WHAT REMAINS: RICHARD MISRACH

Myriam Misrach met Richard Misrach on assignment for a magazine. Decades later, she reflects on their love and the art that preserves its memory.

By Myriam Misrach

My wish has come true. My collection of erotic writing about Richard in the first few years of our relationship has disappeared.

To my surprise, I am bereft beyond words.

When my husband started assembling his extensive archive, he found long-lost material, amongst it these writings which I only vaguely recalled. Passionate and detailed in a way that stunned me, they were obviously the product of someone deeply in love and in lust. After 37 years, we both had forgotten about them. Richard reveled in them while I grew increasingly embarrassed. The first thing I thought about was my family, especially my grandson. I did not want him to see the letters. Then, because they were well-written, I started to think that perhaps they had a place in the world. The writer’s vanity.

Richard wanted me to leave them in his archive, which was due to end up in a museum. The thought of strangers poring over them made me uncomfortable, but so did the fear that they might vanish without a trace in some dusty library. What to do? For several weeks, they lived in a paper bag in our bathroom, next to the hamper.

Many times a day, I would see the bag just sitting there. It bothered me. Finally, I shoved it into the room that contains our photo albums, tax materials, old toys, and an elliptical machine. A room in which no one spends any time. For many months, I assumed the bag was there.

Then, I went looking for it for the purpose of this article. Gone! Richard took it very well, saying something to the effect of, You had wanted it to disappear, you got your wish. That wasn’t exactly true. I wanted the quandary to disappear, not the actual writings. I tore through the closets, the many places in which I might have thought to stash something, out of sight, out of mind.

Nothing.

Had I lost my mind? Forgotten something crucial? My memory isn’t what it used to be and neither is his. Did the bag get thrown out by mistake? Did he take it back to his studio? I don’t know. A precious record of those first fevered, heady days is gone.

Things change. Love changes and deepens. It also gets weighed down with apprehension and concern. Nostalgia. How many more years do we have? I saw my mother vanish inside the many chambered recesses of her mind, where ultimately, I could not reach her. Would this happen to us?

I often think of Richard as a passing comet, throwing off sparks even as the light dims and it shoots back into the dark. As he ages, he grows more prolific. He wakes up at night to make notes on Post-its about projects he wants to tackle and books he wants to produce. These I find stuck to his robe in the morning.

Our lives used to be so much more tranquil. In the early days, we could drive into the desert for two weeks, completely out of communication with anyone else. No cell phones. No career pressures. No great need to rush back. The weirdest part is, I still feel I could walk back a few steps and we would be right there again. The van at night. The warm breeze. So many stars. Life is just a collection of hours strung together. Wasn’t it 1987 yesterday?

The COVID moment proved amazingly fertile for Richard. It brought us even closer. Once we got past the terror. Once I stopped waking up at three in the morning to order groceries online because I would not set foot in the supermarket. (Were we even allowed to go to the market? I no longer remember.) Once he figured out that he could work at home, he moved his computer from the studio to the dining room. As long as he can work, he’s happy, and I was happy to have him home. A circular protected world where every morning I dragged the cushions out to the deck, and we had lunch in the sunshine while listening to the news on the iPad. In the cities, they were banging pots and pans in support of frontline workers. It was only four years ago.

Seven projects ago.

First, in 2020, came a commission to do all the art for the five-story UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building. An unusual challenge in that the works could not be disturbing to the patients amid the lockdown. So Richard sat at the dining table with his computer and mined his archive for pieces that could be interpreted in multiple ways.

Interspersed with that were early morning forays into Oakland, documenting the spaces where Black Lives Matter demonstrations had taken place and provocative street art was happening. That work he put away for 20 years. It has historical value—but not yet.

A book was taking shape, as well—Notations, which later brought Richard to the video he conceived with our son’s music and the split-screen experiments he is now working on.

A year into the pandemic, Richard began documenting the huge cargo ships lined up on the San Francisco Bay, stacked with goods and not enough manpower to unload them. As soon as we were allowed to travel again, he returned to the ocean in Hawaii, his inspiration for the past 22 years. A former surfer, he was fascinated by the new hydrofoil boards and their riders, the elegant silhouettes speeding across the waves.

For over two decades, this particular beach has been a constant source of wonder. He initially captured it with his large format view camera, which now feels artisanal and quaint. Also heroic, in the sense that to stop movement in this painstaking way, on 8x10 film, is practically impossible. With the switch to instantaneous digital capture in 2006 came freedom. There were now a myriad of opportunities throughout the day for him to catch the subtle play of light on the ocean, the graceful surrender of bodies to the elements, their constant motion in and out of the water.

This beach is also where he took 13 dancers for his collaboration with the Alonzo King LINES Ballet. That work—the dancers’ whimsical improvisations on the beach and the lava cliffs—became the backdrop for the company’s new 2023 springtime production. He called the series Dancing with Nature.

Meanwhile, I have lost a treasure trove. Will I also lose the memories? Because we have such limited brain power, we rely on pictures. They say that much of what we remember is actually photographs. I have created nearly 40 albums over the decades and we often pick a couple at random to peruse on New Year’s Day or some other elegiac moment. During one of those interviews people did at the beginning of COVID, when we were trying to pass the time in an interesting fashion, someone asked him what objects he would consider essential in his life. He picked our family albums.

Lately, when I look in the mirror, I see my grandmother. When I look at Richard, I see the young man. It’s like a ghostly outline superimposed over his body, his face. But that’s as far as it goes. I will no longer let him wander alone in the Western landscape. I worry about his safety. Things change. Everything is much more dangerous now. That he traveled by himself for years up and down the US-Mexico border seems crazy.

It helps that he makes work wherever he is. For decades, he went with me to visit my mother in the French countryside. There was nothing to do. He did not speak the language and entertainment was severely limited. So he started photographing her, the kitchen, her food, the crucifixes in the house, the clouds, the birds in her garden.

What has become increasingly obvious is that Richard will never retire unless forced to by circumstance. He still goes to the studio six days a week, a point of contention. I would like to get Saturday as well as Sunday. Doesn’t everyone take the weekend? But even my therapist sided with him. The work keeps him alive and thriving. I cannot argue with that.

We may keep looking for the vanished essays. They might be in one of the 200-odd boxes waiting to leave the studio, or they could be gone forever. Things change. Life teaches you to accept loss. My mother used to say, La vie est dure. Life is hard. I disagreed with her, as mine was full of joy and love. But I take her point. Art remains, though. After all is said and done, art remains.