Andrew Salgado — Painting the Modern Mythology
Andrew
Salgado
He reads Baudelaire on the tube. He quotes Bjork on wellbeing. He is vocal about his distaste for the art world's nepotism and equally vocal about where beauty actually lives: in the studio, in the natural world, in the Odyssey, and in Derek Jarman's garden while dying of HIV.
Works have entered the secondary market with prices frequently doubling their estimates. A piece at Phillips New York sold for five times its estimate in June 2021.
"The studio is just a metaphor for real life. On many levels, I'm creating a sort of anthology. Making choices. Who's in? Who's out?"
Tell us about your greatest inspirations or influences.
I think inspiration comes from anywhere and I try not to be hierarchical about what those sources are. I love music. Music is so immediate and the process of art-making is so slow, so there's an instantaneous aspect to music that can really help tap into your creativity.
I love to read. I'm always reading. Two, three books at a time. I respond to nature, the beauty in the natural world. And of course, to art. No artist worth your time would say any less.
Tell us more about your creative process.
So often ideas will swim around for months, or even a year or more. I take lengthy notes. Sometimes it's just jotting down a title or something that I'll come back to. For instance, "the flower eater" was an idea that I did a bit of research on and it eventually became "The Lotus Eaters" — a group of people Odysseus came across during his travels who ate the fruit of the lotus plant and forgot their general worries. And I'm thinking: is that so bad? What's so wrong with that? Anyway, the tale is told as a sort of warning: not to forget your real-life concerns. I am drawn to stuff like that.
So then I'll usually create a larger narrative in my head. I like stories. I like how we create modern mythologies in almost everything we do. And I always say the studio is just a metaphor for real life. So on many levels, I'm creating a sort of anthology. Making choices. Who's in? Who's out? Sometimes paintings don't work and I have to let them go. Other times they want to take me on a pathway that's not entirely what I had planned. I need to be porous to that process, because I don't always have full control in the studio. What you envisage in your head and what ends up on the canvas aren't always the same thing. So I get in there and work through the problems and try to come up with something coherent. There's always some struggle. Always a bit of hair-pulling.
"I think I'm at the stage finally where I can come and just enjoy the process. But there's always some struggle. Always a bit of hair-pulling."
What do you think of the art world and how it works in general?
I am quite vocal about my distaste for the art world. I think it's a nasty industry that thrives on nepotism and tokenism. It's not a meritocracy, and that can be a hard reality when you've put in 20 years of work but some kid fresh from grad school fits an image that this world wants to propagate. I think it's best that's all I say about that.
How are current trends in technology affecting your work?
I think it's important to adopt technology to make your life and process in the studio as straightforward as possible. But I also keep getting asked about NFTs. Like, I couldn't care less. I think they've already crashed. All I see is this dopey-faced ape and I can't comprehend what any collector would want with that. Buy real, tangible art, for a real, tangible world.
What does wellbeing mean to you?
I have learned that to be a better artist, I actually need to step away from the studio a little earlier. I leave earlier. I exercise regularly. I do yoga, run, lift weights. I think this myth of spending 15 to 18 hours in the studio, seven days a week: that's a myth. That's not healthy. It's not sustainable. I'm more like, yeah, go five or six days a week. But there's a time to tap out. Go get your sun. Go read your book.
As Bjork says: "There's more to life than this."
Second to none when you're searching for imagery or ideas. There are some great translations available. Essential.
Or perhaps even the pocket-sized Pharmacopeia. Details his process creating a garden while dying of HIV. For similar reasons to Baudelaire: imagery, ideas, the courage of the creative act.
About passion and obsession and the pursuit of beauty. Salgado personally loves this one. It is also, incidentally, the basis of the film Adaptation.
Collects musings by authors. Their lessons, he says, are very applicable to visual artists. The cross-disciplinary read that is better than any art manual.
Inspirational in terms of real-world examples. "A must-read," he says, for any creative operating in the contemporary world. Also: she is his friend.
The source of The Lotus Eaters. "Is forgetting your worries really so bad?" The oldest story about modern anxieties, told as a warning that Salgado refuses to fully accept.
Why Andrew Salgado's impatience with the art world is its own form of integrity
There are painters who are diplomatic about the art world. Andrew Salgado is not one of them. His description of the industry as one that "thrives on nepotism and tokenism" and "is not a meritocracy" is not a complaint. It is an accurate structural diagnosis, delivered by someone who has spent twenty years building a career that succeeds on the terms he set for it, not the terms the industry preferred.
The work earns its place. Fifteen sold-out solo exhibitions. Collections ranging from the Government of Canada to the Jordanian Royal Family. A piece at Phillips selling for five times its estimate. And all of it built around a practice that begins with Baudelaire on a train, a title jotted in a notebook a year before it becomes a painting, and a willingness to be porous to where the canvas wants to go rather than where the plan said it should.
Go read The Orchid Thief. Then go see his work. The connection between them will be immediately clear.
Follow Andrew Salgado at @andrew.salgado.art
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