Catherine Mulligan photographed by Ben Taylor.

Catherine Mulligan on Teen Mom,
Tragic Paintings, and Y2K Trends

By Taylore Scarabelli

September 13, 2023

It’s a few days before Catherine Mulligan is set to open her first solo show at Tara Downs gallery in Tribeca, and the artist—unlike the grotesquely candid subjects in her work—is feeling a little shy. Since finishing her MFA at Indiana University Bloomington in 2019, Mulligan has been quietly accumulating a fan base for her eerie oil paintings featuring hyper-feminine zombified women and abandoned buildings that embody both a refuge and refusal of Y2K-era cultural malaise. With her latest exhibit, Bad Girls Club, the Brooklyn-based painter is bringing her teenage traumas into the present with works that elicit a warped embrace of the algorithmically-induced beauty trends of the current era. To learn more, our senior editor met with Mulligan to preview her haunting new exhibition, and discuss early aughts reality television, Tan Mom, and turning tragic imagery into a tool for empowerment.

 

A spectacle of tentacles … Yayoi Kusama's installation You, Me and the Balloons. 
Photograph: Phil Noble

Review

Yayoi Kusama: You, Me and the Balloons review – a psychedelic pop-art garden of earthly delights

Aviva Studios, Manchester
The 94-year-old Japanese trailblazer goes big – really big – with warehouse-filling inflatables of dolls, pumpkins and writhing tentacles instilling satisfaction and a stupid happiness

Jonathan Jones

Fri 30 Jun 2023 16.39 BST

Clearly the architects didn’t get the message that Manchester’s new arts venue Factory International has been renamed, boringly, as Aviva Studios. Because despite the new moniker I can still picture its ultimate inspiration, Tony Wilson, regional TV reporter and founder of the city’s legendary Factory Records, standing on the raised viewing platform in its colossal space, the Warehouse, pretending to be Andy Warhol, looking down on tiny people dwarfed by multicoloured inflatable artworks, pleased that Manchester has finally turned into his fantasy version of Warhol’s New York.

Yayoi Kusama

The Warehouse is a monster of a room that seems to have been inspired by staring at the enigmatic covers of Factory Records LPs while listening to Joy Division. It is an enormous industrial cavern with giant steel doors and towering, shadowy dimensions that appears equally capable of hosting art, gigs or a club. Yayoi Kusama’s opening event You, Me and the Balloons has aspects of all three. The 94-year-old pink-haired artist appears on a screen chanting above a forest of luminous purple tentacles. In front of this loom a gargantuan orange pumpkin, a giant statue that resembles Kusama with a skirt made of fat fingers, yapping dogs and lurid clouds.

 

“Male Surfers” Carmel Ca. 1967 ARTOGRAPHY by KALI

‘The Vivian Maier Effect’: An Artist’s Unearthed Photos Reveal a Bygone L.A.

The new four-volume book KALI Ltd. Ed. chronicles Joan Archibald’s transformation from Long Island housewife to elusive artist

Patrick Folliard
October 12, 2021

In the early 1960s, photographer Joan Archibald abandoned suburban Long Island for the eternal summer of Southern California. Working at home from makeshift darkrooms in desert and canyon houses, she began creating striking, innovative photographs and adopted a Pop art sensibility that included changing her name to Kali.

 

 

Life Lessons From the One
and Only Andy Warhol

By Interview

August 11, 2021

Welcome to Life Lessons. This week, we’re marking what would have been the 93rd birthday of our founder Andy Warhol with a journey into the archives. In our special April 1996 issue (aptly titled Andy Mania!), a few icons paid homage to our “wigged-out” patron saint in words and images. Among them are the likes of Richard Pandiscio, Candy Darling, Mary Harron, and our legendary former Editor-in-Chief Ingrid Sischy—whose most memorable reflections are found below. So sit down and grab a pen—you just might learn a thing or two.

ABOVE: SNOOP DOGG WITH HIS SON, CORDE.

New Again: Snoop Dogg

By Emma Brown and Adam Sandler

April 10, 2012

It must be difficult to think of new and exciting career ventures when you are Snoop Dogg. Already a rapper, actor, producer, philanthropist, Little League football coach, porn film director (Snoop Scorsese), clothing designer, candy maker, author; what else is left? The ever-inventive Snoop has found a new money-making, marijuna-motivated, creative outlet—publishing a book of his lyrics made entirely of rolling papers from Snoop’s new rolling paper line, “Kingsize Slim Rolling Papers” and hemp, with a match strip on the spine entitled Rolling Words: A Smokable Songbook. We suppose there’s no better way to re-use, recycle and reduce than by smoking some Snoop Dogg lyrics post-bedtime read.

Cannibalism and genocide / The horrific visions of Ukraine’s best loved artist

Feed me … one of Prymachenko’s works which c

Cannibalism and genocide: the horrific visions of Ukraine’s best loved artist

Maria Prymachenko created seemingly happy scenes of rural life. But look closer and you see the terror unleashed on her country by Stalin. Now her work has once again become a national symbol, duplicated at rallies worldwide

Jonathan Jones
Friday 18 March 2022

At the 1937 International Exposition in Paris, two colossal pavilions faced each other down. One was Hitler’s Germany, crowned with a Nazi eagle. The other was Stalin’s Soviet Union, crowned with a statue of a worker and a peasant holding hands. It was a symbolic clash at a moment when right and left were fighting to the death in Spain. But somewhere inside the Soviet pavilion, among all the socialist realism, were drawings of fabulous beasts and flowers filled with a raw folkloric magic. They subverted the age of the dictators with nothing less than a triumph of the human imagination over terror and mass death.

Iggy Pop, photographed by Wayne Maser.

Life Lessons from Iggy Pop

By Interview

May 27, 2021

Welcome to Life Lessons. This week, we revisit some admittedly out of context highlights from two interviews with the punk icon Iggy Pop: first in November 1986, then in April 1990. Grab a mic, take your shirt off—you just might learn a thing or two. 

———

“I don’t think I’m lucky; I think I have a tough constitution. And I’ve been wise enough to listen to other people.”

 

Snoop Dogg and his son, Corde, in the November 2002 issue of Interview.

Life Lessons from Snoop Dogg

By Interview

April 20, 2021

Welcome to Life Lessons. This week, in honor of 4/20, we revisit some highlights from our November 2002 interview with Snoop Dogg, as told to Adam Sandler. Sit down, roll a joint—you just might learn a thing or two. 

———

“I got three kids. Two boys and a girl. You’ve got to instill the same values [in your kids] that were put in you, but not be so disciplinary—I feel like my conversation means more to them than actually whacking them.”

Tracey Emin at St John Bread and Wine, Spitalfields, London. Photograph: Harry Borden

LIFE ON A PLATE

Interview

Tracey Emin: 'I was on 100 oysters a week'

The artists tells of her food fantasies and raiding the fridge as a child

John Hind

Sunday 18 April 2010

Sleeping under a dinner table is safe and snug. I picked it up as a child. As a young artist, at a big dinner, sometimes I'd get so tired I'd think, "If I just snooze for half an hour I'll be fine", and I'd slide underneath. More recently I don't, because my absence would be too noticeable.

Portrait of the artist / Kristin Scott Thomas / The English Patient or Four Weddings

Kristin Scott Thomas

Kristin Scott Thomas, actor – portrait of the artist

The English Patient star talks about her big breakthrough, bad reviews – and why her worst performance is always screening on cable TV

Interview by Laura Barnett
Tuesday 12 March 2013 18.59 GMT

Kristin Scott Thomas

What first drew you to acting?

Wanting to be somebody else. As a child, I played dress-up with great conviction. I'd walk to the village shop wearing my mother's clothes, pretending I was somebody different.

What was your big breakthrough?

There are the obvious ones, like The English Patient or Four Weddings. But on a more personal level, it was when I played Bérénice at the Avignon festival [in 2001]. I hadn't done any theatre since drama school. God knows what the performance was like, but to be able to go out on stage independent of any machinery was incredibly powerful.

Do you suffer for your art?

Frequently – though I'm talking "suffer" in inverted commas. You do get lonely; you're torn in every direction. And if you've had a long career, like me, you're constantly being compared to others. You're either adored or criticised.

Did you have a plan B?

No, and I still don't. I would love to be able to stop – the problem is, I have no idea what I'd do. I'm just stuck.

Kristin Scott Thomas

How would you compare the French and British arts scenes?

The cinema is a much bigger industry in France – and there's not the same addiction to America, to pleasing wider audiences, that we get in Britain. French theatres are usually run by a single director, and are heavily subsidised. They have a captive audience, which can get a bit stifling.

What are you most proud of?

A full house on a Wednesday matinee.

What's the greatest threat to theatre today?

Star turns. I think I'm OK now – I'm counted as a theatre actor, rather than a cinema actor who just turns up for six weeks then buggers off. I was very nervous of that when I started. With Bérénice, I signed up for an eight-month tour to all sorts of godforsaken places in France. My American agents were going crazy.

What's the worst thing anyone ever said about you?

A review of my first film, Under the Cherry Moon, said, "Kristin Scott Thomas is a better cure for insomnia than a glass of warmed milk." To be fair, he was right: I was appalling. That film's always on cable – when you're zapping channels, bored, with jet lag, you'll suddenly see me in black-and-white with a lot of makeup, being utterly unconvincing.

What work of art would you most like to own?

I'd like to have been painted by the artist Meredith Frampton in the 1930s. His subjects are very smooth and doll-like, with a disturbing, burning energy.

Is there anything about your career you regret?

Lots of things – but it would be cruel to mention names. It's a job; sometimes I have to do things I don't want to do. But I've discovered that if you stop, everything churns on without you. So you have to keep pedalling, really.

In short

Born: Redruth, 1960.

Career: Films include The English Patient, Four Weddings and a Funeral and I've Loved You So Long. Stage includes several major roles in French productions, and at the Royal Court and London's West End. Performs in Old Times at the Harold Pinter Theatre, London SW1, until 6 April.

High point: "Doing the camera test for The English Patient. I felt that playing that part was going to be so important for me – and it was."

Low point: "Every time I make a film and think, 'What on earth am I doing?'"

THE GUARDIAN

KISS

Portrait of the artist / Liz Lochhead / "Do better next time"

Portrait of the artist / John Cooper Clarke / At heart, I'm just a frustrated playboy

Portrait of the artist / Alice Oswald / 'As a child, I wrote in a little notebook I hid in a bush'

Portrait of the artist / Lemn Sissay / 'An artist doesn't need to suffer to create'

DRAGON

001 Portrait of the artist / Will Alsop / 'I've learned never to trust anyone with big feet and a small head'

Portrait of the artist / Jane Birkin / 'I was at the wrong audition, but Graham Greene still gave me my big break'

Portrait of the artist / Vanessa Paradis/ 'I was only a teenager when I started out in the music industry. I didn't look my best'

Portrait of the artist / Siri Hustvedt / 'I don't read reviews'

Portrait of the artist / Michael Rosen / 'Kids don't get the chance to enjoy poetry'

Portrait of the artist / Sebastião Salgado / 'I looked through a lens and ended up abandoning everything else'

Portrait of the artist / Kristin Scott Thomas / The English Patient or Four Weddings

Portrait of the artist / Colm Tóibín / I work very deliberately, with a plan

Portrait of the artist

Colm Tóibín 

Novelist 

Colm Tóibín talks about writing a Broadway show, giving up poetry at 20 – and why writers would be good at running military campaigns

Interview by Laura Barnett
Tuesday 19 February 2013 18.17 GMT

 Colm Tóibín 

What first drew you to writing?

When I was 12, it was agreed I would spend some hours studying every evening. I discovered rhyme and began to write poetry. I did this until I was 20, when I realised the poems were no good.

What was your big breakthrough?

When Serpent's Tail agreed to publish my first novel, The South. I'd just spent a year in Barcelona and got the news on my way home. After landing in Dublin, I sat alone in the airport bar for an hour, just trying to take it in.

Do you suffer for your art?

Suffering is too strong a word, but writing is serious work. I pull the stuff up from me – it's not as if it's a pleasure.

What's more important in fiction: story or style?

I'm against story. I remember [the painter] Howard Hodgkin really disliking being called a colourist. People love talking about writers as storytellers, but I hate being called that: it suggests I got it from my grandmother or something, when my writing really comes out of silence. If a storyteller came up to me, I'd run away.

 Writing tends to be very deliberate … Colm Tóibín. Photograph: Kim Haughton

How do you know when a book is finished?

You're often wrong. I work very deliberately, with a plan. But sometimes I come to a point that I planned as the end and it needs softening. Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep – it can't be done abruptly.

Do you read your reviews?

Not if somebody has told me in advance that it isn't good. The only time I've ever learned anything from a review was when John Lanchester wrote a piece in the Guardian about my second novel, The Heather Blazing. He said that, together with the previous novel, it represented a diptych about the aftermath of Irish independence. I simply hadn't known that – and I loved the grandeur of the word "diptych". I went around quite snooty for a few days, thinking: "I wrote a diptych."

What advice would you give a young writer?

Finish everything you start. Often, you don't know where you're going for a while; then halfway through, something comes and you know. If you abandon things, you never find that out.

What work of art would you most like to own?

Titian's Man With a Glove. It's in the Louvre – right by the Mona Lisa. I'm probably the only person who's looked at it in 100 years.

What's the biggest myth about writing?

That there's any wildness attached to it. Writing tends to be very deliberate. A novelist could probably run a military campaign with some success. They could certainly run a country.

What are you writing now?

I'm close to finishing a novel. And I have a play [an adaptation of The Testament of Mary] opening on Broadway in about a month. There's a daily phone call from someone saying: "If we cut this sentence, would it break your heart?" Most of the time, I'm very good and say it wouldn't.

What's your greatest ambition?

To write better.

In short

Born: Enniscorthy, County Wexford, 1955

Career: Has published nine novels and short story collections, including Brooklyn, The Master and The Testament of Mary; as well as various non-fiction works, the latest of which – New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families – is out on 7 March. His next novel will appear in the autumn.

Low point: "No lows and no highs – writing has just been a gift."

THE GUARDIAN

KISS

Portrait of the artist / Liz Lochhead / "Do better next time"

Portrait of the artist / John Cooper Clarke / At heart, I'm just a frustrated playboy

Portrait of the artist / Alice Oswald / 'As a child, I wrote in a little notebook I hid in a bush'

Portrait of the artist / Lemn Sissay / 'An artist doesn't need to suffer to create'

DRAGON

001 Portrait of the artist / Will Alsop / 'I've learned never to trust anyone with big feet and a small head'

002 'Portrait of the artist / Rankin / I wouldn't want there to be another me'

003 Portrait of the artist / Thea Sharrock / 'Bureaucracy is the greatest threat to art today'

004 Portrait of the artist / Marin Alsop / It's still unusual to see a woman conducting an orchestra

Portrait of the artist / Jane Birkin / 'I was at the wrong audition, but Graham Greene still gave me my big break'

Portrait of the artist / Vanessa Paradis/ 'I was only a teenager when I started out in the music industry. I didn't look my best'

Portrait of the artist / Siri Hustvedt / 'I don't read reviews'

Portrait of the artist / Michael Rosen / 'Kids don't get the chance to enjoy poetry'

Portrait of the artist / Sebastião Salgado / 'I looked through a lens and ended up abandoning everything else'

Portrait of the artist / Kristin Scott Thomas / The English Patient or Four Weddings

Portrait of the artist / Margaret Drabble / "I think about Shakespeare every day"

Portrait of the artist / Cornelia Parker / "I didn't make any money out of my art until I was in my 40s"

Portrait of the artist / Colm Tóibín / I work very deliberately, with a plan