourn was off the map and the works after his return to New York have been, with some justification, dismissed as fey.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The missing years of Paul Thek — Middle Thek, I suppose — were the golden\u00a0 <\/span>years. This is now clear, thanks to the current retrospective. Thek’s reputation is best served by the installations he made in Europe after\u00a0his fake-meat\u00a0 <\/span>“Technological Reliquaries” had come to a dead end in the U.S. and before his ill-starred 1976 return to New York.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The brave Whitney catalog shows him with his flaws exposed. How then do we deal with a self-destructive, impulsive, erratic artist? His brush with fame? His fall from grace? We cannot separate the art from the man or from the art world of the time. We cannot separate the art from its reception. And then there is the perennial problem of ephemeralization. How can we grasp what was behind the remaining photos and fragments? These are only some of the critical challenges worth tackling, because the art is sometimes brilliant and always emotional.<\/span><\/p>\n \n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n Birth of a Star<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/b><\/span><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n \n Thek’s meat-box cul-de-sac was sealed by The Tomb <\/i>(1967), a faux-minimalist geometric enclosure containing a latex cast of the artist’s\u00a0 <\/span>body altered to look truly ghastly. It was referred to in the press as The Death of a Hippie<\/i> or simply The Hippie<\/i>. It was even on the cover of the Village Voice, thanks to photographer Fred McDarrah.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n In 1981, Thek wrote in a letter to a friend, in regard to his Hippie<\/i>: “I really don’t want to have to do that piece AGAIN! Oh God no! Imagine having to bury yourself over and over.” After it was exhibited that year in Cologne, Thek refused to accept his dead puppet, his life-size Ken doll, his dozing zombie, from the shippers.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Thek turned his back at last on his pseudo-doppelganger, his latex alter-ego, his frozen golem. His notorious horror-movie Hippie<\/i>, wearing pink clothes, with chopped-off fingers, bloated lips, and stringy, shoulder-length hair, languished in some warehouse of undeliverables, rejected shipments, nixed crates, orphaned boxes, still wearing the necklace partially fashioned out of Thek’s own locks.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Seems like Thek had a bad temper and often acted impulsively. Not a good sign.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Gone. Only photos left now. The dead hippie died, but became yet another art-world legend. Nothing becomes a legend most than a lost or destroyed artwork, particularly if it has been well-documented. <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n In a whirlwind of good taste, The Tomb<\/i> is not recreated at the Whitney, but — as befitting an icon — is represented by photos and ephemera. This is a disappointment, until you think about it. In Thek’s meat period, death is the theme, mixed with fallen warriors: Warrior’s Arm<\/i> (1966) and Warrior’s Leg<\/i> (1966-67). Dismemberment. Ancient Rome. Vietnam. Remember Vietnam? We hardly remember the invasion of Iraq.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \n <\/b><\/p>\n <\/b><\/p>\n <\/b><\/p>\n <\/b><\/p>\n <\/b><\/p>\n <\/b><\/p>\n <\/b><\/p>\n <\/b><\/p>\n <\/b><\/p>\n <\/b><\/p>\n <\/b><\/p>\n The Exile’s Inexplicable Return: Look Homeward, Angel<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n When our exile returned in 1976, the art world had still not recovered from the stock-market crash two years before. In what might have been a game-changer, Thek’s 1977 show at the ICA Philadelphia, commandeered by Suzanne Delehanty, went ignored. You know the joke: I went to Philadelphia but it was closed. Yet Delehanty’s saintly survey was ignored not because it was where it was, but because the work was too strange, off-the-map, and possibly too Catholic. It now looks like Delehanty was the saint, not Thek. He himself complained that Delehanty in the catalog emphasized his German-American Catholic roots and Catholic symbolism too much. Complain, complain. <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Some who knew him have reported that he later tried to deny his homosexuality too.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Of course, things back then were not as free as now, when we can be more open, I hope — unless you happen to be a United States Marine.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n He kept on making art, continued to draw and write in his notebooks, and even showed some paintings on newspaper pages and, ripped from context, Pied Piper bronzes he had made in Europe. He hung his paintings low on the wall, fronting them with child’s chairs. Very sweet. Reformed Thek? But none of this made a dent.<\/span><\/p>\n \n \n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n After his Euro-sojourn, he was plagued by rage. There weren’t meds then for rage. Some have suggested that his rage was caused by undiagnosed and\/or unacknowledged HIV\/AIDS, which at that time presented little hope of survival. HIV sometimes directly attacks the brain cells, resulting\u00a0 <\/span>in psychosis. But apparently he did not know he was HIV positive until a year before his death in 1988.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n If that was the case, we cannot blame him for his behavior nor romanticize it.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n He surely felt he had been abandoned by celebrated friends such as the writer Susan Sontag, who years before had dedicated her popular collection of essays, Against Interpretation, <\/i>to him — of all people. Their odd relationship was always a deep mystery to me. Miss Ice Queen photographed well and we all know that those who are photogenic have a better chance at fame. She stood firmly in the closet. In her writings she was often wrong, simplistic, and entirely too self-confident. Nevertheless, I suppose I have to say she is sorely missed, as perhaps the last\u00a0 <\/span>popularizing proponent of the intellectual life. <\/span><\/p>\n \n![\"Peter](\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artopia\/Peter%20Hujar%27s%20Thek%20photo.jpg\")
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n![\"1g](\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artopia\/1g%20Paul%20Thek%20%281933-1988%29%20%28from%20the%20Series%20%E2%80%9ETechnological%20Reiquaries%E2%80%9C%29%2C%20%20%201966.jpg\")
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n![\"Big](\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artopia\/Big%20Hippiepix.jpg\")
<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n![\"arm1967.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artopia\/arm1967.jpg\")
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n![\"chairs.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artopia\/chairs.jpg\")
<\/span><\/span><\/span>Why this lapse into obscurity? Why, in the first place, had he returned? Not a clue is offered in the otherwise exemplary catalog. <\/span><\/p>\n