Chana Budgazad Sheldon on Philip Smith for Curator
MOCA North Miami Director Chana Budgazad Sheldon speaks with artist Philip Smith on the occasion of his latest exhibition, Night Sky at Primary in Little River, Miami.
“As Director of MOCA, one of the benefits of my work is that I have the opportunity to meet and speak with artists, curators, and collectors. Over the past decade, I have enjoyed many conversations and studio visits with Philip Smith. On the occasion of his most recent exhibition Night Sky at Primary in Miami, I thought it was the perfect time to sit down and talk about the vision behind his latest work as well as his background as a PICTURES artist and working with Andy Warhol.”
— Chana Budgazad Sheldon
Chana Budgazad Sheldon: As a young artist, your first New York exhibition was the PICTURES show curated by Douglas Crimp along with artists Robert Longo, Sherrie Levine, Troy Brauntuch, and Jack Goldstein. Can you tell us a bit about that important moment in time?
Philip Smith: Even though we were all so young, I think we all felt we were creating something important that needed to be seen. None of the galleries were showing work like ours. Minimalism and conceptualism were the reigning art movements of the day. Image-based work was nowhere to be found. It was Douglas Crimp’s genius that he saw a new form of art on the horizon. Don’t forget this was pre-digital so images from television, magazines, and movies were immutable. However, we felt that there was meaning behind the meaning that no one was seeing. We felt there more to the culture than what was being shown to this. On many levels, we were engaged in dissecting fundamental notions about our culture.
Many of the PICTURES artists seemed focused on contemporary culture, film, television, irony, and social concerns. Your work became increasingly concerned with metaphysical issues as opposed to irony. What influenced this?
I had an unusual upbringing. Back in the sixties, my father, a designer and artist, suddenly discovered that he could talk to the dead and heal the sick. Overnight, our house became like Lourdes with my father performing miraculous cures on people that the medical profession said there was no hope and were left to die. Talking spirits and inexplicable cures were part of my daily life. I witnessed so many events that I still can’t explain. It was this experience of metaphysics that eventually became paramount in my work.
Your incredible life story is captured in your memoir, Walking Through Walls—the true story of growing up with a father who discovers he has supernatural powers. It is quite a talent to be so successful visually and through language. How did your success as a writer impact your visual arts practice?
That’s an interesting question that I’ve never been asked. Actually, the writing and the painting have constantly influenced each other. Early on, I couldn’t figure out how to make a living so I started writing art criticism for ARTS Magazine. I interviewed everyone from Bob Rauschenberg to Roy Lichtenstein. And, the paintings are a pictographic language with their own visual vocabulary. Possibly because of that, I tend to be a very visual writer. From the moment the book came out people were saying, “this should be a movie” because the writing is so visual. Hopefully, that is about to happen as the book has been optioned for television. In many ways, Walking Through Walls is the Rosetta Stone for the paintings. Warhol once said, “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings…” In my case, if you want to know about Philip Smith, read Walking Through Walls, it’s all there.
Shortly after the PICTURES show you started writing for Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine. Tell us about your friendship with Andy.
My first interview for Interview was with Jasper Johns in his studio. That is an afternoon you don’t forget. For most people, Warhol was about celebrity and glamour. His public persona was very much about the rich and famous and their flaws. But I saw a different side. Andy was always very kind to me. I would drop by the Factory from time to time. We would chat while he was applying colored backgrounds for his paintings using a kitchen sponge mop. Often, I would join one of the many group lunches held around a big, old wooden conference table. You never knew who you would be sitting next to. The lunches were often tape-recorded and ended up in Interview.
When he had just finished the collaborative paintings with Basquiat, I went up to look at them. They were magnificent. He offered to sell me one for $5000. At the time, I lived on that amount of money for an entire year. In many ways, Andy was a Zen master. One day I was up at the Factory to photograph Andy. He started sneezing and I lowered my camera until he finished. He immediately said, “Don’t stop, these are the best photographs.” That was a huge lesson for me, that every moment is important and every moment is interesting. On Saturdays, Andy would call me to chit-chat. Later on, Andy asked me to be the Editor-in-Chief of Interview. I turned him down because I felt that I would get caught up in the Studio 54 crowd and no one would take me seriously as a painter.
Your work is always rich with multiple pictographs. It is its own visual language. Tell us about that.
As a kid, I wanted to be an archaeologist and would devour books on Egyptology. The idea of multiple images probably emerged from looking at this type of early pictographic work. In preliterate days, the churches and governments would use visual devices for communicating their ideology. I also think experiencing different dimensions with my father made me want to represent in some way all these different realities and energies that are always around us.
You have just opened an exhibition of new paintings called Night Sky at Primary Gallery in Miami. Having followed your work, this body of paintings seems to have evolved. Can you share some of the thinking behind this body of work?
I agree, this body of work is related but also somewhat different than all my other work. In some ways, I was thinking about thankgas, which are paintings of Buddha created by monks in Tibet. These are not just illustrations of Buddha’s life but are energetically alive. They impart teachings, bestow blessings, and answer prayers. These paintings are a conduit to a higher power—a very active form of art. Given all the training I had under my father, I wanted to produce art that provided an energetic benefit for the viewer.
What do you hope to accomplish with these new works?
Open people’s hearts and minds. Whether you’re a bus driver or a scientist, an artist or gardener, we all have a responsibility to make this world a better place. In Judaism, there is the concept of Tikkun Olam which means to “repair the world.” I can’t think of a more important job that any of us have right now, other than Tikkun Olam. We can all find a way to make a difference. For now, these paintings are my contribution. All of us can make contributions and they are cumulative. They make a difference. Everybody pitching in is how we get to a better place.
I love this. It connects to this moment of time so beautifully and it is a lovely way to end.
