American artist Robert Cumming (October 7, 1943 – December 16, 2021) appreciated fun. He saw no point in trying to achieve anything else in life. As he put it: “If it’s not fun, there’s no point!” A new book of his conceptual photographs illustrates the point.
Above, you can see the photo Cumming called Watermelon/Bread, one of his witty remaking of everyday stuff that can turn out to be oddly useful constructions. And what it is need not be a more obvious source of amusement. For instance, everyone’s bad memories are vivid, but if you make vivid photographs of them, they become oddly fun to recreate. Do you see? No, us neither – not entirely. But maybe thats the point – you don’t get it but so what. It’s there and it’s interesting to look at. So make of it what you will. Just take a look – and then, thanks to his talent for creating the absurd and alluring – you should look again.
Snow Scene Under Construction, It’s a Wonderful Life. Stage 2, 13 May, 1977
10 Unique Article As – every day signs look different in another setting and arrangement
Cumming earned a BFA in 1965 from Massachusetts College of Art in Boston and an MFA in 1967 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He progressed into teaching, securing his first teaching position at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where he was involved with mail art, an early conceptual art movement that conferred art status on items sent through the postal system. In 1970, Cumming moved to southern California to lecture on photography, and in 1974, he started teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1978, Cumming moved back to New England, where he continued to teach and make art.
Untitled by Robert Cumming
Distracted Mid Stride:Spiked Man Kneels to Read
“I started to go against the avant-garde ‘less is more’ and began to work on more varied levels – sculpture, photography, and writing that has a number of layers. Illusion worked in under that guise”
– Robert Cumming, 1976
Bad Memories of Improper Electrical Application
“To start off an idea, I would do a drawing, like a little pencil sketch. And I had made a promise to myself never to act on these ideas until I’d waited at least a month. I think about one drawing in five was actually made into a photograph. It was a good discipline for me because, you know, the newest idea was always fantastic, and I’d launch into this complicated prop and then realize in the middle, “This really sucks—what was I thinking?” So there was a pact to let each one simmer first as a drawing.”
– Robert Cumming to Aperture
Foundation Students, Hartford Art School
Cumming was an avid reader, of everything from philosophy to DIY manuals, so words and writing became an integral part of his photography. Cross Body Pen Point Choreography
Cumming in his LA studio
67-Degree Body Arc off Circle Centre
From:Very Pictorial Conceptual Art is available from Stanley/Barker Books. All photographs by Robert Cumming.
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