November 22, 1991 (I was 47)
Art
Work
Twenty-eight years after
that gray day at the tv in Minnesota
(That thankless November
began the coldest of winters.)
I’m in Washington D.C.
ignoring gray rain,
avoiding wet turf at
Arlington Cemetery, and its flame,
standing in the Hirshhorn
Gallery, second floor near the escalator.
A Robert Motherwell collage
done in November of ‘73
looks at first flippant- a
crude presidential portrait
torn from packaging
cardboard with two labels attached-
a baggage sticker from JFK
airport
and directly above it an
inverted mailing lablel
addressed to Motherwell in
N.Y. from a California company
called Gemini.
A seam of packing tape
bisects the two labels.
The mailing label is part
of the right temple of the President’s profile.
The JFK sticker is on his
right cheek.
(If the taped seam were
folded upon itself,
the label and the sticker
would meet face to face.)
The shoulders and the chest
of the forward leaning figure
are formed entirely as a
larged painted red heart
beneath the cardboard head.
The figure is surrounded by
rough-brushed yellow-brown.
Dry brushstrokes in the
background color imply the Kennedy hair
around the pasteboard face.
His corrugated eye was
meticulously torn,
and then I notice the
horrible familiarity
of that forward leaning
pose.
And isn’t that a big D
brushed in behind the President’s head?
And those spatters of
darker brown in front of the throat,
and that faintly indicated
right arm reaching
with the hand to the
throat.
And the packing tape seam
is at the flap
of the awful grassy knoll
wound.
And Motherwell’s name is
above the seam
though it is still,
at this moment, attached,
and the piece
is called Gemini.
