“I’m trying to achieve a more realistic approach to the arts”—Lucien Smith is back and Serving The People!

High praise can come at a high price—Lucien Smith has felt both sides of that same coin. The contemporary artist had the art world transfixed on his every move after a “meteoric rise” in 2013. His process-based artwork earned him ‘critical darling’ status amongst the industry’s elite with the likes of The New York Times and Vogue dubbing him ‘the art world wunderkind’. His art would repeatedly exceed valuations at auction—Artsy estimated that his work generated $3.7 million in 2014. His success as an artist saw other avenues of opportunity open up: he went on to give a TED Talk, fronted a Supreme campaign and made Forbes’ 30 under 30 in both 2013 and 2014.

But for Smith, things were not as they needed to be and in 2015 the penny dropped. He decided to step away from the spotlight and take a hiatus. He had become dissatisfied with the way the industry operated—souring relationships with gallerists had led to personal concerns about art’s relationship with commerce. He had become entangled in a process that he ultimately didn’t agree with.

So in 2016, Smith would launch and redirect his energy into STP, which stands for ‘Serving The People’. STP functions as a non-profit creative initiative which aims to provide “a platform for creative inquiry and experimentation”. The experience of giving back to a younger generation and using what he had learned from his career to put them onto “healthier” paths renewed his desire to present his art publicly.

This August, seven years after he shot onto the scene, Smith’s debut exhibition opens at the Parrish Art Museum showcasing ten of the ‘Rain Paintings’ that fuelled his ascension.

SLEEK spoke with Smith to discuss his self-imposed hiatus, the lack of public funding for artists and the elements of tragic-comedy in his ‘Rain Paintings’. You can read a condensed version of the discussion below:

I’d like to start by talking a little bit about the ‘Rain Paintings’. I believe I’m right in saying that the final set was created in 2013. A lot has happened in the last seven years for you personally. Now that you have the luxury of retrospect, does the work tell a different story than it did back then?

The first rain paintings were made in between 2011 and 2012, and this set of ten [featured in ‘Southampton Suite’] were made at a separate location a year afterwards, as a last dance. Having a museum show for these works has definitely been a goal and dream of mine for quite some time. To see that materialise and to have done that independently of any system, it’s a huge opportunity. Seeing those paintings hanging in that room after not seeing them for so many years definitely takes on a new meaning.

Can you share how you went about creating the ‘Rain Paintings’ – as I understand it part of the process involves filling a fire extinguisher with paint.

I was looking at Charles Schulz illustrations of Charlie Brown, not the finalised animations but sketches. I came across this one sketch – he’s standing in rainfall in this melancholic image. I was really drawn to the trope of one individual under a dark cloud. It’s got this slapstick feeling… you feel bad, but it’s also funny in a way. A lot of the titles of those early ‘Rain Paintings’ were taken from rom-coms, like ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding’. I was really interested in how those movies took dramatically traumatising experiences but put them in a light where they were comedic. I think that socially that’s how we deal with a lot of issues. We just laugh at them. I was trying to figure out a way to manifest that feeling – that trauma and comedy within a painting and rain presented itself to me at that moment.

Growing up in New York City, I was very aware that graffiti artists were using these outdated fire extinguishers – not the ones that spray powder but the ones that spray water. You fill them with paint and then I just started experimenting with that tool. There’s a lot of different variables that come into play when making those paintings: the distance you are away from the canvas, the viscosity, the 3 to 1 ratio of paint, what kind of paint you use, how soluble the paint is. Once I’d figured out that process it was really just waving a wand.

In 2015 you took the decision to step away for a little bit from the art scene. What’s changed and how does it feel now that you’ve chosen to re-engage with the gallery format of presentation.

I was always really into institutional shows but there’s more to it than that. A lot of artists will have dealers or gallerists that will sell works to a collector on the pretence that they’ll also buy another work and donate it to a museum. I don’t necessarily agree with that model. I think that it’s kind of contrived. I battled with a lot of these notions. It just didn’t sit right for me to be an artist that was in a museum show but I had got in not necessarily playing by the rules. Whether it be market manipulation or persuasion of a museum board. It wasn’t really something I wanted to be a part of.

In the last four or five years I’ve been really working on my non-profit with much younger artists and just guiding them with the lessons that I’ve learned and get them on healthier career paths. That process kind of gave me a new hope for art.

With this show, it motivated me to take this residency at the Water Mill. I met some of the curators through Robert Willson’s Water Mill foundation and that relationship really blossomed in a natural way which is all one can really hope for as an artist: to develop a healthy communication with the people at the museum. They seem to really appreciate my work and what I was doing and I felt honoured when they asked me to participate in the exhibition.

You spoke a little bit about giving back to the community. Particularly in light of the pandemic, are you concerned at the general lack of arts funding that’s being made available?

I definitely know about a lot of those issues in relation to funding in the arts. I’m a foot in and a foot out. With STP I’m trying to achieve a more realistic approach to the arts: thinking about it democratically—what artists need and what society needs from the arts. It’s been so easy to throw half a million dollars at a public art sculpture you know. That does so much but I started thinking about more efficient ways to use money, time and creativity. We think about how to provide visual platforms even if we can’t give underfunded artists money.

So whilst I think that it’s always a shame that there’s going to be less money in public funds and art residencies I don’t always believe in the effectiveness of a lot of those programs.

STP pretty much runs on nothing. We’re at very early stages of where we’re at, but we have a lot of amazing people doing volunteer work and digitally we’ve been providing a platform over this last year.  We serviced over 100 schools and over 1000 students with no budget. So I certainly do believe there are ways around having no funding.

Is the funding ever going to be wholely effective unless you’re getting the next generation involved?

I think we’re living in an age where digital connectivity is really essential to life and has opened up a lot of doors. A lot of the major creative industries have approached that and been able to deal with it. Music has gone into streaming. The film industry has gone into Netflix and Hulu. Art is one of the last things that is holding onto this older model. It really is selective. The tough pill to swallow is that there will always be great artists but one in a million will ‘make it’ under the current model. There are so many people in the world that are making art and have a creative talent but they aren’t able to showcase it and aren’t able to find an audience. I live in a world where I don’t think that’s necessarily something that people have to live with.

Would you say that the natural world was an inspiration to go out and interact with art?

Initially, it was probably the opposite. It was probably the city. It was definitely me being at school and feeling distracted. But for the scale of work I wanted to be making it was definitely limiting so I moved upstate. That’s probably why I now live in Montauk.

It’s definitely a lot easier for me to breathe and work in open air. As much as I’m inspired by other artists and enjoy having conversations with them, for the most part I’m a recluse and hermit. I do enjoy spending long periods of time in my own thoughts undistracted by others.

As a self-described “hermit”, how have you felt about the wider isolation that society has had to adopt in the pandemic? Has it affected methods or inspirations for artwork?

Honestly… I’ve been self-isolating and quarantining for years. I look at social media and the internet just as much as anybody but it’s distracting. It’s also nullifying. What you see from people on the internet isn’t really the ‘real’ depiction of the world but it’s how I look at it. So oftentimes it really makes me feel disconnected and I can’t really relate to a lot of what I see online. I was almost happy that people were being forced to live with themselves for a bit. I do think the world needs a little bit of that. It made me be able to relate to people a little bit more. For me on a day to day, not much has changed.

Now that you’re finding that you’re relating more to how people express themselves online, is that more useful inspiration for you?

I sit on things a lot longer than I used to. There’s a lot of responsibility that comes with putting images and art out there. The outside world is definitely an inspiration to me. I definitely create work from that pivotal standpoint. I feel a little bit removed from society so that’s kind of where I’m making work from. The stuff that I’ve been making recently has been a lot of appropriated imagery from the internet. I would say that if anything, nature plays more of a setting for me than an inspiration.

What is the difference between a setting and an inspiration?

I feel like my setting puts me in a much better mood or position to be making art. For me, painting has never been an easy thing to do. It’s a laborious thing. I don’t go in the studio grinning from ear to ear excited to paint, because it’s work. But it’s good work and I enjoy it when I’m doing it but I’m selective about what I go in there doing. Being out here, taking a road trip, going camping, being in nature, those things get me to the right mindset where I feel like I can sit down and paint for weeks.

Lucien Smith: Southampton Suite is available to visit at the Parrish Art Museum from 7th August 2020.