Art From the Heart of Amerika : Straight out of the South Bronx, Tim Rollins brings his K.O.S. (Kids of Survival) and their art, “Amerika I--XII”

“I’ve avoided seeing this work installed all together like this because it’s sort of overwhelming for me,” says Tim Rollins of “Amerika I--XII,” a series of sprawling collaborative paintings conceived and executed by Rollins and K.O.S. (Kids of Survival), an art collective of learning-disabled students from the South Bronx. “It makes me feel hurt and happy at the same time.”

Standing in one of the vast chambers of the DIA Foundation, a cavernous industrial art space in Lower Manhattan where the paintings were on view, he gazes around the room with a slightly wounded look on his face. Though Rollins has been immersed in this work since 1984, when he and his evolving crew of 10 to 15 students began the series of mixed-media paintings inspired by Franz Kafka’s unifinished novel “Amerika,” he still finds them deeply moving.

And, “Amerika I--XII” which goes on view today at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, is indeed a remarkable and powerful achievement.

In 1981, Rollins was a 26-year-old artist forced to take a teaching job to support his art career. Working at I.S. 52 in the South Bronx, he was exasperated by a school system that was failing miserably to either educate or inspire students, who looked to the South Bronx drug trade as their main career opportunity. Most of his students’ parents were divorced, many of the students were dyslexic, and their familiarity with art was limited to the graffiti that covers the South Bronx like an angry rash.

Rollins’ improbably idealistic response to this bleak situation was to form K.O.S. and the Art and Knowledge Workshop. The goal, says Rollins “was to make great art and to make history,” and he’s succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. The artwork they’ve produced has garnered glowing reviews and collectors have eagerly forked over the $150,000 required to own a K.O.S. piece. They’re represented by the trend-setting Jay Gorney Gallery in New York, and the Museum of Modern Art has acquired works for its permanent collection, as have Charles Saatchi and other taste-making collectors around the world.

Wealthy admirers are lining up to help finance Rollins’ next project, The South Bronx Academy of Fine Art, a fully accredited school that would make art the core of its curriculum. The K.O.S. kids travel the world as visiting artists and lecturers, rubbing elbows with art world heavyweights.

“I have to pinch myself that we’re in this position and the work is still getting better,” says the indefatigably upbeat Rollins as he launches into the K.O.S. story.

“Most artists who teach have their art in one pocket and teaching in the other, and they only teach to support the art practice,” says Rollins, a former Conceptualist who studied with Joseph Kosuth and was a founder of the artists collective Group Material. “But I fell in love with the kids, so I decided to combine the two practices and started making art with the kids. None of us knew what we were doing in the beginning, but we ignored the obvious problems and just plowed ahead with the faith that the problems would solve themselves--which they did.

“In the beginning the only materials we had were Xerox paper that I stole from other departments and cheap pencils,” he continues, “but things exploded once we got our studio, which we paid for with a matching grant from the (National Endowment for the Arts). They were the only agency that took an interest in us then, and I’m ever indebted to the NEA. I can’t believe people want to attack it and bring it down, because it’s essential for projects like ours.”

As pivotal as the support they received from the NEA, was the day that group member Carlos Rivera did a drawing on the sly on the pages of one of Rollins’ books.

“I wanted to kill him at first,” Rollins recalls, “but it looked really great. And, I was blown away by the fact that here was this dyslexic kid who had captured the essence of the book in a drawing on the book.”

Rollins had been searching for a way to involve his students with the written word, and thus was born K.O.S.’ stylistic trademark: They cover large canvases with the pages of whatever book they’re working with. The pages serve as the ground for the painting, which doesn’t exactly illustrate the book; rather, the images represent ideas the students have extrapolated from the book and interpreted in terms of their own lives.

Previous series have been based on “Moby Dick,” “The Scarlet Letter,” “Journal of the Plague Year” and “The Metamorphosis,” among other works of classical literature. The “Amerika” series, however, is the jewel in the K.O.S. crown. Kafka’s only comic novel, “Amerika” is a dreamy portrait of a country Kafka longed to visit but never saw, and the book can be interpreted as wishful autobiography. Centering on the misadventures of Karl, an ill-fated immigrant who finally finds shelter from the storms of life when he stumbles into the welcoming embrace of the Nature Theater of Oklahoma, the book is essentially the story of the redemption of an outsider.

“An underlying theme in all our work is the alienated individual and the need for alienated individuals to come together to make something new--and that idea is certainly central to this book,” observes Rollins.

“Amerika’s” unifying form is a horn shape that refers to the golden trumpets that greet Karl when he first encounters the Nature Theater of Oklahoma. From that basic shape, the paintings spin out into wild improvisation. Among the motifs detectable at a glance: a large ‘M’ referring to Fritz Lang’s classic film, a crown of thorns lifted from Grunewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece, a scientific rendering of the AIDs virus, a Dr. Seuss drawing of an elephant ear, genital imagery, drawings of weaponry copied from gun magazines, sketches of flying bricks and baseball bats, and motifs borrowed from Dante’s Inferno, George Grosz, Odilon Redon, Paul Klee, James Ensor, David Cronenberg and Mayan tapestries.

This highly complex art has evoked an equally complex response from the art world, which has been intensely critical of Rollins. Most of the negative criticism focuses on the marketing of K.O.S., rather than on the work itself.

Says critic Michelle Wallace in a grumpy essay published in the catalogue for the DIA exhibition: “This work presents problems for me, the first and most obvious being their name, and the fact that of the group, only Rollins (because he’s white, male and educated) has had an individual identity in the art world. And, isn’t it true that if Rollins were black and a woman and the texts the group uses were black or Puerto Rican, that we’d be talking about something much less marketable, something infinitely more obscure?”

Rollins responds: “Obviously there’s some truth to the allegation that the media has focused on me because as a white, middle-class male they find me unthreatening. But, I am the one who got the project going and I am the one who’s been working my booty off for the last decade. But the kids are not shoved into the background by any means. They’d all be here today because they usually participate in interviews, but they’re on vacation this week--and believe me, they were happy to palm off the interviewing duties on me.

“We don’t resent that Tim is the spokesman because we all get plenty of attention,” Nelson Savinon said during a phone interview. “He’s given me a lot and I’m always gonna stand by him whether I’m in K.O.S. or not because he’s always been there for us.”

Even with K.O.S. members singing Rollins praises--which they do--critics have continued to question Rollins’ intentions.

“You wouldn’t believe the criticism I’ve encountered,” says Rollins. “Lots of people have said ‘what you’re doing is ridiculous. You should never have brought these kids into this milieu because you’re showing them things they can never really have.’ I encounter that kind of cynicism constantly, but I know that a lot of these kids wouldn’t have survived without K.O.S.--and even with the support of the program, there’ve been many that we’ve lost.

“Then there are the people who say K.O.S. is like Menudo--that when the kids get to be a certain age I boot them out and replace them with new, cute young kids,” he continues. “That’s not true either. If you’re committed to the work you’re welcome to stay as long as you want. However, I won’t let kids use K.O.S. as a nest. I’ve had kids . . . who become like lazy sons who won’t get a job and lay in bed all day. Those kids do get the boot because it’s not good for them to let them abuse this situation.

“(K.O.S) is often mistakenly perceived as some kind of social work, and though there’s an element of that, what we’re doing is more complex. Some people say I’m a Socialist and a Marxist and I’m trying to make the kids look good--that I do all the work and am the mastermind pulling the poor ghetto children up from their slothful existence. That isn’t true at all. The biggest misconception, however, is that I’m exploiting the kids--if anything, it’s the other way around. The kids are paid good salaries for the work they do, and get lots of other benefits as well.”

Some of the strongest criticism has been the contention that with his use of classical literature, Rollins is immersing K.O.S. in a dying language system that’s irrelevant to the lives of ghetto children living in the late 20th Century.

“Yes we use the idioms of European culture, but the ‘Amerika’ paintings are also full of references to world culture,” counters Rollins. “African art, Santeria traditions--it’s all in there. The accusation that I’m indoctrinating the kids with European culture and destroying their native culture is absurd because their native culture was obliterated two generations ago with the advent of mass media. In America everybody has different roots, but unfortunately, the dominant culture in all our lives is pop culture--TV and movies.

“These books are classics for a reason. We’ve found them to be filled with issues that are a burning part of daily life in the South Bronx.”

As to the criticism that in a group that’s ostensibly a democracy, Rollins alone decides what books will be used, he says “I select the books because the kids just aren’t part of the world of literature. I’d love it if the kids brought books in, but that hasn’t happened yet. We always debate the books I bring in, and several have been rejected by the group.”

In addition to having a voice in the selection of material, K.O.S. members are encouraged to do their own work after hours.

“I sometimes do things on my own,” says Savinon, who describes his solo work as abstract. “I haven’t done a lot of stuff yet but because of K.O.S. I have a lot of connections, and I plan to take advantage of them and maybe try to get a gallery in Manhattan.”

While Savinon has his eye on a solo career in art, Nelson Montes, a group member since 1984, has something else in mind.

“Before I met Tim I knew nothing about art. K.O.S. has taught me how to make art and how to appreciate it, but I don’t want to be an artist--I’ve always wanted to be a cop. I thought K.O.S. would change my mind about that, but it hasn’t. I know it’s dangerous but I like that, and I like being in the streets. I have no interest in leaving the South Bronx.”

Though K.O.S. salaries make it possible for the kids to move out of the Bronx--and Nelson Savinon and George Garces now share an apartment in Manhattan--most of them feel an allegiance to the neighborhood, despite the fact that it forces its children to grow up fast. The fact that there are more men than women in the group, for instance, is attributable to the fact that most young women in the South Bronx come from single-parent families, and spend their teen-age years cooking and caring for younger brothers and sisters. Male children are granted much more freedom--not that time to spend on the street is an advantage.

“A life of crime is the norm for these kids,” says Rollins. “They don’t go to work at McDonald’s when they become 16--they become drug dealers. There’s a black market economy in the ghetto that’s so easy for them to plug into because it preys on the bright kids. Another big problem they have to deal with is AIDS, which is extremely prevalent in the South Bronx. They have one of the highest heterosexual death rates in the country--in fact, the other day I heard that 88% of the men in the South Bronx are HIV positive. We’re thinking of all going together to get our blood test.”

Kids like Annette Rosado and Carlos Rivera, both now 18, have been with the group since they were 12. Rollins believes that the sense of accomplishment they’ve experienced through K.O.S. will help them tremendously, but feels there’s a lot of work yet to be done.

“It’s extraordinary to me that the kids can experience the kind of success they’ve known through K.O.S. yet still suffer such a low level of self-confidence,” he continues. “I’ve had kids that I’ve taken to Europe and they just wanted to lay in the hotel room and sleep. They didn’t want to see anything because they’re afraid of the new.

“I’ve stayed in touch with a few of the kids who left the program, and lost touch with others. Most are too young to really start pushing a solo career in art, and much to my dismay, none have enrolled in college--which the real goal behind all this. Unfortunately, a few have gotten into trouble. One was shot and killed last year for a gold chain he was wearing.”

K.O.S.’ most recently completed body of work based on Flaubert’s “The Temptation of St. Anthony,” is a series of disturbing images that many have interpreted as a metaphor for the AIDs epidemic, but they plan to lighten the mood with their next series.

‘The kids have been wanting to do ‘Pinocchio’ and I’m excited by the idea of Jules Verne’s ‘From the Earth to the Moon,”’ says Rollins. “The book’s pretty dull, but it’s a great title--it suggests transcendence and possibility.”

Rollins is a man who knows a bit about transcendence and possibility--he’s traveled a long way from his humble beginnings.

“I come from a little rural factory town in Maine with a population of 1,400,” says Rollins. “I never had any training in working with emotionally handicapped kids, but I’ve always gravitated towards troubled kids, probably because I was an outsider kid myself. My family was really poor, my father was alcoholic and I grew up feeling a lot of anger. People like to romanticize the working class, and though it has some wonderful traditions, I experienced it as being riddled with sexism, violence, drinking and misery. I wanted out, and I knew from the time I was 6 that art would be the road out for me.”

Art studies with Joseph Kosuth were followed by a stint at New York University, where Rollins received his masters in art education. In 1981 (the year he hooked up with his companion of the past nine years, B-52s vocalist Kate Pierson), he landed the teaching job that led to the formation of K.O.S.

“When I came into the school system I was struck by the fact that though there are a lot of programs for dyslexic young children, if you miss the boat and get to be 17 or 18 without dealing with the problem you’re out of luck--there are few programs for these kids. I’ve always thought that’s the time to get a kid. Speaking for myself, that’s when I met an art teacher who told me ‘no Tim, you don’t have to work in a factory all your life, yes you can be an artist.’ All I needed was someone to push me.”

Having been given a push by Rollins, the kids in K.O.S. have progressed in leaps and bounds.

“The kids operate extremely well in the New York art world,” says Rollins beaming like a proud father. “They can go to an opening in Manhattan and talk to Robert Ryman with intelligence and confidence. However, the art world is extremely myopic and we’ve found it to be extremely prejudiced against art made by children.

“One of the reasons people tend to dismiss children’s art is because it’s usually made out of inferior materials like glitter and macaroni,” he adds. “How many adult artists have managed to build successful careers around art made from construction paper, Elmer’s Glue and cotton balls? Not too many, and that’s why I went to great lengths to see that we had decent materials to work with. “

Using traditional high art materials helped K.O.S.’ credibility, however, they still found the art world reluctant to acknowledge them as legitimate contenders.

“When we first showed the ‘Amerika’ paintings,” Rollins said, “people who saw them would approach our dealer and say wow! Who’s this new young artist!? When they found out the work was by a schoolteacher and a bunch of kids from the Bronx their attitude changed completely. They’d become patronizing and condescending and would say ‘oh, what a nice project.’ All of a sudden it wasn’t a painting, it was a project. This is a subtle form of racism, a way of keeping what they perceive as undesirables in their place.”

With several years of slugging it out on the gallery circuit under their belts, Rollins and K.O.S. are about to shift their energies to the biggest challenge they’ve faced thus far: the building of the school they’ve dreamed of since the group was formed.

“We aren’t going to do any commercial exhibitions until 1992--we want to get off that trip,” Rollins said. “We’ll still be making work, but we’ll mostly be concentrating on building the school. We’re getting the corporation together so we can start accepting the money people want to give us and we’re applying for accreditation. It will be a privately funded school, and though I can’t say who the donors are at this delicate stage of negotiations, I can say that they’re very big foundations.

“Part of why I wanted to talk with you today was to get this story out so other people will start doing this--programs like this could be implemented all across America,” he concludes. “There’ve been lots of new forms and new content in fine art, but there’ve been very few new methods, and we’ve proven that this is a new method that works. How art is made, and for who, and who’s allowed into this pantheon will be crucial questions in the coming decade, and we address those questions in this work. We need a revolutionary approach to art and learning, and K.O.S. is a step in that direction.”

Tim Rollins + K.O.S.

Museum of Contemporary Art (250 S. Grand Ave., (213) 621-2766).

Featuring 13 large-scale paintings and 80 study drawings by Rollins and students from the South Bronx, based on Franz Kafka’s unfinished novel, “Amerika,” opens today.

Open Tuesday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; Thursday, 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Ends Sept. 9.