Autobiography

Video

Jul 2

Autobiography, 1976-83.
Video, black-and-white and color, sound, approx. 1 hr. 40 min. 14 sec.

Two excerpts from Autobiography, 1976-83. Over seven years, McCafferty, Portapak in hand, approacheda number offriends, family, neighbors, and acquaintances, asking, “What do you think of Jay McCafferty?” The result is a series of candid responses, some humorous some serious.

“I had a new piece of equipment, and people didn’t know what it was. So I put it in their face and asked, ‘What do you think of Jay McCafferty?’ They’d give me an answer, and it was usually more about them than me.”*

Together with Every Year and other video works, Autobiography was presented in the solo exhibition"Jay McCafferty: An Edited Ten Years, "in 1984 at Long Beach Museum of Art. Reviewing the exhibitionin the Los Angeles Times, Robert L. Pincus notes “[. . .] The juxtaposition of McCafferty's compositions on paper and video is illuminating. Whether heis working in one medium or another, his attention is on process, to record the here and now as it is happening. In "Autobiography," he strives to document the moment in all its actuality. [. . . ]”

He continues, “[. . .] Because the early interviews were simply part of a private experiment, never intended for exhibition, those on tape tend to speak candidly. Scott Linkletter, listed as a lifeguard in the exhibition brochure, comments, "He sure has changed," referring to McCafferty's own days as a lifeguard. "He's like some Zen Buddhist now." Actor and art collector Sterling Holloway muses, "I wonder what he thinks of himself?" This is exactly what is never directly revealed in the 1½ hours of interviews—any sense of the artist's personal thoughts or reflections. What McCafferty strives to do with this project is to gain distance from himself. [. . .]He is talked about but absent. [. . .]”**

*Glenn Phillips, interview with Jay McCafferty, in California Video: Artists and Histories, ed. Glenn Phillips(Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2008), 166–69.

**Robert L. Pincus, “To see ourselves as others see us,” Los Angeles Times, February 19, 1984, p. 96, review.

Long Beach Museum of Art Video Archive. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 2006.M.7(A.Mcc-3)and2006.M.7(E. 197610.Sout).
© Jay McCafferty