Marcus Jansen: Examine & Report (2016) - full transcript

- And I said, "What does
painting mean to you?"

And he said, "Painting is the
most intimate act of war."

- Many of my friends
were in the military.

I had joined from
Holland and was sent,

almost immediately, to
basic training in March

to report to Fort
Leonard Wood in Missouri,

and then immediately
was sent to Iraq,

Saudi Arabia after that.

So I had very little
time to sort of adjust.

I was there, from there
I went to Fort Bragg,

and with Fort Bragg
we went directly,



were sent directly over directly

'cause the conflict
had already started.

- I think, of course,
his military past,

you very often see in
almost all of his paintings,

especially in the
urban paintings,

but also in the Faceless Series.

He's a very serious person.

As I said, a very caring person.

He is very interested

in today's

political, economic,
environmental subjects

and that, in my opinion,
you see in all his works.

- I saw the damage that we did.

Those are things
that you don't forget



and I'm sure,

well, I'm not sure,
but I don't know

how much my military experience

or what I experienced
there, or even afterwards,

influenced my work
now, but I'm certain

that it had some
kind of impact on me.

There was a sense
of hyper-alertness

that happened during that time.

When you're in an
environment that's dangerous,

there's an automatic
hyper-alertness

that you're in instinctive mode,

much more than a rational mode.

- One of my favorite
things that I've seen,

it's not the, it's very naive,

it's not the best
graffiti I've ever seen,

but I love the message

and it's a girl called
Shamsia Hassanni,

she's an Afghan girl, she's
25 years old, lives in Kabul.

She's a lecturer
at the university

which shows how fucked up it is

when you have a 25
year old lecturer

'cause there's no one else left.

But she's gone out
and she's painting,

it's a girl in a blue
burka that she paints.

And she paints it
all over Kabul.

And you look at it and you go

that is one of the most
politically charged images

that you could possibly have.

It means one thing in the west,

means another thing in the east.

She's going out, she's
puttin' this thing out.

She's putting her
life on the line

every time she does it.

- I was diagnosed with post
traumatic stress disorder

when I came back, and

that probably had an impact too

in terms of the direction I took

and also being critical
about what was going on.

- Those kind of things,
that's what gets me excited

when people are trying to use
the medium to say something.

Like I said, I don't mind people

doing purely decorative stuff,

but I do like the stuff
that has a message in it

and I think, you know,

the general public also like it.

Again, to use Banksy
as an example,

his is a very naive
political message.

As his girlfriend used to say,

it's like sick foreign politics.

But it was something that
resonated right away,

across the board; people
liked the message.

Same with JR, same with Marcus.

If you look around, you'll
probably find a handful,

they're actually
trying to say something

on a political level.

I think, again, I think
a lot of the artists

are put off by their galleries

for doing something that has
too much of an edge to it

'cause it's slightly
harder to sell.

- Everything in life
somehow plays a part

in terms of decisions
you make later.

I think all of it sort of
came together in the arts

because it allowed
me to explore that

and it gave me
maybe some of the,

some of the motive on why I
was doing what I was doing.

And I think that's
probably one of the things

that brought my sort of
awareness about being

or using your instincts
for your benefit,

which again, like I said before,

we don't really use as
much in a civilized society

because we're constantly
following orders and rules.

So maybe it's that that sort
of ignited that whole idea.

And obviously some of it
worked its way into my work

in terms of looking
at that information

and that experience as critical.

- And I suppose
that's the other thing

that separates
Marcus, in a sense,

from the previous generations
of abstract expressionists,

because painting is something
which really hangs on

in American art production

because of New York
and because of the way

that New York took
over from Paris,

and the influence of it

in a way I don't think it really
hangs on in other cultures.

And I think that my first
impressions of his work were,

they were unweighted,
in a sense,

and I say that there was
a lot of iconography,

a lot of popular
iconography involved in it;

the Dorothy characters,

but also there's McDonald
characters, things like that,

the prevalence of a
certain grammar of symbols

which exist in the work,
these targets which reappear,

the use of found material

which become symbolic
material to a certain degree.

And I think that the emphasis
for the gallery owner

was a sense on the
more saleable pieces

which would be the
wall-based works.

So paintings are much easier
to sell than installations.

- That's the pleasure we
have of looking at art,

is that it's the one
free aspect that we have

that's not touchable.

- In some ways, seeing like
the way he works in the studio,

it's a lot of shop talk
kind of stuff how things are

and

I picked up that he's somebody
that's been in the trenches

doing what he does,

and it's kind of nice because

there's murals on
the trench walls,

he's

honing in

and he's focusing on

the nature of the materials

and the way that
they're speaking to him.

- I'm much more interested

in what I feel
about a subject than

what I see in a subject.

It's the feeling that I
get that interests me.

That's what we want to convey.

Instinctive feeling.

- And he's working on mastering
the way they speak to him.

- You never know
when you're done.

You just stop in a
moment of time, you know.

Any painting can continue,
it's just a matter of,

a painting is simply
capturing a moment in time.

You can always
continue a painting

'cause you can always
go over it or, you know,

find a way to sort
of continue it.

It's a matter of capturing
one moment of many moments

that you already experienced
in the process of painting,

in the process of
putting it together.

- This knowing other painters,
how they deal with the chaos

and the confusion
and then finding

the answers in the confusion,
I like that he works,

he talks about, "I don't
know, I just get into it

"and then it kind of
comes into being,"

rather than controlling
it to be exactly

and which is like a
Rauschenbergian thing.

Bob would say, "If I know what
it looks like, why do it?"

- The work of his that I
was really fascinated with,

the first work I
was fascinated with,

was something called
Rock-a-bye Baby

and it's a floor-based
work, basically.

It could be hung on a wall,
if you had a lot of anchors.

But it's a floor-based
work which has a small

figure of a black baby
in the middle of it

with no painted on its forehead

and a landscape around it which

is basically with found studio
material, and then things

like jigsaw puzzle pieces, a
lot of brushes, other things.

And discussing this with Marcus

I thought was very interesting

because there is a very
fascinating discourse in,

you consider art
history or art theory

that was mainly pioneered
by WJT Mitchell,

who's a critic out of Chicago,
and it's basically talking

about colonial
ideas of landscape

and how landscape, as a genre,

can also be considered a medium,

in other words, it's a
medium to convey power

or a medium to
communicate power.

And usually you're
thinking of Gainsborough

when you think of this,

you're thinking of
these English landscapes

from base of the 18th century,

where you start
having an empire,

in which you have the landowner

and maybe the landowner's wife

with this perfect,
idyllic setting,

which they, in a sense,
are the purveyors of.

They're evidencing their wealth.

And you can go on to people
who did landscapes of India

for an entire career, but
they spent one day in India

and India looks
a lot like Dorset

for the rest of their career,

but it's supposed to be India.

So, this way in which
visuality and power

or knowledge that that
visuality represented

and power became part of
the imperial visual culture.

- I, for myself, generally
reject any labels

for art as much as I reject
them for human beings.

I mean, they don't
define anything.

They give people
maybe guidelines in
a certain direction

and not necessarily always
the right direction,

it's simply a label.

So then once you have
a label, of course,

you have individual
interpretations

of what that label means.

Labels are very
dangerous to an extent,

so I generally reject
them, but, obviously,

for historic purposes
and marketing purposes

and business purposes,
you have labels

used to be able to communicate.

But I personally, plus I think
my work shifts all the time.

It's a process in the making,

so I can't really,

I can't really say that
it's in any way particular,

it's not static.

- And to me, one of the
things that was fascinating

about Marcus' practice
was how his work,

in these installations,

specifically worked
against that grain,

without even being
completely conscious of it.

So, the unconscious ability

to harness this
relationship to landscape

in a way that was both
sculptural and also

subaltern, for lack
of a better word,

both from his
perspective and for,

for a way of subverting
the language of landscape.

So that work, when I
spoke to him about it,

he was saying, "Well,
when I was in Iraq,

"flying over these
devastated landscapes,

"this is what I thought.

"This is what it
looks like to me.

"It looks like a jumbled mess."

- Once again, going
back to World War II

and the use of bombers, that
you hear the sounds coming,

on the ground the people have
this very real experience

of being devastated, but
the bombers in the sky

are completely
removed, and I think

when you look at his
aerial paintings,

you can have both of
those experiences.

So, from a distance, it
just becomes a landscape,

a gridded design,
much like a bomber

or a drone, a
navigator would see,

but as you approach the painting

and you get within inches of it,

you see all of those
detailed relationships

between the land, the
people, the animals.

And so now you're
immersed in it.

- In that sense,
reproducing that landscape

with this kind of victimized
child, infantile figure

who is calling out against
the violence around him,

and doing it in such a way

where the figure has
absolutely no power.

This is not a landowner
with a huge estate,

this is not, there is now
power over this situation.

The powerlessness of it, the
chaotic, inscrutable nature

of the landscape
that's produced,

to me was incredibly
powerful as a visual message.

So, that's where we started.

- Oh absolutely, the
point of the process

where I say, you know, let's go,

is when

I get a certain feeling that

I've,

I'm experiencing something,
I'm feeling something.

There has to be a sense of,

the images talk to you, and

once they talk to
you, it's a matter

of sort of serving as a vessel

to kind of investigate
what's being said

and how you can
continue that dialog.

- In seeing a number
of exhibitions

throughout the world,
I've become familiar

with a movement called
Neue Sachlichkeit

which is a German movement
that happened between the wars.

So it happened after World War I

and extended past World War II.

And neue sachlichkeit
means new objectivity,

and what those
artists were doing,

they were looking around them
and see the ravages of war.

So Otto Dix, George
Grosz, Rudolf Schlichter,

a few of them had actually
been in World War I

and were horrified by what
they did, what they saw,

and felt this need
to show the world,

from a first-hand basis,
what was happening.

And I think they
were also coming out

of a surrealistic
movement, Dada,

and when I look at Marcus' work

I can't help but reflect on

his role of today in the
same way that those artists

were engaging society
a hundred years ago.

- You know, I guess
what partially drives me

is simply to get some
kind of sense of truth.

What I notice in the art world,

over I would say
the last decade,

since I've been painting,
there's very little truth

and there's very little
things being said.

There's a lot of, you know,

there's decorative elements,
experimental elements,

but there are no
stories being told,

at least not in American art.

And there was a lack of that,

and I thought that was
something for me to engage in

and it was something
natural to me

because it was
part of who I was.

So, the story-telling
aspect of it was,

it wasn't something
I had to work for,

it was very natural for me
based on my own experiences,

based on needing some kind
of journalistic commentary

in this century, which
I think is lacking.

We have a lot of propaganda,

but there's not too
much documentation.

So I wanted to be
a part of that.

As an artist,

I think that's

part of our responsibility.

- Everyday.
- Everyday?

- I been out here
every day since

I would say 1999.

- Wow.

- 1999.

But on and off, on and off.

- Ya, I'm amazed and yet
I'm not amazed.

We had a good time there,
I mean, it was, you know.

- And then he moved.

- I remember him,
I remember him.

- And I remember,
ya, we used to,

I used to take the
train from the Bronx

and set up on Prince Street,

and my good friend,
Carlos Ramsey,

used to hold my spot for me

and we used to set up
the paintings right
against the wall.

Was a painting called
Harlem Deli that I painted

and it was a painting on
cardboard at the time,

and actually I
had it in New York

and I was showing it on
Prince Street and Broadway

until John Ortiz came
by, who was an actor

that played in Carlito's Way,

and he was doing
a film in New York

and he bought the painting,
I think for $350 at the time.

So, that was
the beginning of that.

- I was like pitching
right around the corner,

and even though I was
interested in art,

it was more like a lot
of artists where like

they had their little lofts
out here with their art

and he had, that guy Hamilton
that did The Shadows,

SAMO which is Michel Basquiat,

Michel-Jean Basquiat, SAMO,

he would tag up with all
this reading and expression.

You got Kenny Shaw, Keith
Harring, Lee Quinones.

A lot of those guys, they
started their careers out here.

- Of course, you always read
something about the painter,

some compared him now as
the modern Keith Harring.

I think he has nothing of
Keith Harring in his paintings.

- It was a very
different scene back then

and everybody was sort
of involved in it.

It was just one of
those things that

you were able to make
something out of nothing

and that appealed to me,
and that also drove me

to kind of investigate it more.

- When I was in New
York, it was the time

of Basquiat, Warhol,

so, a lot of things
going on in New York

at that point of time.

- We had a good time.

It was a good time just,

just being free.

- Back then, all this was all
industrial, all factories.

In fact, we used
garment factories.

Old garment factories.

A lot of hard working, you know,

people from overseas.

- I started writin' graffiti,

I was about 10 years
old, in the Bronx.

And then my mother used to
live in the Lower East Side

so I used to come over there
and check out the music,

that was when punk rock
started coming out.

- Right.

- And when I was
filmin' the Bronx,

hip-hop was coming out, so
I saw both of them blow up.

I saw punk rock blow up
and I saw hip-hop blow up.

- It's like in the old days

but like kinda
before the internet,

you know, when you used
to listen to the radio

and suddenly a tune
would come out of nowhere

and would be massive,

and it wasn't on one
of the major labels,

it wasn't on anywhere, it was
just some kids in a bedroom

that put a tune out.

It went out on radio and
it was wildly popular

and everyone loved it.

I akin this movement
to those records.

Ya, it was kids doin'
it for themselves,

puttin' out their own stuff,

no major label backing,
and wow, look at that,

thew general public love it.

- As a kid, I grew up in a
very strong hip-hop culture,

the 1980s because that was
just the dominant culture.

And I remember even when I
went to Germany, of course,

it took over, the roots
of hip-hop culture

which people sometimes forget

wasn't a whole bunch of
entertainment and profanity,

but it was about speaking of
the issues in the inner city.

And, you know, of course,
the new generation

doesn't really know
it because it just,

it hardly exists anymore.

But it was rooted in a
generation that was rebellious

and rightfully
rebellious because

the conditions weren't
the best conditions.

- I was a graffiti artist in
the '80s, painted subways.

I started a brand
called PNB Nation

which was kinda the first

experiment of graffiti
artists going into commerce.

It's like one of the
first times that like

we started to
communicate, you know,

not on trains, but sort of
via messaging on I-shirts

and sort of

creating graphic language
that people could wear.

- In 1982 I was in New York
and I had met West One,

who was introduced
to me by my godmother

who was actually his
mother's best friend.

And he lived in
midtown Manhattan.

The two of us got together.

He was sort of, and still is,

considered one of
the graffiti legends,

a few years older than me.

He inspired me.

I saw his work and
was introduced to him.

His room was a room
full of spray paint cans

and all kinds of graffiti tags
on the walls and everything.

That impressed me.

I think everybody sort of
has a spark in their life

that kind of gets
them to do things.

It was one of mine back then.

- Used to DJ, ya, I
couldn't hold a spray can.

It's too big for my hand.

Used to hold it like
that to spray it.

Used to get more paint on me.

- I was flippin' through
The Source magazine,

which is a hip-hop magazine,

very legendary hip-hop magazine,

and when I got to the
back of the magazine,

in the ad section,
there was an ad

that Jansen had taken out,

and it was this really
historic, classic piece

titled Subway 82.

It was a silhouetted
figure of a man

kneeling down inside of a
train that was graffitied up.

And I saw that piece and I
was absolutely blown away.

And I said whoever
this artist is,

I need to meet them, I
need to know who they are,

I need to speak to them.

So I reached out to him

and it developed a
relationship between him and I.

I purchased some of his work

and became really
good friends with him,

eventually went on
to work with him,

and here we are 14
plus years later

and him and I are really
still in each other's life.

- See, I don't think it should
be classified as urban art,

I think, again, it's one
of those things where,

I think this was
the real art world

trying to ghetto-ize a movement
that it didn't understand.

So it's like, well, let's
just push it over there,

that's the children's area,

let's put one of the
small table over there

with the little chairs while
we dine at the table over here.

We don't want them near us,

they need to be over there.

I think, if anything, it
was the art world's way

of kinda saying it's
not a real movement,

it stays over there.

And then as the
years have gone by

it's become a more and
more powerful movement.

- It became a movement.

Ya, I think, you know,
we weren't the first

but we were one of the first,

probably maybe
handful of people who,

it was more of like a
youth culture explosion,

youth culture movement.

It happened to be
manifesting in the form of

like small I-shirt brands.

But, it was really a kind of
dialog that became national.

There were west coast brands
and east coast brands.

But ya, also for us
we were very sort of,

it was more of a
social commentary.

We considered ourselves
like the social critics.

- What graffiti inspired?

Ya, you'd think
it'd just be a mark.

There's a kid on Broadway but

I don't know what to
call his graffiti.

- An amateur.
- Amateur?

- He tries his best, but he
doesn't have the experience.

- I'm not sure that's
necessarily a good thing,

25 years old and seeing

the proliferation of shit
graffiti all over the world.

From wherever you go,

from Baghdad to

Birmingham, there's a
ton of rubbish out there,

but there's also some great
stuff out there still.

- And people try
to use that gambit

by taking a graffiti
artist and turning them

into some kind of museum
art or whatever it is,

and they keep trying to
manufacture the new Basquiat

or the new Keith Harring
by taking a street artist

or a graffiti artist
and showing them

in a gallery setting.

And some of that has
worked really well.

Some of that hasn't
worked at all.

But the overriding point is

that I think Keith
Harring is a valid,

you could say Keith Harring
is that gambit, so to speak.

Basquiat happened to be
painting his SAMO sayings

on walls,

but wasn't really
a graffiti artist

in the same sense that
Keith Harring seemed

to be a graffiti artist.

- Depends on who
you're talking to.

From what I gather of personal
friends with Jean-Michel

is that he disliked being
called a graffiti artist.

And in his situation, he was
going for something that,

and people were trying
to tear him down

socially.

- Ya, they did it
with Banksy as well.

This isn't real art,
this isn't made properly.

This will never last.

The movement's finished.

We'd sell a painting
for like 20 grand,

and people would go, "This
is just not gonna last,

"it's not possible."

Oh, I just sold another five.

Or, you know, "You can't
do exhibitions like that."

I said well, we just did

and we got like
40,000 people come by.

So, what is there about
this that you can't do?

And it's just, I think,
they don't like change.

They go to college, they
study art history, art theory,

there's a certain
way of doing it,

it needs to be done like this

and needs to be shown like this.

Your gallery has
to have white walls

and a polished concrete floor,

and a really
annoying German girl

on the desk that doesn't smile

and makes everything feel
like shit when they come in.

You know, I
think, the whole thing,

they don't like it 'cause
they don't understand it

and the main reason
they don't like it

is because it's populist.

And my thing is is sometimes

there's a reason
things are populist,

not because it's
overly commercial

but because lots
of people like it.

- I just think that the motives

behind the promotion of
certain kinds of painting

can be very transparent
in the New York art world.

So,

when I saw Marcus Jansen's work,

it wasn't work that I had seen

in the New York art
world at that stage

because he's in a
different part of America,

and he's also
showing in England,

so it was like more of
an international thing.

'Cause a lot of the work
in New York is very local.

And there's art in New York
that never gets international.

I got a really, immediately
felt that Marcus' work

had an international
thing happening.

- In Germany people
are much more braver

to express

their worries

and what they observe.

Here, they try to be
politically correct

and not express it.

In Germany, they debate
about those things.

And it wondered me how Marcus
put his finger into the wound

of the things which are
obviously out there.

- I think that the popularity,

in terms of my work,
changes depending

on the general awareness
of the population.

And I can say that because,

I mean, I've been doing
this for almost 20 years,

and I would say for
the last 15 years

kind of more, in a more
critical direction.

But my popularity
is just really now,

has been getting more attention.

So that hasn't been the work,

that's been a change in the
consciousness and awareness

of the population, I think.

So I'd like to think that
as I continue to do that,

that that can always shift

whether it's in
Europe and so forth.

I would say Europeans,
generally speaking,

from my experience, living there
for almost half of my life,

there's more critical
debate, open critical debate,

there's no question about that.

Where here, discussions,
generally speaking,

unless you're around
a certain group

that is specifically
sort of tasked for it,

there's more of sort of

entertainment
discussions in general.

So there's a difference
there, culturally.

And this is a cultural
difference that just exists.

So, in terms of the audience
drifting towards my work,

that, like I said,
it largely depends

on what's happening in
what country, and when.

- Well, you know, one of the
things I noticed about Marcus,

like the time he
spent in Germany,

I've done 12 shows around
the world and stuff

and it seems that the European
attitude about the arts

is there's more of a
reverence for the arts

and there's more of a
care about the arts.

American public, to entice
people to go to the museums

to look at stuff is like
this rock star game.

- Look, I remember a few
years ago I was in Paris

and a friend of mine,

we went to visit a
friend who was squatting

in a building with 30 other
artists and they were squatting,

and I said, "What's
happening here?"

And he said here in France,

if a building is not
being leased or sold,

you're required to allow
artists to live in that space.

So they, institutionally,
there's an understanding,

there's no shame to be in a room

and say, "What do
you do for a living?"

I'm an artist, I'm a painter,

I'm a sculptor is
like you can be saying

I'm a doctor, I'm a
lawyer, I'm an accountant.

Where as here,
it's sort of like,

"You're an artist?"

Okay.

You couldn't do anything
else, so, you know,

it's sort of not as valued.

- It seems that the cultures

have looked to the arts
for understanding life more

in the European consciousness,

and there's more of

why we're here-ness,
there's more of a collecting

because we need to collect
it than there is in America.

America, there's a lot of
the 1% that just gets stuff

because that's what
we should be doing.

Like the Flemish masters,

a lot of Flemish
masters happened

at a certain period
because at that time,

the common people that
it was really important

to have a painting, and
they would spend a year's

of income to have a
painting in their house,

not because it was status, but
because this is so special,

we really need this.

- I remember once
touring in Paris

and they were showing
us this huge monument,

it was made of metal and
these beautiful carvings.

It's famous, I forget
the name of it,

but Napoleon had it made.

But the metal for the object

was melted down Prussian canons

that he had brought from
the Prussian battlefields

back to France to be
made into a piece of art

and to me that kind of sums up

their whole deal about art.

It's like, we took, we are
going to have hundreds of men

take these canons
back to France,

symbolically, and create
them into a work of art

and that's gonna be
what stands in our city

and I kind of feel like

that's cool.

- You know, if artists
were to go on strike

and were striking, who
would give a rats ass

in America?

They don't need to do that.

What's that good for?

That, Marcus has the drive
that he has to do this

and we should learn from this,

and we should know why

it matters.

- No, no, I think it's in both,

if I can compare, the
Americans take a lot of care

or are very, very much
interested in art,

so is the German,

so are the German people.

- You know, you have this
seminal Subway Art book come up,

which at the time,
I think still,

it's the most stolen
book in British history

'cause people just go
in and nick the books.

Ya, we were very aware of what
was going on in the States.

I don't think we were so aware,

I think, it was only later
years I started realizing

how old the movement
was in the States,

'cause everyone thinks
it started in the '80s,

but really, it
started in the '60s.

There's a great book
that was made in 1974

called The Faith of Graffiti

that was, one of the
authors was Jon Naar

and Norman Mailer had
written a 12-page essay

to go in this book, so it
was already powerful enough

as a movement in 1974

for Norman Mailer to have
written an article about it.

I think people forget this
and it always makes me laugh

when you're doing
interviews with journalists

and it's like this new movement.

It's like, it's kinda been
around for like 50, 60 years.

It's not a new movement.

Well, you know,
these new superstars,

and you're like you kinda have
Basquiat and Keith Harring.

They can create well, really.

And people always say they've
been written out of history,

really, it's been
graffiti artists,

their fine art, contemporary
artists are not ever

really associated with graffiti.

So, ya, it's been
around for a while.

- New York is a complicated
art scene to talk about

because it's not, as a society,

the New York art world
is not a just society.

Whereas, a lot of
other places you go,

things happen for, more or less,

rational reasons.

But I find that in New York,

there's a lot of
nepotism, there's a lot of

monetary factors
that come into play,

there's factors of
international publicity.

So it's like, you have, all
of the media is in New York,

a lot of the big-money
collectors are in New York.

- And I'm gonna start
the bidding here

at 57 million dollars, at 68,

for 98 million dollars.

- Final bid's at 107.

Anybody else?

At 107 million dollars then.

- And so you bring
all of that together

and it creates kind of

a beast, more or less.

- Ya, the Faceless Series,

they emerged in, I
think 2011 or '12

is when I started painting them.

And it was right around
the time politically when,

you know,

the majority of people
found out about Wall Street

and had attention on the
Federal Reserve and so forth,

and I thought, you know,

like who are these people.

Who are the people that

make decisions nowadays?

Are they the people
that we see on TV

or are they the people
that we don't see on TV?

And that interested me.

And I wanted to
investigate that,

and by investigating that,

I simply started with
people that were faceless.

And I thought that'd
be a good beginning

because it allows
me, without input

of any kind of facial gesture

or implication of
ethnic grouping

or gender or anything,
to start there.

It sort of continued
as a series,

and they stayed faceless,

and they're almost,

they're characteristic, even
though they don't have a face.

You get a sense of
that they're somebody

of some authority.

- It is spontaneous, it is
performative to some extent.

It retains
compositional effects,

but most of the impetus of it,

most of the energy
is this kind of

interior subjectivity,
which is either ruined

or libidinal or an expression

of some kind of interior angst.

His angst is very exteriorized,

if you want to put it that way.

What I mean by that
is he has a purpose

in the way that he is painting.

He's not angry for himself,

he doesn't have some

personalized agenda insofar as

what the painting
is supposed to do.

- Ya, and I can't blame 'em.

You can't,

I mean, you know,
showing a painting

and then explaining a
painting to somebody

that speaks English like you,

giving it an explanation,
an additional explanation

is like adding French to
it, it makes no sense.

The painting is a
vocabulary, it is a language.

You just have to take
some time and study it.

- It is meant to
communicate a reflection

of injustices in
the world per se.

So, questions of the
society of surveillance,

how do you respond to that?

How do you look at this
programmation of the individual

in a work like Resistance,

or he has Cyber Surveillance
in the Wasteland,

these are really commentaries

about the relationship of media
culture and media saturation

to the way that
subjectivity is formed,

the way that media can
stand in for propaganda,

the way that constant
surveillance,

this kind of
post-Orwellian moment

affects the subjectivity
of the next generation,

things like this.

These are the purposes, the
real concerns of his work,

and even though he
works in such a way

where he doesn't have a plan
in terms of what he's doing,

it is very instinctual,
and there are

some other kind of
surrealist aspects of it

which you would
consider unconscious.

It's trying to bring the
unconscious effects of society

to the level of a
visual consciousness,

which is very different than

the solipsistic,
narcissistic kind of version

of a previous generation

or a focus, if you wanna
be kinder about it,

a focus on the
individual so strictly

that it is about their

personal struggles; these
are about social struggles.

- Some of his
scenes are somewhat

like desolate, seem like sort of

a war zone imagery

mixed with sort of
architectural aspects.

I did some writing
about Marcus' work

and I had a chance to
really, really get into it.

You can see the
political overtones,

but his work isn't necessarily,

like squarely politically
based commentary for me.

- Bob was adamant about
don't try to explain.

There was stuff
that I was privy to

like special gifts
that Bob had given me

that I understand what it means,

from him to me.

- Robert Rauschenberg,
blue, to Marcus.

This was a gift,

a precious gift I got
from Lawrence Voytek

who was Robert Rauschenberg's

long-time art director.

These are the actual oils
that Robert Rauschenberg used.

I haven't used them yet.

I might use them
for my Blue period

one day.

- And I think that

we have to deal with
all sorts of things

and I think that dealing with

the various,

the good, the bad, the sad

is something that,

this is the way
that he deals with

what's going on in this life,

this wet dirtball
spinning in space

with stuff all around,

and what we're sold and what's
crammed down our throats

and what others do,
what we believe,

we have to be in charge
of our own church.

- But, you know,
they've all used it.

If you look at the propaganda,

I wanted to do a
show and I still do

called The Art of
Despotic Leaders,

but then there
were so many of 'em

it was hard to work
out where it was.

Where do you draw the line?

Does it have to
have you've killed

at least a million
of your own people

or you go from Saddam Hussein,

Idi Amin, Chairman
Mao, Stalin, Lenin,

all these guys that
used their image and art

as a way of
terrifying the masses.

Look at Saddam.

You had like 50
meter high statues,

you have posters, it's
like we're watching you.

You can turn off the radio,

you can switch off
the television,

but at some point you
have to go outside

and these guys,
they've got it down

in a way of kind of
terrifying the masses with it.

But you're right, the
American government

does the same thing for
Coca Cola advertising.

And Pepsi.

- New York City in the
1970s, as you know,

was almost bankrupt.

They were about to close
down, that's how bad it was.

Out of that, you had Vietnam
veterans coming back,

people homeless, the Bronx
looked like a war zone.

We lived in the
Bronx in the 1970s

and the later moved
to Long Island

because it was just not a
place you wanted to stay.

My father hated it.

- It must have been an
artist's observation.

I took him one afternoon
after we finished a walk

into a bar with dim lights.

And I only took my wife
and children to bars

that were proper, and
this was certainly proper,

but it was a bar, in New York.

And while he was
having his drink

he was looking at
a picture of a nude

in dim lighting,
very tastefully done.

And I was wondering what
he was thinking about this

and asked him, "Marc,
what do you see there?"

And he said, "Daddy, this is
a woman afraid of thunder."

- It was just an environment
that almost cultivated

somebody to speak
and say something

and it happened in the
form of hip-hop music

and graffiti art and so forth.

And I just happened to be
part of that generation

that was engulfed in that.

And then took some of
that to Europe, where,

of course, it just took
over that whole place too.

- I have one which is actually
talking to me very much

because it's part of my country.

Like I just said, we
had a divided country,

divided through a wall.

We had the German
Democratic Republic

and I have a painting from
Marcus which is called Stazi.

And I think you
know what Stazi was,

so there's a big relation
to all those things.

Ya.

- The people, I think,
gravitated towards
the message of it.

It wasn't so much a question
of amusement or anything,

it was really more

the message that
was being delivered

that there was something wrong

in those environments and that
people wanted to be heard.

Tags had to do with the fact
that people noticed you.

It was about getting your tag,

I'm here, I'm important.

I'm not just somebody living
in some bombed out area,

but it's important
that I'm here.

And that changed the culture
of art even till today.

- He is a very caring,
responsible person.

The environment is
a big subject of his

which you see in his paintings.

- Leonardo da Vinci, in
his notebooks at one point,

described mildew on a wall

and he could see
horses charging.

And so, it's the abstracts

seeing things in stuff.

- A lot of the guys that got
pushed out and lived here,

raised their families out here,

eventually were pushed out.

Those are people I feel bad for.

- I think it really comes
out to access and exposure,

and to also see people that
are similar to who you are.

They may look like you, come
from the similar communities

and neighborhoods
and backgrounds,

and that that inspires you.

So, when a young person
comes into the gallery

and I tell them that
I own the gallery,

now that becomes a
possibility for them.

Or they see a particular
artist, such as Jansen,

and that work is
relatable to them

and I tell them that
he's a successful artist,

then now they say wow, I can
create art that tells my story.

- I think the street
nowadays has become,

it's become a medium rather
than a movement of art.

I think you've got a lot of
artists that are at college

that like work or
paint on canvas

or can make a sculpture
or could use the street.

So I think the
street's now become

a bigger canvas than
it ever was before.

- I couldn't compare
him to anybody

alive or dead.