O Superman

Superman, the man of steel, is in his seventies and living in Reseda, where I saw him get on the bus the other day. He's a little smaller than you might guess, about 5'6", and his skin sags somewhat. But his calves are still well defined, indicating the strength of his superhero days.

He's abandoned the Clark Kent disguise of a suit and tie journalist for the casual look of a retiree. He wears a white pocket T-shirt with a pullover tied around his waist and maroon hiking shorts. On his head is a baseball cap with a red bill, and on top of the cap is a white winter stocking hat. One might think this an unusual choice in the Valley heat, but perhaps it provides special protection for aliens. On the hat is a series of numbers written with a marker, a code that only secret agents understand.

Most other-worldly are his dark glasses. They appear to be the same horn rimmed frames of the past, but they are completely covered with tiny pieces of cellophane tape. It's as if he began to repair them at the corners or the nose bridge--as one often sees--and just kept layering piece after piece until he had transformed his frames into a mosaic by the most skilled of Italian artisans.



(Detail of arch mosaic from the mausoleum of Galla Placida, Ravenna from Furman University Classics Department.)

After sitting down he takes a rolled up plastic grocery bag from his pocket. Carefully, he opens it up to reveal a rectangle of aluminum foil. What? Is Superman selling crack? He unfolds the foil and inside is a row of neatly stacked coins. He thinks it over, chooses a few coins, places them back in their stacks, and chooses again. He folds back the foil, rolls it into the plastic bag and puts it back in his pocket. Finally, he slowly walks to the front and pays his fare.

Allan Kaprow, who passed away in April, introduced the concept of "Happenings" in the late 1950s. In distinguishing Avant Garde Lifelike Art from Artlike Art he wrote:

Avantgarde lifelike art is not nearly as serious as avantgarde artlike art. Often it is quite humorous. It isn't very interested in the great Western tradition either, since it tends to mix things up: body with mind, individual with people in general, civilization with nature, and so on.
--"The Real Experiment." Artforum 22: 4 (1983)

Superman always had an important role in the genealogy of performance art. One finds him in "Shoot" by Chris Burden, the flying flesh of Stelarc and of course the music of Laurie Anderson. In his golden age of the 1940s Superman boisterously fought metropolitan moral decline in a cape and blue tights with his farm boy values. He leveled "slums" so they could be replaced by decent housing--thus echoing the Federal Housing Acts of the 1930s and 40s. In the end these Acts reflected the powerful and racist interests of the National Association of Real Estate Boards, which preferred federally subsidized white home ownership in the suburbs to urban housing for the benefit of all.

Superman's sadness at these failures is evident. But there is quiet poetry in the mystery of his contemporary performance.