I Remember Ralston Farina


"I remember Ralston Farina. Or rather, I remember being aware of the name Ralston Farina back in the mid-1970s, in the context of work that was not yet called performance but was something newer and funkier than Happenings. Maybe I saw the wise-guy Pop-art moniker Ralston Farina—half dog food, half breakfast cereal—on a poster in a Lower Manhattan bookstore or on a postcard from some alternative art space. Or more likely I’d seen the two-page spread in the downtown giveaway Art-Rite that appeared under a facsimile of the artist’s signature and began with the ringing declaration 'Ralston Farina is an angry man who came too early and stayed too late,' intriguingly called him 'a vagabond without home or tangible art,' and included a few blurry, underlit, barely legible photographs of someone (perhaps this metahippie trickster himself?) sitting in a chair, holding a valise (an enigma clutching a mystery)."
Artforum

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