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THE TREASURES OF LONG GONE JOHN
Contributed by Sara Schieron
Thursday, 11 May 2006
THE TREASURES OF LONG GONE JOHN opened DocFest this year. A quirky
documentary that is as much about the progression of
lowbrow/urban/young art as it is about the collection of Long Gone
John, the godfather of the urban youth art movement in Los Angeles.
Treating toys, artifacts, painting and other ephemera with the same
loving admiration, Long Gone John has made, not a career, but a legacy
out of his addiction to ownership and, in the process, he's become
something of a shelter to legions of artists and musicians otherwise
cast out my the artistic "mainstream".
Beginning "Sympathy for the Record Industry" in the late 80's, Long Gone John was an outcast in his own right. Though he had parents and a home, he became a deliberate ward of the state and was thereafter thrown out of boys' homes and foster care until he reached legal age. Even as a "legal" adult, he didn't quite fit the bill: creating bootleg records and stealing booty from local goodwill bins for resale at swap meets, John wasn't interested in making a living the "old fashioned way". Ironically, in the process of his less than conventional lifestyles, his success story is somehow ideally American. Moreover, his success story is reliant upon a support of art and music often disregarded in American success stories...or most other American stories for that matter.
The film's interest in the collection of Long Gone John's treasures emphasizes his art. Recording the influence and impact John's contributions (also read: purchases) THE TREASURES OF LONG GONE JOHN focuses in on the work of four particular painters John has admired and, by his influence, helped "make". Like the body of the octopus, John is the center of an art and music community that is just as forward thinking as it is commercial, and in being both, has been identified as "lowbrow". However, as the film postures, in becoming more widely accessible, the title of "lowbrow" loses a bit of its grime.
Time-lapse tracking the arduous process of artist Todd Schorr as he paints a 6x8 foot commission for Long Gone John, TREASURES moves from Schorr to Camille Rose Garcia and a cast of other artists with whom Long Gone John consorts, asking them about the meaning of "lowbrow" and the effects of Long Gone John's patronage. Collectively, the film represents the movements spawned by these artists and their patron and also tracks the artwork that cycles it's way from "clever notion" to vinyl doll by way of the "Necessaries Toy Foundation". In the process, this film touches upon the transitioning from outsider to movement, using (thankfully) a successful, current example, and also identifies the role of this movement in a larger context of commerce and fine art. Described, in the film as "the marijuana of the art world", these toys (part of the "Urban Vinyl Toy Movement) are a commercial gateway drug into an arts universe that is no longer the realm of a select few, these arts and their byproducts are clearly made for all to consume and revere. Such is the power, the glory, amen.
Jumping from the collection of Long Gone John, (which includes his bands, his artists, his paintings, his albums, his cats,) we are shown the product of this potentially unhealthy collecting. Effectively, this modern day pirate paves the way for so many, bringing gifts from abroad and connecting the alienated to the comforted - or rather, connecting the teenagers to the anxy art. Either way, it's still a big reunion.
Festivals 
