Artist Lecture

Image: Kim Jones aka Mudman, Venice, California, December 1975

Kim Jones became famous in Southern California as a performance artist, particularly for his alter ego, Mudman. Caked in mud, bearing a lattice appendage of sticks attached to his back, wearing a headdress and nylon mask, he appeared on city streets on and around Venice Beach and in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Part walking sculpture, part shaman, part urban cult figure, Mudman became a powerful icon for an era defined by the Vietnam War and a fascination with alternative lifestyles and non-Western religious practices.

Now living and working in New York City, Jones has become known more recently for his “War Drawings,” exhaustively detailed pencil and erasure drawings in which x-men and dot-men endlessly engage and disengage. One of these drawings—a triptych—is on view in the current exhibition, Left Coast:Recent Acquisitions of Contemporary Art.  Don’t miss this rare opportunity to learn more about the artist, who will also sign copies of his retrospective catalogue Mudman: The Odyssey of Kim Jones (MIT Press, 2007) directly following the lecture.

Mary Craig Auditorium
Free for SBMA Members and Students/$10 Non-Members/$6 Senior Non-Members
Reserve or purchase tickets at the Museum Visitor Services desks, or online at tickets.sbma.net.