Art Insider is an interview segment with fascinating figures of the art field who lift the veil on their corner of contemporary art.
Guest: Ben Luke (Host of A Brush With)
Ben Luke is an art journalist whose voice reaches a wider audience through his successful podcast A Brush With, where each episode is dedicated to an artist interview led by him. His new book, What is art for? Contemporary artists on their inspirations, influences and disciplines (2025, Heni), stems from it. The scope of his questions is aimed toward building a good perspective on what artists look at, listen to, and where they draw their energy, inspiration and creative flow from. We discuss pop music and visual art crossover in the 80s and the boisterous 90s whose suppressed history Luke knows and shares brilliantly.
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Hi there and welcome to our bi weekly digital meeting place.
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We're about to let someone else in for our first Art Insider
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episode of the season. None other than Ben Luke, widely
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known for his podcast A Brush With, but also for his writing
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in the Art newspaper where he is a contributing editor.
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Ben Luke turned out to be a real art nerd, which made for the
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most enjoyable conversation. As ever, finding out about each
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persons unique journey into art is fascinating not only for us
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in the art bubble, but also for you out there in your own
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meanderings in contemporary arts.
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So we talk about his new book, What is Art?
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For Contemporary Artists on their inspirations, influences
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and disciplines, published by Henny, which revisits the
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Brushwood podcasts and presents the interviews with a completely
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new framing. You'll find out all about them
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in the episode. But mostly what I find really,
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really fascinating is that this book shows that digital formats
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respond to different needs than a printed book, that they are
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complementary. In fact, it is quite interesting
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as an exercise to move from one to the other.
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And even if you are on a brush with aficionado or aficionado,
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you can even try to figure out what interviews you would have
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taken as opposed to the ones that were chosen and also
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compare and enjoy the imagery that or the illustrations that
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accompany each interview. We also talk about audiences.
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So talking about formats, obviously they would not exist
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without you out there listening to podcasts and reading and
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enjoying books. So we talk about audiences more
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from the perspective of museum visitors and museum management.
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And we exchanged about this nagging feeling that I have that
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audiences are considered by most art spaces as a sort of
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shapeless BLOB, a sort of average of all the averages of
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all possible behaviours. And this word also carries a lot
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of biases in attendance of a museum.
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Diminishing is interpreted in many, many ways and can be seen
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in many, many aspects. So it is really interesting to
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talk about these things and also to try and contribute.
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If museums, museum directors, museum teams are listening to
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this episode, I think it's really great to open the
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conversation, but also for you out there who go to exhibitions
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to reflect upon what you choose to go to, how you visit museums,
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but also how the information about the exhibitions is
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delivered to you. And that's a lot of what we
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focus on in this conversation. So yes, here we are again,
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existing and spending time together virtually to go back to
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real life nourished. Because don't forget, we visit
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exhibitions so that you have to or so that you experience them
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vicariously through us and also so you can read books.
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You can find Ben Luke's What is Artful published by Henny
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through a link in the description notes if you want to
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purchase it or have a look at what it's about.
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This is not an affiliated link, by the way.
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I don't gain anything from that. And while you're at it, do sign
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up to the newsletter. As you know, I'm a writer.
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And by signing up, you will also have access to all my archive of
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texts on Sub Stack as well as the exhibitionist files.
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Because each newsletter is in fact a little bouquet of useful
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links, post episode reflections, and also an easy way for you to
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support us through the Sub Stack platform for less than what a
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beer costs these days. If you don't know Substack, it
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is also a place where you can find other writers, other
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creatives you can wonder about. And I usually post some links as
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well to other writers out there or other creatives who are doing
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interesting stuff. So I embarrassed myself trying
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to introduce Ben Luke the way he introduces his artists.
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I don't think I've ever been more self-conscious in this
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podcast in my life, but it was thrilling to do it and it was
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even more thrilling to inquire about so many things in relation
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to museums, exhibitions, books and artists and the 90s in the
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UK. So stick around.
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Here comes the episode. Enjoy.
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Hello, this is Exhibitionist. There's the podcast where we
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explore art in all its iridescent nuance and diversity
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from all angles, with different types of episode providing a
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variety of pathways into contemporary arts.
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I'm your host, Joanna Pierre Nevis, contemporary art writer
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and curator. So welcome to the first Arts
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Insider episode of the season, where I interview fascinating
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figures of visual arts to talk about their passions and their
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suggestions. Also for you to navigate your
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own experiences with more depth and pleasure.
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It is my immense honour to welcome to the podcast writer,
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editor and broadcaster Ben Luke. Welcome to the podcast.
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Thank you so much for being here.
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Thank you. Thank you for having me.
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So Ben Luke studied fine art and history at Middlesex University,
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where his conversation with fellow students and invited
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artists progressively led him to swap the paintbrush with a pen.
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So after graduating, he worked for the press office at Tate's
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Gallery, as it was named then, for eight years, going from
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press assistant to senior press officer.
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In 2005, he had acquired such experience with art and artists
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and such a talent for finding unsuspected entry points into a
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subject or a body of work that he started writing for several
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magazines and newspapers, including The Art Newspaper,
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which he works for as contributing editor and podcast
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host. He also writes for artist
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monographic publications and is regularly invited to host artist
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talks in several art spaces and galleries.
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In 2017, the Art Newspaper launched the podcast The Week in
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Art, and it is in this first episode that we hear Ben Luke's
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voice for the first time, A voice that could very well win
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the trophy of the gentlest voice in the podcasting industry.
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In addition to this, as a host and a writer, Ben Luke has the
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ability to be precise, verbally playful and incredibly
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comforting. The first episode of The Week in
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Art covers a conference at the National Gallery around Nazi
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looted pieces and Rachel White Reads solo exhibition at Tate
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Modern. Then it was also the first time
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that we got to listen to Ben Luke's trademark in Art
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podcasting, carefully worded introductions read with what I
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would characterize as a sort of syncopated composure.
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Ben Luke has another podcast with, I presume, A wider range
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of listeners focusing solely on artist interviews.
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It's called A Brush with It is quite established now and was
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inspired initially by AQ and a interview published in the Art
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newspaper since 2019, where a number of set questions were
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asked to different figures of the industry.
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Ben Luke pitched it as a podcast at the start of the pandemic on
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the 22nd of May of 2020, an effective pitch for an available
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audience then. The podcast was officially
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launched in August 2020 with Michael Armitage and counts
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prestigious artists across 120 episodes such as Rooney Horn, Ai
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Weiwei, William Cantridge, John Jonas, Kapwani kiwanga, Jeff
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wool, Mahlan Juma, Lebena Hamid amongst many others.
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But what brings him here is precisely the book stemming from
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the podcast, a brush width titled What is Artful out now.
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So you can purchase it after listening to this episode.
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And it contains a selection of 25 interviews from the podcast,
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but much more as well. So, Ben, do you want to present
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the book in your own words? Thank you very much.
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I just have to say that is an extraordinary, generous and kind
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introduction. Thank you so much.
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I really appreciate it. So yes, the the book is called
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what is art for? You can see I'm holding it up so
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that. For those who are watching.
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Yeah, for those of you that are watching, it's it's a it's a
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weighty tome, actually. 400 pages and as you say, 25 artist
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interviews from the Series A brush with.
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And one of the things, of course, about podcasts, and
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especially the brush with podcasts for which we don't
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record video is that of course you can listen to these artists
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talking about their influences and cultural experiences, which
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is the kind of key factor of the brush with podcast.
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You know, it's, it's, it's me talking to artists, yes, about
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their work, but also about their work through the prism of their
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experiences with culture. And I mean culture in its
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broadest sense, you know, it's it's visiting cities as much as
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much as it is experiencing particular artworks and so on.
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And what we do in this book, and it's published with by Henny.
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And then it's been fascinating and an extraordinary process
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working with them on this is really try to illustrate those
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interviews in a way that you, of course, you cannot with a
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podcast. And so I'm very pleased to say
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there is a very generous amount of imagery in this book.
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It's wonderful to even for me who who conducted these
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interviews, to read these interviews alongside pictures.
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And there are these fantastic correspondences between the
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words and the images you're seeing of artworks past present,
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deep past, absolutely contemporary.
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You know, it's a, it's a fascinating study, I think in
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what artists are thinking now. And to see that on the page as,
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as visual information as well as reading the artist's words, I
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think really justifies where we've done this book.
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And alongside that, I've written in the, the introduction, which
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I note that you you read very carefully and drew some, some
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information from which explains this with my background, but
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also why I'm interested in talking to artists and what,
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what my fundamental motivation, I guess, is in wanting to have
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these long form conversations. And then also importantly, 5
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short texts on artists that I've called anchors.
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And that's actually a term which I borrowed from the Tate,
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actually the my years at the Tate, even before I left the
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Tate, they they were beginning to talk about certain anchors
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around which the collection was for.
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Oh, I see, I wonder. If they do it a lot with.
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Yeah. And as I don't think you.
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Explained that in the text to you.
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No, no, I mean no, no, I didn't. I don't think I did.
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But, but I think it's a it's a crucial word, This, this idea
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that there are sort of influential anchors around whom
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from whom spring or from or who weight down to, to continue the
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the image, a kind of a kind of discourse around which other
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artists can participate. And I think that that those
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that, you know, in this book, there could have been many more,
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but the five that we chose go from Velasquez through Goya to
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Manet to Duchamp and to Louise Bourgeois.
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And, and those are short texts which draw the kind of
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connections between the different artists responses to
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them, but also try and explain their significance through time
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as well. So for instance, that of course
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somebody like Velasquez, you know, we now think of one of the
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greatest of all time. But there was a kind of period
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between the his death in 1660 and and the 19th century where
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where unless you were in the royal family in Spain or
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happened to be visiting a, a, a kind of nobles palace, you
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wouldn't have seen his work, you know?
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Which happens a lot, of course, to all of us, absolutely.
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Yeah, of course, very much so. So it's, it's just an
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extraordinary thing to to chart influence and to and to look at
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influence and how it manifests over time and how certain
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figures just reappear and reappear.
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And these anchor texts are very much about that.
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I had some trepidation going through the names because I
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started going down the list and thought are there not going to
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be any women in this list? Because very often when I listen
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to the interviews, it is true that the famous artists of the
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past and the all these artists, most of the artists you're
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interviewing are in their late 30s forties onwards.
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And of course, the artists that were taught at university and
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that you encounter most often are men.
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So I'm curious to see so to to ask about Louise Bourgeois,
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particularly was it a name that in terms of the women, because
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I, I presume you had that worry as well.
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So how did Louise Bourgeois come about?
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Is it frequents in terms of referencing and?
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And how is she referred to I? Think in the text that I write
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about her, I write about that extraordinary span of time that
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she connects to. So on the one hand, Louise
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Bourgeois, I think to most people who do know her, might be
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a kind, might still be seen as a contemporary artist.
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She died in 2011, I think, but she her artistic life spans way
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back in negotiation with an enormously important moments at
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different points. She so she married the art
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historian Robert Goldwater and they they relocated to the
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States from Paris. She her background, by the way,
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in Paris is extraordinary in this textile, you know, you
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know, antique dealing, textile manufacturing, extraordinary
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rich background which involves so much of her later
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development. She's she, which she moves with
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Robert Goldwater to the States and you know, and then has this
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extraordinary life in which, yes, as I say, she connects to
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surrealism. But then through the 60s, she's
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when she actually has a period where she, she focuses entirely
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on psychoanalysis, where she's, she has, she has mental illness
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and she, she deals with her mental illness through a very,
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very the exacting process of psychoanalysis, which deeply
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informs her work on the one hand, but also means that she
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doesn't make art for quite a long time.
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And then she begins making art again in the 60s and produces, I
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guess, the kind of iconic, and I hate you hate that word, but I
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genuinely think these are iconic.
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These works, you know, the iconic sculptural works, deeply
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sexual, deeply informed by the psychoanalysis, deeply probing
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her family relationships. Her drawings, by the way, as
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well as her sculptures, are the most extraordinary things there
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is in at the Quarto Gallery in London as we speak, there is a
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room of drawings by Louise Bourgeois which are just.
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Astonishing. Absolutely breathtaking.
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She's an extraordinary figure from the point of view that she
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she spans decades and, you know, grew into that moment where
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installation art exploded and was a pioneer of different forms
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of installations in with her cell works, which are, you know,
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sculptural installations which involve different forms of,
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yeah, multiple different forms of materiality and contain these
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incredibly psychoanalytically informed but but also sort of
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psychically active spaces involving sculptural materials,
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textiles, you know, architecture elements and so on.
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I think, you know, she does come up through the series of brush
00:17:02
with and in the book. And the reason I think she does
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is because she there's there is a kind of moral guidance that
00:17:10
she has for artists. She has that's.
00:17:12
So interesting. What do you mean by that?
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I think, I think she is an exemplar of a kind of tenacity
00:17:19
that artists respond to. She, you know, there are many
00:17:23
ways in which she informs artists from on a formal level,
00:17:29
but also it's her journey. And I think, I think very often
00:17:32
one of the most interesting things about artists and
00:17:35
influence is the fact that they are interested in other artists
00:17:41
as a formal example, as a way of learning about materials and and
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imagery and so on, but also because of the way they behave
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through their life and the way that they made their work.
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And what do you think is most inspiring in her tenacity for
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artists? Well, I think it's that thing
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of, you know, if you think about you, you mention about male
00:18:03
artists versus female artists, you imagine the environment in
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which she is making work right from the start.
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She it's a male dominated world and she is making an entirely
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individual practice surrounded by an entirely patriarchal
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system. And so if you are Louise
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Bourgeois, to have that tenacity to keep making work and make
00:18:27
work with the individuality that you make it and and just keep
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probing yourself through all of this, even when it was deeply
00:18:37
unfashionable, when subject matter was anathema in the 60s
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in New York, you know, minimalism, come on, you know,
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and so you. Know.
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And so feminine and so visceral and sexual.
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I mean, it was absolutely frowned upon, yeah.
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So to make that kind of work, I think is an exemplar for artists
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that you know, you can, you might be able to see a trend
00:18:58
there happening in the corner of your eye, but don't be
00:19:01
distracted by it. Do your thing, you know, don't,
00:19:04
don't succumb to what happens to be the modish way of making
00:19:10
work. Do what you need to do, not what
00:19:13
you think people think you should do, you know?
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On that note, that leads me to my first question to you,
00:19:20
because when I'm invited to, you know, do lectures or for create
00:19:25
creative workshops in Fine Arts universities, I often tell the
00:19:30
students that being an artist is not the only possible outcome
00:19:35
when you're studying Fine Arts. And you are the the perfect
00:19:39
example of that. So I was, I'm really curious in
00:19:43
to know if you're switching from a creative process, like a more
00:19:49
an artistic process you were painting to writing and to
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working in the institutional context.
00:19:59
If it was progressive, it was. If it was a sudden epiphany, how
00:20:02
did that happen and how did you feel?
00:20:06
It's, it's really interesting question because I think by the
00:20:09
time I had come to the end of my degree, I realized I wasn't
00:20:11
going to be a painter. Apart from anything else, I was
00:20:14
a bit disillusioned with the actual process.
00:20:17
It was really interesting. In my first and second year, I
00:20:19
had very stimulating conversations with particular
00:20:21
tutors and so on. In my third year, I think my, my
00:20:27
universe of art expanded to a certain degree, but my, it made
00:20:31
me feel that my work was inadequate.
00:20:34
And so therefore, I think, I think by the time I'd come to
00:20:37
the end of my degree, I very much thought that art history
00:20:39
was the way forward. And so therefore from there it
00:20:45
was just a question of, you know, how do I manifest this
00:20:49
interest in, in art and and artists without being a painter?
00:20:54
So it wasn't an obvious thing. I didn't say it'll step outside
00:20:56
of my degree and go, OK, I'm going to do this.
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I'm going to go and work in a press office or anything like
00:21:00
that. But it was, I was clear that I
00:21:02
wasn't going to be a practicing artist.
00:21:04
But I would say that having been in a studio and having to go
00:21:09
into a studio and make make art every day or four days a week or
00:21:13
whatever it was when I was in my on my degree course really stood
00:21:17
me in good stead in trying to understand artists and trying to
00:21:21
understand the way that they work and feel when they're in
00:21:24
that studio. Because it is kind of
00:21:25
terrifying. You know, going into a studio,
00:21:28
it can be really inspiring, but also can be absolutely
00:21:31
terrifying. There are moments.
00:21:32
Yeah. And I think, I think that, you
00:21:34
know, one of the interesting things I asked about artist
00:21:38
rituals, you know, the, the, the subtitle of the book is
00:21:41
contemporary artists on the influences, inspirations and
00:21:43
disciplines. And one of the key things I
00:21:45
think about the conversations I have on the podcast and in the
00:21:48
book is that I'm interested in what it's like being an artist.
00:21:51
You know, it's what, why they do what they do.
00:21:53
It's a kind of curious life. And, and I think to have a bit
00:21:58
of access to that during my student days, albeit with the
00:22:01
entirely cosetted world that is, you know, studying a degree
00:22:06
rather than just being in a free person with no job, you know, or
00:22:10
whatever, you know, just going into the studio everyday.
00:22:13
Yeah. OK.
00:22:13
So it was slightly softened by the fact that it was done within
00:22:17
the context of a degree course. But still, the idea of going
00:22:21
into the studio and trying to make work, having that in my
00:22:24
past, albeit briefly, I think has helped in terms of
00:22:28
understanding artists. And since this is
00:22:33
exhibitionists, of course, I must ask you about, you know, a
00:22:38
foundational experience with art in general and how that came
00:22:43
about. And I remember that in the Jenny
00:22:46
Savile episode, you mentioned going to Paris with your school
00:22:50
and how that expanded your your horizons about the vastness of
00:22:55
other people creating something else elsewhere.
00:22:59
How did you, how were you first touched by art?
00:23:01
Do you remember? Was it an exhibition?
00:23:04
Was it an artwork? Was it early?
00:23:05
Was it later? I mean, it must have been
00:23:09
profound enough for you to decide to go into Fine Arts
00:23:12
university. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
00:23:15
It was really curious actually. I think that what got me into
00:23:19
art was music. And when I was young, I was, I
00:23:25
loved pop music and I was reading popular music magazines
00:23:30
in the 1980s when loads of musicians, pop musicians, people
00:23:34
in the charts were from an art background from they've been to
00:23:38
art school, you know? Absolutely.
00:23:40
But you know. That's a very United Kingdom.
00:23:42
I'm so sorry to interrupt you, but I'm so glad because I've
00:23:45
spoken about this with many British people who are, you
00:23:49
know, into art. Artists are people who go to
00:23:52
exhibitions with me and I keep telling them as someone who's
00:23:55
not English and who didn't grow up, grow up here.
00:23:58
It is such a British thing to have Bryan Ferry.
00:24:04
What's the what's the name of the Pulp singer?
00:24:06
Jarvis Cooker. Jarvis Cooker.
00:24:08
So many artists or singers and really important pop figure.
00:24:12
I think even Damon Alban went to art school.
00:24:15
Right. Yeah.
00:24:16
So it's. Right, sorry, but please do go
00:24:18
on. Don't lose your you're.
00:24:19
Absolutely right. I think this is really key that
00:24:21
that you cannot underestimate the the influence of art schools
00:24:25
on British music and why it's so fantastic.
00:24:28
Yes, yeah, I agree. You know, because the ideas are
00:24:31
coming from left field and some of those are being propelled in
00:24:35
to people's imaginations through popular music.
00:24:37
And that to me isn't that, that is what I mean about my
00:24:40
liberation, if you like, into art.
00:24:42
It came through music. So, and it's not even the kind
00:24:44
of trendy names. It's actually from that sort of
00:24:46
generation after Bryan Ferry. So Bryan Ferry was archly
00:24:51
artistic in the sense that he was taught by Richard Hamilton,
00:24:54
you know, in Newcastle, you know, so you couldn't get a
00:24:57
better tutelage. And in fact, wonderfully, he, I
00:24:59
think he collects pop art, you know.
00:25:02
But anyway, yes, so, so the generation after fairy, the
00:25:05
people that were influenced by Brian Ferry are people like
00:25:07
Duran Duran and people like that.
00:25:08
So I was, I was looking at these early 80's pop stars.
00:25:11
I was like 910 years old at this stage, you know?
00:25:14
Yeah, we were very young. Yeah, so reading Smash Hits
00:25:17
Magazine and Nick Rose from Duran Duran, he's banging on
00:25:19
about Andy Warhol and Jean Cocteau and you know, these sort
00:25:26
of deeply mysterious figures were people there.
00:25:29
I then was sent on a journey to look at and it took me a little
00:25:32
while, but I think by the age of 13 I'd asked my mum to go to the
00:25:35
Tate and, and so age 13 or thereabouts, I'm pretty sure it
00:25:42
was 19/19/86, I went to the Tate with my mum and I can remember
00:25:47
very, very clearly being deeply inspired and being completely
00:25:51
dazzled in a way by two artworks.
00:25:53
And 1 was Autumnal Cannibalism, which is by Salvador Dali, which
00:25:56
is one of those Spanish Civil War paintings.
00:25:59
And I remember being particularly dazzled by the
00:26:01
painting of a knife, the metal on a knife, the sort of
00:26:04
kaleidoscopic paint that describes the Sheen of the
00:26:06
knife. So that was one thing.
00:26:08
And then by Andy Warhol's Marilyn Diptik and those kind of
00:26:12
two artists kind of formed for me a kind of route through which
00:26:19
to kind of a window, if you like, into the art world.
00:26:21
And, and from there, I expanded out in different directions
00:26:25
from. So, you know, if you've got
00:26:26
surrealism and pop and those two figures in particular as a kind
00:26:30
of grounding, you can imagine how broad you can then, you
00:26:34
know, broadly you can expand your horizons.
00:26:37
And you're right. And and, you know, not not long
00:26:39
after that, there was a trip to Paris, I think.
00:26:43
Yeah. So I think when I was 16, I went
00:26:44
to Paris. And by that stage I'd, you know,
00:26:47
if you imagine I've got three years of being becoming very
00:26:50
passionate about art by that stage.
00:26:51
And I'd seen Andy Warhol's retrospective at the Haywood
00:26:55
Gallery. And by this stage, that was in
00:26:58
1989, it was the great, it was the most amazing retrospective,
00:27:04
which was at MoMA in 1989. So you imagine two years after
00:27:07
Warhol's death, and it's Kiniston Mcshine, the absolutely
00:27:11
legendary curator, Kiniston Mcshine, the curator of primary
00:27:16
structures, that. Information.
00:27:18
I'm fascinated with the exhibition.
00:27:20
Information about technology and conceptual art.
00:27:23
It's he is an incredible curator.
00:27:25
Yeah. He is an amazing curator and it
00:27:26
was his Warhol show which toured from MoMA to the Heywood.
00:27:30
I think he also went to this Entre Pompedou and elsewhere.
00:27:34
So I saw that exhibition at the Haywood in 1989 and I think I
00:27:38
saw it twice. And I and by that stage Warhol
00:27:42
had become my pop * if you know what I mean.
00:27:45
I, I had a portrait of a Frightwick self-portrait poster
00:27:49
from that exhibition and a Marilyn poster from that
00:27:52
exhibition on my wall as if they were kind of icons of my, you
00:27:55
know, teenage years. So was the.
00:27:58
Relationship with Marilyn, or was it a relationship with the
00:28:02
way the, the, the, the star, the icon was treated in terms of
00:28:10
image? What, what, what attracted you
00:28:12
guys? But you were a teenager.
00:28:13
I, I'm presuming that Marilyn was, I mean, I remember in our
00:28:18
childhoods she was still an incredibly glowing presence in,
00:28:24
in the pop world and popular culture.
00:28:27
So was it her? What, what?
00:28:29
Because I'm always interested in the part of life that connects
00:28:33
you to art, that then brings you back to life, you know?
00:28:36
Yeah, absolutely. I think, I think it was.
00:28:38
It was, it was everything that you just said and more in the
00:28:41
sense that, yes, I can remember, for instance, we were reading
00:28:45
biographies of Marilyn and, you know, her death was so
00:28:49
fascinating. Of course, that's what Warhol
00:28:50
picks up on. And that's why he uses, you
00:28:52
know, that's why he uses that portrait of her.
00:28:55
You know, that very straightforward glamour shot of
00:28:59
her. Sorry, that's the wrong term.
00:29:00
That very straightforward portrait of her.
00:29:03
You know, that was a kind of casting image effectively.
00:29:08
And it was, it was the glamour of Marilyn, the glamour of her
00:29:13
death. Frankly, the fact that there she
00:29:16
was this intriguing tragic figure, I think was absolutely
00:29:19
central. And Warhol picked up on that and
00:29:21
knew, went by making these images that he was propelling
00:29:24
that that tragedy into our lives.
00:29:27
It was, it was the kind of celebrity, the the, the kind of
00:29:33
allure of something completely opposite to the life of a
00:29:38
suburban kid in Kent, you know, in, you know, South of London
00:29:43
that it was something to do with that too, I'm sure.
00:29:46
So yes, it was it was all of those things.
00:29:48
But it's important to say also that, you know, I did have
00:29:51
Warhol as a poster on my wall as well.
00:29:53
Him, one of the self portraits, the frightened self portraits.
00:29:56
So Warhol was the maker. Of that of the image was
00:29:59
completely in there absolutely. And I remember also like reading
00:30:06
a serialization of the Diaries of Warhol, which came out around
00:30:09
the same time in The Sunday Times at that point.
00:30:12
And you have to remember that this is during the AIDS crisis.
00:30:15
So I can remember reading about Warhol and, and the glamour of
00:30:19
New York in the context of this terrible, terrible situation
00:30:25
relating to AIDS. And, you know, so many of the
00:30:27
people he knew were dying just before he died.
00:30:30
There was this sense in which this most glorious of scenes,
00:30:35
that New York scene of the late 70s and early 80s was somehow
00:30:39
being destroyed. And it was, you know, that
00:30:40
again, the tragedy of that was somehow weirdly compelling to
00:30:45
me. And so I, you know, it, it
00:30:47
represented something so other in terms of intellectual life,
00:30:53
in terms of, in terms of the idea of this impossibly
00:30:57
glamorous city, these terrible events that were happening that
00:31:00
that was magnetically attracted to it, you know.
00:31:05
Time for a short break to let you into the Exhibitionist the
00:31:10
studio. Look around you.
00:31:13
There is a computer, a good mic, the software in the computer,
00:31:18
which is a sort of virtual space through which you and I meet
00:31:24
with a time and space delay. Then there are my books and two
00:31:29
perfectly round Flintstones. All the magic happens here.
00:31:35
I've been talking to a university whose students need
00:31:38
placements, and I could use some assistance with production and
00:31:43
research while also mentoring the future professionals of the
00:31:49
field. But for that, I have to pay
00:31:53
them. And that's where you come in.
00:31:56
Do you know how much a membership costs?
00:31:59
A mere £25 a year. Which means that you pay £2 a
00:32:06
month, 25 lbs for a whole year when you'd buy a catalog.
00:32:13
That's the average price for one single book with two texts.
00:32:18
If you become a member of Exhibitionistors through a
00:32:22
platform called Sub Stack, you not only get to support
00:32:27
exhibitionists, but you also receive on average about 18 more
00:32:32
texts minimum that I will have written about many, many, many
00:32:38
fascinating topics of contemporary arts, philosophy of
00:32:42
arts, and many other subjects. There's a little bonus that I
00:32:48
added, which is getting to ask me questions.
00:32:52
If you have a question about contemporary art, about the
00:32:55
field, about the market, about studies in contemporary art, I'm
00:33:00
very, very happy to do the research for you or to dig into
00:33:05
my little well of knowledge and put the information out there
00:33:08
for you. I can name you or you can be
00:33:11
anonymous so you get to put me to work as long as the questions
00:33:17
and the prompts you give me are within my abilities and the
00:33:22
research material available to me.
00:33:26
Otherwise you can go to donor books in the description notes.
00:33:30
If you have 1 LB to spare, you can just donate one time.
00:33:35
Very, very small amounts. That's what I do with Wikipedia
00:33:39
once in a while. I put some money in there
00:33:41
because I use it almost daily and I want to reward people who
00:33:47
nourish me. Thank you for spending some time
00:33:49
with me here in my studio. Thank you for considering this
00:33:54
decent proposal. On with the episode.
00:34:02
This would be a very long answer, I suppose, to this
00:34:05
question, but if you could briefly auscultate the
00:34:09
relationship between popular culture and contemporary art
00:34:13
now, which is so different from what you're describing, do you
00:34:18
have a sort of a diagnosis of the reason why?
00:34:21
And I think we'll talk about that later because you wrote
00:34:23
really interestingly about the politics in museums.
00:34:28
But do you think that there's a disconnect between art and
00:34:33
audiences, perhaps in certain ways, Or this fear that people
00:34:36
have a contemporary art because of this lack of overlap between
00:34:42
popular culture and contemporary art?
00:34:45
Or maybe you don't agree with what I'm saying.
00:34:48
Perhaps. I think, I think I agree with it
00:34:50
and don't agree with it at the same time, if you know what I
00:34:52
mean, In the sense that I think there is still a very pronounced
00:34:55
engagement between contemporary art and popular culture.
00:34:58
In the sense that there are very many artists who are accessing
00:35:01
very popular images and making them dynamic in a new way within
00:35:06
the field of contemporary art. I'm thinking about like Arthur
00:35:09
Jafer. Arthur Jafer, yeah.
00:35:10
He's the last. He's the last artist in the
00:35:12
book. He's the most recent interview
00:35:14
in the book. And it's funny 'cause he's one
00:35:16
of the artists recently about whom I've had conversations
00:35:22
around the shocking aspect of the work.
00:35:25
Because it's so hard to shock us, right?
00:35:27
It's so hard to provoke a sort of reaction.
00:35:29
And he certainly does. Yeah.
00:35:33
And I think like so for instance, last year AJ produced
00:35:37
this work which I think is called Its title keeps changing.
00:35:42
So before I talked to him it was called redacted and it was just
00:35:47
that it was written like 5 star symbols.
00:35:51
During the interview he corrects me and says no it's called BG.
00:35:55
No sorry no it's called Ben Gazzara who was an actor from
00:35:58
1917. Then he said.
00:36:00
I later learned that he's changed the title to BG and I
00:36:03
think it may be Ben Gazzara again now but I don't know.
00:36:05
Anyway, there is this. It will change.
00:36:07
Probably again after the episode.
00:36:08
But he has. But he has made this
00:36:10
extraordinary work which I really hope will be shown in the
00:36:14
UK at some point soon. But it's been shown in New York
00:36:16
and LA, which is, and I've seen it as a stream, so I haven't
00:36:21
seen it in a gallery context, but it is one of the genuinely
00:36:24
most shocking artworks I've seen in my life.
00:36:27
And I mean that in a good way, because what he does is he takes
00:36:32
a popular form of popular culture.
00:36:34
It will be it at that stage, a kind of kind of experimental
00:36:38
form of popular culture, which is Martin Scorsese's film Taxi
00:36:41
Driver. And he takes the final scene
00:36:44
from Taxi Driver, final scenes from Taxi Driver in which a
00:36:50
figure, Travis Bickle this this white supremacist taxi driver in
00:36:54
New York goes in and shoots a pimp and men visiting sex
00:37:01
workers. But he recasts it based on
00:37:05
information he had learned that originally the pimp character
00:37:08
was was due was supposed to be black, but he was written the
00:37:11
the black character was written out and Harvey Keitel plays him
00:37:14
instead. So what amazingly AJ does is he
00:37:18
recasts it, reshoots it effectively with with a black
00:37:23
pimp and black people visiting the sex workers and casts it as
00:37:26
a white supremacist repeatedly murdering black people.
00:37:30
And it is one of the most genuinely like you, you, you use
00:37:34
that term visceral. And I think that's a term which
00:37:38
is, is it's it's one of the best ways to describe what art does
00:37:42
when it really hits you, you know, it does.
00:37:45
It's like AI always say it's like a punch to the solar
00:37:47
plexus. It takes the breath out of you.
00:37:49
You know, and this does that, that this film by Arthur Jafer
00:37:52
and it it's just astonishing. And it's repeated 13 times with
00:37:57
slightly different iterations each time.
00:38:01
And then in the middle of it, there's this gorgeous moment
00:38:02
where the pimp starts singing along with Stevie Wonder's
00:38:07
wonderful song as one of the great songs, yes, one of my
00:38:10
favorite songs. And and this sort of delicacy of
00:38:14
this man who's who's about to meet a very brutal death,
00:38:19
smoking on a on the on a porch, singing along with as it's kind
00:38:23
of like, you know, again, just somehow weirdly shocking and and
00:38:28
yeah, yeah. So so there you go.
00:38:29
There's art connecting to popular culture in in a way
00:38:33
which I think is deep and profound and which I think I
00:38:36
would urge anybody to connect with.
00:38:37
And a JS work more generally also does that, you know, but
00:38:41
also I think, yes. So there is also a disconnect
00:38:44
between contemporary art and popular culture in in the in the
00:38:47
sense that there I think you were sort of suggesting that
00:38:50
there was a kind of suspicion around it, you know, within
00:38:53
popular circles to a degree. And I think that is a real
00:38:57
problem because I think with contemporary art, more than
00:39:01
almost any other art form, there's this idea among certain
00:39:04
people that they feel like they're being hoodwinked, that
00:39:08
they're not in on the game, that somehow the rules haven't been
00:39:11
explained to them and therefore they're the butt of a joke.
00:39:13
Exactly. And there's actually a really
00:39:15
good line about this from Alan Bennett, the playwright writer.
00:39:20
He said that they should have a sign above the National Gallery
00:39:22
which says you don't have to like everything.
00:39:25
Absolutely, yes. There's this sense of
00:39:28
obligation, of enjoying everything.
00:39:30
Because my theory is that it's presented as a masterpiece, so
00:39:33
you feel stupid if you don't get it.
00:39:36
And I think it's also the presentation of the the artists,
00:39:41
the genius, the masterpiece, the muse, you know, all of that
00:39:43
patriarchal lingo I find. But you may have a different
00:39:48
view, obviously. Yeah, there there.
00:39:50
There are forms of construction around works of art, whether
00:39:55
they be historic works of art or contemporary works of art, which
00:39:59
are to which can act as a barrier to audiences.
00:40:02
There's no doubt about that. But also, I feel very
00:40:06
passionately, and these conversations in this book and
00:40:09
on the podcast absolutely attest to that, that artists are
00:40:13
generous. You know, they want to connect
00:40:15
to people, you know. You know, it's very rare that
00:40:18
you meet an artist who says no. I just want to make work for my
00:40:20
peers. I'm not interested in connecting
00:40:23
to a broader public. I don't care what people think
00:40:25
of my work. You know, I, you know, I can
00:40:27
count on the fingers of one finger the number of artists who
00:40:31
I think that applies. But.
00:40:33
Yeah. But I know I can't remember for
00:40:35
certain whether it is the person I think of.
00:40:37
But anyway, I know that basically, you know, there are
00:40:40
some they and certainly have been in the past, people who
00:40:43
just want to make work for their peers and they don't really care
00:40:45
about having a broader connection.
00:40:46
But certainly now, in my experience, artists want want to
00:40:50
connect. They're doing this.
00:40:51
If you look at the answers to the question, what is art for?
00:40:55
That's the title of the book. So many of the answers, yeah, so
00:40:58
many of these answers are about a kind of human connection.
00:41:01
Absolutely. You know, and, and I think I
00:41:05
think, yes, there are all sorts of reasons why people feel that
00:41:10
contemporary art or art more generally is not for them.
00:41:14
And some of that is in the language which which is
00:41:16
constructed around it and in the the kind of environmental and
00:41:20
architectural structures that are that are that are around it
00:41:23
too, of course. But I do feel profoundly that in
00:41:26
the right circumstances, all forms of art, historic,
00:41:29
contemporary, everything can connect very deeply to all of
00:41:31
us, you know? So yeah, that's why we're doing
00:41:34
it right. Absolutely, yeah.
00:41:36
And we dedicate our lives to it, not only the artists, but all of
00:41:39
us. Right.
00:41:40
So question related to exhibition going.
00:41:44
You were talking about the 89 exhibition of Andy Warhol.
00:41:48
So I'm presuming you're not going to answer this one.
00:41:51
But I'm really curious to know if there's any exhibition that
00:41:54
you feel that very deeply that you should have seen, you know,
00:41:59
from the turn of the century to the 20th century to now, Is
00:42:04
there any exhibition that you really deeply feel that you
00:42:07
should have been to? There are so many and yeah, I,
00:42:13
so I'm, I think I'm sort of, I'm not a, I'm not a scholar of
00:42:17
exhibition history, but I'm unofficially, I guess I'm a
00:42:19
scholar of exhibition history. I'm constantly in my research,
00:42:23
dazzled by looking at installation shots of these
00:42:27
extraordinary exhibitions that happened in the past and wishing
00:42:30
I'd been there to see it. Like the first papers of
00:42:33
Surrealism, which was a 1940s exhibition in New York in which
00:42:36
Marcel Duchamp. But what it's it's called a mile
00:42:40
of string. The the amount of string he used
00:42:42
is for debate, but basically he put string all the way across
00:42:46
the exhibition as a kind of massive installation, completely
00:42:50
destroying the opportunity for other other artists.
00:42:52
Were enjoying the painting. Yeah, yeah.
00:42:55
So there's things like that which you know, gosh, so many of
00:42:58
those surrealist exhibitions actually, you know, in
00:43:01
surrealist object exhibitions and you know, the Great
00:43:03
exhibition in London for the International Surrealist
00:43:06
Exhibition. And I think the, the show I most
00:43:11
if it's, if it has to be won, the show I most wish I'd seen is
00:43:15
the 1992 retrospective of Henri Matisse's work in New York at
00:43:19
the Museum of New York. 400 works, all the Russian paintings
00:43:24
alongside the American collections and you know, all of
00:43:28
the amazing European collections also lent for that show.
00:43:32
It's like as close as possible as you could have got to a
00:43:36
perfect Matisse show. And so I was, I was in 1992, I
00:43:42
was 19 and I couldn't get to New York.
00:43:45
There was a version of it that travelled to Paris, but I didn't
00:43:47
even see that. But the New York show was, was
00:43:50
the absolutely comprehensive one.
00:43:52
It's curated by the great John Elderfield.
00:43:54
He's one of the great Museum of Modern Art directors, a great
00:43:57
historian of modernism, one of the most incredibly intense
00:44:00
researchers and scholars of, of modern art.
00:44:04
And just like, you know, you can go on Moma's website and look at
00:44:07
installation shots and, you know, little tiny image, black
00:44:12
and white images of show and I'm gasping, you know, that
00:44:15
alongside that, you know, it's, it's that show seems to me to
00:44:21
like that. I, I don't, I would have
00:44:23
exploded if I'd seen that show. Matisse's push comes to shove.
00:44:27
It's it's pretty much, it's pretty much my favorite artist.
00:44:30
And and he, he moves me so deeply.
00:44:36
His achievement is so extraordinary that I just, I
00:44:40
think I would, yeah, that show, I would have been, I would have
00:44:42
been in tears or most of the way through everything.
00:44:47
So in some ways it's it's good that you have to preserve your
00:44:50
syncopated composure. So moving on to politics or
00:44:56
maybe political issues reflected in institutions.
00:45:00
I was so, so happy to read a text you wrote for the other
00:45:04
newspaper Speaking of podcasts as opposed to texts and and the
00:45:08
the reverberation they might have.
00:45:11
Of course this was directed perhaps more to professionals,
00:45:14
but the title is so gripping. Are museums guilt stripping
00:45:19
their visitors question mark? No, they aren't doing enough.
00:45:23
And I would love you to explain what you were responding to,
00:45:27
which is a very specific 2024-2025 situation, I think.
00:45:32
And also, why do you feel that you can't participate in that
00:45:39
complaint? So the context is that there is
00:45:44
this growing swell of views which suggests that the visitor
00:45:51
numbers to museums are slightly lower to certain museums because
00:45:55
they are, and I'm going to put this quote in the heaviest of
00:45:59
quote marks, woke. There's this anti progressive
00:46:03
politics agenda which is appearing sort of subtly in
00:46:09
various spaces, you know, various forms of article, which
00:46:14
is it's suggesting that the programming at certain museums
00:46:19
and, and often it's about tape, but it's all about other other
00:46:21
places as well. White chapels come into, you
00:46:23
know, the people's crossfire. It's, it's suggesting that the
00:46:32
programming, the expanding of canons, the language which is
00:46:37
used to describe historic works within the context of slavery,
00:46:42
of colonialism and so on, is guilt tripping people.
00:46:46
My view very strongly is that there isn't enough of it, you
00:46:51
know? What was interesting is that you
00:46:54
were talking about heritage museums and not contemporary art
00:46:57
museums. And I thought that your scope
00:46:59
was so precise and so fascinating because we're
00:47:03
talking not only about the present but also history very
00:47:06
specifically in what is shown in the museum.
00:47:09
And I was very happy to see you, you know, make an argument in
00:47:14
such, you know, clear words that, you know, I think it's
00:47:16
worth picking up again, you know, and repeating.
00:47:20
Yeah, absolutely. So, So I think in the in that
00:47:22
article, for instance, I talked about that astonishing show of
00:47:26
the mogul period at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which closed
00:47:31
earlier this year. And it was one of the most
00:47:34
beautiful shows I've ever seen. Absolutely stunning show, but it
00:47:37
was really notable how little of the politics was there and how
00:47:42
little of the sort of geopolitical issues which were
00:47:44
central to that period. There were hints of it.
00:47:46
You know, you saw the connection between Europe and and India,
00:47:50
but and I picked up on something that Shutipa Biz was the great
00:47:54
contemporary British artist who's been the guest on a brush
00:47:56
with pointed out, which was a really fascinating article in
00:47:59
which, you know, it's exploring how museums in a way are
00:48:05
disguising to a certain degree by presenting these really
00:48:08
opulent and wonderful shows. By using opulence as the kind of
00:48:12
driving force of a show, they're kind of disguising the kind of
00:48:16
very real global situation in that period, which is to me
00:48:23
endlessly fascinating and wouldn't at all reduce the
00:48:27
impact of those works of art. It's not guilt tripping people
00:48:30
to tell them about the situation relating to empires in the 17th
00:48:36
century and how they connected to India and the, you know, East
00:48:40
India Company and so on. And, and how it was, how it was
00:48:43
active and how, and the ways in which colonialism was
00:48:48
manifesting in that period and, and before it and after it.
00:48:52
You know. So for me, the idea that just by
00:48:58
representing something like that within the context of a
00:49:05
political and geopolitical and social situation is somehow
00:49:09
going to make to put, put visitors off is, is strange
00:49:14
because it seems to me that it's deepening the context and
00:49:19
deepening the understanding. And what, what are museums for
00:49:22
if not for deepening understanding?
00:49:24
Yes, they are about showing artworks and of course they are,
00:49:29
that's their fundamental responsibility and, and looking
00:49:31
after the artworks. But but part of that is the
00:49:35
interpretation of what these artworks that are in their
00:49:37
possession and that they have on loan and so on.
00:49:39
And I feel that they could do more to make it.
00:49:43
I'm, I'm quite, you know, I'm quite surprised when you see
00:49:47
displays of paintings by, by notable figures from the 18th
00:49:54
century of aristocrats who clearly benefited from slavery
00:49:57
and colonialism in the imperial project.
00:50:00
And yet nothing is mentioned about why they can afford to pay
00:50:03
Gainsborough the money for this extraordinary portrait.
00:50:07
It doesn't make Gainsborough's portrait any less powerful.
00:50:10
It makes it more powerful in certain ways.
00:50:12
It shows that art plays a role, yes, in these encounters between
00:50:17
very different and very distance cultures and what role it plays
00:50:24
of possession, of fascination, also of othering weirdly through
00:50:28
possession. I find it also very, very
00:50:31
fascinating and. But also, can I say that one of
00:50:34
the things that I think is really, really important about
00:50:36
this is a lot of the people that are writing these things are
00:50:39
white. And it's really important that
00:50:43
that just because a white commentator doesn't like being
00:50:48
told about empire, it means that a black or brown visitor to that
00:50:54
exhibition or to that collection is not going to respond to it in
00:50:57
a completely different way. And it, it makes assumptions
00:51:00
about audiences at museums as much as it makes assumptions
00:51:03
about, about what showing art is about, you know, and I think
00:51:07
actually it's, it's important that we, that we keep talking
00:51:12
about this, but also just that we, you know, we have a
00:51:16
perspective on how, on the different ways in which we can
00:51:19
communicate about, about artworks and that all of them
00:51:23
are interesting. And let's, let's, let's, you
00:51:25
know, let's make these discussions richer, not shut
00:51:28
them down, you know? Well, fascinating.
00:51:31
I'd love to talk about this far more, but I would love to move
00:51:35
on to the book because there's 25 interviews from those 120
00:51:42
that episodes of the podcast which you recorded.
00:51:46
So sometimes people are not really aware of how podcasts
00:51:49
work. So you prepare the interview
00:51:52
deeply, intensely. You do a lot of research, then
00:51:55
you meet the artists, you ask them questions, and then you
00:51:58
spend a long time editing the episode.
00:52:01
Someone edits it for you, but you have to check the editing
00:52:05
and you have to then absorb what's that object has become
00:52:11
from that conversation. And then you have 120, and
00:52:14
they're in the past. So I'm really interested in
00:52:17
knowing how you revisited these episodes and did you change your
00:52:23
perception on them? Did you see something different
00:52:25
that you hadn't seen in that, you know, the heat of the moment
00:52:28
of producing the episode? How did that work?
00:52:31
It's really fascinating, actually.
00:52:32
So on the one hand, there's sort of certain preconceptions you
00:52:34
have about which are the best episodes.
00:52:35
And I'm terrible at this because they're all like my children.
00:52:39
So it's it's really hard to say, oh, that, you know, and in fact,
00:52:42
some, some of my absolute favorite episodes, we we aren't
00:52:45
representing them because, you know, 25 from, as you say, over
00:52:47
100 is it's, it's it's a a sample of and a very in depth
00:52:54
sample of those those episodes. But yeah, I mean, so on the one
00:52:58
hand, I think it's really important to say that I would
00:53:00
say that it's not perfect, but there is a a, a pleasing
00:53:05
diversity in the artists that we talk to in terms of
00:53:10
geographically, in terms of their backgrounds, in terms of
00:53:14
their age, for instance. The the nice thing is that there
00:53:16
are two Michaels interviewed in the book, Michael Armitage and
00:53:20
Michael Craig Martin, and I think there's five decades
00:53:22
between them, you know, so, so that so there's a sense in which
00:53:26
we wanted to get a, a quite broad scope, but then revisiting
00:53:31
them also has been such a pleasure as we were editing the
00:53:33
text, you know, Rebecca Merrill, who is the commissioning editor,
00:53:37
and Michaela Parkin, he was the coffee editor.
00:53:39
We were working together quite closely in the early stages of
00:53:43
the book and batting these these interviews back and forth in
00:53:46
text form. And there was a real delight
00:53:49
actually in that process. I can remember sending them, you
00:53:54
know, messages where, where we'd go.
00:53:55
I love this one, that bit where they talk about XYZ, you know,
00:53:58
there, there were moments where, you know, moments which I knew
00:54:01
were there. But somehow seeing them written
00:54:03
down as text made me think even more deeply about them and
00:54:09
remember the references. There's a wonderful bit in the
00:54:12
Ragnar Kyatensen interview. Ragnar Kyatensen, the great
00:54:17
video artist and installation artist from Iceland, who It's
00:54:23
probably the funniest of all the interviews.
00:54:25
I'd say it's the one where I laugh the most, definitely.
00:54:29
But there's a wonderful bit where he talks about Mina, the
00:54:32
Italian chanteurs and of the 60s and this amazing song that she
00:54:38
sings. And, and, and it instantly
00:54:41
prompted both Rebecca Morrell and Michaela Parkin to go and
00:54:45
listen to Mina and, you know, and you know, so, and I love
00:54:48
that actually. And I hope that that's what this
00:54:50
book and the podcast does, is that people will go and look at
00:54:53
these references and listen to these references and read these
00:54:56
references and so on. It's certainly done that for me.
00:54:57
You know, so many books that I've read have come out of these
00:55:00
conversations, you know, so yes, the process of choosing 25 was
00:55:05
difficult in some ways because there were so many to choose
00:55:07
from, but I but there were lots of reasons why I think it's a,
00:55:11
it's a balance selection. There's painters, there's
00:55:13
installation artists, sculptors, you know, there's quite a full
00:55:17
gamut of, of kind of means of making here as well.
00:55:20
And I think that's important too.
00:55:21
You know, if we're talking about artists and being interested in
00:55:24
their studio practices, to have a kind of real range of making
00:55:29
is really important too. There's, you know, everybody
00:55:32
from Jeremy Della who kind of doesn't, it's not really a
00:55:35
studio he works in and he called, you know, corals people
00:55:39
to to make work within contexts and so on.
00:55:43
And and then you've got somebody like Charlene von Heil, the
00:55:46
painter, who, you know, just there she is in her studio, her
00:55:50
spy herself forming this world. She talks about how in the
00:55:53
studio she creates these kind of mood chords basically which
00:55:58
surround her, which prompt new bodies of work.
00:56:01
And there's, you know, the the difference between the very
00:56:05
social practice of somebody like Jeremy Della or Theastic Gates,
00:56:09
the Great American social practice practice artist who's
00:56:12
also amazing ceramicist and sculpture and everything else to
00:56:17
have, you know, to have them. And then somebody like Charlene
00:56:20
or Michael Armitage, you know, people using paint, you know,
00:56:24
is, is really thrilling actually.
00:56:27
And, and I think you get that from the imagery in the book and
00:56:29
the way that they're thinking as well, you know, so very, very
00:56:32
different ways of being artists, but also sort of obviously
00:56:36
lovely correspondences between the individual interviews as
00:56:38
well. I'm also fascinated by the
00:56:41
difference of answers to that important question that gives
00:56:47
the book its title. What is Artful?
00:56:53
And I would love to know if that variety and the difference in
00:56:59
answers has had a sort of impact on you or how, how do you
00:57:06
account for the diversity of answers in this question that
00:57:11
sometimes when you're talking to someone who doesn't, you know,
00:57:14
and you say that you work in contemporary arts, they ask you,
00:57:16
you know, what is it? You know, I don't know anything
00:57:19
about it. What does it, you know, what,
00:57:21
what function does it have? What can it bring me?
00:57:24
And you ask the question, which I think is really, really
00:57:27
courageous for a book title because then you have to
00:57:31
deliver, but the artists do. So you leave it in the artist's
00:57:34
hands and the, the sort of myriad of answers that you have,
00:57:40
you know, how do you how, how do you handle that and what does it
00:57:44
tell you? It's it's a really good point
00:57:47
actually that that it's, it's in a way a, a tricky question to
00:57:50
ask of an artist, you know, because it basically says to
00:57:53
them like, why are you doing what you're doing?
00:57:55
But that is a kind of fundamental, yeah, you know, but
00:57:59
it, but it is also sort of fundamental to the book and to
00:58:02
the whole query of the brush with podcast, you know, you
00:58:05
know, because I think it is a curious life to be an artist.
00:58:08
And I think therefore to ask what what is art for?
00:58:12
You know, what, what is this thing that we're all so obsessed
00:58:14
with doing in the world? You know, it, it, it is a sort
00:58:18
of a complex question. The, the the range of answers is
00:58:22
really pleasing. Actually, there's a there's
00:58:24
quite a gamut. You get like people that use
00:58:27
single words like, you know, Sarah Z says it's for
00:58:30
sustenance. That's it, you know, and and I
00:58:34
think she means in in so many multiple ways, A lot of artists
00:58:38
feel that art is basically a way of surviving in the world.
00:58:41
I think, you know, Charlene von Heil says we, you know, and I'm
00:58:44
sorry to use a swear word here, but she says we'd be be totally
00:58:47
fucked without it. You know, she's you know, it's
00:58:51
it's if it wasn't for art, how that on earth would we navigate
00:58:54
what's going on? Because it's grim, you know, it
00:58:57
frankly is so grim out there. And no, never more than it feels
00:59:01
like them now, you know, and, and so lots of the responses
00:59:08
are, are are about finding a way to be human and, and trying to
00:59:12
articulate what it is to be human.
00:59:15
And then for Theaster Gates, I think he says it's it's about
00:59:21
healing you. Know yes, he does.
00:59:24
I was going to ask you about that because I feel that this it
00:59:28
wouldn't have been something that you would have allowed
00:59:30
yourself to say 50 years back or even more.
00:59:34
And now it is a recurring words for artists and even for
00:59:38
curators, This idea of care and healing is quite surprising and
00:59:45
frankly, comforting. No, I agree with you and
00:59:48
actually one of the one of my favourite interviews in the
00:59:50
book. They're all my favourites.
00:59:51
What? Who am I kidding?
00:59:54
One of my favorite interviews is is with Alberta Whittle, the
00:59:58
Scotland based Glasgow based Barbadian British artist who
01:00:04
talks about in the answer to what is art for talks about
01:00:07
about art as a manifestation of hope, you know, but she also
01:00:11
talks a lot through the interview because it's crucial
01:00:14
to her practice about care, you know, about collective care and
01:00:19
an art. Being a kind of an agent within
01:00:22
that and that's AI think you're right that that the idea of art
01:00:27
connecting to care, connecting to healing, connecting to ideas
01:00:30
of well-being and so on. To discuss that 50 years ago or
01:00:36
whatever would have been an asthma, but also even now I
01:00:40
think to do it and to understand that that's within a context of
01:00:43
criticality of inquiry of interrogation is crucial.
01:00:49
It's not fairy, fairy woo woo, you know it.
01:00:52
It is absolutely about a critical inquiry into the world
01:00:57
and legacies of slavery, colonialism, etcetera,
01:01:00
particularly in the in in the work of Alberta Whittle.
01:01:05
So it's it's about those legacies and the damage and the
01:01:07
trauma and so on and about manifesting hope from now into
01:01:12
the future. So the idea that it that that it
01:01:15
was anathema 50 years ago is probably linked to the idea that
01:01:18
you had, you know, the language of art had to be tough in a
01:01:21
certain way. But you can still be tough and
01:01:23
critical and, and you know, laceratingly focused on
01:01:29
dismantling systems of oppression and so on and talk
01:01:33
about care and healing and so on.
01:01:35
So I think that's really crucial.
01:01:37
Interesting. They're not incompatible.
01:01:39
Yeah, that's never thought of that.
01:01:41
But you're so right. I have a really, really strange
01:01:45
question to ask you as someone who hasn't grown up here and who
01:01:50
I guess my FOMO would have been the time where artists were
01:01:55
being talked about in the press in the UK in the 90s.
01:01:58
And that's wonderful. 80s, nineties.
01:02:01
And that wonderful interview is Painting Dead with Tracy Emin
01:02:08
and Norman Rosenthal and David Sylvester and all of those
01:02:11
people. And I was wondering, what do you
01:02:14
make of that era as someone who's was here, who went through
01:02:18
it, was affected by it, who has known and interviewed a lot of
01:02:23
those artists directly, you know, embodying that phenomenon.
01:02:29
And also that seems so far away now, so distant, and yet it
01:02:36
wasn't that long ago. What do you make of that period?
01:02:40
It's a really crucial period because I was at university in
01:02:43
that period. So in 1992 to 1995 I was at
01:02:46
university. I was an art student.
01:02:48
And so I saw in a way, even though I was remote from it, I
01:02:51
wasn't in the art world at all in that period.
01:02:53
You know, I saw in a way that burgeoning scene.
01:02:57
And I was able to, you know, I'm lucky in that I saw the very
01:03:01
first young British artists show at the Saatchi Gallery, the
01:03:06
late, lamented, wonderful Saatchi Gallery in Boundary Rd.
01:03:10
that, you know, anybody who went there, you talk to them about
01:03:13
that space and they talk about it as the most beautiful art
01:03:16
space they've ever seen. You know, it was just A and
01:03:20
utterly stunning art space. It's difficult to express how
01:03:23
beautiful it was, especially within a context in which, you
01:03:27
know, London didn't have Tate Modern.
01:03:29
You know, the, the, the modern collection of the, the Tate had
01:03:33
was shown in what is now Tate Britain in one side of it.
01:03:37
So. So we didn't have Tate Modern,
01:03:39
but we had this gleaming space up in North London.
01:03:42
Yeah, difficult to get to a real schlep, but there it was.
01:03:46
And, you know, I saw that first young British artist show and it
01:03:50
has to be said, you know, it's really important to say this,
01:03:52
that there were lots of kind of artists that were featured in
01:03:54
these shows that have been forgotten.
01:03:56
So everybody thinks it's just about the so-called Ybas now,
01:03:59
the young British artist now. But there were loads of artists
01:04:01
peripheral to it, but also got shown in these exhibitions that,
01:04:04
you know, we've all forgotten about.
01:04:05
You know, Alex Landrum was in the first young British artist
01:04:09
show, for instance, a painter with sort of texts in the middle
01:04:14
of the the the canvases. And then but, but in that show
01:04:18
was Rachel White Reed and Damien Hirst.
01:04:20
And so Hirst showed his shark. He showed 1000 years, which is
01:04:23
the piece with the flies and the fly killer and, you know, cow's
01:04:26
head and but, but Rachel showed ghost, which is, which was the
01:04:32
work that connected to me on that visceral level that we were
01:04:36
talking about earlier on. And, and also, I should also say
01:04:40
that for me, one of the most profound art experiences of my
01:04:43
entire life was seeing Rachel's house, Rachel Woyeri's house, in
01:04:48
East London in 1993. Another one of my firmos.
01:04:51
Well, yeah, I mean, absolutely. And you talk about, you know,
01:04:53
yeah, the sort of great art experiences, a few experiences
01:04:57
I've ever had with art have been greater than Rachel Watery's
01:05:00
house. I was so passionate about it
01:05:03
because the debate in public culture in that time to.
01:05:05
Your so it was in the public space because it has all the
01:05:09
elements of an incredibly intersectional work.
01:05:14
Because it was in the public space, it was in an area that
01:05:17
was raised of a social, a social area, basically where the houses
01:05:25
just disappeared. You know, the, the, the
01:05:27
landscape, the gentrification was ongoing of the city.
01:05:31
And then Rachel Watry decides to basically cost one of the houses
01:05:37
and expose the, the, the sort of empty space of the house in, in
01:05:42
as a sculpture. So the house disappears, the the
01:05:45
empty space remains in the public space and everyone is an
01:05:51
up in an uproar about it. And the art critics love it and
01:05:56
everyone's talking about it. And Rachel White Reed, I have a
01:05:59
question for you because I've always wondered.
01:06:01
I've read about this quite a lot and I'm fascinated by that.
01:06:04
But I never really understood how she feels about it, which
01:06:10
probably has changed across the years.
01:06:13
But I never quite I've I've, I always have the sense that she
01:06:16
was very hurt by the the, the upheaval and the destruction of
01:06:21
the of the sculpture posteriorly.
01:06:23
Oh, and also, and this was commissioned by Art Angel.
01:06:27
He was starting to think about public space as a space to show
01:06:31
arts, which for me as a young philosopher, then curating
01:06:38
student, was such an impressive idea, you know, to just put out
01:06:44
there. So there's so many aspects of
01:06:46
this story. That's a really good summary of
01:06:49
what happened. And it was even more fraught
01:06:52
than even you're suggesting. Because I think one of the one
01:06:55
of the things that's been forgotten about this now deeply
01:06:58
revered sculpture or sculptural project is, is that there were
01:07:02
questions asked about it in Parliament.
01:07:04
It was that much, it had that much of an effect on British
01:07:08
culture. It was.
01:07:10
So basically, yes, the, the whole context for Rachel White
01:07:13
Reed in that time was impossible, if you like, she was
01:07:17
an extraordinarily ambitious, brilliant sculpt sculptor.
01:07:20
She was absolutely, absolutely the vanguard of that scene in a
01:07:24
way that people have slightly forgotten because they think
01:07:27
it's Tracy who was at the vanguard of that scene.
01:07:29
But at that time, Tracy was not that well known.
01:07:32
And, and you know, if you like the, the 2 standard bearers for
01:07:35
contemporary art in Britain in that time were were Damien Hirst
01:07:38
and, and Rachel White Reed. You know, they were by far the
01:07:41
most sort of talked about if you like artists at that time.
01:07:44
And you know, Rachel in the same year she was taught shortlisted
01:07:50
for the second time for the Turner Prize.
01:07:53
She puts this amazing sculpt she the most extraordinary endeavour
01:07:59
to create that thing, you know, So take the, if you like the
01:08:03
shell of a Victorian home in East London off and preserve
01:08:10
mummify the air within it is her phrase.
01:08:12
I love that phrase. It's so perfect.
01:08:15
Mummify the air in a room was the way she described ghost,
01:08:18
which is a single room. She expanded that out into a
01:08:21
full house and this time it's concrete.
01:08:24
And so yeah, it's this massive public art project.
01:08:27
The local councillor is just doing everything he can to
01:08:30
denigrate it and eventually succeeds in having it it it
01:08:34
knocked down. There's debates about what would
01:08:37
have happened had it survived because it was, I think, you
01:08:39
know, Art Angel themselves admit that by the time it it was
01:08:43
knocked down, it already, you know, it was heavily graffitied.
01:08:47
It was, you know, it was, it was already showing signs of wear
01:08:50
and it was never intended to be a like.
01:08:51
And it actually bore the title of your book Someone.
01:08:57
Graffiti, yes, yes, right. Yeah, yeah.
01:09:00
Wonderfully, there was a the the the kind of the kind of subject
01:09:03
of the debate was summarized on the side of the sculpture
01:09:06
because somebody wrote what for and somebody else wrote why not,
01:09:09
why not, you know, so there you go.
01:09:12
I mean, it was just, you know, the debate that was happening in
01:09:14
British culture at that moment was summarized on in graffiti on
01:09:17
the on the actual work. But yeah, I mean, and I think,
01:09:20
you know, from Rachel's perspective in my conversations
01:09:23
with her and I've been, I've been lucky enough to have quite
01:09:24
a few conversations with her now and some of them have, have have
01:09:29
addressed house. I think from from 1, from 1
01:09:32
perspective, she is enormously proud that that she made that
01:09:36
sculpture, sculpture. She knows that it's, if you like
01:09:39
a defining work in her career and she embraces that.
01:09:42
But also I think she feels a very great sadness that she was
01:09:45
never really able to enjoy it because of the furore.
01:09:48
And she would, she told me she'd go and sit in her car and look
01:09:52
at it and see people engaging with it.
01:09:54
And but she felt she couldn't actually spend that much time
01:09:57
physically with it beyond that because it was, there was just
01:10:00
so much clamour and attention around it, you know?
01:10:06
But it was if you cared about art.
01:10:08
And if you, you like me, you were a young person who was
01:10:10
emerging into a passion for, for contemporary art and, and, and
01:10:15
seeing this debate happening in public culture, you know, it,
01:10:19
it's, it gave you so much fire in your belly about why you love
01:10:25
this stuff, you know, And, you know, I remember, you know,
01:10:28
vividly talking to people, arguing with people about why it
01:10:32
was so important and so wonderful.
01:10:36
So for me, that that work, and Rachel's work generally actually
01:10:40
is enormously important, you know, you know, almost more
01:10:44
important than anything else. Yeah.
01:10:47
This has been so enjoyable, thank you so much.
01:10:52
I think I feel like we could go on forever talking with you and
01:10:56
learning. I would just ask you one final
01:10:58
question. As an art professional, what
01:11:03
would you say or what have you said to notch someone you know
01:11:07
into going see contemporary art? Someone who may be a bit
01:11:12
intimidated or a bit discouraged by not knowing?
01:11:15
What would be the thing to say, you think, to kind of convince
01:11:21
or excite people about contemporary art?
01:11:25
I think I would say that it will give you a new sense of yourself
01:11:34
and your relation to the world because it's worth experimenting
01:11:39
with it for that reason. You know, even if it's not the
01:11:44
first artwork you see, it might be the second, it might be the
01:11:47
10th, it will hit you. I, I challenge anybody not to
01:11:51
find the, the art that moves them because it is so diverse.
01:11:55
It is so broad ranging, you know, and I think you know, a
01:11:59
lot of the answers to the question what is art for?
01:12:02
Relate to this extraordinary revelatory feeling that art has
01:12:09
and its extraordinary capacity for changing our perspective on
01:12:13
the world or making us think differently, or making us richer
01:12:19
somehow as people and finding a way to process what is around
01:12:27
us. And so I would say, if you want
01:12:31
your senses sharpened, if you want your intellect deepened, if
01:12:35
you want your heart fuller, go and see some up.
01:12:39
Amazing. Thank you so much.
01:12:41
And you are there. Don't forget, go and get this
01:12:44
book. It's a wealth of information and
01:12:48
you get that variety that you were talking about Ben.
01:12:51
So it's out there for you. Thank you so much, Ben, for
01:12:54
doing this interview. It is, I have to say, quite
01:12:57
unsettling to have your voice and to see your face reacting to
01:13:02
mine. It's usually just such a
01:13:04
soothing experiment to to listen to your voice.
01:13:07
This was quite, quite fantastic. Thank you so much.
01:13:10
Thank. You so much for having me and
01:13:11
thanks again for your very kind words.
01:13:13
Thank you. Exhibition This is an
01:13:17
independent podcast created and hosted by me, Joanna Pya Nevers.
01:13:22
We have episodes every two weeks, and this season, Season
01:13:26
3, is a bit of a turning point. We have 5 new episode types,
01:13:31
from more experimental art travel logs or art stories to
01:13:35
conversational formats about solo exhibitions with people who
01:13:41
are not part of the industry. Because we're all both actors
01:13:45
and spectators of art and life. If you're new here, you have a
01:13:50
whole catalog of episodes to enjoy.
01:13:53
Discover them at your own pace.