I travelled with my family to Gothenburg, Sweden in 1951, leaving Espoo, Finland, which had been home to my father’s side of the family for at least four generations. My grandfather had been part of a movement to adopt Finnish names, legally shedding his Kristiansson identity for Salomaa. When I adopted Rockwell for Salomaa, it had been done for purely creative reasons. My mother held the opinion that Salomaa was entirely the outcome of the 1918 conflict between the Bolshevik Reds and White Finns, where Johan Nestor Kristiansson defected to the Whites. “He rammed his rifle barrel into ground at the base of a tree, and bolted,” my mother recounted.
Kuusta Rovio, the Helsinki police chief, figures into the story here. Rovio not only sheltered Vladimir Lenin in his Helsinki apartment in August of 1917, but supplied him with Russian newspapers and passed on secret deliveries to his party comrades.
Kuusta Rovio, served as Helisinki chief of police during the 1918 revolutionary war
The anti-socialist forces under Carl Gustaf Mannerheim prevailed with a White victory in May 1918. Rovio fled to Soviet Russia, becoming a Communist Party official. A victim of Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge, he was arrested in 1937, and executed the following year. Meanwhile in Helsinki, the police department had been bleached of its Reds sympathizers and released the Sisu “Black Maria.” After the war in 1945, my father had a job painting “Black Marias” at the Helsinki Police Department. He would have familiar with the armored Sisu since it had been service until 1951, when we left for Sweden.
In the dArtles column of the Winter 1999 edition of dArt magazine, I wrote, “At the preview bash of Charles Ray’s mid-career retro at MOCA in Los Angeles, Charles himself stood on the patio roof looking down over the party. He didn’t cut through the party vortex and into the show until artist and teacher Roland Brenner arrived.” From that point in my article it became a list of “who’s who” of the LA art world. Some credit for Ray’s success has to go to the Los Angeles art dealer Burnett Miller, who passed away in 2001.
In her December 13, 2001 obituary for the LA Times, Suzanne Muchnic wrote, “An energetic and insightful entrepreneur who had an eye for quality and a finger on the pulse of contemporary art, Miller is credited with introducing the work of young artists who later achieved international renown. Sculptor Charles Ray – whose travelling retrospective exhibition appeared at Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art in 1998 – made a breakthrough at Miller’s gallery in 1987 with Ink Box, a giant black-lacquered metal cube filled with 200 gallons of black printer’s ink.”
Charles Ray installation view of his 1986 Ink Box at the Irvine Museum, Orange County
Muchnic quotes the Times art critic Christopher Knight, who wrote of its 1990 showing at Newport Harbor Art Museum, “The quivering meniscus of ink that is the top plane of this menacing black cube forms a threatening surface just begging to be touched, even in the face of disaster.”
In his 1995, performance at the Burnett Miller gallery, artist Skip Arnold delivers an obvious homage to Ray’s Ink Cube by replacing its “quivering meniscus of ink” with his own quivering flesh. The image featured here was used in an article by Craig Stephens in the Fall 2002 edition of dArt International titled Pollock to Punk: A Conversation with Skip Arnold.
Skip Arnold, On Display, 1995, performed at Burnett Miller Gallery in Santa MonicaSteve Rockwell, Gallery Space (Shoes), 1988, acrylic, wood floor, shoes, 14 x 14 x 15 inches
My own synthesis of Ray’s Ink Cube and Arnold’s 1995 On Display piece is the sculpture Shoes. It was made in 1988, a year after the Burnett Miller exhibition of Ray’s ground-breaking piece. With the Shoes, Ray’s ink and Arnold’s body evaporate, leaving the residual imprint of black shoes overlaid by black print on plexiglass. In 1997 Burnett Miller consented to have a part in my Storage exhibition. A unique feature of the gallery’s Bergamot Station building in Santa Monica was its spectacularly convenient second floor skylight, clearly visible in the top left-hand corner of the Skip Arnold photo, and neatly matched in the top right-hand of Steve Rockwell’s Storage photo.
Steve Rockwell, Storage, Burnett Miller, Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, 1997, photo by Steve Rockwell
Completely unaware of the Charles Ray Ink Cube until a couple of decades ago, I had produced the progressive “inking” of a six-by-six-inch square in 1987, the year Ray displayed his “inky cube” at Burnett Miller. My square was subsequently cubed as the Shoes sculpture the following year in 1988. It took a hundred and thirty-nine people over a period of nine months to complete the “inky” square, the Pick a Number project eventually leading to the publication of dArt International magazine in 1998.
Steve Rockwell, Pick a Number between 1 and 99, 1987, ink on printed bond paper, 42.5 inches x 12 feet 10 inches
As part of the Meditations on Space project on December 1, 1995, my 36th gallery stop was Mary Boone, then in Soho. The account in the published book work read, “Someone must have been adjusting the lights or changing them. An enormous yellow step ladder rose toward the skylight in the center of the gallery. It made me think of the white ladder in Paris at Galerie Lucien Durand. Ron was busy at the desk by the door wielding a letter opener.” My black and white acrylic portrait staring up at the light suggested layered and cocooned gallery spaces from Paris, New York, and finally Los Angeles.
Steve Rockwell, Meditations on Space (Mary Boone Gallery, New York), 1996, acrylic on panel painting, 32 x 32 inches
Only much later, having reflected on the sources of my inspiration, did it land on a “dream vision” that I had in 1970. In it, an angel appeared with a shining solidity that shattered my flesh self to the extent that I presumed it to be the “Angel of Death,” were it not for its kind radiant beauty. Having not received spiritual grounding of any kind in my family, I was open to its interpretation. In form and perfection, it exceeded anything by Raphael. To a Catholic, it could clearly have been Mary. Then suitably combined with the definition of “boon,” it transformed into a timely benefit, blessing, or something that is incredibly helpful and advantageous.
Published in 1719, Daniel Defoe’s The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner, is generally regarded as the first English novel. Its immediate success might be attributed to its documentary, confessional style of narration. The receptivity by the general public to tales of shipwreck already had the Alexander Selkirk account as a classic example. Lack of lighthouses and the accurate mapping of shoals made naval disasters inevitable in this age.
Scanned image by Philip V. Allingham. The illustrator presents a convincing panorama of the wrecked merchantman off the coast of a remote island off the South American coast (left), with several small figures (presumably, one of them Crusoe). London publisher: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1863-64
To a young Jouko Salomaa living in Grangesberg, Sweden, Defoe’s classic left a deep impression. To him, when screened at Cassels, the local theater, Luis Bunuel’s 1954 Robinson Crusoe was a disappointment. What the film was unable to convey adequately in his mind, and which the book described in intricate detail, was Crusoe’s gradual conversion of his island wilderness into something of a solitary paradise.
Movie poster for Luis Bunel’s 1954 Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. It was screened a year or so before the 1957 Atlantic crossing by Jouko Salomaa at Cassels movie theater in Grangesberg, Sweden
Jouko used one of the illustrations from the book as a basis for his 1957 colored ink drawing of Crusoe and Friday, which he gave as gift to classmate Lennart Hansson. On Jouko’s departure to Canada from Sweden on October 1, 1957, Lennart photographed him at the railway station, the images of which were later emailed to Canada along with one of the Crusoe drawing.
Jouko reser till Canada (Jouko travels to Canada), October 1, 1957, Lennart Hansson scrap book page with two of his photos of Jouko Salomaa at the train station in Grangesberg, Sweden, taken the day before Jouko boarded the SAL ocean liner Stockholm in the Copenhagen to Halifax, Canada Atlantic crossingJouko Salomaa, Robinson Crusoe and Friday, 1957, colored inks on paper. Gifted by Jouko to classmate Lennart Hansson before Jouko’s ocean departure
On his departure, twelve-year-old Jouko and ocean liner passengers endured a storm that produced waves the height of the ship. Seasickness had trapped the lad to his cabin for all but the last day of the voyage. The joy at the release from his confinement came with a boundless excitement to explore the ship. Finding himself at the prow of the liner, on an ill-advised impulse he clasped the jack staff tightly with both hands, hoisting himself up with a quick jerk, legs dangling over the tip of the prow. Looking down, the keel cleaved the relative calm Atlantic waters producing little rainbows. A nervous twist of the head at the fear of discovery, however, brought a quick end to the prank.
The Swedish American Line ship The Stockholm photographed after its 1956 collision with the Andrea Doria in Nantucket Sound
Unknown to the young passenger at the time but common knowledge to crew and many of its passengers, was the ocean liner tragic history. Just a year before on July 25, 1956, in a collision with the SS Andrea Doria, the prow of the MS Stockholm had sunk to the bottom of the sea off the coast of Nantucket in heavy fog. The 75-foot section was repaired within four months at Bethlehem Steel Shipyard in Sunset Park Shipyard, Brooklyn. While the Andrea Doria sunk after eleven hours most of its passengers were rescued.
The ‘Andrea Doria’ in its last hours Harry Trask/Wikimedia Commons
At the moment of impact, 14-year-old Linda Morgan on the Andrea Doria had been asleep. It seems that her cabin, stateroom 52 on the upper deck of the luxury liner had been pierced by the prow of the Stockholm, it somehow sliding under her mattress and catapulting her onto the deck of the Stockholm. Swedish crew heard a girl asking in Spanish, “Where am I?” Puzzled, they realized quickly that she was not part of the Stockholm passenger list.
It is at this point that a dot needs to be connected. Both Linda and Jouko became part of the art world as adults. Linda served as curator at the McNay Museum in San Antonio, Texas. She had married Phil Hardberger in 1968, who served as mayor from 2005 to 2009. Jouko created the art persona Steve Rockwell in 1987 in Toronto, eventually published dArt International magazine, which the city of San Antonio invited to cover their 2008 Luminaria arts festival. I took the photo of Mayor Hardberger, not realizing at the time that his wife and I were curiously connected to the Andrea Doria collision and tragedy. The “miracle girl” after recovery from a broken leg, and fractures, was reluctant in later life to talk about an event where she and her mother survived, while her sister and step-father perished.
The Luminaria in San Antonio edition of dArt International Magazine (2008), featuring the Bill Fitzgibbons light art illumination of the AlamoThen San Antonio Mayor Phil Hardberger photographed at a 2008 Luminaria event by Steve Rockwell. The Mayor married Linda Morgan in 1968. She had been the “miracle girl” survivor of the Andrea Doria
A necessary footnote to the sinking of the Italian luxury ocean liner SS Andrea Doria is the intentional burning and sinking of its American namesake, the USS Andrew Doria on November 21, 1777. The geographical distance between the two wrecks is approximately 277 miles, one about 50 miles south of Nantucket, Massachusetts, the other at the bottom of the Delaware River near Petty’s Island, near Philadelphia. During the American Revolutionary War, rather than surrendering the valuable asset to the advancing British fleet, Captain Isaiah Robinson had the ship packed with combustibles, and watched it burn to the waterline and sink beneath the waterbed. The USS Andrew Doria is historically famous as the first American warship to receive an official salute from a foreign power at Sint Eustatius in 1776. The painting by Phillips Melville depicts the Continental Navy Brig flying the Grand Union flag, the first national flag of the United States.
Phillips Melville (Colonel, USMC, Retired), a 1974 depiction of the Continental Brig Andrew Doria warship receiving its historic first official salute from the Dutch at St. Eustatius on November 16, 1776. Courtesy of the U.S. Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC), Washington,D.C. Gift of Colonel Phillips Melville, 1977. Public Domain (as a work of the U.S. federal government/U.S. Navy)
Hirst’s Anatomy, Burning Man, The Pharmacist and Miami Flurry, 2024, dArt magazine pulp and paper, variously mounted on canvas, 8.5 x 7 inches. Citing the work of Damian Hirst, Matthew Ritchie, Micah Lexier, and Chris Scarborough.
Panel One in dArt Magazine Curated Content #4 depicts a tiny figure gazing up to a 20-foot colossus. Though Damien Hirst’s Hymn sculpture appears here with green grass and blue sky, it is in fact an installation view of Damien Hirst’s 2000 exhibition at Gagosian’s New York Chelsea gallery, the white disk and colors having here been added in oils. The full exhibition title was on the wordy side: Damien Hirst: Theories, Models, Methods, Approaches, Assumptions, Results and Findings. The review of the exhibition was covered for dArt by Clayton Campbell.
Steve Rockwell, Hopper’s Corn Hill, Stipl Squint, Jaan’s Divide, and John’s Paint Tip. 2024, dArt magazine pulp and paper, variously mounted on canvas, 8.5 x 7 inches. Citing the work of Edward Hopper, Richard Stipl, Jaan Poldaas, Barnett Newman, and Malcolm Arbuthnot (of Augustus John).
Hopper’s Corn Hill in the first panel makes use of an 1930 Edward Hopper oil that is part of the McNay Art Museum collection in San Antonio, Texas, of which I had a tour in 2005. The reproduction of the Truro, Cape Cod subject had occupied roughly the bottom half of the 8.5 x 7 inch page in dArt, which I had here expanded to the edges of the page in oils. It functions as an imaginary “framing” of what Hopper might have seen. The same device was used in the third panel, Jaan’s Divide, the original work by Jaan Poldaas, having been square, his stripes here extended to fill the rectangle. It was an adaptation to which the artist and I agreed for a dArt magazine back page to advertise his 1998 exhibition, Colours and Concepts.
The three stripes behind the image of Augustus John holding a brush allude to Barnett Newman’s 1967 Voice of Fire. The eighteen-foot acrylic on canvas had been a commission for Expo 67 in Montréal, Canada, and was part of the U.S. pavilion exhibition, American Painting Now, housed in a geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller. It is not known to what extent Newman incorporated the aspect of three in Voice of Fire, aware that the work would figure prominently within a dome constructed of triangles. On principle, Jaan Poldaas would have objected this employment of the “three,” as he revealed in a discussion that contributed to a review about his Colours and Concepts work.
The image of Richard Stipl‘s sculpted self-portrait heads (panel 2), was used for advertisement of the artist’s work in the Fall 2002 edition of dArt. With the title, The Sleep of Reason, Stipl references the Goya series of aquatints, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, an attribution generally read as Goya’s acceptance of Enlightenment values, that the absence of reason invites the monstrous to proliferate. Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, a German-Austrian sculptor most famous for his “character heads” was a contemporary of Goya, who produced a series of busts with contorted facial expressions, tapping into paranoid ideas and hallucinations from which he allegedly began to suffer. Messerschmidt and Stipl, it seems, would make for a formidable art history tag team.
Five artist temperaments are featured in Curated Content #3. Though an obvious correspondence could be made between the sculpted contortions of the faces by Stipl and Messerschmidt, an unlikely pairing would be Edward Hopper and Barnett Newman. Ralph Waldo Emerson had served as life-long touchstone to Hopper, his painting output imbued with an aura of the “transcendental.” In Peter Halley’s 1982 essay Ross Bleckner: Painting at the End of History, Halley ascribes the transcendentalist wing of modernism as having its roots in French Symbolism and Emerson, informing the work of Pollock, Rothko, and Newman.
With Malcolm Arbuthnot’s image of Augustus John, on the other hand, we have a stereotype of the typical “bohemian.” It is suggested that the character of eccentric painter Gully Jimson in the 1958 Alec Guiness film The Horse’s Mouth was modelled on John.
