Jonathan Levi

Study After Velásquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X – Francis Bacon

The main attraction of the 1948 Venice Biennale, the first after the War, was not to be found in any of the national pavilions, but in the astonishingly wide-ranging collection of modern art exhibited by one woman, the American heiress Peggy Guggenheim. She had arrived in Venice on a wave of disenchantment with her previous life in New York, where she had routinely been patronized by the city’s very male, misogynist art scene. She was also condemned for remaining uninhibitedly sexual in middle age. For much of her adult life, Peggy had been acquisitively promiscuous: her lovers included Samuel Beckett, Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp and, briefly, John Cage. And when her short marriage to Max Ernst unraveled, she compensated by taking many more. Behavior that might be considered rakish in a man, however, was unacceptable in a woman of 50. – Judith Mackrell, The Guardian, May 2017

Vocal – Betsy Morgan

Industrial percussion – Aaron Latos

Violins – Cenovia Cummins, Rachel Handman

Viola – Hiroko Taguchi

Cello – Kate Spingarn

Strings arranged by Greg Pliska

Boys collect girls collect boys

collect paint collect art,

Girls collect boys collect gods

collect pain collect art.

Nails on the walls

Frames on the nails

Gin in the bath

Toys in the bath.

Girls in the bath

Boys in the bath—

Mermaids and whales.

Art collects lust collects sperm

collects flesh collects bones,

Art collects dust collects worms

collects mold collects bones.

Unmade beds

Unsaid words

Uninspired and

Undeterred

Undercoated

Underground

Undiscovered

Never found…

Pope on a throne,

Ape on his knee,

Pope screams,

Ape screams,

You scream, I scream–

You never painted me…

Collector

Defectors

Detectors

Directors

Erector sets

Erect for sex.

A naked wall,

A naked frame,

A naked boy,

A naked girl,

The naked truth–