In anticipation
of the Iowa caucuses next February, artist-candidate Lowell
Darling has thrown his hat near the ring.
But it’s
no ordinary hat--or ring. Darling’s bowler is filled
with cement and bolted to the floor of the Legion Arts Gallery
in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, alongside a ring fashioned from copies
of CFR-11, the Byzantine federal election code. Darling’s
message? "After reading CFR-11 I know that my second grade
teacher was wrong," Darling observed. "Not everyone can be
president." Darling is so much the populist, though, that
he has placed a photocopy machine in the gallery so that any
visitor can file his or her candidacy on the spot.
Darling,
an Illinois native who grew up across the Mississippi River
from Davenport, Iowa, is no political neophyte. In California’s
1978 gubernatorial race, he garnered 2% of the vote against
incumbent Jerry Brown. Moreover, he elicited Brown’s
endorsement after promising, if elected, to hire Brown to
govern the state for him. Darling’s campaign included
what he called an "urban acupuncture" treatment,
performed near Needles, California to "lace up" the San Andreas
Fault. As well, he embarked on a statewide tour in a 1956
pink-and-black Plymouth whose signature was its soft-sculpture
lips (for kissing babies) and hands (to avoid swollen hands
from handshaking). Darling was the subject of a blizzard of
media coverage, from articles in Time and People to 145
TV segments, including shows like "Entertainment Tonight."
Darling
is hardly the first artist to run for office. Nor was Ronald
Reagan. (Never forget that Hollywood dotes on the term "artist.")
In California, Reagan was preceded by B-movie actor/Senator
George Murphy and followed by chanteur/Congressman Sonny Bono.
(Notice a Republican preference for second-stringers?) In
1998, the New York Green Party (unsuccessfully) ran Al Lewis
(Grandpa Munster of "Munsters" sitcom fame) for
Governor. Who’s up next? Reuters recently reported that
actor/bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger is mulling a possible
California gubernatorial race in 2002. When queried about
widespread stories of drug use he replied, "I inhaled, exhaled
everything." And "Bulworth" creator Warren Beatty may not
be the only actor running for the presidency next year; Cybill
Shepherd has also said that she’s considering a candidacy
on an abortion-rights platform.
Washington
has always been a favorite subject for purveyors of pop culture.
Until recently, filmmakers performed ideological cleansing
on their product in order to avoid alienating potential audiences.
Recent efforts about media-obsessed candidates, such as Robert
Altman’s HBO series "Tanner" and Tim Robbins’s
"Bob Roberts" have been distinctly unsanitized. But now that
post-Monica politics-as-self-parody has obviated the possibility
of satire,
what’s a commercial artist to do? Last April, Robbins
told The Nation that "Bob Roberts is thinking about
running for President right now. Being that he’s paralyzed
from the waist down, he’s kind of the perfect candidate.
The slogan would be, 'No sex, just business.'" Please don’t
even contemplate that sequel, Tim.
Fortunately,
Lowell Darling inhabits the world of the artistic imagination,
instead of Hollywood. Although poets and intellectuals frequently
hold office in Latin America and Eastern Europe, the U.S.
seems safe from such subversion. Darling’s merry-prankster
comrades-in-arms include visual and performance artists, musicians,
and comedians. Best known is the late Smothers Brothers’
TV comic Pat Paulsen, who, in his fifth presidential campaign,
received 921 votes in the 1996 New Hampshire primary. Punk-rocker
Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys garnered 3.5% of the vote
in a San Francisco mayoralty race; his campaign platform included
banning cars from the city, making police run for re-election
in the neighborhoods they patrolled, and requiring that the
corporate denizens of the city’s financial district wear
clown suits during business hours. Other artists who’ve
run media-driven campaigns include Alan Abel, prankster-author-filmmaker-composer
and 1983 New York gubernatorial candidate; artist Suzanna
Daikin, who competed in the 1992 presidential sweepstakes;
and Mr. Peanut, a.k.a. Vincent Trasov, an elaborately costumed
performance artist and 1974 Vancouver mayoral wannabe who
looked as if he had stepped off a Planters’ label.
So, is
Darling in or out? If he’s in, what’s his platform?
And what does this mean to the rest of us who may be harboring
presidential dreams? To find out, Robert Atkins tracked
down Darling for an exclusive e-mail interview.
Lowell
Darling: After my gubernatorial race in 1978, it became clear
to me that America should be turned into a theme park for
the rest of the world. Today, entertainment is our number
one export and politics is our favorite form of entertainment.
When I first offered these ideas, they were misunderstood.
Now, my presidential platform makes perfect sense, especially
in light of the
success of "The Truman Show."
Robert Atkins: Isn’t all this---the theme-parking of our public
spaces, the McLuhanization of politics---old news?
LD: I
would make exactly the same suggestion I made in 1980 in my
gubernatorial
memoir, "One Hand Shaking." I suggested that if elected
president I would wear a video camera that would record everything
I said, saw, and heard. We must create the Presidential Television
Network. PTN is the answer to all our presidential problems-issues
of morality, accountability, and especially the budget. Imagine
if we’d been able to market the last six years as seen
from Bill Clinton’s eyes: He looks
at his wristwatch (brand showing), he looks down at his running
shoes (brand name), etc. We all know he jogs with Tom Hanks
and we want to know if Tom Hanks really has a fat neck.
RA: So
you’re running. How will you get around the complicated
financial regulations?
LD: I’m
thinking about not running for president. This is one of the
most difficult and painful decisions I’ve ever made.
I spoke to a fellow at the Federal Elections Commission, and
he told me that he didn’t think that my fundraising strategy
is legal.
RA: What
strategy is that?
LD: Fired
with ambition, I wrote in Iowa’s Prairie Progressive
that if I run for the Presidency, I would return my contributor’s
donations, together with half of my matching federal funds.
But the federal code doesn’t appear to allow such tactics.
RA: What
will you do?
LD: Well,
it’s a problem, but the presidency is about anxiety.
You know, I was the one who gave Jerry Brown his 800 number
fundraising idea, although it was originally intended as part
of a TV talk show about social issues. I’ve actually
done a lot for Jerry, but he’s on his own now. The bottom
line is: I’m no longer looking for tax-deductible contributions.
RA: What
will your next move be?
LD: I
always enjoy not knowing what’s next. Of course, I’m
waiting to see what happens in Iowa. As with all my work,
I set up a situation and watch the fireworks explode. I’ll
be showing at Frumkin-Duval Gallery in Los Angeles, August
14-17, 2000---the week the Democrats have their convention.
And I have a show planned for Inauguration night in 2001 at
the Sonoma Museum of Visual Art, a small museum in Santa Rosa,
California. Maybe I’m not running for president, but
simply campaigning about the presidency.
RA: Can
you explain your rationale for being an artist-candidate?
LD: Conceptual
art or whatever you want to call it is like alchemy. One of
my kids recently asked why I wanted to run and I said that
ideas become the ingredients that you need to create something
out of nothing. I also used to say that to understand a problem,
one had to become part of it. With a presidential run, there’s
the danger of being consumed by the problem. When I
ran for governor, I created a political portrait in reality.
This time, I feel more like the paint than the painter. If
America wants to be the artist that creates its President,
we have to regain control of the materials. I’m running
the art supply store and I’m waiting for people to come
in and commission themselves to create a piece.
- Robert
Atkins Media Channel Arts Editor and a Research
Fellow at Carnegie Mellon's STUDIO for Creative Inquiry.
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