Really Talking Heads Legend David Byrne Is the Outsider Who Got In
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The really Talking Heads legend David Byrne is the outsider who got in. He explains his obsession with Z outsider art and FU ZY how it speaks to his search for utopia THE BIG ISSUE / p25 / June 11-17 2018 Rev Ho wa rd ’ve loved a lot of what’s called function within the strictures of the art Fin outsider art for a long, long time. market or the gallery system, were put into ster Part of it is because there’s an this kind of bucket. These are the outsiders, honesty and directness in a lot of and these are the fine artists over here, and the work. Sometimes you feel that they don’t mix. But they’re being mixed a lot trained artists, either they’ve had more now. They’re being treated sometimes some of that beaten out of them, or as though they are just an artist. And they’ve been seduced by the market or the art whether they’re self-taught, or whether worldI into worrying more about their career they’re apprenticed with someone else or than what they’re actually doing. I think whether they learned in an art school, it there’s a possibility that I might romanticise doesn’t seem to matter as much any more. people who are outside of that world, that Which is encouraging. they are somehow more true to themselves. I’m convinced that a lot of ‘insider’ artists, There’s no guarantee that they are somehow a lot of very successful gallery artists, are more authentic or valid or anything like that. just as troubled and dysfunctional as some But I’m attracted to it. outsider artists are. Yet they’ve managed The Rev Howard Finster put I also find that there’s a sense of exposed somehow to navigate the gallery world. Some Byrne in his pants in his cover painting for Talking Heads’ psyche. A unique way of looking at the world, of their work, I have to say, shows some of the 1985 album Little Creatures or thinking about themselves. It seems raw in same obsessive qualities and repetitive some ways. And it sometimes reveals mark-making that you see from untrained uncomfortable parts of themselves that we people that are driven to produce. The often recognise. I certainly recognise parts borders are really fuzzy. of myself. Some people I know feel that art is only Purvis Young’s art if the intention was work I’ve seen to make art. A very for years. He interesting squiggle of obsessively churned tar on the road might be it out. It just poured beautiful, but it’s not out of him, he art because there was Growth of Creative Photos: Courtesy would fill these no intention behind it. Photos: CBW / Alamy Stock Photo; Anthony Barboza/Getty Images scrapbooks. Some But even then I get of it is incredibly mixed up, because I’ll beautiful and really see something like that rge moving. I was and think ‘oh that’s just Geo Widener watching a as good as some art that Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/GettyPhoto: Michael Ochs Images documentary on I’ve seen.’ Aesthetically, outsider artists On the road to somewhere: Talking Heads in 1977 (l-r): the way it affects me or Dan Miller when I was Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, Byrne, Tina Weymouth how beautiful it is, I wrapping up my don’t see the difference. new record American Utopia, and musing Is the intention really that important? I ‘maybe there should be some sort of image don’t know. that goes with this?’ And I saw a little Some people may be making things Above: Dan Miller’s segment on Purvis Young [who died aged 67 without an intention of making what might art is based around the in 2010] and I thought ‘oh, this might be very be called art. For them they’re just drawing concept of writing words George Widener likes on top of one another; appropriate.’ He does these portraits like the or making marks, or aligning numbers on a to align numbers on Byrne used a portrait by one I used on the record cover that are kind page like George Widener. Or there’s a guy in his artwork the late Purvis Young of benign and angelic figures that appear to California called Dan Miller who just writes on the cover of his new be watching over people. words on top of one another. It might just be album American Utopia The cover for the Talking Heads album something that they do. They’re not Little Creatures was by the Reverend Howard thinking in terms of an art context. But is it P u Finster, a reverend in Georgia. I think he excluded? That seems a bit unfair. r might have been kicked out of his own There seems to be a drive to express v church – who knows where his sermons something in outsider artists. I recognise is went. I’d seen some of his work, probably in that in a drive to write music. Especially in Y an art gallery in New York, and I was knocked my early days, I remember there being this o out. So I asked the gallerist, “Do you think sort of desperation – singing and writing u n Howard would paint a picture to order for a almost because I was desperate to get g record cover?” I asked that the picture be something out. It can be a very healing, square. I think that was one of my big cathartic experience. Even if you don’t know requests, so that it would work as a record what it means or what it’s about or even if it’s cover. He looked at pictures of us and kind of not as finely crafted as you might like. I think incorporated those into his artwork. Me in it’s super therapeutic no matter what part of my underwear. society you might be coming from. I recognise a search for an idea of utopia in a lot of outsider artists’ work, a recurring American Utopia is out now on Todo Mundo/ sense of trying to imagine another place, a Nonesuch Records; David Byrne is touring the place that might be in your head, but it UK from June 14-20, for dates and details see doesn’t exist in front of you. It used to be that davidbyrne.com a lot of artists who are self-taught, who don’t As told to Malcolm Jack @MBJack Tirl/Epa/REX/ShutterstockPhoto: Marc THE BIG ISSUE / p26 / June 11-17 2018 THE BIG ISSUE / p27 / June 11-17 2018.