Whitehot Magazine
"The Best Art In The World"
By JOSEPH NECHVATAL, December 2021
The death of a poet, art writer and art curator divulges a paradox. He was an uncommon person—his diction and tone of voice alone were peculiar—with a common name. It was Alan Jones. Born October 8th 1949 in Portland Oregon, he experienced his death in Venice this year on August 21st.
Jones was the kind of elusive poetic person that you moved to New York City for: a funny raconteur (story teller) with serious art historical chops. He was a generous promoter of artists and poets—thus influential—while also quite a flippant and ironic character. For an example of his astuteness, when the performance artist Colette first risked losing her live-in, flamboyant installation, it was Jones who brought in Leo Castelli to the rescue. Jones was good friends with Jeff Koons (he attended the 1991 wedding of Cicciolina and Koons), as well as Donald Baechler, Alain Jacquet, Sue Etkin, Peter Fend, Ron Gorchov, Peter Nadin, Richard Prince, poet Raymond Foye, Peter Schuyff, Kevin Clarke, Adrian Dannatt, Billy Copley, Taro Suzuki, designer Elisabeth Cannon, Tricia Collins, Don Munroe, Warhol Factory associate Vincent Freemont, Wolfgang Staehle and Steven Pollock, amongst many others. Jones wrote regularly for Arts, Teme Celeste and the French art magazine Galleries, which published an early Koons interview/article by Jones. He also was an active curator, organizing the Urrealism show at Paul Kasmin and the After Millet show at Phillipe Briet, a French gallery owner and publisher passionate about the work of Beauford Delaney.
Jones had settled in New York in1976, and stayed for many years, while remaining deeply bi-continental. In the early-1980s he was often found in the East Village at the now forgotten RedBar—an art bar once at 116 First Avenue at Seventh Street run by filmmakers Ralf Mann and Jamie Kaufmann where we neo-conceptualists would hang out and hang our work. Jones occasionally curated there, and could always be counted on to engage with you in witty repartee. He had a whiff of Jimmy Stewart about him, and was someone you would meet again and again at art parties, and while tipsy, could carry on a conversation with you about Nagy, Nabokov and Nijinsky (just one example, I remember).
Jones was the publisher of the poetry magazine Address (1987) and a contributing editor of Arts Magazine. His book of poems and epigrams, Long After Hannibal Had Passed With Elephants, that was written somewhat in the style of Catullus (the Latin poet of the late-Roman Republic who wrote in a personal, humorous, and emotional style; frequently using hyperbole, anaphora, alliteration, and diminutives) was published by his long-time friend, the poet and art writer Richard Milazzo. It was the first in Milazzo’s seminal Edgewise Press series, and is to be cherished.
Jones moved back to Europe in 1993, first Paris, where I caught up with him again in 1995 at the home of his then bride Victoire Schlumberger. I recall a wonderful small dinner that took place under two prune and red Rothko paintings there. But the marriage did not last long and Jones moved to Italy and I never saw him again. He is buried in Venice now, survived by his long-time partner, the filmmaker Friederike Schaefer.
Jones was fluent in French, Italian and Latin, the latter which he interspersed in his poetry that echoed his admiration for that of Ezra Pound and the Imagist style. It was also this love of Pound that prompted his multiple travels to Japan.
Jones had lived on the beach in Nice, worked in a bank at Frankfurt-am-Main, and stayed for a spell in Pavia, Italy, informally extending his education at the University of Pavia. In Milan he worked at Galleria Marconi, Galleria Blu and Galleria Il Milione and in Kyoto Japan he interviewed film-maker, ceramicist and installation artist Hiroshi Teshigahara for a catalogue for Teshigahara’s 1992 show held at Larry Gagosian and Leo Castelli’s joint gallery at 65 Thompson Street. Jones also curated the first important pop-up exhibition in NY during the 1990’s. Along with producers Steven Pollock and Natalie Rivera, he staged an exhibition at a mini-mall on Broadway, next to the former New Museum that mimicked an Art Fair—selling cheap purses and shoes with works by artists BEN, Sal Scarpitta, Alan Jacquet, Jean Dupey and Allen Rupensberg, amongst others.
Jones was very active in the Italian art world with many collaborations with Studio d’ Arte Raffaelli in Trento (Trent). He contributed to the Italian periodical Art Tribune, for whom he wrote the obituary for fellow poet Rene Ricard. Jones also worked with Paolo Barozzi at Camponatto Editore in Milan, and curated the exhibition 9NEWYORK for Studio Raffaelli, which included works by Donald Baechler, Ross Bleckner, David Bowes, James Brown, Ronnie Cutrone, David Salle, Peter Schuyff, Philip Taaffe and Terry Winters. Jones was also active in 2019 at Rome University of Fine Arts as a lecturer on the American art world, that ranged from Leo Castelli to Jackson Pollock.
But Jones’ passing has gone unremarked in the art press. He has died relatively unnoticed by the art world, which is cruel, as he himself spoke and wrote much about others. (Another paradox.) Jones was the co-author of The Art Dealers (1984) book, now in its fourth edition as The Art Dealers, Revised & Expanded: The Powers Behind the Scene Tell How the Art World Really Works that includes interviews with Betty Parsons, who early-on brought the work of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko to the public, Mary Boone, Annina Nosei and the legendary Leo Castelli. Jones would go on to write a book in Italian exclusively about Leo (as he was affectionately called by all) in 2007; Leo Castelli. L'italiano che inventò l'arte in America published by Castelvecchi.
To close this goodbye salute to the poet Alan Jones: I leave you with a short section from my upcoming long book of poetry Styling Sagaciousness : Oh Great No! that Punctum Books is publishing soon. Styling Sagaciousness is a death farce epic poem, divided into seven major sections, that follows up my sex farce epic poem book Destroyer of Naivetés (2015), also published by Punctum. WM
Misconducted Memento Mori and the Mystery Tradition
no
barbarous otherworldliness
no
smoldering ones deceived
no
no passion for androgyny
no ecstasy in the veins
no drinking of the nectar
of all gratuitous ire
goodbye dear
gratuitous humanitarian
no gratuitous euphoria here
taken loosely as fact
no lurking outside
the window
of four elements
no little secrets
kept
of darkened subtlety
no utterance lent
of voluptuous ornament
no cell receptors
subordinated
to passion
ceaseless go
no movement of the seed
in time
for jubilation row
no insert jubilation
no genetic inconveniency
no capricious pestilence
described round
the color of thy pee
and yet
acrimonious desires rage
for fatal sensuousness be
of maiden scents
behind the fence
dizzying down on one knee
a double game of celebrating
and mocking death
through skull fucking
hardly seems worth doing
but no no more ergo
to be had
reassuring to a lad
no teeming shift
and
dissembled
shout
of
oh my, he’s such a cad
no urge for images either
now
astride
the goat eye blind
no yield of viral particles
within that dirty mind
no capricious
cells
in search of bone
no discharges from the pressure
no platitudes
no painless flee
from that internal gush
no damsel of desideratum
like beautiful Bardot in Mépris
no modicum of blown-out hope
to put the world at ease
of unheard pleasure pots
no more
without
double breasted
insatiability
soil
dark
reaches towards the bed
to satisfy a need
nor balmy bottomless crevasses
a vex on ye
no more
no harmonious coded winks
to vex
like a toy
no fermented grapes
to vex ye still
no Bacchic inebriation
to sooth
to vex ye now
it cannot be
this darkness
no cruel humiliation
no fettering of the capricious hand
caught in flagrante
no deadening of thought
alas
no fléche phallique
tormenting ass
no cheeks smeared with menstrual blood
no tingling of the gonads
caught up in prosaic blunder bust
of that odd
so called material world
Joseph Nechvatal is an American artist and writer currently living in Paris. His The Viral Tempest limited edition art LP was recently published by Pentiments Records and his newest book of poetry, Styling Sagaciousness: Oh Great No!, by Punctum Books. His 1995 cyber-sex farce novella ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~venus©~Ñ~vibrator, even was published by Orbis Tertius Press in 2023.
view all articles from this author