ARTnews

Peter Saul & Jamian Juliano-Villani
by Andy Battaglia
 

Peter Saul’s pointed an provocative style of painting has been raising brows and hackles since the late 1950s. On a long list of influences that counted as outliers within the fine-art tradition he transgressed were comic books and absurdist antics of the kind popularized by Mad magazine, mixed with an appreciation of Surrealism and other perhaps surprisingly stately painters throughout the ages. After decades of under­ground appreciation as an "artist's artist," Saul has been cited by a growing list of young painters for whom his lively and playful vision has proven influ­ential. The market for his work has also swelled, with a recent auction record of $575,000 for Saul's Guernica in 2016 and sales led by the galleries Venus Over Manhattan and Michael Werner. In February, the New Museum will mount the first museum exhibition of Saul's work in New York, with some 60 paintings spanning his decades-long career on view until the summer.

Jamian Juliano-Villani has emerged as a visionary painter in New York starting with her first gallery show in the city in 2013. A native of New Jersey, the 32-year-old artist participated in the 2014 group exhibition "Puddle, Pothole, Portal”—curated by Ruba Katrib and artist Camille Henrot—at SculptureCenter in Queens. The following year, she presented her first show of phantasmagorical paintings at JTT, the Lower East Side gallery that currently represents her.

Saul and Juliano-Villani joined ARTnews for lunch (with more than a little alcohol to loosen the mood) at Floret, a few doors down from the New Museum on the Bowery. For Saul, a cheeseburger and red wine; for Juliano-Villani, whiskey, neat (with a Coke on the side for appearance's sake).

ARTnews: What was a formative early experience you had with an artwork?

Peter Saul: Mine was a gay masterpiece by Paul Cadmus. My mother got a book from the Book of the Month Club on American art—­the only art book my parents ever owned—­and his Coney Island (1935) was in there. I was really attracted to it at age 5. My mother was upset with my choice of art, but, you know, what the hell. All of my influences came to me from reproductions mostly. The first picture I saw in person was Larry Rivers's Double Portrait of Berdie (1955), of his mother-in-law naked. That I liked.

Jamian Juliano-Villani: I used to love Andrew Wyeth. It's pretty corny, but that's OK. Also Giorgio Morandi, because it was so boring. It looks like what art should be, but you can totally ignore it at the same time. I liked that. Then I was looking at Robert Rauschenberg and reading The Andy Warhol Diaries. It's really big and is a good bathroom book. I got really into how he had all these time-capsule boxes and would save everything. I started doing that with printed materials. I am a hoarder. When I found out Playboy was going out of print, I bought every Playboy I could­ because the ads are so good.

ARTnews: Both of you work with a pointed sense of humor, which is not especially common in art. How did you find that register?

Saul: I thought I was a follower of Francis Bacon actually—a gloomer. But then when I had my first show in Paris, I walked into the opening and, of about 30 people in the room, two were laughing. At what, I don't know-but I took that to mean my paintings were funny. I decided then that I was a funny artist instead of a gloomer. That was it. I changed my self-definition to being a funny artist, and I have been one ever since. I laugh at everything. I'm not supposed to say that, but it's true that I have too much of a sense of humor.

Juliano-Villani: You know how you have all the different areas for tastes on your tongue? In paintings I've got to hit those marks-and humor is one of them. When I make a painting, I like to start out with something stupid, then bring it somewhere to cancel that out-then bring it back to something else...

Saul: ...to be more stupid...

Juliano-Villani: ... so aggressively stupid that you can't even talk about it!

Saul: That's when you know it's a good idea.

ARTnews: ls the art world more or less receptive to humor now than in the past?

Saul: The audience has reacted differently, mostly negatively, until recent years. Now it is becoming a little bit OK. But if you were buying a new car and you handed over the check and the salesman burst out laughing, how would you feel? That is the thinking behind the seriousness of art­—avoid humor because it interferes with serious collecting. People try to be serious, and it makes sense in a way because people are teaching this stuff. But I don't give a damn.

Juliano-Villani: I would never teach.

Saul: It's an advantage. It gives your voice gravity.

Juliano-Villani: I just feel like once you start teaching, you have to justify everything and then your work will suck because you have to give reasons for everything. I will do it when I am really broke in a couple of years.

Saul: I enjoyed it. !just asked each student what they were trying to do and helped them do it. I treated all paintings the same: spooky realistic pictures and big zigzag-y things—they're all the same to me. It also helps with the conversational ability you need as a modern artist. You need to sound convincing, because if you look at modern art from a certain distance, one thing is pretty much as good as another.

ARTnews: What do you think people are looking for in painting right now?

Juliano-Villani: I think it bounces back and forth. It feels like everyone is down for whatever, and then all these other things get involved and that changes. Figurative painting came back in at some point—Dana Schutz and all that. There was a context, but then came a lot of shitty figuration. I don't know—I would be painting the same way no matter what.

Saul: I think it's best to not pay any attention to art appreciation.

Juliano-Villani: I would be so pissed off if I were you [because of decades of insufficient attention].

Saul: I am not pissed off at all. I'm relaxed, always, because I don't pay attention to other people's opinions. This is a sign of a lack of ambition maybe, but I feel very lucky to get through life doing only what I want to do. It is a blessing. I started at age 16, and here I am. I haven't had to compromise. The last "job" I had was selling the Herald Tribune on the streets of Paris in 1959.

ARTnews: Jamian, about your process of envisioning and then making a painting, you once said, "I'm trying to deliver a baby. The baby has eight arms and is really fucked up, and I don't know how to deliver a baby." You described searching for a state when a "painting can change from an image-based narrative to something else." What is that something else you're looking for?

Juliano-Villani: Once you get to the point where no one can decide anything and even you are unsure of what it is, that is what I like. Not just: here is my stupid dumb narrative idea that is basic as fuck. I like  it when it becomes more confusing and hard to explain. The way I work is intuitive. I will make lists and whatnot, and I will try to re-create ideas visually that sometimes won't look good. I wanted to paint a tumbleweed going into a garage-that sounded great as a painting idea, but it didn't look good.

Saul: It has to look good. That's the bottom line.

ARTnews: Do the parameters for that stay the same, or is it a painting-by-painting kind of appraisal? Some of your works are very direct and immediately clear in terms of what they depict, while others you could look at for years and still feel disoriented.

Saul: Sometimes I don't bother with my own rules. I start and see what happens. It is nice to have no rules. It's good to have each picture be its own boss, as much as possible. It is not possible all the time. I just go with it. I have a very 19th-century approach. I have zero assistants. It's just me, sitting there.

Juliano-Villani: You know how many assistants I've had for a day and then fired them because they sucked or couldn't hold their liquor or something else? Whenever I get an assistant, I put them through hell the first day. I make them watch people die online, do poppers, and see if they can wake up the next day at 9 a.m. If they do, they are hired. Also if they can paint hands-that's all I need.

ARTnews: Why hands?

Juliano-Villani: Because nobody wants to do that shit.

Saul: I don't want anybody around in the studio that I don't know. That 19th-century stuff is what I want: just calm and live light, like Monet and all those people used to have. Just be in a room with a painting.

Juliano-Villani: That's a nightmare. I need a TV on.

Saul: I think the future is likely to contradict me. Realistically, I take a month for a painting. Or even longer. Why not. The hell with it. I am not ambitious. I am sort of negative about getting ahead. I'm working hard on a painting now for Miami that I hope I get done in time. It's going to be really good. I am doing a female Soft Watch. There is actually kind of a resemblance between a vagina and a Soft Watch.

Juliano-Villani: It kind of depends on the vagina.

Saul: But I did not put it over an erect male member—I did not do that.

Juliano-Villani: Too easy, too easy.