"How to Draw a Bunny"
Artist Raymond Johnson's body was found floating in Sag Harbor, New York in 1995, the victim of an apparent suicide. This enigmatic and unexplained death of "New York's most famous unknown artist" is just a part of the investigation, by documentarian John Walters, of the life and times of the man and his work in "How to Draw a Bunny."
Little is known about the works of Ray Johnson, an artist who would stage an exhibition named "Nothing" and leave the viewer guessing just what they saw. He was the contemporary of such art world notables as pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, photographer Norman Solomon and, most famous, modern icon Andy Warhol. But no one, until now, knew much about the man and his art.
As "How to Draw a Bunny" unfolds we learn why so little is publicly known about the artist who, actually, may have been the driving force at the beginning of the "pop culture" that we have always given Andy Warhol credit for. The difference between these two art personae lay in their means of distribution and exhibition. Warhol, as we know, took the New York avant garde art world by storm in the 60's and created an empire from it. Ray Johnson, an artist on a creative par with Andy W, chose to lead a more introspective and personal means of showing his artistic talents.
Johnson's art utilized contemporary pop culture items, like the Lucky Strike cigarette logo, and incorporated them into his work well before the famous Campbell Tomato Soup can came to the attention of millions. The difference is that Ray Johnson would play to an audience of one, often times, and would send his target aud, via the mail, variations of his initial work, sometime every day for a year! As such, he was a prolific artist but, because of his quirky distribution methods, few of his works reached the attention of the public.
Documentary maker John Walters assembled a collection of Johnson's colleagues and contemporaries and patches together a document of Johnson's life that made me want to learn more about the man's unusual work. He uses anecdotal recollections by Johnson's acquaintances and friends to give insight into the man. Talking heads interviews with such personalities as Lichtenstein, Cristo, Chuck Close and Billy Name are interspersed with video footage of Johnson's varied performance art works.
Johnson worked for himself and docu-maker Walters shows how often his artistic visions were in conflict with the audience's understanding of what he was trying to say. The artist marched to his own beat all of his life, eschewing the limelight in favor of his own, individualist creativity. He did not make an impact on the public but did have a significant one on those close to the man. If you have any interest in Raymond Johnson and his pop art, maybe you, too, will learn "How to Draw a Bunny." I give it a B-.
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