Stanley Donwood: the man behind
Radiohead album cover art keeps
comfortably distant and careerless
interview by Evan Pricco
// Juxtapoz (US design magazine), aug. 2007
:: scanned by qwerrie + many thanks to deirdre for the copy
:: scans ::.::. pp. 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11
____________________
I’m convinced that Stanley Donwood dislikes interviews, nor does he do many. He probably doesn’t like his portrait taken or enjoy the banality of questions lunged at him from computers across the globe. And I know for damn certain he’s less than ecstatic about the state of the world. I’m also convinced that Stanley Donwood has the most recognizable portfolio in this issue; an artist whose work has been both over analyzed and highly appreciated by millions (he even won a Grammy Award in 2002 for Best Recording Package with Amnesiac). But today could be the first time you have ever heard his name.
Stanley Donwood is the infamous artist behind rock band Radiohead. He’s responsible for the cover and booklet art for The Bends, OK Computer, Kid A, Amnesiac, Hail to the Thief, and Thom Yorke’s solo record, The Eraser. The artwork is the perfect companion to the band’s lyrics: spacious, distant, challenging, political, and at times dystopian..
For his most current show at Lazrides [sic] Gallery in London this past June, titled If You Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now, Donwood expanded his repertoire by working primarily in etching. Again, his subject matter included politics, alienation, and a little suburbanitis.
All the better to perform an interview with Donwood over email, thousands of miles away from each other. The hope is that this method will spawn answers reflecting the artist’s subject matter. While I’m at it, I’ll try and squeeze some childhood memories, influences, and daily activities from the man himself – and pose only one Radiohead question. I expect intelligent commentary, some clever mocking, and his interpretation on the condition of the modern man. What I find is that he actively refers to man’s uncomfortable complacency within the modern world; not battling, just subservient and perhaps a little too excited about the release of Pirates of the Caribbean III. How is man doing in the new century? Mr Stanley Donwood has some insight he wants to share. – Evan Pricco
— Your work has spanned collage, abstract painting, little demonic Minotaurs, and politically popular slogans to black and white etchings, yet all keeping a certain theme of man and modernity. Somehow I assume you were a rather curious child?
I can’t remember. What memories I have are colored by my subsequent experiences, and therefore can’t be reliable. I remember being curious about adults and the world that they presented me with. I remember making many vows to myself not to do as they did. Some of them I’ve kept; I haven’t learned to drive, for example. I never got a job.
— I wanted to be a detective when I was younger, but I ended up an editor. Not so strong in my convictions, I guess. That’s quite fortunate that you never took a job. If you were to have taken a job, what would it have been?
I was going to be a forestry worker, but it didn’t work out. If I had to get a job it would probably have been something fairly manual like working on the railways or delivering the post. I didn’t have ambition, and I still don’t.
— What kind of subjects did you excel at in school?
I’m afraid I didn’t excel at anything. I was... average. Which was the best way to be if, like me, you were anxious to avoid being beaten up. I was particularly bad at math and religious education, mostly on purpose.
— As a child growing up in the suburbs in England, what kind of things did you draw inspiration from?
I drew inspiration from the almost incalculable sense of disappointment and boredom that everybody carried within them. The sense of indefinable loss. The furious nostalgia for a fulfilling past that never existed. The identical houses, sense of pointless repetition, cul-de-sacs, bungalows, shopping centers, concrete paving slabs, asthma attacks, and the endless hopelessness that was assumed to be normal.
— A lot of the work that you produced in the late ‘90s helped me understand a lot of the disenfranchised feelings I was having growing up in the suburbs of San Francisco. The outline of the anonymous figures shaking hands from OK Computer stands out to me, always. When did you think you began to “get it” as an artist?
I have no idea. The notion of having a career fills me with a looming sense of disaster. I only call myself an artist because it’s convenient shorthand whilst distractedly discussing everyday matters with other adults whilst picking up my kids from school. I’ve always made pictures, whether on pieces of cardboard or disused buildings or canvas or whatever. I found early in life that being good at drawing – or at least passably okay at drawing – meant that girls talked to you as something approaching an equal. Also, it was another good way to make friends with the sort of people who tended to beat weaker people up.
— Would you consider yourself successful, if you even use terms like success, at conveying these disappointments on a canvas? Everything you listed as childhood inspirations show up in your art.
I honestly have no idea. I’m painting today, and I’m not having an entirely good time. One painting will be okay, but I’m not sure about the other one. I don’t consider myself successful, no.
— Okay, if you don’t like to look at art as a career, you don’t consider yourself successful, and you don’t keep a job, what is your daily life like?
Lots of walking or riding a bike, lots of working, lots of housework, lots of looking after a vegetable garden, lots of being with children, lots of smoking, and lots of reading. You get the picture.
— What’s the last book you read?
A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami.
— Was it good? Murakami tends to have some very strong novels.
Still got a couple of chapters to go; although, I’ve read it before. It’s fucking brilliant.
— A lot of the things you listed before in regard to inspirations as a child also pertain to the United States. Does the American landscape influence or interest you?
I’ve only been to the USA three times and it made a big impression on me, especially Los Angeles. LA is a kind of hell, surely, but a fun, seductive, and convincing kind of hell. I much preferred New York. For the rest of that country I cannot speak, as I know it only from television, cinema, books, and photographs. But the way it is, you know, what you have got now we’ll have pretty soon: denim trousers, right wing monetarism, battered trades unions, obesity, violence as entertainment, Coca-Cola, etc, etc, ad infinitum.
— What is the current climate for the European – or specifically the British artist? Juxtapoz having just covered Paul Insect and Mode 2, there are some influential names out there. Is street art the big thing, gallery art — where do you see yourself?
I really don’t know. I keep away from the art world, whatever that is. I’m completely unqualified to pass comment. I don’t feel like I fit in anywhere. I’m very lonely and very sad.
— Do you pay attention to other artists, for fun, out of respect, out of interest?
Kind of. Sometimes I like art, and other times I hate it. I’m more into reading books than looking at pictures.
— Even though you feel lonely and sad, you do get to stand outside of the art world with the advantage of millions of people recognizing your artwork but not picking you out of a crowd, or not even necessarily knowing your name. Seems to be quite the position for an artist who isn’t positioning himself for a life of riches and cocktail parties.
It’s okay. I know that I’m incredibly lucky. “Jammy” we call it here. Jammy means to be lucky without deserving it or even appreciating it. I’d probably be a distraught homeless heroin addict otherwise. But, you know, it’s hard to be happy.
— Do you ever get nervous before an opening of your work? I mean nervous about having to chew the fat with some folks?
REALLY FUCKING NERVOUS.
— What are you currently working on? What are the new batch of drawings and etchings looking like?
Fucking brilliant, if I may allow myself a brief period of arrogance. I’m doing work for the show at Lazarides called If You Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now. It’s all a disturbed exorcism of several apocalyptic themes centered on the idea of suburbia that have given me sleepless nights for a couple of years. There are 10 large-scale photogravure etchings and about eight paintings. And some other stuff, if I get it together.
— So it’s safe to say you’re proud of the new work?
For the moment, yes.
— Do you even listen to Radiohead? Or do they give you a demo, you listen to it once, and go back to listening to Brian Eno outtakes?
I’m listening to the new stuff now. Nigel (Radiohead’s producer) is downstairs playing a bit from a song repeatedly. I kind of listen to it for months while I’m doing the artwork so it seeps into my brain. By the time it comes out I’ll be fucking sick of it. I don’t have any Brian Eno outtakes. I’ve been listening to this German band, Mode Selektor.
I’m unsure where the Brian Eno reference came from. Just thinking of something ambient in a pinch. What else do you prefer in the realm of a nice film and a nice tune?
I loved Pan’s Labyrinth. And I’m very into Mode Selektor. The best music I’ve heard for ages. The new Radiohead work is okay, too.
— Where do you do most of your work?
All over the place. I’ve got a painting studio (a big shed in the middle of nowhere), a computer studio where I’m at now, and a screen printing studio in town. I’ve got a friend whose got a printmaking studio where I do quite a lot of stuff, and I’ve been working in another one up in Cambridge, where I’ve been doing the new etchings. I’m very lucky to have these places; it has taken years to sort my life out.
— Would you say you’re somewhat sorted now?
Probably. Yawn. What next? Car accident? Nuclear war? Yes, I’m “sorted.” I should get a fucking pension or something, if I thought for a minute that there was any point at all.
— Anything else you would like to mention? The weather in England? What you’re doing today? Where the name Stanley Donwood comes from?
The weather is very hot and sunny. I’ve been painting mostly, and next I’m going to melt a lot of wax in a saucepan on the stove in the studio. I can’t remember where the name Stanley Donwood comes from.
— Does anything surprise you?
Everything, all the time. And not pleasantly.
— Are we okay?
No. I can’t reconcile our economists’ and politicians’ idea of endless growth, endless building, endless production with the intimations that we’re a civilization in terminal decline. The world’s largest oil field, the Ghawar, in Saudi Arabia, has peaked. We rely on oil for everything from medicines to pesticides through transport and packaging, and there really is no viable alternative, nor is there likely to be. The suburban experiment, which has been called “the biggest misallocation of resources in the history of humanity,” continues apace, and the most important problems facing us as a civilization are too enormous and terrifying to be addressed by any politician, or indeed the people ruled by them. Infantile politicians like Slair et al are predictably concerned with the manipulation of fear and control. I can’t blame them for this; it’s what the broadly consensual politics of the last 200 years have been geared towards. Our system is the result of the industrial revolution, and as the revolution spins to a halt anew, and far more frightening, politics may emerge. I’m very sorry.
<<< radiohead.presse <<< main