Troubling Information

George Plumb . . . bought a site measuring just over an acre in 1962; a
year later, he set to work with 5 000 bottles. A former carpenter, he built
his little five-roomed house out of every conceivable type of bottle,
collected from local industries and donated by neighbors and visitors. Over
the years, he used a total of 200 000 bottles. The structures around the
main building included a Leaning Tower of Pisa, a Taj Mahal, a well, and a
giant bottle of Coke, all constructed of bottles and cement. Plumb
surrounded his buildings with animals, some of them sculpted inn the
gardens, paths between low walls led past flower beds to a small waterfall,
water-lily and fish ponds, a totem pole, and a small studio. After his
death the complex was run as a low-grade tourist attraction, but it has
since fallen into disrepair.

-- Angelika Taschen, ed., Fantasy Worlds (Cologne: Taschen,
2007), p. 138.

Blakey likes to point a moral at times and that evening in the hotel -- our last in Santa Fe -- she outdoes herself. As I maunder on about the day, my mother and the odd vagaries of taste, she delivers an irresistible challenge: name ten female artists of the 20th century who are better than O’Keeffe and I will clean up all the dog and cat poo in the backyard for ever. I start off confidently enough: Agnes M. (natch), Popova, Goncharova, Sonia Delaunay, Hannah Höch, Eva Hesse, umm . . . Living artists aren’t permitted, or photographers, so, gosh, Louise Bourgeois and Imogen Cunningham and Berenice Abbott and Kiki Smith and Cecily Brown and Marlene Dumas and Ida Applebroog and scores of others get knocked out at a stroke. (Nicole Eisenman – please know I worship you!) Marie Laurencin seems far too feeble to mention; so too, I’m afraid, does Vanessa Bell. Gwen John? Not exactly a she-titan of the brush. Elaine de Kooning? The canonisation of wives has never seemed to me an effective feminist strategy. Dame Laura Knight? I love her, but does anyone else? Joan Mitchell? Marvellous but . . . uhhh . . . I peter out at Number Seven or Eight in a welter of anguish and indecision. If only Kandinsky or Andy Warhol had been a woman.

-- Terry Castle, "Travels with My Mom," London Review of Books 29, 16 (August 16, 2007).