Edible Suffering: An Interview of Jonny Negron

JONNY NEGRON
Desire Develops An Edge (2021)
Acrylic on linen
40 x 64 in

interview by Oliver Misraje 

The paintings of Los Angeles-based Jonny Negron are rife with ancient and contemporary symbology. Scenes of decadent, sensuous nightlife, commodity fetishization, and urban atmospheres with crepuscular orange and twilit purple hues—all with an impending sense of calamity—are wrapped in the structures of biblical and art historical motifs like a mummy’s gauze. Recently, Negron showed a new suite of paintings at Pond Society in Shanghai, his first exhibition at an international institution. 

OLIVER MISRAJE There seems to be an Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy in your work. Nietzsche talks about culture being fueled by primordial impulses. One is Apollonian, which you see in your color palette, the bright colors, the golds, which could be connected to order, poetry, and language. And then, there's the Dionysian impulse, which is where you see the purple and dark color palettes—this exuberant, animalistic impulse towards art and creation. It’s interesting how you center those things—to use Judeo-Christian terminology, it’s like the centering of heaven and hell. 

JONNY NEGRON I'm exploring the interpretations of color and phasing through colors, but it's a gradual phase. There are some works that are predominantly purple or orange, but then there are a few where there's a balance between the two. And there's really a wide range of interpretations that you can draw from it. The purple represents subconsciousness and the orange represents the activity of the intellect, which can then be interpreted as what some would call god or the inspiration that comes from beyond ourselves. 

JONNY NEGRON
Valis (2023)
Acrylic on linen
64 x 56 in

MISRAJE I don't get an ideological sense of your work where you're saying oh, the Dionysian is good and the Apollonian is bad, or vice versa. It just is. You're drawing these focal points which are like an electrical charge that moves through the work. 

NEGRON I try to observe things from a detached place. I try not to insert my own value system into it. Work like that bores me. A few years ago, everyone was painting Donald Trump looking ugly or something—depicting something unpleasant and making sure the viewer knows that. Around that time, I painted the rapper Tekashi69. He was in the zeitgeist when Trump was still president. Similarly to Trump, he just seemed to offend everyone. 

MISRAJE Like a trickster god figure.

NEGRON Exactly. Yeah. I also chose Tekashi69 as a subject because he's Puerto Rican, and he also has the same birthday as my mom. And when I posted it on Instagram, I got such intense backlash. Part of the backlash was because I depicted him in a flattering way. People just assumed that because I painted him in my normal style, this meant I'm a fan or that I support him, and a few people really tried to attack my character. So, I just took the post down. In a way, it was an experiment. I was trolling myself by painting him. But it’s interesting how people take things at face value now. 

JONNY NEGRON
Here Comes the Flood (2023)
Acrylic on linen
64 x 56 in

MISRAJE I was thinking about your painting, “Here Comes The Flood,” with the lyrics by Peter Gabriel. I lived in Haiti for a bit during one of the big hurricanes and the only memory I have of it is the sound of the wind, which was so deafening. There's something so primal about a hurricane. The painting also made me think of the quiet despair of coming back home to Los Angeles after a trip. 

NEGRON That painting ties back to the work that I was making about Puerto Rico. And I think with the work that I've made recently, it's nearing the end of that phase. The color palette reflects this a little bit. “Here Comes The Flood” is a callback to the work I was doing previously, about hurricanes and floods; also my heritage. I felt like the lyrics to that song really articulate the tragedy of my island. Although it's not directly related to the works in this collection, it’s a callback to my own personal history. It started to become taxing for me that there is this obvious demand for work that is rooted in generational trauma; real trauma that my family had been through. My grandmother almost died. She lost her home at ninety years old. But “Here Comes The Flood” is also informing what's to come—it's suggestive of something imminent. On the windshield, there are eleven droplets of water. The number eleven comes up often with a lot of the new works. I call it the number of initiations. And I'm opening up more with these kinds of esoteric symbology that I interpret. In terms of time, eleven is also the hour of the wolf. A lot of my work exists at night and in the nightlife. 

MISRAJE In ancient Rome, when Christianity was first introduced and it was still a fringe religion, the Roman pagans were worried. They obviously dismissed Christianity, but they also worried that there might be this actual secret god that they didn’t know about. So, then they created this new form of god, which was like a void, “the nameless god.” It was this category they created for any god that they might've missed, but could still properly acknowledge. For you, the number eleven is like an intentionally created void that language can’t put a name to. 

NEGRON Through a deep study of religion I think one can come to that realization. Christianity is an especially funny religion because it uses these absolutes: there's only one god. But throughout the Bible, there's the trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And that's not technically monotheistic. But what Christianity did is that they took the pagan hierarchy and obscured it. So, you have the twelve apostles, you have the saints, which are sort of like the lesser deities of the ancient world, like the sun god or the moon god. 

JONNY NEGRON
Vitriol (2023)
Acrylic on linen
42 x 32 in

MISRAJE It's also interesting with your Puerto Rican background—and it’s the same thing with Haiti—they are these Caribbean countries that were colonized and their pagan religions were heavily policed. In order to worship their old deities, they had to give their deities names like Mother Mary. The colonizers would see that they were praying to Mother Mary and not chop off their hands. Your art reflects a similar hidden symbology. Obviously, you can't separate your identity, no one can, but you're not selling your identity to these art buyers. You're like, oh I'm a person of color and this is my work about my trauma. 

NEGRON It’s like that garbonzonia stuff in Twin Peaks, which was sustenance for all these evil spirits but was basically edible suffering in the form of creamed corn. Just seeing the way collectors would respond, where it's like, yes, make more of this kind of thing. It just didn't seem right. And context is so important to me: LA just didn't seem like the right context to show that work. I want to present that kind of work where my people are also part of the viewing experience. I don't want to be consumed solely by a group that is totally alien. 

MISRAJE It’s like a secret code. You can't erase your identity. So, it’s almost like you're creating this intentional blind spot, and I think that also universalizes your art. I'm not a Puerto Rican person, but I can look at “Here Comes The Flood” and feel something, even if what it means to you is different. There’s something approachable about that. 

NEGRON Also, it deals with a larger idea that is more universal—that relates to nature and the modern world. The image came from a dream where I could see myself in the rearview mirror, the forest behind me, and I’m moving away from that towards the city—the melancholy, panic, and dread of moving away from paradise. Although I only lived in Puerto Rico for two years as an infant, and most people wouldn't even remember that stage of their life, for me it was so vivid and so vibrant. I feel like I was born in paradise and then was taken away from it. So, those memories are really potent for me. And it's such a strong part of my identity. There’s a thread of alienation through my work because that is part of my experience: seeking acceptance or searching to fit in. 

JONNY NEGRON
The Return (2023)
Acrylic on linen
64 x 93 in

MISRAJE There's a term for this: third culture kids. It’s when you grow up in a culture that is different from both your parents’ and your own nationality. It's a semi-new phenomenon in our globalized world. On one hand, you're a chameleon—you know the codes of the art and fashion world. And on the other hand, it's a performance, but you never actually belong to those spaces. So, there’s a sense of mourning your lack of belonging, which I feel particularly in your depictions of nightlife, like the people waiting in line to presumably get into a club. There are metaphorical codes. And I could see a lot of people’s assumptions being that it's satire, but I don’t think that’s the case. 

NEGRON That painting, “The Return,” also relates to ancient art in that the nine figures waiting in line represent the nine planets. The figures are archetypes—they're representative of the characters that I've been working with, all situated together. They are waiting in line, but it resembles the kind of imagery that you would see in ancient religious art, like in a Greek frieze, or Egyptian hieroglyphic, that depicts various deities together in a line. But it also relates to what you said earlier—it’s a representation of a moment that is real: people standing in long lines to get into events; to see the attraction. I once did an interview for an art magazine, and the interviewer was commenting on one of the paintings that I did of a man sniffing poppers. He said something about finding the image horrifying. And I said, “Well, you know, if you've never been in a situation where people are just doing this, then maybe you might see it that way.” It's based on an experience that I've had. I've been to many parties where people are casually passing around poppers. So, for me, it's important to include these scenarios that deal with excess or indulgences, because it's a part of our society. I gravitated towards that kind of imagery because that's what's surrounding the artwork. If you go to Art Basel, it's a rather excessive affair. There are a lot of grandiose parties. There are tons of food and drinks and a huge amount of waste. You could argue that the work is critical of the art world in a sense. The art world sometimes has this kind of hypocrisy. They want to celebrate work that talks about politics, about identity, and about all these problems, but it's being consumed and purchased by people who don't have those experiences at all.

MISRAJE Similar to what you're talking about earlier with identity and feeding them your suffering. 

NEGRON As artists, we're just happy to get a taste of that lifestyle. We're just happy to be on the scene. We're just trying to hang on to what we have. 

Emma Stern

Area crystal embellished wool dress, crystal earrings

text by Evan Moffitt
photography by Jason Miller
styling by Erik Ziemba
hair by Sergio Estrada
makeup by Sena Murahashi @ MAGroup
photo assistance by Benjamin Jastremski
production design by Evan Jean

New York-based painter Emma Stern’s muses are digital avatars—buxom, sexually liberated, 3D-programmed and rendered machinations; some might also say alter egos. The relationship between artist and alter ego as a muse is what makes Stern’s paintings so fascinating, alluring, and psychologically titillating. Utilizing proprietary character design software to create digital sketches, Stern turns to formal oil-on-canvas painting methods to make her digital fantasies come to life. In a new body of work, Penny & The Dimes: Dimes 4Ever World Tour, which will be exhibited at Almine Rech in London, Stern’s new avatars are members of a fictional all-girl rock band. In an interview with Evan Moffitt, Stern expounds on her unique practice.

EVAN MOFFITT So, @lava_baby: what is “lava”? 

EMMA STERN (laughs) Lava is like an amorphous blob of virtual clay. It’s the basic starting point of any 3D program. When I first started messing around with it years and years ago, I was reading one of the last books Carl Jung ever wrote—it was about UFOs. There’s a part in it where he's talking about quicksilver, this medieval, mythical material that can take the shape of anything. I realized that's kind of what I was dealing with in these 3D programs. So, I just started calling it “lava.” When I started doing these figures, I was calling them “lava babies,” and then it became my Instagram handle, and then it took on a life of its own. I've called my social media presence an extended performance piece—which wasn’t really intentional in the beginning, but that's where it is now. 

MOFFITT Can you explain how that 3D rendering comes into your painterly process? 

STERN Instead of doing a sketch with paper and pencil, I sketch in these programs and develop the compositions. Most of the decisions get made before I ever put brush to canvas. It's very akin to when I was learning how to paint formally, working from a live model: you set up a scene, fix the lighting, you have this person pose for you, and you can kind of move around 'em to understand them volumetrically. It's far preferable to painting from a photograph, which most painters would tell you tends to really flatten everything.  

Emma Stern, Margot + Spike (venti), 2023. oil on canvas 72 x 60 inches. courtesy the artist and Half Gallery, photo: Daniel Terna

MOFFITT When did you first start painting? As someone who's super engaged with digital media, what about this very traditional, canonical form interests you? 

STERN I've been doing some version of painting my whole life. I was always interested in the figure, and the female form specifically because it allows me a level of self-portraiture. But in general, female bodies are so much more fun. When I was learning to paint in this very formal, traditional way in art school, I felt quite stuck. All of my heroes, like Michelangelo and Caravaggio, were dead white guys, and I'm a female painter in the 21st century. So, it became a question of how I could add to this conversation rather than just carrying on a tradition that really is not super connected to my experience.  

When I started working with 3D modeling, I realized I was building my own muses. I've long been interested in this relationship between the artist and the muse. When I was in art school, I was working at Cooper Union as a nude figure model. I was using that almost as research, you know? I enjoyed the experience of being a muse and thinking about what that meant for me on either side of the canvas. 

People ask me all the time: “Why paint when it's already an image that exists on a computer?” I really want this work to exist in conversation or at least add continuity to the tradition of painting and portraiture. I like the idea that it's this very traditional way of making work, but a very non-traditional, contemporary subject matter. 

MOFFITT  You’ve described these avatars as self-portraits. Do they ever begin as your own image? Or do you think of them as more abstract representations—like expressions of yourself that the rest of us can’t see?  

STERN  Of course, there is some fantasy involved, but then an avatar is an idealized, virtual version of yourself. The cool thing about a virtual self is that it doesn't have to be static. Quicksilver is this constantly changing thing. There's an inherent drag element to it too. I’m using drag interchangeably with role-playing and cosplay because drag makes most people think of gender, but my show last year was all pirates, and that was like my pirate drag, you know? 

Now, I’m working on rockstar paintings. It’s my rockstar cosplay, because as performative as I may come across, I actually have stage fright. I'd love to be a rockstar, but I hate to perform in front of a live audience. Making these rockstar avatars for the past five months is a way for me to live out the rockstar fantasy and offload my stage fright onto these proxies. Ultimately, that’s what these avatars are. They're vessels I can offload different parts of my personality onto.  

Emma Stern, Ursula (Hindsight), 2023. oil on canvas 72 x 60 inches. courtesy the artist and Half Gallery, photo: Daniel Terna

MOFFITT  It reminds me of something that Nash Glynn once told me: “Every painting is a wish.” You've been making digital avatars for computer games since you were a teenager, right? 

STERN  I'm actually using a character design software that is mostly used by people who make 3D porn. There's an online marketplace with a lot of user-generated assets for that. You can go buy genitalia and different kinds of pubic hair for the characters. Often people call my work pornographic, which is so interesting to me because I don't even really do nudes at all. My characters tend to be at least partially clothed, and there are never any depictions of sex.  

MOFFITT In that respect, I see a lot of Lisa Yuskavage in your work. I'm curious if she's been an influence on you.  

STERN Oh, yeah. I'm a huge fan. When I was in art school, I was going to all of her lectures. She probably thought I was stalking her. But I think she has a really different relationship with painting than I do. She's much more of a painter’s painter, whereas I spend a lot of time erasing my hands. There's really not a lot of brushwork. I also feel she's really focused on pain as a subject matter in a way that I'm not. The thing I've really taken from her is the psychology of color: the way different colors can elicit different emotions.  

MOFFITT Your paintings have a distinct palette. Is that supposed to denote lava? Or, the spectrum that lava can reflect? What’s its mood?  

STERN  With the pirate paintings, I called the palette “tequila sunrise.” It was all very sunset, tropical. For this show, there are a lot of paintings that have stage lighting, so it's very cool, indoor, and artificial. I wanted it to look as fake as possible. Although, my palette is always kind of unnatural. These are not colors you see together in nature generally. That's something I started doing, however subconsciously, to emphasize that these aren't humans; this isn't real life. These are cyberspaces, not landscapes. Lava itself, or virtual clay, is actually a grey, plasticky material. I build and design the characters and then I import them into a program. It's an incredibly powerful piece of software.  

MOFFITT Yuskavage was criticized in the ‘90s for painting hyper-sexualized women, as if a female artist couldn't determine the contours of her own desire. Given that people have made these comments about your work, do you think this attitude is still a problem? Historically, it’s come both from men and anti-porn, second-wave feminists.  

STERN I got a lot of this criticism early on, and it seems to have really gone away. But I did notice it was almost always coming from straight men. They assigned a lot of irony to my painting. My definition of irony is a lack of authenticity and these are very authentic coming from me. Perhaps there's some humor, but I almost feel that for someone to call something ironically misogynistic, they’re just giving themselves permission to enjoy something. It's such a cop-out. People are scared to like things that appeal to base instinct, which again, is where porn comes in. But if you enjoy something, how can that be ironic? Enjoyment must be authentic on some level. I also don't see anything inherently problematic with hotness. It’s actually the most misogynistic thing to say that sexy women are offensive. To whom? I'm not offended.  

Diesel sheepskin leather shirt, skirt and pant, leather boots; Jennifer Fisher plated brass earrings

MOFFITT What about your social media persona? You called it a performance. Do you consider that authentic or ironic?  

STERN It's a character. I don't think I did it intentionally. My virtual self has become so much bigger than my actual self, in a way. Most people who know me and know my work are experiencing it through the filter of my social media persona. I think that persona functions the same way as the rockstar cosplay. “Lava Baby” was not supposed to be an alter ego. It was just supposed to be an Instagram handle. But then, everyone's social media presence is an alter ego. Even the most authentic feeds are hyper-curated. I'm very sassy and cheeky online, but I actually think I'm a pretty serious person (laughs). Sometimes, when people meet me in real life, they tell me I'm so much nicer than they thought I would be (laughs). I’m talking with my therapist, and she's like, this is a defense thing. You're offloading social anxiety onto this very confident, sexually conscious, strong-minded character, which contains a lot of me but is not me.  

MOFFITT  I think you're right to note that we all do it in some way or another. But then, aren’t the real and the virtual inseparable now? It’s like the old joke: a fish swims up to another fish and says, “Isn't the water nice?” And the other fish says, “What the hell is water?” Even the way that we process analog images, like paintings, has been conditioned by our engagement online.  

STERN We all are internet artists. Everything is mediated by a screen. Anyone who makes art and posts it online, most people who see their work will only ever see it at the scale of a phone screen. You can choose to take that into account or not. I think about how my work is going to look on a phone. How elitist would it be for me to only think about how it's going to look hanging on the wall of a gallery somewhere in Europe or in someone's home? I feel guilty sometimes because I think like, my gosh, I'm in the business of luxury retail. That's what the art market is at the end of the day. And the thing that rescues me from that dark place is the realization that so many people are seeing this and connecting to it online. Social media is a way for people who will never be able to afford a piece of art in their life to experience and enjoy it.  

MOFFITT  You're bringing internet subcultures to a different context where they might not usually be taken so seriously.  

STERN Right. Something that is really exciting to me is bringing what would be considered lowbrow, like fan fiction, and digital art, and all these weird niche subcultures that exist in the underbelly of the internet, and turning them into something that's considered capital “A” Art. You hang it on the wall of a gallery and someone writes a press release about it. Because now, there’s discourse, right? But that’s important because this is the visual culture of the masses. I love Russian minimalism, but it is not post-internet. You can't post a painting of a black canvas. It doesn't translate to Instagram. Color field painting does not work on the internet, either. Joseph Albers doesn't work on the internet. If you're making stuff that has to be seen in person today, I think it's actually quite elitist. So, recontextualizing what's considered lowbrow subject matter is super interesting to me. A decade ago, no one expected that suddenly, they’d see street artists in a gallery, and then become the highest-selling artists in the world—that graffiti works were going to be auctioned for millions of dollars. There was an opportunity to have some discourse.  

MOFFITT You're not talking about elevating a low cultural form so much as you're talking about getting the art world's attention economy down to the level where everybody else’s has been. 

STERN Yeah. I like to think of elevating it a little bit, but you're right. For a while, I was concerned, because a lot of the people who collected my work were men. And I think there's been a real switch lately. A lot of women are collecting my work now, which makes me super happy. I mean, I love that people are buying my work because they want a big-titty centaur girl in their home. But that's also a surface read. If you can get a little deeper than that and start thinking about the avatar aspect, the fantasy of the virtual self, you might want to spend more time with the work.  

Emma Stern, Catherine (window licker), 2023. oil on canvas 72 x 60 inches. courtesy the artist and Half Gallery, photo: Daniel Terna

Spiritual Hygiene: Devendra Banhart & Isabelle Albuquerque In Conversation

photography by Magnus Unnar

Devendra Banhart and Isabelle Albuquerque have been friends since they were just kids. Together, they dreamed of becoming artists Banhart became a critically acclaimed musician with over a dozen albums under his belt; listening to each one chronicles the evolution of one of our era’s greatest singer-songwriters. His lyrics are surreal, humorous, dark, and dangerous, but also tender—all sung with his instantly recognizable vibrato. Albuquerque is now an accomplished sculptor with inclusions in numerous group exhibitions and a solo at Jeffrey Deitch gallery in New York. Her series, Orgy For Ten People In One Body, is an erotic elegy to selfhood through a plethora of materials like wax, wood, rubber, and bronze. Each one headless to remain ambiguously depersonalized, they tell the story of the artist’s selfless multiplicity. On the occasion of Banhart’s newest album, Flying Wig (Mexican Summer), they discuss their definitions of instinct and how it plays into their practice and life.

ISABELLE ALBUQUERQUE When we first met, I lived on a really isolated mountain. No TV, no neighbors. It took twenty minutes to drive anywhere. My sister Jasmine [Albuquerque] and I found out that you had moved next door. This was the talk of the town. We were so excited. We went to your house and took you on a night hike to the lake.  

DEVENDRA BANHART We call it “the lake.” It’s a special little secret kind of space. It doesn’t have a name. You’d never find it if you didn’t know about it. During the pandemic, I went there to get away. I once saw Billy Zane just sitting in his car there. Billy Zane knows about it.  

ALBUQUERQUE When we went, there was a full moon. You were so strange. We were twelve or thirteen.  

BANHART I lived in a house with maybe thirty copies of Architectural Digest on the table that I was not allowed to open. If I tried to open them, my mom would go “No, don’t open that, it’s for show.” My parents were both yogis, but they weren’t exposing me to stuff. Suddenly, I go into your house and it’s like, what is going on? Your mom, Lita [Albuquerque] immediately tells me something about Joseph Beuys, Eva Hesse, and Louise Bourgeois. I'm sucked into a conversation about art and artists that totally changed my life. And the books—it was the wall of books falling out and raining down. And then, of course, Lita's work, which was my introduction to seeing the madness of the artist.  

ALBUQUERQUE I remember, you were always drawing. I would come over and talk and talk and talk and talk and you were never not drawing.  

BANHART My first performance was with your mom. Something about the planet of the blue bees. You were in a leotard, I was in Speedos. She prompted us to pour honey all over our bodies. Then Lita poured this ultramarine blue powder on us while we held a vase. And Lita poured honey into the vase and we sang in unison: “Ooooooooh!” It was an Egyptian ritual. And we're beckoning the planet of the blue bees. We're like, “Wow, cool. We did a performance!”  

ALBUQUERQUE I want to talk about the record, obviously. I have heard the track “Twin.” The one thing that I've been thinking about is that it came out at the same time as the ANOHNI record. When we lived in New York together, all the shows we did were with ANOHNI. I really feel, at least what I've heard of the record, it's taking me back to that time, which were some of my favorite shows you ever did. Do you feel that connection?  

BANHART Those early days when I was playing in a dress. This record has a lot of that feeling. I recorded most of it wearing this Issey Miyake thing that I look horrible in, but it just feels so good.  

ALBUQUERQUE Is that the blue dress? 

BANHART Yeah, that's where this blue thing kept coming up.  

ALBUQUERQUE The new album has a real Blue Velvet (1986) vibe, which I saw with you for the very first time.   

BANHART It just felt like a blue record. 

ALBUQUERQUE You used to wear dresses to high school—at a time that was so different from now. You were beat up so much for that. And then, you did your shows in drag for quite a few years. When I see you wear the dress, I always think it’s about your mom. I’m curious about your connection to this blue dress.  

BANHART I was wearing a dress when I first started singing because my mom wasn't around. I put on her dresses and started singing. I was like, well, I can sing thanks to wearing my mom's dresses—from this feminine place. It's a really holistic thing. It's a safe space within myself. I’m a straight guy who loves wearing dresses, but I think there's other kids that are like that. It's not a sexual thing for me. I'm not doing it to be reactionary in any way. But in high school, I was definitely trying to get a little bit of a reaction out of people. It was terrifying and I had to leave because it got so sketchy.  

ALBUQUERQUE The first time you put on the dress was when you first started singing. 

BANHART In Caracas.  

ALBUQUERQUE Oh, so how old were you? 

BANHART Nine. I became a woman to be my own mother.  

ALBUQUERQUE Oh, to care for yourself.  

BANHART It was like, how do I unlock the feminine part of myself to the point that it will  provide what my mom isn't giving? If I even bring it up to her, it's just too intense, which I understand, I don’t want to judge. 

ALBUQUERQUE When we first met, you were a punk. And it’s actually kind of surprising to me how you’ve become more connected to nature and spirit.  

BANHART You know, it’s natural to rebel against the environment you grew up in. For me, that was the jungles of Caracas, Venezuela. You would think I would be very nature-y, but that takes effort for me. Maybe not so much now, but at the time I just wanted city city city city. The minute I heard the Velvet Underground’s first record, that is all I wanted in my life. Television’s Marquee Moon (1977). I just wanted to be in that city world more than anything on the planet.  

ALBUQUERQUE You moved to San Francisco when you were seventeen, and then to New York. But even before that, you would send your music and poems out. You were so courageous. You would make these incredible handwritten and hand-drawn packages, and get nothing but rejections.  

BANHART I wrote to SubPop, Matador, everybody. But nobody ever replied, ever. Except for Michael [Gira] of Young God Records.  

BANHART I would also send poems to The New Yorker every month, and they never wrote back, of course. I was like, I'm gonna be a fucking poet. But I was playing music then with your guitar. The first guitar I ever had was a nylon string that my dad bought me but it kind of sucked. It was nylon, which was not cool. I wanted a steel string. So, I stole your guitar. My first record was made with your guitar and I never gave it back (laughs). 

ALBUQUERQUE We were quite isolated up in the hills growing up. The coolest thing about walking through the mountains is that I could hear you singing. You had such an incredible voice.  

BANHART Those hills make me think of instinct, especially the cave. I think instinct is synonymous with vision in the way that irrationality is another way of saying magic. Irrational things are a kind of scientific, Western way of saying the word magic. The transcendent is magical and mysterious and irrational. And making art is irrational, but we must do it, right? And instinct might be that version of vision. And instinct might be a vision. So if you have a vision, it's the gift of instinct. I have a vision of grabbing a salmon and squeezing till those eggs all fall in my mouth.  

ALBUQUERQUE Really? How many years have you had this vision?  

BANHART The point is that it’s a gift. Because where does that vision come from? So, instinct is maybe a form of vision. And it may be in the same way that following your bliss isn't about, “Oh, go do ayahuasca,” it's really about, “Take responsibility for the gift of that vision.” And so you could call it instinct, because it was such an instinctive drive to do this irrational thing that the entire spiritual sanity of the planet relies on and needs. It's really important to have this kind of spiritual hygiene. Art is a form of spiritual hygiene. And we don’t really live in a world that supports that in any way.  

ALBUQUERQUE What do you mean by spiritual hygiene?  

BANHART Okay, you can call it spiritual hygiene, but that kind of takes away some of the magic of it. But that's probably helpful for a lot of people, to even consider taking a little five minute stop to check on their breath. Those things are totally intertwined with the practice of making art. Both disciplines require discipline in order to bear any fruit. 

ALBUQUERQUE  With regard to instinct connected to making art, it’s also about trust and responsibility. This thing is inside you already and you have to trust it. And then, you have to trust that this thing might be subversive or wrong. And then, you have to take responsibility for doing it, as opposed to what everyone else is doing. There is a kind of responsibility with following your instinct or even hearing it at all. It’s a practice just to hear it. Because we're hearing so many other voices all the time.  

BANHART Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. Basically, take responsibility for it. And, know how difficult it is to listen to a voice whose source is so mysterious. It's really like silence. When you get messianic and insane, there's this bizarro world where you think that you’re god. But, the opposite of that is just when you listen to it and step out of the way.  

ALBUQUERQUE And there is an instinct to be empathetic and that is something we all share as humans. So, there is that thing that connects us as an organism, which is kind of like a shared vision.  

BANHART I think that's what I mean. When you get out of the way, you tap into this shared thing. As opposed to, “Oh, it's all coming from me and I invented it.” That's when it's a really heavy trip, when it doesn't really last, and it doesn't, and that's a turn off. Eventually, we all kind of want to run away when we’re around somebody that is telling you how to be.

ALBUQUERQUE There is something about instinct that's collective.  

BANHART That makes sense. But, as collective as it is, it's very rare to find some other people that understand you. That's what I was talking about earlier. I was talking to my therapist, and they're like, “Do you have anyone who understands you?” And I was like, “Well, Isabelle understands me. AHNONI understands me,” and the list stopped there. And that's so very, very precious, regardless of instinct, this collective thing that we all subconsciously possess. But that's the Buddha nature: we're all Buddha, but it's covered in the mud of delusion.  

ALBUQUERQUE When I finished Orgy For Ten People In One Body, I was trying to figure out: am I like a conceptual artist? I realized that, for me, it's not connected to vision. It's really connected to touch. If you asked me to draw a foot, I couldn’t do it. But if you give me some clay to make a foot—I've massaged John's foot so many times—I can do it in two seconds. So, that's when I started sculpting. And, maybe what I’m saying is that we can all have different ways that we connect to our instinct.  

BANHART I think that's so fascinating. And I am thinking, oh, do I know what a foot sounds like? I don't know, but I want to figure out what it sounds like. Maybe the way I can see a foot is by hearing it.   

ALBUQUERQUE Are you doing image conjuring in the sound and music of the new album? I feel like that's something you always do. 

BANHART I am trying to conjure a mood and set the scene. Everything is blue. And we made it at the house where Neil Young recorded the demos for After The Gold Rush, in Topanga. We made it in this hippie world, honestly, listening to the Grateful Dead constantly. Somehow, that was synthesized into a city pop nighttime record, even though we recorded it in the day—in this beautiful, natural environment.  

ALBUQUERQUE Where did the album start? Was it a poem?  

BANHART Right. Yes. There's a haiku by Kobayashi Issa: “This dewdrop world—Is a dewdrop world, And yet, and yet . . .” I was maybe trying to sing about the world we’re living in now without singing about it. It felt like the most important time to make a record because the world isn't going to be around in a month. But also, this is the most pointless time to make any art. It’s just this perfect paradox. You know, what is the point—everything is so unlasting.  

ALBUQUERQUE Is that “...And yet, and yet” part of it?  

BANHART Well “...And yet, and yet” is the hope part of it. Because everything is so impermanent. This is just a dewdrop world. It can go in a flash—the duration of a rainbow. And yet, we continue to live and make plans. There's that instinct to live set in stone and there's also a totally nihilistic way of looking at existence where there's just no point in doing anything. The point is that it's a mystery. In Buddhism, one of the main Zen prayers is, “Beings are innumerable and I vow to liberate them all.” Sounds like a high trip, but you're trying to say, “this is an impossible task and I'm going to try to go for it.” And you know, art is impossible. It doesn’t end. It's just really mysterious on its own.  

ALBUQUERQUE Where did the title of the album, Flying Wig, come from?  

BANHART Well, you gave me that black wig for my birthday during the pandemic and I looked so terrible in it.  

ALBUQUERQUE You looked gorgeous in it. 

BANHART I wore it to some restaurant and they practically booed me out of the place. I just couldn’t pull it off. But there it stood on a mic stand in the living room—this gorgeous object. It reminded me of you. I couldn’t see any of my friends and I started to picture this wig just flying off into the middle of the night. So, I kind of anthropomorphised it. And also, it kinda seemed like a good euphemism for getting high: tonight “I’m flying wig.” I’m so high that my hair is flying. And, of course, we can get high in the garden just smelling some Mexican marigold. But yeah, that’s where the title Flying Wig comes from. And I think it’s an okay record (laughs). We could talk for hundreds of years. I don't know why I'm talking so much. I never talk. I don’t like talking. I just wanna hear about you.  

The Anatomy Lesson

photography by Carlota Guerrero
styling by Julie Ragolia
models are Ann-Océane, Diarra @ Next, Famzi, Khia, Lynsha @ Cover, Mai @ Aeon, Mouna @ Elite, Nadia @ Identity, Stella
all clothing by Hermès