Daniel Richter: A Very Boring Dream Come True

Daniel Richter
Fun de Siecle
2002
Oil on Canvas
115.75 x 151.18 inches (294 x 384 cm)


interview by Oliver Kupper


Artist Daniel Richter cut his teeth designing music posters and album covers in the antifascist, squatter punk scene of Hamburg in the 1980s and ‘90s. Now based in Berlin, the spirit of rebellion is wielded by the knife blade of his paintbrush in works that cross violently across the threshold between abstraction and figuration. With inspiration from early French symbolists, his work holds a mirror to a society pervaded by chaos and perversity. His show, Limbo, which coincides with the 59th Biennale di Venezia, was presented in a palazzo where a Catholic brotherhood once provided spiritual benediction to those sentenced to brutal public executions. Today marks the opening of his solo exhibition, Furor II, at Regen Projects in Los Angeles. We caught up with Richter while he was on vacation in Trieste, Italy where an oligarch’s seized Philippe Starck-designed superyacht was moored just outside his hotel window. 

OLIVER KUPPER: As someone who grew up in a Germany divided by communism and capitalism, can you talk a little bit about this and how it influenced your work?

DANIEL RICHTER: My work is based on only one belief system, and that's the church of painting (laughs). Growing up in Cold War Western Europe in the northern German countryside meant that you were embedded in a welfare system that guaranteed education, a higher level of consumption, social security, pension funds and, at least for the white working class, the promise of leaving its class behind. During the Cold War, the communists had to prove that they were guaranteeing a better, more just life than capitalism, but they didn't. Both are installed narratives, but capitalism has won.  And the culture we all participate in is like a big blob of oil drifting in an ocean of shit, and both are not mingling. The promise of this constant cultural production offers the poor the promise that if they only try hard enough, they’ll make it, they will be able to participate. But that pile of shit, that huge ocean of misery, depression, exploitation, and materialistic promises is not gonna go away just because you finally can afford a Rolex. A very boring dream came not true. The idea or belief that life could be fair and everybody should have the same rights and the same benefits has sadly nearly completely vanished.

KUPPER: In Europe, and around the world, there’s a growing xenophobia just under the surface and I think your paintings started to explore this shortly after 9/11. 

RICHTER: Yes, for sure. Xenophobia, such a noble word for racism! I find it interesting that those nationalists and racists find their counterpart in the Islamists, the same idealization and hatred towards women, that whole idea of a dumb, violent patriarchal system. When 9/11 happened, it could have been way worse if they had been thinking in military terms. They could have bombed atomic power plants. Instead they bombed the Twin Towers as a symbolic castration of the West’s finest power symbols. It’s a war against women, a war against softness or weakness. It’s a war against reason and reflection. It's a war for dumb guys believing in lord penis, in guns and violence, and all that kind of paranoid, fascist, megalomanic power scheisse. And it's always “the nation” or “righteous path” or “the glorious past.” And in a weird way, they won, because you could say that Trump, or Putin, or Bolsanaro are all perverted, Christian versions of these extreme Islamic beliefs. It’s weird, this dialectical hop that the whole thing took in the years after 9/11. Invading Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and then the engagement in Syria—all in the name of democracy and women's rights with the result of not liberating one woman, but incarcerating all of them. I always wonder why nobody talks about the flourishing American economy under the auspice of homeland security. The military machine is an absolutely idiotic, counterproductive system. All these combinations just build up so much anger, frustration, and depression.  

 

Daniel Richter
Amsterdam
2001
Oil on Canvas
88.58 x 57.87 inches (225 x 147 cm)

 

KUPPER: It definitely seems like we're on a path to some kind of collapse.

RICHTER: On the other hand, darkness is huge and your little iPhone lamp is small, but also when night is the deepest, dawn is the nearest. I don't know—how did we get into this topic? Oh yeah, my paintings—my paintings are beautiful and colorful, by the way.

KUPPER: Art is a good way of synthesizing these ideas. Like the work of Francis Bacon, who people compare your work to—the zeitgeist of war, by osmosis, embeds itself into the artist’s psyche. 

RICHTER: I understand why people make that relation to Bacon, but it was accidental. I think it has to do with those images I made that focused on WWI cripples—guys that lost their legs in combat and are on crutches looking like sad insects. And the squeezing and banding of those figures, combined with the flatness of the backdrop, the aggressiveness and the softness of the bodies—the stress and tension somehow forced itself into an architecture superficially similar to Bacon. But his bodies were isolated and under observation in an empty theater. In my work, the space itself pushes the figures. I never really liked Bacon that much, though—not a lot of humor in it. I gained more from late 19th-century French painting because it’s so beautiful and bourgeois, and so distant from my thinking. Before the first World War, art was more optimistic and also already influenced by different cultural and technological sources, from African sculpture to Japanese woodcuts, and from lithography to photography. I think comic books were for me what photography was for them. And then, there was the whole thing about the possibilities and opportunities of the brush and the material of paint itself. These ideas in those days were like promises of an unknown land, that bland is now discovered and mapped, but I like to pretend it’s not. Sounds nostalgic, I know.

KUPPER: Going back to comic books and your upbringing making art for album covers and posters, can you talk a little bit about how you got into working within the music scene?

RICHTER: In the early ‘80s, late ‘70s, when I was young, punk was the way out. So, I moved to Hamburg. Hamburg was a city with lots of squatters and a red light district with a certain underground appeal. I couldn't make music and I didn't want to make music because you have to rehearse with others, which is how I realized I could draw. So, that was the natural role the subculture chose for me. 

© Daniel Richter, Courtesy Regen Projects

© Daniel Richter, Courtesy Regen Projects

KUPPER: What was the visual language that you were pulling from when you were making these album covers?

RICHTER: I would say somewhere between Raymond Pettibon, Charles Burns, and the work Ub Iwerks did for Disney. But also, John Heartfield, George Grosz, that kind of Dada influence. In those days, information was rare, so it was gathered at record stores, in fanzines, and at concerts. And there was also Linder, who designed the Buzzcocks’ seven inch, Orgasm Addict. And all the Crass records—the idea of having an anarchist collective designing a whole identity for a band and accidentally becoming the role model for millions of idiot punk bands afterwards is quite funny. If there was a band I really liked and they appealed to me, I would do artwork for them, and if somebody needed a poster for an antifascist action concert, I would also do that. I have an antifascist background, so I would design posters and t-shirts for demonstrations etc. You just steal from everybody—it’s very simple. 

KUPPER: How did you get involved in the antifascist movement?

RICHTER: There was a  squatting scene in Hamburg in the mid-’80s, but there was also a huge right wing hooligan scene and regular trouble with fascists and skinheads at concerts. Hamburg was also the home of the militant neo-fascist movement in Germany. So, at some point, we had to turn to self-defense. I mean, all over Germany, generally all over the world, every city has its underground where the outcasts hang out, but every city also has this right wing, macho culture that aims their anger at a perceived enemy. Throughout the ‘20s in Germany, there were a lot of working class, self-defense movements against the Nazis, like the Antifaschistische Aktion.  

KUPPER: Did you ever experiment with psychedelics when you were that age?

RICHTER: The only drug I really recommend, also because it does the least harm to mankind and those producing and distributing it, is LSD. I think LSD is a great drug. It’s very fascinating to watch your brain connecting thoughts, feelings and observations, and structuring the world as a constant ornament in very complex layers, and also leaving your body behind, or intensifying its tactility is a life-changing experience. Weird, that even this drug is nowadays used as a self-optimizing tool.

Daniel Richter
Bill
2015
Oil on Canvas
78.74 x 106.3 inches (200 x 270 cm)

KUPPER: People have described your work as psychedelic, would you say that’s correct? 

RICHTER: For some of the work, I think it fits well. Some of the early, non-figurative, abstract work was definitely a way of getting the complexity of psychedelics together with chaos theory and the looming of the world wide web, you could say. Digital tools in the early ‘90s were promising as a means to change the world for the better … but that just transformed into a huge pile of really shitty flyers for techno raves. 

KUPPER: In the early 2000s, you had this really interesting exploration in the figurative works of riots: people in riot gear, sexuality and pornography, the rise of the internet being this primary driver of technology. Can you talk a little bit about these thematic explorations—the rise in tribalism and militarism?

RICHTER: I just got bored doing the psychedelic thing. I had been searching for something and I found it—mission accomplished. The paintings were surprising to me because they tried to elaborate chaotic structures that asked, “When is too much too much? And what kind of structure is underneath? Are there secret patterns that we do not recognize at first glance?” It was about deciphering chaos. Also, it was fun trying to squeeze in everything I could think of. And then, I thought it was interesting to shift into the opposite direction, which was looking at representation, politics, history, and the world that surrounds me. I can claim to be the first artist who focused on Al Qaeda in his work. On the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, I made a painting that looked like a mix of the Passion Of Christ and the fall of the Berlin Wall in the manner of a psychedelic [Emil] Nolde, but was actually based on the Al Qaeda bombing of the American embassy in Nairobi. The circumstances under which it was shown blurred the reception. The fall of the Wall and the crumbling of the Soviet Union are the reason for the reappearance of religions and nationalism haunting us today. So sad.

Daniel Richter
Phienox
2000
Oil on Canvas
99.21 x 144.88 inches (252 x 368 cm)

KUPPER: I want to talk about your show Limbo that was on view in Venice. Can you tell me about the show and the history of the building [Scuola Grande di San Fantin] that the exhibition is in?

RICHTER: It is a building where for a couple hundred years a Catholic fraternity begged God for forgiveness for prisoners sentenced to death. But begging forgiveness did not mean that they would be guaranteed direct access to heaven, or protect you from hell. Once you gave them your money, they would only guarantee that you would end up in in Limbo after death, which is like a waiting room where your fate is not very clear. So, after you got sentenced to death, the fraternity took the sentenced under its wing. On the day of your execution, dressed like the Ku Klux Klan, but in all black, they would wave buckets of ember, sing in praise of the Lord, and beg forgiveness for the poor sinner. At the first stop of that walk, the hands were cut off in public and people would cheer in joy (laughs). And then, a doctor would cauterize the wound to stop the bleeding. After that, they put your hands on a chain and hung them around your neck. Afterwards, they would walk you another 500 meters to cut off your ears and nose, and rip out your tongue—all while you are still alive. And at the end of that long march ending at San Marco, you would either get skinned alive or torn into four pieces by horses. One aristocrat got sentenced to death because he cursed Mother Mary after losing a poker game. He was at the wrong party at the wrong time. So, the mood of the building is somber. And I thought, that's a great place for my work, because my work is also about Limbo, planet Earth is Limbo. All paintings are based on just one postcard of two men that had lost their legs in 1916. I had never done that before, focusing on only one image. But It liberated me from the force to establish a narrative myself, since the inherent drama is already there. It was the absolute naivety of millions of people entering the first World War—really believing it would be over in four weeks. Matter of fact, it lasted four years, and for some it lasted a hundred, and since they didn’t know better, they may have even liked it, but I doubt that. Anyway, I am happily swinging my brush and spatel knife, drifting on and in my little blob of oil, drifting in an ocean of endless opportunities that smells rather rancid.

KUPPER: It's a dark prospect, but true. And the way artists operate on the outside of that is very interesting. 

RICHTER: It sounds bitter, which maybe has to do with the fact that I’m on holiday and I have too much time on my hands. Honestly, a lot of cultural production is really interesting and is one of the pillars that hope can be based on. Aside from mainstream media culture, I think there's a lot of stuff that is very interesting, very honest, very touching. It makes me learn, and think, and consider beliefs, and rethink old habits. How do we get out of the bog? It's easy to be cynical or sound a radical critic of culture—it's much harder to be humanistic. 

KUPPER: Your show at Regen Projects. Can you talk a little bit about that show?

RICHTER: I am just following the trail I laid out. Some of the paintings may be good, some may even be better. We’ll see.

KUPPER: So, you’re in Limbo again. 

Daniel Richter: Furor II is on view through December 23 @ Regen Projects 6750 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles

Daniel Richter
Punktum
2002
Oil on Canvas
78.74 x 118.11 inches (200 x 300 cm)

A Different Vision On Fashion Photography: An Interview Of The Legendary Photographer Peter Lindbergh

When you think of famous fashion photographers, a few names come to mind: Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin, Mario Testino and perhaps Herb Ritts. There is another name, however, that is just as iconic: Peter Lindbergh. You could say that Lindbergh’s work ushered in a new aesthetic paradigm for the pages of glossy magazines. His images of Christy Turlington, Tatjana Patitz, Cindy Crawford, Kate Moss, Karen Alexander, among others, turned them into supermodels. Coinciding with his major retrospective at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, Taschen has recently released a major career monograph with over four hundred photographs from his oeuvre. We caught up with Lindbergh at a recent signing in Beverly Hills to discuss his work and influences.  

OLIVER KUPPER: When and why did you first pick up a camera?

PETER LINDBERGH: I had an interview two or three weeks ago, with somebody in Germany. They said, be truthful with us, because we know why people pick up cameras: to get close to the girls. I said that I was very interested in photography. I was an artist and then I stopped doing art, specifically paintings. I didn’t feel like it was the right thing. And then I became a photographer. That was very accidental in a way. And I felt very fast that it was a wonderful thing.

KUPPER: So you fell in love with it.

LINDBERGH: I felt that that, wow, that was the right thing. I had to stop art to see what I wanted to do...I could have been a florist or a baker or something but I wasn’t.

KUPPER: Where in Germany was this?

LINDBERGH: Dusseldorf

KUPPER: And this was shortly after the war?

LINDBERGH: No, it was really late actually. 1973.

KUPPER: You were working alongside a lot of really big photographers, like Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin. What were your reflections of them and what were their reflections of you?

Lindbergh: It wasn’t so much that I knew them, I knew of their work.The first professional job I did was for Stern Magazine, which Helmut and Guy Bourdin was a part of. That was a big portfolio. Something that happened twice a year like what LIFE magazine does for fashion twice a year. And that was something, that was very fun.

KUPPER: What were some of the most important lessons that you learned when you were first taking pictures and lessons that you still carry with you, lessons that you left behind?

Lindbergh: Not much. I did a lot of really odd things. I was always excited. But looking back today for the first 5 years, whatever I did wasn’t really something to talk about. After Stern, everything started. I did that portfolio. It was striking. From there, I got a lot of calls. From people like Marie Claire, who said come to Paris, we’ll give you a contract just for that one story.  

KUPPER: Were you bored of the fashion and the glamour that was going on?

LINDBERGH: No, at that time I had no real idea of what was going on in the fashion world. I am bored of the glamour today. You see the Oscars today and they walk down the carpet and sometimes they can’t, they can’t even walk in those heels -- I should shut my mouth.

KUPPER: No it’s okay, I think people should talk back about the industry.

LINDBERGH: You have twelve to fifteen of the favorite actors in the world. They come and walk the red carpet. You know what I would say if I came to the Oscars and I had done a wonderful movie for 12 months or so, and as I walked up the red carpet, someone asked, ‘Wow, what is your jacket?’ I would say, ‘Fuck off.’  That’s what I would say. They’re obsessed. With fashion, there is too much money. So much success.

KUPPER: Some of your earliest photographs especially with Vogue, they were really stripped down. You weren’t using stylists or anything like that.

LINDBERGH: Yeah. A lot of kids, they come for the show and they think, ‘Oh fashion, fashion!’ I was interested in doing something. In creating pictures.

KUPPER: There’s a cinematic quality to your work. Fritz Lang was a big inspiration. There’s a very industrial inspiring look that goes goes against the grain of typical, glossy fashion.

LINDBERGH: I come from a place that is totally industrial and heavy industry.

KUPPER: There’s also Germanic heritage. But you also blend a lot of American influences too, like Sci-Fi and aliens. You mix these interesting worlds.

LINDBERGH: How that came up, it started in 1990. I did a story with Helena Christensen and the martian for Vogue. And then all these super models popped up in my face and I had to follow that trajectory. Then in 2000, I wanted to do more photography like that. A lot of people think my work is all about the celebrities. And they all talk about the celebrities, no? I like celebrities, but only if they have something to say. Bradley Cooper is one of the most interesting men and he is my friend, but they are not all like that.

KUPPER: There’s a closeness in your photographs, an intimacy between you and your subjects. Can you describe where that comes from? Is that something that you project?

LINDBERGH: That contact is a beautiful thing.  When that is your goal, a lot of beautiful things happen. You suddenly find a new friend. It’s strange. It’s something so new.

KUPPER: So How did you come in contact with Vogue? How did that first shoot come about? I know they turned it down at first.

LINDBERGH: American Vogue did turn me down. When I came to American Vogue, the problem was they they thought I had a weird way of shooting and the editor at the time had a different aesthetic. They wanted me to shoot models that I had no relationship to. I had shot those famous pictures of the models on the beach and British Vogue picked up the story months later. When Anna Wintour came to American Vogue, everything changed and I worked with them a lot more. And that famous photo was in the 100 Years Of Vogue issue that came out four years later. They said that it was the most important photo of the decade.

KUPPER: Did you know that they would become such huge icons?

LINDBERGH: No, not at all. Because that was the easiest two days on the beach in Santa Monica and I was thinking I was in heaven because that was what I wanted to do.

KUPPER: Do you see your influence on photography today?

LINDBERGH: Not as much as people say. A lot of photographers I see and like, but I don’t think they go really do good work.

KUPPER: Who are some photographers today that you appreciate?

LINDBERGH: Bruce Weber is really good, but he is from the old school. I also really like Tim Walker.

KUPPER: Would you explain your connection to Van Gogh?

LINDBERGH: When I was in art school in Berlin, they wanted you to choose in the first two semesters to study someone in your medium for your major. He just impressed me very much. He has enormous power in his paintings and portraits.

KUPPER: And you still have a studio in Arles?

LINDBERGH: I went to Arles from Berlin hitchhiking. I went to school there. And I still go back today. I have a house there. My son got married there. It is a really important place for me.

KUPPER: One last question, What makes a photograph iconic to you?

LINDBERGH: The time. The time.

You can purchase Peter Lindbergh's new Taschen monograph here. A Different Vision On Fashion Photography will be on view until February 12, 2017 at Kunsthal Rotterdam in Amsterdam. Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. portrait by Summer Bowie. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Scaring Away the Demons: An Interview with Fashion Designer and Artist Christophe Coppens

One might expect someone with the credentials of Christophe Coppens – internationally acclaimed avant garde fashion designer, official milliner for the Belgian Royal Family, former theatre actor and director, burgeoning artist – to be radically unapproachable. Instead, Coppens shakes your hand warmly, orders iced tea at an outdoor café, talks about his love for cheap avocado toast and the 20s style bungalows in Silverlake. Perhaps this is why Coppens jumped the brutal, fast-paced, capitalist boat of the fashion industry circuit five years ago, abandoning his label to pursue art.

A lot of other designers have recently jumped the same ship, and have actually found refuge in Los Angeles – namely Hedi Slimane, who left Saint Laurent after an incendiary three years at the helm of the label. But there is something more to Coppens, underneath the surface of his accomplishments, even his openness. As we discuss his oscillations between different worlds, pieces from his newest exhibition, “50 Masks: Made In America,” twirl on mechanized pirouettes in the gallery window, the likes of which include: the American flag stitched into a terrifying ape mask, displaying its sharp teeth (“Trump Mask”); a mask made from a plastic bag filled with red and blue prescription pills (“Refill Mask”). The masks explore the many faces of the American cancer – mass food production, erasure of Native Americans, the oppression of women. All the while, a macabre a cappella version of: “It’s a Small World” plays on the loudspeaker. It is clear that Coppens isn’t in the art business as merely a cop-out of the fashion world. Coppens calls leaving the design industry “my freedom.” This does not just mean freedom from obligations, investors, and employees. Through art, Coppens has room to be truly controversial and avant garde, to talk about the things he wants to talk about, to make good work.

We got to talk to the artist about his past life as a star of the fashion world, his new life as a Los Angeles artist, and all the energies and excitements in between.

OLIVER KUPPER: You started out training for theatre, as an actor and a director?

CHRISTOPHE COPPENS: First as an actor, until I realized I wasn’t a very good actor. I was always fighting with the directors and teachers. So I thought, “Okay, I will direct myself.” I went to a theatre school and said, “I want to direct.” They said, “We don’t care; as long as you’re here, you’re going to act.” Through acting, I founded a small company during school, and I directed plays in the evening. I always did sets and costumes for my plays. I needed accessories – hats and stuff. I went to a lady, 87 years old, living in a small village, asking for her help in making these pieces. She said yes, so I went for a weekend. Since then, for a whole year, I went every weekend. At the end, I had a collection, and Elle Magazine Belgium sent me to Paris fashion week. I quit school.

KUPPER: So that’s what brought you out of acting and directing?

COPPENS: Yeah. I love a lot of things about theatre and performance, but I also enjoyed the process of doing something on my own and only showing it when it’s ready. It was a breath of fresh air at that moment. But everything I did then influenced, always, my work – my shows, my exhibitions, my collections, my photos, my display in stores. It’s always there, the stage, the light, and the sound.

KUPPER: You like the theatrical aspect of fashion?

COPPENS: Yeah, amongst other things. I like the impact things can have on stage.

KUPPER: You grew up in Belgium?

COPPENS: I’m from a small village near Antwerp. I moved to Brussels when I was eighteen or nineteen.

KUPPER: Did you have an early interest in fashion, or was it something that came later? Antwerp is known as the place for a lot of incredible designers.

COPPENS: I had a studio as a kid. The attic was my studio. I always made stuff, and then I invited people over for my “exhibition” or “fashion show.” I always had a little bit of a problem to choose, which is still an issue today. I like different things, which is not, career-wise, the smartest thing. I don’t care anymore. I just want to do whatever feels right. It’s all connected at the end, even though it can look very different.

KUPPER: I wanted to ask about the Antwerp 6. That sort of environment bred a lot of great fashion. Was there something in the air?

COPPENS: Oh yeah. It was super exciting to see people like Walter [van Beirendonck] and Dries [van Noten]. I was always in awe, but never in awe enough to go to fashion school, because I thought, “Oh, I’ll have to stop doing theatre and make choices.” I quit theatre school in my last year because they made me choose. Suddenly, I was in all these magazines, and they said, “Theatre or fashion.”

KUPPER: Did you ever get a chance to meet any of those designers?

COPPENS: You know, it’s a weird thing in Belgium. Antwerp is Antwerp, it’s very protective. I have very good contact with Walter, for example, but that’s the only one. Everything else is quite closed.

KUPPER: When you had your fashion label and doing the fashion week circuit, you showed a lot in Paris and Japan. Were those the main ones?

COPPENS: We showed Paris, sometimes Milan. Mainly Paris, twice, or four times a year when I had men’s accessories. And Japan was my biggest market. I showed in 150 stores, and I had a store of my own in Tokyo.

KUPPER: It seems like the Japanese were really appreciative of your work.

COPPENS: First of all, Japan is a great country to start. They like everything new. You can go really fast there. But then the trick is, a year or two later, there is something else new. Then it becomes really hard to keep it going. We did that for twenty years. To keep it relevant and to stay on top, I went four or five times a year for promotion tours, events. I really worked that market because I love Japan. I have many friends there. My collaborations there were some of the best I ever did. From my old life, that’s what I miss the most.

KUPPER: Did you like the fashion week circuit?

COPPENS: Oh no, I hated it. Also, it’s changed so much. At the risk of sounding old, when I started, it was so different. It was exciting to go to fashion week. It was rather small, also. There was this one small accessory fair, Premiere Classe, which became huge after. It became about something else. The last five years of my career in fashion, I was fairly unhappy, because it was no longer about the things I wanted to be about. There were many people who could still have a beautiful career, of course, and beautiful houses and labels. But I got stuck in this system of having to grow in order to survive. In the end, it’s all about, “They need a red scarf because Dries Van Noten has red pants, so we have to make more red scarfs.” You’re competing in these price ranges that are ridiculous. I could never afford my own stuff. You try to make cheaper stuff, to do collaborations with bigger stores, and they had stuff that was only $10. Everything was slipping through my fingers. It’s not what I wanted. I started doing all my free work in secret, because it was influencing the market and the customers. I would have people in my company say, “Don’t show that too much, it will scare away the Royal Family.” I felt trapped.

KUPPER: Speaking of the Royal Family, how did you become the official milliner for them?

COPPENS: One princess called when I was really young. I worked for the Royal Family for fifteen years. It was fun. There were two milliners of the Royal Family. I enjoyed it, but it’s a niche. It was interesting, as an exercise, because there’s so much protocol and so many rules. There’s so much that you have to think of. It’s not about you; it’s about them, how the photos will look, how the audience will take it. My best memories are with Queen Paola.

KUPPER: Did they have a specific preference of style, or did they like the avant garde aspect?

COPPENS: That was always the fight. The other milliner was very classical – well crafted, but very classical. It came in waves. I would do something that was a bit too risqué, and I wouldn’t hear from them for two or three months.

KUPPER: It seems like a lot of designers are coming to LA. What do you think it is about LA that is such a refuge? Is there more space?

COPPENS: For me, it’s all about a certain freshness. I like that LA has moved from the underdog position, culturally, after all these years. People used to talk about LA like it was culturally flat, but a lot of things could brew underneath the surface. I like that attitude. Suddenly, all these things pop up that are much fresher than other cities. The city itself is so magical. There’s so much in it, so many layers. It feels, at times, like New York in the 70s. It’s very exciting.

KUPPER: And it seems far enough away from the fashion world.

COPPENS: To be honest, the fashion world is no longer my world, hasn’t been for five years now. That’s when I quit… It’s about everything. It’s about the energy of a small restaurant and an avocado toast that is amazing, cheap, and fresh. It’s not tired. There’s no pretention here. I really like that. It would be very hard to imagine living somewhere else again. We’re very spoiled here.

KUPPER: Do you feel like you’re disowning the fashion past, or are you disowning the industry?

COPPENS: I love fashion, still. It’s just that, in my journey, I got stuck. I was in a boat that had to go on and on with stuff and obligations and banks and investors. I had no clarity or vision how to steer that boat. I had to pull the plug, which was a very aggressive and very hard. I had a high price to pay for my freedom, because I lost everything and had to start from scratch. But that was the only choice. It was that or jumping off a bridge. My assistant from five years ago, then, suddenly got a very heavy cancer. And I was like, “I’m next if I’m going to do this. This is no longer okay.” There is a big problem in the fashion world. But now, nobody talks about anything else.

About a year ago, I was asked to be the head of a master’s program at the Sandberg Institute. We start from the urgent question, “What’s next in fashion?” It’s all about those questions, from designing, to sustainability, selling, financing, consuming. We have twelve students to ask all these questions. It’s very refreshing for me to see how the young generation looks at all of these things. It’s surprising; the last thing they want to do is go to Paris Fashion Week. They don’t think like that. They stay at home, work in their kitchen, sell at their friend’s store.  

KUPPER: What’s the dream now for these students?

COPPENS: They’re very socially aware. They’re incredible. Talking about sustainability is almost out of fashion; it’s obvious. It’s incredible. We’re going to publish a book next year. Walter is involved also, and other amazing people form all over the world.

KUPPER: Do you see your fashion designs as in a conversation with the art you make now, or are they separate?

COPPENS: When I stopped, I was fairly radical in it. I was like, “Now, it’s all about sculpture and painting.” People would ask me to make accessories for them, and I would say, “No, this is my new life. This is the way I’m going to tell my stories.” I did four shows like that. But I must say now, five years later, I’m much less uptight about it. The masks could be confused with my older work, but I don’t think so. It’s not pretty. I just use this medium and my couture tools from the past to tell these stories. I could not tell the same stories in a painting; it would be way too heavy or obnoxious. I like this medium that is very light. Then, you can hit stronger. For example, one of my friends, Roisin Murphy, asked me to make masks for her tour. I’ve been making masks for the tour and these videos for the past year now.

KUPPER: Is that where the idea came from?

COPPENS: No. I wanted to do a show with masks, but it got delayed because I sent all the masks I finished to her… How do you name these things? Is it an accessory? I don’t think so. You can wear it, yes. Frankly, I really don’t care anymore. Before, I did, I know that it really worked against. Now, I think times have changed.

KUPPER: It seems like you’re distilling everything to have the ultimate freedom to create what you want to create.

COPPENS: Totally. For example, in those four years, I had some shows and did some art fairs. A big part of the art world is boring. Very unattractive, very unappealing. I was thinking, “Is this what I now want? Is this repeating the same story in a new crowd?” It’s not very interesting. I like this [Please Do Not Enter] much more. It’s much fresher and more modern. To say, “Let’s have an art show, and then we’ll have clothes out front, and then we’ll put out perfume.” That’s how we look at things. That’s how we look at Instagram and look at images all day. When I go to galleries most of the time, the life is outside and everything inside is dead.

KUPPER: There’s no movement to it.

COPPENS: No, and it bothers me. There are amazing galleries, of course. There are artists who have an amazing career who should show there, I guess.

KUPPER: What does “the Mask” mean to you?

COPPENS: A lot, actually. My father is a very respective art dealer in primitive art. All my life, I was surrounded with these skulls and brilliant masks from Borneo and Oceania. Always, when I saw a book about mask making, I would buy it. I like the idea of what the mask could mean today. Is it tribal? Is it a disguise? Today, what can you say with your mask? In a way, it’s still about scaring away the demons or trying to evoke something. I wanted to do a show about America, now that I have moved here. Masks were the first thing that popped up. Maybe you wouldn’t see it in the show, but I really love America.

KUPPER: America has a strange, conflicting history.

COPPENS: As a European, you’re raised with American pop culture – that’s how you learn to speak English, those are the songs you sing, the TV series, the movies. It’s always there. But then you move here at 42, and suddenly, you see all these other layers. You read the American newspapers; you watch the American news. So then there are all these things that are conflicting with what you were taught. There are all these things that you don’t like or understand. When we agreed to do the mask exhibition, it wasn’t the idea to do it about America. But the first mask I made was the “Trump Mask.” From there, there was no way back. I cannot make a pretty mask with pretty feathers. Then, I started making a mask about Native Americans, racism, the empowerment of women. The first group was all about the empowerment of women, even though they look very sexist. That’s the game I’m playing. I’m trying to show things that are quite obnoxious, even though that’s not my opinion.

KUPPER: How does satire play into your masks? Do you think about that?

COPPENS: Yeah, and surrealism also. It’s almost like a political cartoon, a caricature. It’s enlarging an idea. I don’t think it’s cynical, to be honest. I always try to show them in a fresh way. You might look at it briefly and say, “Oh, this is pretty and new.” But there are deeper themes.

KUPPER: If you had to design a mask for yourself, what would it look like?

COPPENS: I made three. They’re on the floor. That’s a mold of my face. I see myself cleaning. That’s my face, scrubbing the floors.

KUPPER: How did you create the soundtrack for this exhibition?

COPPENS: I always loved creating the music. My show “The Hills Are Alive” in Tokyo was about a gift store in an antique park that doesn’t exist. Like, when you do a ride at Disneyland, and you get out and buy all the stuff that you just saw. We did the store, with a cashier and everything. For that, we made a beautiful soundtrack. For this show, it went very fast. I knew exactly what kind of music I wanted. A lot of it has pop culture references – movies, TV shows, commercials. There are many weird variations on “It’s a Small World.”

KUPPER: What’s next after this?

COPPENS: There’s a second year of the school. There’s a lot of work to do there. I was asked, and I am going to do some directing in Europe; a big dream come true. Then I want to do another show in LA. I want a big, empty space; it’s an installation, experience piece. 

Christophe Coppens "50 Masks Made In America" will be on view until July 16, 2016 at Please Do Not Enter, 549 s. Oliver Street, Los Angeles. Interview and photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Intro text by Keely Shinners. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE