interview – The Trops

An Interview with Nemo Librizzi

Nory Aronfeld and “So Bad It’s Good” by Nemo Librizzi, photo by Bebe Uddin

In his interview with Alexandra Kosloski, Nemo Librizzi shares the essence of bohemianism, emphasizing the intrinsic drive to create art regardless of external validation. From his graffiti roots in New York to using AI in illustrating his graphic novel “So Bad, It’s Good,” Librizzi discusses his artistic evolution and ongoing projects.

Alexandra Kosloski: What does it mean to you to be bohemian?

Nemo Librizzi: Well, sometimes the arts equate a livelihood. Art can make some people very wealthy, and some people it even makes famous. But for anybody who has ever made something– before there was ever any question of an audience, you’re making it for yourself responding to some unsettled feeling or raw urge to create.

Some people make beautiful things because they came up in an environment of beauty and elegance, and others come from a very dysfunctional place, and have a vision of a more beautiful world. There are people from all walks of life that find themselves in a position to create something. To make something becomes more important than practical realities. People who make art even though they’re not understood or can’t make ends meet by this pursuit, and they do it anyway, we call that a bohemian.

“I think that each of us has an inclination or sensibility to create based on a dream or a feeling.”

I think that each of us has an inclination or sensibility to create based on a dream or a feeling. Not everybody tries it, and out of the people who act on this fantasy, not everybody strikes a chord to be readily understood by others. In which case, the realization is still useful to oneself. Art for art’s sake. And in our society, there are these cultural specializations: you’re a lawyer, you’re a doctor, you’re a statesman or something, or you’re an artist. In other cultures, perhaps it’s more acceptable to be a Renaissance person. You make something, but you also have a regular job, and it’s not necessarily merely a hobby either. It’s part of who you are- a more nuanced part of your identity.

Alexandra Kosloski: I would say that you’re a pretty good example of a Renaissance person. You seem to be an artistic shapeshifter. Can you share a little about your journey from graffiti art to filmmaking and beyond? How did your experiences influence this artistic evolution?

Nemo Librizzi at the launch of “So Bad It’s Good (Part One)” at Village Works

My dad was a painter his whole life, and a poet, although he was an art dealer by day. Just being with my dad as an art dealer, we used to go to Warhol’s Factory, or Tom Wesselmann’s studio, or different artists ranging from the abstract to photorealist. There were no hard and fast rules for my father about what constitutes art other than it’s a movement of the soul.

So when graffiti came around, I remember seeing it on the subway and asking my dad what it was, and he said, “The kids go in the tunnels at night and do it.” I must have been 5 or 6 years old. I told my dad, “I want to do that”. He said, “You have to practice and when you get bigger you can go do it.” And I did.

I focused on it for many years until I went and painted on the subway. The first time I did it was ’82, maybe ’83, and I wrote all the way up until they phased out the graffiti trains in around ’88 or ’89. It was a starting point for me because at that moment when I was initiated as a graffiti artist, it came in vogue in creative circles that people from other disciplines were paying attention to what was happening on the streets in New York. So I found myself, as a graffiti artist, part of this inner circle of people like Jean-Michel Basquiat or Keith Haring or Martin Wong, because all these people were interfacing with that street avantgarde. And I never saw a clear delineation between the different arts. I felt they were all equally relevant.

Sometimes I get an idea that might be musical in nature, and I have to try to figure out a way to make a sound that echoes the sound I’m hearing in my head. I used to make radio shows because I’ve never learned how to play an instrument. That’s just one facet of self-expression. But I also write books and make little films. I think you are inspired by a spark of an idea first, and then that idea knows what it wants to be. Maybe you need to learn some formal things, to bring it into fruition, but technique is not art. The technique is a means by which we express the idea that we have.

Alexandra Kosloski: I’ve experienced this. It feels like the idea is the one driving the car and you just have to be in the passenger seat.

Nemo Librizzi: Absolutely. You have to help it get where it’s going.

“With some Bohemian comrades-in-arms in 2009”

L to R: Ben Ruhe, Nemo Librizzi, Lance de Los Reyes, Kiernen Costello

Alexandra Kosloski: Do you have a favorite memory of when you were Style Writing?

Nemo Librizzi: I had that dream when I was young, but it’s not as simple as painting in a studio. It’s a fearsome thing when you’re nine or ten years old to actually get to a place where you can write on a train. The trains themselves are dangerous. You’re trespassing into subway property, where the people that work on the trains get killed while working there. So us as kids, you were taking your life in your hands. And on top of that, if you didn’t get arrested or hit by a train, the place was full of gangs that would try to steal your spray paint and beat you up. And if you had any kind of name, a sucker reputation could follow you around and ruin your chances of getting your name up.

There was a lot to contend with, especially being a white kid and the son of an art dealer. I wasn’t as tough as a lot of my counterparts. When I could finally paint the side of a train– objectively, my first efforts were horrible, looking back– but I was proudest of that moment where I first achieved it at last, because nobody handed me that victory. I went out and I made it happen just by my own backbone. Even though it wasn’t any great glory in anybody else’s eyes, I proved something to myself that day.

Young Nemo Librizzi in NYC

Alexandra Kosloski: Can you think of a time that another artist surprised you?

Nemo Librizzi: Oh, God. Artists always surprise me, so they never surprise me. I can give you three occasions. One was VFR, who’s a graffiti artist, and his specialty was “tagging”. His signatures were all over the city. VFR made a campaign to go all city [known for graffiti throughout all 5 boroughs of NYC] one of the highest ideals that a graffiti artist can realize, if you’re not going to concentrate on doing what we call “burners” [large, elaborate wall pieces]. When we first met, we were all selling fireworks down on Canal Street. My partner CHAMA saw talent in VFR that honestly, at that moment I felt was too raw. He was too young. But, at some point VFR matured. I don’t know what it was, but one day a light went on in his head. Suddenly he had one of the best signatures in the city and of all time. It shocked me to think the kid ended up being great.

I felt the same thing with the photographer, Khalik Allah. His videos for Wu Tang Clan seemed very straightforward, but he wasn’t coming from any poetic background that I recognized, he was pretty much self-taught. Somewhere along the line, he discovered these people on 125th and Lexington, who were smoking K2. K2 is supposed to be synthetic weed, but it takes people to a much more psychotic break with reality than marijuana takes somebody. Khalik Allah took it upon himself to document these outcasts, and it was like his soul was reaching out to theirs. These weren’t stars, or even conventionally “cool” people. Yet, there developed a very vital connection between the viewer and the subject. I think the resulting works are of great importance on the landscape of our city’s history.

The third example is Martin Wong, because Martin Wong used to hang around all the graffiti scenes, and he was a very self-effacing, humble guy. Although he dressed pretty outlandish and had a big, larger than life personality, he was very earnest. I never knew him to be an artist, I just knew him to be part of the underground. He was an enigmatic character.

And one day, I was brought to see his paintings. It was his Chinatown series, and I had my mind properly blown. Martin Wong was probably the biggest Trojan horse for me in that he had always been there. I was friends with him. I’d hang out and eat dinner with him and I never knew how great of an artist he was until very late in his life.

Nemo Librizzi, Juju, oil on canvas

Alexandra Kosloski: Who are your biggest influences?

Nemo Librizzi: I probably have a thousand biggest influences. I think that if I had to make a shortlist, though, they would probably be all of the outlaws, like John Genet and Caravaggio. Jack Black, obviously not the comedian, but the stickup guy who became a writer in the 1920s. Or Petronius Arbiter, who wrote the Satyricon. Or Eugène Sue. Rimbaud. Anybody that had an aptitude for culture and intellectual rigor, but was also there on the street corners where things actually happened. Henry Miller is one of them. Bukowski. We see this “terribilita” even in the Abstract Expressionists. We find it in Reggae and Dancehall and Rap music. Art that has blossomed right out of the mud of everyday human life has appealed to me most.

Alexandra Kosloski: The counterculture.

Nemo Librizzi: Yeah.

Alexandra Kosloski: I wanted to talk about “So Bad, It’s Good.” It brings a really unique approach to storytelling since it’s AI illustrated. What led you to this style?

Nemo Librizzi: I had written the play about 15 years ago, and it was my intention to have it acted on stage in costumes. I got kind of far along in the process where I was actually meeting with theater people, but it fell between the cracks. I didn’t know quite what to do with it, and I moved on to other endeavors. And then when I saw a friend playing around with AI, I was like, bingo! I can mine that source with this idea. I have chops as an illustrator, but I can’t compete with what AI can do on this level. I can fill up the pages with endless details. I think the AI has untold potential, though it’s unwieldy at times. It’s like trying to make a fine sculpture with a chainsaw, really, because it’s such a powerful tool. It can lead you by the nose if you’re not careful.

Alexandra Kosloski: What inspired the world of Norbert and the hijinx of Petropolis?

Nemo Librizzi and Ibrahim Kandji at the Trops launch of So Bad It’s Good (Part One) at Village Works in NYC

Nemo Librizzi: For many years I’d been a starving artist, I was happy to live wherever I could hang my hat, until I became a father for the first time. In a way, Norbert’s struggle is autobiographical– he has 14 or 18 kids, I have one to worry about– but suddenly I had somebody other than myself to worry about. When I started to face the problem of making a living, I realized, everybody faces those problems. I had to laugh at myself. Struggling to make a living is not really an epic human battle, it’s just normal. “The daily grind” most people call it. So it wouldn’t have been that funny if I wrote a play about my own mundane struggles, but now putting bunnies in there, trying to hustle their way out of an animal ghetto- that becomes funny.

We all grew up with some kind of fairy tales, and most of them were about little bunnies and puppies, with very little resemblance to our own world. They’re usually acting out some sort of moral maxim or ethical lessons to children. I tried to replicate the everyday realities that people are up against in the inner city, except enmeshed with a fairy tale or cartoon world. I just thought it was a funny juxtaposition that I’m sure other people have done, but that’s my own take on it.

“So Bad It’s Good” by Nemo Librizzi, photo by Bebe Uddin

I find it entertaining to immerse myself in the process of making it. It’s almost like playing with a dollhouse. It’s an escape. We got the second chapter at the printer now, I’m in the process of making the third one in the trilogy now. And my friends down here in Miami, tonight they’ll all be going to a party or something, but I’ll rush home to get working on this. It’s more exciting than being at a party. You never know who you’re even going to meet on AI. Once you type in the prompt, you see all these strange faces emerge out of the mist, and it’s just a fascinating process.

Alexandra Kosloski: Yeah, it brings some levity to the story. Besides part two and three of “So Bad It’s Good”, what are some other current projects that you’re excited about?

Nemo Librizzi: I started writing a novelization of Dirty Dancing. I was really excited about it at the beginning, and it wrote itself, but at some point I started struggling with it. I needed it to be a little bit more than a simple rehashing of the story. A filmmaker friend thought it could be cool for it to become a movie, then it could be Dirty Dancing- the movie based on a book, based on the film. It starts to become a hall of mirrors in that way. Other than that, I’ve been making some more little films for YouTube.

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Interview

An Interview with Sante D’Orazio (Part 1)

Interview / Alexandra Kosloski

Talisa Soto-Bratt, Photo by Sante D’Orazio, 1992

D’Orazio’s world is populated by supermodels, actors, rock stars, and icons. His +30 year career has seen concurrent themes of eternal youth, stunning beauty, and rock and roll. D’Orazio’s portfolio is a mixture of informal and posed – an uncensored and provocative trademark. Since he first shot for Italian Vogue in 1981, D’Orazio’s work has been published in the likes of Andy Warhol’s Interview, Italian, French and British Vogue, Vanity Fair, and GQ among others.

In part 1 of their 3 part interview, Sante D’Orazio and Alexandra Kosloski discuss the artist’s current projects and the emotional connection behind his photographs.

AK: Can you describe what it feels like to make art? What is that feeling to you?

Sante D’Orazio: It’s beyond the feeling; it’s a way of life. I can’t not make. There’s a sense that if I’m not creating, I’m usually destroying. It’s the two sides, the yin and the yang of creativity. I’ve seen it with so many different artists and so many different fields. You get destructive. If you don’t have an outlet, it hurts. Whether it turns inwards and it becomes depression, or it comes out in so many different forms. Once you find the creative form, it’s healthier, but it’s just about finding it. And you need it. It’s life giving or taking.

Geometric painting by Sante D’Orazio, 2021

AK: What is your current studio practice like?

Sante D’Orazio: It varies. Recently, I had to get spinal surgery, and so I couldn’t take pictures. I couldn’t move around– because when I shoot, I move– I bend, I twist, I turn. I couldn’t do that, so I was painting more. The worse it got, the less I could paint. I had to find something else, so I started writing. I’ve always told stories since I was a kid, so I decided to write those stories down, not thinking of any particular narrative. I just wrote stories down and put them away, and when I had enough of them, I put them in some order and I had a memoir. And so I wrote a memoir during the COVID period and the period where I couldn’t walk.

Then the other thing I’ve been doing lately, which I hadn’t done in 40 years, is editing my archive. Let’s say I was doing ten pages for Vogue: they only used ten pictures, yet I shot maybe a thousand. Now, you don’t throw the others away– they’re all good pictures. Some are even better than the ones that they used, but I had to put them away because I’m onto the next shooting, and then the next one after that. When you were shooting at my pace, you didn’t even have time to know if your pictures were any good. And the only time you knew that they were good is when the client didn’t call, because if they did, that means there was something wrong. They never called you when something was right. So you put them away, and move on. And now, I’m finding gems I never knew I had. I remember the shootings, but I didn’t remember the particular images and oh, my God, I can’t believe it. I have a new me through all those images. So, I’m only up to 1993 and I started eight months ago, so you can imagine how much work I have to do.

AK: That sounds like a huge undertaking.

Sante D’Orazio: It’s daunting.

D’Orazio in his studio

AK: Not only the sheer volume of images to filter through, but emotionally, I imagine it’s exhausting.

Sante D’Orazio: Yeah, it is. The other thing that you have to know is that taking the picture is really only half the job– the other half is recognizing it within the edit. No one can edit for you if you’re looking for yourself on an artistic level. On a commercial level, knock yourself out. But on a personal level, I have to edit. I have to find my picture. I think that’s the only reason a photographer– and I’ll speak for myself– has any great success.

You have to connect with your subject emotionally. I do. I make a strong connection with my subject. There’s trust, there’s a bond, and there’s a real closeness that happens. If it appears sexy or sensual, it is, but not on a physical level, it’s on an emotional level. And it ends there. But you really care about each other. And when you see each other again, it’s that same trust and love. I just edited some pictures of Talisa Soto– she was a great model– and I sent them to her and she texted me back, she goes “Sante, I always loved working with you.”

AK: That’s so nice to hear.

Christy Turlington by Sante D’Orazio, 1993

Sante D’Orazio: Yeah, it’s so nice. I always felt the same. And it was that bond that I’m talking about. It’s care, a lot of care.

AK: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that, because there is such a sense of freshness and intimacy in your photographs, even when they’re obviously posed. Do you think that that bond plays a role?

Sante D’Orazio: Big role. Yeah. Guys in general are insensitive when it comes to that, but women seem to see it immediately. That trust stays because I was never a predator. And when they came back, the photographs just picked up again from that moment. And that’s what you see in the pictures.

You see it in their eyes. You just catch the whole feeling as soon as you meet somebody. And then to finish what we were saying, is that you have to then find that moment in their eyes in the edit. The eyes may be looking to the left, and the way they’re looking– is it inquisitive, is it trusting, is it not trusting? You have to be able to recognize that, you have to be sensitive to it. And then that’s the picture.

Continue to Part 2

Part 2

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Interview

An Interview with Miriam Parker

Interview / Alexandra Kosloski

Miriam Parker in her studio. Photo by Avery Walker

Miriam Parker is an interdisciplinary artist who uses movement, paint, video art and sculpture/installation. She has been influenced by her experience as a dancer, her study of Buddhism phenomenology, and her connection to the free jazz tradition. Through re-organizational practices, Parker refines her understanding of individuality, outside of traditions built from oppressive ethics. Parker is a Monira Foundation artist-in-residence at Mana Contemporary.

In their interview, Alexandra Kosloski and Miriam Parker discuss the artist’s philosophy and the way it manifests in her art.

AK: What is your studio practice like?

Miriam Parker: Well, there are two aspects. One is working on installation, which is this practice of translating my process from being a dancer into being someone who is making something outside of her body, not just using the body itself. In this installation practice, I’ve been really steady with this idea of creating a space that itself becomes generative. I first use my body to create something, but then, the aim is for this thing to be the matrix for its own development. For instance, if I draw a line, it’s not just about creating a line that stays there, but the line itself has to be growing. How do I create an installation- in space- that is alive, the same way a dancer is alive, or music? How do I create an installation that animates the space?

For the past year, one of my research areas has been about the frame; what does this frame- that is going to allow for the space to be animated- look like?

I have also replaced the body with paint, still with the same question at the back of my mind– what makes something alive? How can you create life, especially where you make do with the human body? Paint is interesting because it is viscous and it can be a vehicle for energies and flows; and right now I am learning about viscosity and paint and pumps and how much energy it takes to bring the water/paint up to a certain height. I am trying many different things and learning from the numerous mistakes I make in the process. But what is interesting is that while I was working with the paint, I also realized that it was not just about using the paint as a proxy for the body– I slowly realized it was also about how the paint was released– that’s where the magic lies.

In the artist’s studio. Photo by Avery Walker

For instance, as I am speaking right now, the impression you have of me is not just the result of what I am saying, but also of how the words are released from my mouth. When someone is dancing, it’s not just about their movements, but it’s about how they move out of their bodies and towards the onlookers. Well, it’s the same thing with the paint. So now the challenge is understanding how to have each of my sculptures– which is dispensing paint– have its own rhythm and language.

AK: So there’s that translation between inside and outside of the body, do you define any boundaries between performance and visual art? How?

Miriam Parker, in residency, via @miriamparts on Instagram

Miriam Parker: Technique. You know, the technique of creating a painting is a choreography that’s very different from the technique of creating movement with your body. The choreography of painting, or of architecture, is a different technique. I would say an artist has a vision that usually has a primary actor and then secondary actors, just like in a movie or a play. For me, my primary actor or main character is dance. I’m a dancer, I’ve spent my whole life dancing. The essence of dance is no different than painting or music making, the essence itself is always art. What is different lies in the technique, the craftsmanship, and now that I am working with different mediums, I have to learn about their own idiosyncratic techniques.

AK: Performance art often physically inserts the artists into the work. Could you tell me a little bit about how you navigate the connection between art and your body when you’re physically in the work? How does that feel?

Miriam Parker: Like coming home. I have this unsurmountable wish to birth something beautiful into the world. I don’t have children, and creating something that is separate from my body, but that still comes from my body, is really important. When I, as much as I can, physicalize everything I’m doing, I’m in a very, very happy place. Then, when I perform inside the spaces I have created and I activate these spaces with my body, the gestures I improvise are of deepest reverence for the space and for the architecture of that space. Once I understand the space I am in, I then can use my body to rearrange this space– even if it’s not visually rearranged for the audience, in my body I’m placing myself in different positions that help me to view the architecture of the space differently. So, what starts off as finite- an installation- then becomes infinite. It’s like a jungle gym of lines and curves and I get to just play.

Miriam Parker, Digital Prints, via @miriamparts on Instagram

AK: I’ve noticed that your art is so tactile. You seem so invested physically, and there’s a lot about process and creation. Also, your art often involves collaboration with other artists, including many different kinds of media. What have these experiences with other characters brought to your practice?

Miriam Parker: The reason why I started fabricating physical spaces and going into what they call “the digital art realm” is because I wanted to play with the power dynamics between performers and creators (of sculptures, installations, etc.). In a solo performance, you usually have a single body, and then you have the space, and if I am the performer I am the number one actor in that space, I am the number one focus. But soon, I felt like I also wanted to honor all the other contributing factors that allow for your eye to see. What if, instead of just applauding the performer, we honored everything- human and non-human- that enable us to see the object? And that, to me, is very much about the social and political aspects of power living. To me, stepping into the visual art world is very much about– let me honor the ground, the importance of how ground plays on the physical body as the performer moves, how ground, in the end, allows the onlookers to see this physical body in its different aspects. And that’s the type of questions an architect would ask. How does the space design the movements? And I say that because I didn’t want to be a master or a conductor. I didn’t want to come and say “This is what we’re doing, this is the object I want to create, and this is how you put it into motion.” I want it to move all together, as a generative, co-operative ecosystem. To me, this is very close to the definition of love.

Working with others is having the joy of bringing in other artists who have a mastery over their own technique, and who have their own vision. People who have spent a lot of time understanding their vocabulary and whatever medium it is. Bringing those together is part of my craft, actually, their masterfulness, their individual creative ways. How do you create space that allows each of these artists to be there in an equal way, without one being more important than the other? That’s my interest in collaboration, which is honoring others without taking away from their voice, which is very challenging.

AK: How has your study of Buddhism phenomenology influenced you?

Miriam Parker: Well, everything I’m saying is birthed from that philosophy. One of the core ideas and concepts that is brought up through Buddhism is the idea of interdependence. The idea is that nothing arises independently, there is always something that is lending itself for something to happen. The question is then– how can I be a part of this collaborative process? How do I honor this creative nature that we are all a part of ? The cooperative, interdependent nature of the life we are living is a key element of Buddhism thought that I am trying to bring into my artistic practice. The goal, in other words, is to break down the misconceptions of how we assume things work (in this case, that things can work independently from each other). So my whole practice comes from my Buddhist philosophy studies, it’s the basis of everything.

Miriam Parker, MAYPOLE to the sun & The Minotaur’s daughter by Eleni Giannopoulou & Benjamin Craig, via @miriamparts on Instagram

AK: What current projects are you working on?

Miriam Parker: Great question. I’ve been working on something called “Heart Patterns” for two years. “Heart Patterns” is based on the idea I was developing earlier of creating an installation that is endowed with a sense of life. In the past, I have created installations in which life was there because my body was there. And I really had this urge to do that without my body. So I’m experimenting with two main elements. One is paint flow, the other is sound. In the end, the whole flow of paint and the receiving of the paint on different canvases and wells will be made sonic. And then this other project, which is so dear to my heart, is a film that revolves around a specific image– the one that stands in the middle of the fire. There is a Buddhist concept called “Bodhisattva”. And a Bodhisattva is somebody who, when they see/encounter suffering, do not run away. A Bodhisattva is one who trains to stand in the center of the fire. And it’s through standing in that center that they transcend by not being afraid of pain. There was an image that I found from the Brooklyn Museum, that is the image that I’m trying to embody and use as the center of this film, a real tribute to wisdom. It is about the fire and the Phoenix and ash and all of these iconic symbols of empowerment.

In the artist’s studio. Photo by Avery Walker

As a side comment– we go to museums and look at these relics and most of them are actually meant for really high spiritual practice. Relics are meant to help us evolve. And looking at them in the context of the way we usually see them shown, does not do that. So I really would like this film to be shown in a museum setting as a challenge. Imagine a show about wisdom. How would you curate that so that people actually learn about transcendence? And not just history.

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Interview

Nature’s Course: An Interview with John Newsom (Part 1)

Artist Profile, Exhibition / Nathalie Martin

John Newsom, Beyond the Horizon, 2008-09. Credit: Oklahoma Contemporary Museum

Combining realistic representations of animals and vegetation, Abstract Expressionism, and hard-edge geometry, John Newsom’s paintings explore our intricate and complicated relationship with nature. I spoke with John about his origins, his practice, and his upcoming exhibitions – a mid-career retrospective at the Oklahoma Contemporary Museum and a two-person show with Raymond Pettibon in Palm Beach.

NM: I want to start from the beginning. How did you first get into painting and art history?

JN: I was born in Kansas, in the middle of America, in Hutchinson, which is a town outside of Wichita. I lived there for five years and then my family moved to Dodge City, which is kind of mythologized in the American west as this cowboy town, and Jesse James, etc. – it’s kind of a legendary place. So that kind of was a fun place to grow up from five to ten. During those five years in Dodge, I would go to this place called Boot Hill, which is a famous old Western subsidiary town within Dodge City. They had reenactments of old Western-themed plays, skits, narratives, salon girl dancers, and cowboy shootouts. It was wild. It was like the wild west. But it was an all-American childhood. I really am from that place, those early roots. That’s my foundation. Then at ten, my family moved to Oklahoma, and I spent my formative youth there. I was always painting. I was always drawing. I was just naturally engaged with the process from a very early age. I remember being three, four, and five years old and recalling vivid experiences of the process. It was definitely something more organic than normal. It was just in me. So I came to it very naturally and I just always did that. I mean, I did other things too; I played sports and ran around and did all that kind of stuff, but I was always drawing. I was always painting. That’s the early, early beginnings, the seedlings of how things started.

Dodge City, Kansas, 1878.

NM: Right. So in high school, when you applied to RISD, you knew you wanted to attend art school, and that painting was something you wanted to seriously pursue?

JN: Well, we got to step back a little bit before that. Again, in the context of where I was from, I didn’t have access to museums or galleries. I was growing up in rural America and it wasn’t the urban setting at all. It was just flat planes and a big, open sky. It was interesting, it was through the early days of MTV that sparked my curiosity. Whenever MTV first began, I can’t remember the exact date, but I remember watching it because it was exciting. It was new. Today, the young kids, they’ve got NFTs, they’ve got the metaverse, they’ve got all this stuff. We had MTV. That was what we had.

NM: I wish I had MTV.

JN: Yeah, man, I want my MTV! I remember I was watching MTV and Duran Duran came on the station and they were talking to this very strange person. I thought he was a new rock star because that’s how we were discovering music. And I love music. Music’s had a big influence on me, on my life and my work (and we can get to some of those things. Not to be long-winded about it, but I do have to lay out some of these stories for context). So I was watching Duran Duran interview this artist, and I thought, this guy has to be from London. I’m around 13, I think, when I’m watching this, like, oh man, I can’t wait to hear this guy’s music. And then they said that he was a painter! Then I really was like whoa, what? A painter? No way. I wanted to see his paintings. And it was Andy Warhol.

NM: Wow.

JN: So I was watching this interview with Warhol and I was really interested in his persona and how he was coming across as someone who could get on MTV as a painter. That was it. That was interesting to me because it was usually Duran Duran, ZZ Top, Def Leppard, you know, stuff like that. It wasn’t painting.

Simon Le Bon and Nick Rhodes (Duran Duran) Interviewing Andy Warhol for MTV, 1983

So my mother would drive me and my younger brother to the local library once every other week to check out books. I went to the librarian and I inquired to see if they had any information at all about Andy Warhol. And again, this is Enid, Oklahoma, a town an hour north of Oklahoma City, just south of the Kansas border. The odds of finding any information on Andy Warhol out there were slim to nil. So she came back with a book and it was a new book, a recent anthology on American Pop Art. And they had a little chapter on Warhol. So I checked out the book and I voraciously read it several times and looked at all the pictures, front to back cover. Through that I discovered the world of New York Pop Art – Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Leo Castelli. I learned the story of the Stable Gallery where Warhol first started exhibiting before he joined Castelli. Leo had picked up Lichtenstein shortly before looking at two early Dick Tracy paintings of Warhol’s – that could get us down a whole other hole.

But anyway, I’m 13, I’m reading all this stuff. Very interested in it, I started drawing images of rock stars and sports figures and artists, things that I’m interested in. I had this kind of double-edge play, this double edge vision at work. One was kind of this Pop vernacular, and the other was just trying to learn the fundamentals of drawing from a more kind of academy style.

But again, where I was, I was restrained, because I didn’t have access to the knowledge, to really get it. And you really need, when you’re drawing, or when you’re doing form like that at any time, whether it’s hockey or painting or golf or whatever, you must have a live physical instructor to show you. You have to figure it out live. You can’t do that kind of knowledge via a book and have it be as effective. So I just kind of paralleled off into my own world.

Continued to Part 2

PART 2

Nature’s Course: An Interview with John Newsom (Part 1) Read More »

Artist Profile, Exhibition