Untitled, date unknown, self portrait. Published on the back cover of Bern Porter: See(MAN)TIC*

Bern Porter (1911–2004) contributed to some of the most important scientific and artistic innovations of the twentieth century. He worked on the development of the cathode-ray tube (for television), the atomic bomb (with the Manhattan Project), and NASA’s Saturn V Rocket. When the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, in 1945, Porter walked away from his position with the Manhattan Project and, disappointed with his work as a physicist, turned his attention to artistic pursuits. In the aftermath of World War II, a flood of visual information spread across the United States. Advertisements in newspapers and magazines and on billboards and television promised an easier and happier life through the purchasing of products. For his collages, which he dubbed “Founds,” Porter gathered the waste of this new culture—advertisements, junk mail, instruction booklets, scientific documents, and other material—and turned it into art. In addition to his books of Founds, Porter authored treatises on the unification of science and art (what he called “Sciart”) and books of experimental poetry. He published work by major figures in art and literature, such as Henry Miller, Kenneth Patchen, and Dick Higgins. Also, as the self-proclaimed inventor of mail art, Porter was an active participant in a vast international network of artists who shared their work with each other through the post.

The Museum of Modern Art Library has a unique collection of work by Porter, including a large archive acquired in 1979. This exhibition features a selection of books published by Porter, many of his own artist’s books, a sampling of his collection of mail art, and original Found collages.

The exhibition is organized by Rachael Morrison, Library Assistant.

Bern Porter: commentator on contemporary culture. 1946* Porter used this pamphlet to advertise his skills as lecturer, writer, and artist. Inside he juxtaposed photographs of his sculpture Affinity with images of a sculpture by Alexander Calder and an architectural model by Frank Lloyd Wright. A portion of the text inside reads: OUT IN FRONT An Illustrated Lecture About New Fashions in Everyday Things Design and clothing, light and music, architecture and sculpture, art and psychiatry, photography and poetry are a part of contemporary expression and living. In describing them BERN PORTER unfolds a new world, a new way of life (other subjects available upon request)

New York and Television

In 1935 Porter, a physicist, moved from his native Maine to New York City to work for the Acheson Colloid Corporation on the development of the cathode-ray tube. City life was new to Porter, and he spent his free time in museums, at gallery openings, and in art classes. At The Museum of Modern Art, Porter was exposed to artists such as Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp, who used found materials in their artwork—something Porter would later adopt in his own art practice. The Museum’s 1936–37 exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism introduced Porter to the work of the Surrealists, much of which was then being exhibited in the United States for the first time. He mingled with well-known artists and writers at Peggy Guggenheim’s New York salons, and on a trip to Paris he attended a salon presided over by Gertrude Stein.

Image Above: Bern Porter and Todd Transformer. Horizontal Hold: A Satire on Television. 1985*
The introduction describes Porter and Todd Transformer’s process: “Bern made the initial collages & mailed them to Todd, who embellished some, added his own pages, and designed them into this book. At the time of this printing the two have never met.” Despite his involvement with the invention of the television, Porter never owned one. He was disappointed when he realized that it was not going to be used as an educational resource but rather be controlled by advertisers and the entertainment industry. The book conveys his disillusion, through phrases such as “public access excess tv,” “mind control,” and “she stood inanimate,” paired with clippings of television actors, ads, and people with wide fake grins staring blankly into screens.

Larry Wendt. Ephemera from Porter’s mail art collection. Mailed from San Jose, 1978

The Manhattan Telephone Book. 1975* (Somerville, Mass.: Abyss Publications) Porter was fascinated with the telephone book despite never owning a telephone. He was interested in the way it promised communication and in the thousands of names and numbers listed inside. Porter alphabetized the pages of this book like a telephone book.

Bern Porter with Dick Higgins and Charlie Morrow. Found Sounds. Recorded 1978 Courtesy Mark Melnicove, Literary Executor, Bern Porter Estate.
In this recording, produced by the New Wilderness Foundation, Porter reads and interprets the telephone book, while Higgins and Morrow perform in the background. Porter introduces the piece thus: “We must in our daily lives confront the phone book. The phone book, as you know, is one of the great barometers of our culture for one of the great technological devices. And it can be a very close and charming friend and it can be a hideous monster.”

Listen Here: Found Sounds. Part I***

Where to Go/What to Do/When in New York/Week of July 17, 1972.
The material for this book was a guide Porter found in a New York City hotel room. The collages here reflect the busy rhythm of New York. In the spring 2009 issue of Esopus magazine, Mark Melnicove, executor of Porter’s estate and collaborator from the 1980s until Porter’s death in 2004, wrote the article “Bern Porter: A Found Essay” and reproduced this book in its entirety.

Jesus Moreno. Postcard from Porter’s Mail art collection. Mailed from Colusa, Ca., 1985

The Waste Maker. 1972* (Somerville, Mass.: Abyss Publications) In The Waste Maker, which Porter considered his most successful artist’s book, he repurposed the visual information Americans are bombarded with—newspaper articles, magazine ads, standardized tests, scientific documents, musical scores, junk mail, and instruction booklets. The juxtaposition of image and text emphasizes the ridiculousness and wastefulness of all this infomation.

Water-Fight. 1941 (South Dakota: L.A. Press, Pine Hill Printery)
Two opposing forces, a dry cloth and water, fight with one another until the piece of fabric is soaked. The last lines of the poem read:

At the point of bursting, their whole diameter throbs with the coursing flow . . .
The spaces between them are glutted with moisture.
By now all the threads feel cold and damp.
The fabric is wet.
All wet !

This copy bears a unique dedication by Porter to his mother, who never fully supported her son’s artistic endeavors. This is Porter’s second book.

Pages. 1986
This Found is an original manuscript page for an unpublished book.

J.O. Olbrich. Ephemera from Porter’s Mail art collection. 1984

Madam X. Madam X’s Gazet. no. 25, 1992- From Porter’s Mail art collection.

The Manhattan Project

In 1940 Porter’s draft board sent him to work on the separation of uranium at Princeton University, where he met Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer. After Princeton, with the Manhattan Project well underway, Porter bounced back and forth between Berkeley and Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Porter, previously unaware, he said, that his research had been used for weaponry, walked away from the project.

Porter moved to Sausalito, California, and began to focus more intensely on artistic endeavors. He published work by poets and writers who would later be associated with the San Francisco Renaissance and worked more seriously on his own art and writing. He named his new house after the German poet, playwright, and philosopher Friedrich Schiller and started an art gallery in the living room.

Cees Franck, Patricia Larter, and Terry Reid. Art Core Meltdown. 1979

Exhibition poster for a major Mail art event at Sydney University, Australia, September 9-15, 1979. From Porter’s Mail art collection.

Guam

In 1950 Porter moved to Guam to escape family problems. He supported himself through odd jobs, such as waiting tables, and barely spoke to family and friends, preferring a life of isolation and self-discovery. He published three books during his time there, but otherwise stopped his creative activities.

James Schevill. The American Fantasies: Original End Papers and Page Illustrations by Bern Porter for James Schevill’s Poems The American Fantasies Published in Agana, Guam 1951, with Added Notes by James Schevill. 1959* (Berkeley: Tamalpais Press) Porter claimed that The American Fantasies, which he originally published, in 1951, was the first book ever to be published on the island of Guam.

Japan

From Guam, Porter visited Japan. He was curious to see what World War II had done to the country and was surprised to find the Japanese welcoming and hospitable. His ideas about the unification of science and art were met with great enthusiasm, he said, and he traveled around the country giving lectures and published his writing in Japanese newspapers.

Image Above: These 50 Years Gone along with the Sorrow. 1996* (Ann Arbor: Roger Jackson)
In 1995 Porter was asked by city officials in Hiroshima to write a piece for the fiftieth anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb. He wrote two poems. “These 50 Years Gone,” describes the guilt and pain he internalized due to his involvement in the destruction of Hiroshima.

Ephemera from Porter’s Mail art collection. n.d.

I've Left

Bern Porter. I’ve Left. 1971 (New York: Something Else Press)
In I’ve Left, Porter proposes wild and revolutionary improvements to and uses for books, poetry, clothing, theater, architecture, art, food, toys, and automobiles. Among his ideas are playing cards with poems printed on them, bed sheets radiating classic literature, lawyer’s fees that may be paid in poems, spray-on suits sold in vending machines that can be disposed of in the toilet, 360-degree theaters in which the audience acts and light and heat produce emotion; buildings with “green” roofs that use solar and wind energy; ubiquitous art forms that make artists wealthy; food in pill form; toys for adults, called “the feelie,” “do das,” and “mallies” that rid hypertension; and smaller more fuel efficient cars.

Poems Lifted off the Page

“I spewed poetry without words, without sounds, without punctuation, without meaning. Poetry Died. In its place arose dots and dashes in full color, cinescope projected with mail-slot screens; intermittent spurts of chemically-dyed ether, alpha-radiated Geiger recordings emanated from my diaphragm with every third vowel crystallized. Textual poetry was at last off the typed ms, off the printed page and jet soaring”. –Bern Porter, I’ve Left.

The Happy Rock: A Book about Henry Miller. 1945 (Berkeley: Packard Press)
Porter considered this his first experimental book, with its multicolored pages, large art-book format, and simple line drawing of Miller drawn by Fernand Léger on its cover. The title is drawn from Miller’s 1938 novel Tropic of Capricorn: “You live like a happy rock in the midst of the ocean: you are fixed while everything about you is in turbulent motion.” The anthology includes contributions by Philip LaMantia, George Leite, Kenneth Patchen, and William Carlos Williams, among others.

Aphasia: A Psycho-Visual Satire on Printed Communication. 1961 (Madison, Me.: Bern Porter)
The pages of Aphasia are advertisements for food, clothing, furniture, guns, bicycles, watches, and other products, cut out of American newspapers and bound together.

Scandinavian Summer: A Psycho-Visual Recollection in Six Languages of a Journey Through Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Denmark. 1961 (Madison, Me.: Bern Porter)
Scandinavian Summer is composed of pages of newspapers from these five countries.

Image Above: Kenneth Patchen. Panels for the Walls of Heaven. 1946** (Berkeley: Gillick Press)
In this book Patchen experimented with typography, layout, and the incorporation of visual and textual elements, predating what would later be called concrete or visual poetry. He hated Porter’s design for the book, and after it was published the two did not speak to each other again.

cut leaves number one: multi-interchanging sheets for multiple designs. 1966
Cut leaves number one is made of loose samples of colorful and patterned bookbinding cloth.

cut leaves #3: multi-interchanging leaves for multiple design formation. 1966

438B: thyfuture. 1966 (Huntsville, Ala.: Bern Porter)
Porter created this artist’s book while living in Huntsville, Alabama, with his wife, Margaret. At that time he was working on NASA’s Saturn V Rocket, and the pages of this book are computer printouts Porter saved from the office. He often collected paper waste and used resources at work, like the Xerox machine, to produce his books.

Founds

Images Above: original Founds, 1986*

Found Poems, The Book of Do’s, Here Comes Everybody’s Don’t Book, and Sweet End were originally conceived of as a seven-part series of Founds. The last three books, The Book of Light, The Devil’s Wishbone, and The Porter Book remain unpublished.

Bern Porter. Found Poems. 1972* (Millerton, N.Y.: Something Else Press) Porter and Higgins (of Something Else Press) had a collaborative friendship, publishing each other’s work, making books together, and performing with one another. In this book of Founds, Porter continued to infuse the materials of a throwaway culture with new meaning.

Do’s. 1986
This original collage is part of a collection of Do’s Porter made at The Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York, November 1986.

Bern Porter. The Book of Do’s. 1982* (Hulls Cove, Me.: The Dog Ear Press) This book is full of directives such as “try it, it won’t bite,” “go ahead and give,” “push,” “save lost souls,” “get a load of these,” “ban the crunch,” “forget,” “pour it spray it froth it slice it,” “look away, look away,” “gather the roses, the lilies, and the pinks,” “charge it!,” “think of money,” “say NO!,” “read this,” “please fill in,” and “look at what 99 cents will buy.”

Gee-Whizzles. 1977 (Rockland, Me.: Maine Coast Printers)
The title of this book, Porter wrote, comes “from a Maine expletive ‘Gee Whizz’ often used by Porters father.” (Porter often wrote about himself in the third person). The book is full of other phrases, foreign languages and nonsense words.

Francesco Conz. Letter from Porter’s Mail art collection (mailed from Verona, Italy, 1983)
Conz is an art dealer and publisher involved with Fluxus Art.

Dick Higgins. What are Legends. 1960 (Calais, Me.: Bern Porter)
This is Higgins’s first book, published and illustrated by Porter.

Ephemera. n.d.
Porter wrote notes for every item of his in the MoMA collection on the backsides of found pieces of paper. When he settled down in Maine during the last years of his life, he hoarded so much paper that he used his refrigerator and oven for storage.

Images Above: Here Comes Everybody’s Don’t Book. 1984* (South Harpswell, Me.: The Dog Ear Press)
The cover of this book shows a row of stereotypically grumpy elderly people, one of whom is shouting out the title. The pages are filled with interdictions such as “don’t wait on tomorrow,” “don’t tamper,” “don’t bet on the rain,” “don’t rub it in, lift it out,” “don’t,” “don’t miss the big one,” “don’t call,” “don’t let infants play with balloons,” “please don’t sit this one out,” and “don’t spend your holidays in the kitchen.”

Sweet End 1989* (Brunswick: The Dog Ear Press) Porter’s first title for Sweet End was The Book of Death.

Clothes

David Luchak and Bern Porter. Anatomical Parts. 1979 …I foresee that human skin can never be improved upon, might under the right conditions be made to grow to suit better a given purpose. Thus by special vitamin injections into skin structures in the soles of human feet I develop there a heavier, tougher skin which takes all conditions of use without the need of additional protection or covering. – Bern Porter, I’ve Left

David Luchak and Bern Porter. Anatomical Parts. 1979
These two photographs exemplify “Scipho,” Porter’s merging of science and photography. Porter was very involved with sound and performance art, and the motif of the ear recurs in many of his works from this time: the poster for his Franklin Furnace retrospective includes a drawing of his ears by Charles Stanley, and the video Earum Magnus (1979), a collaboration with Dick Higgins, Charlie Morrow, and Scott B., is a long close-up shot of Porter’s left ear, with musical accompaniment.

A Regional Report for the Knox County Regional Planning Commission. 1969 (Rockland, Me.: Knox County Regional Planning Commission)
In 1968 Bern and Margaret Porter moved back to Maine from Hunstville, Alabama. Bern became a consultant for the Knox County Regional Planning Commission, which put him in charge of drafting a plan to revitalize the county. In this report he argues that taking advantage of local resources—he discusses Processed Foods, Processed Sea Moss, Pre-Fabricated Houses, Smelting, Quilting, Confectionaries, Wild-Life Farms, Pharmaceutical Plants, Off-Shore Exploration/Drilling, and Minerals, among others)—will benefit the local economy. His ideas were not met with the enthusiasm he had hoped for, and the commission edited his report down to a much shorter summary, of about fifty pages. His anger about this led to his decision to run for governor of Maine in 1969 (a bid that was ultimately unsuccessful).

Food

Pages. 1986 “Margaret Dunbar: Do you yourself follow a strict diet? Bern Porter: I myself am caught in this myth. I noticed ice cream the other day. On the box there were 17 elements, 16 of which I had never heard of before in my life. As it happens, I like ice cream; I’m stuck with ice cream, but I cannot get it. In my day we used to make it out of ice and cream.” – from Bern! Porter! Interview! Conducted by Margaret Dunbar, 1983?

Postcard from Porter’s Mail art collection. (mailed from Baby Ruth and Richard, Winston-Salem, n.d.)

Mark Melnicove. Press release. 1984
This press release announces the inclusion of Porter in Tom Bryan’s Not Famous Enough Americans series. It was publicized by Mark Melnicove’s The Dog Ear Press, which published many of Porter’s later books of Founds.

Image Above: Tom Bryan. “Not Famous Enough Americans.” 1984*
This is a promotional pamphlet for Tom Bryan’s Pure Maple Syrup, made in Erieville, New York. In the 1980s Bryan created a series of short biographies he called Not Famous Enough Americans and printed them on the labels of his maple syrup bottles. Bryan is the founder and former director of Light Work, an organization in Syracuse dedicated to promoting photography through residencies, exhibitions, and publications. Light Work mounted SEe(MAN)TIC, an exhibition of Porter’s work, in 1994, and the article “Bern Porter (1911–2004)” written by Sheila Holtz (editor of the journal Bern Porter International) was published in the Light Work journal, Contact Sheet, on the occasion of Porter’s death.

Tom Bryan. Postcard from Porter’s Mail art collection. (mailed from Syracuse, 1984)
The collage on the back of the postcard reads, “A message from those who don’t to those who do. We’re uncomfortable. / A message from those who do to those who don’t. We’re on the spot.”

Pages. 1986

Venture. 1986
Porter made this unique artist’s book from an October 1970 issue of Venture magazine. The pages of the magazine have all been restructured—some have been cut up and additional text and images have been pasted onto others.

Selected Founds. Croissant Pamphlet no. 2, 1975 (Athens, Ohio: Croissant & Company)

Bern Porter at Franklin Furnace

In 1979 Franklin Furnace, a New York performance and exhibition space with an extensive collection of artists’ books, mounted a retrospective show of Porter’s work, organized by Charles J. Stanley (aka Carlo Pittore) and Judd Tully. The exhibition traveled to San Jose State University, Artworks Gallery in Venice, California, and the Miller Library at Colby College, Waterville, Maine.

Judd Tully and Charles J. Stanley. Bern Porter: Retrospective. 1979* (San Jose: San Jose State University Art Department/Art Gallery) Stanley’s illustrations of Porter’s nostrils and ears adorn the exhibition catalogue and poster.

Letter to Martha Wilson. January, 1978.
This is one of many letters Porter wrote to Wilson, founder of Franklin Furnace. He says he cannot give any of his artist’s books to Franklin Furnace, as he needs to sell them in order to afford food. The two kept up a correspondence throughout the late 1970s, and the Franklin Furnace Archive, now part of the MoMA Library, includes several letters from Porter asking Wilson if she will purchase his books or include his work in an exhibition.

Performance

Bern Porter. Place Stamp Here. Issue 1 (spring, 1983) and Issue 2 (fall, 1983). From Porter’s Mail art collection.
Mail art postcard series.

Image Above: Bern Porter and Mark Melnicove. Poster. 1979
This poster advertises the first collaborative performance by Porter and Melnicove. The two met in 1978 at the Maine Poets Festival, in Bar Harbor. Even though Porter was forty years older than Melnicove, the two forged a lasting friendship. They traveled all over the northeastern United States performing together as The Eternal Poetry Festival, experimenting with music, sound, visual projections, and audience participation. Melnicove wrote that Porter’s "only injunction was that no matter what we intoned, chanted, recited, or danced, no matter how we lived, it must be ‘spontaneous and unrehearsed."

Bern Porter and Mark Melnicove. The Eternal Poetry Festival, postcard from Porter’s Mail art collection. n.d.* (Grindstone City, Mich.: The Alternative Press)

Sue Davis. Postcard from Porter’s Mail art collection. 1981

The Last Acts of Saint Fuck You. Poster. 1977

Bern Porter and Steven Perkins. The Last Acts of Saint Fuck You. 1985 (Madison, Wisc.: Xerox Sutra Editions)
This poem is an alphabetical list of action verbs. It is printed in its entirety on the accompanying poster.

The Last Acts of Saint Fuck You. Audio. Aerial,no. 1 (winter, 1990). Courtesy Mark Melnicove, Literary Executor, Bern Porter Estate.

Listen Here: The Last Acts of Saint Fuck You***

Mark Bloch. Postcard from Porter’s Mail art collection. (mailed from New York, n.d.)

Pages. (1986)

… this is just a duplication of the ease, stagnation and minimal existence of the living room, that is to say no noise, no knock, no carbon deposit, no back fire, no steering, no gear changing, no thinking, nothing but TV, radio, indigestion, decaying teeth, ulcers, more death. And the area occupied by the person dying…is about one two hundredth part of the total volume of…the car itself. –Bern Porter, I’ve Left.

The 89 Offenses. 1972 (Somerville Mass: Abyss Publications)

Pages. 1986

Fred Truck. Safeway bolts Des Moines: a BON BON Postcard from your Full Service ARTISTIC BANK, The Performance Bank, 1982 From Porter’s Mail art collection.

Bill Gaglione. Why Are You Still Making Art? n.d. Postcard from Porter’s Mail art collection

Henry Miller

Porter became obsessed with Henry Miller after reading the writer’s 1934 novel The Tropic of Cancer. While working for the Manhattan Project, Porter traveled to Big Sur, California, to meet Miller and ask permission to print the writer’s antiwar treatise Murder the Murderer. In 1944 Porter published that piece and Miller’s books The Plight of the Creative Artist in the United States of America, What Are You Going To Do About Alf?, and Semblance of a Devoted Past. Porter also published the first comprehensive bibliography of Miller’s writing, in 1945, earning himself the respect of the literary world.

Henry Miller: A Bibliography, 1970*

Bern Porter and Opal L. Nations. What Henry Miller Said and Why It Is Important. 1974 (Ashland, Me.: Strange Faeces Productions)
The text on this poster is taken from Porter’s book of the same name, first published in 1964. Miller’s uninhibited views about sex prompted Porter to write about the importance of understanding sex as a natural act intrinsic to all humans. Strange Faeces is a small press and magazine run by Nations, an artist, writer, musician, and publisher, who drew the illustrations for this poster.

Mail Art

Image Above: Envelope from Porter's mail art collection. 1985

Porter claimed that he had invented mail art as a boy in rural Maine. Throughout his life he preferred to communicate by mail, and he never owned a telephone or a computer. Later in life, mail art became a way to avoid isolation. He corresponded with people all over the world, from the Netherlands to Japan. These items are a small selection of Porter’s mail art collection. Porter maintained correspondences with most major figures of the Eternal Art Network, a vast group of people who corresponded and exchanged art through the post, including Anna Banana, Mark Bloch, Buster Cleveland, Ken Friedman, Ed Higgins III, Ruud Janssen, Musicmaster, Clive Philpot (director of the MoMA Library, 1977–1994), Carlo Pittore, Shozo Shimamoto, Madam X, and countless others.

Jean Noel Laszlo and Nadine Jardin. A Quarter of a Century: Mail Art.1987 (Toulon, France: for the exhibition at la Maison des Jeunes et de la Culture avec le concours du Musee de Salon et de la Crau)
On the cover of this French survey of correspondence art, Porter declares himself the medium’s inventor. The date he provides here means he would have been two years old at the time of his invention.

Carlo Pittore. Bern Porter Commemorative Stamp Series. 1981
After organizing the 1979 retrospective of Porter’s work at Franklin Furnace, Porter’s good friend Pittore created a group of stamps in his honor. This collection, housed in a special case, includes many of the original proofs.

Poster. n.d. From Porter’s Mail art collection.

Pages. (1986)

Finding Bern Porter Today

Recently, Porter has begun to reemerge from his relatively underground status, appearing in a variety of publications like The Wilco Book, a book about the popular alternative rock band Wilco, and an article by the contemporary artist Seth Price in a 2009 issue of the French art magazine May. Porter’s work can also be found in an article by Mark Melnicove in the spring 2009 issue of Esopus magazine and on the website ubuweb.

Seth Price. “Teen Image,” May, no. 2, October 2009

Wilco and Picture Box, Inc. The Wilco Book. 2004 (New York)

Pages. 1986

*Images used with permission from Mark Melnicove, Literary Director of The Bern Porter Estate.

**Image of Panels for the Walls of Heaven by Kenneth Patchen used with permission from Special Collections, U.C. Santa Cruz., Kenneth Patchen Papers.

***Sound recordings used with permission from Mark Melnicove and Kenneth Goldsmith, Founder of ubuweb.

Acknowledgments

Very special thanks to Mark Melnicove (Bern Porter’s publisher, editor, and performance partner, as well as the literary director of his estate) for all of his help and generosity.

Thanks to Jen Bandini, Chiara Bernasconi, Sheelagh Bevan, Sara Bodinson, Christine Bunting, Allegra Burnette, Mabel Cordero, Dan Domench, Sumitra Duncan, Deborah Duwees, Danny Fermon, Kenneth Goldsmith, Julianna Goodman, Ian Goulston, Peter Huelster, Milan Hughston, Tod Lippy, Philip Parente, Lily Pregill, Rebecca Roberts, Lori Salmon, David Senior, and Jenny Tobias.