The_Art_Newspaper_-_November_2016

28 THE ART NEWSPAPER SECTION 2 Number 284, November 2016

Exhibitions United States

Video killed the

dance hall star

As a survey of Mark Leckey’s work opens in New York, the artist

talks about video, technology, nostalgia—and why he is doomed

FIORUCCI AND CIRCA 1987: © MARK

LECKEY; COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND GAVIN

BROWN’S ENTERPRISE. IGGY POP: © BROOKLYN MUSEUM; PHOTO

: ELENA OLIVO. BECKMANN: COURTESY OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK

November 19, 2016

HUDSON, NEW YORK STAIRGALLERIES.COM

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 21

ARTIST INTERVIEW

New York. MoMA PS1 is hosting what

it calls the largest ever exhibition

on the Turner Prize-winning British

artist Mark Leckey. The show, titled

Containers and Their Drivers,

highlights works from the 1990s to the

present, including the one for which

Leckey is best known: his film Fiorucci

Made Me Hardcore (1999), in which he

spliced together documentary footage

of British dance subcultures between

the 1970s and 1990s. We spoke about

the show with Leckey, who says he

hopes people get “lost in the potential

ecstasy” of his work.

Victoria Stapley-Brown

• Mark Leckey: Containers and Their Drivers,
  MoMA PS1, New York, until 5 March 2017

The Art Newspaper: A former

school building in Queens seems

an appropriate venue for your

first major US survey because of

the themes you’re interested in:

nostalgia, youth subculture.

Mark Leckey: I think a lot of what I

do is about a sense of haunting, so

being in a school seemed like a good

fit. One floor [of the show] is quite

ghostly, but the other floor is more

future-orientated, because I think that’s

the sort of push and pull of where I

find myself. I pull toward the future,

but at the same time always in this

undertow that tries to drag me back

into the past.

Much has changed in video art and

technology since you made Fiorucci

Made Me Hardcore in 1999. How

do you think people might see this

work dierently in 2016?

I made it out of nostalgia and now I

think people watch it and are nostalgic

not only for the times that I was

depicting in the video, but the time

I made it. It’s in this weird hall of

mirrors of nostalgia. When I made that

video, it was the end of the analogue

era and I had to write to people—

literally with pen and paper—to

request them to post me videotapes. I’d

NEW YORK

Iggy Pop bares all for

life drawing class

Q Imagine yourself at a life drawing class.

You’re prepared for a nude model. But what

if the model that came in was Iggy Pop? The

Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller

posed this question when, in February,

he arranged to have the rock star pose

nude at the New York Academy of Art for a

group of 22 artists—some amateurs, some

traditionally trained, one as young as 19, the

oldest 90. “Some of the participants knew

who he was and some didn’t, but having

said that, once the model is undressed, it’s a

human body and you have to apply yourself

to looking and drawing that,” Deller says.

“So the novelty went quite quickly [and]

the atmosphere in the room was quite

studious, actually.” The Brooklyn Museum

is now showing 53 of the resulting drawings

in an exhibition titled Iggy Pop Life Class

(4 November-26 March). The show also

includes works from the collection depicting

the male body to give historical context. P. P.

NEW YORK

New York’s special place in the life of

Max Beckmann adds zest to Met’s survey

Q The German painter Max Beckmann died on the street in New York on

27 December 1950 while on his way to the Metropolitan Museum to see his

painting Self-Portrait in Blue Jacket (1950). This story is the inspiration behind

the exhibition Max Beckmann in New York, which is now at the Metropolitan

Museum (until 20 February 2017). The artist’s reputation preceded his arrival

in the city in 1949. “Among his American collectors were Mrs Abby Aldrich

Rockefeller, co-founder of MoMA, who bought one painting in 1930, another in

1931 that is now at MoMA,” says Sabine Rewald, the Met curator who organised

the exhibition. The work that Rockefeller bought in 1930, titled Family Picture

(1920), is among the nearly 40 paintings in this show, which focuses on the

artist’s ties to New York, including the 14 pictures he made in the 16 months

that he lived there. P. P.

Iggy Pop takes

his bare-chested

performances a

stage further

The artist’s Self-Portrait in Blue Jacket (1950)

end up fetishising the footage, because

it was so hard to get a hold of. Now it’s

fetishised in a diferent way, which is

about the technology and the grain of

VHS. That video’s about dance culture,

but it’s also about trying to look at

things through the way these images

are made and what that does to you.

You’ve talked about identifying as a

British artist and the importance of

British subculture in your work.

My experience being an artist in the

1990s was that I felt very alienated

from the critical theory that was taught

at the time. I wanted to find something

that I felt more comfortable with, that

I was more absorbed in. And I’d grown

up with [British subculture], it deeply

afected me. It was just something that

I knew, rather than pretending that I

knew or understood Derrida. I ended

up making work that is about trying to

escape from it, like Fiorucci and [the

2015 installation] Dream English Kid

1964-1999 AD—I make those things

to exorcise them, because I can’t bear

them any more. But then I’m drawn

back into them, so I’m doomed.

Maybe we’ll exorcise some of it

going through your show.

There you go. It’s a kind of group

therapy.

Mark Leckey’s Circa 1987 (2013)

depicts the artist superimposed on an

image of women in a hair salon

“ I make

those

things to

exorcise

them,

because I

can’t bear

them any

more”

Mark Leckey compiled his 15-minute video Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999) from found nightclub footage