The activity inside the Museum of Contemporary Art is typical of the final frenzied moments before any new exhibition opens, with a din of voices, hammers and vacuum cleaners and a procession of curators, guards and interested employees.
The scene is nearly total chaos, all right, but at the center of the maelstrom is a conspicuous pocket of calm. On a visitor`s bench sits artist Doug Starn, serenely observing the pandemonium, his long hair, blue jeans and trashed Reeboks making him look even younger than his 27 years.
Next to him, equally serene, sits his brother Mike Starn, whose long hair, blue jeans and trashed Reeboks make him look even younger than his 27 years.
The Starns are identical twins besides being collaborative artists, and they`re about the hottest patootie in a contemporary art world starved for new talent and capable of bestowing fame and fortune with a snap of its collective fingers.
ART EXPLOSION
In just over two years, Doug and Mike Starn (or, the Starn Twins, as they`re popularly known) have erupted on the scene with the force of a detonated bomb, the prices for their innovative photo-collages soaring from $600 to $50,000, their list of exhibitions and bibliography credits growing longer by the week. (The MCA show runs through Dec. 4.)
What`s all the hoopla about?
It`s about a lot of things. On an esthetic level, there`s the brashness of the Starns` photographs, which tend to be fragmented, creased, scratched, taped together and otherwise adulterated in ways that undermine traditional photography. On a social level, there`s an intense preoccupation with the list of collector-honchos who either already own a Starn work or want to-and have added their names to a waiting list for this purpose.
Finally, psychologically, there`s an overwhelming curiosity about the Starns` twinship that has generated so much attention that many people who know about the brothers have no idea what their artwork even looks like.
The question of who does what is posed repeatedly to the Starns, who were plucked by Boston`s Stux Gallery fresh from a graduate-student show at their alma mater, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School, in 1985.
Then there`s a whole list of now-anticipated queries, asked for the gazillionth time, that ranges from ”Which one are you?” to ”How long will the Scotch tape last?” (They say it could last as long as 20 years, but if pieces of the art start to peel the owner should just glue them back down.)
DOUBLE TROUBLE
While one twin begins to answer, the other invariably stares away in a seemingly unfocused trance. But they`re always listening to each other, since a response might start with Doug, be taken up by Mike and then be finished by both of them as one`s conversation tumbles over the other`s.
In fact, the Starns are an interviewer`s worst nightmare: articulate, quotable, but impossible to apprehend even in shorthand, and with voices maddeningly similar on cassette tape. Trying to figure out who said what is probably as frustrating as Doug being called Mike, and vice versa.
But frustrations aside, all preconceived notions of what these new, young, potentially rich and socially in-demand artists will be like disappears within seconds of a first meeting. They`re sincere, maybe even vulnerable. They`re serious about their art. They possess none of the ”we-can-get-into-any-club-we-want-and-you-can`t” attitude that commonly strikes their art-star contemporaries. They don`t seem to realize just how cool art society at large thinks they are.
”Well, we still don`t believe what`s been going on, and it was terribly confusing for us when it was fresh, when it had just started,” admits Doug, the elder of the two by a full five minutes, who is distinguished from his brother by such subtle points as less-fluffy hair. ”And one of the things that`s confusing is that nothing really changes. We`re no different at all.” STILL THE SAME
Adds Mike, ”When you suddenly become so successful, you expect to feel different . . .” Interjects Doug, ”It`s a very strange feeling. Even though our life has changed, we haven`t. Confusion is what this portrait is about,” he says, pointing to the ”Double Stark Portrait in Swirl” from 1985/86, probably their best-known image.
That initial confusion has abated, but interest in the ”twin thing” has not and, thanks to glossy articles in Newsweek and Vogue (which described the kinds of clothes they wore), Mike and Doug are recognizable to enough people that they`re sometimes asked to sign autographs.
Doesn`t this fascination with their genetic structure bug them after a while?
”Yeah, at a certain point,” says Mike, whose plans to marry in May will necessitate a move, for both, from Boston to New York. ”I think we kind of ignore it, though,” Doug continues.
Still, the two continue to feel the repercussions of signing their early work not with their names but as ”The Starn Twins,” which essentially voided people`s notions of the two as individuals.
”There were two sides to that,” recalls Doug of that decision. ”One was simply to show that the work was done by both of us, and that in itself was very important. We wanted people to know that we`re not just brothers, that there`s a much greater tie than being just brothers. And then the other side was just hoping it would make it easier for people to remember our names.”
THE USUAL REJECTIONS
Incongruous as that seems now, there was a time when the Starns weren`t being so vigorously pursued. According to Mike, ”We sent our slides around to all the galleries in New York a year before everything happened and got rejected by everybody, although you can`t tell much about the work from slides.”
Adds Doug: ”I don`t think anyone even knows they did it. We got letters back addressed to `Dear Mr. Twins,` so, I mean, they didn`t even look at the work.”
”And since then,” says Mike, ”some of the same galleries have tried to steal us from Stux, never even knowing they rejected us before.”
Simultaneously, they crack up.
There`s no doubt the two communicate on levels most of us can`t begin to fathom. ”When we`re working and talking, I think we understand each other exactly,” affirms Mike, who places so little importance on who snaps which photo that he professes not to remember such unnecessary details.
”We don`t always agree, but we really understand,” Doug continues.
”Everything clicks. I can`t even imagine how other people collaborate.”
In spite of their synchronicity and the lengthy discussions that precede each new work, the Starns do have their creative tiffs, one of which took place while constructing ”Boots with Metal and Film.” What, exactly, happened?
”Doug went out to a movie. . .,” Mike says. ”No, it wasn`t a movie, it was in the daytime. . .,” Doug interrupts. ”Anyway, I started messing around, putting on the metal pieces and that piece of red film. Then Doug came back and didn`t feel comfortable with it because he didn`t have any part of it. We hadn`t discussed it out or anything . . .” Doug again: ”It wasn`t just that. I didn`t understand it, or, I don`t know, it just didn`t feel right at all. So we took it all apart . . . and talked about what Mike was doing.” The collaged, iconoclastic result, owned by none other than artist Julian Schnabel, is now pinned unceremoniously to the MCA wall.
SEPARATE STARS?
Naturally, with the kind of attention these two New Jersey-born fellows have been garnering, there have been charges that their joint career would have been less stellar had they not been split in the womb.
Says Linda Stux, co-owner with husband Stefan of the Stux Gallery: ”Oh, this thing about how young they are and the fact they`re twins-we didn`t even know they were twins when we first saw their work. We just fell in love with it, and thought it was very special and unique. ”In the end, the work stands on its own. Has their being twins added to the mystique? Yes. But it hasn`t made them famous.”
Lynne Warren, associate curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, agrees. ”People say, `Oh, they`re so young!` but there have been lots of artists who were recognized when they were young, like Frank Stella, Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns,” she says.
”It`s a knee-jerk reaction that we have to be careful of, since we should be responding to their work, not to the numbers of articles written about them, and this has harmed the Starns to a certain extent already. People have preconceived notions of what their work is about. But even though there are lots of dangers out there for the two of them, they have the advantage of a built-in support system in each other. They`ll never feel lost or alone.”
Mike and Doug have no plans to work separately, and don`t believe their photo-collages could have been conceived by a single individual.
”Together is the only way this work could be done,” explains Doug.
”There`s no way I could have done it or he could have done it alone.”
To Mike he says, ”That`s not the individual part of us. Me, myself, away from the art-that`s a separate personality.”
”But we`re not famous for that,” finishes Doug. ”I mean, nothing I do myself is what people are interested in.” –
