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A utopian community originally located near Asheville, North Carolina, MY GIANT took its name from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”; the exact quote from “Self-Reliance” is: “Travelling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go”; blending Emersonian transcendentalism with various Eastern philosophies (including the “Bhagavad Gita” and “I Ching”), MY GIANT was started by a group of recent graduates from the visionary Black Mountain College in the late 1930’s; founded in 1933 and lasting only 25 years, Black Mountain College was a remarkable institution, responsible for much of the American avant-garde; the faculty of Black Mountain College included John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Josef Albers, and Buckminster Fuller; famous alumni of Black Mountain College include Robert Rauschenberg, Arthur Penn, Robert DeNiro, Sr., Cy Twombly, and the eleven members of MY GIANT; soon after graduation, the co-ed members of MY GIANT—six men and five women—took over an abandoned cotton mill in the mountains outside Asheville; I have visited Asheville—the “Paris of the South”—many times, and toured the lovely 1920’s art deco office buildings, Biltmore Estate, Masonic Temple, Thomas Wolfe House, O. Henry’s grave in Riverside Cemetery, and searched for the remains of the MY GIANT cotton mill, but could not find its location; the MY GIANT commune thrived in its North Carolina location for five years; in 1944, ten of the eleven member of MY GIANT decided to relocate to Manhattan’s Greenwich Village; the members of MY GIANT, who spent most of their time in North Carolina painting, debating, making field recordings of insects and birds, and gardening, moved into a cramped New York apartment on Bedford Street (near Chumley’s); Chumley’s, a beloved former speakeasy, is located at 86 Bedford Street, and legend maintains that the phrase “eighty-six”—as in, “Eighty-six that punk,” or, “We’re eighty-six on prosciutto-wrapped shrimp”—came from Prohibition, when patrons of Chumley’s would run out the door during a police raid; in a strained effort to earn enough money for New York City rent, several members of MY GIANT took jobs in Chumley’s; formerly teetotalers, the MY GIANT members began drinking with gusto, enjoying the glitz and gab of the West Village literary-establishment regulars (including Papa Hemingway); most damaging to the stability of MY GIANT was the rejection of Eastern philosophy and Emerson’s writings, which were replaced with the famed economist John Maynard Keynes’ epic “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money”; capitalism became the new philosophy of MY GIANT, but as its members were trained as visual artists, they quickly fell victim to greed, petty in-fighting, and overspending on shoes and hats; they were incompetent wage-earners; MY GIANT went bankrupt—financially and philosophically—and its members scattered, a few returning to North Carolina, but most remaining in the northeast; MY GIANT vanished into obscurity, but for a fleeting moment, this tiny egalitarian society managed to live and create art together without bickering about the “Keynesian multiplier”; “My Giant” is also the name of a 1998 film romp starring Billy Crystal.

~ by tinyfacts on July 29, 2008.

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Tags: 86, 86 Bedford Street, and Money, Arthur Penn, Asheville, avant-garde, Bedford Street, Bhagavad Gita, Billy Crystal, Biltmore Estate, Black Mountain College, Buckminster Fuller, Chumley's, Cy Twombly, Eastern philosophy, eighty-six, Emersonian, Ernest Hemingway, Franz Kline, Greenwich Village, Hemingway, I Ching, Interest, John Cage, John Maynard Keynes, Josef Albers, Keynesian multiplier, Manhattan, Masonic, Masons, Merce Cunningham, My Giant, New York City, North Carolina, NYC, O. Henry, Papa Hemingway, Paris, Paris of the South, Prohibition, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Riverside Cemetery, Robert DeNiro, Robert Rauschenberg, Self-Reliance, Sr., The General Theory of Employment, Thomas Wolfe, utopian, Willem de Kooning