For more than 30 years, David Boyd has been challenging the limits of artistic expression.
He first made his mark in the 1970s with the flamboyance, a real-stage persona, Ziggy Stardust.
In the 80s, he ascended to superstardom with enormously successful commercial albums,
particularly 1983's Let's Dance.
He's known as an innovator, a creative artist blending the worlds of music and film and art.
Last year, he ventured into publishing with the launch of 21, an independent art publishing house.
I am pleased to have him here to talk about a life in music, in film, and now in publishing and art.
Welcome.
Good evening, Charlie.
It's nice to have you back.
Can we do this without Julian?
I suspect we can, can't we?
We're never doing it without Julian.
Julian will always be there in spirit.
Let me go all the way back because I want to move sort of where you have come to being what you're doing today.
South London, yes?
Yes.
Well, just tell me about where you wanted to be and what it was that influenced you and what it was that got you started.
When I was at school, I was in an art stream and I guess everything was geared for me to be an artist, a visual artist,
and a painter and or a commercial artist.
And I think for about the first six months when I left school, I was a commercial artist making money that way.
But I was playing saxophone in the evenings with rhythm and blues bands.
And I found that I didn't like doing designer work for sort of raincoats and slimming biscuits.
And now defunct slimming biscuit actually that we worked on called AIDS.
Coldway?
It was called AIDS.
It was a slimming biscuit that we were working on that is no more, of course.
And I found that I was earning as much money playing the saxophone in the evening and it was giving me a lot more pleasure
because I was my own master at that.
And so I gave up the commercial art and stayed with the saxophone.
It went from one thing led to another.
Well, rather over a period of time there in the 60s, but Presley influenced you?
Little Richard influenced you.
Little Richard very much so.
Presley, because I think he was just such an indomitable spirit of music in his early days.
And it was reckless and it was really quite a rebellion that he cast upon America.
And a whole of Western society really, single-handedly.
White, the white West anyway.
Little Richard and Fats Domino, of course, the early rockers.
And then into things like John Lee Hooker and also by the 60s I fell in love with a band called the Velvet Underground.
And I think they sort of sorted me up the kind of music that I wanted around.
Not really like them, but I took the tip from them anyway.
You were going from one band to another.
I mean, I've never seen such a list of bands that you were associated with.
Yeah, a weaker band.
A weaker band.
All going to do what?
I mean, just to be a musician and to...
Yeah, I couldn't make...
I mean, I wasn't very resolute about the idea of being a singer and I played saxophone.
I wanted really, I wanted to do that, but a singer was beaten up one night and so I took over the vocals and it went down okay.
And so I stayed on as a singer and then I got disenchanted with the songs that we were doing.
I wanted us to write our own and they didn't want to write songs.
So I got thrown out the band and then, you know, it was all those kinds of changes.
When was the first?
It was fairly sort of...
That's a pretty stereotypical beginning for any person out of England.
But the interesting thing is, is the percentage of people in rock music that in fact have some kind of art background
compared to American bands, a lot of American bands, often come from a different kind of background.
It's very often a blue collar kind of background.
Right.
And they're probably brought up in more industrial towns and they're...
Like Springsteen in New Jersey.
It is a typical example. I think in Britain there was really a penchant for anybody studying.
You went to art school to learn how to play the guitar better, it seems to me.
And so many of us ended up in rock bands.
And I think that gave English rock its kind of character.
It gave it the strange quirkiness that it has.
I mean, for sure, mind draws on not just rock but vaudeville and avant-garde, you know.
It can wear a red nose and sort of take its clothes off at the same time.
This notion of you as an iconoclast, this sense of always striking out to sort of, as we say, push the edges of the envelope.
Where does that come from?
I'm not sure if it's iconoclastic.
I think my ideal more is a synthesis rather than anything else.
I quite have always liked the idea of the cybernetics of our culture,
the way that you can draw several strands together and create a new thing.
I hope and believe that what I do is more of a creative thing in that way.
That I think it's fine to draw from opera or from the visual arts, from the underground, from mainstream,
and just produce a new blend, which is probably a more complete way of describing the way that we live.
And creating a sense of the cultural spin by amalgamating all these different threads.
That's it, isn't it?
That's what it's all about.
One of the things that people have always said about you is you keep an eye on what's going on, what is new.
I can't take my eyes off them.
I've gotten an incredible appetite for what we do and how we do it and how we express it.
Ever since I was a kid, I've always wanted to know what's out there.
I've always wanted to know what's happening.
Do you think of yourself first as a musician?
No, actually I find that the idea of having to say that I'm a musician in any way is an embarrassment to me
because I don't really believe that.
I've always felt that what I do is I use music for my way of expression.
I don't believe I'm very accomplished at it.
I give a little sigh of relief every time that I come up with something which sounds whole and complete and sort of functions as a piece of music.
Fortunately, it does seem to be there all the time.
I never seem to go dry when it comes to writing music, but I don't feel like a musician at all.
Because you don't feel that you have that talent?
Because probably I don't really take myself seriously enough as a musician at all.
I'm too interested for my own good, but I'm far more interested in the blending of different things.
I have the attention span of a grasshopper, which means that it's very difficult for me to become a craftsman.
I suppose that I'm quite promiscuous and a jack-of-all-trades artistically, of course.
With Den Dempsey.
Monogamy and meal like this, you've got to stay in this, Charlie.
Life's changed.
He's moved along.
He's reached a plateau of maturity.
We've behaved, don't we?
Oh, yeah, we do.
We'd see you.
We know a good thing when we see one.
Yes, we do.
We certainly do.
Funny how life changes, isn't it?
Yes, it is.
We are synthesizers, though, aren't we?
We were.
Boy, did I synthesize at my time.
Yes, you certainly did.
You don't regret any of it.
It doesn't bear a flattening upon.
You don't regret any of it, do you?
I don't actually regret it.
I don't regret a thing.
One lives one's life so that one can become whatever one is destined to be.
One wakes up at night sweating.
One has to travel the road and stop wherever life leads him.
Many of mine were cul-de-sacs.
I understand you got a suit like this, Charlie.
Yes, I do.
Do you have one like this?
Exactly like that.
When you go see your banker.
Yeah, I wore it in the hunger.
Did I see something the other day where you were worth, like, $800 million?
$900 million, yes.
Is that true?
Waiting for the check.
Everybody who knows you is digging up in your backyard.
Where is he keeping it?
I've had so many new friendships since that article appeared.
I can't tell you.
I feel so beloved everywhere I go.
It's absolute garbage, complete and utter crap.
Okay, $800 million.
Absolutely.
Nowhere near that.
I have no idea where they pull that figure from.
It's just incredible.
Have you been good at taking the money that you have?
I've been very good, but I'm not quite there.
Not good enough to earn $900 million.
Not that good.
Not that good.
Movies.
A long series of movies.
Yes, I've enjoyed doing the movie.
But you don't think of yourself as an actor either?
No, not really.
In fact, no, not at all.
And I guess it's a vanity that when you are offered a part,
if it's with a director that you have a real interest in,
or you feel has a new spin on things,
it's very tempting to accept the role.
And this year I just did another piece with an independent company,
a new director, a brand new director.
It's his first film.
Nearly everybody involved in the thing is brand new.
And the star of it is a musician in Britain
that I've got a lot of respect for called Goldie.
And he's sort of really the godfather of a new kind of music
that's come out of England over the last 10 years,
called Drum and Bass.
And this is his first role.
And it really tells the story of gang life in Liverpool.
And in particular, I guess the mixed race gangs
and the triad is there's some kind of conflict there.
And it's an extraordinary venture.
And so far it looks to be a really great film.
I think it's going to make quite a noise when it comes out.
It's an excellent piece of work.
I had no idea, Goldie asked me if I would do it with him.
And I had no idea what to expect.
And I just wanted to do it because I liked him
and all the guys that he was sort of with.
And it's just turned out to be a treat.
That's what everybody loves, Sunshine.
But you have, in fact, said that the only moves you do
are those in which you like the director and you want to do something.
There's got to be something in there that I really feel
that has strong empathy with, you know.
And of course, you know about me and SK's and, you know,
the military and all that.
What is it you think you do best?
You know what, I think I would love to have been,
I would actually, I would love to have been like Sting
and been a teacher.
I really would have liked to have done that.
What gets me off is to be able to introduce people to new things.
I love the feeling of introducing a new subject or something,
especially to younger people that maybe excites them
and gets them going on something and influences them to do something,
you know, opening up some kind of world.
I love taking people to art galleries and really corny things like that.
I love going to museums with them as well.
And it's a joy that I've always had with my son, especially.
It's been just terrific to be able to do that.
Take him to the theatre one week maybe,
and then take him to a dance club or a rock show
and then an art museum and all these different things.
And it's just great to see how somebody else takes these same influences
and puts them together their own way.
Because I remember when people did that for me,
I always felt it was a gift when anybody took me anywhere
or showed me a new way of doing things.
I always felt that that was the greatest gift that they could give to me.
And I love doing that back.
I love showing people things like that.
I've got a website called BowieArt.com.
At the moment it's quite a vanity box because it's all my stuff.
But we do have quite a bit of inflation on the books with the publishing company.
We'll get to that just a moment.
My point is that in about two or three weeks
we're going to start putting on new artists.
Artists that I believe are very good and really have something to say.
And we're also opening it up more as an easing with a lot more articles.
And I'm going to encourage the people that are using the site
to contribute their ideas and maybe galleries or artists and work that they've seen
and have them write in and tell us about it.
I want to also get to a place where we can have them download work by artists from this site
and interfere with it, manipulate it and put it back up again,
which I think is a really nice interactive thing to do.
It's to mess with an artist's work is I think great.
I have a magazine here.
One of the things that you do for modern painters is you interview artists.
Yeah, I enjoy that.
Jeff Coons and others.
And I try and make it a deal for myself not to interview anybody
that I really don't feel is somebody who has some place or position in my heart
has been pretty good.
Because not somebody you like or curious about or want to.
Yeah, I mean because I'm a so-called celebrity interviewer
I kind of rather take advantage of that and just go for the people that I really want to interview.
It's not a job in that way, you know, go and interview him or whatever.
I kind of suggest the people.
You go where your curiosity takes you.
Yeah, well, if you've got it, use it.
You're painting.
We're going to see a few here.
How long have you been painting?
Probably again, I guess it all started bubbling up to play music and sing
and paint all around the same time.
Around eight, about eight years old, I guess I started taking it seriously.
When I was around 18 or 19, I took it more seriously.
And it's gone through ups and down, you know.
Sometimes you...
Well, funnily enough, when music starts to decline in my interest,
well, there are moments when you really feel like you haven't got it,
that you've got nothing really to express, that it's going wrong, you've lost the plot.
At those times, I found that painting has really sort of taken over
and I've produced an awful lot during that time.
But I keep balancing each other around.
I used to find that they would balance each other very well.
So one down, one is up.
Yeah, well, I had a way of working through musical problems by painting them out at one time
and that seems to have disappeared over the years, but...
You've lost that ability?
Yeah, for one reason or another, that seems to have changed now.
All right, let's take a look at some of them and then we'll come back.
These are the kinds of images that have been downloaded.
These have been, in fact, downloaded by our group here from your website, www.boyart.com.
Okay, the first...
Let's take a look at the first thing.
What's that?
Could this be Iggy Pop, huh?
It certainly could be Iggy Pop.
I see Iggy Pop in 1976, as I saw him, when we were living in Berlin.
We both had fairly severe drug problems.
And so, to rectify that, we moved to Berlin, the heroine capital of the world.
I guess in retrospect, doesn't sound like a terrible sense.
No, it doesn't sound very smart to me.
And that's a picture of Jim turning blue in his apartment in Berlin.
That's a portrait of me turning into the Lion King.
This is 1995, though.
I was quite prescient with this because I knew that was going to be a musical.
Now, who influences you in your painting?
A lot of people influence me.
Yes, I know.
Not painting.
But we want to spare them the credit, don't we?
You know what?
Again, I have no loyalty to style whatsoever.
I mean, one day I can be a complete minimalist and just paint a stick of wood white.
And the next day I want to be quite florid and painterly and do something like the Iggy Pop painting.
But tell me the satisfaction of completing a painting that you, where you're on, that you like a lot.
For me?
Yeah, the satisfaction of that.
For me to be quite frank, it's finishing it so I can get on to something else.
It's just getting through it.
It's not, it's getting through it.
It's the process.
There's something in it that it just turns, it just turns me to jelly, to my heart and my mind just become, I can't explain it.
It's a very strange feeling.
It's not particularly pleasant either.
I can't really say that I enjoy, I can't really say that I enjoy music or painting and quite that.
I mean, it's not like sex or something which you can kind of really enjoy.
I knew you'd get back to that.
It's important.
But there's something, there's something volatile, emotive and something that makes me really quite angry about going through the process of both making music and doing visual arts.
But visuals are...
But you know, I guess that's my problem.
No, but let's deal with your problem.
But if you deal with my problem, I might not be able to do these things again, you see.
I'm wary of analysis.
Yes, sir, but let me point out to you, knowing your history and knowing your family.
And knowing your background, you have always, always resisted any suggestion.
I want you to look over this way when I'm talking.
I'm getting deeply into those eyes.
Yes, I know you are.
You weren't getting into those eyes, were you?
What's this about?
You have always, always resisted any notion that this creativity that you have comes from any sort of dysfunctional or madness.
I think, I often wondered if actually being an artist in any way, any nature, is kind of a sign of a certain kind of dysfunction, a social dysfunctionalism anyway.
It's an extraordinary thing to want to do, to express yourself in such rarefied terms.
I think there's a loony kind of thing to want to do.
I think the saner and rational approach to life is to survive steadfastly and create a protective home and create a warm, loving environment for one's family and get food for them.
That's about it.
Anything else is extra.
All culture is extra.
Culture is, you know, that's, I guess it's a freebie.
It's something that we don't, we only need to wait. We don't need particular color plates or particular height chairs or anything.
I mean, anything will do, but we insist on making 1,000 different kinds of chairs and 15 different kinds of plates.
It's unnecessary and it's a sign of the irrational part of man, I think.
We should just be content with picking nuts.
Not mine on my own.
You were so on.
Let me see the next slide.
The next thing is an acrylic and computer collage on canvas.
Yeah.
Yeah, what I do, I take...
This is 1997 that we're not...
Yeah, no, we're very recent now. This is what it looks like now. It's not so expressionist, is it?
There's a kind of...
Oh, there's nothing.
There's, I think, I think probably I'm getting influenced by what's called bad painting, which is a invoker.
If you want to know about bad painting, I was Charles Sarchi, because he bought everyone in England.
He did?
Every single bad painting in England, I believe.
And did he put them in storage?
He said that one.
But did he buy that one?
Did he put them in storage somewhere?
He's probably sold them by now.
You know Charles.
Yes.
All right, next slide.
Yes, bad painting meets expressionism.
You see, I can do them all in combinations. You just tell me who you want.
All right.
And you'll get it.
Yes, this is...
What this is...
This is an acrylic and...
Yeah, these are a series of paintings of people that come in and out of my life, and I just
do very quick sketches and take photographs and polaroids and produce very fast and, in
a way, I think they're fairly accurate portraits.
And who might this be?
This is just...
This is a trucker.
There are not too many truckers in my life, Charlie, but this one obviously made a mark.
It must have been the underhang.
Would you call that an underhang?
Well...
It's not an overhang, is it?
Well, I guess it could be an underhang.
I guess so, yeah.
Next slide.
That was a rather, I guess...
Another self-portrait.
Yeah, these come from a series of five paintings that I did as a potential cover for an album
called Outside, and this, in fact, was the one that I chose as the cover.
What happened to the album?
Not very much.
It came out, and I think it was quite interesting.
In fact, I'm supposed to be doing it as a theatre piece with Robert Wilson for the year 2000,
so that's something that we're supposed to be meeting if either of us can find some kind
of place where we're both in the same country at the same time.
Well, that would be right now, because he's in New York City.
Is he?
Yes.
I'd kill him if I don't phone him.
Next slide.
Robert, wherever you are, contact me, will you?
That's called Ancestor Figure.
This was inspired by a trip you went to South Africa in 1995 with Iman.
Yeah, we went over there just after Freedom Called, and one of the stories prevalent in
Africa is that the ghosts of one's ancestors are white, and often when white man was first
seen, he was thought of as being one of the ancestors of the tribe, and so I just took
that and did a series of ancestor figures with kind of Ziggy Stardust haircuts.
See, here's the picture I get.
Yeah.
All of it never goes away.
It's all still there, so you can reach back and bring it forward and push it back and
step forward.
I did not show you this.
Charlie has this.
It's an original piece of merchandise from my Ziggy Stardust tour.
It's still that long time ago.
We pressed seven of these, and this is one of them.
Discovered.
All right.
Next slide.
We've got two more and we're going to move on.
Yeah, I think we'd better.
Well, that's obviously, that's the female to the series.
Remember, America, if you want these, you can pick them up on the website.
Be my guest.
All right.
Next slide.
This is Bill T. Jones.
This is interesting.
Yeah.
Bill T. Jones wanted, well, asked me if I could contribute some art to a benefit that he's
throwing for dance, and this is one of three pieces, three lithographs that I did for him.
Voila.
A couple of things about the music.
You, how do you feel about Let's Dance?
I think it's, it became an incredible, I mean, it was an extraordinary acceptance that I
had there.
I'd never had anything quite like that before.
Up until that time, I was quite happy being a sort of a major cult figure in a way.
You know, it's sort of, it was a nice place to be.
It gave me a lot of freedom.
I could, I knew that I could depend on an audience that would virtually follow, follow
my whims, you know, and I could sort of do what I wanted.
But the Let's Dance thing almost became a hindrance and obstacle.
In fact, it did become a hindrance and obstacle to me because I suddenly, my, my polls changed.
My, my suddenly, my focus was on, well, what are the audience's expectations of me now?
And I started maybe writing for an audience which I've never, ever done before.
And when I learned that that was for me a stupid thing to do, I got back into the way of writing
for myself again.
And I think balance has been, equilibrium has been arrived at now.
I'm very, now very, very happy with the way things are, both musically and the kind of
simpatico that I have with my audience.
Everything got a lot of very good reviews.
It did indeed.
I was, I was so, so pleased about that because it was an album that had no compromises on
it whatsoever.
It was very hard-nosed.
And I was just so pleased the way it was accepted.
It was great.
That's very nice when that happens.
You, when did you start with your 50th birthday?
Yeah.
51 now, Charlie.
51 now.
Yeah, but you're not unhappy about that.
No.
I mean, you seem to be to have arrived at some acceptance.
It might not have been as hard as 40 was for you.
No, but 40 was pretty difficult.
Because you didn't want to let go of the idea that you were still 20.
Everything was wrong.
No, it's not.
It was more about the fact that it was also my nadir as a musician.
It was writing crap and it just, nothing was going right artistically for me.
I thought, you know, I thought I'd just dried.
I was trying to write for audiences.
It was right in the middle of that period, 1987.
And it was just astonishingly awful time for me.
And I think I just had to kind of almost, it's almost about pulling yourself together
and saying, hey, I've got maybe this finite length of time left.
I really would like to enjoy it.
So, you know, stop self-pity and stop all these kinds of things
and just pull yourself together and maybe make some decisions
about what it is you really want out of life.
And I think the first thing I wanted was each day to be really good.
And so I had to go about changing everything in my life, everything.
And I've arrived now at a place that I hope that I'm not self-satisfied,
certainly a fulfilled man.
I'm fulfilled romantically, musically, artistically.
I love my family.
We're so close now.
I have a terrific relationship with my son.
Just, I can't tell you how great.
And so it's something I just want to keep on the front burner every day.
I just want it to be just like that until death strikes, you know.
And that would be cool.
Good for you.
All right, let me turn now, take a break and we'll come back
and we'll talk about publishing and about this latest venture.
Please.
21.
We'll be right back. Stay with us.
As I noted in the earlier segment, David Bowie is involved in a publishing venture.
It is called 21.
The first publishing house launched last year in the UK.
David Bowie founded it with three friends.
It aims to reach a wide audience by producing accessible books on the visual arts.
His first title, Blimey, is an irreverent account of the London contemporary art scene.
Joining me now with David Bowie to continue talking about art,
one of its first authors, Matthew Collings, and three of its four partners.
Karen Wright is editor of the art journal Modern Painters.
London Gallery owner Bernard Jacobson is here and, of course, David Bowie continues with me.
You introduced these people and tell me about this.
I mean, how did all this come together?
Who wants to do this?
Whoa.
Oh, Lord.
You want to do it, Karen?
Oh, I want to go.
Okay, have a go at it.
Okay.
Karen I've known for 25 years.
Sorry.
Sorry.
And she had a gallery.
She came from America, opened a gallery in Cambridge,
and I thought she was miscast, and I thought she should be in publishing.
So eventually, she got involved in Modern Painters with, sadly, the person we launched it for,
Peter Foley, who was tragically killed.
Right.
David came in much later, about five years ago.
I mean, just sort of, I love his company.
I love his mind.
I love the fact that we're on the same wavelength, basically.
So he was bought in as well.
And bought in to do what?
To do these interviews for the magazine?
Or to do something?
To advise, write, everything.
I mean, just across the board.
He formally joined our editorial board.
Oh, he's on the editorial board.
Along with Lord Gowery and Laura, Richard Vaughan, mother of a very, you know...
We had him for a trial dinner, do you remember?
Yes, that's right.
Yes, yes.
And then I had to pass the fire.
Anyway, it was a trial of fire, and he survived it.
And it was tough.
Yeah.
I mean, there was a very kind of heavy...
I had to argue with Hilton.
He was a very heavy intellectual team.
That's a show I'd like to watch.
It was great.
I loved it.
He hadn't loved him.
Yeah.
I didn't want him to go.
Well, he was always kind of heavyweight people.
And, you know, and then David, and they said, well, you know, he's a pop star, you know.
And then, you know, as the evening went on, it was like, oh, he's read the book or two.
Oh, he knows the thing.
Slurred, they're going, oh, we love him.
And so, eventually, he became part of the team.
He's very much part of the team.
How was this magazine different from any other?
Well, basically, we want to get, if I may say, we're basically trying to get away from
what's called, what I call, art speak.
It's basically meant to be just good reading, intelligent reading, so that it's not meant
for just like the 200 people who care about art in the world, but actually, thousands
people care about art.
Listen to this.
David Boyd with Jeff Coons, William Boyd, the story of Nat Tate, Brian Robertson on
Robert Roschenberg, Martin Gayford on Frank Stella, Jed Pearl, Art in New York, Richard
Wilhelm, kids of survival, Norbert Linton with Dora Ashton, David Hockney.
TV is dead.
Whoa.
That's a little joke.
I mean, don't do it with anything controversial.
And Rick Moody, Art after Art.
So this is...
Yeah, Rick Moody.
That's a terrific little article.
Art after Art.
Rick came through.
I mean, he's a wonderful writer, and I was so happy that he came through with such a nice
article.
And one of the other big things we wanted to do from the very, very beginning was to
try and get real writers involved, novelists, playwrights, and there's been a very heavy
emphasis on that.
People like Julian Barnes, Jay McEnany is writing on the next issue.
What's he writing on?
Karen?
You say it.
I think it's okay to say Fonseca.
Fonseca.
Fonseca.
You're having this pronunciation on the way down.
And somebody I wasn't very familiar with, he's about to have a show here in New York
next month.
Oh, I know who he is.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So he's writing a piece about him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's very much a kind of a mix of people who are kind of, you know, interested in the
arts.
I think another thing we're trying to do is that, as you notice, there are a lot of writers
who are not primarily known for being involved in the vigilance.
I think the idea is that an opinion is a very valuable thing.
And if it's well put and there's some kind of brain power behind it, that whatever that
opinion is on, it's worth having.
And I feel that, personally, that it doesn't necessarily have to just fall into the lapse
of the art world to write about art, you know.
Well, no, no, no, don't, don't.
I think that's a pretty good idea.
I mean, basically, that's the essence of what you're saying is that we don't just want to
leave art to those who traditionally inhabit the art world.
Yes.
Yeah.
I messed up because you were kind of on the house of kind of trade generals.
Yeah.
You know, trade generals about cars or houses or hoovers or something.
I messed up my magazines.
So narrow in the way that they talk about art, that it can really only be read by ultra-professionals.
So if I put art in America next to your magazine, you would know the difference.
Yeah, subsidy is much more of a range of voices in this year.
Range of tone of voices.
And much more voices.
I don't want to say much, much more voices outside of traditional art world.
Yes?
It's not a criticism world.
But also, there are a lot of heavyweight art academics writing for it as well.
So it's a mix.
It's meant to touch you.
And I must say every issue Matt Collins is the first.
Matt Collins' diary is a first piece read by whoever it is.
How good is Bowie as an interviewer?
He's excellent.
He is.
He's brilliant.
He's brilliant.
He's getting better.
He's getting better.
I touch the parts of the...
You raise the questions they don't want to talk about.
Yeah, he does.
I do.
He's the best song with Coons has ever been, I think.
Why?
Fantastic insight into Coons' character.
Great affection for him.
Very great sympathy for him.
But not sort of letting him get away with anything where he might say something that you can't
necessarily say.
He keeps probing and picking.
I'm quite a fan-like in that way.
And I've learned a lot from my fans because I find that the ones who really are into
my work really pull me apart.
You know, they really have a go at me.
And they're not kind of thawning at all and I felt that, well, that's kind of how I feel.
I really want to know about my favourite artists and what makes them...
What makes you tick, Jeff?
I'm not sure if I quite got the tick top, but I certainly felt that he was very generous
with his time and allowed me to maybe get nearer to possibly what he's all about than
maybe others have done because he's really great.
He's a great American artist.
Well, I think the point is well taken. It is this notion that the people who...
This is a fandom idea.
The best critics I know genuinely love the art or the performing art that they write about,
the best.
They love it.
Yeah.
They care about their passion when you read them.
And that's what draws you in.
They may be the most critical, but they're brought there by genuine love and not a cynicism.
Yes, that's right.
They're crusaders.
It's easy to be nasty, but it's much harder to be generous.
Cynicism makes a lot more money.
That's why it's so popular.
Exactly.
It's unfortunately so.
It's a real great, it's a career opportunity.
Yeah, it is easier.
It's a lucrative one.
And sometimes, and unfortunately it's become identified even in my profession with talent
and it's not talent.
Cynicism is past so we're going back into an age of romanticism.
Watch.
I don't think the other thing we do with the magazine and it's in these interviews is
give people space to write.
Art magazines always have very short articles and we've given people length and the interviews
length and they make them very special by having length to develop and length to grow in.
Take me from this magazine now to 21, which is publishing.
Books like Blimey.
Well, Matt was typical of a person who was writing for the magazine whose diaries were
getting better and better, who has a long association with the magazine from being a
proofreader in day one to writing.
He was a wonderful proofreader.
We didn't have so many mistakes.
But why a publishing company?
I think it's a true extension.
It's come straight out of the magazine.
You know, let's have books.
I mean, the magazine is great.
It comes out four times a year.
Let's have books on the same subject.
There's so many books that haven't been published.
It's an art publishing company, isn't it?
It's not just a publishing company.
It's just on art.
The same aims for the magazine are the aims for the publishing.
Yeah, we go full of reign to the idea that we can widen the spectrum.
I think that's what we felt that we could do with the book publishing company, that
we may find that there were going to be certain parameters with the magazine that we possibly
in the future wouldn't actually be able to do much about.
But I think that a few of us got together and thought, well, let's have a book publishing
company of our dreams that really it starts on day one with nothing and we can just go
and build it and it'll almost build itself with our own quite diverse interests.
We're not all in agreement about everything, which the amount of friction that that causes
is just the right amount of friction that makes a publishing company something of interest
and is vibrant and has a resonance.
But is there an operative idea that there's money to be made in art books?
No.
Well, I think it's possible, but maybe I'm an optimist.
Tell me about this.
Blimey.
This is a look at the London art scene.
Pronounced as Dick Van Dyke would pronounce it.
Yeah, Blimey.
Blimey.
Blimey.
Blimey.
It's a look at the current London art scene, but allowing the story to go back a bit to
the 1950s and the time of Francis Bacon.
Yeah.
So the title is actually Blimey, from Bohemia to Britain.
That's right, it is.
The London art world from Francis Bacon to Damien Hearst.
So you're reading it.
reading it, you get a very vivid picture of a living art world, the sights and smells
of the real people.
It's a jump from Francis Bacon to Damien Hurst.
Yeah, it's a jump, but actually...
They overlapped in time, and Francis Bacon saw some work by Damien Hurst, thought it
was quite good.
Is that right?
It's not such a leap.
So, the, um, it's a leap in type from, you know, painting to objects where you can hardly
describe what they are, but maybe in attitude and mood, they're maybe quite close.
You meet...
You meet...
You meet...
You go around.
Through me, you go.
You're walking through the streets of London, and you meet these artists, and you hear about
them.
And it's a sort of mixture of my own autobiography and meeting people and chatting to them and
having encounters with them, and then through that, thinking about the big ideas of art
and the big moments of art as they've occurred in London over the last 40 or 50 years or
something.
So, it's neither wholly anecdotal and chatty, nor wholly theoretical or academic.
It's kind of a mixture of those things.
Is there...
When we originally began to plan this program, I was going to come out and do a conversation
with you, then we're going to bring you two on, hoping we get some kind of something going
on here.
Is there some basic disagreement you have about art or anything?
I'm sure there's disagreements about the value of certain artists' work.
I'm very tolerant of people's artists' work and of certain artists' work in there, which
are...
No, there isn't.
You see, now it's not a grig, it's disagreeing by a grig.
Well, I think we all have...
We're all having a very different stance here, I mean, I would say...
He hates all the artists in there.
Yeah, well, I must say, I mean, I said...
I'm very kind to them all, even though there's such a problem with the majority of those
artists.
Well, I mean, I basically say we should piss everyone off, then I say that there's nothing
after Cezanne, you know, it's all showbiz after that.
I mean, I just do it to annoy people, but basically...
And you wonder why he's involved in the same thing.
But there's a kind of truth in it, you know, you kind of think, OK, well, Picasso certainly
is good and Matisse is great, and then you kind of think, well, yeah, then there's Pollock
and he's really amazing.
And George.
OK, Pollock's great.
So, you know, it's sort of quite hard.
And then David is pretty good in convincing me that I should look at these people, and
he does it with a great sort of charm and with conviction.
And I do find myself looking at some...
But is this a game or not?
I mean, you actually...
No, I think we're dead serious about art and us.
About the fact that you find nothing redeeming.
Well, I guess I don't find anything.
I guess I'm all fashion and I do believe in heroes.
I do believe in greatness.
I believe in these things, which I don't think in this kind of television age that it's quite
the same.
The rules are different now.
I think they are different.
So there is no Cezanne.
There's no Matisse.
There's no Picasso.
I don't think so.
There is no...
There's no power around.
I don't think so.
Well, I mean, maybe Frank Stella, you know, it would be possible.
I mean, again, I'm biased, but I think he may...
Maybe Rauschenberg.
But there are very few real, real great artists.
I feel now that Frank Stella's painting...
Well, having other people do his paintings for him.
Fine.
Fine.
Fine.
Okay.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
You wouldn't have said that if it wasn't Frank Stella, if I came to you and said,
do you like this painting?
Yeah, it doesn't like Jeff Koont having his paintings.
Yeah.
I don't mind him having his paintings.
But you only don't mind because you found out that Frank Stella's doing the same thing.
No, no, no.
Frank Stella had people painting his pictures in the 60s.
Oh!
Oh, yeah.
Which is fine.
I mean, I think that's okay.
I don't mind that.
Bro, Dan, I mean...
What do you think of Jeff Koont?
I think he's absolutely charming.
As an individual.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And what about his art?
Well, it's definitely very, very interesting.
What about the sculpture that's over at the Bilbao?
I'm kind of...
I'm intrigued.
I'm very confused.
That's good.
It's amazing.
Yeah, the puppy is all that fabulous.
It's amazing.
There's something amazing.
It's definitely amazing.
Cezanne would have been jealous of that.
He would have been.
Not the puppy.
Yeah.
He would have been shocked.
He couldn't dare.
The times are so different.
I don't know.
It's...
But you are...
You basically are saying that modern art, for the most part, is full of...
Show business.
Show business.
I think there's a lot of that.
Yeah.
Which is maybe fine, by the way.
I think that maybe is okay.
I think that show business is full of a lot of mud and art.
I think it's precisely the other way around.
I think show business is becoming a shelter for the old avant-garde.
What about?
What about?
Well, Cezanne and I were discussing this a few minutes ago.
And, you know...
Discussing what?
About this business of...
Yeah, where our ends and show beers and...
In a way, we sort of agree, but have different conclusions.
We agree.
Because I think, in a way, Bern is right, and actually, a certain type of art has come
to an end.
We don't know when it ended.
The art that really does connect Cezanne or Van Gogh or even pre-modern art has ended.
The type of art in Blimey and the type of art that Geoff Keane does is, in a way, a new
kind of thing.
It's still art, but it's not really...
One has to admit a kind of break between old art, even old modern art.
It's contemporary art.
It's kind of different.
All right, let me just...
It doesn't mean it's worse or bad, or that it's only shape, or that it's only plastic
or shallow.
I mean, if you see...
Oh, hold on a minute.
That's about the type of world that we live in, and the cultures change, you know.
And it's coming from a different...
It's coming from different visual arts.
Let me just throw four names out.
All right.
Deconing.
Yeah.
Great artist.
Great artist.
He's a great artist.
He's a connection to the past.
He's a sort of bridge between the old and the new.
Jasper Johns.
A very, very good artist.
Very good.
Andy Warhol.
Excellent.
Excellent.
Very good artist.
But certainly, if the new type of art, definite break between him and Cezanne.
And that was probably the first one, wasn't it, in a way?
In a way, yeah.
The next book that's a bit like Blimey starts with Warhol.
It's about the New York art world.
It goes from Warhol to now.
The one that's working right now.
The one that's working right now.
The one that's working right now.
The three artists so far, I think they had their moments.
I don't think that their output had a continuity.
What?
Decading, Johns and Warhol?
Yes.
Who would you add to it?
I think Warhol.
Warhol.
We've covered it.
Really?
I'll show you.
I think the later work wasn't anywhere near, wasn't a patch on what he was doing initially.
Who?
In Warhol.
That's true.
The later work was not nearly as good.
No.
I think it applies to De Kooning and I think it also applies to Johns.
I think you'd get an agreement on that, don't you?
I think everybody would agree.
No, I think De Kooning has one or two moments of different, where he does a very, you know,
in the sixties and seventies, he does this very sort of sloppy pink art that people were
dismayed by because his early art was so rigorous and grim and hard and slashing.
And so they think, if it's floppy, it can't be good.
But it was sort of kind of very good floppy, I think.
It's true about, I think Warhol got more decorative and glitzy.
And at first, there was something rather harsh.
But in fact, it's actually in Warhol's later life that people started noticing that early
work had that really black dark side to it at the time.
Yes.
What did Warhol was doing at the time?
People assumed that.
Wow, it's pop.
How groovy.
It almost focused the early work when he did the later work.
You look back on early work now, it seems very dark.
Oh yeah, for sure.
But I think these are the names, I think these are the great names that are in the century.
Yeah, they are the big names, yeah.
These people are in the century.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, if we look at the middle of the century, when I kind of arrived, you know, as a kid,
looking at art, it was, you know, Lege, Chagall, Picasso, Miro.
Chagall?
Everyone's forgotten about Chagall.
Oh, great artist, you know.
But I mean, these were the great artists in the middle of the century.
And we're ending the century now with Lichtenstein, Warhol, Stella, John.
What would you think of Lechtenstein?
I think he's a great artist.
Yeah, I think he's a great artist.
But I don't want to guess what I don't get.
In the television age.
Go on.
Okay, but help me understand in terms of, you know, there's Cezanne at the turn of the
century, there's Cezanne, Picasso, Matisse.
Okay.
Yes, okay.
Isn't it all so personal, though?
Isn't it really all so personal?
No, I don't think it is.
If it's by consensus, an artist is great.
If it's numerically enough, people like that artist that he becomes a great artist.
I mean, Lichtenstein, for me, is not a great artist.
That sounds like Fox Office.
How can he be a great artist if I don't think he's a great artist?
Yeah, I think he did.
He had a great gag for the first few years, and then he just did it, and did it, and did
it, and then he died.
I don't know that.
I don't know how to steer that.
I'm all right?
I don't know how to steer that.
Yeah.
He's a great gag.
He's a great gag.
He's a great gag.
I think you might find, and I'm not sure, you might find that these people, like Stella,
John's, Rauschenberg, I might dwarf the absolute expressionists.
You might find, in 20 years' time, they will be the great late 20th century artists, and
you'll look back on people like De Kooning, and you'll find that they will simply be
School of Paris.
They'll be read as, you know, something that came out of the great Parisian artists.
Greatness is when an artist seems to be a foundation stone.
Yes.
The foundation stone is for thought.
You can't really, if you took them away, it would seem like art would fall down.
Yeah.
I mean, I remember forgetting about people like Jim Rosenquist and Claude Oldenburg.
Sure.
These are sort of giants.
You know, you, being a New Yorker, you're right on top of it.
I mean, me, as an outsider, I'm coming into town, and I know these people very well, I
knew Warhol.
They're something kind of amazing.
They're absolutely amazing, exotic, amazing, original, extraordinary, dynamic stuff that
we hadn't seen before.
And now, I know they're old, they're in their 60s and 70s, and some sadly have now died,
but they are the greats.
They're probably the great living artists.
Okay, but let me, I don't want to lose this idea, is whatever is, what's happening in
London today.
I remember when I mentioned at the beginning, David, can we do this without Julian?
Because you and I and Julian Schnabel had a program right here at this table in which
most of it was a great give and take and back and forth and dialogue and conflict and confrontation
between you and Julian, of which I remember Julian said that you basically didn't know
what the hell you were talking about when you suggested, when you suggested that there
was something interesting happening in art in London.
Do I remember well?
Well, yeah, it's somewhere in there, but I mean, that's, we kind of, you know, we,
I hope we love each other, Julian, we get on great, I bet it is.
Okay, but let me say with this idea, is there something...
I think it was hard, I think it's hard and was hard, and not so much that, well, I don't
know, maybe it is, for American artists to actually believe that anything could possibly
be important that came out of London, I think it shocked a lot of people.
Same thing with London artists.
It was a lot of London artists.
Until ten years ago.
I think it was very hard.
We all thought, well, London art is rubbish, New York is where it's at.
And then you asked what's happening now, what's happening now as artists in their early thirties
who've been working for ten years or so, or mid-thirties, who is the sort of Damien Hearst
generation, who suddenly emerged as this group, making London art now the recognised
top international art spot.
Is it?
Yeah.
I would have thought the...
Oh, yeah?
The only place in the world where there's a New York...
Damien Hearst?
Yeah.
Not the judgement of New York.
Damien directed into focus, but there was an awful lot of new, irresistible talent.
Under his arms.
Yeah.
It was art about contemporary life, it was incredibly vivid, very strong, it was kind
of had a bit of pop in it, and a bit of...
Ordered by...
Very order biographical.
A bit of film, bit of photography, bit of autobiography, a lot of realism, a lot of
black humour.
Great.
A lot of sort of drollery.
I think you kind of...
You end the middle of the century with these great French artists, I mean, there's really
kind of amazing artists.
The 19th century.
No, no, no.
The middle of the century.
Right.
You know, as I said, Leger, Picasso, Girard, Matisse.
French modernism.
Yeah, I mean, unbelievable.
French modernism.
Absolutely incredible.
And on the heels of them are people like De Cuny, et cetera, but they're lesser artists.
Then you kind of...
In my opinion, you're ending the century, as I say, with Oldenburg, Seller, Johns, Rushworth.
Maybe in 2050, it might well be Jeff Coons, it might well be Damien Hearst, it might well
be Tracy Eamon, these kind of people, but I think it's way, way too early to start promoting
them quite as long as they're being promoted.
But I mean, suggesting that the history is known and is carved in stone, that's not necessarily
true.
I think the threads of history are so entangled, they start to detangle at a certain point.
For instance, Picasso no longer has the ultimate priority that he had, say, even 15 years
ago.
Duchamp has caught up so much with another generation, and that happens continually.
That's happened through the artist.
It's changed, so the quantifying great is almost nonsensical, because it's periodic.
Is the emphasis, though, of this conversation possibly wrong, because it's all about who's
going to be there at the end of the game, and it's like this kind of Olympics thing?
Is it not really...
Shouldn't it revolve around...
Is it useful?
Wow.
Is all the stuff that they do...
Is it useful?
Is it useful, you know?
Can we do anything with it?
Well, what's art 4 now?
What is art 4 in 1998?
I mean, we knew what it was about in the Renaissance, we knew what it was about in the 50s.
We knew about it in the 60s.
I mean, what actually is art 4 today?
I mean, the corporations have now left it, they don't no longer buy it, collectors don't
buy it much.
I mean, what is art 4 now?
It's a very interesting, important question.
Yeah, and there's no real solid answer.
I mean, everyone has their views, and if you didn't have a view about it, then why would
you be interested in it at all?
You can say on the one hand, well, it's for money.
On the other hand, you can say it's about, well, life is mysterious, who's going to tell
us about that mystery, and maybe Schnabel and Coons and Damien Haas in their own ways.
That's their endeavour, as much as it is about getting publicity and making money.
Yeah, I really believe that these artists work in a kind of a white heat, they kind
of don't even know what they're doing virtually.
Yeah, but all arts have been like that.
Yeah, no, I think I said plus, but I mean, I think that's why I'm saying we have to
wait and see, but their energy is exciting, and that's what's pushing them to the fore
right now.
And time will have to work out what, you know, when we look back, if we're still around
in 2050 or 2020, even, we'll get some idea, and we'll say, well, actually, that's not
interesting.
Why it won't be interesting, maybe, because we won't be living like that anymore, we'll
be living like this.
And so that kind of art will become irrelevant, and they will not be important, but another
kind of art will be important.
I think one of the programmers, I think the people who buy programmers and collect programmers
who can do extraordinary things with computers, that's what we're calling it.
Well, I'm sure you're right, but it's spooky the way painting never really goes away and
keeps coming back.
And even now at its trendiest, white-hot moment in art, painting is so big still.
Sure.
And I wouldn't be surprised in 2050 if there's still lots of sales of canvases and brushes
and tubes of paint people gave.
Well, I would just agree with that one.
I think it'll be a problem setting paintbrushes in 2050.
You do.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that people, artists will still paint, but I don't think they'll render.
I don't think they'll be doing much rendering of, you know, a kind of tree and stuff like
that.
I think, but I think paint will, there'll be a, it'll go on and on.
As long as there's a Glasgow Bernard, there'll always be a painter.
Can you explain this one, David?
Well, that's something to sing it, that he kept painting going in Britain.
I see you mean the kind of Scottish school.
There was, I agree there, there would be very little painting going on, and if it hadn't
been integrated...
I mean, it'll...
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah, I think so, actually, the Glasgow crowd.
I'm out of time, unfortunately.
Oh, right.
21.
21.
It's the name of the publishing company.
21.
David's idea.
Modern Painters is the name of the magazine.
Thank you.
Well...
Thank you, David.
Thank you very much.
Half of it we didn't cover, so I expect you to be back here at this table to pick up on
some things.
No, we like to see...
I'll wear that suit next time.
And I'll wear that one next time, but you owe me another 30 minutes, sir.
And these people are witnesses.
I've enjoyed it very much, all of it.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Much success on the publishing panel, on the magazine, and on the gallery, and on whatever
career wherever you are.
Whatever it is you're doing.
Whatever you want to do next.
And I certainly hope I'll be here.
Thank you for joining us.
We'll see you tomorrow night.
John Lee Rose is made possible by USA Networks as part of our continuing commitment to innovative
television.
Through USA Network and the Sci-Fi channel, we provide original entertainment to America
and the world.
Anywhere, any time, any book, Barnes & Noble.com, where the world shouts for books.
Cisco Systems, empowering the internet generation.
Charlie Rose is also made possible by these funders.
And by Bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide.
Closed captioning funded by the U.S. Department of Education.
To order Charlie Rose program transcripts and video cassettes, call 1-800-ALL-NEWS.
Or write to the address on your screen.
Please indicate show date and guest.
This is PBS.
Coming up this week on Charlie Rose, Tom Hanks, the actor on space exploration.
Yo-Yo Ma, the cellist on music.
And Robert Wright, the president of NBC on television.
Join us.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
