Myths portfolio

The Myths portfolio brought together popular characters and folkloric figures, treating familiar images as material for a changing body of work. Its development moved from searching for cartoon subjects to portraits of figures such as Howdy Doody, Dracula, and the Wicked Witch; the artist’s own response to the finished prints also exposed a tension between the portfolio’s intended mythology and its association with an earlier visual moment.

Origins and Subjects

The series began with Rupert Smith looking for Mickey Mouse pictures for a New Myths project for Ron Feldman. Donald Duck and the Shadow were also under consideration, but the artist proposed giving the images a different treatment by adding diamond dust. The suggestion made the material finish part of the portfolio’s development: the familiar figures were not only subjects to reproduce but images that could be altered through their presentation.

The portfolio’s range extended beyond the initial search. On December 9, 1980, the artist photographed Howdy Doody, describing him as one of the Big Myths. The diary records the portrait session against a night of repeated television coverage of John Lennon’s murder, placing the work amid an unsettled news cycle without suggesting that the portrait itself addressed the killing.

Making and Participating

The artist’s role in the portfolio was not limited to selecting or photographing its subjects. While working on Dracula and the Wicked Witch, he considered posing in drag himself. Fred Hughes advised him to hold that idea for a later occasion rather than use it up in the portfolio. The exchange shows that the series’ contents were being shaped not just by which figures appeared, but also by decisions about when and where to use a particular image of the artist.

The making of Howdy Doody’s portrait involved a separate, elaborate process: the artist sat for a head mold made by the Lewis Allen dummy people. Material covered his head and his ears and eyes; he felt ill and had difficulty coughing while it was on. The mold was dropped after removal, and a later attempt produced air bubbles and missed fingers. The episode gives the portfolio’s production a material dimension: its constructed figures were accompanied by cumbersome, imperfect work on a physical likeness.

Reception and Revision

On May 7, 1981, the artist went to Mercer Street to be photographed with his Myth prints. Rupert Smith was waiting nearby, and people from Stern were already there. Faced with the prints in the session, the artist felt close to throwing up and judged them as looking too much like the sixties. That reaction complicates the portfolio’s effort to make recognizable characters feel newly presented: the images could be developed and exhibited, yet their appearance also made the artist acutely aware of their period style.

Across these entries, the portfolio appears as a work in progress rather than a settled roster or finished statement. Cartoon figures, a television puppet, and fairy-tale characters sit alongside the possibility of the artist’s own drag image; diamond dust offers one proposed intervention, while the later photo session records an unsparing judgment of the prints. The diary preserves both the ambition to recast familiar images and the artist’s doubt about whether the resulting work had moved beyond its inherited look.