February 12, 2005
The CalArts Mafia
Richard Hertz’s Jack Goldstein and the CalArts Mafia is a tribute to the troubled artist who, after at least one prior failure, finally succeeded in committing suicide in 2002. The book resulted from a year’s worth of interviews with Goldstein, mostly held during Chinatown lunches in Los Angeles. Transcripts of those conversations are interspersed with first-hand accounts from other artists and art world figures that knew Jack personally. As cautionary tales go, however, the book has its limitations. Sure, Goldstein’s early naiveté and anxiety in the big city come across clearly in passages, he was after all among the first students of the Disney sponsored school to succeed in the New York art world along with David Salle, Eric Fischl, and Troy Brauntuch. But these insights are limited to anecdotes about the artist’s not entirely unfounded suspicion of art world politics. The equally paranoid extreme fear of failure is more to the point. It definitely did nothing to counter his severe drug addiction. As is frequently the case with addicts, the artist’s reliance on narcotics becomes the only really distinguishable aspect of his personality in these chapters. The book’s brilliance is, however, probably inadvertent. The accounts of Goldstein’s peers that appear between the transcriptions of the artist’s sessions with Hertz offer the greatest insight into the art world mindset. For many of those asked to contribute, their memory of Goldstein coincided with their own glory days. It is really interesting how few of them have anything at all meaningful to say about Jack. James Welling, as example, barely mentions Goldstein at all. But the same is true of everyone's contribution from the Winter Warlock, John Baldessari, to Tom Wudl. As anyone might expect they are generally focused on what was going on in their own lives. In the end the greatest success stories always win out. Goldstein had a brief spate of major accomplishment, but his then girl friend Helene Weiner obviously went on to greater things. Consequently, if one were to go solely on the outside contributions to the book, there is no small irony in the fact that the casual reader might actually confuse Weiner and Metro Pictures for the real subject of the book. If there is anything that will ultimately betray the Los Angeles art scene, it is exactly this kind of mistake of placing the art institution before the artist.