Kurt, Kate and Courtney- Art of England July 2008
I’d love to write to you today as a voice of optimism, a cheery twitter of joviality, however I need to warn you I’ve had a rotten old month. It ended with a ‘crunch’ as I stepped on one of my dear friend Piers Secunda’s gorgeous pieces last night whilst curating a show and started slightly worse by narrowly escaping being taken down for copyright piracy, but before I get to that I need to tell you that I used to look like a farmer, well at least I had the big hairy side-burns. They’ve not graced the side of my face for over a year now. Even so, this month I’ve found myself paying them homage by pulling my green fingers out of early retirement.
Yes, I’ve started farming chilli plants. It seems in the studio window now I have the makings of a forest, and as I rummage Bill Odie style through this undergrowth I wonder how original they are. They are from seeds of their mother plants; they are surely some kind of progression of a long linage of chillies. A species moving towards the day the perfect chilli is birthed. Maybe these fledgling creatures could catapult me to notoriety by gracing me with the ultimate specimen. I can see the best of breed awards before me now like a proud father. Perhaps my superstar grower daydream was just a way to distract myself from what had happened the night before.
I’d been asked to give a talk for DACS and Own-it (who give free intellectual property advice to creatives) at The Prince’s Drawing School. Before a sea of various people from creative industries I flashed up one of the gigantic paintings that I finished last year, one I particularly like. I could see the shock on the front row’s faces, a pure horror. What had I done? Then I went on to talk about Warhol’s soup cans, how he didn’t have permission to use them 50 years ago and how now they were an icon of the modern age, I touched on Banksy and some edgy illustrations that I’d made with my friend in New York for a magazine in which we re-mixed high end fashion advertisements. When I finished, I scanned the room. Something was wrong, very wrong. All my lips could manage was a vague mumble of “any questions”. A guy storms out screaming, “Artists create parasites copy”. My fight of flight response kicked in. In my mind I could see the copyright police coming to take me away, the handcuffs and a life in prison because I’d utilized Tesco, Disney and Cobain. Perhaps Courtney Love was at the back, her cross hairs zeroed ready to take me down for using Kurt’s likeness.
When I was a child to be an artist was a brave life choice, it really wasn’t a way to get paid, it was at best a calling to be an art teacher and a worst a commitment to a life of meths swilling and cardboard homeless signs reading ‘will doodle for cash’. If I were in this thing to make money from other people’s visual ideas I’d be selling fake t-shirts outside Beyonce gigs.
I walked home churning 50 years of art history in my head. Were Koons, Johns, Rauschenberg, Warhol and Prince really criminals? None of what they did is essentially new; well at least the things they document aren’t really. It’s the way they do it that’s unique. It’s their perspective that changes us.
During my journey back I find myself on my daily ritual. Stood in the bookshop I’ve visited for about a decade, thousands of perfectly constructed images stare seductively from magazine covers, row upon row of perfection. It was wonderful when I cast my beadies over the sullen face of Mark Jacobs as Andy Warhol, in a fittingly iconic cover for his old publication ‘Interview Magazine’. Then the penny dropped - its founder would have been 80 this August. The new editor, remembering Andy, put it brilliantly that perhaps the world now is ‘one big Warhol’ and standing there in that moment surrounded by those images and advertisements I could have agreed he was right. Dearest Andy, great grandfather of a media obsessed culture did YouTube flash by your prophetic gaze when you imagined that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes in the future? Would you have painted Kurt and Tesco? When you made your first appropriations were you too a parasite?
Adamant to celebrate his Birthday in style and put my guilty image thieving mind to rest I find myself staring at one of his fright wig prints from the second half of the 80s, melancholically produced in a sombre monochrome, leaning against the wall. My enchantment brakes as a friend and collector of my work Damian Delehunty pointed to a small room through the back of his Mount Street galleries. I dodged gigantic Banksy’s, the odd Doig and a glorious suite of Chapman brothers etchings, almost scuppered, but ultimately circumventing a perfectly preserved Joan Collins, who perfectly personified glamour in her light-refracting airbrushed splendour, like a living, breathing, Warhol superstar painting. Her gaze from behind an iconic exterior was perfectly empty, but I’m sure honoured that Andy had once used her likeness.
I finally make it into a little room that Damian has curated wonderfully. To my left Banksy’s version of Kate Moss with a Marilyn Monroe smile stares blankly at a Warhol retrospective piece in which he has reproduced one of his most famous images through a narrow cross. There’s almost none of the doomed starlet left. Banksy and Warhol face to face separated by a glowing gold Hirst skull. Both pieces the same price. Warhol Vs Banksy. The old and the new. Warhol does Marilyn now Banksy turns Kate Moss into her, the theft of an idea or a tongue in cheek nod to art history? Their silent gold, dead referee certainly couldn’t tell me.
Perhaps I need to ask someone who was close to Andy and with the auctions in town, little did I know I would get that exact opportunity. I’m at a private party with my work hanging upstairs in a secret solo show. I natter with my friend Tara about her career in a big American TV series and her upcoming film roles, a guy talks to me about the 60s in London and the psychedelic gig posters he made for The Who, Pink Floyd and others. Then the moment arrives. I bump into Andy Warhol’s dealer, Irving Blum who tells me about giving him his first exhibition and showing his soup cans in Los Angeles, how controversial they were and how none of them sold. It turns out Irving bought them in instalments for $100 each. I suppose the rest is history. Just as I’m about to ask if Andy thought he was stealing from Campbell’s I get swept into another conversation and Irving disappears back into history. Before I know it I’m in another space down the street. It seems one of the guests wants to show me his private collection and I’m about to see just how private that gets. Past museum quality Doig, Picasso, Bacon and Mondrain paintings, I find myself with my hands over my eyes in his office, back to the wall. He explains to me that last week he had a very important conference call and his phone system wasn’t co-operating so he had to call out BT. The engineer took one look at what was behind me and then stormed out. I nervously remove my hands from my eyes as I turn to see why. I’m in hysterics. It seems this collector’s latest acquisition is a gigantic Jeff Koons photo depicting the artist in a very intimate sexual position with his then porn star wife Cicciolina. At a grand scale of about five foot I can see how that kind of post-irony could have been lost on the crowd from the night before. There’s nothing new about erotic art but there really is something in the humor of this situation.
A few days later I found myself at the Serpentine, looking at several decades of work from Richard Prince’s private studio collection. Photos of his girlfriends, his own versions of pulp fiction book covers, his collections of the books themselves, his giant text based paintings where he retells jokes and stunning car bonnet sculptures. And Richard, I need to thank you dearly from the bottom of my heart because that night as I chopped up a fresh chilli into a con-carne I realized something. The chilli may be nothing new but it was delicious. You talk about your work as a continuation rather than an appropriation. To me that’s a liberating thought and if continuing popular culture is a crime I’m happy to do my time if you’re in the cell next to me.
For latest exploits visit Stuart's blog at:
Yes, I’ve started farming chilli plants. It seems in the studio window now I have the makings of a forest, and as I rummage Bill Odie style through this undergrowth I wonder how original they are. They are from seeds of their mother plants; they are surely some kind of progression of a long linage of chillies. A species moving towards the day the perfect chilli is birthed. Maybe these fledgling creatures could catapult me to notoriety by gracing me with the ultimate specimen. I can see the best of breed awards before me now like a proud father. Perhaps my superstar grower daydream was just a way to distract myself from what had happened the night before.
I’d been asked to give a talk for DACS and Own-it (who give free intellectual property advice to creatives) at The Prince’s Drawing School. Before a sea of various people from creative industries I flashed up one of the gigantic paintings that I finished last year, one I particularly like. I could see the shock on the front row’s faces, a pure horror. What had I done? Then I went on to talk about Warhol’s soup cans, how he didn’t have permission to use them 50 years ago and how now they were an icon of the modern age, I touched on Banksy and some edgy illustrations that I’d made with my friend in New York for a magazine in which we re-mixed high end fashion advertisements. When I finished, I scanned the room. Something was wrong, very wrong. All my lips could manage was a vague mumble of “any questions”. A guy storms out screaming, “Artists create parasites copy”. My fight of flight response kicked in. In my mind I could see the copyright police coming to take me away, the handcuffs and a life in prison because I’d utilized Tesco, Disney and Cobain. Perhaps Courtney Love was at the back, her cross hairs zeroed ready to take me down for using Kurt’s likeness.
When I was a child to be an artist was a brave life choice, it really wasn’t a way to get paid, it was at best a calling to be an art teacher and a worst a commitment to a life of meths swilling and cardboard homeless signs reading ‘will doodle for cash’. If I were in this thing to make money from other people’s visual ideas I’d be selling fake t-shirts outside Beyonce gigs.
I walked home churning 50 years of art history in my head. Were Koons, Johns, Rauschenberg, Warhol and Prince really criminals? None of what they did is essentially new; well at least the things they document aren’t really. It’s the way they do it that’s unique. It’s their perspective that changes us.
During my journey back I find myself on my daily ritual. Stood in the bookshop I’ve visited for about a decade, thousands of perfectly constructed images stare seductively from magazine covers, row upon row of perfection. It was wonderful when I cast my beadies over the sullen face of Mark Jacobs as Andy Warhol, in a fittingly iconic cover for his old publication ‘Interview Magazine’. Then the penny dropped - its founder would have been 80 this August. The new editor, remembering Andy, put it brilliantly that perhaps the world now is ‘one big Warhol’ and standing there in that moment surrounded by those images and advertisements I could have agreed he was right. Dearest Andy, great grandfather of a media obsessed culture did YouTube flash by your prophetic gaze when you imagined that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes in the future? Would you have painted Kurt and Tesco? When you made your first appropriations were you too a parasite?
Adamant to celebrate his Birthday in style and put my guilty image thieving mind to rest I find myself staring at one of his fright wig prints from the second half of the 80s, melancholically produced in a sombre monochrome, leaning against the wall. My enchantment brakes as a friend and collector of my work Damian Delehunty pointed to a small room through the back of his Mount Street galleries. I dodged gigantic Banksy’s, the odd Doig and a glorious suite of Chapman brothers etchings, almost scuppered, but ultimately circumventing a perfectly preserved Joan Collins, who perfectly personified glamour in her light-refracting airbrushed splendour, like a living, breathing, Warhol superstar painting. Her gaze from behind an iconic exterior was perfectly empty, but I’m sure honoured that Andy had once used her likeness.
I finally make it into a little room that Damian has curated wonderfully. To my left Banksy’s version of Kate Moss with a Marilyn Monroe smile stares blankly at a Warhol retrospective piece in which he has reproduced one of his most famous images through a narrow cross. There’s almost none of the doomed starlet left. Banksy and Warhol face to face separated by a glowing gold Hirst skull. Both pieces the same price. Warhol Vs Banksy. The old and the new. Warhol does Marilyn now Banksy turns Kate Moss into her, the theft of an idea or a tongue in cheek nod to art history? Their silent gold, dead referee certainly couldn’t tell me.
Perhaps I need to ask someone who was close to Andy and with the auctions in town, little did I know I would get that exact opportunity. I’m at a private party with my work hanging upstairs in a secret solo show. I natter with my friend Tara about her career in a big American TV series and her upcoming film roles, a guy talks to me about the 60s in London and the psychedelic gig posters he made for The Who, Pink Floyd and others. Then the moment arrives. I bump into Andy Warhol’s dealer, Irving Blum who tells me about giving him his first exhibition and showing his soup cans in Los Angeles, how controversial they were and how none of them sold. It turns out Irving bought them in instalments for $100 each. I suppose the rest is history. Just as I’m about to ask if Andy thought he was stealing from Campbell’s I get swept into another conversation and Irving disappears back into history. Before I know it I’m in another space down the street. It seems one of the guests wants to show me his private collection and I’m about to see just how private that gets. Past museum quality Doig, Picasso, Bacon and Mondrain paintings, I find myself with my hands over my eyes in his office, back to the wall. He explains to me that last week he had a very important conference call and his phone system wasn’t co-operating so he had to call out BT. The engineer took one look at what was behind me and then stormed out. I nervously remove my hands from my eyes as I turn to see why. I’m in hysterics. It seems this collector’s latest acquisition is a gigantic Jeff Koons photo depicting the artist in a very intimate sexual position with his then porn star wife Cicciolina. At a grand scale of about five foot I can see how that kind of post-irony could have been lost on the crowd from the night before. There’s nothing new about erotic art but there really is something in the humor of this situation.
A few days later I found myself at the Serpentine, looking at several decades of work from Richard Prince’s private studio collection. Photos of his girlfriends, his own versions of pulp fiction book covers, his collections of the books themselves, his giant text based paintings where he retells jokes and stunning car bonnet sculptures. And Richard, I need to thank you dearly from the bottom of my heart because that night as I chopped up a fresh chilli into a con-carne I realized something. The chilli may be nothing new but it was delicious. You talk about your work as a continuation rather than an appropriation. To me that’s a liberating thought and if continuing popular culture is a crime I’m happy to do my time if you’re in the cell next to me.
For latest exploits visit Stuart's blog at:
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