Panel text reads:
at Black Mountain College…
I may have told this story before. One never knows where one has been recorded. In the early fifties, I was asked to leave my high school, Cass Technical in Detroit, Michigan. I applied to at least 18 different art schools... in those days they had no high school equivalency test. Every art school wrote back politely saying get your high school diploma and then come and see us. Except one. I wrote to that school because I'd been in Detroit's main library and found an article in Vogue, or some glossy magazine like that, on a place called Black Mountain....
The name was not completely new to me. In my 9th and 10th grades, I had an art teacher named Donald Thrall, who had studied at Black Mountain with Josef Albers. He truly prepared us in Albersian-Bauhaus color theory.
When I wrote Black Mountain, I thought I knew what I was getting into. I even asked Donald about BMC. He told me not to go there until I was at least twenty-three years old.
I was sixteen. And Black Mountain was the only school that asked me to come for an interview.
I must tell you, I arrived with my mother. And there on the lawn was a table and a tablecloth with silverware. Tea was served. My mother then went home, and I took three paintings to Joe Fiore, who was the painting teacher at the time.
I have nothing but gracious feelings toward Joe, who, when confronted by my painting of a young boy lying down on the beach next to a banana larger than himself, quietly turned to me and said, "Well, we all have a surreal period."
Basil King
from Carbuncle #4
Thumbscrew Press, San Francisco, 1994
at Black Mountain College…
I may have told this story before. One never knows where one has been recorded. In the early fifties, I was asked to leave my high school, Cass Technical in Detroit, Michigan. I applied to at least 18 different art schools... in those days they had no high school equivalency test. Every art school wrote back politely saying get your high school diploma and then come and see us. Except one. I wrote to that school because I'd been in Detroit's main library and found an article in Vogue, or some glossy magazine like that, on a place called Black Mountain....
The name was not completely new to me. In my 9th and 10th grades, I had an art teacher named Donald Thrall, who had studied at Black Mountain with Josef Albers. He truly prepared us in Albersian-Bauhaus color theory.
When I wrote Black Mountain, I thought I knew what I was getting into. I even asked Donald about BMC. He told me not to go there until I was at least twenty-three years old.
I was sixteen. And Black Mountain was the only school that asked me to come for an interview.
I must tell you, I arrived with my mother. And there on the lawn was a table and a tablecloth with silverware. Tea was served. My mother then went home, and I took three paintings to Joe Fiore, who was the painting teacher at the time.
I have nothing but gracious feelings toward Joe, who, when confronted by my painting of a young boy lying down on the beach next to a banana larger than himself, quietly turned to me and said, "Well, we all have a surreal period."
Basil King
from Carbuncle #4
Thumbscrew Press, San Francisco, 1994
Artwork: 1995.52.1
At Black Mountain College in Chronicle #4, Thumbscrew Press, San Fransisco, 1994
This work was created for the 1995 exhibition Remembering Black Mountain College curated by Mary Emma Harris in conjunction with Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center and the BMC alumni reunion organized by Mary Holden Thompson, founding director of BMCM+AC.
24 x 18 inches
In copyright
Gift of Basil King
Basil King, At Black Mountain College in Chronicle #4, Thumbscrew Press, San Fransisco, 1994, 1995. Printed ink on foam board. Collection of Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center. Gift of the artist.
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