It was a Monday, and Billy Childish, perched atop a ladder in front of a large linen canvas, was brushing yellow onto his latest painting.
Mondays are painting days for Childish, 64, who parks his green Saab outside his studio on the naval dockyards of Chatham, his hometown in Kent, about 30 miles from London.
Otherwise, he might be writing a novel, drafting poetry or recording music: Part of a prolific, confessional churn of albums and art that have established Childish as a cult producer. As a singer and guitarist for Thee Headcoats and other groups, Childish in the 1990s was considered a garage rock savant.
His antics as an artist and writer — being expelled from the prestigious Saint Martin’s School of Art, writing the first manifestoes of the Stuckism movement and staging protests outside Tate Modern — have imbued him with an anti-establishment aura. Then, there was a turbulent, artistically revelatory romantic relationship with Tracey Emin, the confessional British artist who has called Childish an early influence.
Childish (whose real name is Steven Hamper) has since disassociated from Stuckism, which promoted figurative painting and opposed conceptual art. He has persisted with the paintbrush, creating surreal landscapes and confronting portraits that have, in recent years, appeared in galleries across Seoul, New York and London that once might have overlooked him. (He attributed that attention to his longtime supporters’ having made their way into influential positions.)
“Why would you want to be categorized by anyone?” he said, adding that he had been inspired by a phrase from the Dada movement: the idea that the artist was an “ever-moving target.” He added: “That’s why I’m so loathe to categorize myself, because it’s only ever partially true. All identities are partially true.”
Childish paints quickly and without a preconceived idea of what he is making. Some of that will be on display at this year’s Frieze London art fair, where he will paint live at the Lehmann Maupin stand.
He was in his studio, a jumbled space scattered with canvases, paint tubes and reference photos, pondering what colors would work on a new painting. It was part of a series inspired by photos of a recent family trip to Lake Tahoe, the resort area straddling the California-Nevada border. His son, Huddie Hamper, and his collaborator, Edgeworth Johnstone, painted in the background to classical music from BBC Radio 3.
“If I was planning it, or working out if there’s was a story or symbolism behind it, I would be bored senseless,” he said. “I’m making the pictures to see what they want to be like.” He added: “You obey whatever their creation wants you to do.”
The following conversation from his studio last month has been edited and condensed.
You also write and you make music. What over your life has drawn you to all these different mediums?
It’s the way God made me. My father painted. My older brother painted.
I was considered very backward with not being able to read and write, and the thing that I liked doing was making pictures. I was brought up listening to the Beatles, the Stones, Bob Dylan, and I was really interested in Jimi Hendrix and Little Richard. Most of my painting was paintings of Hendrix, who I was really obsessed with.
When punk rock came around, I was one of about three or four people interested in punk rock music, I was asked if I would like to be a singer in a group — which I did. I really liked nursery rhymes and Edward Lear and writing poetry and stories, even though I couldn’t spell.[He is dyslexic.]
I’m quite obsessive and I only like what I like, and I can’t do what I don’t like. I tend to be automatic and I get bored very easily. I would really be turned off by something that took too long — although I do write novels, which is one of the things I don’t understand at all.
My paintings are romantic. They are not saccharine, which would be very important to me in my writing as well. There’s a great thing from “Black Elk Speaks” [a nonfiction book about the Native American healer known as Black Elk]: When the people are too happy, they should be shown the sad face. And when they’re too sad, they need to be shown the joking face.
It sounds like, whether it’s writing or painting, you want to hold onto this authenticity.
It’s the fundamental. The bones.
That’s the only unifying part of it, really, is looking for this fundamental element. It’s trying to join heaven and earth. You’re not going there into the abstract, conceptual, airy-fairy land. And you’re not down here, stuck in the mines. It’s a spiritual engagement with the purpose of being a human being.
Does the music give you something that the painting doesn’t?
I was known as a musician and wasn’t allowed to be an artist for a long time, and vice versa happens because people have things in their boxes.
People who genuinely have got feet in the mud of both — you don’t have this preciousness about the thing you’re working on. You’ve worked in unison with other people, you’ve got a group affair.
It also means that the thing doesn’t become rarefied or “clung to.” If I speak to other artists or painters, most of the people I speak to are really, very nice, regardless of whether I engage with their work. But that’s their world. The creation is a precious thing that they hold and they sweat over and they work toward.
With my work, I don’t feel engaged or responsible.
I’m not afraid of painting in front of people or what happens or the pressure of any of it, because for me, there is none.
I think creativity is a natural state of ownership of being a human. I don’t understand how some people allow themselves to be talked out of it. I wish it wasn’t called art.
How do you stay motivated?
Because I get bored. What I think is missing, I like to do.
What is the best way to describe your ethos on what art should be?
It’s a spiritual practice. It’s a lifelong endeavor of self-inquiry, and union with the creator. Van Gogh is one of the greatest artists, because everyone can get it. It’s totally sincere, and grandma gets it. I always think Vincent is intellectually sound, spiritually sound. It’s total.
When you’re abstract and you narrow in on one aspect of life to show that it’s all of life, you miss it. What you want is the total.
You’ve said before that you “feel like an outsider,” but you consider your art “mainstream.” Do you still feel that way?
I’m happy to be “the mainstream.” I don’t like the idea of “outsider.” It’s just another marketing ploy, this idea of the outsider.
Earlier on, it seemed like you weren’t able to make the art you wanted to make and also be shown in galleries. And now?
Not quite. I didn’t have any problem. I was told I would not be in the art world, that my attitude was totally wrong.
Do you feel vindicated now that your work is being shown in New York and Seoul and Frieze in London?
My view is, no one knows what they’re looking at and no one knows what they’re listening to — which is a quote from Anthony Hancock, “The Rebel.”
I think it’s very amusing that I’m in the art world, and now my views, which have stayed exactly the same, are somehow allowed.
What do you want your legacy to be?
I always said that I painted pictures for the yet to be born. You’re just adding a little bit of something that isn’t there. I always say to people: Have a print. We do them really cheap so that every man can have a print. You don’t need the real thing.
A blank hall is not quite as good as one with a picture on, hopefully. When you’re doing something in the correct way as an example, or an inspiration, for someone else to have the courage to follow their star — that would be nice. That’s the good thing about art: It’s generally pretty harmless, which maybe people think is a problem. I mean, harmless is quite good.
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