Matthew Buchinger is the kind of man history doesn't forget easily. The 18th century magician played a half-dozen musical instruments, fathered 14 children and was a calligraphy master -- creating crests of nobility and personal portraits so detailed that a magnifying glass might reveal five psalms written in the curls of a wig.
Ricky Jay can't get Buchinger out of his head for two additional reasons: The performer never grew taller than 29 inches, and was born without arms or legs.
"He created each picture with two flippers rotating a pen," Jay says, with a hint of affection. "It's truly wonderful."
While Jay is probably best known as that actor who keeps showing up in David Mamet movies and the HBO series "Deadwood," the sleight-of-hand artist's biggest fans know his soul lives in the past. The walls of his Los Angeles home are adorned with the publicity posters from a long-gone era of magicians, con men and freak-show headliners.
Those advertisements make up the bulk of "Extraordinary Exhibitions: Broadsides From the Collection of Ricky Jay," on display at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco through April 3.
Arranged on bright red walls by guest curator Renny Pritikin, it's a macabre history lesson told through more than 100 bizarre handbills from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries -- which somehow escaped a dozen generations of refuse bins and found their way into Jay's ever-expanding collection.
"They're kind of like the Thai menus of their day. Initially they were handed to people, or they were posted on walls," Jay says during a recent visit, as the final tweaks to the exhibition are completed around him. "It is hard to imagine people saving them. That's part of what makes it so exciting. There's a very high percentage of these pieces that are probably unique."
Jay has become an easily recognized character actor in the past decade, and developed a strong cult following for his Mamet-directed theater productions "Ricky Jay & His 52 Assistants" and "Ricky Jay: On the Stem," which sold out at small venues in Los Angeles and New York. But he started his collection more than 25 years ago during leaner times. Jay and his magic opened for Cheech and Chong, Emmylou Harris and the B-52's during the night, while he searched for learned pigs, flea circuses and an elusive armless dulcimer player by day.
"Most of them came from being on the road, visiting bookshops and print galleries while I was performing," Jay says.
He wrote about many of his greatest finds in the 1990s publication "Jay's Journal of Anomalies," which was released in book form three years ago and has been revisited on Jay's weekly radio show on KCRW in Los Angeles. The broadsides have also been made into a book, which is being sold at the museum now and will be available in bookstores soon.
With relatively few collectors of this kind of art, Jay says the broadsides often find their way to him these days, instead of the other way around. That includes an 1816 broadside for Giuseppe De Rossi, an Italian magician who boasted he could sever the head of a steer and then make the animal whole again. When a trader presented Jay with the weathered document a couple of months ago, he wasn't aware De Rossi existed.
To understand the magician's joy, imagine a collector of 20th century baseball cards in the 24th century, who discovers there was a player named Roberto Clemente by unearthing his rookie card.
"I've been researching this piece, and I've found literally no record of De Rossi at all," Jay says. "Tomorrow or 10 years from now you may run across a newspaper account describing him. Or maybe he's absolutely lost to history except for this one sheet."
While there are a few performers mainstream audiences may have heard of in the exhibition -- conjoined twins Chang and Eng come to mind -- Jay's favorites seem to be the broadsides that present more questions than answers. He's particularly fond of the prose on the advertisements, most of which seems to come before the advent of irony.
"Wonderful Remains of an ENORMOUS HEAD," one broadside reads, without giving details of whose head is on display or its current condition. "18 Feet in Length, 7 Feet in Breadth and Weighing 1,700 Pounds."
Jay's return to San Francisco has been a happy one, if a little awkward. The performer, who is notoriously private about his personal life, was set to co-star in Mamet's world premiere of "Dr. Faustus" last year at the Magic Theatre, but had to pull out because of a hernia. ("Let's not relive that," he says, when asked to elaborate.)
Jay entertained a packed house during a City Arts & Lectures appearance Thursday night, and hinted during an interview that he would love to bring his card-trick-themed "On the Stem" production to San Francisco. His favorite printer, Patrick Reagh, lives in the area, as does Persi Diaconis -- a Stanford statistics professor and sleight-of-hand icon with a career path as strange as Jay's.
Until Jay returns, locals will at least get a few months to explore the contents of the magician's living room, along with dozens more of the best pieces from his archives, at the Yerba Buena exhibition.
"I've never seen a hundred pieces together in a room. It's really just a wonderful feeling," Jay says, surrounded by Buchinger, De Rossi, the Enormous Head and all the rest. "It really gives the sense of the history of the bills. I keep thinking as I walk around the room how much fun it would be to go to these exhibitions."
Ricky Jay can't get Buchinger out of his head for two additional reasons: The performer never grew taller than 29 inches, and was born without arms or legs.
"He created each picture with two flippers rotating a pen," Jay says, with a hint of affection. "It's truly wonderful."
While Jay is probably best known as that actor who keeps showing up in David Mamet movies and the HBO series "Deadwood," the sleight-of-hand artist's biggest fans know his soul lives in the past. The walls of his Los Angeles home are adorned with the publicity posters from a long-gone era of magicians, con men and freak-show headliners.
Those advertisements make up the bulk of "Extraordinary Exhibitions: Broadsides From the Collection of Ricky Jay," on display at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco through April 3.
Arranged on bright red walls by guest curator Renny Pritikin, it's a macabre history lesson told through more than 100 bizarre handbills from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries -- which somehow escaped a dozen generations of refuse bins and found their way into Jay's ever-expanding collection.
"They're kind of like the Thai menus of their day. Initially they were handed to people, or they were posted on walls," Jay says during a recent visit, as the final tweaks to the exhibition are completed around him. "It is hard to imagine people saving them. That's part of what makes it so exciting. There's a very high percentage of these pieces that are probably unique."
Jay has become an easily recognized character actor in the past decade, and developed a strong cult following for his Mamet-directed theater productions "Ricky Jay & His 52 Assistants" and "Ricky Jay: On the Stem," which sold out at small venues in Los Angeles and New York. But he started his collection more than 25 years ago during leaner times. Jay and his magic opened for Cheech and Chong, Emmylou Harris and the B-52's during the night, while he searched for learned pigs, flea circuses and an elusive armless dulcimer player by day.
"Most of them came from being on the road, visiting bookshops and print galleries while I was performing," Jay says.
He wrote about many of his greatest finds in the 1990s publication "Jay's Journal of Anomalies," which was released in book form three years ago and has been revisited on Jay's weekly radio show on KCRW in Los Angeles. The broadsides have also been made into a book, which is being sold at the museum now and will be available in bookstores soon.
With relatively few collectors of this kind of art, Jay says the broadsides often find their way to him these days, instead of the other way around. That includes an 1816 broadside for Giuseppe De Rossi, an Italian magician who boasted he could sever the head of a steer and then make the animal whole again. When a trader presented Jay with the weathered document a couple of months ago, he wasn't aware De Rossi existed.
To understand the magician's joy, imagine a collector of 20th century baseball cards in the 24th century, who discovers there was a player named Roberto Clemente by unearthing his rookie card.
"I've been researching this piece, and I've found literally no record of De Rossi at all," Jay says. "Tomorrow or 10 years from now you may run across a newspaper account describing him. Or maybe he's absolutely lost to history except for this one sheet."
While there are a few performers mainstream audiences may have heard of in the exhibition -- conjoined twins Chang and Eng come to mind -- Jay's favorites seem to be the broadsides that present more questions than answers. He's particularly fond of the prose on the advertisements, most of which seems to come before the advent of irony.
"Wonderful Remains of an ENORMOUS HEAD," one broadside reads, without giving details of whose head is on display or its current condition. "18 Feet in Length, 7 Feet in Breadth and Weighing 1,700 Pounds."
Jay's return to San Francisco has been a happy one, if a little awkward. The performer, who is notoriously private about his personal life, was set to co-star in Mamet's world premiere of "Dr. Faustus" last year at the Magic Theatre, but had to pull out because of a hernia. ("Let's not relive that," he says, when asked to elaborate.)
Jay entertained a packed house during a City Arts & Lectures appearance Thursday night, and hinted during an interview that he would love to bring his card-trick-themed "On the Stem" production to San Francisco. His favorite printer, Patrick Reagh, lives in the area, as does Persi Diaconis -- a Stanford statistics professor and sleight-of-hand icon with a career path as strange as Jay's.
Until Jay returns, locals will at least get a few months to explore the contents of the magician's living room, along with dozens more of the best pieces from his archives, at the Yerba Buena exhibition.
"I've never seen a hundred pieces together in a room. It's really just a wonderful feeling," Jay says, surrounded by Buchinger, De Rossi, the Enormous Head and all the rest. "It really gives the sense of the history of the bills. I keep thinking as I walk around the room how much fun it would be to go to these exhibitions."
