The third act entitled The Art Olympics of the Art Dockuments is published online. A total of 27 Art Dockuments are now available to read and see. Each Dockuments includes many pictures of Los Angeles artists and such luminaries as Marcel Duchamp, Vermeer, Monet, and Margaret Bourke-White. The website is http//:www.artdock.net.
The Art Documents tell the stories of the Art Dock, the world's first drive-by gallery in a Los Angeles loading dock in the 1980's. The story is told in 4 acts, a preamble, and epilog. The Preamble tells the tale of how the gallery came about as the Cosmic Humeroid's joke. Act I, The Manifesto, tells the story of the Art Dock's early years when loft living and art galleries were illegal in the industrial area of downtown Los Angeles. It includes a manifesto about art's commoditization, and standardization, and the concept of art in a loading dock as a metaphor for the utility of all art. Act II, The Community Gallery, is about how the downtown artists used the gallery as a community resource and place of experimentation. In Act II there are references to two significant deaths. The murder of Peter Ivars, the host of a cable television show, in his downtown loft and the tragic death of Bonnie Calvert in a leftist fire bombing of a movie theatre in Italy are portrayed. Act III, The Art Olympics, just published, is about art in Los Angeles at the time of the 1984 Olympic Games, when the city was pushing its cultural aspirations. Act IV, The Business of Art, and the Epilog remain in the process of completion. This act and the epilog will be published in a few months, at which point the Art Dockuments will be complete.
The Art Dockuments are a serious investigation into art and the life of the artist, the reality, the misery, and the joy. Many of the dockuments are hilarious as the artist deal with city authority and each other. The story of each exhibitor in the drive-by gallery is followed by a postscript for 2011, which identifies what the artist art doing today 30 years later. Most of them are still artists, but make a living my other means. One artist formed an underwater filming business, which caters to the needs of Hollywood. Another has become a doctor of oriental medicine.
The Art Dockuments were inspired by Marcel Duchamp, who said "the most interesting thing about artists is how they live." The Art Dockuments provide a vivid portrait of contemporary American artists. Please read and enjoy The Art Dockuments.