NOAH DILLON: You wanted to look at and talk about a de Kooning painting. So why did you pick Easter Monday (1955 – 56)?

DANIEL HERR: Well there’s this one, and there’s another at the Guggenheim, Composition (1955), and when I was around 17 or 18, visiting New York, I remember seeing both paintings a lot. I didn’t really understand them, but I remember thinking that they must be what painting is. I don’t think I’ve seen the one at the Guggenheim in person since then because they just don’t ever seem have it out. But this one’s always here. I really like this one.

This body of work from 1955 is one of the best that he made. There are others — ’77 for example was incredible — but this work is special, and this is definitely a larger, grander piece of that series.

When MoMA did de Kooning’s retrospective, in 2011, there were several paintings from that period together. There was Police Gazette (1955) and Saturday Night (1956), etc. I remember thinking how they must have looked when he made them — how much brighter and striking the colors must have been, because who knows what he actually used when he painted this.

It’s a pretty stark contrast to the van Goghs that we were just looking at.

Those paintings were made 75 years before this one and they still look perfect today. It’s kind of sad. But he did mostly use good materials after this. And I guess the quality of the color is not really the point of his work anyway.

You can see, too, that this one probably inspired Robert Rauschenberg. Over here, in the same gallery, you have Rauschenberg’s Winter Pool (1959), which uses newspaper and paint in a similar way. You can imagine Rauschenberg — on whom de Kooning was a big influence — seeing this and taking it for his own work. This is one of the paintings where the newsprint is still visible. He would use newspaper to soak up the oil, or keep the surface wet when he wasn’t working on the painting. In part because the newsprint is visible and was transferred, this painting has the feeling and ideas of collage with paint that I find really interesting.

He did a lot of stuff that people do now. He used to throw pieces of paper on the floor, randomly, and then draw over them, and then rearrange the pieces of paper on the canvas to transfer them. He was able to synthesize all these different painting movements in his head. What’s interesting about this series, and maybe the Woman series, was that it is to me the first de Kooning style; there was no question that this was a de Kooning. It wasn’t a copy of Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, or Arshile Gorky. I’m sure he knew what he had stumbled upon, because the work looks a lot different than it did even just five years before. And this was also the first series where there wasn’t a central figure anymore.

So it doesn’t have anything that had formerly held the image together?

Well it probably did. He would always say “the figure is in there somewhere.” He called these landscape paintings, or cityscapes. It’s dark, gray, there’s the newsprint, and it resembles architecture and billboards and things you look at when you walk down the street.

And there are perspectival elements that imply a street.

Yeah: lights, people walking, motion… And the fact, too, that it’s vertical, not a pastoral view. And this little patch of green is like a Green Spaces park or plaza.

What does this artwork mean to you and the paintings you make? You’ve talked about seeing this when you were younger and it being an example of what painting is. What does it mean now?

I think it still impresses me as what painting could be. I didn’t understand it at the time, not at all. I don’t think I really understood him until I was in my mid or late 20s and I’m still learning now. He is like Picasso. He was studying Picasso basically forever; he couldn’t ever get away from that influence. And there was no reason to, because the guy made so much work and there were so many different styles, and all of it was so rich with material and intense, creative personality.

I think you can find a lot of interesting stuff by working in someone’s shadow.

You can see Picasso in this, but de Kooning’s definitely not trying to make it look like a Picasso. It’s hyper-sensitive yet hyper-aggressive. The whole series is aggressive, in the way that he made these, and the subsequent landscapes, like The Door to the River (1960), at the Whitney.

You can see Picasso here, too, in the newspaper: that element of collage is similar to his use of pasted-in or painted newspaper, faux bois, or other materials. Obviously it’s translated into something else and may be happenstance, but it is funny the way that this carries through. And, again, one can carry it forward to Rauschenberg creatively misinterpreting this move by de Kooning.

I really wouldn’t be surprised if Rauschenberg saw this de Kooning and based his entire career off of this one painting. I mean, I would have done that. There’s no reason not to. You’d be an idiot not to.

[laughing]

His intuition as a painter is so precise, so sharp.

Can you point to anything in particular that speaks to that in this?

I think every mark in here is incredibly precise. There’s no excess, nothing insufficient, or that’s too soft. In a certain way everything that’s there is supposed to be. It has this quality that all great paintings have where it just looks like it painted itself. And at this point he’s 51 years old and he’s pretty much mastered this style of painting, which explains why he then went and did something totally different. And five years after that it’s totally different again.

He was also really sharp intellectually. He gave a few public talks early on and they’re really, really funny, really eclectic, like “The Renaissance and Order” (1949) or “What Abstract Art Means to Me” (1951). He talks about the history of art and what people thought about, using imaginary painters who see things a certain way but without understanding how to see it from a historical context. They’re kind of like Surrealist, absurdist prose poems — like reading DeLillo or something. I still can’t tell half the time if he’s just teasing people or if he means things literally or if it’s a language barrier. He definitely had a sense of humor about it.

And he knew what was going on. In one of those talks, he identifies Duchamp as the most important artist of the era. He said, basically, “Duchamp is a one-man movement and he’s showing people that everyone can be their own movement, and you only have to do what you think is important.” And he said that was more important than what he himself was doing, more important than painting. He was saying that before Duchamp was even taken seriously by most people.

Do you feel like this is a particularly relevant painting, or that de Kooning’s work is especially relevant right now in a way that isn’t being thought about, recognized, or has been forgotten?

Definitely it has come back, as with the MoMA retrospective, or the shows at Gagosian and Pace in recent years.

You could see the influence in recent shows, such as “The Forever Now.” As a painter, though, I kind of liked it better when it wasn’t popular. I remember being in school and painting like this and people would be like, “What are you doing? You can’t do this. Stop it.” Now everyone thinks they are abstract artists. The irony is that de Kooning didn’t identify at all with the term “abstract art.”

They’re also all much younger than he was when he made this painting. You described how long it took de Kooning to get out from under Picasso, and it’s going to take them time to get out from under de Kooning, and whoever else they’re looking at.

Do you want to say anything about this artwork in this gallery, in this museum? Does that have any bearing on what it looks like to you, how you experience it?

He’s a New York painter; it’s made in New York and it gets to live in a New York museum forever. Seeing the museums and galleries in person, you learn what kind of artist you want to be. Every time I would visit the city I would go the Met and I started wanting to see the de Koonings. I remember I thought they were ugly, early on. I always thought about how ugly the Woman paintings are.

They’re kind of a mess.

They’re definitely not clean. And I thought art was supposed to be clean because that’s what my teachers told me. Or maybe I just had a clean upbringing.

What do you make of the title, Easter Monday?

It has the ambivalence and duality that critics talk about with respect to his work. But a lot of times he and other New York School painters, in general, didn’t title their work. They used names like Composition X or Untitled XI, or Picture or whatever. Or their wives or girlfriends titled the work. Nobody really cared that they didn’t care what the title was. I like it. It’s Easter Monday: a special day but an ordinary day

Some of this generation titled their works, too, as a reflection of where they were in their lives. They named their paintings for the season or the day, or a place, such as Richard Diebenkorn’s various series. I connect with that, too, because those were about making a painting that reminds you of a certain place. His work in the Hamptons wasn’t serene, but the palette was different — a little brighter, a little more floral. All of his work is intense though; there are no laid-back de Koonings.

Do you want to say anything else about why it’s important to the work that you make?  

I just like how American his work is, even though he’s technically European. It’s so America-in-the-‘50s — tough, with a cigarette. He’s like a boxer, bashing away while he listens to Igor Stravinsky. The poor immigrant boy who comes of age during the time of American empire. There are all these influences: the classical Dutch art-school training, Surrealism, Existentialism, working in advertising and sign painting, the poverty of the Depression, and then meeting all these other artists around him like Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Philip Guston, Josef Albers.

What I’m always asking myself is what didn’t he do? The same things he was asking probably about Picasso. But if you’re starting to learn how to play jazz you don’t begin with third-tier improvisers. You go to Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, John Coltrane. If you’re interested in painting, you don’t start with lesser artists. De Kooning is what he is for a reason; it’s not like he just happened to become an important painter. He’s better. It lets you see where the bar is, how high it is. That’s important if you want to continue to do something different.

The post Tell Me: with Daniel Herr appeared first on artcritical.

Todd Mauritz, founder and director of M23 Project Space, recently hosted a cocktail party for friends, including gallery artist Daniel Herr. After badgering everyone I could think of for summer recipes, Mauritz was the only one gracious enough to oblige me, which he happily did. In between drinks and pizza, we talked about the Kennedy assassination, art, politics of the past 15 years, Mauritz’s recent trip to Shelter Island, and the surprisingly temperate weather we’ve had in New York all summer.

M23 maintains a project space uptown, but has also held experimental offsite exhibitions in Brooklyn, Miami, London, and the Chelsea Hotel. Mauritz explained his project space in this way:

I’ve been doing M23 for three years. We’ve done a couple of really fun things, some in collaboration with other people. We did an Armory after-party at The Hole NYC in 2012, working with ArtStation. Then, the following August, Matt Maust and Sam Owens approached me to have a show at Danese. At that point I decided to make a bigger go at it.

I’d worked for a few galleries before that, and I learned a lot about the business, so it seemed like kind of a no-brainer. I was preparing to leave and had a temporary space already. I named the project M23 for a lot of reasons: my name is Mauritz, but I’m shy and don’t want or like it to be about me, like “Mauritz Projects” or something. The M23 is the bus to Chelsea and I lived on 23^rd Street. M23 is a guerrilla group and the things we’ve done have been guerrilla, insurgent-style events. It’s also a motorway out of London, a male-to-female cable-connector, and a type of semi-automatic pistol. So the title came loaded with all these powerful allusions.

Daniel Herr: So why did you decide to make it a project space instead of a more traditional white-cube gallery? Or is it a kind of hybrid? How did that come about?

Mauritz: It kind of happened quickly and what I’m doing is, I think, kind of a response to the way that the market is changing so quickly. Part of it was noted in that “Saltz on the Death of the Gallery Show” essay — clients don’t even need to come into the gallery anymore, but you still need a space to create your vibe. You can create your vibe online, like I do with my Twitter and Instagram posts, but you still need that space where you can show people that you’re organizing and hanging beautiful shows and that people are showing up and taking you seriously. So part of my business model is to have three or four big events each year, in addition to the exhibitions. I still plan to have a regular exhibition schedule, but I think having too much can kind of burn out your base. So I aim for that and for maintaining mobility.

Noah Dillon: You move around a lot and do a lot of your events outside of the project space, right?

Herr: But the first one was at the Chelsea Hotel.

Mauritz: That’s right; that was the first official M23 event. The project had been going for about a year, but I wanted to mark the gallery’s initiation and have it born at the Chelsea Hotel. A photographer named Tim Nazzarro approached me for the launch of his book No Bad Faith (2013), which had as its subject Liza Thorn. She was Courtney Love’s protégé and had been the muse for several fashion houses, including Yves Saint Laurent, and she had a band called Starred. So it felt like a good fit and the hotel jumped at the chance to sponsor the event. We had security people with black suits and earpieces, and it looked really official. And they work with Nadine Johnson PR, which was great and started a relationship with them; we’re looking forward to future events with them.

Herr: It was a really good turnout. That place was packed. I felt obliged to Instagram the pre-war-era tub overflowing with empty Heinekens.

Dillon: Yeah, I remember that. There was a video, and the space was under construction so it gave it a kind of punk rock flavor.

Mauritz: After that we had an event in London. We wanted to make it event- and artist-driven, bringing the art to where people would be interested rather than waiting for them to come to the gallery space. At the Ace Hotel we installed a permanent mural by Matt Maust, which debuted during Frieze. (It’s also where I stole these tumblers we’re drinking from.)

[laughing]

The space was small, so we limited attendance to RSVPs and we had about 30 amazing galleries, curators, and artists show up. We served duty-free Hendrick’s gin and we’d produced a making-of video and projected it in the room during the reception. It was dark, everyone was ginned-up, and it felt really intimate and sensitive. The room the piece was installed in wasn’t completed, so they had us on a second floor and someone from the hotel was working with me. They gave us a key so we could take people downstairs, a few at a time, and let them into the space so they could see it in a really personal way. Coming from my previous gallery experience the whole thing felt totally surreal: I’m in London, at Frieze, people are showing up here, and we’re doing something that isn’t done in a normal gallery but works really well.

In Miami, the collector Craig Robins set us up with a space in the Design District, where we did a show called “Video Vaudeville.” I brought a projector in my bag and showed videos in a suite there. Francis Alÿs let me show his 1997 video Paradox of Praxis 1 (Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing), where he pushes a block of ice around Mexico City until it melts completely.

Dillon: That’s a great video.

Mauritz: Yeah, I was really happy that he gave me permission, which lent it some cred. And it’s so perfect for Miami.

We participated in “Pyramid Scheme,” a group of shows with curators selecting curators who organized simultaneous exhibitions under one umbrella program. We did the first one in Brooklyn and are going to do another one in Los Angeles. In October I’m going back to Frieze, but I’d like to hold an M23 event in Berlin for a couple of weeks prior to that. I’m really excited by the itinerant nature of our programming. And I’m really proud of the events and we’ve had really great crowds. But with my social media work, with people following me on Twitter and Instagram…

Herr: You’ve got like 5000 followers on Twitter, and the Times says at least 70% of them are likely to be actual people!

I’m into the social media and web presence that you’ve developed. You seem really careful about curating it. Sometimes people can let it get out of hand.

Mauritz: Yeah, and with that I’ve found that I’ve got as many followers in London as I do in New York. I never got this stuff, never had a Facebook page or anything, but it’s been really great in building the brand. The physical space, which I kind of stumbled into, is a beautiful old French-style apartment. It’s packed with work and people can come and see the work. As cool as the event-driven nature of the project has been, I’d like to make a bigger commitment to developing the space as a locus for all this work. The artists that I work with — like Daniel, who I am such a fan of — I am really happy to have their work and have been very selective. I thought, How is he not a huge star?

Herr: Because I haven’t reached my Jesus Year.

[laughing]

But I’m honored to be included in the space. I think the programming is really solid. It’s cool the idea that you can get this group of artists together that make really different kinds of work and then grow from that, instead of getting a space and then trying to decide who to show.

Are you doing something in Miami this year?

Mauritz: I’ve already got my ticket, but I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t want to jinx it if I didn’t get in.

Dillon: Well, here’s hoping. Cheers!

Mezcal23 Cocktail

Ingredients:
Mezcal
Tequila
Triple Sec liqueur (Cointreau preferred)
Limes
Whole black peppercorns

Tools:
Shot glass
Cocktail shaker + strainer
Pepper mill or chef’s knife to crack peppercorns

-Juice the limes and set aside
-In the cocktail shaker start with 3 parts of your favorite tequila using a shot glass to measure
-Add 2 parts Cointreau (or another triple sec) and one part fresh limejuice
-Add ice and shake for 20 seconds
-Using the strainer, pour the mix into an 8 – 12 oz glass over ice (depending on your glass you may want to use large ice cubes)
-Top the cocktail with one part Mezcal, which should be at room temperature and poured slowly so that it floats on top of the cold drink
-Add cracked black pepper to taste and garnish with a slice of lime on the glass’s rim
-Most importantly, be sure to multiply the formula to accommodate all of your guests — sharing is important

Enjoy!

M23 Project Space is at 61 West 74^th Street. Todd Mauritz tweets at @m23co and can be found on Instagram at mauritz228. The gallery’s website is m23.co

Daniel Herr is an artist living and working in Brooklyn.

The post Mezcal23: Todd Mauritz’s Summer Cocktail Recipe appeared first on artcritical.