Billy Childish<\/strong>: I\u2019m recording tomorrow, so I tried to write some songs last night. I started at 11 and at 11:30 I thought, that\u2019d do, surely. We don\u2019t rehearse. I just trust in the gods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chris Moore<\/strong>: Does it ever crash and burn?<\/p>\n\n\n\n BC<\/strong>: Not really\u2014without expectation you can\u2019t have failure. I was not really in the art world until I was fifty, although I had been painting since I was two\u2014quite solidly\u2014and by 12, I was making oil paintings; but [initially] I wasn\u2019t allowed into art schools. Then I did get in to one, and was expelled; then I was on the periphery with music and painting, just carrying on doing it. It\u2019s usually the other way round, burning and smoldering, but I quite like the effect! And when something\u2019s uplifted, it\u2019s as if someone\u2019s knocked on the door\u2014well here\u2019s an example: it\u2019s like a roast pigeon flying into your mouth. That comes from Robert Walser\u2014a great writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: Fair point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BC<\/strong>: In music, I\u2019m very irreverent about my work\u2014about most work\u2014and even things that I like are valued for the wrong reason. Take van Gogh\u2014I think he\u2019s overvalued materially and undervalued spiritually. I think van Gogh is much more important than people think he is, and nowhere near as important as people think he is. Van Gogh is so universal because he is so unoriginal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: What do you mean by that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n BC<\/strong>: There\u2019s very little that he adds to any story of painting. He\u2019s highly, highly eclectic; he absorbed everything he admired and because he did that, the universe gets in line and appreciates this strong, ordinary humanity in his work\u2014because he celebrated tradition in everything he did. He emulated friends and colleagues all the time. The universal field likes that and can be quite generous in its gifts back. Van Gogh starts by looking at Millet and ends by looking at Millet; he starts by looking at Rembrandt and ends by looking at Rembrandt. Along the way, he looks at Pisarro. If he\u2019s hanging around with Gauguin, then he copies Gauguin. He never, ever tries to hide these influences. Of course, there are other elements that come in, but he adapts<\/em> what Pissarro does, he adapts<\/em> what Guaguin did, he adapts<\/em> what Millet did. He appropriates with vim, vigor and integrity. He honors the tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: But that\u2019s not the reason his works receive ridiculous prices at auction; it\u2019s because of what he represents: an artist who is presenting something \u201cauthentic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n BC<\/strong>: It\u2019s so difficult to take apart these things once they become commodities, and obviously van Gogh\u2019s work has become a banking commodity; but that has very little to do with what van Gogh\u2019s work is about and is nothing to do with its value. Things are valuable because enough people decide things are valuable\u2014it\u2019s just marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: There\u2019s a certain sense of anachronism in the paintings; the same could also be said of your music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BC<\/strong>: I come from a tradition; I also don\u2019t try to hide my hand or try to be very obtuse. My painting is actually not like van Gogh\u2019s. I\u2019m probably closer to the later work of Munch, which has a real looseness to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With the groups I\u2019ve played in 20, 30 years ago, some people realized it sounded like Beat Music, but only if you had Punk Rock to inform you about Beat Music. Of course, when you get to the present, our music sounds timeless because it wasn\u2019t of its<\/em> time. Not being of your time is a very important thing. Norman Rosenthal was at the Royal Academy and he put on the Sensation exhibition there, and he asked me who I thought were my contemporaries. I said \u201cDostoyevsky and van Gogh.\u201d And he said \u201cWell they\u2019re dead, they\u2019re not contemporary.\u201d My retort was that there\u2019s nothing as dated as the contemporary. When you have something that reflects who you are, it doesn\u2019t have vision; what it has is fashion, and fashion dates very, very poorly. People often talk about how contemporary art\u2019s a success if it reflects who we are in a material, low way. Some people need that. Whereas I try to reflect who we really are\u2014transcendent, spiritual beings which are not fixed in time at all. This again is about authenticity. That understanding of ourselves comes about through our engagement with our time and our material world. I consider myself \u201csuper contemporary\u201d but\u2014without trying to sound too up myself\u2014that takes a little bit more imagination and insight to see that invisible aspect of ourselves. Great art is essentially timeless. The fact that people want to put it into a time frame is fine, but the actual resonance of it has nothing to do with the time it is made in. Art hasn\u2019t got any better than the art that was made in the caves, but that doesn\u2019t stop anyone doing it\u2014it remains relevant, this very strange joining with the creator, picking up a burnt stick and joining in with creation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: I\u2019ve been looking at the paintings from your show at neugerriemschneider last year, and the ones at Lehmann Maupin. There are three sorts of images that keep arising. Firstly, the forest\u2014and I\u2019m thinking here of Munch or, going in the other direction, Anselm Kiefer\u2019s forests\u2014then mountains, and finally you, like the one with the cactus, which reminds me of Rousseau\u2019s self-portrait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BC<\/strong>: Who?<\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: Rousseau.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BC<\/strong>. Hang on, I\u2019ve got my computer in front of me now. How do you spell that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: R-O-U-S-S-E-A-U. Rousseau.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BC<\/strong>: I was doing an exhibition in Los Angeles, and there were some cacti in the garden; there\u2019s a photograph my pal took of me and my daughter. I borrow and use anything from anywhere\u2014I\u2019m always looking for an idea, and I thought, \u201cI could do that!\u201d Everything, for me, is like a game, so if I\u2019d seen Rousseau and seen that it was a great idea, then I\u2019d have borrowed it. But these worlds meet all the time. I\u2019m forever reinventing the wheel. [Meanwhile Billy is browsing Rousseau images on the Internet<\/em>]. Oh! Is it the self-portrait with a palette?<\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: Yes, exactly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BC<\/strong>: It\u2019s got a bit of that, but his is sooo<\/em> different from what I do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: I just meant the pose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BC<\/strong>: Yeah, well maybe we\u2019re both just posers! I\u2019m nothing if I\u2019m not a poser.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: But this particular way you present yourself, with a 19th<\/sup>-century moustache, the hats, the clothes\u2014it conjures up other times as well? It\u2019s you\u2014you\u2019re not pretending, it\u2019s you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BC<\/strong>: Well, I come from a strange family. My father dressed in an Edwardian manner when I was a kid; apparently my great uncle was a dandy. They were farmers and shepherd-type people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: Hard to be a dandy when you\u2019re a shepherd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BC<\/strong>: Actually, apparently there\u2019s a big tradition of shepherds being very outlandish because they spend too much time on their own. When I was a kid, I always dressed the way I wanted to. I was always out of synch with fashion. The only time I\u2019ve ever been in synch with fashion was when I was a punk rocker in \u201977, apart from, of course, that there were no other punk rockers in Chatham. I used to collect militaria when I was a young boy, and we were brought up listening to things about the First and Second World Wars and playing games about them. Now, I always do what I fancy. I did some self-portraits of myself when I was about 13 or 14\u2014I had something going on about the Royal Flying Corps\u2014and I used to make fake moustaches and wear them into town. I went into a theatrical shop and bought fake hair and made waxed moustaches, and I\u2019d wear them about town, and also a scarlet Victorian jacket of the Royal West Kent Regiment that I\u2019d bought with my pocket money. I used to come in for a lot of flak for being like this. But I never stopped. I don\u2019t even<\/em> like people to notice me o\u00adr<\/em> think I look odd, which is the strange thing, so I said to my wife, \u201cDo I look a bit mental?\u201d and she laughed. If I see myself in a shop window, for instance, sometimes I can\u2019t believe what I\u2019m looking at. I follow my whim. That\u2019s what I\u2019ve always done. We have a so-called construct of persona\u2014of course everyone does [have a construct]\u2014but it\u2019s naturally what I\u2019m like. I don\u2019t edit myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In England at the moment there are lots of people who dress like me, which is slightly irritating, for example in Shoreditch in London. There are all these people who dress like Billy Childish, which is quite irritating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: You mean the Steampunk aesthetic?<\/p>\n\n\n\n BC<\/strong>: Yes, and I find that people doing that kind of thing puts me off, really, but I refuse to be wrong-footed because I know that they\u2019ll go away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: I\u2019ve been looking at a lot of your paintings and there always seems to be a winter chill in them, whether it\u2019s one of mountains, or there the one with a volcano and clouds coming across it that reminds me of New Zealand; and there are these ones with forest images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BC<\/strong>: I\u2019ve always had a thing about trees. I\u2019ve always liked Winnie the Pooh and the Hundred Acre Forest, and one of the first books I read was\u00a0Lord of the Rings<\/em>, when I was 14\u2014I\u2019m dyslexic\u2014and I managed to get a handle on this reading thing and thought I\u2019d read\u00a0Lord of the Rings<\/em>. I like forest spirits and that sort of thing. I look at an oak leaf or an acorn and I\u2019m totally fascinated by them\u2014the same as camouflage, like humans copying camouflage. I like colors and the shapes of things\u2014but I don\u2019t like them in isolation, but in a unity, in a story. I don\u2019t do reductionism. My favorite thing in all my paintings is the abstract, but I like the abstract to be within the whole, figuratively explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: This brings me closer to what I was getting at about van Gogh in your paintings. Even though you\u2019re using paint, there\u2019s a lot of drawing going on your paintings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BC<\/strong>: With decent art\u2014here\u2019s a big, bold statement to annoy people!\u2014you have to practice and make the drawing very, very important, and then paint as if it\u2019s not important at all! I think drawing\u2019s great when it\u2019s got this sort discipline. In the 1990s, I was accused of not being able to draw or paint because I didn\u2019t bother drawing. I didn\u2019t show any of my innate abilities because the paintings didn\u2019t require it or ask me to do it. Now, I\u2019m in the middle of a period when the paintings require me to draw and work on them. Sometimes, they want me to put dots on them and do all sorts of things. The painting is quite in charge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: For instance, I like Lucien Freud\u2019s drawings and etchings, but I don\u2019t like his paintings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BC<\/strong>: Well, Lucien Freud\u2019s a mental case. It\u2019s fascinating. It\u2019s quite incredible what a human can do when it\u2019s tied itself to a chair for life. It\u2019s quite impressive. But impressive doesn\u2019t float my<\/em> boat. I have very little interest in English art at all. I like Norman Wilkinson, who was an illustrator who made railway posters. With a few exceptions, like in writing with George Orwell, the English don\u2019t really<\/em> do art. Francis Bacon\u2014some of the early works when he had a little freedom were okay. Later, his work looks like a bath towel with \u201cLife is shit and then you die\u201d written on it, and then you think that has some truth in it but it isn\u2019t the truth<\/em>. Bacon focuses on nightmarish experience of what life can be like. Being an alcoholic myself and coming from a family of alcoholics, I recognize that world quite well. It\u2019s not one that overly interests me. I don\u2019t find it cool and alluring but dull and constraining. There\u2019s no celebration there. Look at van Gogh and the life that man was leading and the troubles he was going through. But he had incredible generosity and relationship with his creation. And you think, \u201cWell, that\u2019s a victory.\u201d No wonder \u201cSunflowers\u201d is so popular that it can go on a calendar! Van Gogh wanted that picture reproduced and put in the sailing ships in the Baltic Sea just to cheer the sailors up. That\u2019s just generosity\u2014not the mealy-mouthed approach that a lot of Modernism has embraced as a total truth. It\u2019s not the total truth, just one measly aspect of it. Read Dostoyevsky!\u2014Massive scale and God\u2019s in there all the time. It\u2019s not like some cool Martin Amis assessment of life. They\u2019re like teenagers. There are no adults out there anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: So why do forests, mountains and the sea, these elemental things, why do they keep appearing in your work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n BC<\/strong>: I don\u2019t know why they keep appearing in my work. I live on the river. My grandfather was an able seaman in the Royal Navy and the other side of my family was Royal Navy\u2014but I get seasick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first mountains started appearing in my work when I met my wife, in Seattle, where we [the band] were playing. There a quite a lot of mountains there, including Mount Rainier [a snow-crested former volcano], which we would go to. So I did a picture of our marriage with Mount Rainier. Its real name is Tahoma, which means \u201cthe mountain which is God.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reason the forests turned up in those new paintings is that I had some old camouflage jacket and I wanted a friend to take a photograph of me in the trees, because I love oak trees, and in the back of my mind I thought there might be a painting in this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: \u201cEdge of the Forest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n BC<\/strong>: It\u2019s like a love affair between myself and the world. That\u2019s what my life is: a love affair with my family and the world and the paintings and the world. I\u2019m in love with my wife and with my children, and they are the things that surround me, so they are the things that I celebrate. That\u2019s how God made me. I can write a bit, maybe, and play music a bit\u2014but really what I\u2019m good at is making pictures. So it\u2019s my duty to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n by \u4f5c\u8005\uff1aChris Moore \u58a8\u864e\u607a Billy Childish, as … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/randian-art.s3.ap-east-1.amazonaws.com\/2023\/02\/en\/image-222.png\")
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