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Interview with James Chronister

San Francisco: June 2011-- I first saw James Chronister’s work at Eleanor Harwood’s booth at artMRKTSan Francisco. Defiantly visceral and elevated, Chronister’s paintings stood out in the acute environment ofpersevering gallerists and the onslaught of visual engagement. A week later, I stopped by the opening of hiscurrent exhibition, Now We Lustre where I innately conjured associations with his work such as RoyLichtenstein’s appropriation and Robert Ryman’s surfaces. To breakdown these bygone associations ofmine, James agreed to meet me at his studio, a used-to-be-office on the second floor of a building sharedwith non-profits, attorneys and physical therapists.

JamesChronister

'rak'rüm (noun);the back room of an art gallery

where artists and art lovers hang

Montana. January. 1992. Nearingdark, a winter sky shifts above ourheads. On a lonely highway, trees,black and leafless, pattern themountains as we drive. On thehorizon, the earth and sky meldinto a complex and glowing whitethat seems to hold every colorbehind its surface. DaydreamNation by Sonic Youth beginsplaying on the car stereo,providinga soundtrack for the quicklypassing landscap...[more]

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James Chronister, Now We Lustre (RK),2011, oil on canvas, 40 x 40

© courtesy of James Chronister and Eleanor HarwoodGallery

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Kara Q. Smith: A lot of your recent work depicts forests and unassuming portraits of rock stars,could you talk a little bit about your approach behind selecting the images for your paintings?

James Chronister: It is hard to convince people that it is not really about what they overtly depict. It justhappens that all I have been doing lately is painting rock stars. Part of it is that I have to use a certain typeof source image with an offset print, with Ben-Day dots, like the way a newspaper creates an image. So itworks because that is how stuff was printed back then.

The different images point to different things. The forest scenes may seem different than the rock stars, butthe real subject is a new term I came up with: micro-managed detachment. I have these really crazypaintings that take forever, but I did not take the photo or was not at the event. Yet I take a month and a halfof sitting in the dark painting the images; I throw everything I have at it, but the images aren’t thatgrandiose. They’re not super crazy, but I make them in this crazy fashion; it’s kind of like an attitude. Similarto Luc Tuymans' philosophy; I don’t know if I believe this, but he purports that he has this very disenchantedoutlook on painting: it’s all a failure and what can you really do and we are all going to die… I kind of likethat perspective.

KQS: The idea of disenchantment?

JC: I guess so.

KQS: Would you say that your idea of disenchantment is counter to the idea of nostalgia, whichcould be an alternative reading to your work?

JC: Yeah, that’s the tricky thing with these paintings. I get that a lot: “I must really like the Rolling Stones,”or, “I must be a boomer,” but what I am interested in is the opposite of that. I am interested in how it doesn’twork, how the Summer of Love didn’t work out and people became casualties of drug culture. It’s theopposite of nostalgia.

But I wouldn’t say it is a disenchanted approach – I am not really that negative in real life – it’s more like anattitude, sort of a fable about how life really is. Everyone who has ever been alive knows life is not a Disneyfilm. So there is the surface and there is the reality. Despite what is on the surface, I am trying to get at thereality of the subject, and things in general.

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KQS: Even using the term “Lustre” in the titles of each painting is an interesting contrast to howyou like to paint the dirt and grit of life -- conflating the two creates the reality. You’re keeping acritical distance from the subject matter, yet with your methodical approach you have a veryphysical intimacy with materials you use to create them.

JC: This approach, it gets really old; it gets really tedious. But the thing is, you can’t fake it. You have to sitthere and put all these little marks [on the canvas] because otherwise it’s not going to look the same. Youhave to really feel the space between the washes of color; you can’t phone it in. It wouldn’t be the samework if you didn’t sit there all damn day putting dab after dab of paint on the surface. I never really thought Iwould be a realist painter; I was always more into Rothko and AbEx guys. Maybe it will change, but for thetime being I am a very realist painter. I don’t even like the idea of it in a weird way. A lot of realist paintersjust don’t speak to me.

KQS: I was reading that Agnes Martin, whom we’ve discussed as an influence of yours, consideredherself an Abstract Expressionist, and so I was thinking that in a way you could consider yourselfthe same.

JC: Sure, her paintings were nothing but expression. And in a way my paintings are abstract; it’s not likethey are photos.

KQS: Well, there are so many layers or removal, in a Baudrillardian sense, from the actual subjectthat they become abstractions. Even your choice of titles removes the names of the figures or thelocations of the trees.

JC: I think that is a nice way to think about it and that is how I do think about it. That is the difficulty ofpainting subjects that are so specific and realistic. To try and tip the balance towards AbstractExpressionism seems polar opposite but it is actually quite similar – which is what I am looking for.

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KQS: Your artist statement tells a story about you in the forests of Montana with your Walkman andI am wondering if your forest paintings still take you back to that place? And do you still findyourself wandering around the woods a lot?

JC: Haha, well not as much as my wife would like. To me it’s almost like the woods are a reminder of mychildhood and of my family who all still live in my hometown in Montana. It’s what they symbolize. It’s like Ihad to come to California to remember Montana in a sort of way

My parents live right on the base of Mt. Helena, so when you walk out our back door you are in the woods.When I wrote that statement about being out in the woods with my Walkman – which was all true – I think ithad more to do with what I was trying to achieve by being myself in the woods when I was ten or eleven.My relationship to that presently is what I try to achieve now by being in the studio.

KQS: Sure, I get it. In the past you were in that space on the side of Mt. Helena with a Walkman andif you were to have a Walkman in the woods today, it wouldn’t be the same. To me your paintingsare sort of translations of past and present, kind of liminal representations of this abstract space. Inthis sense, how does Now We Lustre connect with your previous bodies of work?

JC: Well, I think in a lot of ways it is a continuation. I feel like in a way, I only really have one idea. And thatcan be taken either positively or negatively depending on who you are talking to. It sounds trite, but my ideais just depicting the dirt of life in a sort of way. They are almost like totems. The trouble with painting is youhave to paint something. So once you’ve made that something, to try to wrestle into what you really want toget across is the difficulty. It is hard to convince people that it is not really about what they overtly depict.The more I go on, the more paintings I make, I think I can make a case for that.

(James goes and grabs some books off his bookshelf to show me.)

I want to start these table settings from old neo-classical interior design books. Someone told me recently,“You can’t do those because Tuymans did that place-setting series.” And I said, “Listen, I have somethingsay about these and it has nothing to do with Tuymans.” so that is what I am going to do next. I have thisother great book with these palatial interiors that are great and a book on medieval tapestries that I wouldlike to use. I want to stir things up a bit.

James Chronister’s solo show Now We Lustre is on view at Eleanor Harwood gallery from May 28 - July6th, 2011

ArtSlant would like to thank James Chronister for his assistance in making this interview possible.

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Copyright © 2006-2010 by ArtSlant, Inc. All images and content remain the © of their rightful owners.

~Kara Q. Smith, an independent curator and writer living in San Francisco.

(Images: James Chronister, Now We Lustre (Brian Jones), 2011, oil on canvas, 40 x 40; Now We Lustre (Greece), 2011, oil oncanvas, 40 x 40; Now We Lustre (River), 2011, oil on canvas, 40 x 40; Courtesy of the artist and Eleanor Harwood Gallery)

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