Back in the hoary days of 1990, I lived in New York's East Village while scratching out a prole's life in the art transport industry. Then, and probably still, the industry was an essential low wage teat for refugee fine arts graduates like me. Along with its meager wages, the industry also offered an abundance angst fuel (and some envy) for the many who'd come to New York to be anointed by their industry of choice. We all know how the story turns out for most: A life of working in the service of the vulgar pots of other people's money—without the gallery representation or record contract or book deal or agency representation, etc. There's a broken heart for every light on Broadway...
I met Steve when we worked together at a small transport company in Greenpoint. He had a novelesque backstory: With the looks and hair of a rock star he was the son of a nationally known OB/GYN and the product of a rocky marriage (paternal philandering). Before leaving Portland OR for NYC, Steve and his father got into a fistfight (the Freudian/Oedipal subtext practically written in spray paint). At the time Steve was in a fresh romance with Wen, a recent transplanted young Chinese woman with model-quality looks and a vow to never to date her countrymen again. Steve was smitten and wouldn't shut up about her. The owner of the company of our employ had neglected to meet certain of his payouts as a business man so when Steve accidentally fell off the back of one the trucks and broke his wrist, he couldn't collect workman's comp (our checks bounced from time to time). The boss allowed Steve to work sporadically (there wasn't much he could do with only one hand) which in turned allowed Steve to go bankrupt. (None of us had much love for the boss. One day I couldn't contain mine any longer and yelled at him. Thus ended my art transport career in New York.)
Steve had a friend who played bass in a band fronted by the curious performance artist and singer Kembra Pfahler. Pfahler had been growing a reputation in downtown circles for her art and performances since dropping out of the School of Visual Arts in the early '80s. She'd just started playing around the East Village with her new band The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. After a long and vigorous campaign by Steve to get me to see her perform, I went to see them at The Pyramid Club on Avenue A.
The musical pleasures of The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black were amusing if slight and Pfahler has humbly admitted as much herself. (The band improved over the years.) Even so, the band's combination of low budget punkified metal and Halloween horror was the perfect platform for the brand of burlesque symbolist schtick Pfahler was peddling. (Hear their recorded repetoire here.) Most notable about Pfahler's performance was her "costume," as it were—her body completely nude save for a thick coat of various brightly colored body paint. To this she adds blackened eyes and teeth and a ratted-out wig the size of an East Village apartment. A burlesque of burlesque might be a better description: While her visual language uses broad strokes, it also contains more layers of subtext than the paint covering her body. (Watch Pfahler discuss this in the videos below.)
Her performance also included walking on bowling balls strapped to her feet, interacting with artfully homemade props (a song from her later set, Underwear Drawer, would have her tossing panties into the audience), humorous between song patter, mugging through her make-up and a general goofiness. Then, at last, to the evening's climax: standing on her head with legs open while an assistant—costumed like the maestro herself—broke paint-filled eggshells over her vulva. Despite all of her performance artifice, Pfahler came off as utterly sincere, genuine, unpretentious, and dare I say, even innocent. Her stage mask becomes more of a window than a wall, and despite her costume grotesquerie, her execution was never heavy handed and always a good time.
Out of her stage make-up Pfahler has bona-fide model-quality, gothy good looks—proof is in her work for both Calvin Klein and Penthouse. In a more enlightened world, her vision of womanhood would be the feature of tyrannical institutions like Elle and Vogue. Clearly, she's not going to be everyone's cup of tea and while a nude chick is the just the kind of feminism most guys could rally behind, it must no doubt rankle the academics. Make no mistake, she's no Wendy O. Williams nor a Hooters for bohemian intellectuals. (She also has a considerable gay and lesbian following.) Her character of the painted gargoyle spins conventional notions of acceptable beauty on its damaged head, not to mention opening vistas of the body feminine as a battlefield for discussion. Pfahler calls her approach Beautifulism (go to the link and also see an example of her interior decorating—she lives her style through and through) and describes herself as a Future Feminist and sees her work as a weapon in the battle against misogyny.
As an artist she's fearless. In the tradition of artists like Chris Burden, Ron Athey, and Fakir Musafar, Pfahler isn't afraid to bring the battle to her own body. In one of her most renowned performances, Sewing Circle, she would sew up of her own vagina. (Underground filmmaker and photographer Richard Kern made a film about it.) Her performances play on culture, tradition, boundaries, taboos, sex, martyrdom, and womanhood itself: it's a heady and esoteric slice of meat put on a stick, battered and deep fried and made much more palatable. It's a subversive strategy that's equal parts politics and entertainment.
(In the early 90s Pfahler brought the band to Los Angeles giving me a chance to share the experience with my future wife. She too was immediately intrigued.)
It'll be interesting to see how Pfahler evolves the concept as she advances in age. As my mother would say, she's already no chicken (my mom's cute and ironic shorthand for spring chicken). At the age of 52 (albeit a very youthful, fit, and robust looking 52), she still performs in her traditional stage "costume." (She still has ridiculously flat abs.) I hope she continues to do so: A sagging and wrinkled body would only add more edges of richness.
Pfahler's diligence over the years has paid off. More recently, she's earned the imprimatur of art world recognition: She's been photographed by French photographer E.V. Day in the gardens at Giverny (see image at top), she's performed at the Whitney (enrobed), she was both an artist and curator for the Deitch Projects show Womanizer, is a contributor to the new feminist magazine Girls Against God, and the founder and president (and erstwhile wrestler) of Punk Ladies of Wrestling (PLOW).
I have no idea what happened to Steve. After I lost the job I never saw him again, We probably won't be able to see The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black again either. They haven't released a recording since 1998 and have no scheduled appearances. Keep your eyes open, though. There's nothing like her.
Sounding a bit like early Hole...
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