WRITING

It won’t matter what you’re saying. No one will care unless you say it with style and gusto. And it doesn’t matter if what you’re saying is in fact bullshit because your style and gusto will redeem that. So in other words, always try to be entertaining.

Do you ever hear a voice in your head? “Hello dickhead, everything you think, do and say is wrong.”

An artist without anxiety is no artist. I had a window of around three to four months where I made energised, confident paintings. I knew that run would end and it did. Abstractionism is my story.

Any ism is a movement and a movement should by its very nature move. I am moving towards Abstract painting. As you’ll see, the figurative is present in my work but anybody who knows anything about Abstract art will know that it’s the most difficult thing in the world. Do you know that Abstract art is mental illness? Pure abstract painting, painting which carries all my thoughts and ambitions in some sort of hardcore abstraction. Is that possible? And of course, the thing about Abstract art is that it’s a road to its own self-destruction. And it’s so hard to not fall into being boring (good is only not being boring) and you’ve got to face up to the fact that Abstract art was pretty much completed some time in the 1960s and you thereby have no reason to do it. At least not in the old serious way.

If Abstractionism used to be the search for the essence of painting, now it’s the search for the essence of Abstractionism.

Jokes, jokes, jokes. Everyone’s telling jokes. But they’re not funny and they’re not well told. A lot of the time I’ll have people in stitches. I am laugh out loud funny. But I’m deadly serious. I accept that my art will kill me. That when I die my work will not have come to anything and I will not have fulfilled my potential. I am not a project artist. And if I am then the project is my life. There are no art goals. I will never arrive anywhere. This is Abstract art. It’s unknowable, unthinkable and it has no end.

What could be more terrifying?

That’s why most artists aren’t artists. They’re just playmakers and decorators, ticking boxes, playing games, telling jokes and forgetting the punchline or telling jokes and forgetting they’re telling a joke but still expecting laughter and applause. Don’t waste my time. I’m not laughing. I’m not clapping. I’m crying. And I’m not crying about you. Don’t flatter yourself. I don’t care about you. I’m crying because my work will always fail. Real artists are Abstract artists. Look at it this way: an artist stands at the edge of a cliff, looking out on a terrifying, enormous abyss. Space. Nothingness. Death. If you’re a real artist you’ll look death in the eye and you’ll be terrified every day of your life. If you’re a faker you’ll turn around to look at and involve yourself in the safe, knowable world. You’ll be comfortable and you’ll do everything in your power to not look back, to not remember that that abyss is there and will never go away.

Abstractionism: Guilt and fear are stifling art.

If you are feeling guilty you are living in the past. If you are feeling frightened you are living in the future.

The past exists to be sampled and as a place for a nostalgic road trip. The future doesn’t exist like it used to.

That’s why art should be in the now. To hell with the rest. I want something that says, “I love you,” in the present tense, right now, in this corridor. I think art should be simple. That we should practice plain seeing and plain speaking. Is this a cop-out? No. Because if you’re saying something smart and interesting you’ll want people to know it but if you’re being dull and facile you’ll wrap it up in convoluted ‘art’ and try to be difficult. Give me a break. Something may look difficult and facilitate a lot of talk from airheads but I just can’t help thinking that if the art is boring and the artist is boring and the people talking about it are boring and what they are saying is boring (and not especially smart at that) that as a consequence it is bad art.

Mean every word you say. Really mean it.

The difference between talking crap and writing crap is significant. Once it’s written it’s physical proof that says, “I am putting my money where my mouth is.” So why don’t you put your money where your mouth is? Any thickhead can keep their mouth shut and look down on others or just bang on about art as some armchair pundit but that’s not good enough. Tell us who you are, here and now, and what you stand for. I think that all students in the Ruskin should write a long statement about who they are and what it is they’re actually doing. What are you doing? Let’s stop screwing around. No one’s a genius. No one’s just got it. Discuss your work, discuss art, let us know where it’s failing, where it’s succeeding and where you want to take it. There’ll be no room for banal cop-outs. I want facts. Explanations. Reasons. I want you to prove to me that you mean it. We’re not special. There is no magic. There are just cold hard facts. And if your art can’t hold up to that then maybe it isn’t art. Why? Why? Why? Mean every word you say.

I have an innate sense of cool and fashion prescience. It’s true. I just know what works, where stuff lies on the fashion clock. So if you ever want some advice or judgement on say a haircut or item of clothing then just ask. But art should work just outside of fashion, not some self-invented underground, but in a harder area where there isn’t instant gratification. Because fashion, it’s fun but very tiring. That burns people out. They give up.

It is at art school that you either fall in or out of love with art. Now be honest with yourself.

If you’re not being hard on yourself you’re being complacent. And then you comfort and delude yourself into thinking what you’re doing is worthwhile. Every artist knows in their heart of hearts whether they’re being the best they can be. Sure, they can shut down critically or assume they have some innate understanding of their art but inside they’ll know they’re wrong. And that hurts.

We are authors. We have total and complete control. This is our responsibility and we must accept it.

I think artists should have all the answers. They should know the cause and effect of everything about their work. How else can you make it better? Some would argue that this kills work. Bullshit. It’s a fallacy, this idea that being vague or unsure or damn well ignorant about something is what creates magic. Art will always have that something, call it aura, that lights up a person’s idiosyncrasies. Blah blah blah. There’s no problem in just doing something because it looks good or you feel like it but you should admit it – vows of silence from artists are weak. What, are we supposed to believe there’s all this intelligent, personal, complex stuff going on that you don’t want to tell us about?

Sometimes you’ll go to an artist talk and they’ll be talking and it’s like you’re listening to a god or a saint.

Any artist can call himself great. To think it is a different matter and that’s between the artist and himself.

And if Oxford is a small world in a small world then the Ruskin is a small world in that small world. And so, more often than not, is art. And I wish I could speak to that world but I can’t. Mine is a voice, an art, which is universal. That is why I am an Abstract Painter.

You might think Abstractionism is confused but know this: the real ambitions and ideals of any painting cannot be communicated through an image or story.

So let’s move on now to look at the role of meaning. Meaning, content, subjects, ideas…what could me more terrifying? Throughout my art education it feels like I have been escaping meaning. Having a subject, it just felt wrong. What does our generation care about? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I can’t stress this enough. I don’t think I have ever met anyone who really cares about a cause, like animals or nuclear power. A lot of people pretend to. Sure. Our generation has no hope for the future. (That’s why it blows my mind when people have children – new parents of the world, can you actually see you child living in a happy world in seventy, eighty years? You must me mental). Our priorities are your every cliché of sin. Sometimes I try really hard to be genuinely, lastingly moved by the evils of the world but I know I’m faking. That’s why political art leaves me cold. For one thing I can’t relate to a fucking artist caring. And then it’s probably preaching to the converted. And I start thinking that they’re just using an issue for their own art ends. Maybe if there were more popular contemporary fascist artists to balance things out. I’m boring myself but I didn’t want to drown in meaning but now I do. I want to bring it back and confront it and make art about what affects us all. Just, you know, to see what it’s like. I’m too young to know I’m right. And so as you look around you’ll see that pretty much every painting is jam-packed with meaning.

Is it sad that most ideas behind art are just little, little things? They’re not profound and they don’t explain or help us understand anything. Why would they? But somehow as art we’re supposed to care. It’s next to impossible to care about anything. If I ever had a truly unique thought, why would I want to turn it into art?

Ideas are a horror. You might have bad ideas, you might have boring ideas. First thought, best thought? In response to the kind of people who say that I’ve had to conclude that first thought, worst thought. And if you find an idea you’re particularly smitten with you’ll only allow it to get in the way of things. Ideas have a way of getting too big for their boots.

Abstractionism.

A teacher once told me good art asks more questions than it answers. Then of course I make bad art. Sure, it asks a heap of questions but then it answers them. If, however, you find yourself unsure about anything in the show then I have failed. If you’re worried that your interpretation of a piece is so obvious that it I can’t possibly mean it then know that I do.

Same story, reference to a piece of work can turn into a one liner. That’s why people say jokes and irony are bad. But people do the same with serious art and it’s like, if you can yack on about your work that makes it good. But dull is dull. So style and gusto is integral to work. At least it gives you something to think about that isn’t boring ideas.

High taste, low morals.
Low taste, high morals.
Which are you?

Generally you only have to scratch the surface to see how conservative and moralistic people are. Which is crazy because nearly everybody leads a Godless, selfish, hateful existence. As long as you’re aware of this and happy with it then fine. But the rest of you – get down off your mountain. If you’ve got principles then, please, at least have the courtesy to be aware of them. This is all tied in to my fear of conventionality in art. I am making little paintings on paper! Justin Coombes told me, “You’re writing with A, B and C when you’ve got the whole alphabet.” I agreed with him.

I have no skills as a painter. I did. But what I found with my paintings was that the most interesting parts were those that were least planned and worked. So I pursued this path and the craft was gradually eroded, I just pushed things further and further until I was left holding a brush and I literally didn’t have a clue about anything. About paint, about materials, about what I was painting and how I should do that and why I wanted to do that and what I hoped to achieve and how I had done this in the past. None of it makes sense. I am an Abstract Painter.

Jean-Michel Basquiat. Julian Schnabel. Albert Oehlen. Paul Haworth.

Trembling, he lifted the brush. This was it. There could be no more failure, no more struggle, no more recycling. With the first mark he would know if this was his first or last ever painting.

I knew.

King of the Ruskin was my show last year, last May, in New College Long Room. I filled that old room with seven big paintings. Big, colourful paintings. King of the Ruskin included better work than Abstractionism. I’ve tried since to paint like that and I can’t. The King of the Ruskin paintings were it. I didn’t realise it at the time but they were the best paintings I would ever make. They were the paintings I wanted to see and they did everything I wanted painting to do at that time. So these are my last paintings. I will never paint again. But why didn’t I stop in the first place? No one ever knows when to stop. They just decline. For me, I had to kill my painting. With King of the Ruskin I had delivered the mortal wounds but one rarely has the pleasure of a quick and graceful exit. No, it has been slow, painful and distressing. Of course I am speaking in hindsight; I only realised it was the end with the randomly themed, scrappy, clustered paintings where it finally became apparent to me that I had no skills, no ideas, no interest, no pride and no pleasure in painting. I was like a dying cowboy, making a final, feeble bid at victory with random, aimless shots at an invisible enemy.

Bad painting? What nonsense. The only way I could conceive of bad painting is to do to a painting what they do to films: have a test viewing of a painting and then another and another and keep modifying it in response to the feedback and opinions of numbskulls. But then anybody who sets out to make a bad painting should be shot. Knowing something’s crap but making out that knowing that makes it okay, smart even – that kind of shit makes me sick to the stomach. I paint because doing it well and interestingly seems especially hard and really good painting is hard to fake. That’s why painting cannot be a side order; some little part of an artist’s oeuvre. Then it just becomes illustration or design. No, painting is far too hard to be something that is picked up every once in a while.

Painting today, it’s just nostalgia for painting. And Abstractionism is pure painting.

My current hypothesis on what motivates me to make art (and I make a lot of art a lot of the time) is that I am on a quest to satisfy the desires and ambitions my ego has for myself. Honestly. That means I will stay this way, compulsively making work, until I make something, a show or something, that matches, no exceeds, my vanity. And I speculate that once I do that I’ll be done. Unless, that is, art becomes my career and then I’m in trouble.

But you don’t want your work to be props. It should be able to exist on its own as good art and not be reliant on the installation or writing or background of the artist.

Let’s get one thing clear from the start: I know nothing about art. My knowledge of its history and theories is very superficial and simplified and my reaction to art is mostly visual. My fear is that as soon as you start thinking you know what’s what you start making statements. “That’s not art!” And this can make you very, very, very boring. Don’t get me wrong – this is not a license to be ignorant, to not read books or see shows. It’s just you’ve got to make sure you don’t start believing it. God, I would hate to know I’m right.

Art is the making of fear. The Making of Fear. NO RISK NO ART. That’s what I have written in my studio. Ha ha ha. I don’t see anybody else laughing. I mean every word: Art is the making of fear. Abstractionism is just the new paranoias, worries, accidents and unfinished thoughts that have arisen since King of the Ruskin. And until I have children that’s the way it’s going to be with me. Sequel after sequel. The law of diminishing returns? That is feeble self-doubt. The way I feel right now is if each show doesn’t feel like it’s the last one you can make, you’ve failed. Hold nothing back, risk the world, make or break. Art is all or nothing.

Soundbites. Soundbites. Soundbites. Remove all the fluff and that’s all you’re left with. And the great thing about soundbites is they tell you everything you need to know in a concise fashion.

The message of all Hollywood movies should be: Don’t live in regret. The message of all art shows should be: How much more of this can I take?

Every artist should decide for himself whether or not art should be entertaining. If you choose non-entertainment, what are you saying? That your art is more serious, more connected, more intelligent…that it’s art? What’s more, does the art then take on a purpose? My fear is you start making art to help people. Stuff which educates and enlightens and allows us to see the world in new ways. I would rather die than see my art help people. But am I an entertainer? The world of art is a refuge to many second rate entertainers: filmmakers, musicians, comedians and writers who call themselves artists because they’re not very good.

Art is a word I’d like to remove from my vocabulary.

I feel that I’ve covered everything. But let’s end by addressing the inevitable accusations of stupidity. Stupidity in art doesn’t interest me. And frequently what we think of as stupid isn’t stupid. For me stupid means a worthless action that requires either a risk or effort or money or all of these. A lot of what we think of as stupid is just an imitation of stupid. My art is neither of these. My art is about bombs, idolatry, meaning, sincerity, artists, personal mythologisation, the relationships between invention, originality, sampling and homage, invisible forces, painting, the romanticisation of painting, parenthood and Abstraction.

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