Photos by Billy Cole Landers and Austin Dewitt. Courtesy of Shazam Studios.

Where do you go when you run out of inspiration?

I usually put my phone down and go outside. I find inspiration in the mundane, everyday, unnatural beauty, and especially the trash of NYC. It constantly pushes me to think and envision outside the box and create art out of literal garbage.

———

What are you trying to survive?

What aren’t I trying to survive. EVERYTHING! Trying to survive with composure, and going against making everything look perfect on the IG grid. I’ve always felt like a warrior, but warriors have feelings too. And those feelings can take you out.

———

How do you handle rejection?

Rejection is redirection. I just keep moving forward on to the next.

———

What’s the most New York thing about your work?

I think my ability to hustle, exchange ideas, and never take no for an answer. These are things that are deeply engrained in the way I work and how I see things. It’s also super important to me to amplify community and bring people together. Launching Shazam Studios has brought so many incredible spirits together in collaboration and helped bring my exhibition to life.

———

What did you learn about yourself in the process?

I’ve learned about my artistry and how I want my work to live beyond image-making. Seeing and feeling the potential of what it can be sparked a new sense of excitement in the expansive ways that I can create. The idea of allowing everyone to see the years of built up traumatic experiences was something that I was initially nervous about. I feel a sense of appreciation being able to see the intersections of my identities and honoring how rich the material is.

———

Who is your favorite character?

My favorite character would have to be “Sex Doll.” The doll isn’t perfect. She has wear and tear. I was yearning to break down the hypersexualization of trans identities by becoming this limitless figurine that holds power behind closed doors. Placing myself in a custom vinyl bodysuit, massive boobs, tissue paper vagina, and a silicone sex doll mask, I was fully immersed in this fantasy.

———

Which of these looks are you wearing to the function?

Depends on what the function is. The one that I can wear seamlessly to any of the functions would be “Kitty Kitty.” She has a certain playfulness that would fit in any room as she also lives in the backyard.

———

When do you feel the most confident?

I feel the most confident when I am surrounded by my tribe. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized the power of my home and the people that fill it. At the opening of my exhibition, my loved ones surprised me and came all the way to Texas to celebrate this moment.

———

The post Richie Shazam Builds a Mythology of the Self in Austin appeared first on Interview Magazine.

Mackenzie Thomas, photographed by Lucia Brown.

FRIDAY 5:00 PM APRIL 3, 2026 HELL’S KITCHEN

I’m in Hell’s Kitchen at 5 pm on a Friday, and it’s surprisingly desolate. I’m walking into the ART NY theater to see Mackenzie Thomas perform for four hours. I can’t remember the last time I watched anything for four hours, and I’m intimidated at the prospect. I know Mackenzie Thomas the way most people on Instagram do: she’s the 5-foot-something girl running around Bushwick with a selfie stick and baby bangs, filming herself dancing on Photo Booth. You might also know her as the girl who went viral for reading entries from her childhood diary on TikTok. I am briefed, via the internet, that I Said What I Said recaps Thomas’s 2025 through tweets and diary entries, and I’m quietly skeptical about the viability of this “performance art.” But there must be something to it because this is the 8th run of the show, it’s gone global, and it’s totally sold out every time. 

It’s nearly 10 pm when we finally file out. The sun set hours ago, and there’s an unspoken agreement among everyone leaving that we’ve never seen a piece of theater quite like this before. A yellow MacBook projecting a year of this woman’s digital footprint somehow made a room full of strangers cry laughing, and then just cry. I meet Thomas outside the venue for a cig. She’s swapped the ’60s-esque, red, A-line mini from the show for a black mini skirt and her own merch. She’s just as cute in person. We light up.

———

LUCIA BROWN: Do you have a cig? 

MACKENZIE THOMAS: Yeah, of course.

BROWN: How was it? How do you feel post-show?

THOMAS: I always feel crazy. I mean, I seek it out. But I think living your life at a vulnerable extreme is just…you can’t not feel crazy after bearing your all for four hours. But I feel good, and I hope that I’m able to move on from the stuff I talk about in the show soon.

BROWN: I was going to ask, does it feel sort of therapeutic? Or does it feel like you’re rehashing old trauma?

THOMAS: Fifty-fifty. I think there’s a harm in sitting in pain, but also artists suffer for their art and this is the gift I’m comfortable giving. It feels like what I’m supposed to do and I’m really happy that I get to do it.

BROWN: And you’ve performed this piece—

THOMAS: Eight times.

BROWN: Yeah, eight times. Wow.

THOMAS: This is the eighth time. 

BROWN: Are you tapping out after this?

THOMAS: I’m tapping out unless someone gives me money.

BROWN: [laughs] Does it feel different now versus the first time you did it?

THOMAS: Yeah, the first time I did it was so crazy. I didn’t know if it was going to work. I didn’t run through the tweet part of the show, and I just kind of let it happen. But now I know the show, I know the beats, and that feels really good. I feel really good. 

BROWN: Are the audience reactions relatively the same or different every time?

THOMAS: They’re different every time. People laughed a lot in this show, and usually there’s less laughter. I can feel people getting really serious. I love it when I can feel people getting really serious. I had new friends, old friends, internet friends in the audience, and that’s, like, how do I not feel at home during all of that?

BROWN: There was such a mix of people in the audience. There were two old men in front of me and a twenty-year-old girl beside me. I was like, “What is this crowd? I love it.” 

THOMAS: I don’t know. It’s so good. 

BROWN: What does prep look like the day of? What did you do today? 

THOMAS: I wake up, I wash my hair really good. I started tech at 11:30 am, and my friends are all working for free. Two of my best guy friends were ushers tonight. My friend Sara worked the board, and I just got to hang out with them all day. So it’s like nothing’s better than that. It’s so fun. And we ate Chick-fil-A, and it was kind of heaven.

BROWN: That’s awesome. And then what are you going to do after this? How do you decompress after a show like that? 

THOMAS: I usually stay up pretty late. I drink a Red Bull on stage.

BROWN: That’s what was in the wine glass.

THOMAS: Yeah, so I just kind of sit, and I’m like, “damn.” Every thought that I have is just, “damn.” But I hope that I am able to feel kind of different. I hope that I’m able to feel like I’ve moved on past this year.

BROWN: And are you still documenting? Is there going to be a part two, a 2026?

THOMAS: No.

BROWN: No? Never again?

THOMAS: No.

BROWN: Too much?

THOMAS: I don’t want to do a gimmick. I’m already writing stuff now that I’m interested in doing new stuff with. I am sure I’ll do this show again, but I think I just need a little break. I’ve been doing it every two weeks basically since the year started. The first show was on January 2nd.

BROWN: You put it all together that quickly?

THOMAS: Yeah.

BROWN: That’s wild. I kept thinking, “How is her computer not crashing right now?” The amount of tweets and clips you go through is crazy.

THOMAS: I started writing the show in the middle of January, and I finished it on my 27th birthday on December 21st. And then I finished the script, and finished writing the tweets on New Year’s.

BROWN: So you sort of envisioned it during the year or…?

THOMAS: No, I didn’t know this was going to happen. I mean, this all stemmed from a breakup, a brief relationship that I had, and I was so upset and confused that I had no choice but to bring it all out to the dance floor and bare my all.

BROWN: I loved watching you dance. Were you a dancer growing up?

THOMAS: No.

BROWN: Oh, really?

THOMAS: But my mom is a wedding singer and just like—

SPEAKER 3: Congratulations. That was great.

THOMAS: Thank you. I’ll let you play with my computer soon. 

SPEAKER 3: I’ll come over. Let’s hang out soon. 

THOMAS:  Yeah, okay. I love you.

BROWN: But yeah, I clocked the Dance Mom’s reference as well, and I was like…surely.

THOMAS: No dance experience, just comes through. I just like to move. I don’t know. I always thought that there was humor in the way that I danced but I guess, in the past couple of years, It’s just something that I do and I just like it. 

BROWN: You do it well.

THOMAS: Yeah. I like to dance. 

BROWN: Where’s the best place to dance in New York?

THOMAS: The best place to dance in New York is in your bedroom. It’s in my bedroom.

BROWN: Period. With a cute outfit on.

THOMAS: Sometimes, but usually I think I do my best dancing when I’m in my sweats.

BROWN: Are the baby bangs here to stay?

THOMAS: Absolutely forever. I think I’ll have them forever.

BROWN: Period.

THOMAS: Yeah, unless something happens to me. Unless I am in a fire and my hair gets burnt off.

[Another friend pops in.]

SPEAKER 4: Great job. I saw your show.

THOMAS: Thank you. Oh my god. Wait, did you like it? Did the girls like it? Did they come?

SPEAKER 4: Yeah, they’re right there. They liked it. They liked it a lot. I’m still processing, but—

THOMAS: Yeah, I’m still processing.

SPEAKER 4: It seems like it’s a lot for you, for everyone. How do you feel?

THOMAS: Crazy. Always.

SPEAKER 4: That’s not a bad thing necessarily.

THOMAS: No. I always feel crazy. Thank you for coming.

SPEAKER 4: Of course. Congrats.

BROWN: You have such a cute community. 

THOMAS: I love my friends. 

BROWN: What does your For You Page look like right now? You had a bit of a TikTok hiatus…

THOMAS: Yeah, I did. My For You Page… I am really interested in people who are documenting their life, and it ranges from mommy vloggers to schizophrenics. Those are my people.

BROWN: That’s a nice mix. 

THOMAS: It is.

BROWN: [laughs] Awesome. Well, I love that. Thank you for chatting with me. 

THOMAS: Oh my God. Thank you for coming. 

The post How Mackenzie Thomas’s Tweets Made a Sold-Out Theater Cry appeared first on Interview Magazine.

Kembra Pfahler, photographed by Marissa Fortugno.

“Performance is not entertainment,” shock artist Kembra Pfahler explained during the launch of her new eponymous book with Rizzoli at Dover Street Market last week. The statement distills four decades of uncompromising work into a single phrase. For Pfahler, performance is ceremony, a ritualistic act of critique, and collective transformation. Since arriving on the Lower East Side in the early 1980s, Pfahler has been the driving force behind a feminist underground in New York. From her early Cinema of Transgression to The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black (her legendary rock band of painted, blackened-tooth performers in mountainous wigs), to gallery interventions featuring dozens of painted nude bodies, she’s forged a visual language entirely her own. Along the way, she’s obliterated every rule about acceptable femininity, refusing the polite confines of female artmaking and performance. The new book collects four decades of ephemera, performance documentation, and portraits of her unflinching vision. To celebrate, we’ve gathered some of Pfahler’s most electric moments from the book. 

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Kembra Pfahler in Innocent zip top by Samoa Moriki, 2008.

Stills from Blue Banshee, director Mike Kuchar, 1994.

Kembra Pfahler home between tours, New York, 1994. Richard Kern.

Skeleton Fornication II, 2006. Katrina del Mar.

Kembra Pfahler modeling Chanel water bottle holder, Interview, 1990. Joshua Jordan.

Flyer for First Annual Kembra Pfahter Film Festival, August 27, 1993. Imagery from Fear of a Karen Black Planet, video to promote A National Health Care (1993). Katrina del Mar.

Kembra Pfahler with red chair and flower headdress, c. 1995. Katrina del Mar.

Kembra with Tape and Bowling Balls, 1995. Richard Kern.

Kembra Pfahler TVHKB tour collages and set list, 1998.

The Anti-Naturalist Show, Anthology Film Archives, New York, 1995. Laure Leber.

The post Black Teeth, Butt-Prints, and Bouffants: Revisiting Kembra Pfahler’s Electrifying Art appeared first on Interview Magazine.

All photos courtesy of Lauren Halsey.

Lauren Halsey’s new sculpture park, tucked between 76th Street and Western Avenue in South L.A., is more than a monument. Two decades in the making, sister dreamer, lauren halsey’s architectural ode to the surge n splurge of south central is closer to a living venue: a temple, a dance floor, a classroom, a garden, and a much-needed gathering place in the neighborhood where the artist was born and raised. It’s a tribute to the generative Black space Halsey sees as sacred, and increasingly scarce. “While I have the keys, I want to do the most,” she told jazz composer Kamasi Washington over Zoom last week. The two have been close friends for over a decade, bound by a shared frequency, both fluent in what Halsey calls the Black fantastical. Just before the park opened, they got to talking about temples, collabs, and cosmic spirits. 

———

LAUREN HALSEY: Hi, Washington.

KAMASI WASHINGTON: How are you doing?

HALSEY: This is the first time I’ve ever been burnt out. I’m exhausted, but it’s for our neighborhood and nobody else, so it’s a blessing. I’ve been praying for the endurance from god to just get over the hump, because what’s on the other side feels liberating. 

WASHINGTON: Yeah.  

HALSEY: You told me you’ve been driving by my sculpture park, and I can’t wait for you to come in. I had an event for the studio the other night and it was very natural, free-spirited. Then we turned on the music, and the lights came on and it felt so fantastical. I use that word a lot, but it’s more how I contextualize funkadelic. Then I came up with a list of all the people who have to perform, and of course you’re on it. I think it will speak to you so deeply.

WASHINGTON: I’m so excited to see it. When I take my mom home, we drive around it. She’s like, “So your friend made that, Kamasi?” I’m like, “Yeah, my friend made that.”

HALSEY: I remember the night I first met you at Thomas Houseago’s studio. I was living at my grandma’s house on the East Side sleeping on the floor, and I got this text from Thomas like, “Come over.” I took buses, trains, and automobiles to get there. Then I met you and we just hit it off. When was that? Like 10 years ago.

WASHINGTON: Wow.

HALSEY: And here we are now.

WASHINGTON: Yeah. Your work really transforms the world you’re in. I’ve only seen pictures, but I can imagine being in this space. If we made some music there it would be crazy.

HALSEY: That’s what your dad was saying the other day when he came by. What are you working on right now? 

WASHINGTON: I got a few things on the docket. Terrace Martin and I are working on a record together. And I have this ballet I’ve been working on for forever. 

HALSEY: You’ve always talked about that. Tell me more.

WASHINGTON: It’s like you said, very Black-fantastical. It’s a very real, deep fantasy story. I started writing this piece of music and I had one little piece of an image. It actually premiered at Disney Hall, but it was only two movements of the piece. When I heard it, like really heard it with real people playing it, the rest of the story started to germinate. So I started to write the whole thing. Now it’s like 27 movements.

HALSEY: Wow.

WASHINGTON: My cousin Tamika, who’s Lula Washington’s daughter, helped me with the choreography. I’m just trying to find the right person to help me figure out how to tell this story visually, and then we can figure out how to bring it to life.

HALSEY: How do you usually approach collaboration, especially when it’s multidisciplinary? Do you just riff and hang out? 

WASHINGTON: I try not to have too set of a thing. If it’s something that I’m doing, I find someone that I think would see the vision. I try to find a way that works for the project itself and for that person. So I leave it open-ended.

HALSEY: Totally.

WASHINGTON: With your compound, how is that working now? It’s almost like you got your own little city.

HALSEY: I will say, it’s a blessing to be able to come to a studio with the most talented artists and minds. From the registrar, to the admin, to the art-handlers who put forward ideas and now we have their knowledge systems. There are moments and phases of production where it literally feels like I’m walking onto a set of HGTV in the hood, because it’s so Extra’d out. 

WASHINGTON: [Laughs] Yeah. 

HALSEY: But I’m trying to embody having a multidisciplinary practice. We’ve talked off the record about my desires to enter into music, and I feel so close. But it’s because the studio is so strong that I’m able to now figure out how to extract some of that language into another context that’s not fine art. I also want to have time in my studio where I can play, and experience myself differently through art so it doesn’t feel like a job. I used to have that in school, and I’m trying to take some of that freedom back.

WASHINGTON: Me and Terrace are talking about that. It felt like when I was younger, I had so much time to share. Similar to what you’re saying, I feel like every time I play music with other people, it’s at a gig or a show. But it wasn’t always like that. It used to be, “Let’s just get together and play.”

HALSEY: Yeah.

WASHINGTON: It gets harder and harder as you get older. 

HALSEY: Because there are all these conditions around it where it has to be produced. And that context makes so much sense because it supports everything I want to do, but I also need a context wherein none of it matters and that there are no stakes.

WASHINGTON: Man, I feel you so much. Everything’s such a big deal.

HALSEY: I saw you play the World Stage on New Year’s Eve, right?

WASHINGTON: Yeah.

HALSEY: I really love that you can be as macro as the Bowl with 17,500 seats, and you can be as micro and as accessible as in the middle of Degnan. And you’re still as ambitious in your performance and accessible to everyone. It’s very poetic. Did you always think that you would want to balance your career in that way?

WASHINGTON: Well, it was my reality. When I was still in college I started touring with Snoop.

HALSEY: Whoa. Tell that story. 

WASHINGTON: We used to come off playing these huge stadiums and then get off the plane and immediately go play at 5th Street Dick’s in Leimert. So, we’d be playing for 50,000 people and then go play for 20 people and have the same energy. 

HALSEY: Love that. 

WASHINGTON: I always said I always had that parallel universe thing with my music. And when I was younger, I was trying to figure out a way to do what we’re doing over here on a smaller scale. But I felt like it fit on the bigger scale too.

HALSEY: Same.

WASHINGTON: Then once we got it to the bigger scale, I had the revelation like, “Oh, I’m going to miss over here.” They were both happening. 

HALSEY: You were just doing it. It was a muscle. 

WASHINGTON: Yeah, and that was just our reality. We had one foot in both worlds. I think that’s just my musical composition, and it’s always going to be that. I don’t necessarily think that the size of something dictates the importance of something. You know what I mean?

HALSEY: Yeah.

WASHINGTON: It’s not like I only want to play little small places or I only want to play really big places. They exist for different reasons.

HALSEY: Totally. I want to see you and [DJ] Battlecat again. That was one of the best nights of my life, musically.

WASHINGTON: Oh yeah?

HALSEY: I just was like, “What?” It was another level of him unlocked that I didn’t even know existed. A genius, for sure. Such a pillar. 

WASHINGTON: And the crazy part is, we know nothing about Cat since the early 2000s because he came and got us. The first thing I ever did with Battlecat was a Roger Troutman tribute.

HALSEY: Wow. Where was it?

WASHINGTON: It was at the Hollywood Athletic Club. It was magic. I knew his music. I grew up a super fan. But sometimes you work with people and you gotta come down to them a little bit. 

HALSEY: What does that mean in the music world? 

WASHINGTON: It means you got to dilute it. I understand it, because it’s like cooking. You know what I mean? Everybody don’t want the hot, hot, hot, hot, hot.

HALSEY: Yeah, totally.

WASHINGTON: But then Cat, his house was hotter than us. He wanted water that we had.

HALSEY: I love that. Wow. When’s the next show?

WASHINGTON: We’re doing the Santa Monica Jazz Festival.

HALSEY: I will be there. I want to invite you to play at my park. Can you do it with Battlecat? What’s so cool for me is that the whole thing pays homage to us and our hyper-local heroes, people who are the pantheon of Black genius across all these eras of South Central. It’s been really special as people see the work, they’re like, “Oh my god, that’s so-and-so from around the corner.” Or, “That’s uh-uh-uh from up the street.” But I also want it to be animated and I want it to be used. I don’t want people to just look at it. I want it to shapeshift, where it’s a classroom for kids, because we’re going to have educational initiatives and stuff like that, and we’ll have art and workshops and wellness. Then it’s also the dance floor. 

WASHINGTON: Yeah.

HALSEY: I’ve been secretly throwing parties there, and they’ve been incredible. We have two layers of concrete walls, so it’s a great soundproof situation. Then I want it to be theater, stage, living room. The sculpture park also functions as this Black and brown venue for the neighborhood, to come and experience ourselves in another context without so much pressure. I’m already trying to plan a Juneteenth thing, secretly.

WASHINGTON: That sounds amazing.

HALSEY: So I’ll figure it out, because someone’s going to be like, “What do you want to do?” And I have four things. And so this is number two. Al Green’s number one. He’ll be at the Bowl August 15th.

WASHINGTON: Oh, snap. Okay.

HALSEY: Yeah, I missed my high reunion to see him. He was at the YouTube Theater. 

WASHINGTON: Oh wow.

HALSEY: So good. His voice is still syrupy and dreamy and silky, and he still croons. When he did “Simply Beautiful,” everyone almost passed out.

WASHINGTON: Oh yeah.

HALSEY: He’s throwing roses out in the crowd. And I’m a lesbian. You know what I’m saying?

WASHINGTON: [Laughs] 

HALSEY: Is there a venue you haven’t played yet that you really want to?

WASHINGTON: I’ve had ideas. It sounds crazy, but I visited Karnak Temple in Egypt and it was like, “I can feel the energy in here.”

HALSEY: That’s not crazy. Didn’t Travis Scott do something like that?

WASHINGTON: I think people have played in front of the pyramids.

HALSEY: But you mean inside? 

WASHINGTON: I don’t know if anyone’s ever played inside Karnak Temple, but hey, let’s put that out there.

HALSEY: It’s happening. It was already written. Boom. All right, come to 76th and Western [the location of Halsey’s sculpture park] first and then we’ll go to the temple.

WASHINGTON: That’s the new temple. I’ve only seen what you can see above it.

HALSEY: Oh, the Hathoric columns?

WASHINGTON: Yeah. I’m like, “Oh man, I can’t wait to get in there and make some music. “

HALSEY: Come towards the evening because we have such beautiful sunsets here. The sky turns this royal orange. It’s so dramatic. Then there’s the DJ across the street at the ARCO station who’s just there all day slinging CDs. Or he was doing CDs, now he’s doing flash drives where it’ll be the Best of Gospel or R&B. By the time the sun starts to set, he gets into the Anita Baker world or S.O.S. Band.

WASHINGTON: I think that there’s an Egyptian temple or something like that up the street. I always wondered what that was.

HALSEY: The KRST. I grew up going there. I did the Rites of Passage program. My grandmother’s name actually is painted in one of the cartouches on the mural on the side that says “Know Thyself.”

WASHINGTON: Wow. I’m so glad that you’re thinking of things in this way too, of making something interactive.

HALSEY: Yeah, I’m literally treating it as a venue, because everyone knows that I love wearing multiple hats. I’ve just been out here taking meetings with people, being like, “Hey, you want to have dinner here? And you cook from the garden.” Chef Alisa was there yesterday and we’re like, “Let’s do a dinner. We’ll get the musician.” Then I went to the Slauson and talked to my friend who makes incense, and I was like, “We’ll do the scent.” But it’s cool because I’m the key holder, and it’s a Black space, which we don’t have a lot of anymore. So while I have the keys, I want to do the most.

WASHINGTON: That’s how it starts. I was just saying that I grew up under Reggie Andrews and his philosophy was, why aspire to get to some other place? Why not aspire to make people want to get to your space? 

HALSEY: Yeah.

WASHINGTON: That’s what you’re doing to me. Hearing how you view the world and move through it is always very inspirational for me. I’m thankful for it.

HALSEY: I appreciate that. Ditto. 

WASHINGTON: What you do is big and permanent, and it exists in the physical world in a very tangible way. Music sometimes is the reverse. It just appears. It only exists in the physical world for a split second, and then it’s only existing within the people that saw it. I’ve been to spaces where beautiful music has been made, and it lingers. When other musicians come to play, they’ll be like, “Ooh, I feel something when I come here.”

HALSEY: I love that.

WASHINGTON: My Aunt Lula Washington’s a dancer, so she was the first person to give me the opportunity to work with one of my biggest heroes, McCoy Tyner. I was really freaking out over that. I had a weird experience. He caught me in a moment of disbelief.

HALSEY: It happens to me all the time.

WASHINGTON: But that was one of the first times I got to really play music that had dancing to it. Especially intense, heavily improvisational jazz. That separation’s never happened, people moving to this music. To me, artists creating spaces that musicians make music in is something that should happen more often.

HALSEY: I’m trying to bring it back, and you are too.

WASHINGTON: You already did it. 

HALSEY: Now I got to bring the musicians in. 

The post Inside Lauren Halsey’s Black-Fantastical Sculpture Park appeared first on Interview Magazine.

Installation view at “What a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem”, 2026. All photos by Joshua White, Courtesy Julia Stoschek Foundation.

The Julia Stoschek Foundation’s immersive video installation What a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem just made its U.S. debut in an unexpected location: the Variety Arts Theater, a five-story Venetian-style landmark in downtown L.A. that has languished in darkness since the early 1990s. Once a symbol of the city’s architectural ambitions, the building slowly faded from public memory. Now, burrowed between decaying columns and hovering over vacant stages is a chronological voyage through 120 years of film and video art that transforms the dormant space into a rich, cinematic dreamworld. Curated by Udo Kittelmann, the exhibition features work by Paul Chan, Jon Rafman, Bunny Rogers, P. Staff, Jacolby Satterwhite, Precious Okoyomon, Paul McCarthy, and Arthur Jafa, among others. Driven by the show’s impulse toward transformation and disruption, we asked several participating artists to reflect on a core question: “What’s missing in the art world?”

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P. Staff, Pure Means, 2021, (installation view).

P. STAFF

“Revolution, compersion, apocalypse, end-of-capital, free-everything, kisses, soaking, fireworks, trans-everything, pleasure, nothing.” 

———

Jordan Wolfson, ARTISTS FRIENDS RACISTS, 2020, (installation view).

JORDAN WOLFSON

“There’s nothing missing. Art is always a representation of the times in which we are living. And if you sense, or feel, that there is a lack or an excess in the art-making, then that is, in fact, part of the reflection the art makes, with or without the intention of the maker.”

———

Precious Okoyomon, It‘s dissociating season, 2019 (installation view).

PRECIOUS OKOYOMON

“For me right now what’s missing in the art world is miracles, and the space for the possibility to create miracles in new and terrifying  ways, more wonder more time outside of time.”

———

Left, Jacolby Satterwhite, 2 Shrines, 2020: right Doug Aitken, 2 Blow Debris, 2000, (installation view).

JACOLBY SATTERWHITE

“When you do clownery, the clown comes back to bite!

 Clownery is missing. Failure too. Everything works. That’s the problem. Empowerment works best. Humanity doesn’t.

I like clownery. It means something failed. Failure is more interesting than empowerment. Empowerment is very successful.

The art world looks good. It doesn’t feel like anything. Clownery would help. Failure would help more.

Clownery is unpopular. Failure even more. That’s why they’re good. Empowerment is very popular.

Nothing is embarrassing anymore. That’s new. Clownery fixes that. Failure makes it human.

Clownery is a kind of honesty. Failure is a kind of beauty. Empowerment is a kind of product.

When you do clownery, the clown comes back to bite.”

———

Thomas Demand, Balloons, 2018, (installation view).

JULIA STOSCHEK

“The courage to not yet know what it’s looking at.“

———

Paul Chan, Happiness (Finally) After 35.000 Years of Civilization (after Henry Darger and Charles Fourier), 2000–03, (installation view).

Travers Vale & George Cowl, Betsy Ross, 1917, (installation view).

Lu Yang, DOKU The Flow, 2024, (installation view).

Arthur Jafa, Apex, 2013, (installation view).

Nina Simone, Sinnerman, 1965, (installation view).

Chris Burden, The TV Commercials, 1973-77, (installation view).

Installation view at “What a Wonderful World: An Audiovisual Poem”, 2026.

Douglas Gordon, The Making of Monster, 1996, (installation view).

The post How the Julia Stoschek Foundation Resurrected Los Angeles’ Forgotten Theater appeared first on Interview Magazine.

Torbjørn Rødland, photographed Reyna Colt-Lacayo.

For three decades Norwegian artist Torbjørn Rødland has constructed images that at first glance seem controlled: glossy skin, wholesome setups, meticulous lighting. But if you stick with them, reality starts to crack, and an unsettling, uncanny presence emerges. His latest show, Bones in the Canal and Other Photographs, which opened last week at David Kordansky, marks a return to the calculated perversions he’s spent years perfecting, only this time with a much smaller camera, and a different view. As he told his friend and collaborator Lily McMenamy (who also appears in the exhibition), over Zoom, it’s all about composition, Enneagram types, and his inexhaustible inner world.

———

TORBJØRN RØDLAND: Hey.

LILY MCMENAMY: Hi. I’m just wondering how to have you on my big screen–oh, wow. I got it. Yay.

TORBJØRN RØDLAND: You’ve got the visuals?

MCMENAMY: Yeah. I’m so grateful to have this power over you finally.

RØDLAND: You feel the balance has been off?

MCMENAMY: No, I’ve just been engaging with the idea of photography and the power dynamics at play.

RØDLAND: You’ve been around photographers pretty much all your life, no?

MCMENAMY: Yes. Is that why you chose me to interview you?

RØDLAND: I thought you would be qualified. But also this upcoming show has two photographs from our Arles session included.

Another Bricolage, 2024-2026. Chromogenic print. 7 7/8 x 12 inches. Courtesy David Kordansky Gallery.

MCMENAMY: No way. [Laughs] You kept that one quiet.

RØDLAND: I might have. It’s the one that you know from the cover of the Mimes zine, and the one with the red shoes from the top of the bar. Remember that one? With the strange teddy bear head night hat?

MCMENAMY: Oh, wow. Yeah. What is the show called?

RØDLAND: It’s called Bones in the Canal and Other Photographs. I made so many titles for all 30 pictures, and I didn’t really have another title in me for the show, so I just reused one.

MCMENAMY: How do you think of a title? You go deep into your poetic soul?

RØDLAND: Sometimes, but for some of them I do the opposite. Some are sort of dry and descriptive, like how an art historian would title something they found from the past.

MCMENAMY: Right. I think the interview should start now, with the day that we were born.

RØDLAND: I think it has already started, but maybe that’s the reason why you were chosen to do this.

MCMENAMY: Because we were born on the same day?

RØDLAND: Mm-hmm. Probably a couple of years apart, but same day. Is that significant to you? The position of the stars?

Tar and Feather no. 2, 2008-2026. Chromogenic print. 22 1/2 x 17 3/4 inches. Courtesy David Kordansky Gallery.

MCMENAMY: I just think being born on the same day means a lot. Anyway, who is conducting this interview? [Laughs]

RØDLAND: I think it’s you, if you’re up to it? If not, I’m going to step in.

MCMENAMY: Okay. So, you were born in Norway?

RØDLAND: Yeah. In Stavanger on the southwest coast. Just across the sea from Scotland.

MCMENAMY: You come from a very wholesome town. I looked it up.

RØDLAND: Mm-hmm. At least it used to be.

MCMENAMY: Do your photos try to subvert the wholesomeness of your upbringing?

RØDLAND: I don’t think so. I mean, these days contemporary art has become so respectable, but the contemporary art that I was raised on in the early 1990s was much more critical, and on the perverted side. So, I was looking for something more provocative within the wholesome, and trying to play the wholesome as straight as I could. In this exhibition there’s a bit of a return to that, to what the pictures looked like in the ’90s. But only with a different camera and therefore a different view on it all.

MCMENAMY: You did a series, which was your first claim to fame, called In a Norwegian Landscape.

RØDLAND: That was the title, yeah. 

Cause of Our Joy, 2023-2026. Chromogenic print. 41 3/8 x 31 1/2 inches. Courtesy David Kordansky Gallery.

MCMENAMY: Torbjørn in a Norwegian landscape with a plastic bag. Was the plastic bag a perversion in the Norwegian landscape?

RØDLAND: That’s one take on it. That’s not how I saw it. I saw the plastic bag as necessary to be able to return to the woods, as a sign of a the problematic nature of trying to be romantic in the forest and so on. To me, it wasn’t standing in the way of romanticism, but it was a necessary component of it in a contemporary way.

MCMENAMY: So, are you returning to that vibe now?

RØDLAND: I think so. For this, I picked up a 35 millimeter camera, the tiny one that I used in Arles. So the main part of this show is all photographed with that.

MCMENAMY: Wow. You’re breaking up with your signature style?

RØDLAND: Yes. It’s pretty counterintuitive to give up a lot of that highly tactile surface focus with different textures that I’ve been looking at for a while. Because of the camera, it doesn’t tell you when things are in focus, so I don’t go that close to anything. The figures tend to be sort of in the middle of a space, so it feels more like folk art. It has more of a vernacular feel to it. Compositionally it’s closer to what I did in the ’90s, but it’s more wide angled because of the lens that comes with these tiny cameras.

MCMENAMY: I feel like how I relate to your work is this kind of dichotomy of smoothness versus leaking. I think that’s what I try to do in my performances. Present this facade, but then it’s spewing out. I wonder how you are playing with the texture with this far away film stuff?

RØDLAND: I guess the interest is still there, but I rarely try to make it extra messy. There is a part of the exhibition that has more skin and more wall-to-wall nakedness than anything I have exhibited before.

MCMENAMY: Wall-to-wall nakedness?

RØDLAND: There’s exposed body parts in all of those photographs, and they are older negatives that are printed for the first time. Some of them have just been waiting around for a context where they could be seen. And some of them have that tactility, especially in one called Tar and Feather. The weird thing about the show is that it’s doing the new thing, but it’s also doing the old thing at the same time.

Church Rope, 2024-2026. Chromogenic print. 12 x 7 7/8 inches. Courtesy David Kordansky Gallery.

MCMENAMY: Did your parents inspire you with art stuff?

RØDLAND: I’m not one of those middle-class kids who was raised with an understanding of contemporary art. That wasn’t something that I got from home. When I started, or rather when I stopped doing editorial cartoons for local newspapers–

MCMENAMY: Editorial cartoons? What? Like drawings?

RØDLAND: Yeah.

MCMENAMY: I didn’t know you used to do that.

RØDLAND: Oh yeah. When I was five or six, I started drawing politicians that I saw on TV, and 10 years later, I started doing this for local newspapers. When I stopped doing that, my parents were a little disappointed, because they saw that as a higher form of art compared to photography.

MCMENAMY: But you seem to have elevated photography into a certain art. I also see that you’re doing a bit of fashion now. I’m thinking about these different ways you present your work and how you protect it, I suppose. 

RØDLAND: Protecting is the central part. Any framework that you can realize your project within is to be applauded. I think the problem is when you start changing what you want to do to please someone else.

MCMENAMY: Like insidiously warped, yeah.

RØDLAND: Right, either because you do it for money or someone else has the final say. 

MCMENAMY: Even your language changes too.

Strings Attached, 2008 – 2026. Chromogenic print. 30 x 23 5/8 inches. Courtesy David Kordansky Gallery.

RØDLAND: Exactly. Because everything you do matters. As long as it’s with your tools, you can’t really put it aside and say, “What I do here over here is not relevant to my main project.”

MCMENAMY: You employ the language of commercial imagery, so maybe it’s important to not make commercials.

RØDLAND: Since my starting point was critical appropriation from The Pictures Generation and so on, that’s the art that I learned to appreciate. But if you were to use a Richard Prince piece to sell Marlboros, then the work disappears completely. It doesn’t keep its power. I think that’s been a very important distinction for me. It’s a balance. 

MCMENAMY: That’s so haunting and real. I got this fucking book called To Photograph Is to Learn How to Die. I would say being photographed is a bit to learn to die, but taking a photo is like taking life. 

RØDLAND: I did start making pictures as a teenager because I was miserable and lonely. To point the camera at myself in those situations and make something gave me meaning. 

MCMENAMY: And it’s such a contemporary thing to take a selfie to remind yourself you exist. And being in the spotlight is nice for when you’re born, on April 3rd.

RØDLAND: I’m honestly so into the Enneagram, so I haven’t really had much use for this focus on the day you’re born.

MCMENAMY: What’s an Enneagram?

RØDLAND: It’s a model for mapping out and understanding differences in personality types. But it’s not at all linked to when you’re born. You just have to figure it out by being honest with yourself.

Balthazar, 2023 -2026. Chromogenic print. 41 3/8 x 31 1/2 inches. Courtesy David Kordansky Gallery.

MCMENAMY: I wanted to talk about Norse mythology, because I found out that Odin lost his eye. Did you know that?

RØDLAND: What happened to it?

MCMENAMY: Odin went to the fountain of knowledge, but he had to sacrifice his eye to go in. It’s like taking a photo, right?

RØDLAND: He becomes the camer, yeah. I guess I’m named after the other guy, the thunder god.

MCMENAMY: Really?

RØDLAND: Well, the first half of my name is Tor.

MCMENAMY: That’s so true.

RØDLAND: And the other half Bjørn means bear, the animal. So it’s kind of an overdose of strength.

MCMENAMY: Whoa. How do you channel all that power, Torbjørn?

RØDLAND: I guess you just become really chill. It’s like a really large dog that has to become really chill.

MCMENAMY: What are you looking for in a subject? I found it hard to meet the gaze of your camera, because with some photographers it’s just like you can’t give something that’s not real. 

RØDLAND: Yeah, but that was fine with me though. I don’t think you look in the camera in any of these photographs in the upcoming show. I thought it was good, because you have so much movement in you. That’s a very generous way to be in front of the camera.

MCMENAMY: Is it harder to photograph a model you don’t know versus someone you love?

Portrait by Reyna Colt-Lacayo.

RØDLAND: I think photographers who have more of a documentary approach at heart can find that that’s harder. But for me, I feel more of an opposite problem. If I photograph someone that I have a close relationship to, then it’s hard for me to see the photograph the way everyone else will see it. I’m not so sure that I’m able to know what I’m presenting. I don’t want the viewer to have to go through me to see the picture thinking, “Oh, this is the photographer’s father, so it must mean this and that.” I want you to be able to connect to it directly.

MCMENAMY: That’s nice of you to think of your viewer. What’s your relationship to humor, but also sincerity?

RØDLAND: I’m building on this very flattened out 80s art where everything had become ridiculous and you couldn’t really deal with any big questions or subjects. I do is start with something that has become funny, because it’s turned into a joke and then try to see, “If the joke isn’t funny anymore, what’s there? Is there anything of value still for us today?” But I guess I’m still keeping the flavor of the joke. But the goal is movement is away from the joke, not toward it.

MCMENAMY: Same. But do you compose your images, or are you struck by a moment of intuition? Or is it both?

RØDLAND: Those go hand in hand, because composition is intuitive.

MCMENAMY: Slay. Do you ever take photos that are completely banal and not art photography?

RØDLAND: Those are the ones that I exhibit as art.

MCMENAMY: That’s a good place for us to end.

The post Photographer Torbjørn Rødland is Returning to His Perverted Roots appeared first on Interview Magazine.

Photos courtesy of Sable Elyse Smith.

Sable Elyse Smith wants to unsettle you, kind of. Really, she wants the physical experience of her work to wash over you before you start trying to make sense of it. So if your eyes begin to ache while staring at the repeating forms and bright lights, or you start hearing phantom sounds from her kinetic sculptures, don’t panic. Just sit with it. In Clockwork, her largest institutional exhibition to date, the New York-based artist pulls together ideas that have animated her work for years: time, spectacle, and the quiet brutality of the prison industrial complex. But as she told her old friend Jeremy O. Harris last week, the imagery has to be pushed just far enough that it never quite settles into something legible. Taking a quick break from installing at The Contemporary Austin, Smith joined Harris on Zoom to talk through Clockwork’s delicate balance of horror and hope.

———

JEREMY O. HARRIS: Where are you right now?

SABLE ELYSE SMITH: I’m in Austin, installing. 

HARRIS: Oh, nice. This show sounds so cool.

SMITH: Thank you.

HARRIS: Before we jump into that, a good place for us to start is, where have you been the last couple of years? What’s been going on?

SMITH: Where have I been?

HARRIS: I mean, you’re a Time 100 person, you’ve had shows all over. How have you found yourself settling back into whatever we call this life that we’re living?

SMITH: That’s a good question. I feel like the past couple of years have felt very dense and quick, partially because of the different projects that I was trying to explore, but then also teaching at the same time. I did a big show at Regen Projects in L.A., and then I worked on this huge opera project, collaborating with a bunch of different people, and it was made at warp speed. So I was in this new world, in this new making space, and trying to catch up to some of my ideas and ambitions around it. It has felt like a circus, almost.

HARRIS: Well, it’s apt that you’re talking about temporality, because your new show is called Clockwork. I do think that we are in this moment where it feels like time has stretched out and condensed very quickly. Do you feel like that’s a marker of the age we are in, or the age that we are right now, late 30s, early 40s? 

SMITH: I don’t want to say we’re in a unique time period, because the world has always been crashing around us. But now, it is incredibly visible and accessible to us, and not just our localities. There aren’t too many smoke and screen narratives happening from the government anymore, so that makes it feel a bit more palpable. I do think it is about the age that we are. Somehow it feels like there’s just a slight shift in perspective and grounding has happened, which definitely makes me look at time and life very differently and with a different type of urgency. 

HARRIS: How have you been looking at it specifically when it comes to Clockwork and this show? How did some of the ideas that are included in the video work and the objects come to be?

SMITH: I mean, there are so many layers and registers of time happening, and what’s exciting for me is how that’s possible, or how you can adjust the volume of it depending on the material or the medium that you’re using. The video work is super dense, it’s visceral, it is quite sharp and jarring, and that is manipulating time in a way that we’re not expecting it to function in that format, so that’s hyper-accelerated. And then some of the objects are static. I’m also dealing with all of these repeating forms to talk about accumulation, to talk about scale, to talk about “doing time” in the carceral space.

Those different material collisions and questions about time are also spread across these two different floors in the museum. One is super frenetic and dense and one is “quiet,” but then once you’re up there, everything becomes loud, and the static-ness also animates in a way. There is this kinetic ferris wheel that moves incredibly slow, and is almost indiscernible upstairs. I think it’s topsy-turvy, how these different times manifest through material and sound.

HARRIS: That’s amazing. It also feels very Austin to me. How much has doing your first Texas show informed the work?

SMITH: Well, when I was first conceptualizing the show, the title was “American Horror.” Obviously, I’m interested in the tropes of horror and suspense, and using those as different mechanisms, but I didn’t want to recreate that. So, I tried to find ways to stretch it as far as possible so it doesn’t look like the trope, but being inside of it you still feel it. We can say that’s a metaphor for Texas, or a metaphor for the US, or that it’s a metaphor for our global experience. I definitely like the word lollygag, because I’ve also been thinking about it as this carnival space where all these grotesque caricatures can be pulled out. But again, stretched so far that they aren’t legible as that, but are felt.

HARRIS: One of the things that I love about horror is that it’s one of the rare art forms where if it’s working, you feel the atmosphere change in the room. People literally take in more breath and that changes the atmospheric pressure. What do you want the room to feel like for your audience? 

SMITH: A driving interest of mine is wanting an embodied experience first. That’s the first register. Then there can be intellectual, discursive, analytical conversation, but for that you actually can’t take your body and your experience out of it to just look at the thing from a distance. I am putting everybody inside of something that actually is quite difficult, or it could even create physical discomfort. There are all these optical illusion techniques in the show that literally hurt your eyes the longer you look at them–

HARRIS: Oh, fuck.

SMITH: And you’re left with all of these ghost images and these registers of sounds, like the silence and other types of kinetic information that slowly creep into your physical experience moving through the architecture. And then, you’re looking at the objects or the images and trying to parse those two things together.

HARRIS: I love that people get to walk away hobbled by your work, so they really have to feel it. Are there any references that inspired this work that have seeped their way in? Or do you not work referentially like that?

SMITH: I think it’s hard for anyone to say that they don’t work referentially. Maybe there are some people who are directly quoting or trying to metabolize that type of material. But I’m taking in information and media all the time, and it obviously always shifts my position. There are some anchors that have haunted my practice for a while, and maybe there are some that are coming up more specifically in this show. 

HARRIS: “There are some anchors that have haunted my practice,” is such a golden line. I love that so, so much.

SMITH: Thank you. The video work, and particularly the new video, is based off of police reality chase shows, so the docu-form where it’s basically chase and capture. I’m appropriating some of that footage and then building it out into this other thing. So, that’s obviously a direct reference. Even just deciphering the entertainment references that go into the production of this thing that is meant for audience entertainment is super fascinating to me. There are ways where I try to pull out and think about where the climax is, where there’s ideas of catharsis. There’s also a slapstick, physical comedy in the way that the people who are actually being pursued by the police are portrayed through editing and the narratives that they choose. That is, I think, a filter over all of the work. And then, Christina Sharpe and her essay, “The Weather,” is thinking about the idea of a pervasive climate. That’s something that definitely comes up and sticks with the way that I try to point to all of these different types of invisibilities in my practice and the ongoing research too.

HARRIS: That’s amazing. “The Weather,” is an evergreen text for our generation. I don’t want to leave it on a harsh note, but it’s hard for me to think about the excitement I have to come to Austin and see your show and to make my own next show, but I’m literally looking at the news every five seconds, I’m like, “Is there going to be a show to go see?”

SMITH: Yeah.

HARRIS: Are you navigating the moment with a sense of hope or a sense of despair, or something else? I’m trying to figure out what engines are driving other artists to make right now.

SMITH: I feel like I always maintain a sense of hope and dread simultaneously. Making things has always been for myself, so it’s a catalyst to process, to turn things over, to try to analyze, and it just so happens that somehow that’s entered the public space. But I would be doing it without the public space and the recognition and the public discourse around it. Making is almost like a second language, and reminding myself of that helps me think through the immediacy, and also in trying to be future-oriented with other people and creating new languages, but for however long we are here or any of it is here for.

HARRIS: Yeah. I love that. I got this lightning bolt when you were talking of a thrill, thinking about how young we were when we met and how ambitious we were, and still are, but how I think I would be shocked by the things that I’ve been able to accomplish in basically a decade. I feel like I meet a lot of young artists right now who are like, “How do I get where you are?” I wonder what you might say.

SMITH: Oh, this is the advice for young artists part of the interview?

HARRIS: We love the advice for young artists part of the interview.

SMITH: For real.

HARRIS: I have to give the kids hope.

SMITH: I guess I can just speak from my own experience, which was that I remained curious and urged to participate in something. That could look very different. It doesn’t have to be what we all classify as the art world, there are many different types of art world, but it’s that active presence. Showing up and participating, and a generosity in thought and making. But you also have to know what’s actually driving you outside of all the external chatter. You have to constantly check in and know why you’re being driven to do the thing that you’re doing, and it has to be more than some kind of external validation or marker of success or a goal. Those things come because of a commitment to it, but you’ve got to be doing it for yourself first, and I feel like sometimes people can lose that.

HARRIS: I love that. That’s a reminder even for me sometimes. It can become this thing where you’re doing it for everyone else but yourself. Well, it was very fun to catch up with you.

SMITH: Same. Thank you so much for doing this also.

HARRIS: Of course. You go have some good barbecue for me today though, because I’m missing it.

SMITH: I got you.

HARRIS: I can’t wait to be down there and have some. I’ll talk to you later.

The post Sable Elyse Smith and Jeremy O. Harris on Horror, Hope, and <i>Clockwork</i> appeared first on Interview Magazine.

Nicholas Campbell has been busy painting paradise. In his new solo exhibition at Amanita on Bowery, gold, purple, and black splash explode over aluminum Dibond—a break from his usual canvas. The paintings chart a psychological landscape shaped by the ambient hostility of modern life. What does that state of mind yield? Meditative, booming fields of color that rupture and reassemble in real time. To mark the show’s opening, his girlfriend Bella Newman administered a short and sweet questionnaire, covering rejection, swag, trends, and envy.

———

What is the main thing going through your head right now?

I had so much more going through my head last night, but now that everything is kind of where it needs to be installed, I’m not thinking about that much. I’m honestly so ready to get some sleep.

Where do you go when you run out of inspiration?

I’ve never had to get inspired to do anything. Italy was pretty inspiring though.

What is your process for starting a painting?

I just think about how shitty my life would be if I wasn’t painting.

How do you know when a work of yours is done?

I just need to love the work. I either love it or hate it.

How did you decide to switch from canvas to metal?

Painting on metal, especially when you prime it correctly, you avoid the absorption and it’s super flat. It creates this glow and charge, and sliding motion with the paint and it’s so much more gratifying to me. It feels so much more contemporary. It’s like contending with industrial tools that belong to us now. It’s important to do something singular with paint. We’ve sort of unearthed all the possibilities, and while you may not be inventing a new movement, you can manipulate the paint in your own way. Being singular makes you valuable.

If you had to have a logline for the way you see the world, what would it be?

It’s a zero sum world for me. The struggle with that is this kind of aspiration for dominance that is really compelling and beautiful to me, to develop that in yourself. You see it a lot in rap music. That’s kind of what art does for me. 

So what’s your favorite color?

Purple. Well, gold and purple together is pretty cool.

What’s your everyday uniform?

My Ferragamo belt, and some Ferragamo loafers. And, like, underwear and stuff. Usually a polo too. 

How do you handle rejection?

I don’t remember the last time that happened to me.

Where have you been that’s impacted your art the most?

When I moved to New York. Nowhere else even compares. The competition of being an artist here makes you so much better at what you do. You feel like you’re in the rotting heart of the world empire. I think going to Italy definitely made me way classier, kind of introduced me to real taste.

If you had unlimited money and materials at your disposal, what would you make?

I would have assistants paint hyper realistic images of beautiful women in the passenger seats of Italian sports cars. Then I would frame them in the most decadent gold leafed frames you could imagine.

What’s one artwork that’s had a lasting impact on your approach?

The self portraits by Rudolf Stingel. They are so self aware and ballsy. Also beautiful in this melancholic way. He’s just affirming himself. Also his massive gold-plated styrofoam pieces.

What art trend are you most sick of?

Stuff that’s too inside baseball.

How would you define success?

Success is when you get what you want. Also the amount of people who would willingly want to trade places with you.

Do you have people you would want to trade places with?

No, I’m too attached to my own story. Too self absorbed. But when I feel envy, I know I’m going in the right direction. I’m confronting something in another person that I want but don’t have yet. I even feel that when I look at art I like.

What was the last dream that you had?

I was dreaming that I survived a plane crash. The plane nose dived into the ocean and then we descended into another world, and at the bottom of that world was a strip mall. Then the plane disappeared from the dream and I was just walking into a 7-Eleven to buy Vitamin water.

If you could resurrect one artist, who would it be?

J.M.W. Turner. But also, who was as cool as Picasso?

The post Painter Nicholas Campbell on Rejection, Fads and Rupturing Landscapes appeared first on Interview Magazine.

For her debut monograph, Social Season, Brooklyn-based photographer Miranda Barnes visited Detroit from 2022 to 2025 to document the hidden world of Black cotillions. From lensing the birthplace of the Mississippi blues to photographing newly constructed Freedmen’s Colonies founded by Black women, Barnes has long had an affinity for highlighting the innovation of the Black community. Now, she’s turning her eye on Detroit debutants, an intergenerational coterie awash with beauty, glamour, and hope. As an outsider, Barnes was able to document just how exclusive and labor-intensive these balls can be, creating a series of evocative images that celebrate sisterhood and upward mobility. To learn more, I caught up with Barnes before her Rizzoli Bookstore launch to discuss Eve Arnold, etiquette classes, and what it means to be a young Black woman today.

———

ARY RUSSELL: Where are we right now?

MIRANDA BARNES: The Rizzoli Bookstore for the talk with Sofia Coppola and Nicole Fleetwood for my first book, Social Season.

RUSSELL: When we walked in, your friend was like, “I’ve never seen a line like this for a book event.”

BARNES: Yeah.

RUSSELL: So how does it feel to have such a wide audience wanting to talk about your book?

BARNES: It’s, of course, overwhelming, but it’s a long time coming. I’m very excited to see this turnout and hopefully everyone is excited to hear us discuss the book and dive deeper into it.

RUSSELL: This is being published by Important Flowers, which Sofia Coppola created. How did that relationship come about? 

All images courtesy Miranda Barnes and MACK via Social Season (Important Flowers, 2026).

BARNES: I met Sofia on a photoshoot a few years ago and we got to talking. Of course, I knew who she was and her filmography, but I didn’t really realize how big of a photo enthusiast she was and a photographer in her own right. I decided to just talk about what I was working on, which was the book in its middle stages. And she really took to it and followed up a few months later about what I wanted to do with the final product. 

RUSSELL: And where did this idea for photographing Black cotillions come from? 

BARNES: I don’t come from that world. From the beginning I was very interested in these sorts of external family and sisterhood communities. I photographed a lot of the Juneteenth pageants. I had photographed a lot of black twins. I just always have been very interested in this sisterhood bond. And I do credit a lot of the inspiration to photographers who came before me, such as Eve Arnold. She did a lot of fashion work in Harlem in the ’50s and ’60s, and I think that that really inspired me to seek out a debutante club that would allow me to come in and photograph them.

RUSSELL: Cotillions are not a world that I’m not too familiar with. Was there a sense of apprehension from families? How did you gain that trust?

BARNES: So I photographed it for four years, so naturally there became a trusted bond between the board and me. And I made it very clear that the intention was to do uplifting work and never to feel like I was poking fun at the spectacle of it.

RUSSELL: Right.

BARNES: I think anyone is fearful of someone coming in and spinning their own narrative on something. I’ve done a lot of family portraits. I’ve done a lot of Zoom meetings with the families beforehand. But also when I halfway pitched it to the New York Times about two years ago to solidify that I was working on this, that was really a moment for the celebration of the debutante ball because they were able then to use that and gain more people to sign up for it. So that in itself was a moment where it was like, “She’s doing this for us too.”

RUSSELL: I was reviewing the photographs and there were two different themes that I was really taken by. One, I loved the moments where you were photographing the young ladies that were fixing each other’s tiaras or fixing each other’s hair. How important was it for you to photograph and immortalize those moments of camaraderie?

BARNES: Of course the camaraderie and community element was important, but personally as a photographer, what I was more invested in was the idea of getting access to this very insular community that otherwise would not have as an outsider.

RUSSELL: Seeing as you were an outsider, what things did you learn about these communities that you didn’t know before going into it?

BARNES: The biggest thing was just how much preparation goes into it. There’s the etiquette classes and the dance classes and the community service that goes into it, people work a full year to present themselves. It’s very fascinating from a standpoint of how intergenerational these events can be. You’ll have a debutante one year, and then two years later their sister is a part of it, or their mother was a part of it. And so that was just really nice to see.

RUSSELL: What does it look like to be a young Black woman today?

BARNES: I don’t know if I can answer that question. It’s a tough time, but I think that you just have to do what you have to do for your community and just go through it. 

RUSSELL: And go through it with each other.

BARNES: I mean, there’s really no other alternative.

Social Season (Important Flowers, 2026) by Miranda Barnes, published by MACK.

The post Photographer Miranda Barnes Explains What It Takes to Be a Detroit Debutante appeared first on Interview Magazine.

Benjamin Millepied, photographed by Myles Pettengill.

When Benjamin Millepied logged onto Zoom with Anne Imhof earlier this month, he wasn’t in a rehearsal room or a theater but, instead, the parking lot of his studio at the LA Dance Project. “There’s no privacy in there,” he laughed, a fitting prelude to a conversation about exposure, intimacy, and the body. The 48-year-old French choreographer, whose career was forged in New York before he deliberately stepped away from the city, is now returning with a radical version of Romeo and Juliet at the Park Avenue Armory, one that reframes ballet as live cinema and love as something plural, unstable, and unbound from convention. Imhof, the German artist whose own Armory epic, DOOM: House of Hope dismantled Shakespeare through durational performance, met Millepied as both peer and provocateur. As they exchanged notes on cabaret, Baroque gesture, and the politics of live performance, the conversation became a reckoning—with romance, authorship, and what it means to make work that stays alive in real time.—OLAMIDE OYENUSI

———

ANNE IMHOF: Hey, Benjamin.

BENJAMIN MILLEPIED: Salut. Pleasure to meet you.

IMHOF: Glad to meet you too. Where are you right now?

MILLEPIED: I’m in Los Angeles, in the parking lot of my studio, because there’s no privacy in there. So yeah, that’s where I’m doing this interview from.

IMHOF: I do this so many times.

MILLEPIED: How about you?

IMHOF: I’m in my studio in New York. I just moved in, so everything’s quite chaotic still.

MILLEPIED: Have you been living in New York always, or…?

IMHOF: No. But since I have a partner now in New York, I shifted from Berlin a little bit.

MILLEPIED: Right.

IMHOF: I’m so happy we are talking. I mean, you’re in everybody’s words when it comes to ballet. I heard your name so often and yeah, one can’t get around you.

MILLEPIED: I mean, I’ve been seeing you from afar—your stunning work—and I wish I could have seen the piece you did at the Armory.

IMHOF: When did you show last time in New York? I mean, the Armory is huge. It’s a big deal. I was terrified.

MILLEPIED: It’s been a few years. I actually avoided New York for a while. It’s really where I had my whole career as a dancer and where I started as a choreographer, but I’ve been sort of taking a break away from it. And I’m glad we’re doing Romeo and Juliet now—

IMHOF: Well, I was wondering also, we are both drawn to Romeo and Juliet, the ultimate love story. How do you relate to Romeo and Juliet? And when did you have it the first time very close to your heart?

MILLEPIED: I resisted it in a way, partly because of the score, actually. Because of this [Sergei] Prokofiev score, I think I overheard it and it became elevator music to me. It really was something that I thought was second-rate. And it’s also inspired so many great Hollywood movies from long ago. There are moments that resemble Bernard Hermann and so many film composers at the time. I think they stole from some of these composers—or got inspired by these composers. But I first had ideas to combine it with imagery, and I made a short film. And it’s really funny, because the short film’s going to come out—it’s really a coincidence—the same day that we open at The Armory.

IMHOF: Oh wow.

MILLEPIED: I made the film in 2019 with Margaret Qualley and Shameik Moore. I did the balcony scene and I set it in L.A. today with a kind of modern take on it. So I was already playing with the idea of, how do you retell this universal love story in a new way? And once I made the short, then I started to have ideas for the stage. But when I came to the stage production, I felt that I had no right to say that it was supposed to be a man and a woman, knowing that in my company I have women who love women, men who love men. So I thought, “Okay, let’s do this production, but we’ll do it with multiple casts.” And I actually don’t have to really tell the story in full, because people sort of know it. I can just take some elements and pare it down and create this experience of a stage performance that does become a kind of live cinema. And the audience, because they’re not watching something prerecorded, they stay with what’s happening emotionally throughout. What really surprised me was seeing them fall in love with characters in the flesh—to see their intimacy through cinema, it was a very powerful experience.

IMHOF: And also, you’ve worked so much in the theaters and in ballet. Usually, ballets are seen by people fixed on a chair with one vantage point. But the Armory potentially allows for so much freedom if you use this vast space freely. 

MILLEPIED: Yeah. I moved the stage the other way so that when they walk into the theater, they’ll walk through backstage. And obviously I’m going to be using all those back rooms and the upper floors, probably, and the stairs and all these other areas. I would’ve loved to go on the roof too—

IMHOF: So beautiful.

MILLEPIED: But I don’t know. Maybe it’s too cold?

IMHOF: Yeah. Will the audience follow the performers?

MILLEPIED: They really don’t in this production. They’re seated, and they’re seated totally conventionally. The way that I always tell the dancers is that the audience just comes upon this play that happens in this space. We’re not performing for them. This is happening, and they happen to be there, so there’s not the kind of conventional projection to the audience. They’re dancing for each other.

IMHOF: Absolutely. It’s a really beautiful way, I think, to work with dance. And also, with DOOM, I felt the New York audiences were overwhelmed at first, so I think you’re doing yourself a favor with a seated audience.

MILLEPIED: Well, I wish I’d seen your piece, first of all, but also to see how the audience navigated through all these moments. It’s always so interesting how people respond, and what you expect, and what happens that’s a surprise, and—

IMHOF: The dress rehearsal was madness.

MILLEPIED: Oh, I’m sure.

IMHOF: Everybody was still figuring it out. I don’t know how much it’s scripted with your piece in terms of the steps. We had frameworks, and everybody was still figuring it out, so the creation process didn’t really stop with a premiere, necessarily.

MILLEPIED: I mean, that’s something that I’ve never done—a full evening work where you’re completely one with the audience in that way. But as far as what I’m working on now and what I’m interested in now, I really just have both the luxury of doing exactly what I’m interested in. I think it’s really a luxury, versus taking commissions and making them in circumstances that aren’t ideal. 

IMHOF: It is, I’m sure.

MILLEPIED: And now I’m starting to work on a theater piece, because I fell in love with the world of cabaret. It’s funny, because before you got on the call we were just talking about They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? It’s set in the world of the dance marathons with Jane Fonda. And movies like The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, the [John] Cassavetes, there was always sort of a fascination with that world and the small stages. So a couple of years ago, I got to go into a cabaret and created a number for someone. And I just fell in love with, first of all, working in this empty cabaret during the day. The atmosphere was so thick, and I fell in love with the format of the stage and the intensity. It’s just a fascinating world because it’s existed for so long. It’s such a political place. It’s a world where everything’s possible.

IMHOF: Oh, absolutely. I share this.

MILLEPIED: Yeah. We’re sort of imagining that this piece takes place in the future, where it’s a worse version of where we are today—where we’ve lost all our freedoms. And there’s this idea of this cabaret that takes place maybe in hiding. The cabaret is there to tell us everything that we’ve lost, about humanity and joy and desire and love and sex, kind of represented through the story and the musical numbers. It’s kind of a crazy, wild piece I’m trying to make.

IMHOF: I totally share your admiration for the cabaret life, the small stages that are in the limelight. I’ve had this affinity for the circus forever. So when I was doing my first bigger piece, Angst at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum in Berlin in 2016, it looked like a circus, basically. And when you’re the rebel newcomer doing these big pieces in museums, I was getting away with a lot. There was a dancer dancing on a rope dissecting the big hall. I was asking the dancers to put their middle finger out doing the port des bras. Now, I think storytelling has become important to me in some way. Romeo and Juliet was the first narrative, non-plotless thing I did. I’m definitely interested in telling stories, and telling stories about my experiences and fascinations with the world. Everybody’s longing for something that doesn’t need apologies, something that is shared amongst everybody.

MILLEPIED:  Yes, totally. And ultimately, as an artist, that’s where I find myself now. What I’m finding is that I have more of an ability to tell the human stories I tell in my pieces with more complexity because I understand myself better now than I did two, three, four years ago. The way that I expressed relationships in my work in the past had a lot to do with the way I idolized relationships. I created representations of relationships that were romanticized in my mind because of my own personal trauma. And I think now, I have a much more realistic approach—a lot more distance and a lot more understanding. So I can tell stories in a more complex way that is more interesting. But I also think the stories that draw me always have to do with something highly, highly personal. Because first of all, what we do is so difficult. It takes money and effort and motivating everyone around you. I’m only good and able to get these things done if I’m really passionate about them.

IMHOF: Yeah, getting everybody in your vision is basically magic. Sometimes it needs everybody to get there, right? And you need their commitment and their agency, somehow.

MILLEPIED: Yeah, so that’s the thing that’s fun right now, that I’m starting to explore this cabaret evening, and I know that I’m going to find my way and understand why I’m making it fairly soon. And next year I’m making Liebeslieder Walzer, a Balanchine masterpiece. And then one piece I want to make later on, that I will make at some point when the time is right, is Winterreise.

IMHOF: That’s a good one.

MILLEPIED: Yeah. It’s deep. And I think when the time is right, it’ll be the time. There was a whole time in my life where I was also making [work] from a fear of emptiness, and now I’m more organized psychologically.

IMHOF: The fear of emptiness or nothingness is always there, though. It can be a great motivator. But I have a feeling you’re romantic, too. I utterly believe in romance so much that I’m falling in love in my own Romeo and Juliet piece. But I also have the feeling that people don’t even believe the sincerity that I put in it. But I’m an utter romantic. And there is something deeply human and deeply universal about humanity in each of those pieces you just told me about. But I was wondering—more of a practical thing—how do you work with your cast? For example, I was writing the script for DOOM, and I was dreaming about developing the role with the characters, with my cast all together, so basically directing in this different way of writing.

MILLEPIED: I think, more than ever, the artist’s sensibility and way of being is a major inspiration and really impacts the work. I don’t make anything the same for every dancer. I choose people very carefully. And with Romeo and Juliet, the version changes and the notes change for every dancer. I leave as much freedom for them to make sense of it, and then I come in and help them find truth in the acting. You don’t have to fill [the space] with movement and emotion. You can just be still in space.

IMHOF: That is very important.

MILLEPIED: But yeah, I love my dancers more than ever. I choose them now with so much specificity. They’re all completely different animals and human beings, and that’s the really special part.

IMHOF: Yeah, I had this luck to work with an amazing cast here in New York City as well. And what you say about the role of the women in your new piece, it was so important for me. Because in Romeo and Juliet, Juliet still holds the power. And I think as much as I deconstructed the whole thing—I worked with a classical score, a [Gustav] Mahler score—I slowed it down. And then I dropped almost like, pop voices of the different musicians that were performing the piece on top of the Mahler. It was almost magical. 

MILLEPIED: I love that. It sounds amazing. I just saw Hamlet in Paris—directed by Ivo van Hove, whose work I honestly hadn’t really seen. And in his Hamlet, he puts in three songs and they really worked. It was totally unexpected. There’s a Queen song, and then the last one is just almost Shakespeare repeated, it almost becomes rap. It’s so beautiful. I love when an artist is able to bring this element that is completely unexpected. It’s really cool that you did that.

IMHOF: I think New York will wait for your piece. It’s really a mood right now in the country—we need more love stories like this.

MILLEPIED: And we need people to spend time with other people. That’s what the theater does.

IMHOF: It’s such a luxury. I mean, this is maybe the most power people have—to be together in one space.

MILLEPIED: Because we’re disconnected from empathy with the way we’re experiencing news. But a piece of good news: I checked the numbers of attendance, at least in France, and theater attendance is up from last year. People are actually going to the movies, too. And even though they’re cutting budgets for culture in France too, I find it really reassuring that this is happening.

IMHOF: I mean, that’s what you and I have in common. For me, the fascination is that I compose in 360 degrees. The movement of bodies together is powerful. Nobody can take that from them. Nobody can take that from us. And I think to reinterpret a piece—or to refuse to reinterpret the piece and completely take it apart—is giving the classical meaning and breaking it up, leaving it open. I think it’s good if things defy the definition that they’ve had before, because we can fill them with something that comes from a true place, from the inner urgency to do it.

MILLEPIED: Yes. Well, this was a pleasure. And I’m in New York now, so I’ll get your contact so I can WhatsApp you.

IMHOF: Yes. I would love that so much. Come by the studio.

The post Benjamin Millepied’s Next Act? An Utterly Modern, Explicitly Queer <i>Romeo & Juliet</i> appeared first on Interview Magazine.

Last November, the artist, actress, and photographer Martine Gutierrez was invited to give a lecture at the esteemed Paris Photo fair. No stranger to spectacle, Gutierrez opted instead for a performance which quickly turned into a scandal. The premise of LOTTERY was simple: the subject, Gutierrez, gifted each audience member an envelope. Those with winning tickets were then invited to take control of her camera, directing the artist to pose in whichever way they saw fit. Naturally, the stunts grew more and more promiscuous and, after 60 minutes of snapshots that left the artist milk-soaked, semi-eyebrow-less, and semi-nude, fair security draped a trench coat over her bare shoulders and escorted her off the stage. So how is she feeling about the work ahead of her forthcoming show at Ryan Lee Gallery? A little turned on, and perhaps a little emotionally burdened by the 700 images the audience captured. As she told Interview’s Mel Ottenberg last week over eggs, it was all about the thrill of losing control.

———

MEL OTTENBERG: It’s so cold, Martine. What are you wearing today?

MARTINE GUTIERREZ: Ripped Margiela, ripped Versace, ripped—oh, we’re on the record.

OTTENBERG: Yeah. This sweater is insane.

GUTIERREZ: For our readers, you’re just grabbing your stomach. I don’t mind.

OTTENBERG: This is 50.

GUTIERREZ: And it looks great.

OTTENBERG: The problem is that I haven’t been working out.

GUTIERREZ: I saw a picture of you younger recently and I actually think you’re sexier now.

OTTENBERG: Thanks, babe. Appreciate that. You have a beautiful foot.

GUTIERREZ: Where’d you see that?

OTTENBERG: In the video that you sent me from the show in Paris. I think you have a sandal on. Am I wrong?

GUTIERREZ: It is quite, yeah, open. I need an open toe.

OTTENBERG: Do you think that women will catch onto the way that you’re dressing? 

GUTIERREZ: Old Hollywood? I personally just think it’s what works for me.

OTTENBERG: Yes. It’s daytime old Hollywood too.

GUTIERREZ: Right. It’s a little Hasidic. 

OTTENBERG: It’s like Hasidic femme fatale. So Martine, my fellow RISD graduate, when does your show open?

GUTIERREZ: What have you heard? You asked for pictures.

OTTENBERG: You showed me pictures. Can you explain the story? We want the monologue.

GUTIERREZ: But I want to know what you’ve heard because maybe there’s some records I need to set straight.

OTTENBERG: I’ve only heard—hey, are you having lunch? We should eat something. 

GUTIERREZ: Yes. I think I’m going to do the breakfast egg thing.

OTTENBERG: The omelet? Do you want to try my order? I think it’s really a good idea.

GUTIERREZ: Yes. Okay. 

SPEAKER 3: You guys are still deciding, right?

OTTENBERG: No, I know. She’s going to have an omelet with onions, peppers, and mushrooms. An English muffin, extra crispy, and a side of bacon and a side of avocado. No potatoes. And I am going to have…

GUTIERREZ: Figure it out.

OTTENBERG: I’m trying to think. I’m going to have…

GUTIERREZ: A stroke.

OTTENBERG: I’m going to have a literal stroke. I guess I’ll have the same thing because I can’t think of what I’m going to have. So we’ll just have two. Okay. So what I know about the show is that you did this thing at Paris Photo where the audience was involved and it was great, but then it got out of control and you had to be pulled away by security. 

GUTIERREZ: Do you like that movie Crash?

OTTENBERG: I do. I just rewatched it. I have the DVD. 

GUTIERREZ: So you have a thing for collisions—because that’s what it felt like. I was turned on. I was turned on by how out of control it was. I tend to find myself in chaotic spaces like at the club. It felt like being young at the club again and the black swan of it all, head rolling back, making out with someone that you don’t really want and then you’re like, “Oh, I don’t want this.” When you talked about security, it was that feeling. I was so—I don’t even know how to tell this story.

OTTENBERG: What was the premise of the performance?

GUTIERREZ: So Paris Photo is the biggest, most prestigious art fair for photography. And my gallery, Fraenkel Gallery, they always get this big gorgeous booth in the middle of the fair. This year they arranged for me to have a lecture and my lectures tend to be these performative, wild-card events. And so I made it very vague. “This is a once in a lifetime experience called Lottery.” I think it weeded out anyone that was not game and opened up the floor for some real freaks and fans. Some friends came, but it wouldn’t have happened the way it did if it happened in New York.

OTTENBERG: So the lottery was what?

GUTIERREZ: It was essentially a situation of me playing dominatrix and asserting this authority that I have in my practice onto the audience. Everyone who came in the door was given an envelope. I watch a lot of TV, so I think there was an amalgamation of Willy Wonka, Oprah, and America’s Next Top Model where I’m your host, like, “You get a car, you get a car, you get a car.” I was like, “Open your envelopes, in your envelope is a number. If that number is called, you will come down to the front and we are going to collaborate on a portrait of me.”

OTTENBERG: Okay. 

GUTIERREZ: I set it up like, “Tonight we discover the next great photographer from Paris Photo.” This kind of folk prestige thing that I think everyone knew was satirical. And I had this kind of flirty, funny mistress vibe. I was trying to make the audience feel at ease about their surrender to me since they didn’t know what they were walking into. It was in an auditorium upstairs above the art fair. I just had my coat, my purse, and a glass of milk, and there was a giant LED wall behind me that was connected to my camera and a remote control. The camera was on a tripod, so anyone that came down that was a winner of the lottery was given the remote. And anything they wanted me to do, I promised I would do it. Then they chose when to hit that remote. I was thinking about access and control. I felt like I had hit a wall and that this idea of control was stifling creativity or some kind of advance into the next chapter of how I make stuff. 

OTTENBERG: Right.

GUTIERREZ: I don’t want to be beholden to a three sentence description of what my practice is for the rest of my life. I want to get out of my comfort zone. For example, I’ve only really acted in things with friends, where I know I have control because I’m either writing the role with them or I know them well enough that I can say, “I don’t want to do that.” But I feel like this performance was what every actor does, turned up to the max. You’re asked to have trust in this other person who’s behind the camera and they’re asking you to do this thing and you have to kind of give it your all. And it’s embarrassing and humiliating but I was so turned on by the humiliation.

OTTENBERG: Oh, wow.

GUTIERREZ: I was like, “Oh, wow. It took me being a dom to make everyone else play the dom so I could be the sub.”

OTTENBERG: Right.

GUTIERREZ: I was worried that it was going to be boring and that, because of who I am and the era that we’re in, everyone was going to be afraid of the Me Too of it all, of being canceled. 

OTTENBERG: What were they asking you to do?

GUTIERREZ: I thought it was going to give what we do with our friends. When we take pictures it’s like, “Your neck doesn’t look long enough.” I thought, “You’re a sexy animal on the farm,” was going to be the worst of it. Although I did put scissors in my purse.

OTTENBERG: In case of a haircut?

GUTIERREZ: Yeah. In my mind, I was like, “The worst thing that could happen is bangs.” I was willing to go full Girl, Interrupted.

OTTENBERG: I could see that. That could look great.

GUTIERREZ: It would look fierce. But then the first woman that came down said, “Spank yourself.” And we did that for five minutes.

OTTENBERG: To get the shot?

GUTIERREZ: I just was like, “Girl, anything else you want to try?”

OTTENBERG: Wow. Okay. There’s also a picture where you’re lying down and your tits are out.

GUTIERREZ: Yeah. That was good. It was a lot of, like, “Can you take off your bra slowly?”  And then someone had me do push-ups and then I got all sweaty and then they had me take my sweater off. Someone asked me to call my mom and tell her I was kidnapped.

OTTENBERG: Oh god. Did she pick up?

GUTIERREZ: Yes.

OTTENBERG: Your poor mother.

GUTIERREZ: I know, but I did warn her. I said, “Mommy, I’m doing a performance. I just want you to know I’m in total control. Everything is fine. Whatever you hear or read or see, I’m safe.” And she said, “Sweetie, just don’t bring any guns to Paris.”

OTTENBERG: You don’t have a gun?

GUTIERREZ: I have guns. I’m not an idiot. I didn’t bring any, but I did bring the scissors. I brought a razor. I brought lipstick.

OTTENBERG: Was the kidnapping picture good?

GUTIERREZ: I look really nervous. There are a few pictures where I’m really connecting with the camera through whoever’s behind it, but for the most part, it does really feel like it’s a fly on the wall or something. I’ve never been so unaware in front of a camera. There was too much to process.

OTTENBERG: How long did it last for before it got too rowdy?

GUTIERREZ: It lasted about 60 minutes, and then Paris Photo stepped in and said, “That’s your last one.” And then security took my coat, which is my mother’s, that cream trench, and they put it over me. My tits are out and I’m missing an eyebrow, someone had me shave it off, and then there’s makeup all over from the milk that someone had me pour on my head. It’s also probably also all over my chest because someone had me go down on the floor and lick it off… I think that’s one of the images in here. [She shows Mel her selects]

OTTENBERG: Oh, wow. That one’s great.

GUTIERREZ: But it’s interesting to see my composure go.

OTTENBERG: Sometimes you just want to create a different image, right? I think it’s fun to be a sub sometimes. 

GUTIERREZ: I hadn’t really experienced it before. I loved it, but everyone was so worried. 

OTTENBERG: The people?

GUTIERREZ: Yeah. The audience was very divided. A lot of people didn’t like it. The curators kept being like, “I did not feel comfortable. Are you okay?” I just kind of sat in the office and didn’t know what happened. There was a bit of PTSD, maybe.

OTTENBERG: Rough.

GUTIERREZ: I don’t know. I really don’t want to talk about my feelings. I feel like it’s not relevant. I think it’s much more interesting for a viewer to—

OTTENBERG: When you were sitting in the office, were you like, “Okay, at least I got these fucking pictures.”

GUTIERREZ: Oh no, I didn’t even want to have possession of them. I felt burdened by them. And even coming back to the States, I didn’t travel back with the camera or any hard drive or anything. I just sat on the plane and was like, “Should I shave off the other eyebrow?”

OTTENBERG: Did you?

GUTIERREZ: No. It’s drawn on. You can’t really tell anymore. It was right before Christmas.

OTTENBERG: Do you have a favorite image from the series? And if so, what was the prompt?

GUTIERREZ: The last one. Because it feels like we were in the midst of something and then—

OTTENBERG: You were rudely interrupted.

GUTIERREZ: Yeah. But I didn’t have any kind of stopping point. I didn’t even think about how it would end. There was maybe no other way besides someone calling an ambulance or something. And then it makes me think of Marina [Abramović]—I think that’s why my mom said don’t bring a gun.

OTTENBERG: Right.

GUTIERREZ: I just thought we weren’t there anymore. I was like, that couldn’t happen. That was the seventies, it’s all different. And yet it all went down the same way. What does that say about humanity?

OTTENBERG: Humanity is not looking so good right now. Who was hating on you? Were they, like, hating on you for who you are?

GUTIERREZ: Who am I? Gorgeous, talented.

OTTENBERG: Gorgeous, talented—how’s your lunch?

GUTIERREZ: I love it. I’m just having trouble eating it because you keep talking to me.

OTTENBERG: I know. I love talking to you. So wait, how many pictures are you showing at your show?

GUTIERREZ: So at first I was going to do a flip book and show all of them, because you get the sense of her demise that way. I changed my mind.

OTTENBERG: You don’t want to show all of them?

GUTIERREZ: That’s a lot of labor, and I also wanted to continue the cuckold, especially for New York, my favorite city. I don’t want to give them everything. New Yorkers are too spoiled.

OTTENBERG: Yeah.

GUTIERREZ: So it’s staying in the vault. I’ve decided they’re going to see 16 images of 700 and something. And I’m going to show the last one, my favorite one, and I’m going to show something from the beginning, and then I’ve picked highlights in between, so you get the sense of how we got there.

OTTENBERG: Can you tell me about any particular people that issued prompts? Were they French?

GUTIERREZ: It was very global. There was something kind of UN about everything.

OTTENBERG: Okay.

GUTIERREZ: I know the first woman was from Mexico. There were a lot of French people.

OTTENBERG: Any fans?

GUTIERREZ: Yeah. There was some trade. The men all wanted me to be sexy.

OTTENBERG: Right.

GUTIERREZ: Of course. That’s that one where I’m on the ground. “Can you sing for me a little in French?”

OTTENBERG: Oh.

GUTIERREZ: So I tried to do that. I sing that song, “La Mer, do-do-do-do.” You know the one about the sea?

OTTENBERG: No.

GUTIERREZ: I don’t really either. I made up a lot of words. “Do-do-do-do-do-do.”

OTTENBERG: Is it Françoise Hardy?

GUTIERREZ: Yeah. It’s puss.

OTTENBERG: I was into the puss, Françoise vibes. She just died.

GUTIERREZ: Should I get bangs in her name?

OTTENBERG: I don’t know. I think her hair was boring.

GUTIERREZ: I’m just looking for any excuse, someone tell me to do it.

OTTENBERG: If you had gotten bangs at that moment, during the performance, it would’ve been amazing, but bangs aren’t as main character as you want them to be.

GUTIERREZ: They are very actress. You kind of have to have them if you’re an actress. Any red carpet, it’s like a gown with bangs.

OTTENBERG: Oh my god. You’re right.

GUTIERREZ: Maybe I’m ready to star in a movie. I’ve only really acted in things where I have control because I’m either writing the role with friends or I know them enough that I can say, “I don’t want to do that.” But I do feel like this show was what every actor does, turned up to the max. You’re asked to step in, you’re asked to have trust in this person behind the camera, and they’re asking you to give it your all. 

OTTENBERG: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

GUTIERREZ: Maybe it’s time for a big director. But all my favorites are dead now.

OTTENBERG: You’re like, “Antonioni, call me.”

GUTIERREZ: From the grave. Or we’re learning terrible stuff about them. They’re Nazis. They’re on the Epstein list.

OTTENBERG: I know if Woody Allen called tomorrow, I’d be like, “Unfortunately, no.” Wait, is this show opening in Venice?

GUTIERREZ: No, it’s opening here in New York.  It’s the last Thursday of the month.

OTTENBERG: I’m not here. I’m going to be working in London.

GUTIERREZ: Are you acting?

OTTENBERG: No. I’m styling Lily Allen’s tour.

GUTIERREZ: She’s gorgeous. 

OTTENBERG: Yeah, she’s fabulous. I’m very excited to do it. Anyway, I won’t be here, but I hope everybody comes.

GUTIERREZ: I just want a few close friends. And then I can cry, finally. Relinquish control and show vulnerability.

SPEAKER 3: Everything alright?

GUTIERREZ: Yeah, thank you.

OTTENBERG: I’m sorry this is so long, but it was just so fun to talk to you, Martine. Will you ever go by just one name?

GUTIERREZ: I think I should.

OTTENBERG: You should. You’re very Martine. 

The post Milk, Razors, Scissors: Martine Gutierrez on Her Paris Photo Meltdown appeared first on Interview Magazine.

Kid Cudi/Scotty Ramone, photographed by Nils Müller.

Why is Kid Cudi painting now? It’s the question one asks when the man who turned emo rap into public therapy quietly swaps the studio for a sketchpad and reintroduces himself under a new artistic alias: Scotty Ramon. Fresh off his artist documentary Echoes of the Past, which premiered at Art Basel Miami Beach last month, Cudi logged onto Zoom with longtime friend and pop-art heavyweight Brian Donnelly, a.k.a. KAWS, to address the particular audacity of beginning again at 42. “I just went after it,” Cudi said of his pivot to painting. “Nobody taught me how to paint, and that’s what was holding me back.”

Running from January 31st through March 1st at Paris’s Ruttkowski;68, Echoes of the Past presents ten paintings that map Cudi’s interior landscape, imagined inverted geometries and playful color schemes.. Threaded throughout is Max, his wide-eyed alter ego and self-described “inner child,” while a 10-minute soundscape composed by Cudi hums through the space, a reminder that he never really leaves music behind. Skeptics may raise an eyebrow. Fans are lining up daily. And Scotty Ramon? He’s already plotting sculptures. “I want to see what else I can conquer,” he says.—OLAMIDE OYENUSI

———

KAWS: Hey, what’s going on?

KID CUDI: Let me get my camera going. 

KAWS: You can turn the camera off if it’s easier to talk and focus. 

CUDI: I look so high. And I fucking splashed salsa in my eye this morning—spicy salsa.

KAWS: Oh my god.

CUDI: Yeah. I’m kind of totally wavy right now, but it’s okay.

KAWS: I feel like that’s a good example of this entire year.

CUDI: Yeah.

KAWS: Just one fucking weird thing after thing. All right, should I just start with some questions?

CUDI: Yeah, let’s just get into it.

KAWS: All right. Let’s get right into painting, and your first exhibition. When you’re approaching painting, is it different from approaching a song or composing music? How do you compare those processes?

CUDI: Well in some ways they’re different, but in a lot of ways, they’re the same. For example, before I head to the studio to work on a song, I like to know what type of record I’m going to make. It’s premeditated. And that’s the same with my paintings. I have to have a vision in my mind of where I want to go, and then I sketch it and go from there. But sometimes if I try to go in and make a painting without a vision, it doesn’t quite come out the way I want it to. And with music, I can go in the studio and just let the music guide me and tell me what to do. So that’s how they’re different in that way.

KAWS: Do you have any routines when you go into the studio? For me, I walk in the studio and immediately turn on the kettle and have tea.

CUDI: Oh, yeah. I think my tea is my tree. So I come in the studio, grab a soda out of my cooler, and then I roll up some weed and smoke a little bit. Get in the groove, put on some music, and I get straight to it.

KAWS: What kind of music are you listening to? I mean, are you listening to your own stuff, or are you trying to extract imagery from previously created work?

CUDI: Sometimes I’ll play unreleased stuff that I’ve been working on just to vibe out and kind of study it a little bit. But when I’m not doing that, I’m usually playing classical music like Bach, and I’m just sitting for hours playing the whole entire album on loop.

KAWS: Oh, that sounds incredible.

CUDI: Yeah.

KAWS: Are there specific albums or songs that directly influence certain paintings, or is it just an overall mood?

CUDI: Classical and instrumentals are really the best for me. I can’t have anything with lyrics. If I do anything with lyrics, it’s mostly my own shit, but I can’t really listen to a song. I just need a mood.

KAWS: Like a soundtrack.

CUDI: Yeah, to soundtrack the whole process.

KAWS: That’s interesting. I listen to a lot of audiobooks and podcasts. Music, I don’t listen to so much, because I hate when it ends and I have to think of the next thing. But what does painting do for you that music can’t?

CUDI: Well, because it’s a new thing for me I feel like there’s a certain “I don’t give a fuck”-ness about it. The music is less, “I don’t give a fuck,” and I try to live up to what I’ve created all these years. Painting is such a new thing, so the “I don’t give a fuck”-ness is what excites me. I think people are connecting with that, but they also see that there are strong messages in the artwork. This isn’t just a bunch of pretty paintings. There’s always a deeper meaning to what you’re seeing. And that was important for me. Everything I do has to have a deeper purpose. You know what I mean? I also think it’s important for artists to explore and create in different mediums whenever they can.

KAWS: Yeah. I mean, I was super excited when you first started sending me pictures of paintings. I don’t remember when it was, maybe sometime last year.

CUDI: Yeah, November 2024. That’s when I started. 

KAWS: It was just out of left field. I was pretty excited for you to just veer left and get into it. And now you just had your first show in Paris. How does that feel, having your visual art being seen publicly rather than just this long-crafted musician identity?

CUDI: It’s a mindfuck. I just saw a video of this yesterday, but people are still lining up every day to go see it. It’s been popping ever since we opened. It just warms my heart that I have this support. When I first started painting, I wasn’t like, “Ooh, I’m about to fucking have a gallery show one day.” If I really thought about it, it was like, “Oh, that’s not going to happen for another couple years.” My goal when I started painting wasn’t to have this kind of career. I was just doing it for fun. Then the more people I showed, it ended up becoming a conversation, because people were like, “Man, you got to show these. People have to see this.” Then it went from one person leading me to another. Then I met Nils [Muller, a gallerist at Rutkowski 68], and I was sending pictures of my paintings to Amy Verner, who is a writer for Vogue. We met when I was doing interviews for my brand, Members of the Rage, and she was very supportive early on. I would send her pictures, and she would just be like, “You have to send these to Sarah Andelman.” And I was like, “You really think so?” So I sent some pictures to Sarah, and she was loving it and was like, “I have some people you should meet.” Next thing I know, I was in Paris. Sarah set up a meeting with Nils, and boom.

KAWS: Yeah. It’s funny, all things lead back to Sarah. She’s just an incredible person.

CUDI: [Laughs] Yeah, she’s a connector of worlds, for sure.

KAWS: Yeah. Has exhibiting changed how you understand your creative identity? I’ve never made any sort of musical sound. I’ve only existed in a visual space, so I couldn’t imagine just adding this whole other lane.

CUDI: It’s kind of crazy, man. I’m the type of guy that will go out and do stand-up comedy for the first time and just take a swing and say, “Fuck it.” That’s kind of how it all started for me, even the Kid Cudi stuff. That’s kind of how I got to this place of confidence, just being like, “Okay, I will show my work and I’ll put myself out there.” And I’m painting what I want to paint. I hope that this is a kind of SOS out there to the world, so it attracts people that feel like me, who might’ve experienced some of the same struggles and who understand me as a human.

KAWS: Do you feel like it’s more vulnerable to show paintings than to perform music at this point?

CUDI: Man, I don’t know. Music is so tweaked, and there are so many things that happen to a song before people hear it. All these technical things, you know what I’m saying? But a painting is just me making contact with that canvas. It’s just such a personal thing. I made this. I painted this. This is all me. 100-percent me.

KAWS: How do you deal with criticism when you’re putting stuff that personal out there?

CUDI: I know there are people that are just like, “Man, what the fuck? Stick to rapping.” And it’s my duty to just keep pissing people off and doing whatever the fuck I want to do. [Laughs] You know what I’m saying? It’s my job to always inspire the youngins. Some kid is going to see me popping off in different realms and be like, “Damn, I’m inspired to do this and do that and do this.” When I was coming up, it was almost like you had to just pick one thing, and that was it. But now, at 42 years old, I want to see what else I can conquer. Music—I’m a master. I can make any song I want. I can make any album I want. It’s easy. You know what I’m saying? Sometimes I’ll be in the studio making a beat and it’ll be crazy, and I’ll just stop and be like, “This bores me.” Like some king. Unless I’m working with my friends or working on an album. But painting is a challenge for me because it’s like I’m learning something new. I haven’t put my 10,000 hours in. I’m still just cooking, and it’s the early beginnings. I’m just so excited to see where I’m going to be five years from now with painting. What will my shit look like then? What other mediums will I touch? Because I’m already getting into sculptures and things like that.

KAWS: Yeah. Are there visual artists that influence you? 

CUDI: Man, you and Murakami really inspired me to do sculptures. I’ve always been a fan of your work, seeing what you’ve done with the Companion. It’s so ill and so inspiring. And that’s what made me want to create Max for my series. I just felt like I needed this representation that felt like me, where if people saw it, they would know it was a Scotty Ramon painting. The same way people see the Companion, they know it’s KAWS.

KAWS: Can we state for the record that I’m not paying you in any way for this interview?

CUDI: Yeah—put that on record. He’s not paying. [Laughs]

KAWS:  [Laughs] Just put that in.

CUDI: But just seeing the sculptures you have around the world—the sculptures that Murakami has done—it just put my mind in a new place and helped me see what was possible.

KAWS: Yeah. What does having an alter ego afford you? 

CUDI: It allows me to speak freely about things. It seems weird, but it’s like I have this bulletproof vest on when I speak from Max’s perspective about my inner-child experience. I can be completely vulnerable.

KAWS: Yeah. I mean, growing up, having KAWS in addition to my birth name always gave me a lot of play, and a lot of leverage. Sometimes I’ll be at dinners and the name card will say “Brian Donnelly” and the person next to me has no idea what I do, and it’s kind of nice.

CUDI: Oh yeah, I love that. I know people are going to think this is crazy, but when I walk in a room, I don’t assume people know who I am. So anytime somebody’s like, “Yo, I’m a fan of your music,” I’m genuinely surprised and happy. You know what I’m saying?

KAWS: Yeah. I wanted to ask you, have you had any formal training?

CUDI: With painting?

KAWS: Yeah. Or are these things that you’re just figuring out and learning?

CUDI: No, I haven’t had any formal training. I just went after it. I thought that was best, because that’s kind of what stopped me all this time. It’s like, nobody taught me how to paint, and that’s what was holding me back. But I was like, “Man, fuck it. Let me just try this shit and see what happens. I know how to draw. I feel like I can handle it.” I mean, a brush is a different beast than a fucking pencil or a marker. And that’s something I had to learn really fast—just the strokes, how to move the brush, and what brushes to use for certain things. That was all just trial and error.

KAWS: Right. So now that you kind of opened this door, do you think it’s a permanent parallel practice for you?

CUDI: I do. I already have my next two shows figured out. But I’m just waiting, taking my time. No rush. 

KAWS: I didn’t get to see the show in person, which I’m still kind of bummed about, but there’s a soundscape in it.

CUDI: Yeah.

KAWS: What made you pull that into the exhibition?

CUDI: Man, I was just thinking about how usually in these rooms, they’re quiet, and you just have people talking. But I really wanted to have something that set the mood. I was like, “Hey, man, I make music. Let me just go on here and make a score.” I worked with my buddy Rami [Beatz], who’s a producer and a good friend of mine, and we just cooked up this score. It was a long jam session of just banging out different parts and making it one long, 10-minute piece. It was really dope.

KAWS: Man, I wish you to send it to me to hear.

CUDI: I’m going to send it to you after this call, for sure.

KAWS: Cool. Thank you. So the first show’s still up. Are there things already in the pipeline that you’re thinking of next, or is it just back to the studio?

CUDI: Well, you talking about—

KAWS: It’s funny, when I say “back to the studio,” I just realized you could take that either way.

CUDI: [Laughs] Yeah, like studio music or painting?

KAWS: I don’t know. I like to balance between doing commercial work, doing product, and then getting back into painting and sculpture.

CUDI: Yeah, I kind of am doing both at the same time. Some days I’ll be in the studio, and then some days I’ll go to the art studio and just kick it there all day long and bang out shit.

KAWS: Yeah. Thinking about today’s culture, is there anything you wish you could change about it?

CUDI: Yeah, man. I wish there was more bravery in art and in music. I wish people took more chances. A lot of people play it safe because all they care about is numbers and awards and stuff like that, and they’re missing out on the opportunity to create something special. That’s why I want to keep doing my thing. I know years ago we talked about me giving up and hanging it up, and you had told me that was a mistake, but—

KAWS: [Laughs] I mean, come on—that was the one time I was right, right? 

CUDI: Yeah, no, for sure. But the world needs artists like me to be out here and be a guide and let people know that you can be as trippy as you want. You can explore soundscapes, try different things, and you can still be successful. You know what I mean? You don’t have to have all the awards, you don’t have to do all this bullshit. You can still be successful and still shine.

KAWS: Yeah. I mean, I see success in just getting it made.

CUDI: Exactly. Doing a show, whether it’s for 50 people or 2,000 people or 20,000 people, the fact that you’re on a stage getting paid to perform your music is a win. Man, when I was getting $5,000 a show, I thought I made it. I was like, “I’m rich.” I ain’t never had no money like that before in my life.

KAWS: Yeah. Well, it’s been a pleasure talking.

CUDI: Yeah, man.

The post Kid Cudi Is Artmaxxing. KAWS Has Some Questions. appeared first on Interview Magazine.

Marilyn Monroe and Douglas, photographed by Douglas Kirkland in Hollywood, 1961

At the pinnacle of photojournalism in the 60s and 70s, Canadian-American photographer Douglas Kirkland somehow made his 2D images multi-dimensional in feeling. Tomorrow, the Morrison Hotel Gallery will present Romance: A Love Letter to The Douglas Kirkland Archive, a curation of limited-edition Kirkland photographs imbued with intimacy, as well as copies of Kirkland’s book, Romance, available with Damiani Books. Hosting the book signing and exhibition is Françoise Kirkland—his wife, collaborator, and enduring muse. Even from the other side of the aperture, she knows how he saw the world was special. “I find it totally irresistible.”

———

This book is a love letter to anyone who is as hopeless a romantic as I am. The idea came to me one night shortly after Douglas died. I had gone to the opening of a beautiful exhibition of photographs by Julie Blackmon at the Fahey/Klein Gallery. I was among friends and colleagues, yet I came home overcome with sadness. I realized that the reason for my despair was not just missing Douglas, but the overwhelming realization that he would no longer take pictures. I wanted to crawl under a rock, but instead I spent the night looking through images which spoke to me of love, connection, togetherness. I had no idea where it would take me, but I knew I felt safe.

Photography was Douglas’ first love. He was a dreamer who saw the world better through his camera. He would roll over in the morning, say, “You look beautiful,” and grab a camera in spite of my protests. The erotic tension that sparks desire is something physical–yes, very physical–and yet also mental. There is a part of me which responds violently to beauty and creativity. It is totally out of my control. This provokes stimulation akin to euphoria. Watching my lover like a voyeur, knowing he is not aware, lusting and admiring him for doing what he does with passion, knowing that it has nothing do with me, takes my breath away. I find it totally irresistible. Romance for me is the willingness to surrender with complete abandon. To feel wild, reckless, with a heart full, full of contradictions, full of love, is a state of grace. It is a precious gift, a seductive, intriguing, and slightly dangerous treasure. Plein les yeux, plein la tête, plein le coeur, plein le corps.—Françoise Kirkland

Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro, photographed by Douglas Kirkland in New York, 1978

Douglas and Françoise, photographed by Douglas Kirkland in Kenya, 1969

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, photographed by Douglas Kirkland in Paris, 1964

Marilyn Monroe and Douglas, photographed by Douglas Kirkland in Hollywood, 1961

Julie Christie and Warren Beatty, photographed by Douglas Kirkland in Vancouver, 1971

Björk and Jeremy Scott, photographed by Douglas Kirkland in Florence, 1998

Nicolas and Caroline, photographed by Douglas Kirkland in Paris, 1972

Daryl Hannah and Tom Hanks, photographed by Douglas Kirkland in Hollywood, 1983

Douglas and Françoise, photographed by Douglas Kirkland in East Hampton, 1969

Brandy and Brian, photographed by Douglas Kirkland in Hollywood, 1994

Audrey Hepburn and Sean Connery, photographed by Douglas Kirkland in Spain, 1975

Jesus Garcia and Lisa Hopkins, photographed by Douglas Kirkland in New York, 2002

Grace Jones, photographed by Douglas Kirkland in Los Angeles, 1986

Marilyn Monroe and Douglas, photographed by Douglas Kirkland in Hollywood, 1961

The post Marilyn, Björk, and Liza, Through the Lens of Douglas Kirkland appeared first on Interview Magazine.

For Chapter 2 of Versace Embodied, designer Dario Vitale’s art-forward campaign, the brand commissioned a large-scale drawing titled “Love Theme 4:55” by New York artist Drake Carr. With work reminiscent of the fashion illustrations of the late Interview collaborator Antonio Lopez, Carr’s drawing is the perfect complement to Vitale’s 80s-inspired Spring Summer 2026 collection. To find out how he brought this collaboration to life, our senior editor called up the artist for a quick chat.

———

DRAKE CARR: Hi.

TAYLORE SCARABELLI: Hi! How was the rest of your time at Parkside the other night? Did you dance?

CARR: I was dancing.

SCARABELLI: I wanted to stay but Slava dragged me home. Probably for the best. Okay. I’m going to start by asking you, how did you feel when you first saw this new Versace collection by Dario? Because you’re such an ’80s diva to me.

CARR: Well, the way that I first saw it was by friends sending it to me saying, “This is so you.” I think you’re someone who also appreciates an ’80s silhouette, music, but there’s also a lot of things from the ’80s I don’t like.

SCARABELLI: Of course.

CARR: And sometimes when people say the thing like, “You’re so ’80s,” it can make me wince a little bit because I agree that I am, but there’s some of it that’s really bad and cheesy. So I loved it when I first saw it. I was like, “Finally.”

SCARABELLI: Was there anything specific that you were drawn to?

CARR: Weirdly, there wasn’t a lot that I was like, “I need to have that.” It was more like this hard to pin down feeling—like it was sexy in the ways that it was unsexy. The weird crotches were doing something for me. The unbuttoned pants. And I loved the butter yellow dress with the diamonds on it. 

SCARABELLI: Me too. Had you done a brand collaboration like this before?

CARR: Not like this. This is the largest scale collaboration and also the largest portrait I’ve done in terms of people and size.

SCARABELLI: Right, because normally you do individual portraits. How was that making something with this bigger cast of people?

CARR: Well, I was excited because I got to choose who I was drawing, but then I started to get stressed because it’s a bit of a confusing math equation trying to figure out everyone’s proportions. 

SCARABELLI: Oh, to fit everyone in, you mean? 

CARR: Yeah. Six people are sitting there staring at me and I’m trying to figure out how to fit them on these two huge panels, but then I sketched it in and I drew/painted each person individually. It was kind of like reverse of the America’s Next Top Model ending credits—

SCARABELLI: The girls reappear instead of disappearing. [Laughs]

CARR: Yeah.

SCARABELLI: Who did you cast for this?

CARR: The first two obvious models were John [Patrikas] and Rose [Mori]. John’s my fiancé and Rose is one of my best friends and I’ve drawn and painted both of them a ton of times, so I know their faces very well. And then Ms. Carrie Stacks and Thug Pop, they are two friends from my bartending days at Happy Fun. They both DJ’d there. And I used to work with Rose there every Friday for almost six years.

SCARABELLI: Oh, cool.

CARR: And then Sebastian [Acero] and Chloé [Despos] are newer friends. She’s like a total fashion head. Actually, one of the reasons the Versace thing felt meant to be was that I was on a trip with her and the girls went shopping, so John and I were like, “We need a runway show.” We went crazy gay guy mode and stayed up till 4:00 A.M. producing a runway production and a look book at this Airbnb. We were picking songs and then setting up like iPhones and camcorders and then doing a catwalk. We were talking about how it felt very Versace because this was right when that collection debuted, on the Aries Supermoon, and then the next day Versace reached out to me. And so I felt like I needed to have Chloe in it because we had kind of conjured this collaboration through our voodoo runway thing.

SCARABELLI: That’s such a beautiful story. We’re so used to fashion campaigns being shot by the hottest photographer who’s done a million editorials and blah, blah, blah. And so to come at it from an art angle, from a fashion fan angle, is so refreshing.

CARR: Well, it felt really emotional for me making this portrait. I also did it in my studio, which is basically an extension of my home. Seeing Rose and John, people who I love, who really know me, in glam wearing Versace, with my music playing, because music is a big part of these portraits. It still sometimes washes over me. All these factors came together and made it a very cinematic, memorable, dream-like moment. And it sounds cheesy, but it really felt the power of friendship and making things with people who you love. It was one of my most favorite things I’ve ever done.

SCARABELLI: Oh, that’s beautiful. So what happens with the work now?

CARR: I have it. It’s a huge piece. It’s eight feet long by six feet tall. I’m hoping to show it in New York so that people can see it in person because it’s way obviously completely different from looking at it on your tiny phone. It’s like a wall when you walk up to it. 

SCARABELLI:Okay. Well, I look forward to seeing it in the flesh. Keep me posted.

CARR: I will.

The post Drake Carr Draws a Very Versace Campaign appeared first on Interview Magazine.

Mouna Ayoub, photographed by Stephane Cardinale.

The French socialite and businesswoman Mouna Ayoub is often referred to as the “Queen of Haute Couture” due to her decades long patronage of the medium, one that only about 1,000 women, per most estimates, have the luxury of enjoying. But after my hourlong conversation with Ayoub earlier this month ahead of an auction featuring her most treasured Dior pieces, it became apparent that she is more of a Godmother. When speaking about this rarified craft, it’s clear that Ayoub, who married the billionaire Saudi businessman Nasser Ibrahim Al-Rashid in 1979, approaches couture with respect, intelligence, and most importantly, heart. Perhaps that’s because she learned from the best, Yves Saint Laurent and John Galliano among them. As Ayoub prepared to part ways with pieces she sees more as works of art than as mere garments, she called me from Monaco to explore her beginnings inside the hushed salons of Paris, the staffed warehouse in France where she stores her collection, and why couture—with the notable exception of Schiaparelli’s Daniel Roseberry—just isn’t as exciting as it used to be.

———

CHRISTOPHER BLACKMON: I want to thank you so much for doing this. I’m really excited about this interview.

MOUNA AYOUB: Thank you.

BLACKMON: You have been named ”the Queen of Haute Couture.” But I want to take it back a little bit. What was your first experience with couture? I think I read that you needed a wedding dress…

AYOUB: It was at Jean-Louis Scherrer at the time. I wanted a wedding dress, but I didn’t want a long gown. I wanted something simple, because it wasn’t a big wedding. It was a wedding that was very official, in the embassy of Saudi Arabia, and I had to be seriously dressed. So I opted for an atelier in duplex blanc and gloves and everything that went with it. That was my first experience. Jean-Louis Scherrer himself came to greet me and he was the nicest person ever.

BLACKMON: Did the love affair start there?

AYOUB: It was instant. I fell in love with couture. I fell in love with everything. It was an experience that was very much connected to my childhood. Because, as you’ve probably read, my mother had a couturier who used to create all her looks. She used to take me to the atelier with her and they’d put me in a corner with some fabrics and dolls and ask me to dress them up. But what I remember very well is that that experience resonated in me as being the sort of life I absolutely wanted for myself in the future. I said, “I will never buy prêt-à-porter. I will only buy couture.”

BLACKMON: It’s often been said that only a thousand women in the world can truly engage in haute couture the way that you have, or the way that Nan Kempner did. For the woman who will be reading this interview, can you explain what it feels like to wear it, versus something you can just buy in a store?

AYOUB: For me, the whole ritual is so important. You first see the défilé, the fashion show. You spot the looks that you like the most and then you take an appointment and go see them. You’re allowed to touch them and see if you like the fabric. When I was skinnier and fitter, I used to be able to try the dresses. [Laughs] Then you say, “Okay, this looks good on me. This color is suitable. This color isn’t.” You choose what you need. Before, I used to choose a lot. I was obsessed with couture. Now, of course, things have changed, and couture has become much more expensive than it used to be, so one has to be careful. But then the première comes and does the first fitting on a toile. A toile is a white fabric, just to see that first. You have to pay a 50% down payment on your order, then she does the toile. After the toile, you say, “Okay, I like it. I don’t like it. I want to change. I’m not so happy. Maybe this isn’t for me,” et cetera.

But the toile is a decisive moment in confirming your order. After that, the fabric is cut and then you do your first fitting with the fabric a month later. Then a month after that, you do the second fitting. I am known to do the most fittings, I think, of all clients, because I’m a perfectionist. I know that’s not really a good quality, but I see every single detail. And of course, from having so much experience, I’ve become even more difficult instead of easier. I have four fittings in all, and then the dress is ready. You pay the other 50%, and you take delivery of your dress.

BLACKMON: You’re very famous for keeping whatever you do buy very close to how it went down the runway. Is that true?

AYOUB: Absolutely. I never, never change any outfit. Not the color, not the fabric, not the shape—nothing. I remember Mr. Yves Saint Laurent, when I went to his salon the first time, I was very young and it was in the ’80s. I made the mistake of asking my ex-husband to come with me. [Laughs] He looked at all the dresses and said, “They’re all beautiful. We will take this one, this one, this one, this one, this one. But they all have to look alike—long sleeves, high necks. Don’t open it in the back.” I mean, he changed everything. And Mr. Yves Saint Laurent was horrified. Then my husband paid and left. He ordered about 11 dresses for me that day. After he left, I told Mr. Saint Laurent, “Don’t you dare touch those dresses. I want them exactly the way they are.” And he said, “But I promised your husband.” I said, “Don’t worry. He’s never going to see them.” And he never saw them. I took delivery of the dresses just the way they were.

BLACKMON: He never asked, “Well, where are those Yves Saint Laurent dresses I paid for?”

AYOUB: He asked me once. And then I said, “I would actually like to wear them if you take me out.” And then he said, “No, no, no. I’m not taking you out.” I said, “Then you’re not going to see them.”

Mouna Ayoub, photographed by Celine Clanet.

BLACKMON: After you get the dress, I know that you do a thing called a mannequinage, where they’re packed with this special tissue paper so that the ordered pieces always keep their shape. But I’m wondering, how else do you take care of these things?

AYOUB: Actually, I went with Mr. [John] Galliano to the Musée des Arts Decoratifs because he wanted to show me all the dresses of Madame Vionnet. I never knew Vionnet before. So we went together and when I saw how they kept the Vionnet dresses—in drawers, flat, covered with silk paper, barely any light, any humidity, anything, and some were kept in boxes. So I started ordering boxes from the same German supplier who supplies those boxes to museums, with a special silk paper. But because boxes are really very bulky, I started sending them to a place called Les Établissements Marolleau, in Braslou, which is right outside Tours—three-and-a-half hours from Paris.

BLACKMON: I know that your Dior auction goes through all the eras of Dior, from Marc Bohan all the way through to Maria Grazia Chiuri. But I want to focus on what most people know you for, which is that Galliano era. What was it about the Galliano hand, the Galliano design, that you just resonated with so much?

AYOUB: I mean, Galliano and I started almost together with Dior. The year he arrived at Dior was the year I got divorced. I was very young when I started with Dior. But when Galliano came, I was 38 or 39. I saw his first collection and it blew my mind. I said, “This is how I want to wear my dresses from now on. This is who I want to be.” It was a big explosion of joy. He’s also a very good storyteller—every piece has a history to it. He had a vision and a technique that were equal to no one.

BLACKMON: You were very famous for buying many pieces from the [Fall 2000] “Clochard” Collection, also known as the Homeless Collection. That was such a significant moment because it really hit a nerve with the French, about whether he was mocking the homeless or not. I’m so shocked that you’re willing to auction the penultimate piece of that—the Egon Schiele piece, the painted piece with the big hat.

AYOUB: Yes, yes. I loved the Clochard Collection. It was like a collection that was made for me. Maybe because I was poor before, I don’t know. This collection had imagination. It had abundant research behind it. And it was the present, not only historical. And you know how it came to life, this collection? He was jogging every morning by the river and he would see clochards. He would stop and talk to them, learn from them, see their clothing and everything. So it’s very imperfect—it was a fragile collection. But I loved the audacity of it.

So that dress, I saw it and I saw the hat. I regret very much not ordering the hat, but I didn’t think I would wear it. The dress is brand-new. Never wore it, never. I always considered it as a unique piece and I didn’t want to damage it. So the story of that dress is that whoever has it will have a brand-new dress.

BLACKMON: From that same collection is the one that Courtney Love made famous because she wore it to the Golden Globes in 2000. It’s the black one with all the wine bottle dangly pieces.

AYOUB: Yes. I love this piece.

BLACKMON: You held onto that piece for 20 years and wore it within the last five years, correct?

AYOUB: Yes, I did wear it in Cannes. This is the only dress in my entire collection that I wore twice. Because normally, I don’t wear my dresses twice. I wore it once at Elton John’s birthday party and then again at the Cannes Film Festival, because I absolutely love this dress. This is the dress that represents the collection the most—the bottles hanging, the keys hanging, the other symbols of the clochard hanging. It’s gorgeous.

BLACKMON: The next one I want to explore is from the Surrealist Collection, Spring 1999. It’s the backwards tuxedo.

AYOUB: Yes.

BLACKMON: Now this one has a special meaning for me, being an American, because Celine Dion wore this to the Oscars that year. It was heavily panned. The American mindset did not understand it. But I want to know what you saw in this and why you loved it so much that you bought it. 

AYOUB: I bought two pieces like that—the dress that was opened like a suit, the black one, and the suit that was open in the back. I loved it because it was something completely new. This is what’s so special about Galliano: he always had a new idea and created drama. I knew it was going to shock a lot of people. I tend to always order pieces that are shocking, and I needed something to liberate me from all the suits that I bought. I don’t know if you noticed, but during the Marc Bohan period, I bought a lot of suits. I thought by ordering suits, I would be more respected and listened to. But this one was totally the opposite of all the suits that I wore before, so I bought it. Maybe I bought it to shock people.

BLACKMON: And where did you end up wearing it?

AYOUB: In Matignon, at a dinner with Madame Chirac. And the suit I wore at a lunch, also in Paris, I think.

BLACKMON: How does it sit on the body? Is it comfortable?

AYOUB: Oh, it really wears exactly like a dress.It’s very well-designed. See, this is the genius of les petites mains, the premières. You can give them anything and they make it totally wearable and comfortable.  I think, if I remember very well, I was asking myself the same question: “If I order it, will it sit on me?” And I was very surprised to see that it sat very well on me.

BLACKMON: I think this next look is from Galliano’s first collection, the one that he did at the Le Grand Hotel in Paris for Spring 1997, the Maasai dresses. The short one, with the kind of beaded panel. It’s very much a departure from what you had bought before.

AYOUB: I love the Maasai Collection. I was so afraid to lose the beads—there’s a lot of beadwork in it.

BLACKMON: What was it about this dress?

AYOUB: It wasn’t just clothes. This is a story. It was like I traveled to Africa, really. I learned more about the Maasai through this collection than by reading a book about the Maasai. I didn’t realize that they had such beautiful beads. I fell in love with this collection because there was the story of a continent, and a story in the present. Africa was present in Europe, and vice-versa. The couture, there was freedom in it. There was artistic freedom, freedom of imagination.

BLACKMON: Did you actually wear this one?

AYOUB: Yes, I did wear this in 2000, in Marseille. I was invited to lunch with the mayor for my exhibition, because I had an exhibition in Marseille.

BLACKMON: Is that the one that Karl Lagerfeld did the cover for?

AYOUB: Yes. And again, because it’s a mixture of a dress and a suit—I was very into suits. It took me a while to develop my taste a little bit. This was an absolute perfect combination for me to wear at a mayor’s lunch. You see what I mean?

BLACKMON: I love these last two dresses, so I saved them for last, because they’re the most, I guess, outré. The first one is from the Fall 1999 Matrix Collection, the red coat with the croc patches.

AYOUB: I love this red coat. You know how much I suffered to put it up? I put it for sale, I remove it from sale. I put it up for sale. But the reason why I decided to part with it is because I am too old to wear red.

BLACKMON: Says who?

AYOUB: I just couldn’t see myself wearing a red coat anymore. I’m approaching my 70s now.

BLACKMON: That’s young.

AYOUB: Yeah. [Laughs] That’s what they say, but it’s not true. I thought it was perfect when I was 40, 45. Somebody that age will look much better in it than myself, so I let it go.

BLACKMON: That collection was so beautiful, almost schizophrenic. It was everywhere, both historical and modern.

AYOUB: There were a couple of other pieces in this collection that I chose. There was a black dress and a green dress, I think. And the green sweater and the red sweater that I loved so much. Okay, I’m going to tell you something that my grandmother told me when I was a little girl. She said, “Don’t you ever wear red, Mouna.” And I said, “Why?” She said, “Because this is a color that prostitutes wear when they want to seduce a man.” So I remembered that all my life and I never ordered red. [Laughs] You will not see any red in my collection. But when I saw this coat, I kind of rebelled against what my grandmother said. I said, “That is not true, what my grandmother told me. This is such a beautiful piece and I’m going to own it.” There were always lots of compliments when I wore this coat, so I did very well by buying it. And this is a coat that Dior doesn’t have. You know why?

BLACKMON: No.

AYOUB: Because I bought the runway model.

BLACKMON: Oh, wow.

AYOUB: Yeah. I’m very happy that you mentioned this coat, because I’ve given a few interviews and nobody mentioned this coat. And I said, “What’s wrong? Nobody loves this coat?”

BLACKMON: The last look, again, is such a beautiful departure from what you usually would wear, but it’s also very “Mouna Ayoub.” There’s some experimentation, an audacity. It’s the Fall 2001 look with the leather chaps and the jeans and the big quilted floor-length coat. It’s so full-on Galliano as well. 

AYOUB: A friend of mine, his name is Eric Dionne, he’s a movie director and producer. He was filming a movie about Andy Warhol and he said, “I want you to be in this movie and I want you to wear your most extravagant dress that you have in your closet.” I didn’t have anything extravagant, because you can see that my taste was quite serious. So I went to Dior and I saw this collection. I chose it to be in the movie because I’m supposed to be the best friend of Andy Warhol, and his best friend used to dress up very unusual and all that. And this is, again, a runway piece. It’s not a piece that is made especially for me. It was a piece that the model wore on the runway, with the hats and everything.

BLACKMON: Okay, I’ll stop asking you about the dresses, but I do have a few more questions. You are a beautiful woman. When you’re wearing couture, especially the more extravagant pieces, I’m interested in the male gaze. Is there a difference?

AYOUB: When I’m wearing couture, not one man comes and talks to me.

BLACKMON: Really?

AYOUB: Yeah. I think they are intimidated by such an important garment, so they really stay away from me, probably because they think that I’m not affordable. When I’m wearing jeans and a T-shirt, I have many more people approach me and talk to me. And they don’t understand that your relationship to those couture pieces is a love relationship. You are in love with those pieces, and you love couture, and you don’t care about what people are going to say. It’s an endless love story. Women have much more interest in couture. Men, not so much. 

BLACKMON: I’m curious—in the auction, what was the most expensive dress?

AYOUB: I think it’s a Galliano piece. Well, the most expensive piece, I didn’t put for sale. I still have it. That would be the royal gold-embroidered dress.

BLACKMON: It’s no secret that you are a woman of means, but was there ever a time where you thought, “I’m sorry, this is just too expensive”?

AYOUB: No. In couture, nothing is too expensive for me. What I find expensive is the prêt-à-porter. I wanted a skirt made out of feathers from a prêt-à-porter collection and when they gave me the price, which was 200,000 euros, I said, “This is crazy.” I would [rather] go buy couture. With couture, it’s kind of justified, because there are so many hours, so many people involved. There are so many beautiful fabrics that last forever. So no, for couture, I always say yes to the special pieces. My gold dress that I donated to the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris had 1,920 hours of embroidery. And that’s my aim: to continue encouraging les petites mains, the designers, the premières, the ateliers.

BLACKMON: What was the criteria for the stuff that did make the auction? Was it that they weren’t as sentimental to you? 

AYOUB: Well, there are a couple of reasons. The first reason is that they don’t fit me. I absolutely can’t fit in any of them. I have kept some of Karl’s dresses, but I had to send them back to be enlarged, and that was such a difficult process. I waited two years, longer than for a dress that was brand new.

BLACKMON: Wow.

AYOUB: The second reason is that I’m keeping them in boxes in storage outside Paris and I’m not enjoying them anymore, so I prefer for somebody else to enjoy them. Couture today is very, very expensive. And when I allow a younger generation to buy in my auctions, they can afford it. It’s much more affordable than buying it new. And my pieces are brand-new anyway, because I don’t wear them more than once—except for the Matrix coat and the Clochard dress, but they were both Galliano pieces. But at the end of the day, every collection has a life, and every collection has an end of life.

BLACKMON: So, Karl is no longer with us.

AYOUB: And Valentino [Garavani].

BLACKMON: I heard the news just an hour before we spoke. Mr. Gaultier is in a retirement-like stage. Even Galliano isn’t really working, and we’re not sure if he’s going into retirement or not. So, with what’s happening in couture today, does it still excite you the way it did in the ’80s and ’90s and early 2000s?

AYOUB: Yes. It’s not as exciting, except when it comes to Schiaparelli. I love Daniel Roseberry. He is so talented. It’s beautiful what he does. But it’s not really only the designer that matters to me. It’s the couture. It’s the fact that a dress requires so many hours of work—first the designer, then the premières, then the embroiderers, then the plumasserie if they are doing feathers in it, then the hours of confection. It’s the story behind each dress that interests me. So, for sure, I will find one or two dresses with the new designers. But definitely, the ’80s and the ’90s were much more exciting than today, apart from Roseberry, who always puts on a show that’s very exciting.

BLACKMON: I know that you had an auction 10 years ago, and you said something to France 3, the television news station, that I thought was really interesting. You were speaking broadly to anyone who bought these prêt-à-porter items that you had put up for auction that was also for charity. You said, “Wear them. Do not do what I did. Don’t put them in your closets. I looked at them as if they were works of art.” And with that, plus all the subsequent auctions you’ve had, that to me sounds like a woman whose interests are fundamentally changing. So I just want to know, at this stage in your life, is it just that you’re moving on to other interests?

AYOUB: It’s true, I used to order a lot, especially when couture was exciting. We had Karl, we had Galliano, we had Jean-Paul Gaultier. Every year, four or five pieces from each designer. And now, I don’t know what to order anymore. I’m busy doing other things. I have my grandchildren. I look after them whenever their parents can’t. So I wouldn’t say I will move away from couture, because couture will always be the center of my life, my interests. But instead of ordering 10 pieces a year, I will probably be happy with three or four. This is where I am now. So I’m moving slowly away from it, but not entirely, never entirely. I absolutely love the art of haute couture.

Mouna Ayoub, photographed by Celine Clanet.

The post “In Couture, Nothing Is Too Expensive For Me”: Inside Mouna Ayoub’s Dior Auction appeared first on Interview Magazine.

Martine Gutierrez, photographed by Emily Sandstrom.

MONDAY 6:40 PM JANUARY 27, 2026 CHELSEA

Walking to the annual Whitney Art Party last night in blistering cold, I realized I didn’t know what a co-chair was. “How do you co-chair a party? Or even just chair it?” I wondered while being pummeled by arctic gusts. Does anyone know, or are we all just pretending? I’m pretending. At the museum, my body is still acclimating to indoor temperature when I meet Martine Gutierrez, the blindingly gorgeous artist who happens to be co-chairing the party, the first event I can remember putting The Dare, Martha Stewart and I all in the same room. Crawling around on the floor of a gallery that shoots off from the main hall, Gutierrez and I got into some important stuff: Louboutins, America’s Next Top Model, setting-spray, performance art. As for her duties as co-chair, we both drew a blank. “I have no idea,” she told me. “I’m looking for the chair.”

———

SANDSTROM: How cold are you right now?

GUTIERREZ: Frozen. 

SANDSTROM: Me too. What does a co-chair actually do? Do you know? I don’t know.

GUTIERREZ: I have no idea. I’m looking for the chair. I came in and I didn’t see a chair. 

SANDSTROM: And now we’re on the ground.

GUTIERREZ: I guess that’s what happens when no one’s prepared.

SANDSTROM: Are you excited to be here?

GUTIERREZ: I’m excited to see friends who are in the arts. It’s been so bleak.

SANDSTROM: Like winter or…?

GUTIERREZ: Just looking out into the ether of the world, the news, the political indigestion. It’s worse than that. It’s like vomit.

SANDSTROM: It’s really bad. 

GUTIERREZ: We’re a mess.

SANDSTROM: How do you feel?

GUTIERREZ: I don’t feel like a mess, but that’s only because of my friends.

SANDSTROM: That’s nice.

GUTIERREZ: That’s why I look like this tonight.

SANDSTROM: Can you tell me about your beautiful outfit? And your makeup?

GUTIERREZ: Yes. My friend did my makeup, Jake [Dupont] and another friend did my hair, Sonny [Molina]. And I got dressed all on my own, like a big girl.

SANDSTROM: Cute. Where’s the dress from? 

GUTIERREZ: This I’ve had forever. I wore it actually in a magazine that I made years ago in 2018. Did you clock the dress? I have a giant bundle of sticks on my head in the picture.

SANDSTROM: You have that dress on in the cover picture, right?

GUTIERREZ: No, but it is close to the cover.

SANDSTROM: I was looking at that cover image again today and I was like, “Oh, it’s so Richard Bernstein,” like the early Interview covers, which I know was intentional right?

GUTIERREZ: Yeah. I’m a big fan. 

SANDSTROM: Tell me more about your relationship to the magazine?

GUTIERREZ: I have a few old copies that probably should be in an archive somewhere. They’re just in these plastic pH-safe slips, corroding away. You can see the acidity in the paper kind of breaking down. I don’t know if I should scan them or if I should donate them. I just don’t touch them.

SANDSTROM: Keep them away from light in a bag, I think?

GUTIERREZ: Yeah, they’re literally shut in a closet. It’s almost like I don’t own them at all.

SANDSTROM: That imagery–the early covers, the brightness, what does that do for you? 

GUTIERREZ: It makes me want to draw. There’s something very tactile about them. I mean, I went to school for printmaking, so I’m looking at them from a technical vantage point.

SANDSTROM: The theme tonight is maximalism. What are you hoping to see tonight? Sorry, we’re just doing a quick interview in here, but we’ll be done in two seconds. 

SECURITY: What time are you going to be done?

SANDSTROM: Like, five more minutes.

SECURITY: Oh.

SANDSTROM: Thank you.

GUTIERREZ: Thank you. For the record, security tried to ask us to leave.

SANDSTROM: But we’re never leaving. We’re going to crawl around in here. 

GUTIERREZ: No one recognizes me. I look too good.

SANDSTROM: What are you hoping to see tonight?

GUTIERREZ: Martha Stewart. And what was the theme?

SANDSTROM: Maximalism.

GUTIERREZ: I didn’t know that. I mean, it’s too late now. There’s no turning back. The last time I was in here, I was wearing a dress made of toilet paper.

SANDSTROM: Was that for Supremacy?

GUTIERREZ: Yeah. I made this gown and it fell apart everywhere. So by the end of the night—I felt so bad—there was toilet paper everywhere. You could see it stuck to people’s feet. It was being tracked places I had never even been in the building.

SANDSTROM: That’s really funny.

GUTIERREZ: There’s a picture somewhere.

SANDSTROM: In the Supremacy show, America’s Next Top Model is referenced in the press release. Did you see there’s a Netflix documentary coming out about the show?

GUTIERREZ: Sunny literally just told me about this.

SANDSTROM: I want to know what your top ANTM moments are. Or you can say your favorite judge or favorite winner?

GUTIERREZ: Oh my god. It’s too hard to summarize. And I hate pitting my girls against each other. But I will say that the show taught me everything I know now. That show is the reason I stand before you now with two girls in my hands.

SANDSTROM: Now you’re the two girls.

GUTIERREZ: Yeah, depending on the night.

SANDSTROM: What does the art world need more of?

GUTIERREZ: Money.

SANDSTROM: You said in Cultured that you want people to ask you stupider questions. What is the stupidest question you have been asked this week so far?

GUTIERREZ: Oh, I don’t remember. It was so stupid.

SANDSTROM: What was the dumbest question that you asked this week?

GUTIERREZ: “What’s a co-chair?”

SANDSTROM: That was the dumbest question I asked this week, too. Okay, it’s 2026. Should we still believe in institutions?

GUTIERREZ: I mean, do you believe in magic?

SANDSTROM: Yes.

GUTIERREZ: So if you can believe in magic, you can probably believe in anything.

SANDSTROM: What do you believe in?

GUTIERREZ: Fire horse.

SANDSTROM: What are you done with?

GUTIERREZ: I dare not say, for becoming some kind of political symbol any more than I have. I want this to be a fashion interview.

SANDSTROM: Okay, your amazing Louboutins. Are they d’Orsay pumps?

GUTIERREZ: They are. Look, never been worn. This is their moment.

SANDSTROM: They’re so silky.

GUTIERREZ: They’re actually kind of impossible to wear. There’s something quite bridal about them.

SANDSTROM: They are very bridal. Does it annoy you when people try to politicize you and your art?

GUTIERREZ: I understand that I have made a spectacle of myself. I think I’m becoming The Naked Girl. Famously naked, publicly shameless. And these are the repercussions.

SANDSTROM: Well, we love it. I have one art question and then one question about your makeup. Which one do you want first?

GUTIERREZ: I didn’t realize I was in control. I’ve been trying to surrender control.

SANDSTROM: What do you want to see more of at the Whitney?

GUTIERREZ: I can’t wait to see all the new young children, the young crop of artists that are going to be in the Biennial.

SANDSTROM: And you’re going to be in the Biennial too, right?

GUTIERREZ: Yes and no.

SANDSTROM: What does that mean?

GUTIERREZ: I technically am, but physically will not. I’m doing a performance.

SANDSTROM: Oh, nice.

GUTIERREZ: It’s not happening here, but it’s very close. But the Whitney, it was all their idea. They said, “We’d love to have you.” And I said, “Yay.” It’s going to be on Little Island.

SANDSTROM: I’m curious about that space. It’s … What is that word? Biophilic?

GUTIERREZ: Mm-hmm.

SANDSTROM: What do you want to see from the kids at the Biennial?

GUTIERREZ: I just want to see them feeding the world.

SANDSTROM: Lovely. How do you keep your makeup on? Hairspray, setting spray? Tell me your secrets.

GUTIERREZ: I keep it on because I’m kissing no one. Nothing’s touching my lips today.

SANDSTROM: When you get dressed to leave the house, do you ever double-check yourself?

GUTIERREZ: You mean check myself in the mirror and say, “Tonight, you are going to be a good girl, Martine. Tonight, you’re not going to make waves. You’re going to be a lady. You’re going to cross your legs at the ankle.”

SANDSTROM: [Laughs] No, like, do you ever doubt yourself?

GUTIERREZ: No. Never.

The post “Famously Naked, Publicly Shameless”: Inside the Whitney Art Party With Martine Gutierrez appeared first on Interview Magazine.

Sterling Ruby, photographed by Maya Spangler.

Now based in Los Angeles, the artist Sterling Ruby consistently turns to his city for inspiration, infusing his prolific, materially diverse body of work with electric hues and an industrial edge. The 54-year-old Dutch-American does things blotchy, bleached, and bright—from his paintings and drawings to his soft-sculpture, garments, and ceramics. Beginning this weekend, a new exhibition of his work, Atropa, opens at Sprüth Magers, featuring a number of watercolors, nature-focused graphite drawings, small-scale pen-and-ink studies, all governed by the notion that we are all going to die one day. But the celebrity stylist and creative director Karla Welch isn’t so afraid of death, which makes her the perfect audience for Ruby’s work. “I really don’t have any say in the matter,” she quipped when the two got on a Zoom call last week, “so I’ll take that Chardonnay with some ice.” Below, the old friends reunite for a wide-ranging conversation about trance states, plant life, forensic psychics, fashion economics and, of course, Formula 1.

———

STERLING RUBY: Hi, how are you doing?

KARLA WELCH: Good. How are you? Happy New Year.

RUBY: Happy New Year, yeah.

WELCH: I like how every “how are you doing?” is with the preface that we know we’re not doing great. But thank you for having me interview you. I’m sure others weren’t available and I was happy to.

RUBY: No!

WELCH: I’m teasing you. But I wrote down all my questions because I would never ChatGPT any of this. I apologize in advance if I have to look at my questions. But first, congratulations.

RUBY: Thank you.

WELCH: Well, it’s kind of amazing. 

RUBY: What’s amazing?

WELCH: Your show, the pieces.

RUBY: Oh, thank you.

WELCH: The title’s a little intense.

RUBY: The Atropa? The nightshade Atropa belladonna?

WELCH: Well, the Fates. The idea of being the one who cuts the thread and the life.

RUBY: I’ve wanted to title a show this for a while. I love the witchy aspect of the nightshade. It’s been a long time now, but I have glaucoma. 

WELCH: Oh, okay. Do you smoke weed for that?

RUBY: No.

WELCH: Okay. Well, good for you.

RUBY: I was first diagnosed when I was 18, so I’ve had it a long, long time. But every four to six months I go to my ophthalmologist and they do these tests.

WELCH: The pressure tests? My mom has glaucoma.

RUBY: Yeah. And atropine, this liquid, is a source from atropa, like a belladonna flower. So it’s essentially nightshade that they drip into your eye.

WELCH: You’re poisoning your eyes?

RUBY: It’s under control. They dilate your pupils, so your pupils are just huge, and they take these crystals and they actually touch your eye with them and they shine this extremely heavy light into them. So you get this prism that just shoots through your peripheral vision. And in terms of the Atropa and the mythology, this was the way that witches would have astral projection. This would put you into a trance state. It’s such a surreal experience, and it’s still every six months. I love doing it. It’s really, really fun.

WELCH: That is not where I thought that was going to go but that’s incredible. So when you leave, are you seeing little fractals? Are you seeing little glimmers? Do you walk around like a shiny little star? 

RUBY: A little bit, yeah.

WELCH: I’ll be calling my mom immediately.

RUBY: Ask her about it.

WELCH: So you started these drawings 30 years ago?

RUBY: Well, I started drawing like this 30 years ago. I went to this school in Pennsylvania and we just drew. We drew the nude figures. We did a little bit of watercolor, a little bit of painting. Most of that would be landscape painting out in the field on an easel. The school was based on the Wyeth family tradition, the Brandywine School, so it was a lot of nice art materials—like heavy French Arches, dark graphite pencils, and a lot of erasers. I didn’t really draw like that for many, many years, maybe 15, 16 years. And then just a few years ago, I started going back into it and it felt kind of nostalgic.

WELCH: Oh, that’s nice. Well, when I first saw this work, I was like, “I wonder if it’s optimistic or pessimistic.” I couldn’t decide if you were feeling happy or a little bonkers when you’re doing this stuff, because it’s super graphic and a little wild.

RUBY: I think it should always be both. I mean, I’m sure that you feel this way too. When you see a collection or when you—

WELCH: But it’s not the same, Sterling. I zip up dresses for a living. [Laughs] There’s no sense of permanence to what I do.

RUBY: Well, it should always be a bit of both. I really don’t like it when [art] is just beyond didactic and you know everything about it. I think that there should be a sense of mystery, some sort of distortion or twist. 

WELCH: Are you afraid of death?

RUBY: Maybe. Yeah, I’m sure I am. Are you?

WELCH: I can’t decide. I don’t want to die early. But sometimes I’m on a plane and I get up there and I’m like, “Well, I really don’t have any say in the matter, so I’ll take that Chardonnay with some ice.” It’s only really going to be a bummer for everybody who’s left—I think that’s the sad part. So I’m not really afraid of it, I’m just not in any mood to anticipate it happening anytime soon.

RUBY: Yeah. Have you had to explain death to your child yet?

WELCH: You know what? My husband did it so amazingly. His grandfather died and they were our best friends. Our son was maybe eight or nine, and they had just gotten super into Star Wars. So he’s like, “He’s part of the Force now.”

RUBY: My youngest daughter is so obsessed. My mother died a long time ago and my youngest daughter is just really upset that she never got to meet her. There’s altars all over the house to my mom. The world could use more monuments to mothers.

WELCH: Oh, I love that.

RUBY: So today’s my birthday.

WELCH: Oh, what? Happy birthday.

RUBY: Thank you.

WELCH: Jeez Louise!

RUBY: Well, I wouldn’t have brought this up unless it was a funny story. So my youngest daughter wakes me up really early and she’s like, “I have something for you set up by the fireplace.” I go down and it’s yet another altar to my mother. And she was like, “Your mother’s here.”

WELCH: Aw, that’s love. Well, many, many, many, many years from now, I hope she gets to meet her and have a little kiki.

RUBY: She finds it completely fascinating, but it’s also so present in our house. 

WELCH: I had a crazy experience. I mean, this is going to be the most L.A. conversation ever. I spoke with this psychic in November, a forensic psychic up in Canada who actually solves a lot of crimes. She’s a psychic who can help guide your life, but she also communes with the past. She’s blonde and super attractive and talking a mile a minute and has “Live, Laugh, Love” behind her. So I’m like, “What the fuck is happening?” And Sterling, she just started talking about all my relatives. There was no way. She’s like, “Oh, there’s Irma. There’s Tony.” Tony’s my dad’s father who passed away when he was really young and I’ve never met him. She’s like, “There are so many Italians up here waving at you.” They were all there and I just burst into tears. She goes, “Yeah, you have to cry or you won’t go to the bathroom for a week after I’m done here.” It was wild. It was unbelievable.

RUBY: That’s amazing.

WELCH: It was kind of amazing. So when I pass, I want to be with my dogs and hang out with the living, if we’re so lucky.

RUBY: As a child, I was very scared of the idea of dying. Years and years went by and [I realized] it was just anxiety.

WELCH: What was your favorite thing to do as a teenager?

RUBY: My favorite thing was to get out of town. It didn’t matter what it was.

WELCH: You’ve told me that you made clothes as a teenager, and you know how much I loved the collection you made. I mean, you’ve made a couple, but I really wish I’d stolen some of the samples, all that stuff with the plaids. Would you ever do another collection?

RUBY: Yeah, I think we would. To go back to my mother, she was an incredible person. She was Dutch and really young when she came to the States. I went to this school that had two different curriculums that were considered “creative.” One was home economics, but you weren’t allowed to take it. The boys took drafting and woodworking, but my mother would petition every semester to let me take calligraphy too, and we would design our wedding invitations in calligraphy.

WELCH: How modern.

RUBY: I was going to this school, I was listening to a lot of music, and I wanted to look a certain way. I don’t know how you felt when you were growing up where you did in Canada, but for me it was very powerful to go to school looking a certain way that most of the students were really against. It was just a big F you. And then later on I realized, “Oh, this is so interesting, the idea of making clothes.” My grandmother, my aunts, they all made everything. So it felt very crafty, it felt very earthy. So yeah, I do love it. And I would love to make another collection.

WELCH: Obviously you’re incredibly prolific. You’re the top dog, you’re Sterling Ruby, you’re this fine artist. And then you move into a space like the fashion world where there are a lot of “top dogs” and a lot of different types of people to work with. How did you find that collaboration? Because the work you’ve done there is so interesting and really quite profound. That Calvin Klein collection was incredible, especially when it was craft, Bonnie Cashin etc.

RUBY: I was excited because it was such a big jump to take this American brand and try and bring it back to the forefront of high fashion. But I also think with the history of Calvin Klein and working with John Pawson and working with Donald Judd, it had a precedent that made a lot of sense. I mean, they were all my friends from Clémande [Burgevin Blachman] and Matthieu [Blazy] and Peiter [Mulier] and Raf [Simons]. For them, I think, it was really exciting because they were European. And I loved how excited they were. I still feel that way whenever I do a project that’s outside, whether it’s making a record or a piece of jewelry or working on a runway show. I like that it gives me a chance to do something else that isn’t just making a piece of art, and there’s a task or an exercise associated with that. But to a certain extent, Calvin Klein was the first chance I got to really understand how the industry operates.

WELCH: Being in Long Beach and seeing just the sheer amount of things that get made—that, to me, was the most depressing thing.

RUBY: It was cheaper to make 1,000 of something than 100. And immediately after the collection was dropped, you’d have a two-week window for it to be at full-price before it gets marked down.

WELCH: That’s a whole other conversation, and I agree with you completely. The whole system is a mess, which is sad. But I love this about you—you’re so generous that you can just step in and make things with people. And you felt it in the collection. Lately I’ve bought a bunch of pieces from that first collection and I love them, so I hope you make more clothes.

RUBY: Thank you. I hope so too. I would love for somebody to come and say, “I will help you do this,” but there’s always a real catch to that.

WELCH: There usually is. Where is our $20 million check?

RUBY: Maybe you and I should start our own company.

WELCH: Okay, great.

RUBY: Get a really good backer.

WELCH: I’m in.

RUBY: I’m in too.

WELCH: I have some dumb and fun questions for you since we’ve been very, although I didn’t really ask you all my questions, I’m looking at my clipboard and all my handwritten stuff. So I’ll start with, what is your favorite pen or pencil to work with?

RUBY: Oh…

WELCH: I actually don’t think that’s a dumb question at all because I’m real specific about my Papermate here.

RUBY: This is a uni-ball Vision line pen. It’s waterproof. And for pencils, I’m a real stickler for the German, the Staedtler.

WELCH: Good answer. I know you’re a big collector of lots of stuff. What’s your most favorite thing you’ve ever collected? It can be a grouping or a single item.

RUBY: Well, it changes.

WELCH: Give me just one thing.

RUBY: I bought this group of silverware recently. It’s a Dansk Odin. It has a slight design skew to it that makes it a little bit more geometric. And the collection comes with these serving spoons.

WELCH: Oh, yeah.

RUBY: And this little incense holder. I’m pretty sure that’s from the Steinbach company, but it’s a weird oddity that I’ve never seen before.

WELCH: I love it. Do you know all those Japanese wood dolls?

RUBY: Yeah, they come in different sizes?

WELCH: Yeah, but I just got this one that looks like a pinecone, and there are two spaces for little faces—these two little happy people inside of the cone. I could look at that all day long and just feel so happy.

 RUBY: Anything pinecone or acorn, I’m obsessed.

WELCH: Well, that leads me to the most perfect question of all. It could even be the last question. Who is going to win the F1 2026-27 season? And you can only give me one—

RUBY: George Russell.

WELCH: Oh my god.

RUBY: Shocker, right? But it’s going to happen.

WELCH: You should go put whatever you’re willing to lose in Vegas right now because there’s no way George Russell is going to win.

RUBY: He’ll win.

WELCH: Okay.

RUBY: Who do you think? Who are you rooting for?

WELCH: Max [Verstappen], but. I love rooting for almost everybody. Of course I would love to see Lewis [Hamilton] and Charles [Leclerc] do amazing, but I never have any hopes there. So I think Max Verstappen’s going to win. We should each place a hundred bucks.

RUBY: We’ll make a wager.

WELCH: I look forward to taking your money.

RUBY: We’ll see…

WELCH: Well, congratulations on the show because I love it so much.

RUBY: Thanks so much, Karla.

The post “Are You Afraid of Death?”: Sterling Ruby, in Conversation With Karla Welch appeared first on Interview Magazine.

David Bowie, photographed by Herb Ritts for Interview in May 1990.

50 years after the release of Station to Station—the album that captured David Bowie in a state of transit, suspended between European modernism and American soul—his refusal to settle still defines the work. Originally published in May 1990, writer Glenn O’Brien’s conversation with the Interview cover star finds the artist at another inflection point. Nearly two decades after Bowie first appeared at Andy Warhol’s “place of business”—then largely unknown in the United States—to perform his song “Andy Warhol,” he was once again on the verge of a new beginning. On the eve of his “putting the songs to bed” tour, Bowie speaks candidly about repetition, collaboration, and the risks of becoming too easily understood. To mark the anniversary of Station to Station, below is the original 1990 Interview feature with David Bowie, as told to Glenn O’Brien.—OLAMIDE OYENUSI

———

The first time I met David Bowie was about eighteen years ago. It was shortly before the release of his first album in America, and he had come up to Andy Warhol’s place of business to perform his composition “Andy Warhol.” Andy had never heard of him—which was no insult; hardly anyone in the United States had heard of him then, Andy was a little embarrassed to be serenaded, but he acquiesced and listened attentively while Bowie sang and mimed the song. Bowie had long blond hair and wore Mary Jane shoes and one blue sock and one red. The next time I saw him was less than a year later, in England. I caught him performing with his band, the Spiders From Mars, and he really rocked the house. This time he had short blond hair, or maybe red, and was well into an alien fashion mode that would soon sweep the world. Soon he was huge and changing his look and stage persona with remarkable frequency. He was always something else: an extraterrestrial, an androgyne, an aristocrat, a banana-republic dictator. Bowie’s personas never seemed too gimmicky. They were part metaphor, part shtick, part put-on, part character, but they were all informed by the real dude.

Over the years Bowie has proved himself to be a preeminent artist in what’s loosely known as rock ‘n’ roll. He’s made some of the most significant music of our time, usually pushing the envelope of the pop arts in the process. At best his songs are both fine-art gems and mass rhythmic social movements. He has always maintained a yogic balance between the cerebral and the pelvic, and that has kept him loose, outside the pack, and on the nose cone of our time, Superficially, Bowie, might be seen as a chameleon picking up the arriving trend and riding it. But I think he has always been genuinely ahead of the times. Some might attribute that to marketing genius, but it would seem to have more to do with a brilliantly low threshold of boredom and a healthy capacity for self-indulgence. He’s a guy who always does what he likes.

Over the years this has included pursuing many musical and theatrical directions, acting in films such as The Man Who Fell to Earth; Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence; Absolute Beginners; and The Last Temptation of Christ and producing artists such as Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. A year or so ago, after a sort of vacation from the front lines, Bowie put together a new band. This time it was to be a real collaborative band, not a backup band. Tin Machine consists of Bowie, guitarist Reeves Gabrels, and the brothers Hunt and Tony Sales on drums and bass. It is a hard-edged, tough-minded band, tough enough to pull off the Bowie-as-a-band-member stuff. They’re now working on a second album.

At the moment Tin Machine’s singer and rhythm guitarist, David Bowie, is touring the world as a headliner, backed by a band led by guitarist Adrian Belew. This is Bowie’s “putting the songs to bed” tour. He says that after this tour you’ll never hear these golden hits again. Another publicity stunt? Can this be the end of Major Tom? I asked David Bowie about these and other things when I talked to him at his rehearsal space in New York just before the tour kicked off. He was wearing worn black jeans and a red turtleneck—very much the regular guy. Which he is—maybe in a way that only the best artists and average Joes can be. Thinking about all the versions of Bowie I’ve seen, all those costumes and personalities, I’m sure that indeed there always was a regular guy behind them. I mean, isn’t art just a way of making the world safe for sincerity?

———

GLENN O’BRIEN: Tell us about your tour.

DAVID BOWIE: It’s the “putting the songs to bed tour. I’m going to be doing between twenty-five and thirty-five songs, closely associated with me, and then not do them any-more, because I’m moving on. Bye-bye, Major Tom, forever…

O’BRIEN: Are you signing a contract on this? Are you sure?

BOWIE: Yes, absolutely. This is it. And I’m relieved. Knowing that I won’t ever have those songs to rely on again spurs me to keep doing new things, which is good for an artist.

O’BRIEN: You did retire from the stage once before.

BOWIE: I think ’73 was the only time I retired. But all I said was that it was the last performance of Ziggy and the Spiders. And indeed it was. I didn’t say that I was going to stop performing altogether.

O’BRIEN: Did you get this idea by seeing some venerable group doing their old hits?

BOWIE: I’d like to say that was how I got the idea. But I think it was the excitement I found being generated by Tin Machine that made me realize that I wanted to put myself in a group context, which I’ve never done.

O’BRIEN: Even when you started out, you were never really an equal member in a group.

BOWIE: No, I never felt that need. I never felt that matey. It was very much my own show, but I’ve changed considerably over the years, and now I do enjoy relaxing my responsibilities artistically and trying to feel a bit more open to other people’s ideas in terms of what we can do. Using the royal we…

O’BRIEN: I remember when I saw you playing with Iggy Pop you really seemed to be having a good time just being one of the boys in the band.

BOWIE: I did enjoy that. I enjoyed not having to say, “O.K., we’ll do it this way” or “Let’s stay in that hotel.” Of course, there are times when I find it difficult to keep my mouth shut, and I want to throw in more than my two cents’ worth.

O’BRIEN: Are you doing something with dance on this “putting the songs to bed” tour?

BOWIE: I’m working with Edouard Lock, from a Canadian dance company. La La La Human Steps is absolutely fantastic-they’re one of the most expressive and aggressive dance troupes that I’ve ever seen. Their chief dancer, Louise Lecavalier, is doing prerecorded pieces with me. Whatever I do tends to have some kind of theatrical device attached to it, but this one is a lot simpler than anything l’ve done before. We’re experimenting with a series of video-interactive devices that we can work with onstage, with prerecorded pieces of footage which are shown and projected in a substantially new way.

O’BRIEN: I thought you were going to be with dancers onstage.

BOWIE: There will be dance within the program, but it will be footage treated and slow-mo’ed, and used more as atmosphere. It will feature Louise, just one person.

O’BRIEN: Will you have a video of this show?

BOWIE: We’re intending to film it for posterity; I should hope so. I’ve always regretted not having filmed things like the “Diamond Dogs” show. We never filmed the “Station to Station” show. Or the “soul” show with Dave Sanborn and those guys. I have absolutely no footage of those things. It’s terrible. Rod Srewart has footage from 1908-well, from quite a long way back. I’ve got the “Ziggy Stardust” thing, and that’s about it. That’s all I’ve got. It’s infuriating.

O’BRIEN: Do you pay attention to what’s going on now with pop music?

BOWIE: I have an incredibly hard time with it at the moment. It’s all so dispirited and sexless. There’s this strange atmosphere now that’s come over sex that I’m particularly angry about. Sex is suddenly once again the unmentionable word, and one wonders if that’s going to lead to more right-wing thinking and to a kind of fucking depressing grayness to the quality of life. It’s a return to everything that we despised in the early ’60s. I do like the Pixies. I think they’re great. I think Sonic Youth are wonderful. I must say I still like The Cure. It’s marvelous that they’ve actually got a huge audience over here now. There are a number of bands that are good to listen to, but it really doesn’t seem that there is access for new people anymore. I just named the three bands that probably will get access, but for other new bands there is no radio they can use, and MTV won’t play anything unless it makes money for MTV. With all the media that we have now it’s less possible to put over good music than it was when we didn’t have all those facilities, which is ludicrous.

O’BRIEN: It seems to me that the real leadership artistically has totally gone over to the black artists. They are almost the only ones that are really changing the forms.

BOWIE: I agree. Absolutely. I think that white music is in an incredible decline at the moment. And now that rock is a fully fledged career opportunity, I don’t think we’ll ever see the likes of what we once knew ever again.

O’BRIEN: Now there’s a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

BOWIE: I think that’s awful. Well, I guess what you have to do is just go against the flow and not be demoralized by it. One has to keep buoyant. I don’t listen to the radio anymore, and I never watch the TV things, the MTV stuff. When I do, it draws me into that dangerous position of wondering why I’m still doing what I’m doing; I think, God, am I part of all this? The best way is to just completely eradicate it from your mind and draw back into yourself and say, “Well, what I want to do is have fun.”

O’BRIEN: Is that how you always changed directions?

BOWIE: By turning away from things?

O’BRIEN: Yes.

BOWIE: Yes. Repeatedly. From cities, from experiences, from art, from everything. There just comes a point where things become mundane, and it’s repetitive.

O’BRIEN: I think a lot of people thought you were just trying to come up with a new gimmick.

BOWIE: I’m the last person in the world who should say this, but it was never, ever a marketing or merchandising device. But every time I did it, it was the worst thing I could possibly have done for everybody around me. It didn’t work out that way in the end. But to any management I had, it was always “What on earth is he doing?” When I had the “Diamond Dogs” show, I scrapped it when I got to Los Angeles and came back with the “soul” show. It was very petulant, a lot of it. I needed to do that because I always had a hard time sorting out exactly who I was. I needed to buffer myself with some kind of premeditated identity just to get out there onstage. It was necessary for me to develop some kind of character, but it also happened that I got bored with the characters very quickly if they didn’t quite fit. And then it seemed like a logical thing to develop a new one…

O’BRIEN: So do you feel that you’re totally over requiring a character?

BOWIE: Yes, I have been for a number of years. I don’t think that I need characters anymore. I’m not sure that means I’m cocksure about who I am, any more than I ever was, but at least I have an understanding that I know myself better. It doesn’t mean that I know what I am, but I know who I am, if that makes any sense. That sounds like rambling shit, but I’m far more aware of my limitations, strengths, and weaknesses than I ever was. I still feel that it’s fair to both myself and to my audience that the shows have a different personality every time that I tour. I don’t want to see an artist duplicate his presentation every time I see it. There are a few artists who can carry a show sheerly on their real persona repeatedly, but there comes a point where you want some new information, as much as you love them. That’s true with anybody-the Stones or whoever. There is a point where you think, Yeah, I know that jump, I know that lick.

O’BRIEN: Do you still identify with the songs that you’re putting to bed now?

BOWIE: Oh, God, it’s so hard. One thing that has made it a more real experience is having Adrian Belew interpret the musical side in his own way. The premise was: Yes, we’ll do these songs, but let’s not be a slave to the original interpretations, because that’s no fun for any-body. We’re just a four-piece band, so let’s do them the way a four-piece band would do these things, even if it’s “Life on Mars,” with orchestra and everything. Let’s make it a four-piece-band version of it, so musically it is a honed-down, stripped-down kind of thing. which is fun.

O’BRIEN: So you’re playing too.

BOWIE: Yeah, I’m playing saxophone and guitar.

O’BRIEN: Have you seen Dylan in recent years?

BOWIE: No.

O’BRIEN: It’s amazing the way he alters the arrangements of his songs radically night after night.

BOWIE: I hope that you approve of that. I saw the most despicable reviews of his concert in L.A. They were so patronizing, as though they had an angle on the guy. The contempt and the dismissal that Dylan is given is unbelievable.

O’BRIEN: I think that what he does is great. His songs really hold up lyrically, but rather than just come out and do them the way that everybody remembers, to come out and jar people with something totally alien is just brilliant. It’s like Charlie Parker playing standards. It just makes you think about everything all over again.

BOWIE: I’ve heard a lot about the way Dylan’s speaking the songs now instead of singing them, which I think is absolutely right. He is the poet laureate of America. He should be reading his poems to music now, like Linton Kwesi Johnson.

O’BRIEN: I always wondered why you never got a little more involved in the art world. A lot of people who have been in pop have been able to cross over, and they’ve chosen to. I think you’re somebody that artists take seriously, but unlike Brian Eno or David Byrne, you’ve stayed out of the art world. I know you paint.

BOWIE: A bit. I did a portrait of Iggy a number of years ago that appeared on the back of Iggy’s book.

O’BRIEN: So what has kept you from —

BOWIE: From being arty?

O’BRIEN: Well…

BOWIE: Oh, yes, indeed. There’s a quality to art at the moment that I can’t come to terms with. It just doesn’t appeal to me. I find it far too comfortable and bourgeois and middle-class. I think it’s generally having a negative effect on David Byrne. He’s probably going through his most uninspired period at the moment. I can’t say I follow Brian Eno’s work too much, because I don’t know what he’s doing half the time. He’s probably doing video installations or something. I’m not sure that an art career would have any benefit for me; I’m not sure it’s what I want. I don’t think I want to be a designer-rock artist. It’s almost a social grace to get into the art world, and I’m very wary of it. Art was good in Berlin in the late ’70s—there was a lot more guts to art when the Neo-Expressionists were starting up; it was real slapdash; it had real heart to it-but it seems so cold and heartless in America. It’s a buyer’s market.

O’BRIEN: Obviously you don’t need the art world to have credibility as an intelligent person, and in a way you’re more free by staying out of it, because you’re not in a market that’s dominated by twenty or a hundred people. But the cool thing about the art world is the having-dinner part. There is a community in the art world, and one of the best things about it is the dinner talk. And I think people do trade ideas, or concerns, once in a while.

BOWIE: But it’s the same idea that they’re all passing around—or it has been over the last ten years, hasn’t it?

O’BRIEN: I don’t know. Who do you hang out with?

BOWIE: Oh, my God, who on earth do I hang out with? Let’s take the last few months. The last six months, who have I been hanging around with? Apart from my fiancée, and Coco, whom you probably remember from the dim recesses of the past-Coco Schwab is my best friend. And the band. Most of the time we’ve been in Australia recording, so I’ve been hanging out with surfers and the occasional sheep farmer. You meet sheep farmers in very trendy restaurants in Sydney. And there’s the Sydney Dance Company; they’re quite fun, actually. They did an awful tour over here, and they should not be judged by that tour, because they are much better. Before Australia I was in Indonesia, and I hung out with the village people in north Bali.

O’BRIEN: You don’t mean the Village People.

BOWIE: Ha. Where do you think those people got those crazy clothes ideas? But really, have you been to Bali? My God, do they dress. Every day of the week there’s a celebration.

O’BRIEN: Did you read in the papers that they were blasting rock ‘n’ roll at Noriega when he was in the Vatican Embassy? They were blasting “Modern Love” at him.

BOWIE: Yeah, I know.

O’BRIEN: What did you think of that?

BOWIE: Mixed feelings. I enjoyed it very much, but I really wished my songs hadn’t been pulled into that particular situation.

O’BRIEN: You were in good company, because your songs were played along with Jimi Hendrix’s.

BOWIE: That’s fine.

O’BRIEN: As a former Berliner, you must have been thrilled with the fall of the Wall.

BOWIE: The first thing it brought back into my mind was an evening I once spent in a punk club in Berlin on the anniversary of the Wall having been put up. There was a birthday cake of the Berlin Wall that went around the entire room. It was under green neon. The people all had Mohawks and things through their noses, and as midnight struck all these punks just started lunging into the cake, rooting pieces out of it. I wished I’d had a camera. I had never seen anything like it. It was an extraordinary image, seeing the Wall come down. And now they’re really bringing it down. I can’t believe that it has happened. Everybody in Berlin was fully convinced that it would be up another hundred years. It’s quite spectacular. And it might lead Britain into an area of socialism that is a lot truer than anything else it’s had before; it might take the emphasis off having Nanny out there all the time. It is all over. It is all over. What is to replace it, we shall see, won’t we?

The post “White Music Is In Incredible Decline”: David Bowie, by Glenn O’Brien appeared first on Interview Magazine.

Photos courtesy of Jennie Jieun Lee and Matt Dillon.

For Jennie Jieun Lee, it starts with the face. The Korean born artist’s fixation almost registers as a compulsion. “When we first moved to Manhattan, I used to draw on the walls,” she recalls. “It was always this fat face with eyeshadow going up.” Faces are where history, emotion, and projection collide in Lee’s ceramic practice. Consider the masks and heads that first brought her attention to Marie, her interactive tribute to Marie Laveau, the 19th-century voodoo priestess and community organizer whose legacy has been warped by myth and racism. The sculpture will make a reappearance in her museum debut, Luteal Elements and Grooves, which opens next week at the The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Those early pieces also happened to spark the beginning of Lee’s longtime friendship with Matt Dillon, who became her very first collector. Dillon, the actor-cum-visual artist, demonstrates a similar preoccupation with faces, shaped in part by a lifetime of studying them in his screen work. In conversation, he recalls the words of director William Friedkin: “The greatest location is the human face.” Before the show opened, the pair got on Zoom to exchange ideas about discipline, doubt, and delayed arrivals.

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MATT DILLON: Wow, it’s great to see your studio back there. 

JENNIE JIEUN LEE: I know. It’s pretty empty because everything for the show has been picked up. So right now it’s just the dregs.

DILLON: But look at that, all those racks. I guess when you’re working in ceramic, which is really sculpture in a way, you need all that space.

LEE: Oh yeah, this space and more. We’ve been using the outside, too. 

DILLON: I think I was one of your first collectors, but your work has developed and grown so much since then. They’re also larger works now. And congratulations on the show.

LEE: Thank you. Yeah, you bought that mask and were one of the first people to ever buy my work. Our dear friend Adam Roth brought you to the show, and that’s when I realized that you were into art. Before that I just knew of you as an actor.

DILLON: Yeah. I come from an artistic family, so I was always predisposed to it, but I didn’t have a serious studio until about 10 years ago. But I would work, and a lot of times I would keep sketchbooks and things like that. I would do it for maybe a year at a time, and then I’d put it down. Then I would return to it and be like, “Oh, I’m going to go back in and buy all these art supplies.”

Jennie Jieun Lee’s mask in Matt Dillon’s collection.

LEE: Was it too much pressure? All of a sudden you’re all serious versus just a sketchbook?

DILLON: I don’t know what it was. I remember once I was at my friend’s house and her kid’s kitchen table, and the kid’s art supplies were there, like crayons and stuff. I just was like, “I really miss this.” 

LEE: It’s funny that you say that. My mom was an art teacher in Korea, and then we moved to New Jersey. For her to make money, she took her skills and taught the neighborhood kids arts and crafts class after school in our attic. She knew that making art is a long game. And it was such a long process for me. I mean, I went to undergrad, got out of school and then didn’t make art for 11 years. Then I started making and it all blew up. I had stuffed it away for so long and I thought I wasn’t doing anything, but it was really kind of like the research and development stage. Maybe that was the same for you while you were acting. You’re doing all this other stuff, but it’s feeding your creativity, and then it comes out in your paintings. Especially in the last 10 years, I’ve visited you in your studio and seen how prolific you are.

DILLON: Thank you. I was also friends with a lot of conceptual artists. Patrick Painter, and I was hanging out with Mike Kelley a lot. I guess as a filmmaker and as an actor, there’s always this thing with preparation and you have this structure, and it’s also very collaborative. It is like construction sometimes. In that way, it’s a little bit different.

LEE: Yes, it’s less spontaneous. It’s almost like making ceramics. There’s so much planning. I mean, you could start spontaneously, but for you to get to the final piece, it takes a month, because it has to dry and you have to fire it twice. It’s kind of like making a movie, whereas something like painting is so immediate.

DILLON: Absolutely. I love that painting is so direct. But it’s mostly solitary. It’s interesting that you talked about masks–you went right to the human element, and I guess there was a part of me that immediately responded to that.

LEE: You do own many masks. Also, I went to your new studio recently, the first thing you did was put up a mask.

DILLON: I like them. 

LEE: I mean, I would say the things that sell the most are definitely heads and masks. I think people like to try and see themselves through something.

DILLON: There’s one that’s going to be at the Aldrich Museum, right? I’m trying to remember the name. It was a woman who was a voodoo–

LEE: Yes. It’s titled Marie. It’s named after Marie Laveau, the famous voodoo priestess from the 1800s who was a free Black woman of color and an entrepreneur. People would go and visit her and she would aid them with romance, finance, and also swaying politics. She sat with men on death row, praying with them. So when she died, this mausoleum was set up for her, in St. Louis cemetery No. 1. It’s in the Treme district. 

DILLON: Is it one of those above ground cemeteries?

Marie at Martos Gallery.

LEE: Yeah, all of them are there. Nicolas Cage has a preemptive tomb for himself in the same cemetery, and it’s got a lot of lipstick marks. The archdiocese keeps wiping them off and he gets mad. But anyway, at Marie Laveau’s tomb, people go there and they mark an X and leave an offering. Then they turn three times, or some people knock three times. Supposedly, if your wish comes true, you come back and you circle the X. But in 2006, somebody vandalized it and painted it all pink. Now the Archdiocese won’t let people visit without a guide, which I understand. But it just moved me so deeply that it is no longer marked as I originally saw it. So I wanted to recreate that memory and honor her. Because of racism, she’s been poorly portrayed in the press and in books since 1881, as they often did with Black women back then.

DILLON: But the structure still exists, right?

LEE: Yes they restored it, but I think it’s just all white. If you want to go visit it now, you have to pay a visiting guide, and I’m not entirely sure that they let you mark up the tomb anymore. So it’s kind of a vestige of the past.

DILLON: And you’ve kind of recreated it, right? Is it ceramic?

LEE: It’s actually wood with a lot of joint compound, and then I marked it up. When it was up at Martos Gallery in 2019, I invited visitors to mark it up and leave an offering. 

DILLON: That’s great, so it had a kind of interactive element to it?

LEE: Yeah, and kids love it. Well, kids usually love being able to do something that they’re told not to do usually in a gallery or a museum.

DILLON: You mentioned voodoo, and I did this film in Senegal once [The Fence]. When I was done filming, I became very interested in Dahomey and Benin, which has a very interesting history, although it’s somewhat dark. That’s where the voodoo came from, which ended up in New Orleans and in Brazil, and in Haiti, and a little bit in Cuba. There’s a really interesting cultural aspect to it, not just with painting and carving, but also musically. It was very inspiring to me. It reminded me of how when I made different films, I would bring stuff with me–anything I could fit in my luggage. I think there’s real power in these symbols. I’m spiritual, but I’m not a religious person. What are your thoughts about that? I mean, you did this piece dedicated to Marie.

LEE: Right. I was concerned about whether or not anybody from Marie Laveau’s lineage would take offense, but we found somebody related to her. It was like her great, great, great-granddaughter, and I sent her an image of the tomb and she thanked me. I don’t want to pretend that I do voodoo or anything like that. I believe in spirituality, but I’m more there to honor and to give a voice to somebody that has been portrayed in such a terrible way. 

DILLON: When I was traveling throughout the world, I noticed there’s a real fear of voodoo. 

LEE: There is. When I was reading about Marie Laveau and what her time here on earth was like, it was really about local activism and community building. This is all lore and word of mouth, but she was paying enslaved people that worked for politicians to get intel from them. And then she would use that intel in other ways to sway politics by passing that information along. So she was supporting her community, which is what you have to do when the world is so cruel.

DILLON: I think this really says a lot about your curiosity for the world. You’re not just focusing on something like, “Well, I came from here and this is my background, and I don’t deviate from that.” You’re truly curious. And it makes me think of the painter who I love, who is no longer with us, Martin Wong. He was free and he embraced what he was interested in and it was beautiful. And I can identify with it, because as you can see here behind me, I have all this music and mostly it’s all Cuban or the diaspora of African music. Of course, I love Irish music, which I grew up with as a child.

LEE: Well, after watching your film, City of Ghosts, I realized that you brought back the textures and energy from the film, which was shot in Cambodia. I was trying to do the same thing. I’m at a place where I’ve been working with ceramics now for such a long time and I do get burnt out. But I recently went to see Marty Supreme, and I was so inspired by it. I was just thinking about origin stories and backgrounds, and our parents and grandparents. I really wanted to write more, and partly because–this is something that my friend said that Mike Kelley did, he didn’t like what people were writing about his work, so he started writing about his own work.

DILLON: I understand that.

LEE: I’m actually going to take a writing workshop with the writer, Alex Auder, in February. That’s why I’m interested in your writing process, especially the collaborative aspects with Barry Gifford. 

DILLON: That’s great. Well, it goes back to the whole idea of not being controlled, being free. I was thinking about Lars von Trier, who I really enjoyed working with. There is this Danish phrase he would say that means, “keep it messy” or “remember to draw outside the lines.” It’s something that has stayed with me when I’m in the process.

LEE: [Laughs] I don’t have any issue with that. I feel like I was born outside the lines.

DILLON: You were born outside the lines?

LEE: Yeah, and I don’t have an issue with being messy. That was actually my problem until I was able to channel it in the right way, or in a productive way. My boyfriend, Graham, doesn’t like this, but people have introduced me and my work as being “feral.” He sees that as very problematic, but I was just like, “I’ll just go with it. Maybe that’s kind of weird, like they’re othering me or something like that,” but really I think it’s because I’m so messy.

DILLON: Well, your shows have been really interesting. There’s obviously a voice there, so I can see that it’s you, but you’re still discovering stuff. There are no limitations. I’m excited to see what you’re going to be doing at the Aldrich Museum. I remember earlier shows of yours, where you did these heads and masks. But now I’m noticing that it’s a little bit of a departure from figuration, which I think is an interesting development.

LEE: I do have some figures though in the show, some new ones that I made in North Carolina this summer at a residency called Township10. We were using some incredible clay from North Carolina, from this company called Starworks, and it was so rich and just so easy to build with. 

DILLON: You can’t help yourself, I’m sure.

LEE: I know. It’s almost like when I’m doodling, it’s always a face. It just goes straight to the face. Even when we first moved to Manhattan in 1976, I used to draw on the walls. We lived at 145 Fourth Avenue, right in Union Square, and I used to draw on the walls and it was this fat face with eyeshadow going up. But it’s always been faces. It started with me making my mom’s face, I think, in ceramics. Then when you saw those masks, they came after an 11-year artist block where I didn’t make work. Then I joined a ceramic studio in Greenpoint called Clay Space 1205, and the first thing I made was a slab with a face. I just kept doing it and kept doing it. They ended up in that group show that Eddie Martinez curated, called Bad Fog.

DILLON: I loved that. I think the actor part of me always liked the faces. I think about this thing that I always remember–and I got a kick out of it, because Billy Friedkin was complaining about something that he did in casting. Listen, I won’t go into all that, but I said to him, “What about that location you were working in?” And he said, “The greatest location is the human face.”

LEE: Wow, that’s amazing. I’m obsessed with him, even though I heard he can be quite cruel. He made that film Bug, and I just went to go see the play version of it. Have you seen it, with Michael Shannon?

DILLON: I haven’t seen it, but Michael’s a great actor. I’ve seen a lot of Friedkin’s earlier works. 

LEE: Exorcist is one that will forever be etched in my brain.

DILLON: One thing I’d like to say is, earlier I was thinking about young artists making work now. I think my best advice is just to be open to discovering. I mean, I’m certainly a lot older than you, but as I develop, I think some things are dragged out, but you know what? I think the depth is there. I mean, to be a film director, it’s really hard to have a late period. But in the visual arts, you can do that, because it’s so direct. A friend of mine teaches at a great art school in Brussels, and he’s a really great drawer. And he said to me, he said, “Getting old is a drag, but my line gets better all the time.”

LEE: So true. I teach a lot of young people how to make ceramics, and also grad critique. But I don’t put any pressure on them. I just tell them to keep going, because when I was that age, I didn’t believe in myself. I was making hideous work and I thought it was the end of the world. I stopped making work for over a decade and then I started again. You just don’t know what’s cooking in there. You just have to be patient and you just have to stay alive. I think it’s very hard for many people–they feel like it’s the end and it’s not going to get better. But you just have to keep waiting until a miracle happens, because it does. That waiting time is so hard, that idle time. But things are happening internally. It might not feel like it, but they are. And that’s just coming from someone that experienced that. 

DILLON: You’re right. 

LEE: It’s all work, and work is hard. Art is hard, as my friend says. But it’s worth it if that’s what you want to do with your life. And it’s the only thing I can do with my life.

The post Artists Jennie Jieun Lee and Matt Dillon on Doubt, Discipline, and Diaspora appeared first on Interview Magazine.

Nicolas Party, photographed by Steve Benisty.

For the artist Nicolas Party, painting can be an act of time travel. In Dead Fish, the Swiss-born painter’s new show at Karma Gallery in Chelsea, Party finds himself in conversation with his own oeuvre and that of masters like Francisco Goya and Marcel Duchamp, revisiting (and remixing) paintings he made years ago while putting his unmistakable and hypermodern stamp on the works of art world giants. “It’s an emotional and interesting process because you put yourself back into the person you were 10 years ago,” he told the celebrated countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo when the two got together earlier this month in midtown. “But things happen in 10 years.” Costanzo, of course, wanted to know what Party meant by that. Below, the two artists trade notes on their respective practices—plus mortality, forgery, flow states, and artistic freedom.

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ANTHONY ROTH COSTANZO: Thank you for asking me to do this. This is fun.

NICOLAS PARTY: I mean, we’re always crossing paths!

COSTANZO: And we have to continue. I have a process question. You paint very fast, famously. Does that mean that it comes from a kind of instinctual or subconscious place, rather than you having to stand and think about it. Or do you know exactly what you’re doing when your brush hits the canvas?

PARTY: l’ll describe my practice like athletes or musicians. I practice every day and things come out of it physically. I work all day, but I’m not working towards a big ambitious painting for the next six months. I’m just painting. The subject comes and goes. The main thing is that I’m constantly doing it. And when I’m doing it, in a way I’m trying to not think about what I’m doing. I’m trying to be in the act of doing, trying to find things that are surprising for me. You have to practice, practice, practice to keep the muscles.

COSTANZO: When I sing a phrase, I might have an idea about what I want it to feel like, what the emotion is. But then when you’re in the act of doing it in front of an audience, it might take on a different meaning, either intentionally or unintentionally. And I was thinking about the eyes in your painting, which can express a lot. When you’re physically drawing the shape of the iris or the reflection, do you know the expression that you’re going for?

PARTY: I think it just appears and I’m not forcing anything that’s going to come. I’m very suspicious of my intellectual intuitions. Like,  “Oh, this is going to look good. This is going to be right.” If you can actually be truly honest and open when you do anything artistic, that’s probably when the most is communicated. And I think whatever style you sing, whatever instruments, even the art form you’re using—it doesn’t really matter. 

COSTANZO: That’s the same thing with my work and opera in general. It’s both so abstract, or in some world that feels dramatic or over-the-top. But honesty is what communicates best. And when people perceive that kind of honesty or authenticity in something like an opera or a performer or a sound or a singer, that’s when they really—

PARTY: Yes, every artist is fully looking to achieve that. In music, I think it’s very palpable because it’s such an emotional art. If you feel something, it’s successful. But if you don’t feel anything, it just doesn’t work for you

COSTANZO: Exactly. Obviously you’ve had all this success with this idea of forging your own paintings, recreating them. Did you feel like they evolved? Or were you trying to make it exactly the same?

PARTY: I think I’m trying to maybe put myself back where I was, or trying to see what was working or not working in a painting that I was doing. When I copied the Goya painting, I think it’s more or less trying to go back a few hundred years ago and see what is in that object. And I think when you sing, you have to connect with the time that was made then. I mean, you don’t have to, but it is the exercise. So I did that with my own work. It’s an emotional and interesting process because you put yourself back into the person you were 10 years ago, but things happen in 10 years.

COSTANZO: Things do happen. What’s changed?

PARTY: A lot of obvious practical things, but I feel the world is constantly changing. You get older and you have children and your own mortality is much more palpable as soon as you have kids. As soon as you have kids you know that you’re dying. You do a kind of math equation: “Well, I’m 45, so I’m going to see them hopefully in their 40s, but not in their 70s.”

COSTANZO: Do you ever think about living forever through your paintings?

PARTY: I don’t think about it. But actually now, with the children, when I see people that take care of  estates, or even in fiction when they talk about the idea of—did you watch that movie Sentimental Value?

COSTANZO: No.

PARTY: It’s about a filmmaker that has been a bad father and there’s a lot of trauma in the family. But basically, he’s making a movie about his mom who committed suicide. She had a traumatic upbring in Norway during the war and he wants his daughter to play his mom. And it’s this kind of intersection of past and present. With art, maybe I have that a little bit. The idea that objects are going to sustain you more than yourself, I think that is very inherent to art. That is one of the functions of it, more or less.

COSTANZO: I’m jealous of that aspect of painting because if you have a really great day or a really great year or a really great month, it’s there. Even if somebody buys it or it goes to a museum or whatever, it exists. There’s a record of it and everyone can see it. Whereas the minute I create something, it’s gone. I sing so much every year that it’s never captured in any way. There might be a few CDs here and there, or a few recordings, but they are not even 1% of what I’ve performed.

PARTY: Do you sometimes feel like, “Oh, tonight was so good, I really wish it was recorded”?

COSTANZO: All the time. I’m like, “Oh my god, if they could see that, I would be famous!” [Laughs] You know what I mean? But with the artist, everyone will always see it if it’s really great.

PARTY: Yeah. I go to live arts fairly often, especially plays and music, and I believe that for plays, a bad night and a good night is completely different. Sometimes you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t really like it.” But what if it was just a bad night?

COSTANZO: That’s right.

PARTY: Like, we’re in a restaurant right now. Chefs have to recreate the same thing every day. If I like a play or if I don’t like it, I think I should actually go back and see. Do you do that?

COSTANZO: Oh, yeah.

PARTY: You have to sometimes.

COSTANZO: Also now that I’m running an opera company in Philadelphia, I’m hiring a director or hiring a singer and I’ll go see a show at another company and I’ll be like, “I hate that show.” But then I start thinking, “Well, maybe I got it wrong. Everyone seems to like this director.” You have to constantly be revisiting things.

PARTY: If you do, let’s say, 50 shows of the same thing, what will really be the difference between the best night and the worst night?

COSTANZO: That’s a good question. It’s so minute. What’s amazing is the distance between a good note and a bad note in my throat is not even measurable. It’s not even a millimeter of movement of the pieces of skin that creates sound inside your throat. So it’s very different from what might make a painting good or bad, ’cause it’s a much larger instrument in a way. I also think there’s a special flow state where everything coordinates. The muscular movements that are producing the sound coordinate. And in this book that I just wrote, I talk about how the breath is what makes the sound. It travels through the throat and it vibrates these two pieces of skin that are the vocal cords. And what does the breath pass through? Somewhere on the way out of your body, it passes through the soul or whatever that is. So this is all controlled by your imagination, and if your thoughts are clear, sometimes it produces this magical thing—coordination—and you can sustain this sort of ephemeral nature of beauty for a little bit of time that people can connect to. But similarly, I do feel like you’re working with your hands a lot.

PARTY: Yeah, mostly.

COSTANZO: And there are small movements that have become habitualized?

NICOLAS PARTY: Of course, with the hand  you can have a bad day. But it’s definitely less technical than music. That’s why I think the practice is different. An athlete is very clear; they need to just keep shooting the ball so they get better and better and better. In art, it’s not your skills getting better, but you getting looser with your intention. You get freer, and maybe something comes out that is more pure, more honest. But that’s by far the hardest thing to achieve. Sometimes I feel like “Okay, I’m really right here and it’s coming out.” But most of the time that’s not enough. I think the only way to achieve that is to do it all the time. And sometimes, you just pray.

COSTANZO: And then the technical part becomes habitualized so that the other stuff can somehow come through.

PARTY: Exactly. You need to not think about it. The worst is trying to achieve something that you don’t know how to do. But for you, to be able to play this Baroque music, you need to have the technical ability that they had back in the day. In art, nobody’s trying to sculpt Michelangelo. 

COSTANZO: That’s true. But I was also thinking about scale and the idea of dynamics. Sometimes, singing softly for me is actually harder because there’s so much room for error. And I wonder—if you’re making something very, very small, is that more challenging than painting a big mural for Hauser & Wirth or something? 

PARTY: I’ll say a big mural, because the effect is big. There’s an impressiveness that takes a bit of the wow factor, basically. In painting, the smaller the painting is, the less big mistakes are visible. A large painting, that’s where it’s probably the hardest. And also, the simpler the painting, the harder it is. 

COSTANZO: Which you do a lot of, I think. And there’s so much clarity in your paintings, which I love. I think that’s sort of what makes it both incredibly sophisticated but also very universal. But I’m curious, now that you have all of these shows happening, what do you feel like your place in the art world is? There’s an industry, a cabal of people who determine taste. There’s the youth and the future, there’s the past and the grandeur. How do you feel like you fit into this whole landscape?

PARTY: I’m 45, so I’m definitely in my midlife/mid-career. I’m very grateful and very happy that I achieved this, and it makes me feel more kind of relaxed because at least I did that. If I die now—

COSTANZO: You’re good [Laughs].

NICOLAS PARTY: I’ve worked hard to get here, but now the challenge is that I hope I’ll still like what I’ve done in the past, but it’s hard. It’s like “Oh my god, it’s terrible.” But now I have a bit of money. I have the shows. I have a good support system around me with curators and collectors and galleries. Hopefully in the next decade I get even freer. 

COSTANZO: Do you feel a pressure every time you pick up a brush that it has to then be a Nicolas Party painting?

PARTY: Yes, but I’m also very at ease by doing bad things. I don’t really care. There’s a lot of bad paintings that I’ve done. That’s not really a problem. My problem is to do a few good ones sometimes. [Laughs]

COSTANZO: I think about this a lot. In a way, I can’t have a bad night, because if I go out and I sound bad, then people are—

PARTY: Tomatoes. [Laughs]

COSTANZO: And people also expect that if they spend a lot of money on a ticket to the opera, they want it to be really amazing. There’s a certain vulnerability in that. I was doing a big gala at the Palais Garnier at Paris Opera in November. I was standing in the wings waiting to go on thinking about how Maria Callas sang her solo concert with the orchestra on the stage of the Palais Garnier and how I was about to go do this too. And I was so sick. I had a terrible cold. I didn’t know if anything was going to come out. And I knew that if I went out and did a terrible concert at the Palais Garnier, there’s nothing you can do. 

PARTY: It’s done.

COSTANZO: It would be a bad moment. So I’ve had to learn that part of my practice is that I have to sing and practice so much every day that if I’m really tired, if I’m really sick, I’ll know that there’s some technical way around it, you know what I mean? But you talked about surprise earlier—how in order to create surprise, you have to take risks. In this show, was there something that surprised you?

PARTY: I think it’s very surprising for me. It takes 10 to 20 times more to do the copy than to do the original work. It’s a very kind of strange process.

COSTANZO: Is it conceptual or is it physical?

PARTY: Physically, it’s very hard to do because it’s very small. So I’ve been asked, “Why are you doing this?” And it’s like, “I don’t know, but I want to do them. And I love looking at them.”

The post For the Painter Nicolas Party, Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery appeared first on Interview Magazine.