The Defenestration Building: Part 3

Sometimes while cruising through the streets of San Francisco I stumble upon some glistening, confusing gem that calls me in. And then, I research the hell out of it.

I was lucky enough to have this experience on the north side of the old Hugo Hotel, which now boasts an RIP mural dedicated to the late Barbara Bode Falcon.



I'd say the iconic images of voluptuous women with Venus of Willendorf exaggerated femininity beckoned me in like a prostitute's protective solicitation, but then again, that probably wasn't it, since I never make it into any of the sex shops on Sixth St. So, I decided to dig a little deeper than the clothing on the skin and the paint on the walls and figure out the back story behind these notorious characters.



Barbara has been immortalized in graffiti and tattoo culture through her childhood relationship and later marriage in 1961 with the underground cartoonist Vaughn Bode. They bore a child together two years after, Mark Bode, and remained together for a roller coaster ride of ten years before their divorce in '71.

In his comic strips, Vaughn Bode constructed a fantasy world where jive talkin' lizards and a drunken wizard stroll through enchanted forests dotted with prancing, well-endowed women. The curvaceous figure and resilient spirit of Barbara Bode Falcon inspired the form of these women dressed in myriad revealing costumes. The icons were soon stamped into history with the publication of Vaughn's work, "Bode Broads."

I realize that this depiction of Barbara Bode does not have much to do with her real life. In fact, it only describes the life that Barbara took on in the setting of Vaughn's imaginary world, a world hugely obsessed with hyperbolic femininity. Such is the fate of art. Let's take a look at this world.

Vaughn Bode spent his formative years contributing to the underground Manhattan comic scene with the likes of Robert Crumb and Spain Rodriguez in the 60's. After joining the staff of the independent publication, the East Village Other, he spearheaded his own all-comics supplement to the newspaper, the Gothic Blimp Works. During this period Bode released his most famous character, Cheech Wizard, which he claimed to have concocted at age 15, 2:30 in the afternoon, many years prior. Bode published Cheech in the National Lampoon for a number of years.

Depicted as a star spangled yellow hat packed tightly over a red leotard, Cheech Wizard never reveals his face to the reader, and when he shows it to a fellow cartoon, his lovers and interpolators go blind or fall into paraplegic spasms. It remains a mystery why Cheech's identity produces such psychic deconstruction in his viewers. But we must expect an intelligible reason, since Cheech does not conjure magic but rather methodically causes it through his effortless antics.

Self-proclaimed as the cartoon messiah, Cheech often discusses metaphysical questions with his disciple, a slower minded yet insightful lizard. However, Cheech spends most of his time in more down to earth affairs. He searches out parties where he can find cold beer, potent weed, and seductively loving women. The characters speak in an urban slang that borders on the incomprehensible to the poetic. The stories often end with Cheech furiously kicking someone of the male species in the testicles.

Bode aimed to breathe a life into his characters in radical ways that extended far beyond the traditional medium of ink splotched paper. He toured a popular show featuring animated impersonations of his characters while their images were projected on a screen behind him.

Late in his career, Vaughn Bode considered his own life just as much as a piece of artwork as the fantastical world he constructed. After moving to San Francisco with Barbara and Mark, Vaughn started to publicly question his sexual identity.

No doubt influenced by the burgeoning transvestite subculture in the City as well as his ongoing exposure to a more experimental youth culture, Bode soon self defined his own gender identity as somewhere between "auto-sexual, heterosexual, omnisexual, masso-sexual, sado-sexual, trans-sexual, uni-sexual, omni-sexual."

He transformed his appearance from a self-described straightedge "Kennedy" into an androgynous glamor queen with billowing curly hair, long manicured nails, and dark eyeliner. Taking his obsession with the feminine form to the next level, Bode looked into surgical reconstruction of his body, but gave up on the idea when hormones killed his libido.

Bode presents his sexual exploration in two autobiographical works, Confessions of a Cartoon Gooroo, written in a formal essay style and Schizophrenia, published as a thoroughly animated comic strip.

On July 18, 1975 Vaughn Bode died in a tragic accident while experimenting with autoerotic asphyxian, the practice of heightening masturbatory pleasure while strangling oneself with the noose. Although he had succeeded in the practice beforehand, this time a necklace got caught in the noose, constraining it from giving out.

Despite Vaughn's unfortunate fate at the young age of 33, his work lives on. Mark Bode dedicates his life to sustaining the precious worlds that his father constructed. He recounts that Vaughn made him believe at a young age that Cheech was a real wizard, living in the urban jungle wilderness.

They would journey to visit the foul mouthed Cheech but alas, he was always fast asleep and unresponsive in some distant crevice or sewer. These experiences forever inculcated Vaughn's fantastical worlds into Mark's own imagination. Now an artist in his own right, Mark tends to channel the energy of his father's work.

The work of Vaughn Bode also touched many early graffiti writers, notably the works of Dondi and Seen who were attracted technically to the bold lines and vibrant colors.

They drew most inspiration, however, from Bode's ambitious artistic project in crafting intricately connected, self-sustaining worlds, an objective that graffiti artists themselves hoped to achieve on New York City's subway cars. Painting a Bode character now takes on the ceremonial weight of a right of passage in much of the graffiti world.



Let the characters of Bode live on!

Peep some of the comics here.

In these videos of the 1974 Comic Con in Toronto, Bode talks about his life as an artist, the comic publication industry, and the development of his character. Bode reminds us artists to stay true to themselves and always try to come up with their own style, their own worlds.