David Hockney, 1998
|
David Shapiro
is a recent graduate of Columbia University. He studied Art History
and edited Museo,
the university's journal for contemporary art. He has worked as
a painter for the past eight years and has exhibited his work widely.He
lives in New York City, sells |
| Images Courtesy
of: Gavin Brown's Enterprise |
DS: I wonder why photography has become such a dominant way of representing things. Take, for example, the very title of this year's show "Committed to the Image: Contemporary Black Photographers." I couldn't imagine a show having been put together called "Committed to the Image: Contemporary Black Painters."
EP: Why do you think it's gone that way?
DS: I don't know - but visually, our culture seems to be in some place in which the one thing people don't want to do is paint people - unless it's relegated to some other place.
EP: It's a very hard thing to not make it very corny - painting people. But people always love paintings of people - in a way. Photos are really very sexy - they're really easy. Sometimes I wish I could just be a photographer - as if that were enough for me -- but it's not -- or maybe I'm not a good enough photographer for it to be enough. DS: So do you have any favorite painters?
EP: Favorite painters? Yeah, lots of them! I love Warhol. I love Sargent. I love Van DyckI love Goya and Velazquez, and Edouard Manet. And I love Karen Kilimnik.
DS: And David Hockney? (looking at the pictures of him taped to the wall)
EP: I love David Hockney! Staring at me in the face! He's really inspirational.
DS: Is it more Hockney or more Hockney's paintings?
EP: Both! Really both! I love that in the '70s, in the time of high dry conceptualism, he was doing portraits, and he was really rendering them. And he believed in it too.
DS: Why did he believe in it?
EP: Because he believed in humanity, and humanism, and people -- and he also looked fantastic. He was so aware of his image. He became a blonde pretty young and had more fun. He just had a lot of glamour to him. And he paints things he loves - like his dogs.
DS: Do you think people ever do paint against their love?
EP: I can't say. But, there have been schools of people being cynical - or things like that. Most great painters don't have to think about it - they know what they love. And there've been other times, when people do commissions of people that I'm sure they don't love - but they learn to embrace them.
DS: Like Sargent?
EP: Yeah, he could see some kind of beauty in them - bring it out, or put there even if it couldn't be brought out - a very positive move to try to put that in everyone.