Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Visual Artist Gerard Pas on the Work of Greg Curnoe
103 Plays1 year ago
Joe and Mark are joined by visual artist Gerard Pas to discuss the work of Greg Curnoe.
Gerard was born in The Netherlands and immigrated to Canada with his parents when he was a boy. When he was a teen, he moved back to Holland, where he steeped himself in the Dutch masters and launched his career in art.
Greg Curnoe was a huge influence on Gerard; both artists made London, Ontario their homes. At first, Greg was Gerard's hero, then mentor, then friend and colleague.
Find out more about Gerard Pas and Greg Curnoe and their work on the show notes page for this episode.
Re-Creative is a co-production of Donovan Street Press Inc. in association with Mark A. Rayner.
Contact us at: joemahoney@donovanstreetpress.com
Recommended
Transcript
Joe's Maritime Heritage
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello, Joe. Hello, Mark. I have a question for you. So you're from the, you're from the Maritimes. I am from the Maritimes. Which I did know, but I didn't realize that you grew up in PEI. Yes. Born in New Brunswick, raised in Prince Edward Island, educated in Nova Scotia. How long are you living on PEI for? Uh, I was there for 17 years, I guess, because we moved there when I was one year old and I moved away when I was 18 to Nova Scotia. And then when I was 19, moved to Ontario.
Being 'From Away' in PEI
00:00:38
Speaker
So, pretty formative years then. Yes, yes, absolutely. And now, are you still from the island or are you come from away? That's the phrase, right? Well, that's the... From away? Yeah, because, okay, so my parents moved there in 1966. They are still considered from away.
00:00:58
Speaker
And now that you've revealed that I wasn't actually born in the island and lived like one year in New Brunswick, I am technically from away as well. And of course I've been away the last 37 years. Of course. Interesting. Okay. It's like not in the countryside here in Ontario. You're always living in the person that owned the house before you house.
00:01:22
Speaker
So I'd like you to meet Gerard. He lives in Dr. McCarty's house. You've been living there for 10 years. This is, listeners, this is Gerard.
Identity and Background Jokes
00:01:32
Speaker
Gerard Pop. Gerard Pop. And so the reason I asked that question, Joe, is because, first of all, I'm interested in, I'm obviously just trying to learn more about you.
00:01:40
Speaker
and help the internet steal your identity, obviously. That's why I keep asking all these questions. But also, because Gerard also comes from another country, and I thought that might be an interesting confluence of ideas.
Gerard's Dutch Origins
00:01:53
Speaker
It is. And so I gathered that country is the Netherlands, am I correct? Yes. Yeah, I was born in the Netherlands. And how long have you been in Canada? Oh, heavens. I've been in Canada for quite some time. I've never actually sat down and counted the years, but
00:02:10
Speaker
I would feel safe to say 35 to 40 years in Canada, and I'm now pushing 70. And so you had your formative years, though, in Holland? Yeah, I went, sort of, my parents and I immigrated to Canada in 1960. So I was awake.
00:02:32
Speaker
Then I went back when I was 17 and lived there for quite some time. Then I was back and forth, back and forth. Then I met the love of my life, my wife, and I stayed here. I'm glad you clarified it was your wife that's the love of your life. Just in case she's listening.
00:02:55
Speaker
We always ask our guests to introduce themselves, Gerard. So we've got two reasons for this. The main one though, is that we want you to frame your reality a little bit. So, you know, how would you describe yourself to someone that you're meeting, say at a cocktail party or something? Yeah.
Gerard's Artistic Journey
00:03:13
Speaker
Yeah. In simple terms, I would say at a cocktail party, I'd say I'm a neurosurgeon and then they'd look at me and then I'd wait, pause, and then I would say,
00:03:24
Speaker
Yeah, I did my own. But I'm a visual artist and I use combined mediums, not just a painting or sculpture. And that's who I am. Okay. Yeah. So a neurosurgeon from, but you were not educated in the Netherlands, you were
00:03:43
Speaker
The largest portion of my education was here up until I became an artist and then I took most of my notes after that through practical reasons and that meant while I was living in Holland.
00:03:57
Speaker
Right. And I realized I made it sound like I actually believe that you're a neurosurgeon. Don't you dare cut that. I can only imagine that going to Holland is probably one of the great places to go study the visual arts because there's so many amazing masters that come from the Netherlands. I can only imagine that must be just a great place to go. You know, it's an ironic thing because
00:04:22
Speaker
I was really trying to eke out my own identity. I had a lot in those days to do with the punk movement, both here and abroad. When I went to the National Gallery in Holland, for example, where all the great masterworks are, I would wear my dark sunglasses for fear of being overloaded by the
00:04:46
Speaker
the joy or something. It was really stupid, but I did. But the better part was that for me, I was involved in learning art again, practically, by working with other living artists. And so it was very current and had nothing to do with the art history that everyone knows of Rembrandt.
00:05:08
Speaker
all the others. Is it fair to say that's true, though, of most artists all through history, that they're more influenced by their contemporaries than, or at least since the Renaissance? I think that, you know, we've gone through different stages, and it just depends on what sort of the
00:05:25
Speaker
academic criterias at the time. So in postmodernism, you had to sort of quote somebody. But in terms of being influenced, I think that I definitely would say that I have been influenced by Dutch art, both living and dead.
00:05:43
Speaker
So, you know, I went through a whole period of my production where everything was kind of based on what we in Holland called the style or the neoplasticist, but that would be artists like Mondrian and Cher Tritwelt and others. And so I did a lot of work that was a sort of continuation, investigation of, and I picked them because they were very idealistic.
00:06:13
Speaker
and idealism intrigues me. That actually might lead us very nicely to the piece that you want to talk about today. The piece that inspired you, like, is there a continuum between what you were seeing with those Dutch painters and the inspiration that you think you want to bring to the table today?
00:06:32
Speaker
It's a long-winded answer. I hope you don't mind. No, that's fine. I will not interrupt. My life is a series of references that sometimes refer to my own existential existence and that of others.
Polio's Impact on Gerard's Art
00:06:49
Speaker
But it's important to understand that when I was a wife of a boy,
00:06:55
Speaker
at 13 months contracted polio. And that meant that I was left with an atrophied left leg. And at the time, I didn't know all of this, but here's where it goes. That polio and the way that I was influenced, let's start with one small influence back from when I was like 10. I was used to see a poster child and or the 10th
00:07:23
Speaker
And I went to the sportsman's dinner and Jesse Owen sat beside me, the American track and field runner, and he cut up my meat for me because he was sitting to my left.
00:07:37
Speaker
He was cutting them into rather large pieces that I knew I was going to choke on. But I was always Thomas the tank engine, you know, I know I can, I know I can't, I can't. And it took me a lot longer to learn that I need to say I can't because I always wanted to please all those people that said, I know I can, I know I can. So against that backdrop, I went to Ottawa and I got to Ottawa because my
00:08:06
Speaker
teacher in grade eight, who also had a wrestling team. It was not high school, it was grade school. But he organized a trip for the wrestlers from St. Mary's here in London, but it wasn't an art school then, it was just St. Mary's, to go to Ottawa and wrestle. So there I was, all ready to go and be a wrestler, which really? Really?
00:08:34
Speaker
Yeah, really. But I was, again, in that frame of mind that I was the little engine that could. So off we went to Ottawa, and there I was. It must have been about 1968, maybe even a little earlier. And we were
00:08:54
Speaker
at the high school. We did the wrestling stuff and then we had some spare time and we went around walking down Spark Street and at that time the National Gallery wasn't a separate building. It was housed in what had one time, I think it was a bay or an Eaton's or a Simpson's, but a big department store and right on the, I don't know what they call it, but where their Cenotaph and Remembrance Day activities are.
00:09:23
Speaker
And so there I stood and we went in and much to my disbelief, I recognized a lot of the buildings and structures in these paintings. How is it possible? And so the first influence from that was my hometown, my architecture, my surroundings were art.
00:09:47
Speaker
at the National Gallery. And of course, as I explored further, I realized that I think the show was called The Heart of London, but it was a show by Greg Kernow and a number of other prominent London artists. So the Kernows really spoke to me because they were paintings of Victoria Hospital or just downtown or, but they were places I knew. And suddenly that
00:10:17
Speaker
environment where I lived gained some kind of importance due to the fact, and rather naively, due to the fact that they're in the
Inspiration from Greg Curnoe
00:10:26
Speaker
National Gallery. This must be real art. But the artist who had done the paintings that I was looking at at the time was Greg Carnot, who would play a large part of my life and my development as both a person and an artist. We were friends until his death, sadly, but there I stood
00:10:47
Speaker
And then I realized that I could be an artist. That wouldn't take effect for a while, but it did. So that's primarily it to begin with. There's so much more. Well, was there a specific one of his paintings that? I forget which one it is. It's the one with the London and the old hotel that stood where the Canada Trust Towers are now, the London Hotel, I think it was. And it was all like orange, blue and yellow.
00:11:17
Speaker
And it had devices in it that were electric. So I'm looking up his work. First of all, I had to get the spelling. So it says C, probably I should know this guy, but that's how much of a Philistine I am. C-U-R-N-O-E, Greg Crunow. And it's quite distinctive work with very unique colors. Yeah. Yeah. He was, I don't, I don't think it's fair. I mean, I read, I read some of these, um, commentaries.
00:11:45
Speaker
You didn't, you didn't finish your point, Joe. No, no, not at all. No, that's, uh, there sadly, there was no point. So yeah, no, you're, you're free to continue. Okay. So he wouldn't like it because he was unique in the sense that he was one of the first artists in this country that was nationalist. He was very proud of the fact that he was regional.
00:12:11
Speaker
In his mind, it didn't matter where you were, you didn't have to be in New York or London or Venice or Rome or whatever, all the titles on the cologne bottles or whatever. And he wouldn't have liked to be categorized under the term pop artist because the stigma with pop artists is that it's primarily Americans. And he was vociferous about not being an American, so much so
00:12:39
Speaker
that he never went to the United States. The closest he ever got was standing in the Straits of Juan de Fuca and looking across the water at Washington or Oregon. I don't know what state it is, but I think Washington State. And I can understand why. I mean, I'm of a different generation. So by the time I went into the art school, the people that were teaching me were Canadians. But when Greg was at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto,
00:13:10
Speaker
A lot of the props were Americans. They were shoveling American art down the throats and Greg did not like that one bit so he quit and left and came back to London and started making art. So I think his advice to a lot of young artists would be shovel what you're doing and make art.
00:13:27
Speaker
Is it fair to say that he kind of started a movement? I mean... Yeah, he was definitely a regionalist. And I think in terms of art, regionalism is Greg's baby. Sadly, I have not been familiar with Greg Crineau, but his work, his art looks fascinating. Can you tell us more about his style and his work? Well, I mean, he loved colour.
00:13:56
Speaker
He used it liberally, and he liked colors that popped, meaning of course that they were complementary. At times it might even seem garish, but
00:14:08
Speaker
they're beautiful and they were things his wife or his life or the view from the back window or you know they were intimate things that most of us can understand because they live here in London because we share the same things are changing of course as they always do but you know I did a painting of the Forks of the Thames from the Warrencliffe Street Bridge in London and it's now in the collection of Museum London but that painting
00:14:39
Speaker
against the current skyline, I wouldn't recognize it. And on the fainter, you know, just things change so fast. Yeah. I'm a little, I'm a little familiar. Cause of course I'm from London, so it's hard not to hear about Greg Carneau at some point when you live in London. And I was very lucky in the sense that, uh, where I worked for a while, there was one of his bicycles hanging.
00:15:04
Speaker
on the wall. It was a huge painting and I got to look at it every day. So I'm seeing, I'm seeing paintings of, I'm seeing self portraits. I'm seeing paintings of multiple paintings of bicycles, lakes with sailboats, people with unusual hats or helmets. And he did, he did installation type stuff too, right? Yeah, he did. He was a great artist. I have no problem saying that. I really admire him a lot.
00:15:33
Speaker
So you call them a regional painter? Yes. How widely known is he? How widely known should he be?
00:15:43
Speaker
I don't think that any Canadian artist or anyone in Canada that studied art doesn't know who he is. I mean, many exhibitions at the National Gallery. I mean, that's where I saw him. And that would have been 60, I can't remember, 68, let's say. I was just a wee boy. I mean, after that, there are so many books and so many major exhibitions from the Art Gallery of Ontario everywhere. We showed abroad as well, but because of that regionalism,
00:16:12
Speaker
sometimes limited him because he didn't want to show in America. He was scornful towards Americans to be honest. I mean I lived in the US for a while and worked in New York and so it wasn't obviously my cup of tea because I look at the art but some people may say that I'm naive
00:16:31
Speaker
But nonetheless, he's internationally known artist here in Canada and known around the world because of his connections to the period of the 60s. I was going to ask a question about that. That sort of London idea or the regionalism idea and the idea of Canada?
00:16:49
Speaker
I was having a conversation with a friend the other day and we were talking about the first Trudeau, Trudeau the elder, and his multicultural policies. And we were sort of both kind of thinking, yeah, I think really in some ways Canada kind of begins then in the 60s.
00:17:08
Speaker
When that starts happening and people like Greg Crunow are saying, no, we're different. We're not the same as Americans or the British. Cause I would imagine that in some fields it was English people who were the instructors, not Americans, depending on the field. Yeah. I wonder if that's, if there's any truth to that idea that, that our conception of Canada really kind of does begin back then. Let me describe.
00:17:34
Speaker
a map of North America that Greg Drew. It's a beautiful poster. He has Canada, Bath and Highland, all at the top.
00:17:45
Speaker
And then he has Mexico bordering Canada and there is no USA in the map. He just erased it as though it never existed. And I mean, I wish I had that in my collection. Don't get me wrong, I don't have like this big collection that I need pieces for, but I wish I had one because I think they're, I mean, like I said, you know, I've shown in New York and worked in New York for years. It's not, I'm not anti
00:18:15
Speaker
American per se. I mean, I'm anti-asshole no matter where they are. It doesn't matter here, there, or anywhere. I'm going to jump in there if I can. So imagine you're an American listening to this podcast, if you've made it this far. What is an American to think of that? Like, how would you not be offended by that? Well, yeah, he didn't give a shit. Let me put you this way. I can't remember.
00:18:42
Speaker
We did a show at the Embassy Cultural House here in London and Greg put a piece in and there was an American, we were doing a series and there was an American artist and he, at the opening, I remember he was talking and then he saw the Greg text thing. Greg did a lot of works that were texts and very colorful and beautiful. But the guy said, well, has this guy never seen Jenny Holster, who is an American artist who uses text?
00:19:12
Speaker
But the truth of the matter that Greg was in Baghdad before she was in her dad's bag, I mean, it's like he had been doing that type of text work for years. And so I think that's the point that Greg, I think, felt the strongest about. Americans think they are the center of the universal and they're clearly not. So, you know, how they feel about that, I mean,
00:19:35
Speaker
Hubris is a nasty thing, so I wouldn't encourage him to get too hubris about it. It's just him. I don't, and I know many Canadians who don't share the same opinion, but I honor him. Yeah, I don't share his opinion either, to be honest. Though, I do like the idea of celebrating your own.
00:19:58
Speaker
which is I think the positive aspect of what he was about, which is just because it's from London, Ontario doesn't mean it's not really good. I think as Canadians, we're guilty of this problem of like in Canada, you know, to be seen as successful sometimes, you have to go down to the United States and make it there before people here will sometimes accept your success.
00:20:24
Speaker
And I know that that is true for lots of the arts here in Canada. It's less true than it used to be, though. So I think maybe one of the legacies of the Great Grenos of that time period is that it started us on this journey of being able to accept our own excellence outside of other places, other countries. Because I would say I would argue that probably
00:20:47
Speaker
At a certain point in our history, it was all about what the UK said or people in England said rather than what people in America said. Definitely. So where where would you situate Greg's art in the scheme of art, like in terms of importance or significant?
Canadian Artist Representation and Support
00:21:04
Speaker
Well, I mean, he comes into recognition in in the 60s. You know, I think he was still going pretty strong up until his death in the 90s.
00:21:16
Speaker
There's another part, though, that I haven't started on about Greg. And that was that Greg, for all the success he had, he was not afraid to share it. So he wouldn't, Pierre T. Bearge would come to him and say, I'd like to do a show with your work. And he said, well, you should look at these three other artists' work. And then suddenly it's those four artists. It's exhibition. That's the kind of guy he was. He was a very decent man.
00:21:44
Speaker
I know that some people didn't like him because they perceived him as arrogant and he had a certain amount of arrogance to him but I always thought it was charming. The other thing that cultivated was that he then looked at the situation in Canada and made a radical change that has affected everyone in the visual arts in Canada
00:22:06
Speaker
whether they know it or not. And that was, he started an organization with other prominent Londoner Jack Chambers, who was also a painter, and they started Canadian Artist Representation. And Canadian Artist Representation became an organization that made sure that artists were paid. You know, you go down to the States, oh, you're lucky to have a show, and all the money's coming out of your pocket in Canada, you can get a grant.
00:22:36
Speaker
That's largely because of the hard work of people like Greg and Jack and many others. So we have a sort of professional recognition. What a concept, eh? Yeah, eh? Pay your artists. Yeah. And they do. And so if you have a one person show in Canada, you might get a thousand bucks to do the show. Now that's not, you know, going to fill your bank account up so that your eyes tilt like a
00:23:06
Speaker
pinball machine but the reality is you are given something for your hard work and then you can ask for a grant and Greg was him and several other prominent
00:23:17
Speaker
artists like John Boyle and were influential in starting all of that. I'd like to stop down in that idea for a second and just talk about that because there is this, um, this perception that artists will just give you their work for free and that you can consume it and you don't have to give them anything. Pay for your art people. Yep. Yeah. I mean, that was the one thing for me as a young man.
00:23:43
Speaker
I looked at Greg, who was my hero, became my friend. But during that hero stage, I saw an artist who was able to provide for his family. He had a wife, three kids. His wife didn't work. And they lived off the fruits of his art making, which included grants and sales. And that, to me, when I was
00:24:07
Speaker
You know, in grade 12, I thought, well, you know, I'm going to try to make a goal of this. We'll use him as the model and go, well, he can do it then, so can I. Yeah, that's really inspiring. I mean, as a young person to see somebody in the arts and actually making a living at it, that's a doorway to doing that, becoming that. Yeah, it is. It is. Yeah, I really admired him for that. Now, can you speak to how else his work influenced your own work?
00:24:37
Speaker
Well, he liked to be a little troublemaker. We like troublemakers in this podcast. I think that's an apt description of you as well, Jarred, if I'm not mistaken. Okay, I want to hear more about that later. But he liked to turn the knob up a little higher on occasion.
00:25:01
Speaker
belong to a group, the Nyla Spasm Band, you know, and the instruments are kazoos. And one of my favorite artists in life is in that group. It's an artist sculptor named Murray Favreau. And yeah, so things like that. I mean, I, you know, I took it upon myself. I sort of left the genre of just painting out for a number of years and I did performance art and so forth. But I always did things that would stir the pot.
00:25:31
Speaker
And he liked artists that stirred the pot. So he was, for me as a young artist, after first becoming my hero and then after learning him as a person and becoming his friend, he was very supportive. And he would hear about some of the stuff that I was doing and it would just bring a grin to his face. Okay, tell us now, how were you stirring the pot?
00:25:58
Speaker
Well, I don't know what your audience is. I already was worried about me dropping the F-bomb and stuff. But I did a show in London, one of my very first shows. I didn't know what I was going to make, but I went to an abattoir. In the abattoir, I watched the whole process from start to finish. And then I harvested organs from cattle, you know, primary things like the brain and the lungs and the
00:26:27
Speaker
And then I encased those all in a clear plexiglass boxes that were sealed from the outside. And then they were put on the floor of the gallery. And I went to the opening and I was really well attended. And I looked at these sculptures which were sort of meant to say, you call this art. And people were,
00:26:53
Speaker
showing my friends, particularly, were picking them up and looking at them and going, cool. And that was not what I wanted to hear. So I was aghast, and I started kicking these things at the opening. And of course, you can imagine what a piece of
00:27:12
Speaker
fetid flesh that had been sealed inside a plexiglass box smelt like. And there was a stampede to get it out. Because there wouldn't have been room at the toilet. It was so bad stench. This art stinks, literally. Yeah. Well, that's what we used to have a magazine at that time called satellite. They wrote the review of my work was you call that art, which
00:27:41
Speaker
just tickled my fancy. And I would do things like that, and Greg loved that. Greg loved the fact that I could piss people off. Okay, so that's how you would stir the pot. How would he stir the pot? That's a good question. I think
00:27:58
Speaker
I'm not absolutely certain to answer that question with any authority, but the idea of artists union, the idea of his work with regards to the nude, he was just brilliant. But definitely an artist union and telling gallerists and so forth. Back in the day, Greg would have to do things that had a large impact. He sold a lot of art and he had a dealer.
00:28:27
Speaker
In Canada, we have an agency called The Art Bank. The Art Bank buys art from artists for the collection of the Canadian people. He would always be visited because of his notoriety. He got to the point where he would make a contract with a bad dealer saying, look, you can have your percentage, whatever that was.
00:28:47
Speaker
but not on these sales. That would be the Art Bank, for example. In his opinion, he cultivated that sale. He did all the legwork over a period of 20 years. Why should this gallery suddenly get a honking 40% or 50% of the deal?
00:29:06
Speaker
when they never did anything. So that would piss people off. Man, I wish he was around to talk to Jeff Bezos. Yeah, I know. In America, like, that's the thing, you know, I've lived in the American equation where the saying is, you know, oh, you're lucky to have a show. Well, no, I'm not lucky to have a show. You know, this is what I do.
00:29:29
Speaker
And you're lucky to have something to look at. You know, pay up, you know? Yeah. So, yeah, so important. So I have a question that because I mean, I don't want to leave this conversation on the least talking a little bit about New York and your your your access to the punk movement and your part in that.
Gerard and the Punk Movement
00:29:49
Speaker
So what but I could there's a segue to it, which is what did Greg think about that? I organized the first view being a London remark.
00:29:57
Speaker
I organized the first sort of punky concert in London and I got a group of women, none of like classic punk, none of whom really actually, you know, how to play their instrument very well yet. And, um, they were called the curse. And, uh, we did a concert at, uh, the gallery, the four city gallery.
00:30:22
Speaker
which at that time was located on Richmond Street, down at the end of Carling, but has since moved many, many times, but it's still in existence. But he loved that. He loved the fact that that activity and the energy and the
00:30:40
Speaker
And don't forget, he was a member of the spasm band, so his prerequisite to music was noise. In fact, you know, when you think of people in noise music like the artists in Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore, and people like that, I mean, they come to Canada to listen to this stuff. And they would come to London. So it meant a lot. It meant a lot. It meant a lot to me. And I'm sure many, many others.
00:31:11
Speaker
So yeah, that's how. Many different ways, but he was always, he was a very thoughtful guy too. If he was going to roast you in the media, he'd let you know beforehand. How considerate. That's good. Well, that's nice. That's not a good PR move because it gives us too much time to prepare. So he was okay with you going to New York.
00:31:36
Speaker
No, I don't know about that. Oh, I was going to say that, that surprises me. He was okay with that. No, no, no, no, no, no. I don't think so. And I mean, a lot of the people who are strongly influenced, and I'm not going to name names here because I don't need that kind of energy. But they hold the same opinion. And I know when I went to New York, I got dissed, not by everybody, but by people who met a lot to me at the time.
00:32:06
Speaker
and still do to some degree, but the idea of going to America is kind of like a bit of a traitor treasonous to the idea of regionalism. Now, not all regionalists are so dogmatic, but it's still a part of reality. I guess I'm a terrible traitor then. I sell way more books in the United States than I do in Canada. Well, you know, that's the point.
00:32:36
Speaker
contacting me and saying, would you like to do a show in New York? Well, yeah, because I can't get some Ontario or Canadian gallery to give me a show. Why wouldn't I want a show in New York? I've got to try to make a living. Okay. So tell us, tell us about your adventures in New York.
00:32:55
Speaker
Well I've been going there since I was a boy in short pants. That meant like 1965 I went to the World's Fair. So I was already pretty comfortable with New York or at least seeing New York from the backseat of my parents car. But then in the mid 70s I started going on my own.
00:33:17
Speaker
I had an aunt that lived in Midtown Manhattan, and she let me use her apartment. From there, I went and searched for all these places that were important to punks, for example, CBGBs. I went to CBGBs. When you walked in, you feared for your life because it was bikers.
00:33:39
Speaker
Hell's Angels and pretty rough looking disguises, you know, maybe inside they were sweethearts. But that movement escalated or moved forward so quickly that when I was going there and it was CBGB, Zoom Pug, and everybody was punk or biker, and a lot of them were already or soon to be stars, Debra Harry and
00:34:04
Speaker
and various others. Within a year and a half, it was filled with people, the bridge and tunnel crowd they call them, people that come to Manhattan via a bridge or tunnel and are from either upstate or New Jersey and there was no more room for bikers. They stopped coming and it wasn't the beginning of the end because I don't think it ended but
00:34:30
Speaker
If you were to talk to an artist like Chas Vincent, he might say, yeah, I didn't add because he's got a legacy of his own in terms of punk in London. Anyway, so then I started getting involved.
00:34:43
Speaker
started meeting people. So, for example, I'm still friends. My oldest friend from New York, we're both about the same age and I'm 67. He would become my friend. He would come to my home in Amsterdam. He then, at that time, played as the drummer for Lydia Lunch, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. And he was one of the Teenage Jesus and the Jerks.
00:35:10
Speaker
And they were pretty robust band. What was his name? James Scalbunos. You might know his name because he's the drummer for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
00:35:21
Speaker
So we hung around and he'd come to my house and see the difference because in my opinion at that time, if you were a punk and you had to be estranged or alienated or whatever, but I realized quickly that sometimes that alienation in New York was, oh shit, I've dropped my father's
00:35:40
Speaker
credit card somewhere. What am I going to do now? James came to visit me and my good friend, Beth Mondini, who teaches film at the Dutch Film School, but she's the head of the Buddhist Broadcasting Network. Anyway, he came and visited us there and I said, well, now I'm going to show you the difference between Dutch punk and New York punk. So we went to a party in a house.
00:36:08
Speaker
and you know Dutch staircases if you've ever been there, they're rather narrow and rather steep quickly.
00:36:16
Speaker
we were partying on suddenly up the stairs pops the head of some helmeted policeman and he proceeded to grab everyone that he could and push us quicken our descent down the stairs and he like this on every floor they're just rounding us all up and kicking us in they asked to get out of there and when we got to the bottom floor we ran a gauntlet of cops that were you know
00:36:46
Speaker
had the opportunity to get their batons and give us a good whack just for measure. Just in case you hadn't got the message set. Yeah, just in case, right? That was the end of it. There wasn't a truck there arresting people and throwing us in. They stopped the party and everyone had to go somewhere else. That idea of estrangement and alienation in England or in Holland was, it wasn't like
00:37:15
Speaker
America, but because if you were singing about employment, your grandfather was out of a job, your dad was out of a job, you're out of a job, you know, and it's not just the loss of a credit card. It wasn't so much a style. In other words, it was a way of life in many ways. So that was a difference that I felt strongly about New York and Europe in the punk scene at the time. Are you still a punk? Yes, I think so.
00:37:46
Speaker
I mean, I've changed a lot, but in my heart I don't mind screaming, but there are issues.
00:38:02
Speaker
you know, whether, I mean, social content in punk is, I think, you know, God Save the Queen, a fascist regime, you know, they made, that was, you know, the lines from a Sex Pistols song, and, or the clash London's calling or whatever, it's, it's all in there. And it does have social impact. And so yes, I am still a punk, I do not wear leather pants, I do not have,
00:38:31
Speaker
safety pin through my nose and upper lip, but there was a time I did. I just don't know. Yeah, there's an ethos to punk that's, it's not totally dissimilar to the indie ethos in the sense that if there's a DIY component to it, like you're not part of the regular machine, so you have to find your own way of doing things, which doesn't really have anything to do with the aesthetic of punk.
00:39:01
Speaker
No. OK, so you're a punk. Was Greg Carnot a punk? Yeah, I think he was. I mean, I his sons were both of them heavily. Owen had, you know, one of those mohawks and they did. They had a band and it was very punk noise. And Greg was really encouraging and supported that. So some of the things that Greg would be or stand behind
00:39:29
Speaker
or in many ways, punk. So yes, he was a punk. I don't know that punk is a dogma so that I would have to mute a series of criteria in order to call myself one. I think in terms of the music, sometimes it's overlooked and some bands get thrown in as punk when they're clearly not. But the reason I said yes, he was a punk is because I think that understanding the milieu at the time and him
00:39:57
Speaker
I would think he would define himself as a punk if you were to ask him. That's cool. Yeah, his aesthetic, though, is not, I would say. No, I mean, the bright colors, especially are not super punky, from what I remember of that. Well, that's then again, you know, the hair, the hair could be bright. Yeah, that's true. So, you know, and the way the colors are and
00:40:23
Speaker
It's pretty magnificent work. Oh yeah, his work is great. And so is yours. So we're going to have to put up some links to your work as well as some links to Greg's, because the reason I wanted to have you on the podcast is because I'm a great admirer of your work and you are a painter as well as a visual artist because some of your paintings are magnificent. Thank you. I've always defined myself in my mind. So when you asked me earlier as a painter and the work that comes out of that,
00:40:53
Speaker
whether I do it with a camera or otherwise, comes out of my painter sensibility. So when I look through a viewfinder in my camera, I'm composing like an artist and then I'm looking at colors and so forth like a painter. I'm not just a document.
00:41:12
Speaker
Now this, this is one of those podcasts where we could talk forever and I'd love to keep her forever. But, uh, but I have, I always look ahead to the editing and I'm like, Oh dear, we better wrap it up. But, uh, any final thoughts then on, uh, on Greg Chrono punk and your work? Well, two things I'm going to say. Never let anyone steal your joy as an artist.
00:41:41
Speaker
They're out there and they would suck it out of you and you'd have nothing left. And so you really have to be protective. And then to do that, I would say my second point to thine own self be true. And that's the way I kind of see it. That's a great piece of advice. I like that. Thank you to our power for being on our podcast.
00:42:08
Speaker
Thank you for having me. I'm, yeah, I enjoyed it. It's fun to rethink things and work out why we did what we did, right? Yeah. Cause, cause hindsight is 2020. It's nice to be able to look back and yeah, life doesn't make sense while it's happening, but when you look back, you can sort of see some themes and yeah, it makes a bit more sense. Exactly. I know I made a lot of mistakes as a punk, you know, but.
00:42:31
Speaker
I don't really want to spend a lot of time talking about that. Well, that's too bad, because now I want to go for another five minutes hearing about the mistakes. That could be an episode two. Okay, all right. That'll be the next day. We can ask what William S. Burroughs then too. Yeah, we haven't really talked. I know, of course not. Many of my relationships to him and a lot of other
00:42:54
Speaker
Very famous artist. All right, buckle up. We're going to another 20 minutes. You know, I mean, you know, my work with Chuck Close. Yeah, I was going to mention him too. Yeah. And lots of others over the years. But yeah, let's save that for another. All right. Yeah. Okay. Now I got to bring you back. So we'll do that. That's right. There's a sequel. Not security. You know, my dad was a gardener and he always
00:43:22
Speaker
We've talked about fertilizers, job security. Spread out the fertilizer because it's going to grow like Ellen. We're going to have to cut it and when it starts not growing so well, we put more fertilizer on it. On that note, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, guys.
00:44:14
Speaker
So Mark, you and I have discussed how people can support this podcast, and one of the ways I would like to get them to support us is by, and I think you're gonna like this, by purchasing one of your books. Ooh, I like that. How about your books? We're gonna start with your books. Start with my books? Okay. And today I would like to point people in particular to Alpha Max, which is a novel about the Metaverse, which is kind of in vogue these days.
00:44:36
Speaker
Yeah, and it doesn't take a lot of the standard approaches that the Metaverse stories do. I think it's a bit more grounded. It's funny and it's witty and it's smart and it's entertaining. Go to recreative.ca slash support and you can find your books there. Alpha Max by Mark A. Rainer.