Curiosa: Celebrity Relics, Historical Fossils, and Other Metamorphic Rubbish

Barton Benes imbues mundane objects with the mystical power of holy relics. He assembles modern-day curiosity cabinets, or reliquaries, out of everyday items that have been touched by fame. From such bizarre celebrity-owned articles as Madonna's panties, Bill Clinton's throat lozenge, O. J. Simpson's glove, Larry Hagman's gallstone, and glass from the car crash in which Princess Diana died, Barton Benes creates an art that is as arresting as it is unique.

Whether his creativity is fueled by discards with the pedigree of fame or infamy, such as a Frank Sinatra fingernail clipping or the Son of Sam's hair, or by unusual and strange objects from human and natural history, such as mummy dust, Benes mounts and labels the items and assembles them into mini-museums that are, as this book shows, alternately provocative, disturbing, and amusing, but always compelling. Benes supplies humorous captions that tell the quirky history of each piece, and John Berendt, best-selling author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, writes an insightful introduction on Benes's art and discusses his own fascination with it.

In the idiosyncratic tradition of Joseph Cornell and Ray Johnson, Benes has established his own school of art, one founded on obsessive assemblage. A born collector-"I have always been afraid of losing things"-Benes leaves no gallstone (see page 59 for Larry Hagman's) unturned in his acquisition of odd objets. The artist's fastidious catalogue recalls crime-scene investigations and Albertus Seba's Cabinet of Natural Curiosities. Whereas the 19th-century pharmacist recorded rare flora and fauna, Benes preserves the leavings of celebrity culture-Nancy Reagan's chocolate-souffl‚ stained napkin, Bill Clinton's half-sucked throat lozenge, Roy Rogers's nasal douche. Macabre, witty and earnest, the book offers readers the guilty pleasure of supermarket tabloids and the brooding quirkiness of a modern-day Vanitas. The most mundane object-a desiccated cookie baked by Katharine Hepburn, for example-labeled and squared in its wooden cubbyhole, looks just like art, but also foretells decay. Leavening the reliquary's morbidity are anecdotes of stealthy acquisition-the artist surreptitiously pocketing Ed Koch's dinner fork, friends thieving a twig from Mao Tse-tung's broom, a postal worker retrieving a dead bird that flew into Elizabeth Taylor's window. The book itself, beautifully designed, promises to be a poignant keepsake for connoisseurs of the absurd. Warhol would have loved it; Benes has indexed a celluloid strip from Empire. And Berendt (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) has contributed not only the introduction but also the aforementioned Rogers keepsake. 110 full-color illus.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.