JESSE HULCHER
Current Residence
New York, NY
What is your favorite art book?
'Devastated College Guy' by Jon Clark
What are you currently reading?
'White Noise' by Don DeLillo
What is your favorite art book title?
'Drinkollage'
What is the first book you read that was influential to you?
Casting the some of the more obvious stuff aside, I'd have to say that Kurt Vonnegut was probably the first author who really spoke to my sensibility at a young age. I feel like I should mention 'Bluebeard' because of its absurd and accurate characterization of the 'Art World'. But I know I read 'Slaughter House Five' much, much earlier and that this was the book that introduced me to writing that was truly creative. It was probably my first experience reading something experimental or something that could be defined as 'post-modern' literature. That's a big deal. That opens the door for everything else. You don't make it to the point where you're writing your own experimental literature without this introduction. You wouldn't even make it to reading anything more experimental than that. The copy that I first read also had a major misprint. One you reached something like page 245, the book started over again at page 186. So, you had to read all of those pages over again in order to finish the book. Initially, I thought this was intentional, being that time-travel was depicted in the novel. So, I was waiting for something to possibly happen differently during the second reading of those pages. But nothing was changed. I didn't realize that this was completely unintentional until a read a different copy of the book a couple of years later, which was not misprinted. This probably added to my early fascination with the book. But I would have been interested regardless. It's sad. It's hilarious. It's weird. It's historically accurate. It's historically inaccurate. It's sweet. It's perverse. It's crass. It's smart. It's all of those things. And it probably taught me that all of these tones can coexist within the same piece or body of work. So, that's also been very influential for me. I like to make work that is rich in this way. I think that art can be, and should be, layered with many different ideas, tones and emotions. As far as my own art is concerned, if I can't find a way to laugh at, or be entertained, by my own misfortune then what have I learned from these experiences? I don't want sadness to be the only emotion that I experience and I don't want that to be the only emotion that a viewer feels when they experience a piece that I've created. When I write about my father's death, there's humor in there too. Maybe I have Kurt Vonnegut to thank for this.
What books, magazines, or art ephemera do you keep in the space where you work?
I enjoy reading non-fiction and essays about technology and its effects on culture. So, I've got plenty of books about things like the internet, 'social networking' and MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing games) lying around, to name a few topics. I find that stuff the most interesting and the most relevant to my work, which is generally technology-based in some way. SkyMall is a constant source of culturally-relevant inspiration.
If you could only live with one art book what would it be?
I'm not completely sure what art book would be an absolute necessity to me or to my process, given that I could only choose one. But I guess I can at least say that it would not be Brian Eno's 'Oblique Strategies'. I'm a sucker for strange humor and dead-pan delivery, and I love experimenting with language. So, I might be appeased with a thorough collection of William Wegman's text-based drawings and doodles. That might keep me entertained. I think that has something in common with my favorite artist book in the MoMA Library as well.
What is your favorite item in the MoMA Library Collection? Why?
While I certainly haven't seen everything in the MoMA Library Collection, I was immediately attracted to Pat Shook's 'Universal, religions, symbolism'. I like that it's so simple in both form and concept, and seems closer to irreverence than spiritual curiosity. The collections and arrangements of symbols and icons seem almost careless, bordering on mindless doodling, not unlike the drawings one might imagine 'Beavis and Butthead' would produce using their own cast of nominally 'evil' symbols and icons. This repetitive and obsessive juxtaposition of so many symbols and icons renders them abstracted to the point of meaninglessness, which I'm guessing might be half the point. But I get the sense that there is some kind of perverse enjoyment being taken in the production of these drawings. I find them hilarious in any case. And having been produced in 1980, it's beaten an entire world of hipster zines and comics to the punch by around 30 years. I think there's also something to be said for the tonal ambiguity of Shook's piece in contrast to the expected irony involved in many contemporary pieces of this ilk. That's refreshing right now.