Lives of the Artists: Portraits of Ten Artists Whose Work and Lifestyles Embody the Future of Contemporary Art PDF
Preview Lives of the Artists: Portraits of Ten Artists Whose Work and Lifestyles Embody the Future of Contemporary Art
Also by Calvin Tomkins Duchamp: A Biography Alex: The Life of Alexander Liberman (with Dodie Kazanjian) Post-to-Neo: The Art World of the 1980s Off the Wall: A Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg The Scene Living Well Is the Best Revenge Merchants and Masterpieces: The Story of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Eric Hoffer: An American Odyssey The World of Marcel Duchamp The Bride and the Bachelors Intermission (Novel) LIVES OF THE ARTISTS Lives of Artists the Calvin Tomkins A JOHN MACRAE BOOK Henry Holt and Company New York Henry Holt and Company, LLC Publishers since 1866 175 Fifth Avenue New York, New York 10010 www.henryholt.com Henry Holt® and ® are registered trademarks of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Copyright © 2008 by Calvin Tomkins All rights reserved. Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tomkins, Calvin, 1925– Lives of the artists / Calvin Tomkins.—1st ed. p. cm. “A John Macrae book.” Includes index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-8872-4 ISBN-10: 0-8050-8872-5 1. Artists—Biography—History and criticism. 2. Art, Modern—20th century. I. Title. N6489.T66 2008 700.92—dc222008013121 Henry Holt books are available for special promotions and premiums. For details contact: Director, Special Markets. First Edition 2008 Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Once again, for Dodie CONTENTS Preface DAMIEN HIRST CINDY SHERMAN JULIAN SCHNABEL RICHARD SERRA JAMES TURRELL MATTHEW BARNEY MAURIZIO CATTELAN JASPER JOHNS JEFF KOONS JOHN CURRIN Acknowledgments Index PREFACE M aking art is both harder and easier than it used to be. The radical changes in art and society that were set in motion during the early years of the twentieth century gave rise to a new kind of artist, whose first obligation was to invent or discover a new self. Tradition, skill, rigorous training, formal knowledge: All the old requirements fell away or became optional. Art, it seemed, could be what ever artists decided it was, and there were no restrictions on the new methods and materials—from video and verbal constructs to raw nature and urban detritus—that they could use. The limitless freedom of the modern artist has been an unending burden. If art can be anything, where do you begin? For the ten contemporary artists discussed in this book, art has been, among other things, an approach to the problem of living. (The profiles were all published in The New Yorker during the last de cade, and are reprinted here, with a few minor changes and updatings, as sightings of lives in midstream, open to future developments.) Common denominators are notably absent. Richard Serra, our greatest living sculptor, freely acknowledges his early debt to the work of Jasper Johns, our most extravagantly admired paint er, but the two men are so different in temperament, sensibility, and ego management that it would be hard to imagine them having a useful conversation. Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, the reigning masters of a deliberately outrageous, media-centered art that feeds off the corrupting influences of entertainment, celebrity, and late-capitalist glut, have both, in mid-career, settled into the unlikely roles of devoted husbands and fathers. Conversely, Cindy Sherman shuns the spotlight at all cost, but thrives as a virtuoso performer in a theater of her ever-shifting selves, and Maurizio Cattelan, an escape artist with a taste for anonymity, scours the world for serious jokes that pinpoint our social and philosophical dilemmas. Julian Schnabel’s star waxed and waned in sync with the overheated art market of the 1980s; since then he has doubled himself, holding on to his claims as a neo-expressionist paint er while forging a second career as an award-
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