Lives of the Artists: Portraits of Ten Artists Whose Work and Lifestyles Embody the Future of Contemporary Art

188 Pages·2010·1.25 MB·English

by  Calvin Tomkins

Also by Calvin Tomkins

Duchamp: A Biography

Alex: The Life of Alexander Liberman (with Dodie Kazanjian)

Post-to-Neo: The Art World of the 1980s

Off the Wall: A Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg

The Scene

Living Well Is the Best Revenge

Merchants and Masterpieces: The Story of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Eric Hoffer: An American Odyssey

The World of Marcel Duchamp

The Bride and the Bachelors

Intermission (Novel)
LIVES OF THE ARTISTS
Lives
of
Artists
the

Calvin Tomkins
A JOHN MACRAE BOOK
Henry Holt and Company New York
Henry Holt and Company, LLC
Publishers since 1866
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10010
www.henryholt.com
Henry Holt® and ® are registered trademarks
of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Copyright © 2008 by Calvin Tomkins
All rights reserved.
Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tomkins, Calvin, 1925–
Lives of the artists / Calvin Tomkins.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A John Macrae book.”
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-8872-4
ISBN-10: 0-8050-8872-5
1. Artists—Biography—History and criticism. 2. Art, Modern—20th century. I. Title.
N6489.T66 2008
700.92—dc222008013121
Henry Holt books are available for special promotions
and premiums. For details contact: Director, Special Markets.
First Edition 2008
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Once again, for Dodie
CONTENTS

Preface
DAMIEN HIRST
CINDY SHERMAN
JULIAN SCHNABEL
RICHARD SERRA
JAMES TURRELL
MATTHEW BARNEY
MAURIZIO CATTELAN
JASPER JOHNS
JEFF KOONS
JOHN CURRIN
Acknowledgments
Index
PREFACE

M
aking art is both harder and easier than it used to be. The radical
changes in art and society that were set in motion during the early years of the
twentieth century gave rise to a new kind of artist, whose first obligation was to
invent or discover a new self. Tradition, skill, rigorous training, formal
knowledge: All the old requirements fell away or became optional. Art, it
seemed, could be what ever artists decided it was, and there were no restrictions
on the new methods and materials—from video and verbal constructs to raw
nature and urban detritus—that they could use. The limitless freedom of the
modern artist has been an unending burden. If art can be anything, where do you
begin?
For the ten contemporary artists discussed in this book, art has been, among
other things, an approach to the problem of living. (The profiles were all
published in The New Yorker during the last de cade, and are reprinted here, with
a few minor changes and updatings, as sightings of lives in midstream, open to
future developments.) Common denominators are notably absent. Richard Serra,
our greatest living sculptor, freely acknowledges his early debt to the work of
Jasper Johns, our most extravagantly admired paint er, but the two men are so
different in temperament, sensibility, and ego management that it would be hard
to imagine them having a useful conversation. Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, the
reigning masters of a deliberately outrageous, media-centered art that feeds off
the corrupting influences of entertainment, celebrity, and late-capitalist glut,
have both, in mid-career, settled into the unlikely roles of devoted husbands and
fathers. Conversely, Cindy Sherman shuns the spotlight at all cost, but thrives as
a virtuoso performer in a theater of her ever-shifting selves, and Maurizio
Cattelan, an escape artist with a taste for anonymity, scours the world for serious
jokes that pinpoint our social and philosophical dilemmas.
Julian Schnabel’s star waxed and waned in sync with the overheated art
market of the 1980s; since then he has doubled himself, holding on to his claims
as a neo-expressionist paint er while forging a second career as an award-