Charles Mingus III Political Macaroni Visionary

 By Ed McCormack

 I first met Charles Mingus III in the late1960s, when I was writing for Changes, an
underground art and culture journal published by his famous father’s girlfriend, Susan
Graham, at an apartment in the East Village that he shared with the playwright and
actor Sam Shepherd. Not only did he wear the great jazz bassist and composer’s
 face on a thinner frame, but the paintings that he showed me and the music that he
played a tape of, which he had composed and performed with ordinary straws, were
possessed of an eccentric originality suggesting that the apple did not fall far from the tree.
Like his roommate, Mingus was writing plays that were performed at Cafe La Mama
and Joe Papp’s Public Theater. But not being a theatergoer, I was more fascinated
by his paintings and assemblages. And I remain so today, with the digital prints that
have become Mingus III’s most recent preoccupation, and which he showed in a
splendid solo exhibition at The Berkeley Gallery, Berkeley College, 3 East 43rd Street
a while back.

In the interest of full disclosure, as they say, I should make clear that my subject is
a friend of mine. Charles and his wife Lois, a performer with The Living Theater,
have been frequent guests at Jeannie’s and my holiday gatherings and I have followed
his artistic development at his regular exhibition venue, Allan Stone Gallery, and elsewhere
with great interest over the years. That said, what has always fascinated me most in his
métier is a species of Swiftian satire that seems woefully in short supply in our literature
 today (with the exception of certain novels by Ishmael Reed and William Burroughs) and
is otherwise nonexistent in contemporary art, where snarky, self-protective irony has been
the trend for quite some time.

As with his father’s famous composition “Fables of Faubus” (in which the band
chanted “Why is he so sick and ridiculous?” about the Arkansas governor who opposed
School desegregation) old white guys, who would simply be figures of ridicule if they
weren’t in the dangerous business of politics and law enforcement, are recurring actors
in Mingus III’s visual repertory company. Bulldog-faced tough guy transvestite J. Edgar
Hoover and deadeye Dick Cheney are recurring characters, along with such props
as fish-heads and watermelon wedges –– the latter a symbol of ludicrous racial stereotypes
 for an African-American artist.

Indeed, like his father (who I once saw pull his chair right up to the buffet table at
a record company press party) Mingus III seems to have an outsize obsession with food,
as evidenced in his print “Oyster Mandela,” in which, unless it’s just my dirty mind,
there also appears to be a vaginal allusion. However, by far the most ubiquitous symbol
in his recent compositions are multitudes of elbow macaronis with blue irises and pupils
peering out of their openings, of which the by no means short-winded artist states,

“My anthropomorphic blue-eyed macaroni juxtapositions are an Agitprop response to Western iconic and mythical
ploys and propaganda tricks. Like The blue-eyed Barbie, these high-fashion psychological operations are the product
of Madison Avenue scientific hucksterism with military-spec religiosity and Wall Street Flimflam. This agglomeration
masquerades as ‘civilization,’ yet enforces divergent personal identities and cultural schizophrenia.” 

                                                            from “Magritte” Prognosticator of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypses

                      ]                     

 GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2010 By Ed McCormack CHARLES MINGUS III Continued from page 9

Even a backward Luddite like myself, admittedly partial to the tactile pleasures of his paintings and
found object assemblages, can’t help but realize that in digital prints, Charles Mingus III has finally
found a medium that moves fast enough for his image saturated mind,realizing literally at the speed
of light the elaborate conceptual conceits inherent in such titles as “Magritte: Colonialist Prognosticator
of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypses,” and “Thompson-Koons- Rosenquist” –– the latter a work of especially erudite visual art criticism juxtaposing the underground legacy of the woefully underrated late African-American artist Bob Thompson with that of two grossly overrated white art stars of different eras.

I once heard Pete Hamill go on about how the advent of the computer is a godsend for novelists.

That goes double for the unique visionary sociopolitical surrealist Charles Mingus III.
 –– Ed McCormack

30                                                                                    GALLERY&STUDIO APRIL/MAY 2010