Image Culture

My guest is William Middleton, author of the new biography Double Vision: The Unerring Eye of Art World Avatars Dominique and John De Menil, out now through Knopf.

The book follows the lives of the celebrated art collectors, who over the course of the 20th century forever changed the cultural landscape of their adopted home, Houston, TX. William spent 15 years between Paris, New York, and Houston researching and writing. When you hear him speak about their lives, you can feel the enduring nature of his interest. That may be because the de Menil’s offer a kind of model of civic engagement. They represent the idea that, given the opportunity, we have an obligation to invest in the places we find ourselves. Heirs to the massive Schlumberger oil fortune, Dominique and John relocated from France to Houston during the turmoil of World War II. Over the coming years they would champion the city, creating lasting institutions such as the Menil Collection, the Rothko Chapel, the Byzantine Fresco Chapel, and the Cy Twombly Gallery. They were also outspoken supporters of the civil rights movement, funding key scholarship and exhibition of African American Art at a time when it was seldom granted institutional support. William’s expansive biography considers the impact art can have on society through the lives of two of its most devoted members.

I photographed William at his apartment in New York, surrounded by more than a decades worth of photographs, exhibition catalogues, letters, and manuscripts used in research for the book. His french bulldog Hubert makes an appearance as well. You can see the photograph at www.williamjesslaird.com/imageculture or on Instagram @william.jess.laird or @image.culture

I’d like to thank William Middleton as well as Katie Schoder and the entire team at Penguin Random House. This show is produced by Sarah Levine and our music is by Jack and Eliza. Thanks for listening.

My guest is author Dan Riley, whose debut novel Fly Me was recently released to critical acclaim. Fly Me, set in a fictionalized Manhattan Beach, California in 1972, follows the story of Suzy Whitman, a young stewardess at Grand Pacific Airlines who soon finds herself in the midst of a drug trafficking scheme taking place in the skies. It’s a real page-turner, but somehow still takes its time to revel in the peculiarities of the early 70’s, surf culture, and “stewing” as Suzy calls it. Well researched and perfectly paced, if you’re looking for a great summer novel, I highly recommend it.

I photographed Dan at the offices of GQ Magazine, where he also serves as the Features Editor, and you can see the portrait at williamjesslaird.com/imageculture or on Instagram @william.jess.laird or @image.culture

I’d like to thank Dan Riley, Sarah Goulet, and the teams at Little Brown and Company and GQ Magazine. This show is produced by Sarah Levine and our music is by Jack and Eliza. If you like the show leave us a review, a rating, or share it with a friend! Thanks so much for listening. See you next week.

In 2008 Robert Beck became Robert Buck. He did this in response to an idea that in a state of hypermodernity the status of the Name-of-the-Father had been fundamentally shaken. In its absence as a universal, he says, each of us must invent our own, be it knowingly, explicitly or intuitively. Robert changed his by the exchange of a single vowel. It was a work that marked a major turning point in his life and practice.

I met with Robert at his studio in New York on the occasion of his recent back to back solo shows at Ulterior Gallery. The first, Vestige, premieres a collection of staged Kodak Instant photographs made in the early 80’s during Robert’s first years in New York. The second show, entitled Second Hand, presents Buck’s ongoing series of amended thrift-store paintings, a body of work he began to coincide with the changing of his father’s name.

You can see my portrait of Robert in his studio at www.williamjesslaird.com/imageculture as well as on Instagram @william.jess.laird or @image.culture

You can find more information on Robert Buck at https://www.robertbuck.net/ and http://www.ulteriorgallery.com/

Special thanks to Takako Tanabe and the team at Ulterior. This show is produced by Sarah Levine and our music is by Jack and Eliza. If you like the show consider leaving a rating, a review or sharing it with a friend. Thanks for listening.

My guest is Eileen Myles, whose works of poetry, fiction and criticism have profoundly impacted a generation of writers thinking about narrative, sexuality, and feminism. Eileen came to New York in the early 70’s and became associated with the St. Marks Poetry Project, of which they would eventually be named director. Their iconic 1994 novel Chelsea Girls reflects on this time and, in the process, redefined both the queer novel and autobiographical fiction. They are the recipients of both a Creative Capital Grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship and have published over 20 volumes of poetry and writing.

I spoke to Eileen one morning at her house in Marfa, Texas. You can hear the birds in the background. We made a photograph there and you can find it at williamjesslaird.com/imageculture or on Instagram @william.jess.laird

I’d like to thank Eileen Myles, Mary Farley, as well as Caitlin Murray and Tim Johnson of Marfa Book Company.

My guest is Gideon Jacobs. In 2016 Gideon staged a social media performance piece in which he went on a month long virtual road trip from New York to California. Using other people’s photographs geotagged to his corresponding itinerary and writing fictitious captions that recounted his days spent on the road, he built an extended narrative capturing an acute feeling of self discovery. Of course none of it really happened. Gideon writes that the work might remind us that we don’t just go places and photograph what happens, but what happens is a function of what we photograph. Gideon’s work exists at the intersection of writing, art, and performance, but what connects the disparate parts of his practice is a continual preoccupation with narrative, with the ways it can seduce, inform, and mislead. This has a lot to do with photography, something that’s always been central to Gideon’s work. He formerly served as Creative Director of the storied photojournalism agency Magnum Photos, and regularly contributes writing on photography to publications such as The New Yorker, The Paris Review, VICE, and Bomb Magazine. His fiction, much like the writing in #INSTAROADTRIP2016 is highly experimental, often manifesting in extremely short works that can be read on a single page or screen. It’s a way, he says, of pushing back against more established modes of writing and tailoring work for a new kind of consumption. It’s through thinking about the ways we’ve built narratives in the past, either through photography or the written word, that Jacobs finds new ways to consider how narrative functions today. Here I am with Gideon Jacobs.

You can see more of Gideon’s work at http://www.gideon.works/ and you can see my portrait of Gideon at home on Instagram @william.jess.laird @image.culture or at www.williamjesslaird.com/imageculture

On the show is the artist Juan Antonio Olivares. Juan’s highly interdisciplinary work resists traditional object-oriented art production. Instead, his work often manifests itself as video. He first studied art at Columbia University, before moving to Germany to study at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf under acclaimed conceptual photographer Christopher Williams. It was during this time that Juan began work on his film Moléculas, a 10 minute CGI animation following a one-armed teddy bear who ruminates on family, loss, and our place in the world. If it sounds strange, it’s because it is, but it was also one of my favorite works of the year, and I wasn’t alone. Moléculas was recently acquired by The Whitney and is now on view at the museum through June 10th. I encourage everyone to go see it.

I got the chance to photograph Juan at his Brooklyn studio, and you can see the portrait at www.williamjesslaird.com/imageculture as well as on Instagram @william.jess.laird or @image.culture

You can find more information on Moléculas here: https://whitney.org/Exhibitions/JuanAntonioOlivares

I’d like to thank Juan Antonio Olivares, John Miller, the Columbia University and Barnard College Art Departments, and the entire team at the Whitney Museum, especially to Jane Panetta and Allie Tepper. Our show is produced by Sarah Levine and our music is by Jack and Eliza.

My guest is Timothy Morton. Timothy’s work spans the fields of ecology, Romantic literature, and ontology, and he is considered one of the world’s most influential living philosophers. In his book Ecology without Nature he calls for us to cease considering nature and humanity as separate entities, and instead foster a kind of ecological awareness, a sense of the interdependence of all things. I met with Timothy in Marfa, Texas on the occasion of Hyperobjects the new show at Ballroom Marfa, which he co-curated with Executive Director Laura Copelin. Organized around his concept of the same name, Hyperobjects explores entities so large and complex that we lose our ability to understand our individual relationship to them; things such as global warming, plastic, and nuclear waste that have grown to such a scale as to defy comprehension. Morton argues that in order to understand such things, we have to shift the way we understand our relationship to the world. To this end, artworks in the show, including work by Tara Donovan, Postcommodity, and Emilija Skarnulyte, seek to de-center human perception and our idea of what constitutes an object.

I’d like to thank Timothy Morton, Laura Copelin and the entire team at Ballroom Marfa with special thanks to Peyton Gardner and Gabriela Carballo. You can see my portrait of Timothy at Ballroom with Tara Donovan’s work Untitled (Plastic Cups) on Instagram @william.jess.laird as well as at williamjesslaird.com/imageculture

On EP 009 I speak with Dung Ngo. A prolific editor, publisher, and curator, Dung began his career studying architecture at Rice University, going on to curate exhibitions on architecture and design for the School of Architecture at Rice. It was during this time that Dung began consulting on titles for a range of publishers, as well as releasing his own book Bent Ply, a history of plywood furniture. In 2005, Dung was named Senior Editor and Creative Director of Rizzoli, where he oversaw definitive monographs for many of the world’s most influential architects, designers, and photographers, including a series of books with Francois Halard, of which he is particularly proud. In 2012 Dung began his own imprint, August Editions, a niche publishing house focusing on contemporary visual culture. Their most recent title is The Women of Woodcock, a book made in collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson exploring the set and fashion of Phantom Thread as seen through the photographs of Laura Hynd. Dung also publishes the magazine August Journal, each issue of which offers a deep dive into a single city, immersing the reader in its art, architecture, and design. I photographed Dung at his home in Carroll Gardens.

Iman Raad’s painted works, often made directly on the wall, draw on influences such as Persian miniature painting, truck ornamentation in South Asia, and the imagery of digital glitches. Rejecting traditional representation, Raad instead populates his works with anthropomorphized objects, animals, and plants, building complex narratives with a collapsed sense of time. Iman’s use of flat planes of primary color may hint at his early experiences working as a graphic designer in his native Iran before moving to the states to study art. In addition to his painted and sculptural works Iman has collaborated with his partner Shahrzad Changalvaee on a series of artists talks titled Two Headed Imagomancy, which examine the nature of language through storytelling. He took his MFA from Yale in 2017 and recently had his first New York solo show, Tongue Tied, at Sargent’s Daughters on the Lower East Side.

On the show I talk with photographer Matthew Leifheit. Matthew approaches photography as both an artist and a curator. In addition to his own work he has published Matte Magazine, a journal for new ideas in photography, since 2010. Matthew also spent three years serving as the photo editor of Vice, in addition to writing for other platforms including Time and Aperture. In 2017 Leifheit graduated with an MFA from Yale where his thesis focused on a set of rejected photographs he originally took on assignment for the Yale Daily News. His work is held by ICP, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the MoMa Library among others.

I met Matthew at his home one day in Brooklyn, and you can see the portrait we did on Instagram @william.jess.laird as well as at www.williamjesslaird.com/imageculture

You can see more of Matt’s work at www.matthewleifheit.com and you can find Matte Magazine at MoMa PS1, Printed Matter, and ICP.