This project began with the making of a single, manipulated silk-screened image of an Arnold Schoenberg photo-portrait by Man Ray. (See with other images.) I chose Schoenberg not only for his musical importance but also because he seemed to be and represent a particular type of personality that might lend itself to the artistic treatment I was interested in.  Another person might have been Freud. In the end I chose Schoenberg because of his connection to music. In my view, it is people such as these two who provide the necessary real importance as well as their own sense of self-importance who can be both satirized and respected in equal measure.

They, in effect, can absorb and transcend anything that is directed at them; be it praise or caricature. The latter certainly only makes sense when it is directed at someone of note and true stature. I don't remember the germination of my original intention to do this work. The original photo-silk screen, printed in black ink only was done by three women — Anita Wetzel, Tatana Kellnor, and Barbara Leoff Burge, a friend of mine living in New Paltz, New York — who created the Women's Studio Workshop in Rosendale, New York (www.wsworkshop.org). I began these pieces at a time while living in New York City after I had already been using spray paint for another show to make canvases for an installation at Hallwalls Gallery in Buffalo.  The idea of graffiti in general, and graffiti used to deface and transform something already in existence, was probably the main impetus for this work.  It also represented, I think, my, shall we say, ambivalent feelings toward the contemporary music establishment and music scene in New York, at that moment in general.

Most of these works were painted while I was in residence at the MacDowell Colony. Some of them were shown in various venues in New York City and later, in two shows La Jolla, Ca. There were approximately 25 works in the original series; 3 with oil paint in the mid-late '80s; and 11 pieces done around 1990 using spray paint and mixed media. (These last pieces had really nothing whatsoever to with Schoenberg.}  The parallax distortion in some of the images from the original series (as they are seen here on the website) comes from badly shot slides. All of pieces, each measuring 30 X 22 inches, were done on arches printing paper.  At some point in the early-mid 1980's, Kenneth Gaburo published, along with some of my notated music, a folio containing some of the work from the original series through his Lingua Press.  The folio came in a small box; the images reproduced with a color Xerox process. I never quite understood his interest in the images printed in this manner, whereas I did understand his interest in the idea of the work itself.  It is possible that some of these folios are still available from Frogpeak Music.