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1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 5 6 6 7 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 11 11 12 12 13 13 14 14 15 15 16 16 17 17 18 18 19 19 20 20 21 21 22 22 23 23 24 24 25 25 26 26 27 27 28 28 29 29 30 30 31 31 32 Unless a few people at least say, 32 33 33 34 34 35 ‘Why are you doing that? 35 36 36 37 You’re mad!’ then what’s the point? 37 38 38 39 39 40 Sedate society portraits 40 41 41 42 to sexed-up shock tactics: 42 43 43 44 Jonathan Yeo’s walk on the wild side 44 45 45 46 By Rebecca Rose 46 47 47 48 Photographs by Charlie Bibby 48 49 49 50 50 51 51 52 52 53 53 54 54 55 55 56 56 57 57 58 58 59 59 60 60 61 61 62 62 63 63 64 64 65 65 66 66 67 67 68 68 69 69 70

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1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 5 6 6 7 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 11 11 12 12 13 13 14 14 15 15 16 he fantastic thing about Gordon 16 17 Brown’s face is that it is just so very… craggy. That’s what Jonathan 17 18 Yeo tells me during a recent visit to his studio in Cadogan Gardens, off 18 19 London’s Sloane Square. 19 20 Laid out on a table in front of him is his recent portrait of the prime 20 21 ministerT in all his splendid cragginess. Despite appearances, the portrait is 21 22 nowhere near finished. In fact, the bold, expressive brushstrokes, typical of 22 23 Yeo’s painting style, are only the underlayer of what will undoubtedly be 23 24 the first image of the premier of its kind. The 37-year-old artist is known 24 25 predominantly for being one of most successful portrait painters in the UK 25 26 today, and in particular for the illustriousness of his sitters, among them 26 27 Prince Philip, , , and, currently, 27 28 . Brown, however, would not agree to sit for him. “It was 28 29 probably seen as too elitist for him to be sitting around having his portrait 29 30 painted,” muses Yeo, who resorted to composing the portrait from an amal- 30 31 gam of photographs. 31 32 Brown and his advisers may regret this decision when the finished work 32 33 is unveiled later this month in New York. There, as part of a group show for 33 34 Steve Lazarides, Yeo’s dealer and an enfant terrible of the contemporary 34 35 art scene, “Gay Gordon” (the piece’s working title) may look like a painting 35 36 from a distance but will in fact be made of scraps cut from pornographic 36 37 magazines. Viewers’ eyes are bound to water as they pick out certain sala- 37 38 cious details. 38 39 When I ask Yeo if he ever thought twice about making such a flagrant 39 40 piece of art, he says, “I did meet Sarah Brown the other day, and she was so 40 41 lovely, I thought, ‘Oh, can I do this?’.” But he overcame any wobbles by the 41 42 next day. “Anyway, I hope people will find it funny. I’m in the entertain- 42 43 ment business after all!” 43 44 Pornographic collages of politicians and other dignitaries may seem a 44 Jonathan Yeo’s 45 kamikaze detour from portrait painting, especially with Cameron sitting 45 studio, just off 46 for Yeo in good faith. But for the past year, Yeo has been straddling two Sloane Square in 46 47 very different artistic spheres. On the one hand, he continues to paint oil central London 47 48 portraits of the great and the good for £75,000-£100,000 a pop. But he is 48 49 also dipping a toe in the frenzied waters of the contemporary art world While the juxtaposition is amusing, in a back-of-the-school-bus kind of left 49 Erin 50 with its love of controversy and headlines. His collages shock and titillate way, I find the bombardment of genitalia of all shapes, sizes and tones ini- 50 2004, oil on canvas, of 51 in equal measure; they whizz around the internet at the speed of light and tially stomach-churning. model Erin O’Connor 51 52 are sold in a flash in Lazarides’ Soho gallery. Is this a risky diversion from “You soon get over the content, and start really only looking for very 52 53 a lucrative business of classical portrait commissions? The fact that Yeo’s particular skintones,” says Yeo. “You soon learn which magazines are good Portraits right 53 54 porn-collage portrayals of Hugh Hefner and fetched for certain areas of the face. Big Butt magazine is a good one,” he says, Dennis (study) 54 2005, oil on canvas, of 55 £30,000-plus this summer suggests not. The risk, then, might be of a dif- pointing vaguely to two plastic crates full of porn, and then turning to test by Yeo 55 actor Dennis Hopper 56 ferent nature: that a portrait painter’s bid for contemporary art-world me with an impish smile. Before his move into 56 57 stardom could fall flat. By my third visit to the studio, he has begun building up the first layer collage, Jonathan 57 58 The Gordon Brown portrait is under embargo until the New York of collage by finding bits of body that match skintone in the painting Yeo built a reputation 58 59 show’s opening night, September 25. But an exclusive look at the work-in- underneath. It takes time and, as Yeo points out, one of these collages can for unconventional 59 60 progress – and at Yeo at work – reveals Brown’s large, square, boulder-like take a lot longer than a painted portrait. oil portraits, often 60 61 head filling out the canvas. At the piece’s painted stage, Brown’s faceis He seizes on a scrap of darkish, toned flesh and holds it up to Brown’s with bare canvas 61 62 rendered in sludgy, liverish tones, which make him look jowly and give him forehead. “Yes,” he says, “that ought to do it.” The match is exact. Yeo then backgrounds. His 62 63 that unhealthy tinge of a man under the cruel light of news cameras. This traces around the blocky area of paint and transfers this shape to the mag- image of the model 63 64 is the tense, scrutinised Brown we recognise from the television, being azine paper. He cuts it out carefully with a pair of nail scissors, uses his Erin O’Connor, 64 65 taken to task once again. It is in marked contrast to Yeo’s official portrait of finger to apply a thin layer of glue from a puddle on a Blockbuster mem- right, won a place in 65 66 Tony Blair unveiled earlier this year, in which the former leader has bership card, sticks the scrap to the canvas and smoothes it down. There the 2005 BP portrait 66 67 dropped his clenched smile and relaxed the worry lines of office. are several bits of collage there already, and it is only under the glare of prize awards show 67 68 On the table, a sea of top-shelf magazines surround the prime minister, Yeo’s giant spot lamp that you can see a difference in sheen. The edges of 68 69 some intact, but most ripped apart, with pages and scraps lying around. the paper, however, are now invisible. The result is like a cross between a 69 70

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1 very complex jigsaw puzzle and an equally sophisticated mosaic. The proc- 1 2 ess is mesmerising to watch. 2 3 While he flicks through a pile of pages selected for tone and texture, Yeo 3 4 chats animatedly, telling me how he has consulted a paper conservationist 4 5 to find out how to make these collages last. “This kind of paper,” he says, 5 6 feeling a thin, shiny sheet between two fingers, “is not meant to last.” Yeo 6 7 uses acid-free glue and frames the pieces with UV-filtering glass to give 7 8 Yeo selects pages from them a better chance of survival than, say, a Picasso collage. But those 8 9 a pile of pornographic techniques are as far as he will go: a work of art should not be frozen in 9 magazines for tone 10 and texture, then aspic. “It is, after all, a living thing.” 10 11 cuts and pastes 11 12 them to build his Yeo had long pondered using pornography in his work but was 12 13 collage portraits. only galvanised into trying it in 2007, with an image of George W. 13 14 The resulting Bush – after an official portrait commission of the US president fell 14 pictures have sold 15 15 for £30,000-plus through despite a long, frustrating vetting process from 2002-2004. 16 The resulting piece, a large, framed collage 16 17 that hangs in Yeo’s studio (shown on the cover of “There 17 18 this magazine), is a close-up of Bush, with the 18 19 top of his head cropped. “I like that CinemaScope was just 19 20 composition, it’s much more direct,” says Yeo as a noise in 20 21 we stand and look at the picture. 21 22 Yeo studied literature and film (at Kent Uni- my head 22 23 versity), not art, but through his painting he’s telling me 23 24 spent more time in the company of Hollywood 24 25 stars than the average film graduate manages. to go and 25 26 The actor Dennis Hopper, for one, is a champion paint” 26 27 of Yeo’s, and his portrait hangs on the wall of 27 28 Yeo’s studio opposite the collage of Bush. 28 29 Yeo grew up in London, attending Westmin- 29 30 ster School, where he did an art A-level. “The 30 31 art department was very much there as a com- 31 32 edy, hobby department,” Yeo says. He was dis- 32 33 couraged by those around him from studying art at university, and it was 33 34 only after doing the degree in film that he felt the urge to return to the 34 35 easel: “There was just a noise in my head that was telling me to go and 35 36 paint,” he explains. 36 37 He began to paint regularly again at the age of 19 in a studio in Green- 37 38 wich owned by his grandmother. Three or so years later, in 1993, he found 38 39 a new reason to paint: he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, a form of 39 40 lymphatic cancer, and during his treatment art became solace. “The prob- 40 41 lem when you’re going through a serious illness like that, it’s partly having 41 42 all this time to sit around feeling shit. Having something to do is a huge 42 43 advantage.” He made a full recovery. 43 44 Yeo’s first portrait commission was Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, the 44 45 anti-apartheid activist, who sat for him in 1993. Huddleston came to Yeo 45 46 through the artist’s father, Tim Yeo, who is a Conservative MP. The younger 46 47 Yeo spent his childhood in the company of politicians and dignitaries, a 47 48 48 49 from left 49 Tony Blair 50 2007, oil on canvas 50 51 51 52 (Keith) Rupert 52 53 Murdoch 53 54 2005-2006, 54 oil on canvas 55 55 56 Reflection 56 57 (homage to Freud) 57 58 2008, mixed media 58 59 collage 59 60 60 Cassiopeia 61 2008, mixed media 61 62 collage 62 63 63 64 64 65 65 66 66 67 67 68 68 69 69 70

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1 background that may have helped him feel at ease with Blair and his band In May 2007, Steve Lazarides attended The New York group show, which opens in two weeks’ time at a 1 2 when shadowing the prime minister on his election campaign in 2001. Yeo a party at Yeo’s Cadogan Gardens stu- “space” in lower Manhattan, has a distinct whiff of Lazarides about 2 3 had been commissioned by the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of dio and spotted the half-finished it. To start, in typical Lazarides style, the location is the up-and-coming 3 4 Art to paint a triptych portrait of the three main party leaders – Blair, Bush collage. Lazarides, whose stable Bowery district. The exhibition will showcase artists who are not necessar- 4 5 and . He called the work “Proportional of artists includes that will-o’-the-wisp of ily art-school trained and who have come at the contemporary art world 5 6 Representation” and tailored the size of each portrait to reflect the per- graffiti, , and other street and from different angles – street art, for example, or even taxidermy. The 6 7 centage of votes each politician received in the 2001 general election. This graphic artists, was quick on the uptake. organisers are even erecting a museum shop – a dig at the New Museum of 7 8 kind of playful wit is typical of Yeo’s approach. He deployed it again in his “I thought it was very funny, but with Contemporary Art nearby, perhaps – and aiming for a hottest-ticket-in- 8 9 2007 portrait of Blair, in which Yeo encouraged the former PM to keep his dark undertones. It hit the nail on the town opening-night party. (Keep in mind that Lazarides masterminded 9 10 remembrance poppy pinned to his lapel as a delicate reference to war. head in terms of what a lot of people Banksy’s 2006 secret-location Los Angeles show “Barely Legal”, which 10 11 When Yeo started down the portrait route 15 years ago, he was happy for think about Bush. I said – ‘I really want attracted “Brangelina” – Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie – among others). 11 12 it to be a lonesome path. Hardly anyone else in the art world was painting, to do a show with it’.” “We’re hoping for some more hip-hop stars to drop by this time,” 12 13 let alone painting portraits. “When I used to tell people I was in portrai- Lazarides got excited about the porn Lazarides says. “We have a good client base in New York, but you never can 13 14 ture, they were a bit baffled. I was seen as an interesting curiosity,” says Yeo. collages at a time when Yeo was ready for tell who will show up until the day.” 14 15 He relished being an oddity in an art world fixated on minimalism and something new anyway. Since the heyday The pieces in “Blue Period”, Yeo’s ironically titled one-man show of col- 15 16 conceptualism and dominated by the first wave of Young British Artists of the YBAs, narrative art has come lages at Lazarides Soho this summer, sold out the afternoon before opening 16 17 (YBAs), led by and Tracey Emin, as well as collectors such as round again. “You no longer shock the night. And there is still a waiting list of people wanting to buy the next one 17 18 Charles Saatchi and art dealers such as Jay Jopling. Despite Yeo’s incongru- diehard art world by saying you’re a por- he makes – no matter who or what it portrays. “People will now buy things 18 19 ity with the main thrust of the art set, he socialised with them. “I bumped trait painter now,” says Yeo. The artist’s off the basis of a ‘jpeg’ image on an e-mail,” Lazarides says. “But, it is new 19 20 into a lot of the same people and was seen as their mad old artist friend new dealer, however, had a plan to shock territory in NYC, so it would be nice to give people over there a chance to 20 21 doing portraits in the attic.” Gallerists would hear about Yeo and occasion- the public anew. try and buy something.” 21 22 ally ask him to contribute a portrait as a sort of wild card. Lazarides – in an excellent example of During several visits to Yeo’s studio, I get to observe a frenzied produc- 22 23 “Doing portraits was seen as absolutely, irredeemably uncool. And I the way that art and artists are marketed tion period as he scrambles to finish enough collages for the show and 23 24 was so determined not to follow the art world crowd that I probably spent today – posted the Bush portrait on his meet demands for various charity donations – he receives three to four a 24 25 longer doing it than I would have done otherwise.” website, sent it to various blogs and art week. All this is in addition to a constant flow of requests for portrait com- 25 26 sites and pushed out a flurry of emails to missions – there have been about 100 so far this year. He is lined up to do 26 27 Look closer at the Bush collage and you can’t help but notice the friends, journalists and others. Within and Baz Luhrmann at the end of the year in Australia. 27 28 president’s ear is composed of a graphic image of an act banned in five days, Yeo’s website (www.jonathan- The Yeo portion of the New York show will open with several different 28 29 certain US states. And the crease of his downturned smile is fashioned yeo.com) had received 5.5 million clicks. coloured canvases decorated with collages of swirling autumn leaves. Porn 29 30 from a photo of a woman whose bland, open-mouthed expression suggests “The internet is the best medium to lends itself surprisingly well to falling leaves, I discover, as I watch Yeo 30 31 she appeared in pages more risqué than Vogue’s. get artists’ images across the world,” arrange the delicate cut-outs on a black, shiny, painted canvas. 31 32 “I did it really to amuse myself,” says Yeo. “I didn’t mean it to be an Lazarides says. “What kind of gallery can The leaf display will be called “Fall in Love”, 32 33 insult. It was more an ironic tribute intended to unsettle ultra-conserva- offer that kind of viewing potential?” and will doubtless please visitors at first glance: Porn lends 33 34 tive, right-wing Americans.” At the time Yeo began the Bush portrait, he The story was then seized upon by the “It’s very New York, and the timing is perfect.” 34 35 was exhibiting oil portraits of figures such as transvestite potter Grayson press, and one or two British newspapers The pleasure will last, Yeo hopes, until they step itself 35 36 Perry, actor Ross Kemp and model Erin O’Connor in museums including even printed the Bush image in all its a little closer, see what they’re really looking at, surprisingly 36 37 the Scottish and the National Portrait Gallery. Rendered graphic and unsettling detail. “I did lose step back again, maybe step forward once more 37 38 in delicate paintwork so that their smoothly modulated faces burst out of a couple of commissions,” Yeo says. – until they find a distance from the painting well to 38 39 the rough canvas, these portraits were far from conventional. One image of “Unless a few people at least say, ‘Why where they feel comfortable. “It’s a little like per- falling leaves, 39 40 O’Connor, in which the model strikes a contorted yet elegant pose, caught are you doing that? You’re mad!’ then formance art,” he says, clearly looking forward to 40 41 the eye of the judges at the BP portrait prize, and was exhibited in the 2005 what’s the point?” witnessing this merry dance. I discover 41 42 award show. The appearance helped push Yeo’s fees higher, and brought in Major art intitutions, meanwhile, New York has yet to react to Yeo’s work. The as I watch Yeo 42 43 more famous sitters and media attention. remain interested in Yeo, but for his clas- cognoscenti there may well hate it. And New 43 44 As a portrait painter, Yeo says, you get to dip into other people’s worlds. sical, painted work, not his foray into York is the most important art market in the 44 45 “You don’t think you are doing the same thing over and over when one day YBA shock-tactic territory. world. You don’t become a superstar without 45 46 you’re with the Russian mafia, the next you’re with Prince Philip and then The National Portrait Gallery has winning its blessing. 46 47 you’re on Venice Beach hanging out with Dennis Hopper.” been exhibiting Yeo’s portrait of Andrew In fact, Yeo says, he doesn’t expect the king- 47 48 Lloyd Webber this summer; it was a pri- makers of the NYC art scene to be the first to 48 49 Andrew Lloyd Webber vate commission, but the NPG decided that it would be nice to show it to warm to his work. “What tends to happen with Lazarides shows is that they 49 50 2008, oil on canvas the public before it disappears into the Lloyd Webber estate. A small oil of bypass the art world and generate a groundswell of popular, and usually 50 51 Rupert Murdoch by Yeo also hangs in the gallery; the NPG acquired it also celebrity, interest so that the art world then has to take notice.” Indeed, 51 52 about a year ago. this is what happened with Banksy in LA. This show’s title, “The Outsiders”, 52 53 Sandy Nairne, the gallery’s director, says that Yeo’s collages are not rel- may suggest naïve art or Art Brut (often known as Outsider Art) to the New 53 54 evant to the NPG at the moment, but he isn’t horrified by them. He points York crowd. But while many of Lazarides’ artists didn’t go to art school, 54 55 out that collage with an element of visual trickery has a historical prece- there is nothing naïve about what they are doing or how it is marketed. 55 56 dent in Giuseppe Arcimboldo, the 16th-century Italian painter known for Perhaps most important of all, this will be the first time that the Amer- 56 57 his faces made of fruit. Yeo’s work, however much it embodies today’s need ican public will see the Bush portrait, and for many, the first they will have 57 58 to shock, is still following some form of tradition. Little is truly new in the heard of it. Yeo seems a little nervous. “They may all hate him but he’s still 58 59 art world. their president.” 59 60 I asked Nairne whether Yeo’s street cred will have increased since he is “The art world is so cautious,” he continues, as he glues down a leaf that 60 61 no longer pigeonholed as an artist working on commission. “There is a crowns the swirling arrangement. Maybe, but not on Yeo’s and Lazarides’ 61 62 premium in the art world for art that is produced freely. The very idea of a side of the street. Yeo points to two graphic photographs pinned to the 62 63 commission tends to put it at a different or lower status for some art crit- wall: they are images of breasts before and after cosmetic surgery. “I’m 63 64 ics,” Nairne admits. “But I think there is fantastic skill and ability in the doing a series of diptychs on plastic surgery next year,” he says. “It’s called 64 65 best commissioned work, and I would argue it has a very important place ‘You Only Live Twice’.” ■ 65 66 in contemporary art.” 66 67 Nairne is more concerned about Yeo pushing the porn collage theme Rebecca Rose is the FT’s deputy books editor. “The Outsiders”, Lazarides 67 68 too far. “The Bush collage was a riposte. And there was a certain logic in Gallery, 282 Bowery, New York (www.lazinc.com), from September 26 to 68 69 that riposte. What is more puzzling is what happens after that.” October 12. Video: visit Jonathan Yeo’s studio at ft.com/jonathanyeo 69 70

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