IPA - TOM WOLFE INTERVIEW


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TOM WOLFE INTERVIEW

by C.F.Payne

CFP - Early in your writing career you were a literary equivalent to an

illustrator, working with magazines on a variety of assignments with an

editor and deadlines. You also illustrated many of your articles. Did you

have any aspirations to be an artist or an illustrator?

TW -Very early on, up through my teens, I was really interested in it.

When I was seven or eight I went to a WPA [Works Projects Administration]

art school. It cost 25 cents a week. This was in Richmond, Virginia.

Fabulous artists who were down and out because of the Depression taught in

these schools. When I was in my early teens, I learned anatomy — by

drawing boxers in “Ring Magazine”, Beau Jack, Listless Lee Oma, Sugar Ray

Robinson. Beau Jack was great for obliques and quadriceps, I remember. I

wasn’t aware of bodybuilding magazines at that time or I would have

probably used those.

My first real job was as a reporter for a newspaper in Springfield,

Massachusetts. One day in 1957, I was sent to cover a murder trial. It

was a big deal in Springfield just to have a murder trial. They wouldn’t

let photographers in, so on the spur of the moment, just using a ballpoint

pen, I drew the courtroom. It was quite amazing in Massachusetts at that

time. The defendants in murder trials were put inside of a half-cage,

kind of like a hockey goalie’s cage. So I drew that. It was published;

and I started doing a fair amount of illustration. I would do Sunday

features. One, I remember, was two pages of detailed caricatures of

teenagers and their hairdos, the ducktail, flattop, the Presley. I did a

whole bunch of these things. I continued doing it in Washington, for the

Washington Post. I started illustrating against a daily deadline. I was

reporting, drawing and writing. That will drive you nuts. You get the

feeling that there really are two sides to the brain, because while I was

drawing, I could not take in the meaning of the words. They just floated

by. And vice versa; if I was concentrating on the meaning of the

testimony, I couldn’t draw a thing.

Finally, from 1977 to 1981, I did a monthly feature for Harpers that was

called In Our Time, a drawing or drawings with a caption, some short, some

200 words or more. I had a good time doing that. I haven’t done a whole

lot since. I did publish one book of drawings called In Our Time in 1980.

It ranged over about 15 years of work.

For years now, I have felt that the annual published by the Society of

Illustrators, has been better than all of the catalogs of the contemporary

art shows in New York put together. I feel very comfortable predicting

that art historians 50 years from now, assuming we’re in a world kind

enough to indulge art historians, will look back upon the illustrators as

the great American artists of the second half of the 20th century. There

is such emptiness in the so-called art world today. So much of it is just

etiquette and fashion. For example, right now it is considered terribly

reactionary to be using paint, much less doing drawings. That is why you

have the prominence of somebody like Matthew Barney who crawls naked in

front of a video camera or various “installation artists” who merely place

existing objects in a room. Such things are not done for visual effect

but in the name of this year’s theory of the century in the New York art

world. They don’t have much with the theory. They have zero without it.

This intellectualism has led two generations of serious artists like the

Pied Piper of Hamelins’ rats over the cliff and into complete triviality.

The annual from the Society of Illustrators is full of work that actually

engages life. The work that is praised within the art world only engages

the art world. It really has absolutely nothing to do with the world

beyond. I probably will ruin my own argument by saying this, but when I

look at Guernica, I laugh. I see a Cubist horse strangling on a light

bulb. Only illustrators have brought skill with them in the 21st century.

Tom Stoppard in his play called “Artists Descending the Staircase” says,

“Imagination without skill gives us contemporary art.” I think that’s

true. Go to any prestigious art school and see what they are doing. When

they do installation art or earth art or conceptual art, the purpose is

not to sell it, though you might possibly make a sale to a museum. It is

to get tenure. If you become a big enough name doing installations, you

have a good chance of being hired by a university. If you hang on there

for ten years, you’ve got tenure. You’ve solved your financial problems

for the rest of your life. But some very funny things happen. One

well-known California university ended up with 10 conceptual artists with

tenure. They made up almost the whole art faculty. They began to get a

little grousing from some of the young artists who wanted a life drawing

class. They had to bring in, on a temporary basis, artists who knew

anatomy, who knew perspective, who knew what colors were all about. A

friend of mine was hired for that very reason. And it was made it very

clear that he was merely a temp.

I wrote a piece about neuroscience and genetics in 1999. It began with

an account of an exhibition of the work of Milton Glaser, Jim McMullen,

Seymour Chwast and Paul Davis in Japan. They were being honored with a

show as great illustrators from the famous American Push Pin Studio. And

naturally they felt great about what was going on. So, now they are

brought on stage before 500 Japanese art students. The director of the

museum gets up and he says something in Japanese. They have an

interpreter on stage for the Americans, none of whom understands Japanese.

The director gives his introduction, and the American artists notice that

all of the eyes in the audience start staring at them in a very curious

way. Then the interpreter kicks in; “Our guests this morning are four

artists from the Manual Age”. Far from being looked upon as cutting-edge

artists, they were looked upon as hairy mastodons left over from the

Pleistocene Age. How curious! These old guys work by hand! From

scratch, whatever that is! Manual Art! Can you imagine such a thing?

The students did only computer graphics. I think some digital artists are

terrific; for example, Craig Frazier, who does highly stylized work. But

a lot of it is just junk. They take a photograph and stretch it this way

and that way. In my experience, the results are almost never anything

that has any real originality or personality. That is a separate issue

from the talent that is unique to the illustrator. .

CFP - Time Magazine ran a feature article identifying what they call

“America’s Best Artists”, with Julia Roberts on the cover. It identified

actors as artists, fashion designers as artists as well as architects,

sculptors, clowns, comedians, talk show hosts and talk show guests as

artists. Time has commissioned Andrew Wyeth, Grant Wood and Gerald Scarfe

to create work for their covers, yet still the magazine doesn’t consider

the illustrator an artist worthy of mention. Though it’s true many in the

art community may not consider illustrators artists, why don’t those in

the traditional media who use the talents of illustration view them as

artists?

TW - In the case of Time, I was once talking to a former editor of Time,

and I was asking him about the art coverage and he said, “We turn it over

to our art critics and pretty much let them do what they want.” We can’t

claim to know exactly what they’re talking about, but they seem to be

wired into this thing.” Wired in they are. Contemporary art critics are

not critics but messengers. They convey to the public the Word, which is

to say the current predilections of “the art world,” which in fact

consists of about 3000 museum curators, collectors and gallery owners,

perhaps 250 of whom do not live in the New York metropolitan area.

Contemporary critics --- I don’t know a single exception to this --- never

champion an artist who is not well known within the art world. You would

think that along the way, some critic would want to discover somebody.

That does not happen. Critics are not interested in discovering anybody.

They might be sniggered at. Their only concern is to bring you the news

of what this small esoteric world values or finds fashionable at a certain

point - - and to justify it. When I see tortured articles that try to

tell you that abstract impression, for example, expresses the spirit of an

age or that conceptual art expresses an age or that Pop Art expresses an

age --- it’s perfectly ludicrous. No one in America, no one, is more

totally isolated from the age we live in than the fashionable artists.

Even Pop Art you would think had some connection, but was only about

images that were out of date. Andy Warhol’s Campbell soup cans were about

the age of manufacturing and mass production. Yet by the time Andy Warhol

was born, we were in the information age. The comic strip things by Roy

Lichtenstein — the comics were already dead, because of television. It is

all very reactionary. McLuhan once said that “serious” artists are at

least one technology behind. They didn’t discover the landscape until the

railroads arrived and invaded it. But at least you could tell what Pop

Art was. I will give it that much credit. But did any of it require skill?

Practically none of it, maybe Ramos and Rosenquist; I kind of enjoyed

their stuff.

CFP - I guess there are some figurative artists like Wayne Thiebeau whose

work would show up in magazines. Diebenkorn’s figurative and landscape

images as well as his Ocean Park series seem to walk both sides of the

fence.

TW - You are right about Thiebeau, and even stranger, he is not grotesque.

Going grotesque is about the only way for a representational artist to

make it in “the art world.” I think the reason that Lucien Freud, who I

think is a good craftsman, is accepted today is that he only does

corroding people. They are just coming to pieces with flesh decomposing.

You can get away with that. Bacon was the same way. Here are these two

realists from England. Bacon’s acceptance depended on various forms of,

shall we say, grotesquely suffering human beings, men raping men, people

with their faces smeared from one side to the other. Not that I don’t

like Bacon, but without that morbidity, the nihilism, he wouldn’t have had

a chance in the art world. Meanwhile Norman Rockwell is making his way

back in. Have you noticed?

CFP - Well, he has had this exhibition at the Guggenheim. I can’t help

but have this mental picture of the Guggenheim trustees with one hand on

their noses and the other hand out enjoying the lines and the cash from

people coming through their doors.

TW - They are treating him more or less of the way they treat Velasquez or

Goya. Those guys wouldn’t get to first base doing the same sort of work

today. But they are from the past, and so it is all right to judge them

by the standards of the past. Rockwell now is beginning to seem far

enough from the past. The theory for Rockwell within the art world is he

was a painter of American mythology. So it’s okay to have these cheery

people with mom’s-pie faces and sentimental kindness and so on. Remember

the one he did of the man in the CEO’s suit looking at a Pollock. It was

brilliantly done and a brilliant idea.

CFP - Here is another item I wanted to touch on. You may be unfamiliar

with it but I think there is a connection for you as a writer. In

illustration, we have stock house agencies and large publishing houses,

each having illustrators sign very punitive contracts of one kind or

another, where artists are signing over their image rights with troubling

consequences.

TW - You wrote about that in your newsletter.

CFP - Yes, in our newsletters as well as in the booklet I sent you, titled

The Independent Streak.

TW - I was unaware of that, and a lot of it seems to get down to the

pernicious side of mergers.

CFP - The two of the major corporations involved with stock are Corbis,

owned by Bill Gates, and Getty Images, owned by Mark Getty. These folks

have deep pockets and are gobbling up as much imagery as possible.

Artists are having to choose to compete with these huge stock house

libraries or ally themselves with them. Some of the contracts give away

all the artists rights, whereby giving the image user the right to alter,

manipulate and reconfigure the image into a new picture. If this becomes

the dominant model for illustrators to work, what do you see the

implications to be for the artists and our culture?

TW - First, let me ask you this. When you sign one of these contracts,

does the corporation also own the original?

CFP - Work-for-hire-contract means fundamentally that the corporation is

the author.

TW - What happens if you simply refuse?

CFP - They simply will not work with you. For example, if you refuse to

sign one large publishers contract for their individual magazine, then you

can be shut out of all their other 30 or so publications.

TW - That is the pernicious side of the whole spree of takeovers in the

last 26 years. You really are eliminating competition. If you had

competition between all those magazines --- if Vanity Fair was really

competing with the New Yorker --- which it isn’t --- illustrators wouldn’t

have to face the problem they face now. There used to be competition. It

just doesn’t exist today. It would be easy for me to sit here and tell

you just say no, but it is a real dilemma for artists trying to make a

living from illustration alone. It is so insulting. It is actually

reducing artists to the level of cottage weavers in the old cottage

weaving system. You could design patterns and come up with all sorts of

great innovations in weaving, but you just got paid for the amount of

cloth you turned out, not for your creativity. We’ve managed to go back

three centuries in that respect. The other problem I guess artists run

into is, these magazines are so used to using photographs now.

It occurs to me you are quite right, it will dry up creativity because if

magazines can get by with these wholly owned stock pictures, the audience

itself will not realize that there is anything better. People got used to

dreadfully put together architecture in the 20th Century. Cheap

construction was made aesthetically acceptable. The Lever House is

falling to pieces. That was the great ornament of the1950’s, even before

the Seagram’s Building. They only got by with it because this little art

world we’re talking about persuaded people with means to believe

architecture without decoration, without variety, without any amenities,

is fine, not only fine, but beautiful. If you can persuade people of

that, they will accept the architecture that is the cheapest. I never

thought of it before, but it’s probably happening in illustration. If

they can persuade people that this is the best you can get, the audience

will simply not know there’s anything better, particularly if just a few

companies are controlling so many publications.

CFP - Can there be a time when the audience, being saturated with so much

of banality, will then come back and demand something different? Would it

have to be market driven to make that change?

TW - It can be fashion, and that could be a tool on your side as well as

something against you. My impression in talking to gallery owners is that

the younger generation with money, like all the young investment bankers,

are not interested in buying Picasso or Braque. They particularly don’t

want distorted, grim, grotesque art. They want art they can put with

pleasure on the wall. This usually is going to mean something figurative.

But that hasn’t swept New York yet. I can easily see it happening.

Another example, almost like Rockwell, is Tissot, who was written off

through most of the 20th century as this French illustrator who happened

to do big paintings. Now his work is selling two, three, four million

dollars each because the skill is overwhelming. Finally, there can be

only so much resistance to someone that good. I don’t know if you are

aware of his work. Some of the things he does are breathtaking. He will

create this super-perspective in which you are on a ship that fills up the

front of the picture and you look carefully and, there in the deepest

imaginable distance is a ship that is about as long as a gnat in true

perspective out on the sea somewhere. He really is fun.

CFP - I’m not familiar — I am going to have to look him up.

TW -Tissot. James Tissot; he was French, but he did much of his work in

England. Late 19th century. He’ll knock your socks off.

In the long run, talent and skill will win out. You are quite right that

Rockwell is a perfect illustration, if you’ll excuse the word.

CFP -I have noticed when you hear someone playing the piano you naturally

want to listen and if the person is good you stay, but if they are not you

leave. The same applies to drawing and art. It is my hope there will

always be a natural human instinct to choose what the human hand can

produce well over the alternative.

TW - I quite agree. I think one of the shortcomings of

neo-representational painting today is that it does not engage the world.

So much of it is studio work, still portraits, still lifes, nudes, but

they’re the same old narcoleptic nudes you’ve seen forever. I think it

would be so marvelous for painters like that to do what illustrators do.

Illustrators have to connect with the world out there. They have to be

contemporary or there is no interest in what they do. That is what’s

missing generally even from the world of the very skillful

representational artists. I’ve met some of these artists. What they can

do with paint is great but it’s as if there is no world outside of the

studio. I wish they would linger awhile before Homer’s “The Fog Warning”,

Eakins’ “The Gross Clinic”, Bellows’ “Stag at Sharkeys’”, and almost

anything by Tissot.

I think there are so many young artists who simply can’t give up skill.

Usually they have something. The idea of just giving all that up and

becoming conceptual artists or abstract artists or installation artists is

like treason to their talent.

CFP — Mr. Wolfe, thank you so much for granting me this interview.

TW - I’ve enjoyed this myself.