Jeremy Blake is missing, following suicide of gf/wife Options

[Miss Candy Darling]

Most of you know Jeremy Blake's work from Sea Change and Punch-Drunk Love. I hadn't heard this till just now, but his girlfriend or wife committed suicide recently, and it seems he may have, too. (She's reported to be his girlfriend in this article, but I have read her blog before and she referred to him as her husband.)

http://www.artsjournal.com/man/2007/07/jer...ke_missing.html

July 20, 2007
Jeremy Blake: Missing

Jeremy Blake is missing off New York's Rockaway Beach. The news initially comes via this unconfirmed report on LA Observed. The NYPD confirmed to me that as of this morning, they consider Blake to be missing.

The details at LAO are correct: This past Tuesday, a week after Theresa Duncan, Blake's longtime girlfriend, committed suicide, a man called 911 to report that he saw someone swimming out to sea. Blake's clothes and wallet were found nearby on Rockaway Beach. Blake has not been heard from since. Duncan's funeral will be held in Detroit tomorrow.

Blake is known for photographs and DVDs that mix visual narrative with abstract forms. He had a 2005 solo show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, created an abstract sequence for the film Punch Drunk Love, and he worked with Beck on the CD Sea Change. This fall Blake is scheduled to have shows at his New York City gallery Kinz, Tillou and Feigen, and at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

I read Theresa Duncan's blog sometimes. She posted things that were so involved...about the CIA and Scientology and all kinds of interconnected plots....I really couldn't focus on it enough to follow it all. I thought she might be nuts but also as far as I knew maybe it was all true. I feel stunned by this.

Theresa Duncan's blog is here.

She also seemed to have a strange thing about Kate Moss.

[Miss Candy Darling]

Okay, I realize no one has been paying attention to this thread, but now the Los Angeles Times has brought Beck into the story. Maybe I shoulda posted this in Beck Discussion after all.

Here's the beginning of the article (including the Beck part).

The apparent double suicide of Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan
Friends cite strange behavior in the final days of a golden couple in the art world.

July 25, 2007

By Chris Lee, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer


It's been just eight days since rising art star Jeremy Blake was seen wandering into the ocean off New York's Rockaway Beach -- presumably to his death -- a week after he discovered that his blogger-filmmaker girlfriend, Theresa Duncan, had taken her life in their East Village apartment.

But the apparent double suicide of this glamorous, intellectual couple has confounded and disturbed the art world in New York, London and Los Angeles, where they lived together for several years. Many were shocked by the turn of events while others noted that the couple had acted strangely in their final months together.

According to several friends and art world peers, the two believed they were being stalked and harassed by Scientologists, an abiding fear that soured old friendships and made some of their respective working relationships difficult.

Christine Nichols, a colleague and friend of Blake's since 1998, produced two art exhibitions, two books and a record in conjunction with the artist through the New York art gallery she co-founded, Works on Paper Inc. Nichols dates the couple's rising sense of "paranoia" to around 2004, two years after Blake created an album cover for alternative-rock star Beck, who is a practicing Scientologist.

"They thought Scientologists were really harassing them," Nichols said. "They would say, 'They are following us, harassing our landlord.' I did not see any evidence of that.

"But it got to be something that was huge to them -- a 'You're either with us or against us' thing where if you didn't believe them, you weren't on their side. The story they had woven in paranoia and conspiracies took over part of their lives. A lot of us couldn't understand that acting out."

Two other art world sources corroborated Nichols' characterization but declined to speak on the record out of concern that Blake may still be alive.

Beck was unavailable for comment, but his manager, through a publicist, let it be known that things were "extremely cordial" between the singer and the artist the last time they talked three years ago. A spokesman said the New York Police Department was not investigating any involvement by the Church of Scientology. Karin Pouw, a spokeswoman for the Church of Scientology, denied the allegations, saying, "Never heard of these people. This is completely untrue."

Complete article here.