I met Adrian Ghenie in 2013, when he made a vibrant impression over the artistic world. Back then he was very present in the media, but I wanted to hear a better story. It's only now I decided to restart the search of a convenient platform to publish our discussion. Thanks to Les Nouveaux Riches Magazine you can read now a shortened version of this dialogue.
Here is the extended one.
Sibi - Bogdan Teodorescu, 2013, Untitled (Portrait of A. G.), collage
Adrian Ghenie: I’m sorry that we’re meeting a bit later, but I’ve been painting until late last night, almost until morning.
Bogdan Teodorescu: Thank you for making time for me.
AG: Sometimes I get some of the students to help me. Nowadays I work with very large surfaces and I leave some things in the hands of others. It helps. What is your story?
BT: I wanted to meet you for an interview, because I think it’s essential to personally meet the people who inspire me and with whom I can have a lively exchange of ideas. I understand that public people are more exposed, there is a price to pay. However, would you agree to an interview? Maybe you have certain agreements with the galleries representing you…
AG: Not at all, no gallery can influence my personal decisions. I don’t have to ask for permission from anyone if I want to give an interview. Anything you’ve seen in the press, it’s because I agreed to it. I don’t like interviews, but I don’t like rejecting the ones who have a duty to fulfill either. Also, I don’t like that they are conducted by unprepared people, or ones that rush through the subject and lose the essence. The dialogue can last for two hours, and at the end you’re left with one page of text. A lot is cut out and only what they believe to be more interesting is published. Often, the selection does not say anything and is inconsistent.
BT: I have a feeling that you’re very shy or embarrassed in video interviews. It looks like something is bothering you.
AG: I’m not shy. But I also don’t think I have that much to say.
BT: I have the dialogues of David Sylvester and Francis Bacon with me, and I underlined some questions and answers that I’d like us to do together. I also brought one about Richter, with a very good interview. [It is the one with Robert Storr in 2001, published in Gerhard Richter, Doubt and Belief in Painting, MOMA, NY]
AG: I like this style of interview more. I’d like to do this.
BT: I’m afraid we don’t have much time. Like yourself, I went to university in Cluj. My wish to see you is not so much linked to your continuously rising fame. I like verifying some ideas with artists of a certain relevance, ones whom I consider tangible presences, alive and capable of communicating something unexpected, if not always through words, at least through smiles or glances. A direct contact is needed for that. Undoubtedly, they communicate the most through their work. There are many notable exceptions, for that matter. I often see the person behind the work, without allowing myself to be distracted by predictable links between the two. Otherwise, where would all this force come from, if not from an experience lived in a special way?
AG: You’re two, three years younger than me, right? I don’t even remember how many years I spent at university. Maybe five? University was a time of few notable events. I mostly remember how I met Victor (Man), Șerban (Savu) and Mihai (Pop). Victor was a rascal. He started painting after he had an epiphany in front of an El Greco painting in a museum (in Hungary?). He didn’t study, he was a problem for the others. After he started painting, things changed. Șerban however was very quiet, well-behaved and had an excellent sense of humour, often self-deprecating. He managed to make us all get along. I wasn’t great either, a mediocre student, without much merit. Maybe only sports gave me a bit of character. I played a lot of basketball, art didn’t interest me as much. I think both my brother and I inherited some sort of depression from our father.
BT: Is this depression constant? Does it last long when it manifests itself?
AG: Yes, sometimes for very long, whole periods of emptiness. My father was a dentist, my mother was a dental nurse. We were much alike, he was always disinterested, indifferent to how things were going, so when he retired he treated people for free, didn’t take their money. He just kept going on like that. I don’t know if he was being generous, but he certainly didn’t care about much. He died when he was about seventy. I didn’t mourn him, or my grandmother. But I think it would have been different if it happened to someone younger. I understand that we have to die someday, but not when we are young.
BT: Do you like El Greco?
AG: Yes.
BT: And De Chirico?
AG: De Chirico too.
BT: Are you afraid of death?
AG: Not of death, but rather of old age, when you become helpless, useless and you slowly lose your identity. You look in the mirror and suddenly you see someone else, with an expression you don’t recognize. You realize you are already dead. This terrifies me. My mum still looks the same as I’ve always known her, even though she’s quite old. My brother is almost fifty, forty-eight, I think. He’s still all right.
BT: You feature dentures and dental molds in your work.
AG: Those were the things I had available. My dad was more of a dental surgeon, maxillofacial surgery, than a dentist.
BT: There are also big house plants, which gives me a bit of a distressing feeling. Everybody associates them with stagnant hallways, the old tourism agencies for example, or public institutions. They were always at the post office.
AG: There wasn’t much space in our house so we couldn’t keep a big plant, and my dad had a philodendron or two in his practice that I would have liked to have at home.
BT: I think they are a symbol of the decadence typical of the eighties, maybe even earlier. They produce a powerful, stirring impression in me. A sort of nausea, like when you are traveling uncomfortably, when it’s bad outside or you have wet shoes. Generally, your painting seems terrifying to me. Maybe I told you about that time when the cupboard above me landed on my head in the middle of the night, hardly leaving any mark. I was terribly scared! At that moment I despised your paintings. I was instantly reminded of the one where a man is hiding under a desk over which a phone is hanging out of its cradle. I recovered after a day or two and now I don’t find them so scary anymore, even though I still have a feeling of abandonment and heaviness.
AG: Is that how you feel? I’m not especially interested in this aspect…terror.
BT: I’d like to go back now to the questions I prepared. Actually, I can see that we’re getting back to them anyway. The way that you paint somehow expresses a state of alteration, and otherness: people without faces, or with their faces obscured, cream fights that destroy a flawless picture, obscurity, fragmentation, the uncertainty of concrete shapes…
AG: It probably has something to do with my fear of old age and its destructive effects. I don’t think about the possible connections between this and my painting for long. Many art theories don’t go further than opinions. Who cares what they say about one painter or the other, about whichever artist?! An El Greco or a Rothko, for example, or any other from art history, stays where it is, no matter the trend, or the opinion of some painter or reputable art critic. They cross centuries with a sort of indifference. That is what I believe, and I would also like to create something of this independent force, resisting its author and all the others that I mentioned earlier.
BT: I don’t agree, at least not wholly. Artworks, even when they possess a sort of immutable power, are vulnerable in front of an audience, who always guarantees for one art piece or the other. Museums, for example, have radically changed perspectives towards art, and not always for the best.
AG: All right, but think about how despite this vulnerability there are some works that endure everything, stubbornly, distantly. The ancient Greeks, for example. How these people, who did not live nearly as long as we do, worked?! How fast they managed to produce such masterpieces! There are so many of them. They probably lived, I like to imagine, in an immediate contact with nature, in a simpler, freer way. Such energy! It constantly fascinates me. I don’t want much from painting, just to make one or two of these images, that can stand on their own, without having to resort to external elements, to the author’s biography. From this point of view, I’d like to be like Salinger or Greta Garbo, to disappear in total anonymity while only the works remain. I am almost there with Pie Fight Study no. 2 (2008), which I’ve seen on a T-shirt in London, and then on a few posters somewhere. There’s also an album cover.
BT: I find Salinger’s example hard to understand, maybe because of my somehow extroverted personality. I think it’s impossible to create something so independent, and in your case hiding completely is out of the question. Of course, you can make a run for it and isolate yourself somewhere where you can’t be found, but news travels faster now than it did during Salinger’s anonymity, who was not necessarily hard to find but quiet, rather. A few producers found him and asked him for the rights to make Catcher in the Rye into a film. What would you have thought if I had a Pie Fight Study no. 2 T-shirt on?
AG: If you had bought it somewhere it would have been perfect, but if you had printed it yourself, it would have been disappointing.
BT: Another question I had written down beforehand: do you think true works of art are based on suffering, evil or fear? Missing these, would a work be less powerful? Your works, for example. Could you imagine works of a more neutral character, so to speak, or featuring something else, for example beautiful, or even cute objects and themes, in a brighter light? Many are ridiculously wrong when thinking of Mannerism or the 17th century. Watteau is still undervalued.
AG: What critics or commentators think is not important, Watteau is an important painter. And as far as how serious a painting should look, of course I don’t agree that fear or violence, or the suffering of which you hear constantly, are necessary ingredients for success. I really like humor and I like things that make you laugh. Someone said that they (almost) never give Oscars to comedies. The rule should be changed, as, like you said, behind happy and superficial things are usually the other, serious and grave ones. Anyway, it is very hard to do a quality comedy.
BT: In the style of Mozart, for example…I don’t agree, regarding the critics. Their contribution is necessary and sometimes valuable. Again, we’re coming back to the prepared questions, even though I received more answers than what I was thinking of before. You also became famous for the portrait of Ceaușescu filmed by Ciprian Mureșan. At that time, you weren’t as elegant as you are now, you were wearing a tracksuit and an army-style cap. Anyway, I was very impressed by that footage, by the action of painting itself.
AG: But I was in the studio, at work… Ceaușescu did not interest me too much and I am still not very keen on the subject. However, I was fascinated by history, by communism. I always liked history, and I cordially answered Cipri Mureșan’s challenge. I haven’t painted Ceaușescu since. I have a drawing and the courtroom scene. That’s it.
BT: Even so, I feel like it was a revealing strategy. The Western world is constantly waiting for stories about recent Eastern European history, like we are always waiting for American movies with the latest special effects. I don’t fully believe in Romanian art or in the School of Cluj, which is only a name. I am more convinced by the presence of other ‘celebrities’, like Elvis or Laurel and Hardy, in your works. From the same perspective, I am surprised and maybe even upset that you’ve never done a portrait of Michael Jackson, who is avoided by many artists. For the most part, the portraits that have been done of him are quite kitsch. Such an interesting and diffuse character, outside the spotlight…
AG: Michael Jackson has its own special place, regardless of the criticism he has faced. All that is always left behind. I think that even the most ‘serious’ people owe something to Tom and Jerry, which are part of our culture. The same goes with Jackson. Maybe he is more than Marilyn, an artist, or a woman, without much merit, but one who embodied an ideal for the common American. Her legend persisted because of the end that she met.
As for what is expected of us, the School of Cluj does not really exist, and I am drawn to communism or Nazism because they make me think of extreme situations. I wouldn’t suffer if I saw that the world is dying or being destroyed, but I am always curious about what would happen in extreme situations. What would I do?... I associate loss and aggression with these kinds of situations.
BT: This is the domain of existential questions. You said that your father was a strong atheist. This eventually led him into depression and indifference… Is this your case as well?
AG: On the contrary, I wanted to be a priest, and after I read Steinhardt’s journal – to which I return even now – I went to talk to a prior, his confessor. An almost senile little old man, but happy with himself, who turned me away comparing me to the losers who ended up as monks because they had nowhere else to go.
BT: A bit like Wittgenstein… He was rejected three times.
AG: My anguish is not explained by that. It’s just my and my brother’s personality. We are like replicas of our father.
BT: I am going to quote Francis Bacon: I think that life has no sense; but we give it a meaning throughout our existence. We create certain attitudes that give it meaning as long as we exist, even though, in reality, they are meaningless.
AG: I don’t think life is meaningless…
BT: Are you often bored?
AG: Sometimes very much so.
BT: Even painting bores you?
AG: Sometimes, yes. For almost two years I did not paint at all. I lost time and I thought I was lost myself. I did not think of anything, and my plans were very vague. I lived in Vienna for a while, and Victor in Israel. We weren’t amounting to anything. The good thing is that in Vienna I could go to a huge library where I could read and smoke at the same time. This kept me standing. I voraciously read anything I got my hands on, classic literature, books that no one reads anymore. I lived very modestly. I was always at the library. I was also in Italy, where I stayed with a family. I was looking for a job and not thinking about painting anymore. However, when I lived in Baia-Mare I spent a lot of time in the County Art Museum. It’s a building with a few baroque elements, where nobody set foot anymore. The staff, at first annoyed and a bit bothered by my presence – nobody ever went there – easily got used to my repeated visits. It was very quiet, and I was closely studying every work of the famous colony, of which many European painters were also part, some of them having arrived even from Saint Petersburg. I liked many paintings, and the solitary, desolate atmosphere of the building. I was doing something similar at home as well, where I was constantly watching all the small things going on in the street from my balcony. That is how the time passed, without anything truly happening.
BT: Speaking of books, I don’t think you’ve read Don Quixote, and I don’t think you ever will either… I confess it is my favorite book and we would need many hours to talk about it…
AG: Why do you think I won’t read Don Quixote? Maybe I will…
BT: I don’t think so; you and Cervantes seem incompatible… I ended up here because just like others, Orson Welles for example, I can’t escape it anymore. You know he wanted to be buried in Spain. Don Quixote is amazing! Cervantes wrote it when he was in jail and he was completely confident that it would survive. For some it is nothing more than a literary myth. But it is so incredible that Cervantes apparently had blind faith in the fate of his novel, a reward for his repeated failures.
AG: If someone like you falls in love with a 16th-century book, it means that it is as alive and well as it was when it first came out. It’s exactly the example I wanted to give you. A live, independent work…
BT: You read a lot in Vienna, lived in Italy for a while, and now you live mostly in London and Berlin. How much have these journeys changed you? It’s common for people to travel a lot nowadays. I am quite worried about living in multiple worlds at the same time, geographically speaking.
AG: My travels and living in other countries allowed me to understand Romania better. I don’t necessarily miss it enough to return, but I feel comfortable, especially if the rhythm of certain banal activities is not too greatly disturbed. They serve to give me the impression that everything is going well, they are a sort of background for everything that is happening (to me).
BT: Does this include the banality of ‘Romanian errors’? From what I’ve noticed, there’s an absurd discrepancy between intellectuals, artists included, and the rest of the world.
AG: I am not a fan of intellectuals and titles. Often they only cultivate a name. At the end of their career they realize that they haven’t accomplished anything and they often try to impede you. You will soon see my name somewhere in the press after they’ve poked around the activities of Patepievici’s ICR1 . It will be funny to find out that I’ve been fed their money, that I’ve been ‘supported’ by public funds. The truth is I never needed it, the galleries always paid for all my transport and accommodation. I think that I accepted one trip funded by the ICR, after their repeated insistence. They had to sign their activity log; bureaucratic stuff. In any case, if it created some sort of news, I’d be pleased, I’d be glad to be called a lichea2 [he laughs]. It’s a word I like, it has a Balkan sound to it, it’s savory. It belongs to the same group as beizadea3… Lichea, beizadea…It sounds great! Of course, it doesn’t matter as much if I end up on the blacklist or not. That’s how things are in our parts…
BT: Were you supported by your teachers? There are many good things happening in Cluj, despite a disarming appearance of calm, everything seems full of positive creative energy. People make a better team here.
AG: I did not communicate with teachers much during my time at university. Therefore, I was not guided. Their main merit was that they didn’t impede us. Maybe only (Ioan) Sbârciu helped us, but he didn’t do anything. He just left us alone, which was enough.
I don’t know how you thought of us meeting, I wouldn’t have done the same if I were you. In America, in London or Berlin I have the opportunity to meet plenty of celebrities, but I’m not interested in doing that. What would we have to talk about? The photo with Mila Jovovich was because Luana Hildebrandt insisted. She wanted the picture and just got us to take it. I don’t want to be photographed, appear somewhere, be the subject of discussion, I want to be gone without a trace. I’d rather appear in a film, disguised, caricatured, in a ridiculous role, a circus figure, a colorful mask, feathers, rosy cheeks, bright clothes, something not solemn at all. Yes, I’d like that very much!
BT: But your presence is always interesting and quite controlled. You don’t look like someone who doesn’t care at all about their appearance. When you don’t care, you don’t mind it either way, whether you are being photographed or not. You take great care of your appearance and you’ve done quite a few self-portraits.
AG: I offer dialogues, images, to anyone, I don’t care about copyright. It’s a care I don’t want to have…
BT: Can I take a photo or two of you? I wouldn’t think of publishing them, it would be just to keep a more credible memory of this conversation.
AG: I don’t see that necessary.
BT: Now, let’s talk about money…
AG: My mum or my brother don’t have an exact idea of what I earn. My brother knows, but like me, he doesn’t care about many things. We are not interested in the money itself necessarily. He is a plumber. I offered him an artwork once, and even though he knows they go for so much, he refused. I respect this attitude. Things have stayed the same, and our relationship is the same. It is very comfortable. The family routine is my rhythm. This gives me the certainty that everything is all right. Wherever I am, Los Angeles, Denver, London etc., I call my mum and ask how the winter preparations are going, how the food is going. It’s very important for me to know.
BT: Is your mother a good cook?
AG: Yes, right after we finish [the interview] I’ll go to her place to have a meal. We don’t talk much, she’s always left me alone, never meddled in my decisions.
BT: Does she still live in Cluj?
AG: In a six-story building.
BT: Is your place tidy?
AG: No way, it’s a huge mess. I don’t waste my time on that and I often lose a lot of supplies by accident. Sometimes I get help to tidy up.
BT: Even so, you prefer a very tidy look, galleries with white walls, rather than a cluttered space.
AG: You can see better in a white cube. A wall like this [he shows a brick wall in the café] is more beautiful than any of my paintings. It would be unpleasant to put them together. Yes, it’s better on white…
BT: Do you like collecting anything in particular? It’s a sedentary activity, in a way…
AG: I don’t collect things. I bought a few works from other artists, among which there is a small Georg Grosz.
BT: Your paintings are almost exclusively indoor scenes and have a theatrical air, despite the naturalness in your manner of painting. You have gotten very close to color lately, so different from the era of Lenin’s portrait. Everything seems more and more broken, but also, on the contrary, livelier. It is a cinematic universe. Do you watch many films?
AG: Yes, and I don’t have a schedule. I watch anything that catches my eye. I don’t necessarily avoid throwing a glance at films considered not as good either. As a phenomenon, cinematography seems extraordinary to me. When I was younger I used to go to a neighbor who organized video sessions. She had a VHS player and a lot of tapes. The schedule was mixed, but not without logic. At first there were more accessible films, where children could also take part. Then something more serious, and at the end even erotic films. Anyway, I remember what a strong effect Jesus of Nazareth had on me. I still enjoy it.
BT: I’m not that much in love with films. Maybe I am naïve and incapable of accepting it, but all of them, without exception, inevitably end. It is a fascination that is fixed in time. Of course, I have a few favorites, but I never see them twice. I find that tiring. I like music more.
AG: On the contrary, I can watch a film repeatedly. Music does not appeal to me as much. I don’t know too much about what is happening in the music world. I don’t listen to music when I work.
BT: This reminds me of Dalí, who said that music is made by fools. Of course, this opinion never stopped him from writing an opera. At least that is what I knew.
AG: The talk over the superiority of an art is outdated. It’s irrelevant…
BT: I didn’t mean to bring the conversation in this direction. But I think Dalí always had a subtext that doubled any gesture or affirmation. I consider him a true painter, outside of any appraisals. Few people really look at his paintings.
AG: He really has some good works, but the rest lack their own importance. I saw some very good paintings of his in real life. Dalí is one of the celebrities with whom I would have liked to have a coffee. I won’t meet up with anyone, even though I get many requests. I met Michael York once, and I had the urge to know him personally, to get talking to him. It doesn’t happen often, but he is an exception. I strongly thought of him as John the Baptist in Zefirelli’s film. But in other parts as well. I am not that drawn to artists. I appreciate Francis Bacon, but I don’t know what I would have talked about with him.
BT: We haven’t exhausted the subject of indoor scenes; I have a feeling that you don’t like adventure trips. Do you like hiking?
AG: No.
BT: Some people climb mountains for the sake of the workout, others for the view. I like the former the most, the latter disappoints me, the mountain doesn’t look that high to me from the top. Deserts and open spaces captivate me much more, they give you a glimpse of infinity. You look like a city man.
AG: That’s true. Maybe deserts intrigue me more than mountains.
BT: Do you like teaching? How do you work with your students?
AG: Yes, I enjoy working with the students. We philosophize too much regarding the works and do no practical demonstrations. It is a trap for them. I don’t care much about copycats, I am not the one who loses. And I would have no reason to create a school of copycats. If there is a reason for that, I don’t understand it.
Sibi - Bogdan Teodorescu, 2011, Leopard Skin, oil on canvas (one of the works A. G. particularly appreciated)
BT: It’s about helplessness and the incapacity of others to pay attention to what is around them. In your case, I appreciated the attention you gave to my works, hopefully not just politely. [I had shown AG some of my works]. It is part of the necessary qualities of a teacher, and of an artist in general. I don’t know if I am mistaken, but I think it is natural for an artist to be curious and interested in other artists.
AG: You go in so many directions. Everything looks so good and you can do anything, installations, manipulated images, collages… The paintings also look very good. There is too much aestheticism and too much care for the images to be immaculate. Maybe there is an element of otherness that is missing, a certain clumsiness.
Sibi - Bogdan Teodorescu, 2011, Yellow Cross, acrylic and collage on cardboard
BT: Behind my preference for a neat and beautiful approach there is a mannerist philosophy. It’s not mainstream, but it deserves full attention. I think it is not enough to just notice mannerism…
AG: Yes, your approach is mannerist. I would be more economical about it, your repertoire is very vast.
1 n. tr. Romanian Cultural Institute.
2 n. tr. Romanian word of Turkish origin meaning ‘worthless, a man without dignity or morals’.
3 n. tr. Romanian word of Turkish origin meaning ‘prince’.
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