Jeffrey Gibson

interview by Nellie Scott 

Jeffrey Gibson, a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, is the first Indigenous artist to represent the United States with a solo exhibition at the Venice Biennale. Since the 1990s, Gibson has been weaving his own Native traditions and queer history with pop cultural references, particularly song titles, into kaleidoscopic textile works, paintings, videos and performances. His exhibition at the US Pavilion, the space in which to place me, takes its title from Oglala Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier’s poem Ȟe Sápa. In the following interview, Nellie Scott, the director of the Corita Art Center in Los Angeles, delves into Gibson’s history-mining practice. 

NELLIE SCOTT In your work, you blend a rich tapestry of cultural influences, materials, and themes. How do you describe your artistic identity and vision and how has it evolved throughout your career?

JEFFREY GIBSON There are a couple of things that have happened recently, even in the past twelve months, that will serve as milestones for me, like the Venice Biennale and the publication of An Indigenous Present. So, I'm kind of thinking that I can move on to different aspirations artistically. It's a strange transitional place to be because I think for so long I've been pushing for different kinds of representation in the art world and trying to use every platform that I have to do that. I have outgrown a lot of the language that's been used to describe me and my work, which I have perpetuated myself. I think being a parent has shifted the way that I think about what I’m responsible for putting into the world and the conversations that I want to be a part of. One of the biggest things I would look at is the collaborations that I've done. I've learned a lot about what collaboration can mean. What kind of partner am I? I have always pushed for inclusion of Indigenous Queer voices and I think we're at a point now where we need everybody at the table. Culturally, we need all of the best perspectives for everything that we face in contemporary life. 

SCOTT Your artworks often feature a striking use of language. A quote of yours that feels like such an embodiment of the infusion of pop lyrics, club culture, queer theory, and intertribal aesthetics into your work is, “How do you write a word that screams? How do you write a word that whispers?” Could you describe your process for integrating language into your art, and how you decide what words or phrases to incorporate?

GIBSON For some reason, other people's words articulate my feelings. I have been trained by musical lyrics and excerpts. I love brevity. But they used to be more plentiful. I would listen to music and they would just kind of jump out. It's almost like foraging now. I have to go hunting for words. I try to envision a personal sentiment that I'm feeling. Maybe it's something that comes up in my head or a theme. For instance, my body and other bodies are an important theme. Intimate space, anonymous space, public space, private space, introspective and internal space. And time—I don't feel old, but I do feel like when I turned fifty, there was a shift. Somebody described it as suddenly you're on a branch, looking at the end of the branch, rather than looking at where the branch is connected to the tree. With words, it's interesting—I have thought about Corita Kent a lot lately and revisiting scripture, in particular, the way that she used it. There were times when I didn't know it was coming from scripture. It felt provocative or it felt political. It felt progressive. We live in a time where it's so easy to get caught up in the minutiae of life and it’s decontextualized from the intentions and dreams of the future and historical narratives of the past. So, I feel like it's been very helpful for me to think about the voices of people, historically, who have proposed progressive ways of living and communing. I think what always drew me to popular lyrics, musical lyrics, was the way that they hit this mass saturation point of so many people being able to remember them, repeat them, relate to them, and feel themselves in those words. Now that I’m authoring my own writing, what are the things that I'm afraid to say out loud to another person for fear of sounding too sappy, too sweet, too loving, too trusting, too naive?

SCOTT Your work offers an invitation to the viewer to be present, often using bold colors and familiar materials. In your 2021 exhibition, It Can Be Said of Them at Roberts Projects, you drew the exhibition title from an artwork in Corita Kent’s Heroes and Sheroes series created in 1969, which features a quote from the New Yorker, “It can be said of him, as of few men in like position, that he did not fear the weather and did not trim his sails, but instead, challenged the wind itself to improve its direction and to cause it to blow more softly and more kindly over the world and its people.” Considering the legacy of artists like Corita, how do you see your work contributing to or diverging from this lineage of artists who blend art with social commentary?

GIBSON I think of the generation when I was studying art, the late ’80s into the ’90s. At the time, the phrase “the personal is political” was always being thrown around. And it resonated with me for sure, because of being a gay man, because of being Native American, because of being an artist. And then, there was something about that language that became outdated very quickly. It lost its punch. It never stopped being true, but I think at this time in history, when we think about things that are happening at the political level and how much they are about our physical health, our mental health, our decision-making, our own bodies, that statement continues to be so true. It's almost like it's become realized. And it's almost been reversed. Also in the ’90s, we were presented with the concept of didactic thinking. But the space of freedom exists in between, or on either side of those two points. And for me, that's where poetics happens. Poetics happens because we let go of these firm points that determine meaning, and we suddenly have to open up to fluctuating definitions. Nothing is fixed. You actually have to be somehow welcoming of the unknown. You have to be welcoming of the unfixed. You have to suddenly become comfortable with things in continual transformation. 

SCOTT Your work has this incredible ability to remind us that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. And congratulations on the US Pavilion. I was just so over the moon when the news broke. I was also excited to see the commissioners were Kathleen Ash-Milby, Louis Grachos, and Abigail Winograd. Can you share a little bit more about your history of working with these three individuals, and can you touch on the work you’ll be presenting at the US Pavilion? 

GIBSON Kathleen, I've known the longest. We met in 2002. She was the very first to visit my studio in New York City. At the time, she was the director of the American Indian Community House in New York City when they were on Broadway. This was the time of slides and it would cost a fortune to get your slides duplicated. But I sent out like twenty packets, and she was the only person who replied. Then, she went to the National Museum of the American Indian, and in 2007, they did a project where they supported young Indigenous artists to come to Venice. So, I went over to support artist Edgar Heap Of Birds. Kathleen and I talked and I remember her saying, “One day we're gonna do this.” So, we've continued this dialogue now for over twenty years. Abigail and I met a few years ago through the MacArthur Foundation and we did an exhibition together. Lewis, I met when he was at the Palm Springs Art Museum. He commissioned a film called To Feel Myself Beloved on the Earth. Then, when he went to Site Santa Fe, we started talking about the exhibition, The Body Electric. And one day, he was like, “You know, we should talk about proposing you for Venice.” I felt like having two curators is important. One, because I need these brains that understand the history of Native American art and everything that comes with that, which is policy, community relationships, and understanding sensitivities. Louis, I just really enjoyed working with and I needed the contemporary art mind. He's very charismatic. So, we asked him if he would come on board to help guide fundraising support for the project. It has been everything that I envisioned. Wait until you see the pavilion. 

SCOTT I’m just so excited. The title of the exhibition is the space in which to place me, which refers to a poem by Layli Long Soldier, a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation. Can you share more about the poem’s influence and reference to the planned multimedia installation and performances?

GIBSON I refer to it as “the project” because there's programming, there's education, and there's the catalog—in addition to the artworks in the exhibition. From the very beginning, I knew that there would be text involved. I had to come to some terms with my relationship to the nationhood of the US, and how I think about my biography in the context of the United States. There are lots of obvious things, but where do I wanna sit? The founding documents of the United States were my starting point. Eventually, that led me to the proposed amendments that have not passed. It led me to voices, music, abolitionist speeches, suffragette speeches. I was like, wow, okay, so there have always been these voices demanding some of the things that we're still seeking today in terms of equity and justice. It was important to me to also think about who is represented in the voices that I'm choosing. Of course, I wanted there to be Indigenous voices, Black-American voices, and female voices. And just like when I do an artwork, the title always comes at the end. The pavilion—we're not calling it a site-specific installation; I am referring to it as a site-responsive installation because we took the architecture into consideration. And I’ve had a Layli Long Soldier obsession for a few years. She is able to write things that I didn't know other people saw too. It almost feels like we share a similar experience because of who we are in this world. 

SCOTT In your essay for An Indigenous Present, you describe your approach to expanding the way people think about Indigeneity. Has the process of curating such an incredible group of artists and such a monumental publication changed your approach to the US Pavilion? 

GIBSON The idea for the book had been with me for a very long time. And weirdly, when I started working on the book, these feelings of resentment were coming up. I thought, why do I have to make this book? I felt like I was waiting for somebody to make this book, and waiting is your biggest enemy. And then, I realized that I was supposed to be the one to make this book. There's been such a moment of recognition of Indigenous artists over the last ten years. More than I've ever seen in my entire lifetime. So, I knew that we were contributing to that moment. And when we published it in the way that it was meant to be published, it was perfect timing. You could feel there was a thirst in the world for a book like this. It wasn't just me. Other people recognized that there was a gap. And so, in that sense, it just felt like being part of a larger moment. 

SCOTT We all have educators or ancestors of influence who are pivotal in shaping our lives, someone whose hands we can almost feel on our shoulders in our work and practice. It can be powerful to bring their name into spaces with us. Was there an important figure in your life that you’d like to share more about?

GIBSON I would have to say my parents. They live five minutes from here. My parents were born in the ’40s in Mississippi and Oklahoma, and they both went to boarding schools. So, they both grew up with their families having been in communities that were torn apart. They're part of that generation trying to pull themselves back together and stabilize. To go back to some of the earlier themes that I was talking about—things I have been thinking about. These are things that they have not been able to speak of. They may never speak of them, and that's okay. There's this tremendous amount of allowance that you give somebody because you understand how layered a life can be, probably for everybody. One of the best skills that you can teach somebody is to give it some time. Life is unjust, life is inequitable. That is the world we live in. They taught me that in a way where it's like: yes that is true, but it leads you to learn the skills that help you to make the best of a situation, to give yourself space for mental freedom, physical freedom, creative freedom, generosity, and to recognize the abundance of what's in different spaces. When all you can see is scarcity, it just eats at your soul. 

SCOTT On a personal level, I think I needed to hear those words too, so thank you. I think it shapes our lived experiences. And those things could be really intertwined in the social practice of creating, it's the doing, and the making, and the message. 

GIBSON Being an artist humbles you very quickly. I've seen a lot of people think about art in this extremely privileged way, but you do need something that humbles you. You have to keep it at this really humble level. Something as simple as holding together pigment on a piece of fabric. The simplest technology of putting color on something, using lines and making images, and making letters that become words that we can share.

SCOTT What role do artistic place-making and place-keeping hold in the work you will be presenting in Venice this year?

GIBSON As I'm walking through what the exhibition is going to look like, who's going see it, and who we've invited to activate the performative spaces, it's really made me realize how much content we're generating at the invitation of one Indigenous person to other Indigenous people to come onto a global stage and be themselves. The spotlight of representing the US in the US Pavilion is a unique platform. I just want to take advantage of that. I’ve been thinking about how to photograph the artwork and the installations. These images are going to circulate. I could say there's no photography in here, but this is how we exist today—this is the time to send this all out as far and wide as we can. This growing interest and focus on Indigenous artists—the goal is for it not to be a trend. We are responsible for our longevity. We need it to go beyond Venice, which is what's guiding a lot of the programming and the educational efforts. How do we make the best of what happens in that space and seed everywhere we have access to?

SCOTT In past interviews, you have spoken about museum exhibition posters on your walls as you were growing up as an entrance point into the art world. What do you think a younger self would say about seeing a poster with your work on it for the Venice Biennale?

GIBSON I'll give you a parallel answer to that. I did get a call from somebody who I know and I have a lot of respect for—a creative person who is very much involved in the Indigenous art scene. And they told me what was so great about An Indigenous Present was that their kid who was eleven or twelve years old could just sit down with this massive book, go through the pages, and see how many people they knew. People they would refer to as an auntie or an uncle. Being able to look at those images and learn something about the person who made the work, who also happens to be family, is so much more powerful than a famous person that you don't know. I have always been pretty obsessed with artist biographies because I've always wanted to know what's at the root. How do I become these people I look at? What biographies teach you is that the person you are learning about did everything to have an interesting life and make their best choices, but there are so many factors that are beyond control. So, I hope my artwork survives me. I hope my words survive me. I hope my biography is interesting. My responsibility is to leave the breadcrumbs—to leave a trail. 

WHO IS CHARLI XCX?: An Interview of Charli XCX by Hans Ulrich Obrist

Balenciaga

interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist
photography by Davey Adésida
styling by Julie Ragolia

Born Charlotte Emma Aitchison in Cambridge and raised in Essex, Charli XCX is one of those rare superstars that defies genre categorization. She sways effortlessly between the experimental and the mainstream, the serious and the irreverent. Her rise, and rise, and rise, since releasing the first demo via Myspace in 2008 at the age of fourteen, has proven that a particular indistinct classification may be the key to her success. But who is Charli XCX? Pop star or performance artist? We enlisted her closest friends and collaborators to offer clues through quotes, tweets, and behind-the-scenes photos. On the occasion of Charli’s upcoming album, BRAT, a follow-up to her 2022 chart-topping album CRASH, Hans Ulrich Obrist examines the artist’s inspirations and solicits her advice for younger generations. 

HANS ULRICH OBRIST How are you? 

CHARLI XCX I am good, thanks. How are you? 

OBRIST I'm good. I'm very excited to finally meet. We have so many friends in common. Where are you? 

CHARLI XCX I'm in an Uber in South London and I'm going to East London. I imagine that you know my friend Matt Copson. 

OBRIST Yes, I know Matt Copson and Caroline Polachek. I'm going to tell them that we met. They will be excited.  

CHARLI XCX Nice, nice. Cool. 

OBRIST I wanted to begin with the beginning. How did you come to music or how did music come to you—because you started so early? Was there an epiphany? 

CHARLI XCX I think the reason I wanted to make music was because I wanted to be cool, really. I always just felt like such a loser. Also, I was enthralled by certain artists who I loved on Myspace. I was just at home in the countryside, living out this fantasy life through other artists that I would listen to on Myspace. I wanted to make music in the way that they made music; that made me feel like I was living in a film. And so, I just started trying. At first, I failed terribly because I wasn't really a producer. I didn't have an understanding of sound or anything, but I knew that I was trying to capture this feeling of excitement. The feeling of listening to music in the back of a car, and looking out the window, and immediately feeling like I was in a music video. I was always very against the idea of needing music to survive. But now, the older I get, the more I need music to keep me sane and functioning. It does really help me air out a lot of anger and emotion that I have. 

OBRIST In all art forms, the future is sometimes invented with fragments from the past—we stand on the shoulders of giants. I read that Björk inspired you. Also, Britney Spears. I am wondering if there are other musical artists, but also artists from other disciplines, that have inspired you.  

CHARLI XCX What I've learned about myself recently, particularly during the making of this record, is that I'm not actually that inspired by music. I'm inspired by the careers of artists like Björk. I'm inspired by her position in culture—what she has done for female auteurs in music. She carved a lane for herself and has been really defiant in the choices that she makes. I'm inspired by Britney because I'm fascinated by pop culture. I like looking at pop music and pop culture through the lens of society. That's the thing that gets me really amped up. Lyrically, I adore Lou Reed because he was looking at all of these people in New York—these amazing characters who were so fueled by drug culture, punk culture, by the culture of fame—and he was writing this incredible poetry about them. I think I write my lyrics from that same perspective. I went to art school at Slade [School of Fine Arts], but I dropped out after a year. I was always gravitating towards performance artists. I also really liked Alex Bag and Pipilotti Rist. 

OBRIST In an interview recently, you mentioned that music isn't as important as artistry; a great artist is more than the songs they make, it's the culture they inhabit. That’s, of course, the case with Björk, whom I met in the ’90s when I was a student. I went to her gig at Rote Fabrik in Zurich, which is a totally alternative space. And then, a few years later, she was super mainstream. But she never stopped experimenting. With your work, I feel like there is a similar oscillation. 

CHARLI XCX There is this pendulum within me that swings from caring about commerciality to not caring about it at all. And then, there is this thing where I gravitate only to what I love. I love Britney Spears, but I also love Trash Humpers (2010) by Harmony Korine. He's interesting because he plays with pop culture in a very glossy magazine type of way. And I like high and low. I think that's what I was actually trying to do at art school when I was there. I was putting pop music in a more traditional space. A lot of the people that I was at school with were interested in classical painting and I just wasn't at all. But it was fun to play in that realm with pop music and literally sing Britney Spears songs in my crits next to people doing these huge fucking canvases that were always brown, which bothered me. 

[Charli’s phone cuts out] 

OBRIST Hello? Can you hear me? I lost you. 

[Fifteen minutes later] 

CHARLI XCX Hello? Oh my God, I'm so sorry. I just went through a tunnel and then my phone just gave up on me, but I think I'm back now. 

OBRIST No problem. We’ll do the interview in different parts. (laughs) It's now part two. So, where are you now? 

CHARLI XCX I'm now in East London. So, part two is in East London. (laughs) 

Araks, Bloch, Malone Souliers Shoes

OBRIST I wanted to talk about collaboration. I have been doing studio visits with visual artists lately and everybody has these amazing collaborations going on. And your new album is a continuation of these amazing collaborations you’ve had for a long time, whether it’s Caroline Polachek, Kim Petras, or Troye Sivan, and your very special collaborations with SOPHIE. 

CHARLI XCX Collaboration, in general, has always been really important to me. When I was younger, I was very much searching for this crew of artists that I wanted to surround myself with. I felt like a lot of the people who I was looking to, whether it was artists signed to Ed Banger Records, there were this group of people who were working separately, but also collaborating and weaving in and out of each other's worlds. I was searching for that for myself, but never really found it. So, I kind of realized, okay, maybe I have to sort of create this for myself. And it was only when I met A. G. Cook, and I saw he was doing a similar thing with PC Music that I felt like, okay, we have a very similar outlook about the way that music can be made. You can bring your friends in, you can work with other artists really in a very low-stakes way without ego—just because it's fun, and I began doing that. Caroline, for example, is someone who I've collaborated with a lot and we work in possibly the most polar opposite way, but it works. She is so detail-oriented and in the weeds. The way I work is very instinctive and spontaneous, but then I literally will never revise a single thing. Whereas Caroline is such a perfectionist. It's fun to work with her because she makes me think about things that I wouldn't normally think about. 

There is one song, in particular, on the upcoming album that is about SOPHIE. And that song is about my dealing with the grief and guilt around her passing. She has obviously been such a huge inspiration in my creative process across the board. I think this album is a kind of homage to club culture as a whole. And, of course, she was an extremely big part of my experience of club culture along with many other artists, including A. G. Cook and a lot of French electro artists like Mr. Oizo, Uffie, and Justice. But while this record is about club culture and partying, it’s a very brutalist take on that. It’s very raw, confrontational, and in your face. What all of the artists have in common, which can be felt through this record for me, is this element of confidence and commitment to doing exactly what you feel in a very fearless way. That's something that SOPHIE was always encouraging, not just with me, but all of the people that she worked with. 

OBRIST You said that in the previous album, you were moving away from hyperpop. Is the new album moving further away? How would you describe the music of the new album? 

CHARLI XCX I don't pay too much attention to genres. To me, it's a club record. I understand that some people need to define the music. There are some pop songs on the record, but this is stuff that I would play in a club. It’s very much electronic. It's very much dance music. It's abstract in some ways, but in other ways, it's very tangible. There are elements of it that are super repetitive, but then there are also these really kind of blossoming, flowing melodies. It's my take on club music. 

OBRIST Do you have any unrealized collaborations or projects? 

CHARLI XCX I have so many. (laughs) Firstly, the fans don't know it yet—I guess once they read this interview, they will—I am releasing a lot of my demos that won't make it to the album and playing them at my shows, at my DJ sets. Just to show that there are a lot of tracks that don't make it—not because they’re bad (in fact, some of them are really good), it's just that they don't fit with the record. I'm into the idea of this massive amount of material being out there, saturating the fan base with all of these things that could have possibly happened. In terms of other projects outside of music—I acted in my first film last year, called Faces of Death. And that has spun a wheel for me. I was very afraid to explore that side of myself for quite a long time, but now I really want to act. And that put me in this zone of writing a script. Also, I went to Italy for six weeks to write my book, but then I ended up just drinking Aperol spritzes all day, every day, and chain-smoking cigarettes. I think I wrote the beginnings of two chapters and then gave up (laughs). But there are a lot of projects. Right now, there's this film I'm beginning to formulate in my brain, and that's probably my biggest project that hasn't been realized yet, but I'm hopeful that it will be. 

OBRIST I'm really interested in the connection between music, literature, and poetry. I just had a long discussion with Lana Del Rey a few weeks ago. Lana, of course, wrote this very beautiful poetry book. In a recent interview, you mentioned books by writers like Rachel Cusk, so I am interested in your connection to literature. And do you write poetry? 

CHARLI XCX You know, I don't write poetry. I mean maybe some people would say that song lyrics are poetry, but I tend to think of poetry in a more traditional way. And I don't feel that I'm a poet in the way that a lot of people would call Lana Del Rey a poet. I don't feel that I'm operating in that same sphere. But I think my favorite author of all time is Natasha Stagg. I really like the energy of her writing—it just feels very visceral but very blunt at the same time, which I absolutely love. When I'm reading her essays, I feel like I'm in a conversation with her. That’s my favorite kind of writing, those are my favorite kind of song lyrics. It's why I love Lou Reed's lyrics. I feel like he's talking to me, and it's why I really feel quite strongly about the lyrics on this record that I've just made. They feel like I'm texting my friends. If I was ever gonna write this book, I think it really would feel like a kind of group chat, like a flurry of iMessages. (laughs) 

OBRIST Now the topic of this issue is levity, which has to do with high spirits, but also vivacity, which has to do with one of my favorite virtues, which is energy. Your work is so full of energy. Can you talk a little bit about what the word levity means to you and its connection to pop music? Do you think that music can bring levity to people in the form of positivity or optimism, as opposed to doom? 

CHARLI XCX It's funny, when we were shooting the images, everybody was saying the word levity a lot. The stylist, the photographer, everybody was sort of saying, “Remember levity.” Which is sort of funny because I don't smile in pictures. And I was like, “Yeah, yeah, totally—it's in my head, but it's not coming out of my face.” There is such a joy to music and a lightness to the feeling that it often brings people. Even when I get so bogged down by the theory behind what I'm doing, like the reason I make my album cover, the things I say, my lyrics, and the production choices, at the end of the day, I gravitate towards all of it is because it's fun and it makes me feel something. That's what good music does. You can be as clever as you want, but the important thing about art, in general, is the feeling and conviction. 

OBRIST Caroline Polachek works a lot with Matt Copson who created these gorgeous volcano visuals. Musicians often use visual art, or do visual art for their stage sets, or for music videos. I’m curious about your own visual art and also your collaborations with visual artists. 

CHARLI XCX On this record, and the past few albums, I've been working with Imogene Strauss on building out the entire visual world. Sometimes we'll go super in-depth with another collaborator. For example, the music video I made for my first single from this record, “Von Dutch,” was something I worked on with Torso. I had this idea for it, and I knew they could pull it off because their camera work is so intricate. I filmed little pieces of it on my iPhone and would send them to them. I would put the phone on the ground and walk over it—demonstrating to them exactly how I wanted it. The album cover, for example, was made on my iPhone in June of last year. I don't use Photoshop. When it comes to computers, I'm not very skilled at all. So, I made the cover with this app on my phone. We went through a million different iterations of this green square that had the word ‘brat’ on it with this design company called SPECIAL OFFER, inc. Eventually, we just came back to the version that I made on my phone. But I enjoy sharing things with my friends and going back and forth with them, even if they're not really in the art world. That's fun to me. Also, I’m sharing music with people who don’t have anything to do with music. Getting opinions on music from visual people, like photographers, is interesting. And getting visual opinions from musicians is more fun. 

OBRIST When I was about sixteen, I started to curate and visit art studios. But I was so lucky to have these mentors who gave me advice. And you, of course, started even earlier. Rainer Maria Rilke wrote this book, which is advice to a young poet. A lot of young people are going to read this interview. Given your huge amount of experience, I am wondering what kind of advice you would give to someone who might be sixteen today and wants to be an artist or a musician. 

CHARLI XCX I would say, there’s no rush to create. You have your whole life to create and maybe you'll make your best work when you are fifteen years old, but maybe you'll make your best work when you are ninety-five. There's no peak in creativity. Obviously, in pop music, especially for women, there is unfortunately this kind of time bomb on age, this myth that women are at their peak at a particular age. But I don't agree with that and I think it’s changing—it’s just an awful trait of the industry that still lingers over us. But it's not true. I mean, it doesn't matter how old you are, you can still create great work from a really unique perspective as long as your perspective is interesting and as long as you're true to yourself. There's no timeline for creativity. When you are ready, you’ll know it deep within you; when you feel the most confident and fearless. But that also takes a lot of trial and error. You have to work your craft in whatever you're doing. 

OBRIST That's great advice. Today, we had a conversation here with Alex Israel, another friend we have in common. He was saying how important it is when he makes a feature film or does an AI project for a big brand like BMW, his art can reach many more people than just through the visual art world. And that's also true for music—for example, when you did that amazing song for Barbie (2023). You reach hundreds of millions of people who might otherwise not encounter your work. So, I wanted to ask you about that as a strategy to reach many different worlds and bring people together. I think the world is too fragmented and separated, and we need to bring things together now. 

CHARLI XCX It's interesting. I actually didn't really have a strategy, but it's totally smart to think of it like that. I’ve known Mark Ronson for a long time—he reached out to me and said, “There's this driving scene in Barbie. Greta Gerwig thought of you, do you wanna do it?” And was like, “Yeah, sure.” But in my head, even though at that point they had Nicki Minaj, Ice Spice, and Billie [Eilish] on the soundtrack, I still wasn't thinking, oh this would be a smart thing for me to do. Even though Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling are in it—and Greta Gerwig is directing. I was just like, okay, I love doing driving songs. I can do that. And I like Barbie and driving scenes—that’s the only reason why I did it. It didn't feel like this high-pressure, massive, multimillion-dollar budget movie thing. It felt like me and EASYFUN, who I made the song with at my boyfriend's flat in Hackney, making this song in forty-five minutes and then him spilling coffee over the white sofa before he left. That was the day. And then, it comes out and it catches fire, and you're like, Oh my god. I'm part of this cultural moment. I don’t think you know that you're going to be part of a cultural moment before a cultural moment happens. Otherwise, it probably wouldn't be one. 

OBRIST We haven't spoken yet about you as a DJ. I was in Milan and Erykah Badu was DJing at a Bottega Veneta event. She makes music and does concerts, so it was really interesting to see her DJing. Recently, your Boiler Room DJ set went viral. Can you tell our readers and me what it means for you to DJ?  

CHARLI XCX It's one of my favorite things. I actually hate going to live shows; I just love watching DJs. I grew up listening to 2manydjs and Soulwax mixtapes, and it would always just make me feel so alive. And the sound quality—listening to a DJ is always better. It makes me feel so much when I see a good DJ playing good records and controlling the crowd with their own choice of music. It makes me wanna party and get fucked up. But also, I don't need to do that if I'm watching a really good DJ because I just feel so elated and in the zone. It is totally joyous for me and I love it when I get to do it. And the Boiler Room thing, I was definitely very nervous because there were a lot of cameras in our faces, but we had a really good time. 

OBRIST Amazing. Thank you so much. It was such a great conversation. I really hope we can meet in person. I can show you our shows at the Serpentine and maybe have a coffee. 

CHARLI XCX I would love that. 

Otis Houston Jr.

photography by Nick Sethi
text by Tara Anne Dalbow 

The first time I saw Otis Houston Jr., he was standing beneath the Triborough Bridge in Harlem, New York, with half a watermelon balanced atop his head and a paintbrush in his hand. Stuck in the congestion of rush hour traffic, I watched from the back of a cab as he traced short, careful strokes through the air as if he were painting the world before him. More striking than his overalls and melon cap was the expression of absolute calm and contentment on his face as if he were standing beside not a heaving highway but a mountain lake. What I remember is straining in my seat to look back, transfixed by the grace and gravitas of the man painting over the exhaust, the sirens, the crush of cars, with a smile on his face. 

It wasn't until years later that I found out who he was and that far from being anonymous, he was something of a legend in Upper Manhattan. Well-known for his impromptu performances, found-object installations, and spray-painted signage, he’s been the unofficial tenant of that marginalized strip of concrete at 122nd Street since 1997. “It’s all about location, location, location,” he told me during our conversation more than a decade after our paths first crossed on FDR Drive. 

While some things have changed for the artist since then, he’s now shown his work at Canada and Gordon Robichaux galleries and numerous international art fairs. Other things have stayed the same: he still performs roadside in outlandish outfits with watermelons balanced on his head a few times a week. “FDR Drive is like my freedom,” he explained, having first spotted his future studio and stage from the terrace of the public housing unit where he lived after his release from prison. “It found me, it did.” 

Art seemed to have found him, too. He first started creating work while incarcerated, namely, layered collages constructed from magazine clippings and whatever other print media he was allowed. In more ways than one, the pictures he made then prefigured the method and materiality of his art practice now and established his insistence that the artist “use what he’s got.” Along with a passion for artmaking, he also developed a voracious reading habit and earned his high school equivalency diploma while behind bars. “I don’t call it prison; I call it education,” he explained. “You have to read to grow, to evolve. Read, read, read!” 

Both the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge are central to Houston Jr.’s practice, as well as his conception of himself as an artist and responsible member of society. This is as much a byproduct of his edifying experience in prison as his grave dissatisfaction with politicians and other people in positions of power who refuse to share what they know with the public. “Few know too much; many know too little,” he told me. Viewing his work through this lens reveals how the multivarious facets of his democratic practice—performance, sculpture, painting, signage, and song—are united by a common goal of reversing the paradigm so that many know much and few know little. As he sees it, with the great power afforded to him by books comes the great responsibility to share his wisdom with others.  

That said, Professor Houston Jr.’s teaching methods are about as zany as they come. Perhaps the most straightforward are his signs, and even then … slogans, epigrams, poems, protests, and exhortations are spray-painted across gym towels, old paintings, and banners made from salvaged fabric scraps. Their messages range from “educate yourself” to “man do not destroy man build.” Then, there’s the profusion of fruit that he integrates into his performances to promote healthy eating and encourage the “95% of Americans [that] don’t eat enough fruit” to go home and have an apple. Or his assemblages, constructed entirely from found objects that he salvages from the streets and the office building where he works as a maintenance custodian. All of these works extoll an ethos of reuse and restoration that returns a sense of reverence and delight to once-treasured objects as various as children’s toys, artificial flowers, and broken chairs. Still, he imparts other lessons through example, like lifting weights roadside, greeting everyone he sees with a smile and a wave—because “the closest thing between two people is a smile”—and confidently affirming his identity, experiences, and artistic creations for all to see. As he says, “They see someone that looks like them doin’ it; they know they can do it too.” 

His generosity of spirit and talent for infusing mundane moments and objects with levity and laughter also make learning difficult lessons possible by tendering receptivity instead of defensiveness. Alongside celebrations of health, education, kindness, and creative expression are poignant critiques of racism, poverty, and power. Questions like, “Can I live” and observations like, “he ain’t did nothing, but being a negro,” distill complex issues surrounding systemic racism and social injustice and confront unspoken prejudices and acts of violence. “We not in the same boat, but we all in the water,” he tells me in a sing-song voice that tempers the gravity of the subject. 

When I asked him how he maintains so much joy and hope in the face of adversity and increasingly unbearable realities, he laughed and told me, “It’s not hard” because he loves himself, he loves people, and he loves making art. In his words: “We are the canvas. Abstract. Original. Breathtaking.” Recalling the first time I saw him, paintbrush in hand, I wonder all over again if he was, in fact, painting over the world, making it a little brighter than it was before. 

Michelangelo Pistoletto

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interview by Dan Thawley
portraits by Alessandro Sartori

Art and spirituality have been inseparable for millennia as humanity grapples with the unknowable through sculpture, painting, performance, and the written word. Through depictions of beauty and pain, using figuration and abstraction, artists construct their own mythologies in conversation with the world around them. The ninety-year-old Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto is a living legend and a world builder who has traveled further down this philosophical rabbit hole than most. His ‘mirror paintings’—first executed in the 1960s—formed a crucial axis of the Arte Povera movement, one that found an explicit universality due to its interrogation of the relationship between self and society. In 1994, Pistoletto returned to his native Biella, a historical textile town one hour north of Milan, to consolidate his practice into the Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto where continues to provoke new conversations in the arts and sciences.

Our visit to Cittadellarte in early spring came at the invitation of the Italian fashion designer Alessandro Sartori, creative director of Zegna, a global empire with historic roots in the region. Born and raised in Biella, Sartori first visited Pistoletto as a student and returned to his hometown with us to photograph the artist for this interview. Today, Pistoletto’s cultural factory serves as both an art foundation and a ‘laboratory school’ for students and traveling academics. The sprawling riverside complex inhabits multiple sites with temporary exhibitions and permanent installations, artist residencies, a restaurant, and a library. Its most spectacular asset is a vast expression of The Third Paradise, a long-term artistic and philosophical project represented by a tripled infinity symbol inside the vaulted concrete hall of a former wool mill. Traced in yellow on the smooth floors and studded with metal tactile paving, it’s an idea that continues to morph in form and scale across the globe—from a mirrored loop on IM Pei’s glass pyramid of the Louvre in Paris in 2013, to flash mobs in Milan and Sarajevo, to ‘land art’ installations featuring textiles, benches, and flags in other major cities.

For those only familiar with Pistoletto’s ‘mirror paintings’—stalwart presences in art foundations and museums across the planet—the scope of his vision as a cross-disciplinary thinker may come as a surprise. Yet it is that very immediate, unapologetic nature of the mirror’s reflection that remains at the center of his practice, which demands us to look back at the successes and failures of humankind as a new roadmap for a more equitable existence. Despite its associations with ego and vanity, Pistoletto deconstructs our relationship with ourselves and the world through the collective and transient possibilities of the mirror. Often the mirror is removed entirely, yet the idea remains more palpable than ever. It’s a soothing balm in troubled times.

DAN THAWLEY I wanted to start by asking you about infinity.

MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO Infinity is the right word. My mirror paintings date back to ’61 or ’62, and I still engage with mirror painting, because the mirror represents infinity. Within infinity, we have all that exists. So, in the mirror painting, are we looking at what exists directly? No. The mirror painting represents what exists. The mirror comes from the work of making the material smoother, taking roughness, and making it more brilliant—increasing its ability to take in the vision. Art in the ’40s and ’50s, even before that, was based on creating more and more material on the canvas. 

THAWLEY Like Abstract Expressionism?

PISTOLETTO I did the opposite until the material disappeared. The canvas was not the canvas anymore, it was a mirror. The first mirror paintings were black varnish, and very shiny. So shiny that they started to reflect not only the light but also the images. It was absolutely necessary to give the meaning of art to that material because that material became representative, and representation is the entire history of art. So, putting my image in the middle of the mirror meant putting art in the middle of infinity, you see? It's incredible because we have two opposite elements. One is me, and the other is the world. I am necessary to make the conception of what exists. So, in that case, what exists becomes conscious. The universe that is reflected becomes conscious of its existence through me. For me, this is incredibly important because I discovered what I was looking for. Who am I? Why do I exist? All the questions were finally answered.

THAWLEY I wanted to ask you about technology and how it has changed the way you think about your work. You have continued making mirror paintings up until today, yet the meaning of the mirror has changed so much over time. The meaning of a photograph, of a self-portrait, has changed in the 21st century, with the camera, with the smartphone. So, how have you evolved that thinking with technology yourself?

PISTOLETTO I couldn't go on painting my figure on the reflective surface with a brush, because the reflection is so objective that any intervention I make is not as objective if I use my hands. So, I had to use something as objective as the mirror, and that was the camera. Photography can fix an image that would otherwise exist in the mirror for a fraction of a second. That image becomes the memory of a moment that immediately passes. So, what we have in our mind is the memory. The mirror paintings have the same function: the figure that is fixed within the photo is the memory that lives in each moment of the future of the mirror painting. Not only for one person but for everybody. They represent everybody, every mind, every life. Art is virtuality and the mirror is the maximum possible expression of virtuality. I recognized that the mirror itself doesn't have any image of itself. Because it is a zero image, it can reflect all existing images. It’s a binary system. But what is important is that the mirror becomes activated through technology. It's always a metaphysical process.

THAWLEY Most of your body of work sees layers of symbols placed between the viewer and their reality, with the trompe l'oeil painting or photographic transfer that you add to the surface of the mirror. What we've just discussed shows how the practical application of the work leads to an entire ideology that you have extrapolated from this universal capacity of the works. You've mentioned the everyman and how everybody can see themselves in the work. So, everybody can relate to what is in the mirror differently due to their lived experience too.

PISTOLETTO Society is dependent on common thinking. This is always a question of using our collective memory to reorganize and create new dimensions of living. And for me, art is the fertilizer of science, religion, and society. Art is a kind of stimulation that comes from the combination of the material of the universe and the capacity of that material to think about itself. This is incredible. That's humanity. And we’ve arrived at a point where humanity can possess the universe. And we have the responsibility of possessing that universe. What we are doing today with artificial intelligence—this accumulation of memory that is so vast and so big—that it is getting closer to reality. The present moment and memory are almost connected. I think that's something that we are very, very close to. It is why we have become responsible for the way we connect memory and reality.

THAWLEY I wanted to ask you about the concept of “demopraxy,” which is another essential idea in your approach to art and philosophy. 

PISTOLETTO At Cittadellarte we have the school, UNIDEE, a university of ideas. Every year, for almost twenty years, we have invited artists or designers who come from all over the world. As artists, as designers, as architects, we have to explore democracy. At a certain point, there were two or three guests from different countries who said, “For us, democracy is the wrong word.” So, we started to search for the right word. Paolo Nardini, the director of Cittadellarte, came up with the idea of using another root. Instead of ‘kratos,’ which means ‘power,’ use ‘praxis,’ which means ‘practice.’ So, how can we use the practice? Practice is in all the different organizations that exist everywhere, and each organization needs a small government.

THAWLEY Where does the idea of protest and social responsibility come into your work?

PISTOLETTO We call Biella an Archipelago City because there are seventy-four municipalities. We have land, we have mountains, we have water. We have been organizing forums to discuss renewable energy among all the different municipalities. It is difficult to convince everybody, but we can no longer have destructive energy sources. If we really want to eliminate war, eliminate conflict, we have to learn to put the monster on one side and virtue on the other side. To eliminate the violence, you cannot just have virtue, you have to have the two elements. There has to be harmony. It is why in art we look to find harmony. If you put together two sounds, you have a third sound, and the more sounds you put together, the more harmony you can have. That is the chorus. The chorus of life. This is the chorus of society. There's a chorus of war or a chorus of peace. You decide. This is politics.

Rose Wylie by Juergen Teller

photography & portfolio by Juergen Teller
creative partnership by Dovile Drizyte
interview by Jennifer Higgie
postproduction by Lucas Rios Palazesi at Quickfix

Art and life are as inextricably linked as inhaling and exhaling for British figurative painter Rose Wylie. Her cottage studio in the English countryside is evidence of her prodigious output. Newspapers, magazines, brushes, sketches—the flotsam and jetsam of a creative life, mirror the frenetic energy of her large-scale, unprimed canvases that are rife with references from Hollywood movies, art history, lost civilizations, and her own domestic environs. At almost ninety years old, Wylie is more prolific than ever. On the occasion of her first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, CLOSE, not too close, at David Zwirner, novelist and art critic Jennifer Higgie explores the hidden archetypes and symbolism of her paintings; and Juergen Teller visits her studio in Kent for a picnic lunch and a document of portraits.  

JENNIFER HIGGIE How are you, generally?  

ROSE WYLIE Painting most of the time.  

HIGGIE I can see that from these amazing paintings. It's extraordinary.  

WYLIE I can stand up. I can move around okay. No, I'm fine. I’m in my ninetieth year.  

HIGGIE I'd love to start with your show in Los Angeles, CLOSE, Not Too Close. It's such an intriguing title. How did that come about?  

WYLIE It comes from 17th-century poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge doesn't go for wax works; he doesn't like copies. He doesn't think art should be a copy. It is about finding the likeness in the unlikeness. What I often do is make a list of characteristics: age, type of hair, type of physical makeup and additions, tall, wide, big shoulders, huge hips, tiny ankles, all these sorts of things. That's what CLOSE, Not Too Close, refers to: it's close to the image that you're looking at, but it's not too close, a lateral slant, but connected. This title suits me perfectly. I don't want it too close because I think art has to go through a process of transformation.  

HIGGIE It makes sense to me that there are, say, portraits or resemblances that aren't necessarily about the actual way something looks. It's about how something feels or the resonances.  

WYLIE Exactly. It's how it feels, how it smells, how you sense it. It's all those things. It's putting all this stuff together, which is what Matisse called the ‘synthesis,’ rather than the ‘analysis.’  

HIGGIE Do you believe in the idea of the spiritual in its broader sense, like the idea that objects or people have a spiritual dimension or a dimension of some other reality? 

WYLIE I do, but I'd call it mood, or quality, or transcendence. A shift into something outside the subject or the painting. But it's mostly about appearances, how the painting looks. That's what our business is about. 

HIGGIE Considering it's your first major exhibition in Los Angeles, and I know you've long been interested in the movies and movie stars, was it an extra dimension for you that this show was in LA? And did knowing that they would be in LA shape some of the paintings that you were making?  

WYLIE Well, it did interest me, but it didn't shape anything. I do paint from films. It's one of my genres. I love films, and I've done a lot of paintings based on film. I didn't do anything in the show specifically for LA. I think often if you do that, it doesn't actually come out too well. Maybe for some artists it does, because it's an impetus; it tricks them into something new, but sometimes you go into it and it just doesn't work.  

HIGGIE Have you ever been to LA, just out of interest?  

WYLIE No. But I love Mexico, so it's sort of going down in that direction.  

HIGGIE And maybe it's good not to go to LA in a sense, because Hollywood is such an idea of a place,  rather than an actuality sometimes.  

WYLIE No, it could be a good thing not to go. Some writers, when they write, they research and go everywhere. Other writers deliberately don't. I mean, it's a way of working, isn't it?  

HIGGIE Do you feel that, in some ways, all of your paintings are a kind of self-portrait, even when you're not painting an image of yourself?  

WYLIE They are and they aren't. This particular show is a kind of self-portrait. Without actually painting myself. If you say that the subject I choose and the way I paint is a self-portrait, then it's all a self-portrait.  

HIGGIE But maybe it could be said that these are portraits of your life, that it's a friend's Sunday garden, or things that you have in your home, or films that you've watched. And humor has always been important to you. I really love your painting, Lying In The Sun (2022), with “cautionary tale” written across the top. Is it a cautionary tale because she's naked or because she's getting sunburned?  

WYLIE If you lie in the sun too much, you can get moles later, and moles are often cancerous. So in fact, it's a suggestion that to lie in the sun and fry is not a good idea. And then, top right in that picture is a fire department sprinkler boat. It is funny. She's on fire. She's burning. She's roasting. It's almost medieval, and yet, it's not medieval at all. It’s transtemporal.  

HIGGIE What do you mean by transtemporal?  

WYLIE Well, I mean it could turn up in the history of painting at any time. It could be medieval. It could be well before medieval: early wall painting, before Christ, or Pompeii. People have always painted objects, girls, women, clothes. I think the painting I do fits something which crosses time.  

HIGGIE That was really noticeable in this group of pictures. I thought that time moved very swiftly around. I was looking at Wing Tips and Blue Doodlebug (2022), which I think are references to your memories from World War II. And then Spindle and Cover Girl (2022), which has “Observer Magazine” written across the top, and also “Assyrian hair.” You're moving around thousands of years. 

WYLIE It’s using what you've got. Often artists think, What shall I paint? If you do a lot of drawing and ideas, there’s often something you can just use. If you look back at what you’ve done, something turns up. So that's how “Assyrian hair” came up. The sarcophagus eye came up. Those pink plants, the spindle from the hedges, I just put them together.  

HIGGIE And when you said they came up, where did “Assyrian hair” come up? (laughs)  

WYLIE (laughs) I watch television programs that deal with Mari Art, that deal with history and Easter Island, Syrian, Babylonian. I like ancient art.  

HIGGIE What is it you like about it?  

\WYLIE I mean, it's often isolated. It's not hugely detailed or textured. It's not flashy and arty. If you just look at ancient art, it's often not terribly realistic. Sometimes it is. But the way it's realistic is somehow not quite photographic, it’s universal.  It’s close, but not too close.  

HIGGIE In our 21st-century world, we're bombarded with images all the time. But you can look at very ancient images, and surprisingly, they seem very fresh. It's like we haven't seen the world or a body represented like that before.  

WYLIE It can be exciting and, well, intensely compelling. But there are so many contemporary artists I like as well.  

HIGGIE Who are the contemporary artists that you like?  

WYLIE Well, there's Alida Cervantes. She does very fresh painting. And Tschabalala Self I have a particular affection for. She's young and she's very fresh and very vigorous, but also there's a pleasant splash of vulgarity. But it's not hideous. It's vulgar ... nice, but it's not cheap. I don't mind cheap when it's the right kind of it. Jonathan Meese I've liked, and he's very gestural. But I think I'm off gestural at the moment.  

HIGGIE Why is that?  

WYLIE I tire of it. I prefer other images. I like Giorgio de Chirico and El Greco. I mean, there's no gesture in sight in de Chirico. El Greco or Giovani di Paulo. Today, if a painting is too gestural, I get rid of it. That's just how I work, because you work through ideas and faces in your painting life, and you just keep moving on 

HIGGIE So has that been quite a recent shift in your work, this move against the gestural?  

WYLIE It's been coming up, but probably I’ll be back on it tomorrow. I do both … I like two apparently contrary things going on together. 

HIGGIE In terms of how you go about making your paintings, at the moment, are you doing many preliminary drawings, or do you just go in there and work instinctively? 

WYLIE I do a lot of drawings, pick one and work from it, then put it down, and think I should have started with another, and then I use another, and then I go back to the first one. It's all flexible and fluid. There's no real fixed rule for it. But I often have a drawing because that's where all the decision-making is, you can do a lot of getting the image into something which you can bear to look at. And then, the painting goes on from the one you like the look of most, or the one that you think will translate better, and then the other decisions begin.  

HIGGIE Is there a lot of slippage between the preparatory drawings you do and the final painting? Do you change things a lot when you're making the painting?  

WYLIE There isn't. Sometimes it's very close, and I want to get it close. And if it's not close, I go on with it. Other times, I just let it go.  

HIGGIE Would you describe yourself as a very instinctive painter?  

WYLIE I think both. Both instinctive and—what would be the opposite of instinctive?  

HIGGIE I think it might have been Caspar David Friedrich who had his palette in one room and the easel in the next room so that he could never make an instinctive gesture. He had to move slowly between the two rooms, so every gesture would be very considered. Maybe very considered is the opposite of instinctive.  

WYLIE I do both, instinctive and considered. I'm a hybrid. I'm a combination of any kind of attitude that you can dredge up. I mean, the painting My House Front, and Back (2022)—I took nine hours drawing the blackberry leaf. I had the leaf in front of me and I just kept thinking, That's cheap. It's horrible. I can't bear it. I don't want to look at it. That's no good. It's not good enough. For hours, I kept changing it. And then finally, I did the painting quite close to the drawing because such a lot of decision-making had gone into the drawing that there was nothing more for me to do, and why not use it? 

HIGGIE How long would you spend on most of your large paintings do you think?  

WYLIE Sometimes I work obsessively for two, three days, you know really, just all the time because no one is here to stop me. And then, I leave it for a bit, just simply because I've got somewhere, and then I come back to it and if I don't like it, I change it again. So, I would always leave a painting for at least two weeks, and then come back to it, perhaps, and change it. Occasionally, you can do one in two days, but not often. Very, very rarely.  

HIGGIE Do you abandon many paintings?  

WYLIE I usually go on with them. I don't like wasting the paint and the time, so I push on. I just change it, scrape it all off, and put more paint on. 

HIGGIE And at what point do the titles come in? Do you begin with a title, or do you come up with a title once you've finished?  

WYLIE It gets an affectionate nickname, and I sometimes stick with that. One of the paintings in the show, I nicknamed Tarantino's Sister. Really, though, it was a bit too close to Hollywood. If you look at the heads, the middle head looks a bit like Tarantino. But because it's a girl, I called it Tarantino's Sister. Now it’s called Up the Bikers.  

HIGGIE Where did that title come from?  

WYLIE I live in a village, and up the road, there's a lot of spare land. The Prince, now King of Wales, bought a plot of land and gave it over to ex-army people who had motorbikes. It was a kind of rally-point. Motorbikes stream past the window and they can use this plot of land for racing.  

HIGGIE So, you don't mind the bikers going past the window?  

WYLIE No, I don't mind them at all. It's life. It's noise. It's only sometimes—four times a year or something. No, I don't mind the noise coming in. The bikers and the noise and the traffic—I like it. It's the opposite of death. My studio is generally thought to be a bit messy, but it's the opposite of sterile, and hospitals.

HIGGIE It's life. And there's almost a feeling in that painting of a slippage with time. They look like Easter Island heads or something. They feel very ancient in that picture.  

WYLIE Well, I hope so. I like Easter Island heads. And they're also quite current because I think the hairstyles are current.  

HIGGIE Do you ever make paintings which please you, but you don't fully understand what each component is? One of the many things I love about painting is that however full of resemblance it might be, painting is still enigmatic. The meaning is often enigmatic even to the painter.  

WYLIE It can keep on accruing, can't it? It can get more and more.  

HIGGIE How important, or not, is it for you that people looking at your paintings understand the references? Or can they take away their own new meanings from them?  

WYLIE It doesn't matter at all. I think it can be enriching for the audience if they do see, or interpret it in some sort of way, but it need not necessarily be what I intend. I think it should be open. But it's quite nice if they've seen films, like For A Few Dollars More (1965) or Blazing Saddles (1974). I think it can help. 

HIGGIE I'd love to hear more about your thoughts on color, because I remember you telling me once actually, in that piece that you wrote for Thin Skin, the exhibition I curated, you talked about your love of yellow and green. I'd love your thoughts on that.  

WYLIE I love yellow and green. I had a bed for my daughter, Henrietta. I painted it green. It was metal. It had yellow flowers on it and was early Victorian. But while I do like yellow and green, I also like pink and black. I like black and brown. I love pink, but I think color depends on how much and how it's used.  

HIGGIE I'm sure there are artists who you particularly admire for their use of color.  

WYLIE Manet and El Greco, something about the black keeps it all together. But then, I don't necessarily like to have too much black. Matisse is good at color, but then so is Picasso, and look at Ugo Rondinone or Franz West. 

HIGGIE We've obviously talked a lot about extraordinary painters, but I'd love to hear a little bit more about your thoughts on caricature and cartoons, which I know that you've spoken about before.  

WYLIE I'm not so interested in caricature, it’s too distorted. What I do is transform and extend. And the thing about cartoon language is that it has to be immediately recognizable or the cartoon has no point. If you're painting something like a brick or an ice cream, it's quite useful if people can see what you're doing. I do like predellas and little paintings at the bottom of big paintings which show movement—they link into cartoons in a way that I can completely accept. Cartoons are a move away from reality, which I also like. And the cartoon language is actually very useful if you grab hold of it and channel it. Sometimes I get accused of being too cartoon-like. And from my point of view, they're not cartoon-like at all. I'm simply using everything at my disposal. For instance, if you paint a hot dog, you paint the lines of heat. I use cartoon language, but I also use Renaissance devices of foreshortening and cross-hatching. I put it all in, mix it up. I think distortion can go too far, and that's perhaps more to do with the comical or the tiresome. Exaggeration, I don't actually go for that either. I go for poetic transformation.