The Dark Bob

To describe The Dark Bob as an artist or an entertainer doesn't begin to tell the story of what he does, but it will do as a beginning. A freewheeling combination of Will Rogers and David Bowie, The Dark Bob was part of the first generation of performance artists that flourished in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Above all else, The Dark Bob is a storyteller, and every facet of his live shows comes together to create a narrative; the abiding subject of his stories is love in all its permutations, and the dark forces that threaten it. He speaks with an exquisite combination of the absurd and the profound, and that is the source of his genius. In the tradition of Andy Warhol, The Dark Bob embraces pop culture at the same time that he parodies it. He favors the extravagant costuming of a Vegas performer - feathered tights, harem pants, a skirt, heavy make-up. At a glance, fine art appears to play a subtle role in The Dark Bob's work, however, he came of age as a creative person in the church of high Modernism, and fine art is the anchor of his work. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s he toured continuously, and over the past three decades he's given hundreds of performances, held workshops, and lectured throughout the country. The Dark Bob often works collaboratively, and over the years he's completed projects with performance art divas Rachel Rosenthal and Barbara T. Smith, Nels Cline (of Wilco), songwriter Peter Case (Plimsouls and Nerves), DJ Bonebrake of LA's beloved punk band "X", actor Andy Dick, and poet Lewis MacAdams, among many others. Music has become central to The Dark Bob's work over the course of his career, and he's developed a hybrid style that synthesizes elements of classic American pop, traditional middle-eastern music, light opera and country & western. His music has been released by PolyGram/Polydor Records, High Performance Records, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the San Francisco Art Institute and his own label M.I.T.B. Records. From 1975 through 1982, The Dark Bob was one half of the pioneering Los Angeles conceptual/performance art team, Bob & Bob; together, the Bobs developed an international audience, and their work can be found in numerous public collections including New York's Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art and the Getty Museum. His archives (and the archives of Bob & Bob) are held in the Smithsonian Institute's "Archives of American Art".