Keith Boadwee is known for provocative photographs like this NSFW one of a compromised Homer Simpson doll as well as his “scatological” paintings (meaning he painted them with poo). About 20 years ago, at the insistence of his art dealer, Keith documented his artistic process and became an instant sensation. In this case, the process involved filling his body (and you know which part I’m talking about) with paint and splashing it out onto a blank canvas.
Tonight, Armory Arts Week continues with the opening of Boadwee’s new exhibit, Poppies, at Shoot the Lobster on Eldridge Street. We visited him at the Lower East Side gallery to talk about the inspiration behind the new paintings. This time, it’s not what you think. Or is it?
(Photo: Paula Ho)
So, tell me about these poppies.
I have a whole history as a body artist and a performance artist. At one point in the span of my 30 years of art making, I made these paintings that came from performances. They were scatological and the idea was to really start a conversation. Conceptually, I believe that all abstract things are equal in value. I thought I could make abstract paintings and that they would be judged as paintings, but I got into a protracted fight with my dealer who basically said, “I won’t show the paintings unless you show me the documentation of you making the paintings.” I finally caved in and consented to show the paintings with their documentation and of course the whole conversation became about the documentation and the paintings were doomed to never be judged by the criteria that people judge a painting by.
I decided about six months ago that I was interested in revisiting my original idea to fulfill its destiny. This time, I would make flowers. It just seemed like a benign, beautiful thing. So I made these paintings, and if you hadn’t looked at those other paintings that I made in the ’90s or didn’t know anything about my whole history, you couldn’t make assumptions about how they were made. Nobody knows how these were made, except me and I’m not telling anyone. The people who are aware of my entire practice are going to connect those dots and that’s fine too. But I’m really just more interested in how these things function as paintings. I want them to stand or fall on their own merit.
I read a review that describes your work as “ripping apart the tradition within an image that embodies it.”
Obviously, given my history, that’s a pretty accurate statement. I have a relationship with painting, I’m somehow making an effort to subvert it, to change it, to do something different. But I think it’s my gesture of even alluding to the fact that these paintings are produced with my body through an abject process that’s the mosquito on the elephant’s hide. But in a way it seems kind of foolish to even think that you could begin to take on the behemoth that is paintings with such a small gesture. Painting will always, dominate, it always has. So this isn’t a gesture to subvert it or undermine it in any way, but to provoke conversation on something is always a good thing.
(Photo: Paula Ho)
Were you nervous about expressing yourself in the way that you have in some of your photographs? Was there some kind of boundary within yourself that you had to cross over to be okay with doing this?
I actually feel my work is really conservative. Most people wouldn’t think of it as conservative in any context, but culturally we’re so puritanical. Really, seeing someone’s genitalia, or vagina, or asshole it’s like – nothing. It’s really liberating. I feel like once you’ve presented your naked body to the world there’s nothing left to hide. But there’s a lot of stuff that I won’t do. I have a husband, I have a family, and it’s like, “This is a thing that I won’t do – this is something that I won’t depict.” It might even be an idea that I think is a good idea, but then it could have fallout in other aspects of my life. I admire the artist that would say, “I’m entrenched in the art and I don’t care about the repercussions it might have in my personal life and my work life. The art trumps all that.” But I try to push that boundary as much as I can. The artists I really love are the artists I think don’t have that filter and will just completely fucking go for it, all consequences be damned.
You mentioned that you lived in the East Village, many years ago.
I lived in New York in the early ’80s. In ’82, ’83, and ’84 I lived in the East Village. I was 19 when I moved here and I was like, a hick from a small town in the South. I was born in Mississippi and I grew up in Louisiana – this was my escape. I was so excited, I really wanted to be here. I was like, “I need to get the fuck away from all these rednecks and right wing idiots,” but then New York just totally beat my ass. I just didn’t have it in me, I just wasn’t that guy and so I moved to LA. I showed up for my first day of art class and my teacher was Paul McCarthy, which is kind of mind blowing. Nobody knew who he was back then. He introduced me to some of the stuff that I didn’t know about and when you’re this young kid and you meet someone like Paul McCarthy – it was like an epiphany and I’ve been doing it ever since.
(Photo: Paula Ho)
What was the East Village like back then?
It was still Sin City. One of the most prominent features of Manhattan at the time was the sex industry. There were porn cinemas and porn arcades — people used to call them jack shacks – everywhere! Manhattan was covered with them and if you were a queer man it was like a fucking Mecca, it was amazing. The East Village had a ton of porn cinemas. There was one called The Jewel on Third Avenue, I think, and you’d go in and it would be 3 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon and there’s 300 guys in the middle of the day just fucking each other and eating each other’s asses and sucking dick. It was mind-blowing. You can’t imagine it now.
All these straight guys – and I’ve thought about this a lot – would take the PATH train in from New Jersey. They’d come to these porn arcades and they would have sex with men. And then you think, well how many of those men were infected with HIV and then gave it to their wives? It was crazy. It was just dirtier, cheaper, more fun, a less gentrified city. Second Avenue was kind of the last outpost of civilization. One, A, and B were still pretty sketchy. I came back briefly about ten years later and that was the beginning of everyone I knew migrating to Williamsburg.
Why did you leave?
I wanted to be here so bad, but no matter how hard I tried, it just wouldn’t work. I honestly woke up one morning, I put everything I owned in one trunk and dragged it down the five floors of my walk-up. I hailed a taxi to Penn Station with the last of my life’s savings and got on a train to LA. I thought I wanted to be as far away from here as I could be. LA worked from the get-go. I just got there and it was good. It was great.
