A Conversation with Philip Slein: "The Art Crowd"

"Smorgasbords," by Philip Slein

Philip Slein is best known around town as a gallerist; people forget he is a painter, too. He earned his MFA from Washington University in 1996 and taught painting up until 2002, a year before starting Philip Slein Gallery. This Friday, he’s having a solo show at Schmidt Contemporary Art, and all indications are that it will be well-attended. Part of it is that he hasn’t shown in a while, but this show also has some serious, early buzz. “The Art Crowd: New Paintings by Philip Slein,” is a Hogarth-like satire of the St. Louis art scene and its characters, including ex-Post-Dispatch art critic David Bonnetti and White Flag Projects’ Matthew Strauss. Here is Dana Turkovic’s description of the show from the  essay that accompanies the poster/mailer:

“These recent portraits are formed from his interest in history, satire, allegory, caricature and the social side of the art world and provide a good-humored commentary on range of subjects; depicting big time art collectors, dealers, artists, curators and writers with a studied hand and a cartoonish edge. Refreshingly avoiding the pomposity or timidity one might expect from a gallerist, Slein manages to blend the joys of looking at art as a social group in a series of works that aim to re-enchant our world again through the medium of painting.”

Fair ‘nuff. We like these paintings too, and so rang Phil on his cell last Friday, just as he was leaving the post office with Jim Schmidt, after the pair had just dropped off another big stack of mailers announcing the show. —Stefene Russell

So I wanted first to talk about the show in general—how long have you been working on these pieces?  Some of them, I’m looking at this image on the poster, and I recognize, I think, Tom Huck, but it looks like an image Contemporary’s Dada Ball from like, ages ago….

It’s not necessarily from that image. I have a big cowboy that he likes to put on sometimes and I had an image of him in that hat, and then I decided to paint him as a Boss Hogg character. Tom and I are best friends. He called me this morning, he got it, he loves it. I’m finding that a lot of people are able to laugh at themselves. But to get back to your question, I started on these in 2006. So I’ve been working on them for about three and a half years. And to be honest, I’ve been working slowly on them, with no intention of ever really showing them, but then Jim (Schmidt) saw them, and thought, we have to show these, for the community.

One of the interesting things here is how grounded these paintings are in art history. Do you want to talk a bit about that?

Many people don’t know that I started out as an artist, before getting into the gallery business. I got my MFA at Wash. U., I love art history. I grew up with the St. Louis Art Museum, I’ve been the the museums in Europe and whatnot, and I just love painting from all different times. And I thought that being in the gallery business, sometimes the art world gets very pompous and full of itself and takes itself way too seriously. I thought it might be fun to gently and lovingly lampoon that, but I thought I’d also like to show my love of art history in these paintings. So, for example, in the “Smorgasbords”  painting, obviously it’s based on Dutch still life painting …

And then you’ve got Matt Strauss (White Flag Projects) as Napoleon.

Well, that is kind of mean but Matt has seen it. I actually had Matt come over to the studio. And he actually loved it. Again, I’m amazed at how people can laugh at themselves. And they’re not super, super mean; I based it on the famous [Jacques-Louis] David painting of him ["Napoleon in His Study"]. I felt that when Matt, I think Matt has done an amazing, amazing job at White Flag, I’m so proud of him. But when he first opened, he came on very strong in a big piece that you guys did on him, and a big piece that the RFT did on him. He was going to remake St. Louis, and the local galleries were … I felt that he needed to be lampooned a little bit because he comes from such a privileged state that he doesn’t understand that some people have to work. And you have to sometimes have to make some sacrifices. I would love to show stuff I can’t sell all the time, too, but sometimes you have to show some things that you might be able to sell because you have to pay your bills. So I felt that Matt was being a little insensitive, but he probably should get another portrait done, because I think he’s done a really good job. But he loves his Napoleon portrait. He was using his Napoleon portrait as his Facebook picture for a while. So, he couldn’t understand why I painted him as Napoleon, but it’s a loving portrait. He is also a conquerer who is attacking the mediocrities that can happen in a small town like this. He was criticizing people, so I felt like he could handle it. And he did, he did handle it. There’s also a lot of sycophancy, if you’re rich and powerful, so I figure you can’t be afraid to attack rich and powerful people. But he likes the portrait, he had a good laugh about it.

So, when I first got the press release for this show, there was an image attached. It was your painting of David Bonnetti.

That’s not a very good representation, by the way. But you get the idea.

So he’s seen the portrait?

Yeah, he’s seen it, and he loved it. Now, I didn’t tell anyone I was doing this, and I did not ask permission obviously. And I had a party this spring where I had three of the paintings on display. People weren’t expecting them and Bonetti shrieked, like he saw a mouse or something. And he told me his initial reaction was that he was just horrified, just for the first second. But then he just fell in love with his portrait. And his portrait was the first one that I did, in 2006. I had to go over there to help him hang a piece. He lives right across from the Cathedral Basilica. And he has difficult walls to hang on, and I’m good at hanging pictures. So he had me come over. I got there a little bit early, and his door was slightly ajar because he was expecting me, and I heard his voice, he was on the phone. I walked into his living room and there he was—he wasn’t ready for me, and was kind of in a state of disrobe, he already had a glass of wine poured for himself, his stereo was blaring jazz, and he was on the phone in some hysterical conversation with somebody. And I saw this image, because he lives in that building with the dome right out his window, and he’s in this big read Saarinen chair, and I said oh, my god. And I was mad at him about something, he’d written a harsh review about me or something, or he’d written something I didn’t like, and I thought, I’m gonna get him. And that’s what started the whole thing.

There’s still something sweet about it; I didn’t get the feeling that it was supposed to be like a poison dart to the back of the neck or anything.

Oh, no, and none of these are. And I don’t want them to be. I think satire fails if there isn’t some admiration. And I’m only painting people that I kind of really like. I spend a lot of time with these people. I have to kind of like them, these aren’t mean-spirited—they’re just lampoons.

Yeah, I recognized a lot of the people in the "Smorgasbords" painting, but there were a lot of people I didn’t know. So there on the back row in the baseball hat … I had no idea who that was.

That’s Ted Simmons, who’s one of the largest collectors of Tom Huck in the world. He’s also one of the biggest collectors of Enrique Chagoya, he’s crazy about art. People don’t really know that, but he is. He’s still in baseball, and he’s one of the most famous Cardinals from the last 40 years, but he loves art, and I just decided to put him in.

Are you going to have like the little numbered silhouettes that tell you who everyone is?

We are. We’ve already made that. Some people are just very obscure, and then obviously there are the stars of the art scene. It’s a smorgasbord, which is a Swedish word meaning a lay out of meats and cheeses, but it’s also a homogeneous group of people. So it’s just a random sampling. I could have put a lot more people in there. There is a key, one of those outline keys.

"The Hockney Days and Warhol Nights of Robert Lococco," by Philip Slein

Now, I haven’t seen all the images that are going to be in the show …

The one on the poster is the love letter to St. Louis. The still life is there to show the real bounty we do have here if we just look. And I’m a lover of St. Louis. Robert Loccoco’s is probably the nicest, actually I owe a debt to St. Louis Magazine on that one. I’ve been to Robert’s house many times, and I’m very close with Robert, but you guys did a thing on him ["The Art of the Deal," by Jeannette Cooperman, September, 2007.]. So the painting is based on the photograph from that story. I obviously changed the outdoor scene, changed the carpet and added things to it, but it’s based on that spread that you did, which I loved, because Robert, he’s just kinda got it made. He’s got the Hockney days and the Warhol nights. He parties at night like a rock star, and he’s got the boys in the pool, so that’s the most straight-on, even though I’ve compressed his body and there’s little things like he’s sucking in his gut, and his cigarette is excited to see you. But that’s really the nicest one, and the most straight-on one. And then the Smorgasbord. Matt’s and David’s are kind of mean—well, not really mean, but—and then I’ve done a send-up of Wash. U. Art School, which is really the one where people are going to…well, it’s the most critical. It’s not called the Ship of Fools, but it’s based on that, and it’s the largest painting in the show. It’s a big, huge galleon in a very stormy tumultuous sea, and the sail is billowing and the mast is cracking. It’s based on Moby-Dick and the Cane Mutiny and JAWS and paintings by Rembrandt, like "Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee," and "Wrath of the Medusa." Also some of Turner’s storm paintings. I have people from Wash. U., you know what they say about academia, the fights are so big because the stakes are so small, and it’s kind of …. again, it’s loving, and I put a lot of my friends on the ship. And I hope they’re still my friends after they see the painting!

How big is it?

It’s the largest in the show, 6-and-a-half-feet tall by 7 feet across.

And that one’s more recent?

Yes, that’s the most recent one. In fact, I’m still painting on it. And I will painting on it until the night before the show. It’s well underway, but I really just like to build up the layers, and it takes a long time.

Oil?

Yes, yes, everything’s oil on canvas.

There’s something really immediate about smelling oil paint and turpentine in a show because the paintings are still a little wet.

Yes, I love that smell, and you will get that smell and if you get too close, probably some will go home on your jacket. The Ship of Fools painting, the title is actually "Choppy Seas Move Ships," which softens it a little bit. That’s a famous quote from Billy Martin, who was the manager of the New York Yankees, describing his relationship with George Steinbrenner. They were winning massively in the era of Reggie Jackson, but he was constantly being fired and rehired. Tempest in a teapot type stuff (laughs). It’s easy just to be mean; but I think it loses something if it’s just vicious. I get frustrated with some the faculty up there, but these are people who are just trying to do their job. People who are in the ivory tower of academia, they’re tenured, I think they need to be poked at a little bit, because they get out of touch and they kind of sell their souls a little bit. But they’re not bad people. But I do think that academia is ripe for a little bit of lampooning.

So now that the word is out on the street, with the mailers and Deb Peterson’s blog, are you getting any reaction from people?

I’m getting reaction not from Deb’s thing, though I think if it had been in the paper I would have, and the mailer just went out, people really just started to get them yesterday. Tom Huck loved it, Duane Reed sent me a nice note. Everyone seems really positive about it. Schmidt’s telling me that Matthias [Waschek], everyone at the Pulitzer is poring over it. People didn’t really know that I did this, so they’re getting this in their mailbox for the first time and I think they are shocked. I think they really enjoy looking at it. Now, one thing I do want to say is that "Smorgasbords" is really Brian Young’s portrait, who I adore and love. It’s his picture, but because he caters, when I’m over at Jimmy Jamieson’s, or any of these parties that people have after these things, he seems to be the caterer to this group. So I just really love him, and I told him that I was going to do his portrait, so I thought I have to do a crowd scene of artsy people, so it’s really him, but people like to look at the faces. But it’s for him, honestly.

Well, his face was definitely the first thing when I opened the mailer up. Dana’s essay is great, too.

Yeah, Dana was the one who, Schmidt brought Dana over, and I was just so thrilled that she wanted to write something, and when I read what she wrote I really thought she got it—she talks about her own ideas about Matt, and some of these other players... she’s really adding her own things to this, which I thought was really interesting.

So ultimately what do you want people to come away with after seeing the show?

I just had fun with it. Because of having a gallery, I know a lot of people and I go to these things. The main thing I wanted people to know, dealers, and I never really realized this because I was naïve, get kind of a bad reputation as far as not paying their artists or just being salesmen. I wanted to let St. Louis know that I have a history of painting, it’s been seven years since my last show at Duane Reed, I was painting abstractly and I was trying to paint in this minimalist style that St. Louis finds very popular, because of Emmy’s [Emily Pulitzer] love of minimalism, it’s a trickle-down. I always wanted to show with Schmidt, and it took me a long time to find my own thing that I wanted to do, but I wanted people to know that I love art history, and that I love to paint, and I love to draw, and I just thought the players were interesting enough that paintings could be made that were in the vein of Alice Neel, and in the vein of satire that could unite the scene a little bit. With David [Bonetti] leaving, the scene is not fractured simply because of him, but just to celebrate this little jewel we have, because we do have something very special here. We have the Pulitzer Foundation, the Art Museum, the Kemper, and what’s happening down on Cherokee … and then we have seven or eight galleries that are really, really good. So let’s celebrate it in a fun, loving way that isn’t too sugary-sweet. It’s just that, again, I did want people to see them, like when people came over for drinks or whatever, I wanted people to see them. I wanted the smell of painting, I wanted to do something in my free time. It was really Schmidt’s idea, and Dana’s idea, to do a show. Which, of course, I was thrilled to do. They were more private paintings. For Brian, you know, Brian did a party at my house one time, I saved for like a year to have him do it, but Brian was going to come over, I just liked the idea of having a few people over and seeing it, but then Schmidt and Dana said, we gotta do it, it’ll be good for the community. I have no real agenda other than I love community, I like the people, I like to riff on the people.

Is that Barry from Left Bank in the back row?

Yes. He really was fun to paint. Off to the left is Jorge Martinez, then next to him is Leslie [Laskey] and Frank Schwaiger, with the bald heads in the back, and Jeff Pike and Carmen [Colangelo], Mary Ann Simmons, the Shanks, Saskya Byron, Ivy Cooper, Sabine Eckmann, Andrew Walker, Jessica Baran, Kim Humphries …. in real life the heads are much bigger and easier to see.

And Jim Schmidt himself is in there, over on the right-hand side.

Yes. Right above Deb Peterson. They’re caricatures, but I also wanted them to be recognizable, so I’m glad you got a lot of them. But I don’t think anybody would know them all. I would be surprised, because I have some obscure people in there that I just put in there, just for fun. So I don’t think one person could gt them all—I don’t think it’s possible!

The Art Crowd: New Paintings by Philip Slein

October 23–November 21

Opening reception October 23, 6–9 p.m.

 615 North Grand, 314-575-2648, jschmidt@schmidtcontemporaryart.com

schmidtcontemporaryart.com