King for a Day
Through a series of performance pieces enacted in the mid 1970s, California artist Eleanor Antin "illustrated her own dreams" by acting them out in costume. Our colleague Steve Brown recently got in touch with Antin to ask her some questions about a particularly memorable image from her King of Solana Beach performance (1974) wherein she donned a crown and beard to "celebrate the birth of her male self," thus "extending the limits of her own personality."
SB- The photograph of the King holding a Budweiser and talking to the surfers is such a loaded image. I recall surfers like these being a very exclusive lot. They had strict codes of dress and speech and were not friendly towards outsiders. In the photo the guy on your left seems to be trying to be trying to make telepathic contact with the guy you are engaging. The other two seem to be saying a lot with their body language. Can you share some recollections about this episode in the King's "life performance." What were they like? How was it for you?
EA- Hi Steve, neat reading you gave the King and the surfers. All I remember about that image is that I said hello, introduced myself as The King of Solana Beach, I always introduced myself, kings should have good manners, and just sat down and began talking. They were hanging around on the pillboxes, the local name for the bluffs overlooking the beach, where as its name suggests, kids sat around and got stoned. They actually looked very amiable and sweet, pot had a friendlier, more agreeable tonality than speed, meth, coke, or any of the more mind blasting drugs that came later. The obvious fact that they wouldn't have seen too many bearded women in their short lifetimes, probably had an element of intriguing surprise and curiosity that I could often count on to smooth over my intrusions into people's lives. your suspicions would have been more likely to come into play had I looked like a bourgeoise woman out to play tennis or penny poker with their mothers. What a pleasurable experience to be in a stoned daze, playing hookey from school and visited by a bearded king with breasts on a sunny day at the beach?