feminist parable, even though it seems obvious that sexual bias played a determining role in the perception of Burden’s work. And yet, each of her masks seemed to uncover a different aspect of her imagination, and it is not unfair to say that the trajectory of her artistic experimentation became a movement toward an increasing and almost sinister ambiguity.
Anton Tish, who has disappeared from the art world entirely, seems to have been little more than a puppet. Phineas Eldridge, on the other hand, brought his own searing charm to The Suffocation Rooms they worked on together. He, too, has retired from art but not from speaking out, and his letter to Art Lights remains, to my mind, not only a tribute to Burden, the woman, but a perspicacious reading of her work.
Burden’s involvement with Rune is, at least to me, both sad and mysterious. The controversy over his apparent suicide and the antics of Oswald Case, whose book Martyred for Art turns Rune into the genius-celebrity of a new technological era, have only blurred the real issues. It is true that four of the window pieces cannot be absolutely attributed to Burden, and there are those who insist they belong to Rune. The final verdict has not been made, and the uncertainty may continue for quite some time, if not forever. Nevertheless, a black-and-white treatment of the Burden-Rune story is uncalled for. It leads to mythmaking at its worst: The wish supplants the evidence. It ignores Burden’s autobiographical writings, which make a strong case for out-and-out theft of some of her pieces by someone, possibly Rune. In a notebook entry from September 12, 2003, she wrote, “Four works have vanished from the studio overnight. I am desperate.” Why would she write this if it weren’t true? Case’s theory is that Burden framed Rune by leaving written records that strongly hint at his malfeasance and that she did it out of envy and spite. Case relies heavily on what Rune told him, and he had access to almost none of Burden’s papers when he wrote his book. He quotes a single sentence taken from three pages of her writing that were published in the spring issue of Dexterity (2008), the year of her retrospective at Grace. “It is so easy for Rune to shine. Where does that effortlessness come from? How do people acquire it? He is so light. I am earthbound, a Caliban to his Ariel.” This is hardly proof of some Machiavellian plan to poach another artist’s career.
I have only one personal note to contribute. When I saw The History of Western Art , supposedly the work of Anton Tish, at the Clark Gallery, I was struck by a passage etched into Venus’s inner thigh:
Have not girls done as much for the doll?—the doll—yes, target of things past and to come? The last doll, given to age, is the girl who should have been a boy, and the boy who should have been a girl! The love of that last doll was foreshadowed in that love of the first. The doll and the immature have something right about them, the doll because it resembles but does not contain life, and the third sex because it contains life but resembles the doll.
It is from Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, a difficult, strange little novel. To be honest, I am not at all sure what is meant by this meditation on dolls, but I do know that in not one but in three of the works in her second show, Burden included quotes from that particular book. No one has exclusive rights to quote from Nightwood . Still, it struck me as curious, and then, when I looked inside the boxes that circled the large Venus sculpture, the little scenes bore such strong similarities to Burden’s early rooms with their small figures and oblique narratives that I felt sure Tish must have seen her pieces. Influences are normal, but these looked like the development of that earlier work, and I was bothered by the thought that he might have looted from works she had never shown. Not a single reviewer mentioned Burden.
Through the son of a friend who knew
Anton Tish, who has disappeared from the art world entirely, seems to have been little more than a puppet. Phineas Eldridge, on the other hand, brought his own searing charm to The Suffocation Rooms they worked on together. He, too, has retired from art but not from speaking out, and his letter to Art Lights remains, to my mind, not only a tribute to Burden, the woman, but a perspicacious reading of her work.
Burden’s involvement with Rune is, at least to me, both sad and mysterious. The controversy over his apparent suicide and the antics of Oswald Case, whose book Martyred for Art turns Rune into the genius-celebrity of a new technological era, have only blurred the real issues. It is true that four of the window pieces cannot be absolutely attributed to Burden, and there are those who insist they belong to Rune. The final verdict has not been made, and the uncertainty may continue for quite some time, if not forever. Nevertheless, a black-and-white treatment of the Burden-Rune story is uncalled for. It leads to mythmaking at its worst: The wish supplants the evidence. It ignores Burden’s autobiographical writings, which make a strong case for out-and-out theft of some of her pieces by someone, possibly Rune. In a notebook entry from September 12, 2003, she wrote, “Four works have vanished from the studio overnight. I am desperate.” Why would she write this if it weren’t true? Case’s theory is that Burden framed Rune by leaving written records that strongly hint at his malfeasance and that she did it out of envy and spite. Case relies heavily on what Rune told him, and he had access to almost none of Burden’s papers when he wrote his book. He quotes a single sentence taken from three pages of her writing that were published in the spring issue of Dexterity (2008), the year of her retrospective at Grace. “It is so easy for Rune to shine. Where does that effortlessness come from? How do people acquire it? He is so light. I am earthbound, a Caliban to his Ariel.” This is hardly proof of some Machiavellian plan to poach another artist’s career.
I have only one personal note to contribute. When I saw The History of Western Art , supposedly the work of Anton Tish, at the Clark Gallery, I was struck by a passage etched into Venus’s inner thigh:
Have not girls done as much for the doll?—the doll—yes, target of things past and to come? The last doll, given to age, is the girl who should have been a boy, and the boy who should have been a girl! The love of that last doll was foreshadowed in that love of the first. The doll and the immature have something right about them, the doll because it resembles but does not contain life, and the third sex because it contains life but resembles the doll.
It is from Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, a difficult, strange little novel. To be honest, I am not at all sure what is meant by this meditation on dolls, but I do know that in not one but in three of the works in her second show, Burden included quotes from that particular book. No one has exclusive rights to quote from Nightwood . Still, it struck me as curious, and then, when I looked inside the boxes that circled the large Venus sculpture, the little scenes bore such strong similarities to Burden’s early rooms with their small figures and oblique narratives that I felt sure Tish must have seen her pieces. Influences are normal, but these looked like the development of that earlier work, and I was bothered by the thought that he might have looted from works she had never shown. Not a single reviewer mentioned Burden.
Through the son of a friend who knew
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