Abstract: The Art of Design (2017–…): Season 1, Episode 1 - Christoph Niemann: Illustration - full transcript
Episode 1 profiles Christoph Niemann, an illustrator and his work with abstraction and interactivity from various mediums such as the New Yorker to Instagram.
[director] Part of this is
I'm trying to figure out
some of the big picture things.
How aesthetically to tell your story.
And even before that,
kind of what your story is, you know?
Roll, camera.
[Christoph] I've been thinking about
how we would kind of
create the documentary.
And in my general state of anxiety
right now, I came to this question:
Is this about me, or is this by me?
And you don't even see me drawing, right?
[director] We don't. We're just seeing
the top half of your head.
So you can act with your eyes.
[director laughs]
[Cristoph] When I design
the experience for the viewer,
of course I want to come across
as good as I possibly can.
'Cause we're vain and we have to be.
And if it's about me,
it's a little bit, just tug of war
of how much do you make me reveal
and how much do I reveal
of stuff that I might not want to reveal.
But, ultimately, it's not about me.
[director] Be an artist.
[Cristoph whispers] Be an artist.
[drumming]
[woman sings in German]
[clock ticks loudly]
[door opens and closes distantly]
[Christoph] I would say everything
that happens between nine and six
is about work.
I work mostly by myself.
So I sit at my desk and I draw
and I design.
So I'm there,
and it's me and my art supplies
and my computer and my coffee maker,
so it's kind of me, me, me.
I'm such a control freak
that I would always love to sit down
and come up with the perfect formula
for creating art.
But it doesn't work that way.
It's a little bit
of a painful realization,
because, ultimately, it really is,
to a very large degree,
staring at paper.
And I have to trust
for kind of crazy moments to happen.
[piano plays]
I would say that abstraction probably is,
for me, the most important concept of art.
Where you say,
"Oh, I'm just drawing a simple box,
because I love things
that are not precious."
But it's the idea of, like, I start
with a thousand different thoughts
and then I, one by one,
throw them all out,
until, at the end,
I have the one or two or three
that are essential to the whole question.
But the abstraction, for me,
is this idea of getting rid of everything
that's not essential to making a point.
This thing here, it's called
The Good Shape or The Good Form.
So I take this flatiron shape
and I start doing things out of it.
Men, women,
bathroom, strongman, nuclear power plant,
cowboys and Indians,
all sorts of sports.
[director] So what did your teachers
make of you?
I had a very, very difficult teacher,
Heinz Edelmann,
who did Yellow Submarine,
The Beatles' movie,
and did amazing posters and book work.
Fantastic designer, but let's say
he did not teach by encouragement.
The highest compliment that
you could hope for was,
"Oh, we don't really have
a problem with that."
That was like, "Yes!"
When I grew up in South Western Germany,
I was always drawing.
It was all about getting action
and proportion right.
Drawing things very dynamic.
And that was the goal.
To kind of get there, to this, like,
hyperrealist, amazing painting.
And this is kind of the notion
that I went to art school with.
But the teacher I had at art school,
Mr. Edelmann,
he made it pretty clear that he really
disliked this stuff that I was doing.
So I was drawing hundreds of sketches
on just letter-sized paper,
and each week, he would come in
and go through them
and basically say, "Nope, nope,
nope, nope, nope, nope, nope."
"Oh, this one's okay!"
'Cause this is what we did in school.
Take a topic, like a red clown's nose,
and then just squeeze the hell out of it.
Just do every single variation.
[director laughs]
[Cristoph] Eventually, I realized that
it's not about something super simple
like a black square or, like, one line.
But each idea requires
a very specific amount of information.
Sometimes it's a lot: a lot of details,
a lot of realism.
Sometimes it's really just
this one line. The one pixel.
But each idea has one moment
on that scale.
So, lets say you want to illustrate
the idea of a heart as a symbol for love.
When you illustrate it,
as just, like, a red square,
which is the ultimate abstraction
of a heart,
nobody knows what you're talking about,
so it totally falls flat.
When you go all the way realistic
and draw an actual heart made out
of flesh and blood and pumping,
it's just so disgusting
that the last thing anybody
would ever think about is love.
And somewhere between
that abstract red square
and the real, kind of butchered heart,
is the graphic shape that kind of looks
like that, and kind of looks like that,
and it's just right to transport
this idea of a symbol for love.
New Yorker covers are the biggest deal
for an illustrator, I think.
Once you see The New Yorker cover once,
you see the history, you see the artist,
you see, most importantly, I guess,
the cultural impact.
This was my... This was the first one.
[director] What was the date?
July 9, 2001, the day I got married.
Which is especially fantastic.
What I love is that this is
what they put on the magazine.
There's no headline.
There's not even a story.
This was July 4, 2001.
It was about the missile shield.
The Dr. Strangelovian generals
who start World War Three.
There's no story about this idea
inside the magazine.
It's almost like the stage is pulled empty
and this is the image for one week.
The second cover
might actually have been... this one.
And, to a strange degree,
this might even be the most exciting one,
because the first cover of The New Yorker
is the Eustace Tilley,
this New York dandy with a top hat.
And we said,
"Let's try to do an icon of an icon."
Making the butterfly just a blue square,
makes absolutely no sense
unless you know the original.
I've done 22, I think.
The thing is,
I never even thought about 22.
You think that
when you've done two or three,
all of a sudden it becomes, like,
"Oh, it's just another job."
It's not, because it's extremely exciting,
but it never becomes easy.
[clock ticking]
[director] So tell me about
this New Yorker cover you're working on.
[Christoph]
I'm doing this virtual reality cover,
which... It's more like augmented reality.
So the idea is I have this magazine open,
on the front or on the back,
now I approach it
with my phone or with my tablet
and then this whole three-dimensional
animation comes out.
And you're just like, "No way!"
There's a lot of kind of levels
of metaphors and drawing to work.
And 3-D and 2-D and back and forth,
and it's kind of like physical and...
And I also knew I couldn't plan.
I couldn't have one idea
that just solves the entire thing.
I had to start somewhere and then say,
"Okay, is this strong enough
or flexible enough
to just go to the next step?"
[clock ticking]
So the magazine, in theory,
opened like that.
But I don't look at a magazine like that,
I think nobody ever looks
at a magazine like that.
So I thought, when I have a magazine,
I might look at it like that,
so, really seeing it
as the inside-outside world.
And I was thinking,
"What's... What's like a very
New York inside/outside scene?"
I realized that a subway...
I have the windows,
I have people sitting in there
and then the whole subway can be...
Yeah, that's the idea of the magazine
as the plane
that the person walks through.
You can see it from the inside
or from the outside.
It's a New York City cab, off-duty,
which you can see...
It's off-duty here.
This is... Let's make it busy.
This one's busy.
It looks better, though,
all black and yellow.
My favorite colors.
It's the restriction with Lego,
the restriction of...
just very low resolution...
It's almost like
a three-dimensional pixel drawing...
that I enjoy so much.
[director]
Why have you done so much New York work?
Well, it started with my connection.
It was the first city I went to
by myself...
and I think there's only one city
in your life that you go to by yourself...
and you own that.
There was no uncle, there were no parents
that paved the way.
It was like my place.
[simple electronic tune playing]
I moved to New York in '97.
To my surprise, when I went there
and showed my book,
I realized that people understood
99% of my work.
Going to a country
that's a few thousand miles away,
and everybody gets everything
is really amazing.
In a very odd way,
I felt very much at home
just being so immersed in
American culture as a kid.
From music, to art, Magnum P.I.
[electronic music continues playing]
[Christoph] Staten Island Ferry.
If you've been on the Staten Island Ferry,
you know that this is it.
This is the essence
of this kind of first tourist moment.
For me, this style is based on culture,
on shared experiences.
This is more interesting than coming up
with a visionary new way of speaking
that people then have to decipher.
[electronic music ends]
[street hubbub]
[Christoph] There's this one Starbucks,
and I love sitting in that window,
and that's been a place
I've been sitting at
from my very first time coming
to New York.
I always felt like, "That's where I want
to sit and kind of look out."
And I've, a couple of times,
tried to work from there,
because that's how I see myself, you know,
like the artist
being in touch with the city...
And then we have
this kind of emotional exchange,
people walking by...
[street hubbub]
[silence]
It doesn't work at all.
The impact on the work is zero.
It's even actually confusing,
and I can't really focus when I sit there.
This is the moment where I realized
that kind of, like, my real life
and my work life, they don't really mix.
[director] I see what you're saying.
I'm just trying to kind of solve it
from a visual storytelling point of view.
I mean, I guess, the way
I see some of these things,
it's almost like these very quick montages
of very close shots,
you know, done very quickly.
Just... [makes sweeping sound]
Getting through the day,
its ritual, like brushing your teeth.
[Christoph] I mean, again we can try...
You know, like, the idea of a camera
in our bathroom...
makes me feel extremely uncomfortable.
[director laughing]
Okay, well I don't want that.
[Christoph] And so we can do it,
but it would be more like a painful thing
and I could not possibly imagine
how I would ever want to see that myself.
[ominous music playing]
I'd much rather draw it than show it.
[ticking clock]
When I started working,
I worked mostly under deadline.
For the first ten years,
if I would have to separate my business,
it was 30% "We need Christoph
to make a nice drawing on this and that"
and 70% of, like,
"Oh, no, something went terribly wrong.
We have another 12 hours,
let's call that guy,
he will make a somewhat
unembarrassing solution
that will save our butts for deadline."
And I love that.
I love this kind of tension,
especially in editorial,
but a lot of the calls I got
were out of desperation.
[clock ticking]
[strings play to a climax]
So I think Chuck Close said,
"Inspiration is for amateurs.
Us professionals,
we just go to work in the morning."
The one thing
I really love about that quote
is it relieves you of a lot of pressure.
It's not about waiting for hours
for this moment where inspiration strikes.
It's just about showing up
and getting started,
and then something amazing happens
or it doesn't happen.
All that matters is you enable
the chance for something to happen.
For that you have to sit at your desk
and you have to draw and do
and make decisions and hope for the best.
[calming music playing]
[Christoph] It's so scary when you have
half an hour to do something.
That of course, creating a process
that allows you to do
unembarrassing stuff on command
is the only way you can survive.
If you create an armor
of craft around you.
The one thing that's dangerous
about focusing on craft
and working very hard
is that it can keep you from asking
the really relevant questions.
I'm trying to get good at something,
but is that thing that I'm trying to
get good at the real thing?
It's the subway track
with the knobs on the side of the tracks.
Put...
someone standing there.
So when you stand there
in the middle of the night,
'cause you missed the last G train
and you just look at the critters,
your friends and your enemies at once.
The yellow is the perfect New York color.
It's the taxicabs,
it's the side of the subways....
The contrast is just so perfect.
[upbeat piano music]
I met my wonderful wife,
we got married and had kids.
We have this routine of, like, waving
at each other when she leaves and comes.
[in German] Have fun.
We're all waiting for you
to leave the frame!
[laughs] It's totally okay.
See you in a bit.
[in English] I guess it started
with me and my wife.
And then we have one kid,
and then it's really more like that.
Then you have a second child.
You think they're like the first one
because you're doing the same thing
you did with the first one,
but the second one
turns out totally different.
But then the third one is more like that.
I did a book
based on the experience
of riding the subway with the kids
and how they just
totally absorbed this idea.
And I think what they liked
about the subway,
what I like about the subway is,
in a strange way,
you're in this huge city,
but it's the one thing
where you're in control.
Sometimes we're like that.
Sometimes like this.
I guess we hope
to be like that more often.
That seems like a realistic rendering
of family life.
I'm trying to come up
with something for The New Yorker.
I'm doing this virtual reality cover,
and basically this is
something I've never done.
In this case, not only do you work 360,
but you work 360 in all directions,
so you can look at it
from all different angles.
For anything decent I've ever done,
I distinctly remember
being in a tense, grumpy mood.
Worse than that, I get suspicious
when having too good of a time working,
since I know that this doesn't bode well
for the outcome.
[clock ticking]
When you draw in two dimensions,
you can cheat.
You can just hide
anything you don't like behind a wall.
And in this case,
you can look behind the wall
and you can see all the mess
that's behind it.
It's like an endless compromise.
The elements are not this kind of, like,
highly-rendered 3-D world,
which I really detest visually.
You know, where everything has highlights
and everything feels
like this smelly plastic.
I want an ink drawing.
I want, like, a flat ink drawing
that you can walk into
and that kind of surrounds you.
There's too many lines in that side.
Just throw in something
that you think you would regret,
and that's usually
the most interesting part.
When all fails,
just put in some water towers.
It's always a great trick.
And this is so wrong with that dry brush.
I wish I could rip out
the rest of the painting
and do more of that.
Obviously I'm playing around
for the camera now.
Dun, dun, dun...
Okay, next scene.
I'm convinced
you always have to change direction
while things are good.
I was in my mid-30s, was extremely busy.
I felt fulfilled, but exhausted.
And I still think New York
is the best place to work,
but I feel like it's not a good place
to refill your kind of creative tank.
And I find it harder to reinvent.
I sensed that the only way to grow
required that I loosen up.
And it was in the mid-2000s,
my wife and I agreed that the only place
that we could imagine to move to
would be Berlin.
[jazz music playing]
[woman sings German lyrics]
[Cristoph] There's all these
kind of crazy galleries
that do stuff that makes absolutely
no sense whatsoever economically
and it's just totally a different mindset.
Berlin makes it easy not to worry so much
about the feasibility of an idea.
So my kind of, like, most intense phase,
in terms of my work,
actually happened when I moved to Berlin.
[German song continues]
[director] In a perfect world,
in this documentary,
and this will probably make you queasy,
there would be a moment where
there's a sense of unadulterated reality.
Just a glimpse.
[Christoph] I...
It would feel so completely out of place.
Like, it would be the farthest thing
from me ever showing anybody
how I brush my teeth.
When you show the real thing, you kill it.
You make it impossible to then look
at these things in the abstract.
It's like in... I think in Charlie Brown,
you never see the grown-ups,
-you only hear these muffled voices,
-[muffled voice]
and that's perfect, that's amazing!
The one moment you zoom out
and show these grownups,
they could be designed perfectly,
they could be written perfectly,
but everything else
would be crashing down.
So, in a way, I feel like
we already zoomed out and showed,
even though I don't know
if I'm a grown-up,
but that's already far too big
of a zoom out.
And if you go even further there...
[director] So much of your daily routine
and life inspires your work.
It just seems
like we should be able to see it.
Well, yeah. I guess. Yeah.
[stammers]
Okay, honestly nobody wants authenticity.
Authenticity is like changing
your kid's diapers.
It's a cute idea in the abstract,
but the real deal is just...
All I care about
is what's happening on the page,
because I want people
to really think about themselves.
What went into creating the art?
[director] But people want to see you
in your real life.
We can't just film you
at your desk the whole documentary.
[electronic music playing]
[Christoph] Anything that's happening
between nine and six
is kind of the essence.
But some stuff has to happen
outside the studio.
Like going to a museum.
The gateway drug is not creating art,
but experiencing art.
[electronic music continues]
[Christoph]
Having the whole world explained,
or even better, turned upside down,
just by looking at
a few strokes of oil paint on canvas.
That's the greatest thrill I know.
If experiencing art is so amazing,
how great must it be
to actually make this stuff?
And that's how they lure you
into art school.
[electronic music continues]
[Christoph] Everything I do
is kind of creating information,
creating usually images that do something
with what the viewer already knows.
Really the idea of, like, their experience
and my experience coming together
and the images are the trigger.
But the big, big problem with routine
is everything starts to look the same.
So I'm constantly trying to reinvent
how I approach image making,
how I approach storytelling,
because the audience changes all the time,
I change all the time.
[chime music playing]
[Christoph] When I was 12,
I taught myself to juggle.
At any given moment,
there's one ball in the air.
And this is something that I hate so much,
this idea of no control.
But this approach of not planning
opens a new door.
It's really, really hard,
but it just leads to these magic moments.
I started an Instagram project
called Sunday Sketches.
In terms of the response I've got,
they've been some of the better stuff
I've been doing,
but on the other hand, they're
the most useless things I've ever done.
There's almost zero control there.
For my professional work, I need control
because I need to be able to tweak,
to adjust, to plan.
But these Sunday Sketches
are un-plannable.
All the good ones just happen
by me just staring at something.
Like moving around the light,
and all of a sudden,
there's a highlight or a shadow and then,
"Oh, now there's something happening."
You can't sketch that.
I never was a reader
because I never want
to escape from anything,
I want my real life to be interesting.
But then I read a book,
The Invention of Slowness,
I think is the title.
It's about a guy who is
so incredibly slow in his perception
that he can...
He actually sees shadows moving.
It's a good fiction book,
but the amazing thing
that I remember from reading that book
is, whenever I looked up from that book,
I felt I had this view from the book
in my real world.
[calming music playing]
This book made my life more interesting.
This is also in art,
something where you're not creating
an artificial world.
You're taking the things you know,
and then you break them down
into little elements.
And I rearrange them,
and all of a sudden make a statement.
[calming music continues]
[Christoph] Not with a monster
or a dragon,
but with a pencil.
I came from, you know, print media.
You just felt like it's always
going to be there,
people always need images
and they always need to be drawn,
and if you've figured it out, you're set.
And all of a sudden, it wasn't anymore.
It was about web long form pieces,
it was about animation.
Of course, it's our job to see
if there's some relevant way
that I can contribute to this new angle.
So this is all of us, all the time.
So this is an app I did
over the last four years,
and I wanted
to do something interactive...
But the big question is
the moment I give too much decision-making
to the viewer over what can happen...
Often, the viewer
might have different ideas,
and you want to be surprised.
That's the whole point of books.
You want some surprise.
You want something unexpected to happen.
But here, in my literary section,
I have all these literature references,
like Don Quixote and Kafka,
Moby Dick,
a little Jane Austen,
and Homer,
and hopefully kids enjoy that scene
as much as grown-ups.
Some people love it,
and probably some people don't.
Some people love it,
some people don't.
That's life.
[swoosh]
[clock ticking]
[director] I'm wondering, it almost seems
like, you know, the creator of your pieces
and you, as editor of your pieces,
are two different people.
[Christoph] Yes!
I need to be in control
and I need to have a very clear sense
of where I'm going and why
something's working and not working.
On the other hand, I've also realized that
being more free-spirited is necessary.
I've found that I need to develop
these two personas separately.
Be a much more ruthless editor
and be a much more careless artist.
This I find physically exhausting,
but there's good stuff happening there.
I take very specific time off
for this kind of, like, free creation.
[clock ticking]
Because I know it's basically impossible
to do under deadline.
Literally, just sitting
in front of a piece of paper
and just doing stuff and being fearless.
There's something there that I need to,
kind of, go back and investigate further.
[clock continues ticking]
[Christoph] Creatively,
I'm extremely dependent on these sparks.
And it only works with loosening up,
without an assignment, without deadline,
with just kind of creating
and not worrying so much
about where the whole thing goes.
But I think it has never happened to me
that I tried something new
on a big deadline.
[director] And what's your deadline
for The New Yorker?
[Christoph] Two weeks.
It's going to be insanity.
Totally stressed out. [laughs]
I've seen a lot of VR stuff,
and it's always, like,
"Oh, wow! This is so interesting,"
and then, 25 seconds later,
I completely lose interest
and this is the great challenge right now.
This is not, like, a coy thing to say,
"Oh, I don't believe I'm talented."
This is real,
like, being absolutely painfully aware
of how you're not good enough
to do something on command.
[chime music playing]
[Christoph] Your general notion
is that doing something nice
makes you more confident.
With ideas,
I often find it's the opposite.
With every good idea you have,
it actually becomes more difficult,
because it's so hard to then repeat.
Of course, you can't repeat.
This is, like, where the pain comes in,
when I talk about not being good enough,
or being afraid that you're out of ideas.
You measure yourself
against a lucky moment.
And this is, like, really, really painful.
You had this one kind of spark
three years ago,
and then a client asks you to do it again.
And you think, "How can I?
I won the lottery then.
How can you ask me to win the lottery,
under pressure, with a gun to my head?"
And this is something that,
before I consciously thought about it,
I just realized, "Oh, God, I'm miserable."
[chime music continues]
[Christoph] But when I realized
that my fears threatened
to take a toll on my work,
I decided I had to deal with them.
Relax; don't be so hard on yourself.
I actually totally disagree.
You have to practice and become better.
Every athlete, every musician
practices every day.
Why should it be different for artists?
[upbeat music playing]
[Christoph] I sometimes imagine
what would happen
if I had to face
the 2006 version of myself
in some sort of creative bar fight.
Maybe I've lost some of my youthful spark,
but I'm confident I would kick my butt.
The assignment was
to do an augmented reality cover.
In a way,
we have that augmented reality cover,
but this already is
an augmented reality cover,
because you can look at the same scene
from two sides.
I'm inside the subway.
So, essentially what I do with the iPad,
I do with the physical magazine.
As if the magazine is
the door of the subway.
So this is an extension of that,
rather than the other way round.
[muffled female voice]
-Yeah, yeah.
-[muffled female voice]
[muffled female voice continues]
[Christoph] I know how complex it is
to put these different things,
like the 3-D and the animation together,
that I'm surprised
how close it came to what I imagined.
[Lou Reed's "This Magic Moment" playing]
♪ This magic moment ♪
♪ So different and so new ♪
♪ Was like any other ♪
♪ Until I met you ♪
♪ And then it happened ♪
♪ It took me by surprise ♪
♪ I knew that you felt it too ♪
♪ I could see it
By the look in your eyes ♪
♪ Sweeter than wine ♪
♪ Softer than a summer's night ♪
♪ Everything I want, I have ♪
♪ Whenever I hold you tight ♪
♪ This magic moment... ♪
The idea of pop music is not
to invent a new story,
but to tell the same story again
in a new and interesting way.
We don't buy new pop songs and say,
"Oh, there's somebody singing about love,
nobody else has dared do that until now."
People have been singing about love
for 500 years.
♪ Why won't you dance with me? ♪
And it's the idea of, like,
making it different,
that you feel,
"Oh, I never actually until now,
nobody has ever gotten it right."
♪ This magic moment ♪
♪ So different and so new ♪
♪ Was like any other... ♪
I love the idea of bringing
these familiar scenes back in,
but just making them
appear to be totally different.
New and true.
♪ You know it took me by surprise ♪
♪ I knew that you felt it too ♪
♪ Mmm ♪
♪ By the look in your eyes ♪
♪ Sweeter than wine ♪
[Christoph] In the best moments,
what happens
is that design celebrates the world.
♪ Everything I want, I have ♪
[Christoph] When I look at a piece of art
that references my fears,
my anxieties, my hopes,
and I can say, "There was this one drawing
that made me realize that I'm alive
or that I love other people
or that I'm afraid."
♪ Sweeter than wine ♪
♪ Softer than a summer's night ♪
♪ So please ♪
♪ Baby ♪
♪ So please ♪
♪ Save the last dance for me ♪
[clock ticking]
[Christoph] My goal is to speak visuals...
like a pianist speaks piano.
And like somebody controls the keys
and can convey different ideas,
different emotions,
through that language.
I have to constantly battle to try to
kind of refine the act of speaking.
Taking the world and putting it
into images and conveying them.
And for that,
I have to constantly produce.
It's not done,
because the whole idea of being done
is kind of the opposite
of what I'm trying to achieve.
[instrumental music playing]
Gute Nacht.
I'm trying to figure out
some of the big picture things.
How aesthetically to tell your story.
And even before that,
kind of what your story is, you know?
Roll, camera.
[Christoph] I've been thinking about
how we would kind of
create the documentary.
And in my general state of anxiety
right now, I came to this question:
Is this about me, or is this by me?
And you don't even see me drawing, right?
[director] We don't. We're just seeing
the top half of your head.
So you can act with your eyes.
[director laughs]
[Cristoph] When I design
the experience for the viewer,
of course I want to come across
as good as I possibly can.
'Cause we're vain and we have to be.
And if it's about me,
it's a little bit, just tug of war
of how much do you make me reveal
and how much do I reveal
of stuff that I might not want to reveal.
But, ultimately, it's not about me.
[director] Be an artist.
[Cristoph whispers] Be an artist.
[drumming]
[woman sings in German]
[clock ticks loudly]
[door opens and closes distantly]
[Christoph] I would say everything
that happens between nine and six
is about work.
I work mostly by myself.
So I sit at my desk and I draw
and I design.
So I'm there,
and it's me and my art supplies
and my computer and my coffee maker,
so it's kind of me, me, me.
I'm such a control freak
that I would always love to sit down
and come up with the perfect formula
for creating art.
But it doesn't work that way.
It's a little bit
of a painful realization,
because, ultimately, it really is,
to a very large degree,
staring at paper.
And I have to trust
for kind of crazy moments to happen.
[piano plays]
I would say that abstraction probably is,
for me, the most important concept of art.
Where you say,
"Oh, I'm just drawing a simple box,
because I love things
that are not precious."
But it's the idea of, like, I start
with a thousand different thoughts
and then I, one by one,
throw them all out,
until, at the end,
I have the one or two or three
that are essential to the whole question.
But the abstraction, for me,
is this idea of getting rid of everything
that's not essential to making a point.
This thing here, it's called
The Good Shape or The Good Form.
So I take this flatiron shape
and I start doing things out of it.
Men, women,
bathroom, strongman, nuclear power plant,
cowboys and Indians,
all sorts of sports.
[director] So what did your teachers
make of you?
I had a very, very difficult teacher,
Heinz Edelmann,
who did Yellow Submarine,
The Beatles' movie,
and did amazing posters and book work.
Fantastic designer, but let's say
he did not teach by encouragement.
The highest compliment that
you could hope for was,
"Oh, we don't really have
a problem with that."
That was like, "Yes!"
When I grew up in South Western Germany,
I was always drawing.
It was all about getting action
and proportion right.
Drawing things very dynamic.
And that was the goal.
To kind of get there, to this, like,
hyperrealist, amazing painting.
And this is kind of the notion
that I went to art school with.
But the teacher I had at art school,
Mr. Edelmann,
he made it pretty clear that he really
disliked this stuff that I was doing.
So I was drawing hundreds of sketches
on just letter-sized paper,
and each week, he would come in
and go through them
and basically say, "Nope, nope,
nope, nope, nope, nope, nope."
"Oh, this one's okay!"
'Cause this is what we did in school.
Take a topic, like a red clown's nose,
and then just squeeze the hell out of it.
Just do every single variation.
[director laughs]
[Cristoph] Eventually, I realized that
it's not about something super simple
like a black square or, like, one line.
But each idea requires
a very specific amount of information.
Sometimes it's a lot: a lot of details,
a lot of realism.
Sometimes it's really just
this one line. The one pixel.
But each idea has one moment
on that scale.
So, lets say you want to illustrate
the idea of a heart as a symbol for love.
When you illustrate it,
as just, like, a red square,
which is the ultimate abstraction
of a heart,
nobody knows what you're talking about,
so it totally falls flat.
When you go all the way realistic
and draw an actual heart made out
of flesh and blood and pumping,
it's just so disgusting
that the last thing anybody
would ever think about is love.
And somewhere between
that abstract red square
and the real, kind of butchered heart,
is the graphic shape that kind of looks
like that, and kind of looks like that,
and it's just right to transport
this idea of a symbol for love.
New Yorker covers are the biggest deal
for an illustrator, I think.
Once you see The New Yorker cover once,
you see the history, you see the artist,
you see, most importantly, I guess,
the cultural impact.
This was my... This was the first one.
[director] What was the date?
July 9, 2001, the day I got married.
Which is especially fantastic.
What I love is that this is
what they put on the magazine.
There's no headline.
There's not even a story.
This was July 4, 2001.
It was about the missile shield.
The Dr. Strangelovian generals
who start World War Three.
There's no story about this idea
inside the magazine.
It's almost like the stage is pulled empty
and this is the image for one week.
The second cover
might actually have been... this one.
And, to a strange degree,
this might even be the most exciting one,
because the first cover of The New Yorker
is the Eustace Tilley,
this New York dandy with a top hat.
And we said,
"Let's try to do an icon of an icon."
Making the butterfly just a blue square,
makes absolutely no sense
unless you know the original.
I've done 22, I think.
The thing is,
I never even thought about 22.
You think that
when you've done two or three,
all of a sudden it becomes, like,
"Oh, it's just another job."
It's not, because it's extremely exciting,
but it never becomes easy.
[clock ticking]
[director] So tell me about
this New Yorker cover you're working on.
[Christoph]
I'm doing this virtual reality cover,
which... It's more like augmented reality.
So the idea is I have this magazine open,
on the front or on the back,
now I approach it
with my phone or with my tablet
and then this whole three-dimensional
animation comes out.
And you're just like, "No way!"
There's a lot of kind of levels
of metaphors and drawing to work.
And 3-D and 2-D and back and forth,
and it's kind of like physical and...
And I also knew I couldn't plan.
I couldn't have one idea
that just solves the entire thing.
I had to start somewhere and then say,
"Okay, is this strong enough
or flexible enough
to just go to the next step?"
[clock ticking]
So the magazine, in theory,
opened like that.
But I don't look at a magazine like that,
I think nobody ever looks
at a magazine like that.
So I thought, when I have a magazine,
I might look at it like that,
so, really seeing it
as the inside-outside world.
And I was thinking,
"What's... What's like a very
New York inside/outside scene?"
I realized that a subway...
I have the windows,
I have people sitting in there
and then the whole subway can be...
Yeah, that's the idea of the magazine
as the plane
that the person walks through.
You can see it from the inside
or from the outside.
It's a New York City cab, off-duty,
which you can see...
It's off-duty here.
This is... Let's make it busy.
This one's busy.
It looks better, though,
all black and yellow.
My favorite colors.
It's the restriction with Lego,
the restriction of...
just very low resolution...
It's almost like
a three-dimensional pixel drawing...
that I enjoy so much.
[director]
Why have you done so much New York work?
Well, it started with my connection.
It was the first city I went to
by myself...
and I think there's only one city
in your life that you go to by yourself...
and you own that.
There was no uncle, there were no parents
that paved the way.
It was like my place.
[simple electronic tune playing]
I moved to New York in '97.
To my surprise, when I went there
and showed my book,
I realized that people understood
99% of my work.
Going to a country
that's a few thousand miles away,
and everybody gets everything
is really amazing.
In a very odd way,
I felt very much at home
just being so immersed in
American culture as a kid.
From music, to art, Magnum P.I.
[electronic music continues playing]
[Christoph] Staten Island Ferry.
If you've been on the Staten Island Ferry,
you know that this is it.
This is the essence
of this kind of first tourist moment.
For me, this style is based on culture,
on shared experiences.
This is more interesting than coming up
with a visionary new way of speaking
that people then have to decipher.
[electronic music ends]
[street hubbub]
[Christoph] There's this one Starbucks,
and I love sitting in that window,
and that's been a place
I've been sitting at
from my very first time coming
to New York.
I always felt like, "That's where I want
to sit and kind of look out."
And I've, a couple of times,
tried to work from there,
because that's how I see myself, you know,
like the artist
being in touch with the city...
And then we have
this kind of emotional exchange,
people walking by...
[street hubbub]
[silence]
It doesn't work at all.
The impact on the work is zero.
It's even actually confusing,
and I can't really focus when I sit there.
This is the moment where I realized
that kind of, like, my real life
and my work life, they don't really mix.
[director] I see what you're saying.
I'm just trying to kind of solve it
from a visual storytelling point of view.
I mean, I guess, the way
I see some of these things,
it's almost like these very quick montages
of very close shots,
you know, done very quickly.
Just... [makes sweeping sound]
Getting through the day,
its ritual, like brushing your teeth.
[Christoph] I mean, again we can try...
You know, like, the idea of a camera
in our bathroom...
makes me feel extremely uncomfortable.
[director laughing]
Okay, well I don't want that.
[Christoph] And so we can do it,
but it would be more like a painful thing
and I could not possibly imagine
how I would ever want to see that myself.
[ominous music playing]
I'd much rather draw it than show it.
[ticking clock]
When I started working,
I worked mostly under deadline.
For the first ten years,
if I would have to separate my business,
it was 30% "We need Christoph
to make a nice drawing on this and that"
and 70% of, like,
"Oh, no, something went terribly wrong.
We have another 12 hours,
let's call that guy,
he will make a somewhat
unembarrassing solution
that will save our butts for deadline."
And I love that.
I love this kind of tension,
especially in editorial,
but a lot of the calls I got
were out of desperation.
[clock ticking]
[strings play to a climax]
So I think Chuck Close said,
"Inspiration is for amateurs.
Us professionals,
we just go to work in the morning."
The one thing
I really love about that quote
is it relieves you of a lot of pressure.
It's not about waiting for hours
for this moment where inspiration strikes.
It's just about showing up
and getting started,
and then something amazing happens
or it doesn't happen.
All that matters is you enable
the chance for something to happen.
For that you have to sit at your desk
and you have to draw and do
and make decisions and hope for the best.
[calming music playing]
[Christoph] It's so scary when you have
half an hour to do something.
That of course, creating a process
that allows you to do
unembarrassing stuff on command
is the only way you can survive.
If you create an armor
of craft around you.
The one thing that's dangerous
about focusing on craft
and working very hard
is that it can keep you from asking
the really relevant questions.
I'm trying to get good at something,
but is that thing that I'm trying to
get good at the real thing?
It's the subway track
with the knobs on the side of the tracks.
Put...
someone standing there.
So when you stand there
in the middle of the night,
'cause you missed the last G train
and you just look at the critters,
your friends and your enemies at once.
The yellow is the perfect New York color.
It's the taxicabs,
it's the side of the subways....
The contrast is just so perfect.
[upbeat piano music]
I met my wonderful wife,
we got married and had kids.
We have this routine of, like, waving
at each other when she leaves and comes.
[in German] Have fun.
We're all waiting for you
to leave the frame!
[laughs] It's totally okay.
See you in a bit.
[in English] I guess it started
with me and my wife.
And then we have one kid,
and then it's really more like that.
Then you have a second child.
You think they're like the first one
because you're doing the same thing
you did with the first one,
but the second one
turns out totally different.
But then the third one is more like that.
I did a book
based on the experience
of riding the subway with the kids
and how they just
totally absorbed this idea.
And I think what they liked
about the subway,
what I like about the subway is,
in a strange way,
you're in this huge city,
but it's the one thing
where you're in control.
Sometimes we're like that.
Sometimes like this.
I guess we hope
to be like that more often.
That seems like a realistic rendering
of family life.
I'm trying to come up
with something for The New Yorker.
I'm doing this virtual reality cover,
and basically this is
something I've never done.
In this case, not only do you work 360,
but you work 360 in all directions,
so you can look at it
from all different angles.
For anything decent I've ever done,
I distinctly remember
being in a tense, grumpy mood.
Worse than that, I get suspicious
when having too good of a time working,
since I know that this doesn't bode well
for the outcome.
[clock ticking]
When you draw in two dimensions,
you can cheat.
You can just hide
anything you don't like behind a wall.
And in this case,
you can look behind the wall
and you can see all the mess
that's behind it.
It's like an endless compromise.
The elements are not this kind of, like,
highly-rendered 3-D world,
which I really detest visually.
You know, where everything has highlights
and everything feels
like this smelly plastic.
I want an ink drawing.
I want, like, a flat ink drawing
that you can walk into
and that kind of surrounds you.
There's too many lines in that side.
Just throw in something
that you think you would regret,
and that's usually
the most interesting part.
When all fails,
just put in some water towers.
It's always a great trick.
And this is so wrong with that dry brush.
I wish I could rip out
the rest of the painting
and do more of that.
Obviously I'm playing around
for the camera now.
Dun, dun, dun...
Okay, next scene.
I'm convinced
you always have to change direction
while things are good.
I was in my mid-30s, was extremely busy.
I felt fulfilled, but exhausted.
And I still think New York
is the best place to work,
but I feel like it's not a good place
to refill your kind of creative tank.
And I find it harder to reinvent.
I sensed that the only way to grow
required that I loosen up.
And it was in the mid-2000s,
my wife and I agreed that the only place
that we could imagine to move to
would be Berlin.
[jazz music playing]
[woman sings German lyrics]
[Cristoph] There's all these
kind of crazy galleries
that do stuff that makes absolutely
no sense whatsoever economically
and it's just totally a different mindset.
Berlin makes it easy not to worry so much
about the feasibility of an idea.
So my kind of, like, most intense phase,
in terms of my work,
actually happened when I moved to Berlin.
[German song continues]
[director] In a perfect world,
in this documentary,
and this will probably make you queasy,
there would be a moment where
there's a sense of unadulterated reality.
Just a glimpse.
[Christoph] I...
It would feel so completely out of place.
Like, it would be the farthest thing
from me ever showing anybody
how I brush my teeth.
When you show the real thing, you kill it.
You make it impossible to then look
at these things in the abstract.
It's like in... I think in Charlie Brown,
you never see the grown-ups,
-you only hear these muffled voices,
-[muffled voice]
and that's perfect, that's amazing!
The one moment you zoom out
and show these grownups,
they could be designed perfectly,
they could be written perfectly,
but everything else
would be crashing down.
So, in a way, I feel like
we already zoomed out and showed,
even though I don't know
if I'm a grown-up,
but that's already far too big
of a zoom out.
And if you go even further there...
[director] So much of your daily routine
and life inspires your work.
It just seems
like we should be able to see it.
Well, yeah. I guess. Yeah.
[stammers]
Okay, honestly nobody wants authenticity.
Authenticity is like changing
your kid's diapers.
It's a cute idea in the abstract,
but the real deal is just...
All I care about
is what's happening on the page,
because I want people
to really think about themselves.
What went into creating the art?
[director] But people want to see you
in your real life.
We can't just film you
at your desk the whole documentary.
[electronic music playing]
[Christoph] Anything that's happening
between nine and six
is kind of the essence.
But some stuff has to happen
outside the studio.
Like going to a museum.
The gateway drug is not creating art,
but experiencing art.
[electronic music continues]
[Christoph]
Having the whole world explained,
or even better, turned upside down,
just by looking at
a few strokes of oil paint on canvas.
That's the greatest thrill I know.
If experiencing art is so amazing,
how great must it be
to actually make this stuff?
And that's how they lure you
into art school.
[electronic music continues]
[Christoph] Everything I do
is kind of creating information,
creating usually images that do something
with what the viewer already knows.
Really the idea of, like, their experience
and my experience coming together
and the images are the trigger.
But the big, big problem with routine
is everything starts to look the same.
So I'm constantly trying to reinvent
how I approach image making,
how I approach storytelling,
because the audience changes all the time,
I change all the time.
[chime music playing]
[Christoph] When I was 12,
I taught myself to juggle.
At any given moment,
there's one ball in the air.
And this is something that I hate so much,
this idea of no control.
But this approach of not planning
opens a new door.
It's really, really hard,
but it just leads to these magic moments.
I started an Instagram project
called Sunday Sketches.
In terms of the response I've got,
they've been some of the better stuff
I've been doing,
but on the other hand, they're
the most useless things I've ever done.
There's almost zero control there.
For my professional work, I need control
because I need to be able to tweak,
to adjust, to plan.
But these Sunday Sketches
are un-plannable.
All the good ones just happen
by me just staring at something.
Like moving around the light,
and all of a sudden,
there's a highlight or a shadow and then,
"Oh, now there's something happening."
You can't sketch that.
I never was a reader
because I never want
to escape from anything,
I want my real life to be interesting.
But then I read a book,
The Invention of Slowness,
I think is the title.
It's about a guy who is
so incredibly slow in his perception
that he can...
He actually sees shadows moving.
It's a good fiction book,
but the amazing thing
that I remember from reading that book
is, whenever I looked up from that book,
I felt I had this view from the book
in my real world.
[calming music playing]
This book made my life more interesting.
This is also in art,
something where you're not creating
an artificial world.
You're taking the things you know,
and then you break them down
into little elements.
And I rearrange them,
and all of a sudden make a statement.
[calming music continues]
[Christoph] Not with a monster
or a dragon,
but with a pencil.
I came from, you know, print media.
You just felt like it's always
going to be there,
people always need images
and they always need to be drawn,
and if you've figured it out, you're set.
And all of a sudden, it wasn't anymore.
It was about web long form pieces,
it was about animation.
Of course, it's our job to see
if there's some relevant way
that I can contribute to this new angle.
So this is all of us, all the time.
So this is an app I did
over the last four years,
and I wanted
to do something interactive...
But the big question is
the moment I give too much decision-making
to the viewer over what can happen...
Often, the viewer
might have different ideas,
and you want to be surprised.
That's the whole point of books.
You want some surprise.
You want something unexpected to happen.
But here, in my literary section,
I have all these literature references,
like Don Quixote and Kafka,
Moby Dick,
a little Jane Austen,
and Homer,
and hopefully kids enjoy that scene
as much as grown-ups.
Some people love it,
and probably some people don't.
Some people love it,
some people don't.
That's life.
[swoosh]
[clock ticking]
[director] I'm wondering, it almost seems
like, you know, the creator of your pieces
and you, as editor of your pieces,
are two different people.
[Christoph] Yes!
I need to be in control
and I need to have a very clear sense
of where I'm going and why
something's working and not working.
On the other hand, I've also realized that
being more free-spirited is necessary.
I've found that I need to develop
these two personas separately.
Be a much more ruthless editor
and be a much more careless artist.
This I find physically exhausting,
but there's good stuff happening there.
I take very specific time off
for this kind of, like, free creation.
[clock ticking]
Because I know it's basically impossible
to do under deadline.
Literally, just sitting
in front of a piece of paper
and just doing stuff and being fearless.
There's something there that I need to,
kind of, go back and investigate further.
[clock continues ticking]
[Christoph] Creatively,
I'm extremely dependent on these sparks.
And it only works with loosening up,
without an assignment, without deadline,
with just kind of creating
and not worrying so much
about where the whole thing goes.
But I think it has never happened to me
that I tried something new
on a big deadline.
[director] And what's your deadline
for The New Yorker?
[Christoph] Two weeks.
It's going to be insanity.
Totally stressed out. [laughs]
I've seen a lot of VR stuff,
and it's always, like,
"Oh, wow! This is so interesting,"
and then, 25 seconds later,
I completely lose interest
and this is the great challenge right now.
This is not, like, a coy thing to say,
"Oh, I don't believe I'm talented."
This is real,
like, being absolutely painfully aware
of how you're not good enough
to do something on command.
[chime music playing]
[Christoph] Your general notion
is that doing something nice
makes you more confident.
With ideas,
I often find it's the opposite.
With every good idea you have,
it actually becomes more difficult,
because it's so hard to then repeat.
Of course, you can't repeat.
This is, like, where the pain comes in,
when I talk about not being good enough,
or being afraid that you're out of ideas.
You measure yourself
against a lucky moment.
And this is, like, really, really painful.
You had this one kind of spark
three years ago,
and then a client asks you to do it again.
And you think, "How can I?
I won the lottery then.
How can you ask me to win the lottery,
under pressure, with a gun to my head?"
And this is something that,
before I consciously thought about it,
I just realized, "Oh, God, I'm miserable."
[chime music continues]
[Christoph] But when I realized
that my fears threatened
to take a toll on my work,
I decided I had to deal with them.
Relax; don't be so hard on yourself.
I actually totally disagree.
You have to practice and become better.
Every athlete, every musician
practices every day.
Why should it be different for artists?
[upbeat music playing]
[Christoph] I sometimes imagine
what would happen
if I had to face
the 2006 version of myself
in some sort of creative bar fight.
Maybe I've lost some of my youthful spark,
but I'm confident I would kick my butt.
The assignment was
to do an augmented reality cover.
In a way,
we have that augmented reality cover,
but this already is
an augmented reality cover,
because you can look at the same scene
from two sides.
I'm inside the subway.
So, essentially what I do with the iPad,
I do with the physical magazine.
As if the magazine is
the door of the subway.
So this is an extension of that,
rather than the other way round.
[muffled female voice]
-Yeah, yeah.
-[muffled female voice]
[muffled female voice continues]
[Christoph] I know how complex it is
to put these different things,
like the 3-D and the animation together,
that I'm surprised
how close it came to what I imagined.
[Lou Reed's "This Magic Moment" playing]
♪ This magic moment ♪
♪ So different and so new ♪
♪ Was like any other ♪
♪ Until I met you ♪
♪ And then it happened ♪
♪ It took me by surprise ♪
♪ I knew that you felt it too ♪
♪ I could see it
By the look in your eyes ♪
♪ Sweeter than wine ♪
♪ Softer than a summer's night ♪
♪ Everything I want, I have ♪
♪ Whenever I hold you tight ♪
♪ This magic moment... ♪
The idea of pop music is not
to invent a new story,
but to tell the same story again
in a new and interesting way.
We don't buy new pop songs and say,
"Oh, there's somebody singing about love,
nobody else has dared do that until now."
People have been singing about love
for 500 years.
♪ Why won't you dance with me? ♪
And it's the idea of, like,
making it different,
that you feel,
"Oh, I never actually until now,
nobody has ever gotten it right."
♪ This magic moment ♪
♪ So different and so new ♪
♪ Was like any other... ♪
I love the idea of bringing
these familiar scenes back in,
but just making them
appear to be totally different.
New and true.
♪ You know it took me by surprise ♪
♪ I knew that you felt it too ♪
♪ Mmm ♪
♪ By the look in your eyes ♪
♪ Sweeter than wine ♪
[Christoph] In the best moments,
what happens
is that design celebrates the world.
♪ Everything I want, I have ♪
[Christoph] When I look at a piece of art
that references my fears,
my anxieties, my hopes,
and I can say, "There was this one drawing
that made me realize that I'm alive
or that I love other people
or that I'm afraid."
♪ Sweeter than wine ♪
♪ Softer than a summer's night ♪
♪ So please ♪
♪ Baby ♪
♪ So please ♪
♪ Save the last dance for me ♪
[clock ticking]
[Christoph] My goal is to speak visuals...
like a pianist speaks piano.
And like somebody controls the keys
and can convey different ideas,
different emotions,
through that language.
I have to constantly battle to try to
kind of refine the act of speaking.
Taking the world and putting it
into images and conveying them.
And for that,
I have to constantly produce.
It's not done,
because the whole idea of being done
is kind of the opposite
of what I'm trying to achieve.
[instrumental music playing]
Gute Nacht.