Buster Cleveland, 55, Dada Artist
Known for Collages and Mail Art
By HOLLAND COTTER
Buster Cleveland, who first gained attention for his zany, meticulously made Dadaist collages in the East Village galleries of the early 1980's, died on May 6 at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens. He was 55.The cause was cardiac arrest, said his dealer, Gracie Mansion.
Mr. Cleveland, who was born James Trenholm in Chicago, studied at the Chicago Art Institute and the San Francisco Art Institute. In the 1970's he was involved in the Mendocino Area Dadaists (M.A.D.) and the Bay Area Dadaists (B.A.D), California organizations of artists whose intent was to recreate the ephemeral works of early European Dadaists like Kurt Schwitters and Marcel Duchamp., He, was co- director of two international Dada conferences, Inter-Dada 80 and Inter- Dada 84. He wore a "Dada" tattoo.
Mr. Cleveland came to New York in the late 1970's and began selling postage- stamp-size collages on the street in SoHo. He met Ms. Mansion, also an artist, who become his dealer, although she had no gallery of her own then.
In 1981
they rented a limousine, parked it on the corner of Spring Street and West
Broadway, then the heart of the SoHo gallery district, and invited passers-by
into the back seat to view Mr. Cleveland's work. A year after the "Limo
Show," Ms. Mansion opened a gallery on East 10th Street in the East Village
and began showing Mr. Cleveland's
work.
His last show with her was in 1993. His last New York one-man show was
held last year at Bound and Unbound Gallery. He was also included in group
exhibitions in the United States and Europe.
Many of Mr. Cleveland's collages from the 1980's and 1990's were made of poured plastic embedded with toys, automobile hood ornaments and. other consumer items. But his most widely seen works were those using the covers of Artforum magazine. To the original covers he added photographic self- portraits, pictures of friends, logos from cigarette packs and kitsch and Pop Art images. He then made color laser prints of the collages, reducing them to postcard size.
Mr. Cleveland had long been involved with mail art, a medium pioneered by his friend, the late Ray Johnson. And four years ago he began to distribute his Artforum collages through the mail by subscription. He offered a year's subscription (10 issues plus a bonus summer issue by a guest artist) for $100, and a lifetime ("mine," he stipulated) subscription for $1,000.
Mr. Cleveland
is survived by his companion, Diane Sipprelle, an artist, of New York;
two sons, Zach and Isaac, and a daughter, Angel, all of California; a daughter,
Summer, of Arizona; his mother, Margo Janko, his stepfather, Jack Janko,
and two stepbrothers, Curt and Bart Janko, all of Wisconsin, and
five grandchildren.
Reprinted
from the New York Times, May 25, 1998.
