Cahill, James. “`Deliberate Clichés`: An Interview with

Cahill, James. “’Deliberate Clichés’: An Interview with Matthew Darbyshire.” Apollo. 18 March 2014.
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In late imperial Rome, the palatial Baths of Caracalla were graced by a marble figure –
now known as the Farnese Hercules – that towered over the real, somewhat feebler, nude
bodies of bathers. This three-metre paean to raw brawn has always been a more elusive
object than its stolid stature implies. Who, after all, created the famous spectre of a weary
demigod?A sculptor’s name, Glykon, is blazoned across the Roman statue, but it has long
been viewed as a super-sized copy of a lost Greek original.
The notion that this heroic ancient statue might also be an overblown caricature seems
pertinent to Matthew Darbyshire’s recent recreation of theFarnese Hercules in his
exhibition ‘Bureau’ at London’s Herald St gallery. Darbyshire has long been intrigued by
the outward packaging of modern life – interior furnishings and surfaces, fixtures and
fittings – and the deep meanings we are inclined to ascribe to such ‘stage scenery’. (What,
after all, was the Farnese Hercules but a piece of bathhouse eye-candy?) It is therefore apt
that Darbyshire’s own Hercules (2014) has been built from polystyrene – the desultory
stuff ofpackaging and padding – in hand-layered seams.
The feather-light effigy stood, at Herald St, amid an array of sculptures including a
polystyrene mannequin reclining in a des res Windsor chair, and polystyrene cats
scampering around wooden rockers. A series of paintings meanwhile recycled the
imagery of vintage advertisements; their air of studied neutrality itself appeared rather
‘vintage’, summoning memories of the appropriation art of the 1980s. From design
classics (the Windsor chairs; an
Asimo toy robot cast in plaster) to classic advertisements or classical statuary,
Darbyshire’s show seemed fixated with that ubiquitous concept of the ‘classic’. Our
conversation began with a discussion of the term’s slippery, often contradictory meanings.
Matthew Darbyshire: One of my reservations about reinterpreting classical traditions is
that while many artists and writers have of course succeeded, so many have also failed.
You only have to look at the cringeworthy output of Quinn, Collishaw, Elmgreen &
Dragset, Fujiwara, Hirst etc. to realise that it’s best avoided. In fact it’s that misuse that I
was trying to refer to with Hercules. All my object selections in ‘Bureau’ are deliberately
clichés – they’re trite or obvious in order to become ‘ultimate symbols’ (the
Herculesbeing power, the radiator being necessity, the cats being domesticity, the robot
being technology, the cooler being corporate blandness).
This began with a show I did recently in Turin’s GAM museum where I was asked to
make work in response to their collection and I found myself identifying within it four
sculptural clichés (the phallic in an Arp, the erotic in a Cellini, the abstract in a Merz, and
the heraldic in an unauthored lion). These are also, as you put it, very mutable or slippery
categories and therefore open to embodying very different meanings.
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James Cahill: How did you first
come across the Farnese Hercules?
What lay behind your
decision to ‘translate’ him into
polystyrene? MD: It was in the
Royal Academy Schools corridor,
where for three years I’d take fag
breaks at his feet and admire those
thundering thighs! The decision to
use polystyrene came through
necessity. I wanted to use the same
materials as industrial 3D
prototyping technologies (in car
factories and the like). This was
quickly reinforced by the nice
element of subversion in a sacred marble form being translated in to the most debased
and abundant material known to man. Although it’s grim stuff, it has that pristine
whiteness and a reflective shimmer to rival
marble’s.
JC: Would you agree that artists have for a long time actively rejected the classical past
because of its associations with tradition, academicism, or cultural conservatism?
MD: I was yesterday at the [École des] Beaux-Arts doing a recce for an upcoming project,
and was reminded of this point – that there’s nothing particularly radical or subversive in
ridiculing the classical. I say this because I found all the students’ tagging and
defacement of Venus, Minerva, Bacchus et al, so embarrassing and misguided. I have to
say I’m a little wary of this [Nicolas] Bourriaud effect – we saw, with the introduction of
graffiti, parkour, and skateboarding, the accelerated the demise of the Palais de Tokyo’s
historic architecture, and now it seems to have happened at his new place of residence,
the Beaux-Arts. I’m no blustering red-faced Tory, but find this form of protest a bit futile.
I am just as wary of this middle-class, organised anarchy as I am of the conservative
connotations of classical plaster-casts. My subversions are of everything – the
conventional, the corporate, the classical, the consensual – and are not intended solely as
an impotent dig at tradition or academicism.
JC: Do you nonetheless see your current exhibition as part of a recent half-ironic embrace
of classical antiquity? (I am thinking, among others, of Jeff Koons, with his exhibition at
David Zwirner last year of classical plaster casts adorned with blue baubles).
MD: Not really. Classical antiquity is no more important to me than the contemporary
stuff, and in fact, I woke up this morning fantasising far more about making a big
cumbersome photocopier than another classical personality. Koons hasn’t been
interesting for years. There are one or two artists doing it properly I suppose – Hans-Peter
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Feldmann’s Davids are irresistibly funny; Oliver Laric’s gobbling up and regurgitation of
everything in his path has a certain urgency, and Urs Fischer’s proximity to the dismal
output of, say, Quinn, is pretty courageous.
JC: One idea that struck me was that of datedness, or faded power: your Hercules is dated
both in its reference to an antique statue, and in its pixelated appearance. The adverts
similarly had a belated quality. There was a pervasive sense of objects having been
demoted or redeployed: the famous image of Picasso recast as an advert (itself a dated
advert), the chairs reused as sculptural apparatus.
MD: I suppose the faded power aspect came about through the juxtaposition of the
highbrow or profound form with the low-grade or profane materials (polystyrene and
paper to make Hercules and Picasso), and the datedness through my employment of
apparently traditional or bygone processes and media (painting, carving and casting).
However, I must admit that most of this was driven by a desire, albeit a naïve one, to
wrestle back the right to make images and objects from today’s monopolising digital
means. In this sense, it could also be construed as empowering.
JC: Does this quality of datedness
(or faded idealism) amount to a kind
of memento mori, or a commentary
on the constant and unavoidable
metamorphosis of objects? Is there
also a trace of Romanticism
(elegising the past) here?
MD: Maybe as a sculptor I find
today’s material landscape full of
confusion and intimidation. I can’t
really fathom the composition of the
physical, let alone the virtual, and
therefore I possibly lament the lost
disciplines I lovingly learned at art
school.
However, while wary of the uniformity, genericism, deceit and toxicity of new materials
and technologies, I’m becoming more determined than ever to get up to speed. I’m
feeling increasingly bored by both our limitations as artists, and this subsequent tendency
to elegise, and am even warier of the alleged expertise of our so-called ‘post-internet
generation’ who seems only to be reusing materials and technologies as they were
intended, as opposed to be taking control or repurposing them in any inventive or
meaningful way. Most often, those who want to speak of these issues employ only glib
references, via the throwing in of a few scraps of ABS plastic or the guts of an old
desktop keyboard. I feel more determined than ever to figure this stuff out.
107 Norfolk Street
New York, New York 10002
Lisa Cooley
212-680-0564
212-680-0565 fax
frontdesk@lisa-cooley.com
lisa-cooley.com
107 Norfolk Street
New York, New York 10002
Lisa Cooley
212-680-0564
212-680-0565 fax
frontdesk@lisa-cooley.com
lisa-cooley.com