76 new york | march 16–29, 2020
TheThe CULTURE PAGES CULTURE PAGES
BushwickRococo
Salman Toor lets himself go.
By Carl Swansonsalman toor’s “How Will I Know”
opens at the Whitney Museum March 20.Photograph by Stefan Ruizsalman toor lives, and paints, between
worlds—Lahore, Pakistan, where he grew up fasci-
nated with his grandmother’s framed Gainsborough
prints and refused, much to the befuddlement of his par-
ents, to draw cars or planes and other things deemed gender
appropriate, and New York, where he moved in 2006 after
going to Ohio Wesleyan. “I was just completely speechless
for the first year because I hadn’t really been to the States,
and I was like, ‘What is going on?,’ ” he tells me, laughing,
when I arrive at his Bushwick studio with the iced coffee he
requested despite its being rather icy out. After Ohio, he got
into graduate school at Pratt, where he befuddled his profes-
sors with his interest in the rococo (Watteau’s work is among
his favorites, but it wasn’t among theirs) and his desire to
create himself in the mode of various no-longer-in-fashion
canonical painters of 16th- and 17th-century Europe.
Toor, whose first solo museum exhibition opens at the Whit-
ney this month, is 36, but he looks younger, if a bit less bohe-
mian, than the lanky, curly-haired boy with the extra-long nose
who seems to act in many of his paintings as his fairy avatar,
passively alive with nervous languor. Toor still holds on to the
somewhat posh accent of the private school his prosperous
parents sent him to in Lahore (where his father owns a car
dealership) and comes across a bit like a gay man of another,
more fastidious era when he explains why the legs in his paint-
ings are so skinny and unarticulated: He just likes legs too
much and is afraid to lose himself in erotic reverie if he gets too
much into painting them. Best to hold back a bit.
Up until three or so years ago, Toor had been making what
he calls “very academic kind of work”—bloodless and
careful—which was bought by mostly South Asian collec-
tors. Then, on a whim, he decided to do something different,
something loopier, just to decorate his apartment. These
were scenes of joy and fey disquiet very much like the queer
life he’d created for himself in New York. His gallery here—
Aicon in Nolita—wasn’t convinced at first, but images of the
work, which is very Instagrammable but far more interest-
ing in person, went viral.
The Whitney invited him to do this show six months ago;
some of the paintings, of family and immigration inspections
and what appears to be a gay bashing, were done in his studio
in Lahore. He reconstructs everything entirely from memory,
which is why something like a car doesn’t look very much like
an actual car, but when he paints a boy dancing or staring into
his phone, it couldn’t feel more real. And then there are the
paintings of life in New York, made in New York, which are
cozy and quietly heroic in a way but still unsettled.
I ask him why the hands are often different colors and the
noses extra long. He references Pinocchio: “It’s that they’re
different parts that are put together to make this person who
is maybe relatable and nice and moral—but in the fairy-tale
language of a marionette.” ■I stopped making art, and I
grew more and more and more
unhappy. And that’s what
procrastination will do. It’s
easier to not work than it is to
work, but it’s more fun to work
than it is to not work. Forget
about the idea of being good.
That’s an idiotic idea, and this
book has nothing to do with
success. That’s one percent of
one percent of one percent of all
artists, about 55, mostly white
males, who, for some reason,
are collector catnip. Everybody
obsesses over them, and I would
say, “Good for them; I want
everyone to make money,” but
I’m trying to talk to the 99.9
percent of the rest of us who are
trying to have a life lived in art.
LS: You stay far away from
talk about the art economy
in the book, which I love.
JS: The market, as you know,
is just numbers. The market
only buys what other people in
the market have already bought.
It’s a great delivery vehicle for
a lot of people to make a little
money and a few people to
make a lot. There’s nothing
wrong with that, but to define
success through the market,
through prices, well, that’s an
absurdity. That has nothing
to do with what I’m trying to
write about. My book is trying
to let you have one thing:
yourself and the time to make
the things you want to make.
LS: I’d love to hear your take
on your own Instagram. It used
to be lewd, crude, sexist, and
quite repugnant, but you seem
to be in a very different place
now, mixing art and politics.
JS: I have about a million
followers cross-platforms.
I happened to start posting
at a time when tens of
thousands of new images
were coming to light from the
ancient world, from medieval
manuscripts that had been
newly digitized. And these
are people that lived through
the collapses of civilizations,
plague, persecution, enormous
instability, hardship, slavery,
everything. And I started
posting these images, which
are extremely violent, in many
cases, but they’re masterpieces.They’re gorgeous, and they’re
sexual. They have bodies
compromised in every way,
sexually, bestially—every way—
but they’re actual masterpieces.
I rarely posted photographs
of naked people; I posted
paintings and mosaics, and
the art world went nuts, and
I fought back, and I was wrong.
LS: Oh.
JS: I was wrong. I did not
shut up and listen, and—
LS: Listen to what?
JS: To the criticism that
people felt that it was sexist,
lewd, and crude. I saw it
only as art. I was completely
divorced, really, from those
charges, and I was wrong.
And I’m afraid it took until
2015, when Donald Trump
came down that escalator, and
started spewing that kind of
foul hatred, laced with sexism,
and then finally, the ...
LS: Pussy grabbing.
JS: ... The pussy grabbing.
It was right around then that
I thought, Oh my God, I do
not want to be that. We’re all
in equal amounts of pain, and
I don’t want to be an agent of
that. I love art. I’d like to think
I’ve evolved away from it;
however, I still will post saucy
images, because, all around
the world, except in the West,
these images are really valued.
We’re just a little bit ... we
have a hard time with naughty
things; I do, too. I post more
men than women because I
think, Okay, at least I put my
body as a subject, and not the
female body. But I understand
that causes problems too.
LS: The very last chapter
of your book is one sentence:
“Oh, and Once a Year, Go
Dancing.” What a lovely
thought, but when was the
last time you went dancing?
JS: Busted. I dance naked
at home. It’s a horrific sight,
but I want to dance barefoot
before the world. No one
knows this, but I do it when
I walk. When I’m walking,
not talking. At the end, I take
off my shoes and dance in a
few circles in gratefulness.
LS: Well, at least you practice
what you preach.ADVANCED FORM ADTRANSMITTED
________ COPY ___ DD ___ AD ___ PD ___ EIC0620CR_bond_ jerry_toor_lay [Print]_36895176.indd 76 3/12/20 4:18 PM76 newyork| march16–29, 2020
TheCULTUREPAGES
BushwickRococo
Salman Toor lets himself go.
By Carl Swansonsalman toor’s “How Will I Know”
opens at the Whitney Museum March 20.Photograph by Stefan Ruizsalman toor lives, and paints, between
worlds—Lahore,Pakistan,wherehegrewupfasci-
nated with his grandmother’s framed Gainsborough
prints and refused, much to the befuddlement of his par-
ents, to draw cars or planes and other things deemed gender
appropriate, and New York, where he moved in 2006 after
going to Ohio Wesleyan. “I was just completely speechless
for the first year because I hadn’t really been to the States,
and I was like, ‘What is going on?,’ ” he tells me, laughing,
when I arrive at his Bushwick studio with the iced coffee he
requested despite its being rather icy out. After Ohio, he got
into graduate school at Pratt, where he befuddled his profes-
sors with his interest in the rococo (Watteau’s work is among
his favorites, but it wasn’t among theirs) and his desire to
create himself in the mode of various no-longer-in-fashion
canonical painters of 16th- and 17th-century Europe.
Toor, whose first solo museum exhibition opens at the Whit-
ney this month, is 36, but he looks younger, if a bit less bohe-
mian, than the lanky, curly-haired boy with the extra-long nose
who seems to act in many of his paintings as his fairy avatar,
passively alive with nervous languor. Toor still holds on to the
somewhat posh accent of the private school his prosperous
parents sent him to in Lahore (where his father owns a car
dealership) and comes across a bit like a gay man of another,
more fastidious era when he explains why the legs in his paint-
ings are so skinny and unarticulated: He just likes legs too
much and is afraid to lose himself in erotic reverie if he gets too
much into painting them. Best to hold back a bit.
Up until three or so years ago, Toor had been making what
he calls “very academic kind of work”—bloodless and
careful—which was bought by mostly South Asian collec-
tors. Then, on a whim, he decided to do something different,
something loopier, just to decorate his apartment. These
were scenes of joy and fey disquiet very much like the queer
life he’d created for himself in New York. His gallery here—
Aicon in Nolita—wasn’t convinced at first, but images of the
work, which is very Instagrammable but far more interest-
ing in person, went viral.
The Whitney invited him to do this show six months ago;
some of the paintings, of family and immigration inspections
and what appears to be a gay bashing, were done in his studio
in Lahore. He reconstructs everything entirely from memory,
which is why something like a car doesn’t look very much like
an actual car, but when he paints a boy dancing or staring into
his phone, it couldn’t feel more real. And then there are the
paintings of life in New York, made in New York, which are
cozy and quietly heroic in a way but still unsettled.
I ask him why the hands are often different colors and the
noses extra long. He references Pinocchio: “It’s that they’re
different parts that are put together to make this person who
is maybe relatable and nice and moral—but in the fairy-tale
language of a marionette.” ■I stopped making art, and I
grew more and more and more
unhappy. And that’s what
procrastination will do. It’s
easier to not work than it is to
work, but it’s more fun to work
than it is to not work. Forget
about the idea of being good.
That’s an idiotic idea, and this
book has nothing to do with
success. That’s one percent of
one percent of one percent of all
artists, about 55, mostly white
males, who, for some reason,
are collector catnip. Everybody
obsesses over them, and I would
say, “Good for them; I want
everyone to make money,” but
I’m trying to talk to the 99.9
percent of the rest of uswho are
trying to have a life lived in art.
LS: You stay far away from
talk about the art economy
in the book, which I love.
JS: The market, as you know,
is just numbers. The market
only buys what other people in
the market have already bought.
It’s a great delivery vehicle for
a lot of people to make a little
money and a few people to
make a lot. There’s nothing
wrong with that, but to define
success through the market,
through prices, well, that’s an
absurdity. That has nothing
to do with what I’m trying to
write about. My book istrying
to let you have one thing:
yourself and the time tomake
the things you want to make.
LS: I’d love to hear your take
on your own Instagram. It used
to be lewd, crude, sexist, and
quite repugnant, but you seem
to be in a very different place
now, mixing art and politics.
JS: I have about a million
followers cross-platforms.
I happened to start posting
at a time when tens of
thousands of new images
were coming to light from the
ancient world, from medieval
manuscripts that had been
newly digitized. And these
are people that lived through
the collapses of civilizations,
plague, persecution, enormous
instability, hardship, slavery,
everything. And I started
posting these images, which
are extremely violent, in many
cases, but they’re masterpieces.
They’re gorgeous, and they’re
sexual. They have bodies
compromised in every way,
sexually, bestially—every way—
but they’re actual masterpieces.
I rarely posted photographs
of naked people; I posted
paintings and mosaics, and
the art world went nuts, and
I fought back, and I was wrong.
LS: Oh.
JS: I was wrong. I did not
shut up and listen, and—
LS: Listen to what?
JS: To the criticism that
people felt that it was sexist,
lewd, and crude. I saw it
only as art. I was completely
divorced, really, from those
charges, and I was wrong.
And I’m afraid it took until
2015, when Donald Trump
came down that escalator, and
started spewing that kind of
foul hatred, laced with sexism,
and then finally, the ...
LS: Pussy grabbing.
JS: ... The pussy grabbing.
It was right around then that
I thought, Oh my God, I do
not want to be that. We’re all
in equal amounts of pain, and
I don’t want to be an agent of
that. I love art. I’d like to think
I’ve evolved away from it;
however, I still will post saucy
images, because, all around
the world, except in the West,
these images are really valued.
We’re just a little bit ... we
have a hard time with naughty
things; I do, too. I post more
men than women because I
think, Okay, at least I put my
body as a subject, and not the
female body. But I understand
that causes problems too.
LS: The very last chapter
of your book is one sentence:
“Oh, and Once a Year, Go
Dancing.” What a lovely
thought, but when was the
last time you went dancing?
JS: Busted. I dance naked
at home. It’s a horrific sight,
but I want to dance barefoot
before the world. No one
knows this, but I do it when
I walk. When I’m walking,
not talking. At the end, I take
off my shoes and dance in a
few circles in gratefulness.
LS: Well, at least you practice
what you preach.