he Art Newspaper: I understand that you sleep by day. When do you paint?
Marilyn
Manson: It’s easiest for me to paint late at night when I’m at my most
creative, around 3am. I’ve been making a new album and the band works
from 8pm until about 4am, so I often come home and paint in silence.
It’s a real escape for me because it’s the thing I can do when no one’s
around.
читать дальше
TAN: I’ve read that you started drawing as a child, using it as an escape.
MM I liked drawing as a kid and I wanted to become a cartoonist for something like Mad magazine.
TAN: Are there any special objects that you keep around for inspiration in your painting studio?
MM
I have things taped and written on the walls, it’s almost like a big
notebook. It’s a bit haunted-house-mixed-with-Las Vegas, there’s no
sense of time and there are no clocks. I have a lot of art and anatomy
books, magazines, about 250 children’s books and lots of Polaroids. I
kneel down on the floor when I work, so I can control and balance the
paint, and the ceiling fan above me has a video camera attached so I
can document my painting.
TAN: Would you describe your works as psychological portraits of your subjects?
MM
I don’t paint photorealistic works; I think that’s what cameras are
for. I’m painting a girl that I met recently who was concerned about
how she looked, and I explained that I was trying to capture her
personality.
TAN: Are your paintings more personal than your very public stage persona?
MM
I have a terrible time losing my paintings to other people. I don’t
consider painting a hobby at all. At one point I was willing to
completely trade one for the other while I was going through a dark
period in my life, but somehow the combination of singing and painting
seemed to work together.
TAN: Can you tell me about your painting Trismegistus, the centrepiece of the show?
MM
I found a portable embalming table from the 19th century, and some
foolish part of me thought it would make a goth girl really excited.
But I left it sitting against the wall in my studio, and one night I
started painting around midnight with only the moonlight coming through
the shades. I finished the work by about 1pm the next day. It’s a very
fragile piece and I’d like to see it end up in a museum.
TAN: Is it true that the first paintings that you sold in 1999 were five-minute concept pieces that were bought by drug dealers?
MM They were traded for drugs. I wonder where those are now.
TAN:
How would you describe your watercolours? Is it accurate to
characterise some of your major themes as death, celebrity, pop culture
and hermeticism?
MM I always choose interesting people,
like the Black Dahlia [Elizabeth Short, who was the victim in a
gruesome unsolved Los Angeles murder in 1947] and [murdered child
beauty pageant contestant] JonBenét Ramsey, who are fascinating because
of their mystery. I also have a lot of fetishes that come from pop
culture—things like “Tom & Jerry” cartoons where we see a woman in
high heels pointing her red fingernail, but that’s all you ever see.
TAN:
Where do you get most of your material? Do you work from newspaper and
magazine photographs, live models, memories or from sketches?
MM
I’m a closet photographer. My house is filled with big movie lights so
I can take photographs whenever I want. I don’t really like to show my
photographs, but if I might brag, I think they’re pretty good. I like
to photograph a person before I paint their portrait and lighting is
very important. I don’t necessarily work directly from the photograph,
but I want to have something in my head when I begin.
TAN: Can you name some artists who have influenced your work?
MM
I love the surrealists. I have a Dalí video where he refuses to do an
interview with Orson Welles for his own documentary that I love. I also
like what Man Ray did with film and shadows. And Egon Schiele has been
a big influence on me. I enjoy looking at Bacon’s notebooks and his
studies because it reminds me of how I work.
TAN: What do you
think about Matthew Barney? You’re both interested in creating
elaborate personas with detailed histories and philosophical
underpinnings.
MM I have an extreme love/hate for Matthew
Barney because I’m jealous that he is able to do so much. Someday I’d
like to work with him, or beat him up for being so good at what he
does. I have every one of his books and bootleg copies of the
“Cremaster” series. We both incorporate the same type of manic detail
in our work.
TAN: In previous interviews you’ve said that
the name Marilyn Manson refers to “the disturbing dualism of American
culture”. Can you explain what you mean by this?
MM In the
1990s, one channel on the television would be investigating the secret
behind Marilyn Monroe’s death, while [talk-show host and investigative
journalist] Geraldo Rivera was interviewing Charles Manson on another.
To me, Monroe and Manson were equally famous for completely different
reasons. Besides the obvious contrasts of beauty and ugliness, and
female and male, I think that Monroe had a dark side and Manson has
strange moments of coherent philosophy. For me, being Marilyn Manson is
my art. My brain doesn’t shut off, so it’s not as easy as saying that
Marilyn Manson is just a stage persona; it’s me and I don’t think about
it any other way.
TAN: You recently developed your own brand
of absinthe called Mansinthe. Did you start drinking absinthe because
of the romantic associations it has with writers and artists like Edgar
Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, Charles Baudelaire and Vincent van Gogh?
MM Yeah, I think so. I like it because it doesn’t make me drunk and it helps me to create.
TAN:
You’ve been interested in the creative energy of Weimar Germany for
some time now. I realise that there’s a historic specificity to the
period, but there are some interesting parallels in terms of cultural
excess and the bankruptcy of our financial institutions. Do you think
the global recession might lead to increased creativity by artists?
MM
If money becomes an issue, artists will probably resort to the basics.
I think it will make people appreciate the things that they’ve cre-ated
with their own hands that have a personal and spiritual value.
TAN: Do you consider yourself a spiritual person?
MM I think I’m 100% a spiritual person. If I didn’t care about the world, I wouldn’t put something into it.
интерьвью (то же что говорилось в видео постом ниже)
he Art Newspaper: I understand that you sleep by day. When do you paint?
Marilyn
Manson: It’s easiest for me to paint late at night when I’m at my most
creative, around 3am. I’ve been making a new album and the band works
from 8pm until about 4am, so I often come home and paint in silence.
It’s a real escape for me because it’s the thing I can do when no one’s
around.
читать дальше
Marilyn
Manson: It’s easiest for me to paint late at night when I’m at my most
creative, around 3am. I’ve been making a new album and the band works
from 8pm until about 4am, so I often come home and paint in silence.
It’s a real escape for me because it’s the thing I can do when no one’s
around.
читать дальше