THINK TANK | Tyler Alpern « Urban Molecule

THINK TANK | Tyler Alpern

26Aug08

There’s no doubt, Tyler Alpern is his own man. And a charming one at that. He’s very serious about his art, and even more about his teaching; according to the testimonials left by students on his website, this professor passes with flying colors. He stays physically fit and he’s a history buff. He loves history so much in fact, he’s published, with author Brad Confer’s consent, the annotated index for the Mattachine Review, the gay rights publication that helped lay the groundwork for the modern gay liberation movement. And if that’s not enough to get you interested, this artist’s grin will make your canvas melt faster than you can say “Leonardo da Vinci.”

In 1976, at age eleven, Alpern moved with his parents from suburban Indianapolis. He says they realized there was far more excitement and opportunity to be had elsewhere. So, after a six month trek around the country, they settled on Aspen and, with the exception of several jaunts for school and a few years in Europe to get “closer to art,” Alpern moved to Colorado where he’s resided ever since. Now in Boulder, he teaches at the University of Colorado – the same institution from which he earned his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1990. His home is nestled deeply within pristine mountains and under frosty-blue skies, and he takes regular morning runs through Buckingham Park where it’s not uncommon for him to spot a fox, deer, bear, or the occasional rattlesnake. In this special ThinkTank edition, the Molecule returns to our February 2008 interview.

UM: When did you start painting?

TA: I got back from Italy in 1986. That’s when it started. I took one beginning painting class the last term of my sophomore year of college and then spent the next year looking at paintings in Italy rather than trying to make them, and upon my return after a year of intensive looking, I found I could paint in a way entirely different and better than I ever could before. My first work after returning is actually still up on my wall. In Italy I took a lot of art history. When I got back I knew exactly what I wanted. I took a few art workshops just to get a portfolio together. That’s when I really fell in love with painting. In Italy, I learned by seeing, rather than by doing. When I got back it sort of just happened, it bloomed.

UM: And you enjoyed Italy so much, you went back.

TA: I went back to Italy and worked for Peggy Guggenheim in Venice for a summer season. I was made the head intern, you know, the capo. Everyone else was from Yale or Harvard. They were pretty pissed off, and weren’t shy about why that was the case.

UM: You’re an artist who loves a good story.

TA: In Italy the artwork was narrative in nature, very storytelling. That’s what my artwork has been ever since.

UM: On your website you provide narrative information for some pieces but not others. Why?

TA: If [the viewers] need to know it, it’s there. They can participate rather than me telling them what’s wrong or good or bad. And just because the artist doesn’t intend it, doesn’t mean it’s not there. The art is filled with rich images the artist isn’t necessarily aware of. Enjoy the painting for what it is. If I quiz people about who is in the painting, they can usually tell the story I’m telling. I like to not tell the story to see what other things are there. What do I want this to be? It’s easy to look at a painting you like. You learn more by understanding what an artist is saying in a painting you don’t like.

UM: You’ve produced a few pieces – “Icarus,” for example – that could be considered homoerotic.

TA: I like to paint sexy guys. I’ve had to work to keep sex out of my art. I want my artwork to speak about things that are more complicated than physical lust. I have no shame about being gay, but being gay is only part of who I am. “Icarus” is a self-portrait – even though I’ve never flown to the sun and melted. [laughs] I’ve spent a lot of time as a figure model. “Icarus” was originally a gesture drawing, a warm-up sketch. I rescued this drawing from the trash and flipped it upside down. I added wings and endowed him. Butterfly wings are so fragile. They make more sense for Icarus; he’s always been portrayed with angel wings. Neutral colors in the background made it less like a church glass window and more horrific, more like falling.

UM: What are your thoughts on gay art vs. straight art?

TA: It’s all a bit strange. What is a gay painting or poem? It’s not a painting that’s attracted to another gay painting, is it? Why can’t a painting just be a painting? It doesn’t sit right with me. I like art to have more of a universal appeal. Wiping the slate clean is a struggle. I don’t know how to paint anything. I’ve painted water a million times before, but there’s no formula. I’ve never painted water in this context before, so it’s all brand new. I have to start from scratch every time.

UM: You’ve said that you believe the imagery of an exquisite painting “often reveals a surprising and occasionally candid or frank message in the guise of something far more tame.”

TA: “Death Car Girls” is a perfect example. In a sense it’s a morbid painting. These people were having a lovely Sunday drive when it all goes wrong, yet it doesn’t have spurting blood. When you look deeper past who the characters are, it’s not really about the terrible things happening to them. It’s a comment on us, the viewers, and how we take pleasure from the misfortunes of others, even though it is really taboo to admit it. I don’t think we should take shame in enjoying the drama surrounding the misfortunes of others. America is riveted by and thus entertained by the OJ Simpson murders, Kennedy tragedies and celebrity mishaps. We are complex enough that it is so easy to both feel empathy and sadness but also get entertainment from those feelings and the drama. It’s even more compelling when it’s something real or about people we have all come to know like the famous.

UM: In “American Landscape Photography” you comment on our culture’s obsession with self. You go so far as to claim that “flesh and artifice have become the new landscape.”

TA: I started that piece in the eighties and just finished it last year. I have a passion for history. History and research are important to me. I did a lot of it during high school and college. During its first few hundred years, America differed from Europe in that it sat in a vast, untapped landscape as opposed to ancient ruins. That landscape was a source of pride, enthusiasm and promise. Now landscape is accidental and irrelevant. We’re focused on our breasts and bodies and superficiality. It’s shown in our entertainment. The camera is narcissistically turned on and interested in the flesh, not the immense and now threatening landscape that originally defined the uniqueness and character of our new nation. Painting tornadoes was to symbolize the landscape fighting back.

UM: Does your textual approach to this painting affect the finished product, and ultimately your message?

TA: The imagery touches on my personal experience, but the crafting of the painting isn’t a metaphor for anything. I don’t see it as a metaphor. It’s just for the painting itself, for mood, etcetera. What consumes nearly one hundred percent of my time is not the telling of the story but the monumental effort to make the artwork look right, to be well painted. I’m a slow painter. I can make a painting relatively quickly that photographs well, but I care so deeply about how the image is crafted. I’m really fussy about that.

UM: One painting you’re currently working on has quite a bit of metaphor. Tell us about Louisa Fletcher.

TA: This particular painting comes from ongoing research that has already taken a number of years. Both women in this portrait share the same name: Louisa Fletcher. A name generations of other Fletcher women also bore. Further out on the dock the elder aunt is dropping her “shabby old coat” – a metaphor of her past grief taken from a poem she wrote during her divorce from Booth Tarkington: The following is taken from her poem:

I wish that there were some wonderful place
Called the Land of Beginning Again,
Where all our mistakes, and all our heartaches,
And all of our poor selfish griefs
Could be dropped like a shabby old coat at the door,
And never be put on again.

UM: That’s beautiful.

TA: She is seeking a new beginning as is her runaway niece seen in the foreground. The aunt has her back to the viewer displaying her long Victorian braid and dropping the shabby old coat. The landscape is otherworldly as there is no such place as the Land of Beginning Again. You cannot escape your past and remain your self. The younger Louisa has just been expelled from a second school in 1920. In contrast to the pose of her aunt, she has her back to her aunt, and is committing the then daring and shocking act of chopping off her hair and disguising herself as a man. She is about to steal a boat and ride the river and cast off the legacy of her name and family to live under the alias of Willie Sullivan. Like her mother and grandmother before her and her brother after, she will soon die young. The painting also quotes contemporary master Peter Hocking. The story of the two Louisas is a tangent of the hidden history of gay life.

UM: Historical research seems to be a recurring element in your work. How do the two connect?

TA: It’s so important for me to share this history because gay people don’t see where they fit in the continuum. I hear people complain and threaten to move to Canada when a gay rights amendment is defeated, or an anti-gay bill is passed. They enjoy the legacy of freedoms and openness that recent generations have given us but don’t see how the struggle can’t continue without their help. They just bristle at the indignity of the moment and don’t see where we come from, and thus have no idea how or why to proceed. The only way I can reach out to those who have no interest in the past is to tell fascinating stories that draw them in or seduce them with compelling imagery. That way the past and its legacy comes alive and speaks and sparkles without preaching.

UM: Although you claim not to pay homage to pop in your work, you frequently reference pop culture. According to your artist’s statement you are “a student of pop culture and…admire unusual people who had the courage to be themselves and follow their own star.”

TA: Like the pioneers who made being gay today tolerable. Again, some talked about wanting to move to Canada after the reelection of Bush. I found that offensive. You don’t just abandon ship because things aren’t going your way, not after so many people worked so hard to change it.

UM: Bruz Fletcher was one of those unusual people, those pioneers. In fact, your research was used for Gay L.A., the book by Stuart Timmons and Lillian Faderman that recently won an award.

TA: Stuart Timmons also published an article about Bruz Fletcher in the Gay and Lesbian Review: Worldwide. He came to me because he wanted information on Frances Faye. I told him that I had an important and totally forgotten gay character that was essential for any history of Gay L.A. I showed him my then hidden website on Bruz and he flipped. When it became obvious to him that Bruz was not going to be much more than a brief mention in the book, he was compelled to write the article. Bruz Fletcher was a gay entertainer in L.A. The LAPD made it impossible for gay people of that era to find work, yet he had the longest run of any nightclub performer in the 1930s. Then he killed himself. I’ve done a lot of paintings about Bruz. I’ve been doing research now for a while. I don’t like my paintings to be just illustrations. I like them to say something about who that person was. Bruz’s own marvelous story reveals how far things have come.

UM: How far things have come for gays and lesbians, a group that has contributed enormously to world culture, yet has largely remained marginalized.

TA: We have the gift of lifestyle, of openness and acceptance the last few generations gave us. We have a responsibility to nurture the gift, to build on it and pass it on. Just by knowing the past, people can see for themselves where they are and what is relevant. I don’t try to tell people what to do. I just show them where they are and how we all got here. I’d like to combine the writing and research with the paintings and make an interesting book, to find a visual fun way to tell his story with my paintings. It’s all new to me. I use my painting as a way to find an audience for my research and the lessons that come from it. And my online research introduces my artwork to another new audience. The portrait of the two Louisa’s points the viewers directly to my fascination of Bruz.

UM: This narrative process is unique, and no doubt creates a particular niche. You also seem to effortlessly maintain a more general appeal, not to mention a hearty following of young people. You’re an artist. You’re an educator, a historian, an advocate. Sometimes you’re about paying homage to pop culture, sometimes you’re about protecting the environment. So, the burning question: what’s your formula?

TA: Each painter invents their own [visual] language. It’s almost arrogant of us to expect viewers to be able to encode each language. My artwork isn’t just homage to pop fiction. I want to talk about why people are fascinating to me and what makes them special, and how I can, in a visual way, explain a very complicated story. I’m an amateur historian. Uncovering this last story [presented] a complicated and fascinating mystery. But it’s only a tangent of a tangent of the story I originally sought to reveal. Finding the story is only part of what I do. The story dies with me unless I share it. I don’t make movies. I don’t write. What I do well is paint. Through paint I document and pass on the story that otherwise was lost to time. I wouldn’t say that I’m against formulas…they just don’t work for me.

images in order of appearance: Tyler Alpern in his Colorado home; Death Car Girls; Rough Trade; Icarus. artwork and photography courtesy Tyler Alpern