And the diamond twinkle in your eye is the only wedding ring I’ll buy you Muriel
In 1962, David Hammons moved to Los Angeles, where, after a halfhearted foray into commercial art, he attended the Chouinard Art Institute (later CalArts). He became excited by the antagonistic avant-gardism of L.A.-based international artists such as Bruce Nauman and Chris Burden. He joined a scene that was both laid-back and irascible. “If you showed more often than every three years, no one took you seriously,” he said. “Some people worked and worked and never showed at all. That’s what I come from.” (…)
At one point during our meanderings, Hammons went into a bodega on First Avenue and bought a box of rice. A few minutes later, as we were passing a church, he said, “Watch this,” and tossed a few handfuls of grain on the steps. I said, “Who’s getting married?” He said, “The wedding was earlier. We missed it.” At the time, I found the stunt hokey, but now I can’t shake a vision of that forlorn bit of evidence of a wedding that never took place. Hammons married young, and he has two adult children. Divorced in the early seventies, he has never remarried. “As an artist, you have to keep reinventing yourself,” he said. “In a marriage, you have to be consistent. It’s difficult.”
artwork { David Hammons, Out of Bounds, 1995-96 | dirt on paper in artist’s frame, with basketball | MoMA }
