Philip Slein, Self Portrait with Palette, 2012, Pastel on linen mounted on panel, 47 by 47 inches
When Philip Slein moved into the University Lofts in 2000, the only grocery store was a bodega down the street; you could get a Harvey Wallbanger at Dapper Dan’s or peruse dusty, overstuffed Amitin’s Books, where Les Misérables shared shelf space with Jay David’s The Flying Saucer Reader. In 2002, on the cusp of the loft boom, Slein opened his namesake gallery on Washington Avenue, showing everything from Missouri landscape painters to Art Chantry’s punk rock posters. Now, post–loft bust, Slein notes that downtown’s become “a party-entertainment-restaurant-nightclub district,” rather than the arts district that it was once predicted to be. He’s OK with that. He’s not moving out of his loft, which he’s lovingly filled with everything from abstract paintings to miniature Mississippi River paddleboats to antique taxidermy. “I’m running out of wall space,” he says, which is why he rearranges his collection (which he sees as the loft-dweller/collector’s version of yardwork) when he adds new stuff. This spring, though, he is relocating the gallery to the Central West End, to William Shearburn’s former space at 4735 McPherson, with a grand opening on May 18. SLM talked to him about that move, his passion for collecting, his love of St. Louis, and the series of portraits he’s doing of people involved in the city’s art scene.
So will this move change the kind of work you show?
We’re still going to be very dedicated to the local artists that we’ve been working with, but we’re going to be bringing in more artists from the East and West coasts. We’re working with a well-known gallerist, Jim Schmidt; Jim closed his gallery in Grand Center last year, but he’s still in town. He’s going to be bringing a lot of his contacts and his artists to the table. We’re going to be curating shows together, and going to New York together, and bringing in established artists like Andrew Masullo, as well as emerging artists.
We have a focus on painting at the gallery, and works on paper. That’ll continue. We also want to bring artists to town that people should be collecting. We’re going to continue to go to the art fairs in Chicago, New York, and Miami, because we’ve been able to become part of a larger network. So yeah, in the move some things are going to change. You’re going to still recognize the Philip Slein Gallery without a doubt; we’re always going to be dedicated to what we like, first and foremost.
And Mark Buckheit’s coming with you?
Yeah, Mark’s our framer. They’re two separate businesses, but we’re in process to make sure he comes with us. I’ve been very blessed to work with the two best framers in St. Louis, Sandra [Marchewa, of Pace Framing and PSTL Gallery] and Buckheit, and we’ve got them both with us now. Mark frames for everyone, all the museums, and we’ve had the best. He is really an artisan. He makes his own frames. He really does gorgeous work and he cares, and caters to the top collectors in town.
Now, you never lived above your gallery on Washington, right?
I was always in this building. When I first moved down here, these buildings were empty. And now they’re all lit up at night. I like the sun coming in, but I hate to fade anything. There’s a lot to see up here! [He walks into the middle room from the kitchen.] This is kind of the advertising room. While I consider Art Chantry an artist, his posters are really advertisements for bands, so he’s in here. And then [he points to the old Hi-Fi Fo-Fum sign leaning against one whole wall, depicting the defunct audio store’s mascot, Hideton Finster Forbush Fum], of course, Fum is an advertising icon of St. Louis.
Wow, you got him!
Yeah. I love him, because you could be having the worst day, and you just look at him—he’s so happy. It’s hand-painted—it’s a real sign. There were actually two of them. This one faced more north, so he didn’t get so faded. I scour all kinds of places, and Craigslist is one them…
Wait, he was on Craigslist?
Yeah, and there was a smaller one made out of wood that I really wanted, but I love the big one, and he was in two pieces, so I could fit him up here. And then [he walks into the back room], what seems like it should be the bedroom, this is where my paintings are.
There’s a portrait of former Post-Dispatch art critic David Bonetti…
That was my first. He was wonderful, yet he could be so frustrating. He lived right across the street from the Basilica, in Lindell Terrace, so you could see the dome right out there. And he had all this intellectual clutter, books he was reading, and he was always having hors d’oeuvres and drinking and gossiping. He really loved the painting. My style has gotten, I think, more refined and better, but he really encouraged me. And then, of course, there’s [Robert] Lococo. There’s Strauss. Matt was a good sport about it, but he never bought it. Now, Paul Ha, this one is going to Paul. I had to varnish it; I’ll probably deliver it next week. That’s an Eva Lundsager—that’s his wife—there in the background. I just wanted to capture Paul in this relaxed moment, maybe at Greenberg Van Doren Gallery after his wife’s opening, and he’s having a Scotch or whatever, and he’s just happy to see you come in.
I think the first portrait of yours I remember is Smorgasbords, from “The Art Crowd.”
When I did that, the only thing I was thinking about was, I wanted to get a diversity… There are hundreds of people who could have been in that painting. I think I put 70-some-odd people in there. I’ve heard from a few people that their feelings were a little hurt that they weren’t in it. And I felt really, really bad. That wasn’t my intent. My ambition is, if you’re doing anything interesting in the art world, and you’re collecting, then I will want to paint you.
I just noticed that the nameplates are painted right onto the canvas.
These are serious paintings, but they’re also satires; they’re tongue-in-cheek. I’m into advertising. Advertising at the turn of the century used to put these faux frames on; it’s a reference to that. I hand-paint the little tags that they would put on the painting. I’ve gotten better at it. [He points to a set of paintings and objects nearby.] Here’s another creep that I’m making. When I say “creep,” I mean like ivy, or a coral reef. Things just start to collect. This is a great Ernestine Betsberg painting; this is from the ’50s.
That’s the best cat painting I’ve ever seen.
It’s actually nine cats, for the nine lives of the cats. I love Ernestine. Arthur [Osver, her husband] was such a good painter, but she was just as good as Arthur. I just like the way things accumulate, although it takes time. I really love folk art. I love ceramics, even though I don’t show them. This is just an old cubbyhole from a blacksmith that I like. And it just provides a catchall for all sorts of little knickknacky and trinkety things.
And then these things [he walks over to a series of glass-front cabinets], I just love. I got them from Sandy Marchewa. They were from the Aloe Building, which was this beautiful Art Deco building that got destroyed. Again, they’re very functional, but they’re part of St. Louis history, which I’m such a geek for. This is where I keep my paints, because this is where I live, and I treat it kind of like a yacht or a boat or a car on the Orient Express. It’s really small, so it has to be superfunctional.
Then I put in things like this pull-up bar. I figured out that I didn’t have to go to the gym, because you can do your pull-ups and push-ups, and then I love to walk; I walk across the Eads Bridge and back. It’s really cool to be on the river at all different times. You see ice, you see fog; I’ve seen all the barges laying along the side of the river in heavy fog…
That beats doing the walking-to-nowhere thing at the gym, watching CNN.
I can’t do it. It’s just too boring.
Hey—a jackalope mount! I haven’t seen one of those since I left Utah.
I got this from Michael Nolan, who’s a Chicago artist and a really good friend of Fred Stonehouse’s. He’s a huge collector of folk art, and I gave him some of these gun molds from Brauer Brothers, and he thought they were really neat. Some people think [the jackalope] is real, and they’re like “Oh my God, it’s a prehistoric rabbit!”
I love anything based on the river. I love the river, the history of St. Louis, paddle-wheelers. And of course some of this stuff is from St. Louis. We had Chantry here for a while, which was really cool. Some of this is from Washington Avenue; some stuff’s from trips. I love vintage stereos. [He points out his incredibly complicated-looking stereo system, which is tuned to WSIE-FM.] Why people would go to Circuit City is lost on me.
That’s a nice Huck on the wall facing the kitchen.
Tom Huck is an artist I really like. This is my favorite of all his work. This is a masterpiece. This is from ’99, Attack of the 50-Foot Yard Ornament. So there you see this big pink flamingo running amok, and the guys from Plucky’s Chicken are trying to wrestle him down.
And then, over here, these are some of his blocks?
This is something I preach to everyone… It’s something I just started doing when I was a kid, and then I happened to go to graduate school. I had a teacher at the University of Missouri who told me, ‘Start trading and collecting with your peers.’ Huck and I became such good friends, I was able to acquire some of his blocks and other things.
So this is where you finally decided to park the bedroom, next to the foyer.
Yeah, I built this wall and moved my bedroom up here, because it forces me to keep my bedroom really perfect and tidy all the time. So I put this little velvet rope here.
Like the velvet rope at a nightclub?
Er, well, kind of. It just separates things a little bit, so you can see it, and it makes it like a little
vignette.
OK—more like peeking into the colonial bedrooms at the art museum.
[Laughs.] Right. “The Philip Slein Suite.”
Seems like this building has a nice community.
This building has—and has had—a terrific community. I was the first person to live here. Now, when I say that, I mean one night alone. Then, the next day, people started moving in. We’ve had people like Jenna Bauer, Jerald Ieans, Maryanne Simmonds, Greg Edmondson, Robert Goetz…it’s just been full of artists. The building was set up by Washington University as an arts incubator to keep St. Louis from suffering more brain drain. This building, I have to credit a lot with my own personal success. I’d been coming down here as early as 1995, ’96, when I worked at St. Louis ArtWorks. But it really got me down here at a time when you had a huge renaissance in the art world.
Looking back, how do you feel about the last 10 to 12 years?
A lot of the pundits are talking about a lost decade, from the dot-com bubble bursting, to 9/11, to all the wars, to certain administrations, to the financial collapse. I’m not so sure it isn’t true, but I’m just thinking, “A lost decade! That’s such a weird thing,” thinking about it in the science-fiction sense. What if you were able to erase a decade completely, and you couldn’t find it?
This hasn’t been a lost decade for me. It’s been the best decade of my life. And it’s been a great decade in the St. Louis art scene. I think you could make an argument that it was the best decade in the St. Louis art scene. You saw the Pulitzer open, you saw the Contemporary move up from the Forum to its new building, you’re seeing a major new wing at the art museum…you’ve got Bruno [David], you’ve got me, you’ve got White Flag, you’ve got all the galleries on Cherokee Street, we have more criticism and writing than has ever been done. While Bonetti was controversial, he was a legitimate critic. I like to think of him as the fountain that kept the pond from getting too stagnant. But we still have Jessica Baran and Ivy Cooper; we’re getting more national press in the magazines because of them. It’s been a terrific decade in our town.
