ERASED OSTERHOUT

I've always been a student of history. From Mrs. Whitmore's American history class is high school, to history of Northern Eurpeon painting in art school, to Old Testament class in seminary to my own personal history regurgitation in blog form, chronological truth fascinates me. But as everyone knows history is written by the winners and truth is many times the first casualty. It's like that pass it around telephone game . Before you know it the girl that was kissing Jimmy next to the locker just got popped for pulling tricks and smoking crack under the bleachers. Swear to God!
As most (if not all of you) know I've worked as an artist for many years and for a good part of my so-called career I've retreated from the showing aspect. In fact the last time i had a show of any consequence was in 1986 at The New Museum. The space shuttle blew up a couple of days before the opening. It's now 20 years later, and the day the substitute teacher rocketed back into space I drove into the city to meet with Jason Rulnick concerning the possibility of showing my work. JR was a student at The Old School for Social Sculpture in 1999 and now he has his own gallery in Chelsea. I made the call and he agreed to meet.
He was mainly interested in my pornographic newspaper collages I had been doing for almost 30 years. I brought them, and as an afterthought threw in a piece I had done called "ONE GOOD IDEA". This was the distillation of a work called "GOOD IDEAS". Basically it was something I think every artist comes across. You have an idea for a piece and then you think- that's something so and so would do. NOT I. So i had a bunch of these ideas and then I decided to settle on one good one. There was an artist back in the day who was known for "appropriating" other artist's work in exact detail. His name is Mike Bidlo. I knew Mike, so I asked if he had ever done Rauschenberg's erased Dekooning? He said he hadn't and agreed to do it for me to complete my "ONE GOOD IDEA." Done and done.
Today I showed this piece to Mr. Rulnick and he pulled out a catalog of Mike Bidlo's ERASED DEKOONINGS. The opening essay by the guy who published the catalog talks about Bidlo crediting an artist Jane Kapowski? giving Bidlo the idea and how genius the whole Bidlo head and this series is. What the.....? No mention of Osterhout.

Like I say I dig history. To revise it would be sour grapes. The meeting with JR went so so. I have no juice. He wanted me to be a part of some group show of SFAI alum. I tried to contain my enthusiasm. Maybe Bidlo just forgot who gave him that idea. Maybe some day he'll do an Osterhout, in exact detail, brush stroke for brush stroke and it will look like a Dekooning, erased by Raushenberg, replicated by Bidlo, and conceived by Osterhout.