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Courtesy of the artist
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Courtesy of the artist
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Courtesy of the artist
I leave Earthbound Beer after a few and meet David Langley on the walk home to my building on Cherokee Street. For those of you who lived and walked around this street several years ago, David’s depiction of Little Richard used to “hang” on the side of a building at the southeast corner of Jefferson and Cherokee. My first morning was New Year’s Day, and I walked upon the snow and then saw Richard’s gorgeous, ecstatic face looking at me. There seemed to be music emanating from Langley’s piece. I think that might have been my favorite encounter in this neighborhood, when it was snow and silence and no cars and seven in the morning and again, quieter than a gallery.
Langley is one of those rare people that occasionally come by, here and there, that you feel you’ve known a long time. By which I mean he is unpretentious, kind, and making some of the best art around. Period. I asked him about a reliance on audience or if audiences mattered to him.
“An audience is the only way to determine my relevancy,” he says. “I can only create. There is no possible way for me to determine whether what I happen to be creating is of any value at all to anyone other than myself. The true worth of my creations can only be determined by those who witness them.”
David Langley’s art, sometimes slightly reminiscent of Marcel DuChamp, has always has a signature something I can’t put my finger on. It’s like reading Caesar Vallejo; countless readings (or viewings) immerge for me each time I go back. I wondered, given the originality of Langley’s creations, what painters and makers might have inspired him earlier in his career.
“The most notable single experience I recall that truly altered my artistic reality came as a young man turning the pages of an ArtNews,” he says. “Suddenly before me was a full-page image of an inner-city scene portrayed by Romare Bearden that captivated me. He presented to me the power of collage in a way unlike anything else I had ever seen. Bearden created a new reality out of the old reality of images that already existed. I was a young painter at the time, and had not yet created my first collage. I am sure that, in a very serious way, that work affected my direction.”
David wasn’t content to learn only from the old masters. He knew he had to look forward and see what was happening currently.
“I focused my intense personal study on work from the 1940s to the ’80s,” he explains. “I wanted to be acutely aware of movements and precedents that had occurred immediately prior to my beginning. I took advantage of every opportunity I had to view such works. There is no comparison to seeing artwork in person. To believe that you have witnessed a work of art by seeing it in a book, or worse yet, as a digital image, is a false belief. It was in these times in the early ’80s that I grew to love the palette of Diebenkorn, how the oil paints bled into the unprimed canvas of Rauschenberg's work, and seeing how all of these works were constructed. I was influenced by a large number of artists, Franz Kline, Motherwell, Anselm Keifer, Rosenquist, Oldenberg, Gerhard Richter, and the list truly goes on and on.”
David has been successful, especially for a painter; he lives primarily by the sweat and toil of his work. But he is well aware of the pitfalls for anyone attempting to live and work as he does:
“I would call it a brutal position. After my undergraduate degree, it was one of two options, pursue an MFA, and increase my level of debt, or begin to create work on a full-time basis and hit the streets with it. I had already become attuned to the premise that freedom in life was directly related to one's financial obligations. That thought, in conjunction with the fact that I still had plenty of my own questions to answer, led me to begin a solitary focus on my work. This was primarily an actualization of what I felt was the most I had to offer the world: an intrinsic drive. If taking the less-traveled path is a conscious choice, one will usually not survive the tribulations of such a choice.
"It's becoming more and more difficult to maintain a life of simplicity as the years go by. I would not want to be a young artist in the year 2015. How many do we know who have embarked on the pursuit of an artistic career and then, as a result of the difficulties one faces with such a task, have completely abandoned such a choice? It's not surprising at all. It's no cakewalk. My thought is that whatever choices one makes in life there will be a degree of suffering involved. Suffering is unavoidable. I see there being two types of suffering. One form is a result of external factors. The other a result of our own choices. For me, the key was in the effort to remain true to myself, and to falter as little as possible from that objective. The easiest type of suffering to endure is the type that is a result of following your deepest beliefs. We cannot avoid suffering in life, but we can certainly minimize the suffering we experience due to the choices of others.”
It was good to be graced by David Langley. He gave me a slice of plum cake as a gift, which I ate while typing this. David left my apartment when I told him I needed to write. He understood, better than most, that when one has to get to it, it might as well be now.
David Langley will be showing new work at The Vino Gallery (4701 McPherson) September 5–October 17. The opening reception is September 5 from 6–9 p.m. For more information, call 314-932-5665, or go to thevinogallery.com.
