villa kennedy interior design

>>so i wanted to start with this painting,rather, large drawing. it’s 17 feet across, it’s graphite, witha related sculpture that has sound. and it’s called “about midnight saturday”. the reason i want to start with it is, it’sthe first of my work where i developed the imagery based on an interview. so i interviewed my father, my sister andi interviewed our father, skip bollinger, about an event in his life that had been,in a way, a kind of family myth. in 1970, on christmas night, actually, heand a friend were coming home from a double date, going to the friend’s house to a party.

they passed a car that was driving reallyslowly on the road, and that car proceeded to kind of follow them home, drag racing style. and when they pulled up at the house, my fatherwalked out of the—opened the door to his car, went to the passenger side of this unknownvehicle. they rolled their window down, and withouta word, stabbed him in the chest with a knife. don’t worry, he’s okay, he’s actuallyhere today. but it was, of course, a very traumatic event. they never found the assailants. it shaped, i think in a lot of ways, my father’slife.

and so being the child of the person who hasgone through that, that became a story that i was highly familiar with, and it becamekind of part of the myth of what my father was. and so from the interview, i constructed thedrawing entirely based on his accounts, and research based on those accounts. so it wasn’t until after i’d completedthe drawings that i actually had him drive me to the scene of the crime, basically. we retraced that night. so, in doing that research, i had to investigateall the information about the type of car,

and try to kind of rebuild that experience. it was important to me to not have the figurespresent, because there was this cabinet speaker, which was a replica of one that he had atthe time, and his 8-track player that was in the camaro that, within that, hidden insidethe sculpture, is a little mp3 player. so you can go and you can listen to my fathertalking about this event, and then look at this large drawing, and sort of mentally project,you know, your imagination would function as a kind of a projector. and you could project these events onto thislarge backdrop, like drawing. which brings me to one of the pieces that’sin the show, which is called storage.

this is not the same camaro, but a very similarcamaro. he will, of course, be very particular aboutthe previous one is a 1970 camaro, this one’s 1974. it’s presently sitting in his garage inthis state, and i’m embarrassing him slightly to say this, but i was interested that herewas this kind of heroic object that sort of-- co-actor in this very dramatic story thathappened to him. but also a kind of emblem of youthful dreamsand passions, and his love of cars, now sitting in a state of relative disrepair. and i became interested in the way that thecamaro was a kind of surrogate for him.

so i could think about him, but look at thecar, and think about family and look at the car. and so in thinking about the car, and bodies,and thinking about vulnerability, i thought, well, i need to open the hood. so i made this, this is a smaller painting,it’s 5-feet tall. but the engine is close to life-sized. and i thought, well, what’s the heart ofthe car? well, it’s gonna be the engine. so i opened it up to kind of look at all thepipes, and ventricles of the machine.

this painting, not all of my paintings comedirectly from that family story. a lot of it comes from my own autobiography,and my own experience. things that i’ve seen, or things that i’vedirectly done. and a few years ago, for years i drove aroundin this old toyota tacoma pick-up truck. it was really important to me that everythingi did could roll up and fit in the truck. so like the whole studio could collapse intothese special boxes, they’d fit in the truck. the paintings could roll up, all of them onone roll, an entire show. that could fit into the back of the truck. and then i had to sell the truck because igot married.

we both couldn’t, we had two cars suddenly,we live in brooklyn, so that’s a disaster. so i sold it to a friend. so he’s taken good care of clover, my sweettruck. i thought to memorialize our separation thati would paint it kind of getting away. but that’s not necessarily something thatyou would, i would need you to know when you’re in a gallery looking at it. what’s more important is that there’sthis barrier between you, the audience, and this vehicle, where something’s going tohappen. you can tell it’s in the middle of happening.

the bolt cutters are there, the chain hasbeen cut. and i feel like these barriers are ways tosituate you, as an audience person, in relationship to this fiction i want to create. because my paintings are all fundamentally,in some way, narrative. they’re a glimpse of a piece of a story. this is a large diptych drawing. it’s the same size as the diptych in thegallery, so each page is 8-feet tall and 6-feet wide. in the summer of 2015 i interviewed my mother,and i became really fascinated in the places

that she and my father lived, and did thingsbefore i was born. and so i interviewed her all about her apartmentin independence, missouri, where she moved to after she finished physical therapy school,and was just starting her first, kind of real, adult job. and in thinking about it i realized that thisis actually the first time she hadn’t lived with roommates, i believe. so it was kind of entirely her space. and i wanted to make a drawing that felt likethe inside of the room was sort of the inside of her imagination, or her mind.

so you can kind of see her on this left sidein kind of shadow, or silhouette. and then the rest of the space is kind ofunnaturally animated, like gusts of wind are kind of blowing through and setting everythingin motion. and i was actually drawing it very much likean animation. i would draw and move things to kind of convincemyself that they could be blown around. but this, too, was constructed out of small,detailed elements based on her account. some of these objects i actually had directexperience with, so. when i was 18 i took this stereo, and nevergave it back. so i know that very well, along with thatotis redding album that’s down below.

it’s fantastic, mom, thanks. but others i had to construct entirely fromher accounts, and then kind of google searching for things. as i was thinking about that space, and talkingwith her more about it, it came out that she actually met my father in the apartment complexwhere that apartment was. and then, when they got married, they movedinto the apartment next door to the apartment she had been living in. and the only difference being that it hadan extra, one more bedroom. so i became fascinated with what had beena kind of interior mental space becoming a

place of meeting between the two of them. and i don’t typically think about art historicalreferences, and things, when i’m making my stuff, but as i started this i realized,“oh, this is like a marriage portrait.” which was a little weird, ‘cause it’slike the origin of matt. so this painting was developed out of thatsame interview, plus some follow-up questions, except this time, of course, constructed outof paint. and i like to show these details because,it’s bizarre to see it blown up like that, but you can see some of the textural qualitiesthat are even hard to see with the naked eye. so there’s my father behind the door, andmy mother reflected in the panes of glass.

and i was talking to someone earlier in thegalleries about the way the color changes the kind of tambour, or the flavor, of thework. i’m interested in things like hollywoodmelodramas. this is a still from douglas sirk’s “allthat heaven allows.” that’s rock hudson and jane wyman. and i realized, as i was putting this together,and i was looking through my archive, that i borrowed that window. and i was also interested that these objectswould be kind of stand-ins for them. i deliberately didn’t put them in the space,because i want the space to be a kind of theatrical

backdrop. to hang like an empty stage, that you, theaudience, get to come and populate. but i wanted the objects to be there in away to kind of speak for the absent characters, in this case, my parents. so there’s the rolling stones album. there’s also the beer can. so that’s on her side. on his side is carole king’s “tapestry.” and the two cigarettes, you know, they’rekind of nestled together in a sort of--almost

kissing. and the final work i want to show and talkabout is called “dad’s home office.” i’ve done a number of paintings that werebased on the small business that my father had in independence, skip’s speed and sport. skip bollinger. he sold auto parts. he was an auto parts retail store that was,eventually pushed out of business by big box store competition. and i have related pieces that are based oninterviews from that.

but i felt like i’d been looking at theirdomestic spaces before i was born. and i was thinking about the way that thiswas the kind of counterpoint to the camaro, which was maybe a dream of the kid that wentout and drag raced illegally on the street a bit, maybe too much in his early 20s. and then formed that dream into somethingreal that he’s continuing to this day. and the way that that could be encapsulatedby something as simple as a chair and a computer. the chair is a kind of stand-in. you know, this is where he was sitting, andwhere it’s sort of waiting for him to be. the cigarette’s still smoking.

and then all of the kind of emblems of hiscurrent life. family photographs, the different kinds ofauto enthusiast memorabilia as well. that’s it for me. (audience applauding)>>i will start and echo some of the sentiments from matt. i’m very honored to be here and speakingwith you guys. not something i would have thought about noteven five years ago when i was working still as a live-in nanny, which is what i’m startingwith as an example here of a day in my job. my family came from mexico, and they movedto san bernardino, california area.

and i’m born and raised there, then eventuallywent to school, art school, cal arts. and that didn’t work for me. i ended up dropping out for various reasons. and also ended up exploring some of this likearts life, jumping around different couches, living in very unstable situations. i felt very unstable at that period, and ineeded stability. so out of nowhere this job came about. i had a lot of childcare experience, and thisnanny job was offered to me around that time that i dropped out.

so i said, “you know what? it’s a free home in the hollywood hills,and what could be better?” i took it out of a necessity, but what endedup happening was, this job seemed to be the art school part that was missing. in other words, it slowly became obvious tome that it was put in my life, and this experience came into me, in order for me to make connectionsbetween my family’s experience. working in jobs similar to what i was doing. i was not necessarily intended to be a nanny,either. my family worked hard.

they sacrificed a lot. and for me to end up doing exactly what theywere doing was what my mom said, “not the plan.” you know? but again, here i was. so this is a day in my life a few years agoin 2012. and i was babysitting at the time the twinsthat i raised from when they were six weeks old. so my nanny job started in 2009 when theywere only about six weeks old.

and by this point they were already abouttwo and a half years old, three years old. that’s an interesting thing to me that timestarted happening. and again, if you look at the close-up ofthem, they’re just sort of playing and drawing. but then the back, there’s this man thatwould come in. and he would come and clean the pool. it reminded me a lot of my own family members. every thursday, in fact, all these picturesthat i’m showing you are from a thursday afternoon, the housekeepers, the cleaners,the pool cleaners, such as this guy, would come in and work.

and it’s interesting because i was the onlyone out of all of them that was actually living there. but yet, what does it mean to live there? what does it mean to come in and take careof a space that you’re not really a part of? at the same time, it made me confront my ownthings. am i a part of this? is this what is intended for me? so here, again, the pool cleaner coming in,reminded me a lot of my parents, but then

the housekeepers are also their own individuals. and they have their own families, and theyhave their own kids to take care of. so that’s why they’re there. and seeing these interactions, these connectionsbetween everyone, from the people inside working with me to the people outside, like the gardenerhere, gondelario. that’s what started in forming my work. and again, it wasn’t an art project, butlittle by little, the neighborhood, laurel canyon area of the hollywood hills, the factthat i was working for an entertainment industry family.

editor in tv shows that many of you probablywatch, like criminal minds, or true blood. that kind of part of hollywood is well knownand documented through work, such as the iconic work of david hockney, who you may alreadyknow of through all those great works that have been exhibited. but at the same time, i didn’t become veryfamiliar with him until this period when i started looking at his paintings in a verydifferent way. i didn’t see gondelario reflected in hispaintings, though. i didn’t see that pool cleaner. i didn’t see that housekeeper.

so what i ended up doing was looking at hispainting in a very different way, and deciding what’s so clear in my head needs to be clearto everybody else. so i came there with that intention. this is actually the original version, notthe one that’s downstairs. but this is the original version i did ona smaller wood panel that’s made from, or that’s sourced from wood that’s used tobuild the sets of tv shows. so anyway, i’m really engaging with thathollywood aspect there. but more so, i’m engaging with art history,i’m engaging with an iconic artist. and i didn’t want it to be karaoke.

so by replacing that splash, seeing the splashoriginally be his sole focus, that ephemeral moment of a splash, made me think about theephemeral moment of labor. the ephemeral moment of somebody coming in,working, and all that’s left is this spotless home. so replacing them was key in this series. the piece downstairs is what it is. no splash at the scale of the original painting. it is my hope that one day no splash is exhibitednext to a bigger splash by david hockney. i’m just throwing it out there for anybodythat would be interested.

but i’m honored that it’s down here, becauseagain, these are experiences in los angeles that aren’t very far removed from experienceshere, or elsewhere. no matter where in the world you go, laboris happening. the cast is different, but the roles are thesame. then going into further past no splash, iwanted to go further with more of david hockney’s work. and of course, there was lots of paintingsthat called for me immediately, such as this one, his iconic portrait of the art collectorsfred and marcia weisman. and in that painting, it was easier for meto think about where to place the figure when

the figures were already there. but what wasn’t easy was how to insert theminto this painting. i thought originally of them working, butthen i thought, you know what? the power of them replacing them specificallyin the same positions, owning the space, confronting the viewer. the scale of it. the figures are very different when they’relarger, closer to life size, which are connected to other works that i’ve done. when the figures are actually more closerto real life, and they’re standing there

guarding you, or watching you, you’re almostconfronted by this reality that exists, that gets hidden. especially in the context of art. so here the reflection of a moment in an imaginativescenario. these aren’t really the art collector’sgardeners, but they’re not much different from the ones that actually exist out there. that was key for me. you also see different layers. david hockney, for example, when he paintedthis, he was interested in the tension between

the couple that existed, whereas i’m notnecessarily interested in the tension between the couple, i’m interested in the male couplethere. that does happen. lots of male will work together. sometimes uncles bring their friends. or, you know, there’s a lot of relationshipsthat develop in the gardener work that exists. and they’re there together for an afternoon,and then, you know, they move on. so there is a connection between these twomen, but it’s a little different. i leave it for you, as the audience, to explorethat.

one of the things that is not intended, butis part of the project is, as it’s going on, it’s been now inserted into google history,which i actually love. just because that little moment that someonemight be searching the david hockney painting, then seeing mine, might pique their interest,and then see something that they might not have thought about before. pushing what david hockney’s work means,and actually exploring it further, not just staying on the surface. speaking of surfaces, i’m very interestedin not just david hockney work, and mimicking him, but almost also interested in reflectinglos angeles itself.

very similar to him. that’s just natural. it’s a very beautiful location to walk aroundand see these different shops. and this is basically the original versionof what’s downstairs called “paul smith’s store.” it’s an iconic fashion store. and unlike the domestic work that i was doingwith the hockney series, this is just making you connect domestic labor with just laborin general. the guy that comes in and sweeps, and maintainsthat building.

the original is a very small scale, but didn’thave the logo. and then the second painting you see downstairsincluded the logo, and a nod to pop art. definitely ed ruscha with the lines. definitely andy warhol with the logos. i see myself very much in line with them,but at the same time, what pop art does is focus on very almost surface things, surfacedetails. things that are very easy to dismiss, or justlook at as something like a pop song, and then move on. but here i’m asking you to look at it, whichis why i use the strategies of pop art, but

then it’s connected to the social realist. it’s connected to all kinds of other artiststhat explored what it meant to exist and work in that time and period. and then looking at it from a course of historywhen we’re not here, and i’m not here anymore to share with people what my workis about. letting the painting speak for itself to documentsomething that existed now. with that painting, something that’s happenedis a manager at the paul smith store is a guatemalan-american. and he found my work online, shared it withpaul smith himself, and now has been taking

pictures of the guy that takes care of thatlogo and that store. and so he sends that to me, and that’s developingas well. i’m thinking, “okay, what does that meanto have that kind of effect out in the world, you know?” it’s one thing for people to come and seethe paintings, and another thing for someone to look at my work, see it, take a photo,and then share it back to me. so i’m still in that process of collectingthese photos that people send to me. but, i don’t know, it’s just somethingreally strong about the fact that this guy now shares it on his social media feed, andhe’s sharing it with that designer, and

that designer is openly supporting the project. these guys that work at the paul smith storealso work in other storefronts on that iconic melrose avenue, such as alexander mcqueen,and they clean those stores for people to come in and buy something. so, unlike the domestic labor, i think wheni look at those paintings, and i look at these magazines, or these images on popular socialmedia, i’m looking at it through instagram feeds. i’m looking at it and trying to focus onhow to bring these ideas into lexicon, or more of a contemporary feel.

david hockney did it his way. one year, or in the years that he was doingit, continues to do so. i’m actually exploring it through, again,a different lens. yeah, again, social media is a big influenceto me, because i share these images online, images of the people that are working. taking pictures of them that inform the work,as you saw the pictures of the kids that i was babysitting. that social media aspect is really interestingto me, just because i’m able to let go of an idea, share it, and have immediate reactions.

again, the surface is what i’m interestedin focusing on here. but i’m exploring it further here, the tenoversixlogo is framing this sort of body that’s not showing a head in front of this darkerstorefront, talking about commodification and industries such as the fashion industry,that are all about selling you something that you need right now. and it’s all about giving you somethingthat you’re supposedly missing. but then, after you buy something, it takessomebody else’s maintenance, somebody else’s labor, to come in and take care of it foryou. that’s what i’m talking about when i talkabout commodification.

definitely the industries that sell you somethingwhen at the same time it has real effect on humans elsewhere. and then the image i want to end with, actually,is one that brings me to the context of the museum itself. as i move from being a nanny as i did, intoan artist now, i’m still looking at the world in the same way. i’m still connecting the people that comein and clean to the people that were cleaning in that home with me. it’s very personal.

similar to matt, i come from my family, whoagain work in these jobs. my mom is a custodian at an elementary school. so when i see the custodians, it’s actuallycloser to me now to make the connection between them cleaning in spaces like this museum,or the museum here that i’ve painted called the broad in los angeles. and then making sure that they get insertedinto art history. getting inserted into spaces like this showhere, so that people’s stories, people’s children in the future, can go back and seetheir families reflected in a way that, again, i feel is closer to life.

they’re small, we’re all small somewhere,and small here. but at the same time, these ideas are biggerthan just us. this idea that i had way back when is definitelygrowing and bigger than me, so thank you again for having me here. (audience applauding)>>hi. i also want to thank everyone here for havingme, and my work in this beautiful show. it’s a real honor. now, let’s see if i can figure this out. right.

i’m ezra johnson. i thought i would use this opportunity tofocus on an aspect of my work i don’t get to focus on as much. and so my sculptures, which i started backin like 2002. this, i apologize, this isn’t a great image. i never have been a great documenter of mywork. but i see a thread that sort of carries throughfrom this sort of first sculpture that i made back then. which actually was after doing a road tripdown to, driving down to miami from new york

for the basel fair, bringing, i used to workas an art handler, and i’d stopped at some kind of truck stop, and this is a productyou can get around here. so, or not around here, sorry, around i thinkthe carolinas. but this is like a four-foot version. and i started to make a bunch of sort of verycommon objects into sculptures. and these were made out of wood. they were sort of like an homage to claesoldenburg, except for they were sort of heavy and made out of wood. many of them, i often, like i would enjoysort of playing with different kinds of meat.

and sort of realizing that when i would sortof paint the surface with color, that would have a transformative effect. and it would sort of like turn this thing—theseare actually kind of heavy wooden objects, but then they started to feel like plastic,or like foam. yeah. here’s another one. so these are all from the early 2000s. this is a still from a video that’s here,“the time of tall statues.” my work, it always sort of originates withpainting, or, you know, even the sculptures

are very much dealing with the surface, andcolor on the surface, and sort of the transformation that happens. one thing i wanted to highlight from thisvideo is like the combination of the painted flat surface, and then the sculptural 3-dimensionalsurface that i really kind of exploited in this piece. this is also a still from that same scene,but this was done, this still was taken before the previous still. and i made a giant painting of like the meatsection of the supermarket. but in order to make the animation work, ihad to paint actually on the wall and on the

floor. so you can kind of see that, it gets thisfigure that i have passing through. you can sort of see the weird effect of thepart of the figure, like from the neck down. that’s actually the floor, and it’s sortof getting more light. and then the face is actually painted on thewall. if i remember right it’s about a six-footby five-foot or so wall painting, and then it comes down on the floor about three-feet. so it’s a giant face, and basically, overthe course of like a month, to make this sequence happen, i kind of walked different peoplein front of the scene, and then ultimately,

i blew it up. i have a short excerpt that ends up with thathere. so i’m gonna try to get that to play. this is just about three minutes. how does this work? >>this is great, honey. wow, you see that river? >>wow, that is a great river. >>such a good idea.

i’m so glad we came. i’m so glad we came for this drive. it’s so beautiful. >>yeah, i think so, too. >>hey, look at that house. >>oh, yeah, that is a nice house. wow, the trees are so tall. >>yeah, it’s beautiful. the air smells great.

and i love the light. >>yeah, i agree. (violin music)(tires screeching) (crashing)(thumping) (exploding)(violin music) >>that last bit was a combination of like3d animation, and she’s all painted on the wall. but then the child in the cart i sort of madeout of a milk crate and spray foam, and painted it.

this is also an image from that same video,“the time of tall statues.” but i think it kind of relates to that sortof tie in my work between like the physicality of sculpture and painting, which is sort of,there’s some kind of essence there that is really the most important thing to me. so this is the first mattress sculpture imade. and i made this in london in 2011. so pretty recently. i had spotted, you know, abandoned mattresseson the street, and thought like, “those are kind of like abstract paintings there.”

but then they have, they’re like a surrogatepainting. you know, they’re rectangular, and they’reflat. and they often have kind of patterns, likestripes, or other kinds of abstraction on but i was sort of attracted to--they can slump,and they could almost be exaggerated into kind of a cartoon-y sort of representation. like the gravity is like really, really heavyon them. that was an aspect that really attracted meto this idea that, you know, got me to make these mattress sculptures. but also the fact that they can be kind oflike formal, and have a presence, a physical

presence. but also sort of conjure up the idea of abody, or like, you know, a person lying on them. you know, there’s something also urban tome about them. like you don’t see mattresses in the country,leaning on trees. and actually this is the first of the mattresssculptures i made after i moved to florida. it’s kind of got like florida colors. but then it’s also sort of like an homageto great, you know, painters that i admire like picasso, and jasper johns.

and so this was sort of the original versionof the mattress balanced on the bottle that is down in the lobby here. i was somewhat inspired by the lyrics of bobdylan’s song from “leopard-skin pill-box hat.” “it balances on your head like a mattressbalances on a bottle of wine.” and i’ll end with this. this is the communal beard. it’s also my first animation that i madeback in, i started it in 2004. it was called “what visions burn.”

at the very end of this clip, which is twominutes, i think i have enough time for that, you’ll see the very first animation sequencei did where there’s like a silhouette sort of cutting a painting out of its frame. yeah, this is a short excerpt from “whatvisions burn.” how did i get it to play before? (crowd chatting)(door opens) my technique has improved since then. this is the very--what began it all. that’s it, thank you.

(audience applauding)>>this is john singer sargent’s “lady agnew of lochnaw” from 1892. it’s probably one of my favorite paintingsof all time. and i was lucky to have seen it in personwhile still a teenager in art school when it was part of a sargent show at the whitneymuseum. besides the bravura handling of her exquisitedress and violet sash, the way he has captured her gaze is sort of like a drawbridge thatallows us to cross into the painting and go behind her perfect appearance into her soul. and for me, what i see there, is a powerful,controlled, and perhaps slightly troubled

person. this is my painting of lady agnew from 2009. and i see this as the forerunner to my socialitesseries, which is here. and that began about five years after thispainting. by the way, i’m also super honored to bein this show. it’s the first time my work has been ina museum, and i couldn’t be happier to have it here and with these other artists. this is sargent’s “a dinner table at night”from 1884. it’s an informal portrait of sargent’spatrons edith and albert vickers at their

sussex home. and it may be that my desire to paint interiorsbegan here. i was captivated by the glowing red lightsand the gleaming silver. this is my red painting. it’s “nancy in the red room of the whitehouse” from 2008. i often paint the same image multiple times,because i know it will be different each time. this is the second version of that painting. and this is both of them in my studio. they’re about five-feet tall.

i like seeing them side by side, and in fact,they were bought by one collector, and he installed them side by side. i like the idea that they remain together. my next room in the white house was the yellowoval room, which was designed by sister parish. she was the first interior designer broughtin to help jackie kennedy decorate the white house. and apparently it’s in this room, in particular,that you can see her influence. around this time i became deeply interestedin the work of the great interior designers of the 20th century like billy baldwin, sisterparish, and albert hadley.

sister parish, especially, sought to createrooms that were at once elegant, and looked like they had been lived in for years, implyinggenerational continuity, and an aristocratic family seat, no matter how new the family,furniture, or money was. this is “billy baldwin’s eastman livingroom” from 2013. and this is “billy baldwin’s broad hollow.” this painting is based on this image. when i saw those yellow drapes, i became obsessedwith them, and so i painted it three times. this is albert hadley in his hallway. i’m so happy this is in the exhibition herebecause it’s an important moment in the

evolution of my work. i wanted to paint albert hadley’s iconicred hallway, but i couldn’t find an image of it without him standing in it. so i painted him as well, and i was struckby how the figure activates the space. and while i’m equally interested in theidea of an uninhabited room, at this point i knew i wanted to explore the figure in relationto their surroundings. i began to look for images of the type ofrooms i was interested in, but this time with figures. i found lee radziwill standing in a red roomin a red lanvin gown, photographed by mark

shaw in 1962. though i’m not sure why, she’s actuallystanding in beauty mogul helena rubinstein’s paris apartment. her gown is bleeding into her skin, and downthe floor. and that’s when i started to see how theway that i paint can reveal a psychological aspect of the sitter. this is lee radziwill in nina ricci. i loved painting the french furniture here. i also liked how the strange angle of thephoto shot from above, as well as the furniture

crowding in on her, lends lee a touch of claustrophobia. though i think it’s important to mentionthat i’m not aware of these things when i paint the paintings, i just, i sort of seewhat happens after i paint them. this is consuelo crespi. at this point i became more and more interestedin who these women were, and i studied them in depth, which i’m sure influenced theway i portrayed them. so i’m going to tell you a little bit aboutthem. consuelo was an american born italian countessand style setter, and vogue editor. although she is the height of aristocraticelegance here, and did have a profound role

in promoting italian fashion, she was bornin the new york suburb of larchmont, and met count crespi on a blind date in a restaurant. it’s not exactly rags to riches, but i lovethe idea that she invented herself as she went along. slim aarons photographed lady daphne cameronon a tiger skin rug in the trophy room at socialite laddie sanford’s palm beach homein 1959. i really just really wanted to paint thattiger. and i’ve done it about three times. this is c.z.

guest. my images of c.z. all come from a slim aaronsshoot at her family home in palm beach, villa artemis. born into the highest ranks of american society,she was a socialite, equestrian. in the early ‘50s she was considered oneof the best-dressed women in the world, and was one of truman capote’s swans. my impression of her is that she was anythingbut stuffy. in 1976, after a riding accident, she beganwriting a gardening column for the new york post.

and after battling cancer, and losing herhair to chemotherapy, she sported a chic crew-cut. she was even featured in a nike ad wearingan upside-down sneaker on her head to suggest a mohawk. which i know that i’ve seen, but i cannotfind an image of anywhere. here she is with her two dogs. and i love her arm in this painting. it’s sort of like, it looks like it’sbroken. it’s bleeding into the building. she’s sort of merging with the building.

it was, this is c.z. again. it was only towards the end of painting thisone that i felt c.z. needed to be pushed into a stranger territory. so for me, the acid colors, along with thepalm trees, give it a little “morning in vietnam” feeling. this is marella agnelli in 1963, wearing balenciaga,in her garden at villa la leopolda on the cote d’azur. she had a tough life, no, she didn’t, really. unlike consuelo, marella grew up in an aristocraticand conservative italian family, and married

jetsetter gianni agnelli, the owner of fiatmotorcars. another of capote swans, one of several veryclose friends that he ultimately betrayed when he published a chapter from his novel,“unanswered prayers”, in “esquire” magazine, revealing secrets they had all sharedwith him. that betrayal, along with several via herhusband, must have deeply hurt her. marella is known for the many gorgeous homesshe poured herself into creating. i never decide beforehand what i want thebleeds to do in my painting, but i thought it was revealing here how she ended up literallymerging with and dissolving into the garden of her estate.

this is slim keith, photographed by louisedahl wolfe for “harper’s bazaar” in the 1940s. slim was the only one of truman’s swanswho wasn’t born into either wealth or society. instead she was a sultry, beautiful, intelligentwoman who came from a poor family in northern california, and fell into the hollywood crowdwhen she left school and home to hang out in a desert resort where she met two actorswho nicknamed her slim. she quickly became part of the hearst castlescene where she spent time with the likes of clark gable, and director howard hawks,whom she married. she’s credited with discovering lauren bacall.

she left hawks for hollywood agent bill hayward,and was devastated when he left her for pamela churchill, who had become pamela harriman. slim was a tough broad. great friends, oops...how do i do this. i don’t know how to do this. anyway, she was great friends with ernesthemingway. the thing about this painting is that it comes,the photo it comes from is really strange, it appears that she’s lighting a cigarettein a holder from a lighter, in a holder from a lighter, but a closer look shows that thecigarette and holder have been painted in.

it’s hard to see here. and she’s not holding a lighter but a germanemblem of some kind. i don’t know what they were going for, andthen someone thought she really, let’s just make her smoking. this is my favorite image of slim becauseit really captures her sharp style and knowing stance. it looks to me like she’s in a lodge somewhere,and there must be other fabulous people just outside the picture milling about during cocktailhour. the way i painted her, her right elbow isnot really leaning on anything, and it’s

just poised in the air, and i think it throwsoff her center of gravity in a way that i like. this is babe paley, photographed by horstp. horst in 1946. i think babe paley is the most tragic of thewomen, and maybe the most revered as an icon. she and her two sisters were brought up tomarry wealthy men. her mother was specifically hoping for europeanroyalty, and to be perfect hostesses. and babe took it seriously. i added the red at her mouth in a moment ofinspiration in the studio. i just felt it needed something.

later i learned that as a teenager she hadbeen in a terrible car accident, and lost all her teeth. she had to wear a painful set of denturesfor the rest of her life. on rare nights that her husband was home insteadof with a mistress, she would wear them all night, and then get up at 5:00 am to havetime to perfectly make up her face before bill woke up. she is often described as looking and beingperfect. truman capote, her dearest friend, who consoledher during her most painful moments while behind her back, lining up new mistressesfor her husband, also viciously betrayed her

and her secrets in “esquire.” she never spoke to him again. she died relatively young and after a longbout with lung cancer, and she also did that perfectly. she had made up her face the night beforeso as to look flawless at the end. this is also babe photographed for “vogue”in 1946. as i painted babe in this work, she seemedto me to have reached her max in terms of playing at perfection. she could no longer hold the center, and beginningwith her head, pieces of her start to fly

away. to me these women were the last of their kind. after immersing myself in their lives, i wasfeeling pretty claustrophobic. and i next found myself turning to a differenttype of iconic women. these new women were not socialites holdingit all together. they had a different kind of celebrity. they were about rock and roll, and appearingperfect seemed to them to be really overrated. they were hanging out with andy warhol, halston,and the stones. and my next show, then, was titled “thegirlfriends of the rolling stones”, and

felt like a natural segue from the swans,whose days were on the wane. so i’ll just show you a few of those. this is bianca jagger in yellow. this image is from a “sunday times magazine”shoot in 1972. bianca is best known for having married mickjagger, being devastatingly stylish, and being a key part of the 1970s studio 54 scene, alongwith andy warhol and halston. i know that i would have been very intimidatedby bianca. the confidence that she exuded leaves me inawe. i love how this painting ended up giving heran almost cartoonish look, like an evil queen

from a disney movie. this is anita pallenberg from a “playmen”magazine shoot in 1967. pallenberg was an italian actress, model,and fashion designer. in terms of her rolling stones liaison, shewas with brian jones from ’67 to ’69, which was followed by a long-term relationshipwith keith richards. with him she had three children. she was much more than a groupie, though. mick jagger remixed several tracks on “beggar’sbanquet” after she offered criticism, and she’s listed as singing background vocalson “sympathy for the devil.”

fun fact, she was obsessed with black magic,and began to carry a string of garlic with her everywhere, even to bed, to ward off vampires. she also had a strange, mysterious old shakerfor holy water, which she used for some of her rituals. richards’ bodyguard described her as havingbeen like a life force. a woman so powerful, so full of strength anddetermination, that man came to lean on her. and finally, this is marianne faithful. faithful is an english singer, songwriter,and actress. she wrote “as tears go by”, famously recordedby her and mick jagger.

she and mick had a highly-publicized relationship,though she’s a rock and roll legend in her own right. later, in the 1970s, she struggled with heroinaddiction, alcoholism, and anorexia. the image here is from the 1968 film “thegirl on the motorcycle”, which starred faithful and french sex symbol alain delon. the plot description will give you a vivididea of how different these women were from their predecessors. “newly married rebecca leaves her husband’salsatian bed on her prized motorbike, her symbol of freedom and escape, to visit daniel,her lover in heidelberg.

en route, she indulges in psychedelic anderotic reveries as she relives her changing relationship with the two men, before crashinginto a truck at the end.” it was a new world. that’s all. (applause)

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