Christopher M. Paints A Visual Feast By JAMIE ELLIN FORBES Born in 1975 in Oakland, California, Christopher Mangum (who paints under the name Christopher M) always had a penchant for art. “In the very beginning, in high school, I took a class in my senior year in which I prepared a portfolio of drawings and assignments and won the competition which resulted in a scholarship to art school. “Once I got to art school and began studying painting and drawing from life,” he said. “I was hooked. Since then I have never wanted to do anything else.” Educated at the noted Academy of Art University in San Francisco, he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Illustration in 2000. He earned awards and honors from the Academy for his sketchbook, figure painting, landscapes and still lifes as well as from the San Francisco Society of Illustrators.
FINE ART: You have a very classically executed approach to art, whether you make it an abstraction or an impression. CHRIS: When I was in art school, I took every class for drawing figures that I could. I knew that I would need to do very accomplished 24 • Fine Art Magazine • Fall 2009
Opus One
drawings before I could deconstruct them and play around. If you can’t draw, none of that good stuff is going to happen. I am always thinking of different ways to make the imagery more exciting with color, texture and brushwork. Lately, color has been very much a fixation for me. I am experimenting with color to get patterns or a different emotion from what I’ve done in other paintings.
“One thing that draws me to painting the chefs that I meet is that I notice so many similarities with what the chefs do as artists and what I do myself as an artist.”
Cafe Boulud New York
FINE ART: You are very focused, your perspective holds up as a composition. You have a classic eye for composition. CHRIS: The further back you are, if that doesn’t hold together, you have failed. It is a classic law. I love Degas and Sargeant—two of my favorites. The classical artists were great and inspirational to this day, but at the same time we can’t live in the 1800’s. I try to incorporate their sensibility into the modern paintings along with those of Klimt, Beaugereau, Rauschenberg and Picasso who were all very creative and constantly looking for a new challenges, constantly innovative in their work and I relate that to my own question of ‘How am I going to develop my work in the future?’ Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns — I really like the way that they think and the way they develop their
painting processes along with the impression I get of their painting philosophies. FINE ART: Your selection of the chefs is a visual feast—food being the creative process where we consume the bounty of the earth in the way that art nourishes the soul. CHRIS: That’s one of the things I have to offer that might be different from what other artists are offering. The process of working with chefs and focusing on the culinary arts in my paintings has been fascinating and so absorbing. Meeting the great chefs has brought something new into my work that is very inspiring to me. FINE ART: Were you inspired by the current group of media star chefs? Fine Art Magazine • Fall 2009 • 25
Wine Cellar
CHRIS: A number of the chefs I have worked with have been on television. Kevin Rathbun was on “Iron Chef ” with Bobby Flay. I think he won. FINE ART: When you create the paintings and you are embodying the philosophy of a Rauschenberg or Picasso and you are applying the visual stimulation of the eye — whether it be through food or through art — what are the seeds that you draw your intent from creatively? What do you want to feed people when you paint? CHRIS: There’s a variety of things that go on with that. One big thing is the general philosophy of the chefs I have spoken with. They just don’t cook so they can eat the meal and tell themselves how great they are. It is to give someone who comes into their restaurant an experience that they’ve never had before With the stories that I tell in my paintings, I try to give the viewers experiences that might be reminders of important events in their lives or a restaurant that they love. It can go in all kinds of directions. FINE ART: In Cafe Boulud New York, you certainly captured the moment of the kitchen team in action. In the background you’ve abstracted the color and then you married that through a palette of blues highlighted by the reds. How did you choose that kitchen scene? CHRIS: I had the opportunity to talk to the chef, go into the back and make a lot of sketches. Then when I came home from New York, I 26 • Fine Art Magazine • Fall 2009
made the paintings. My impression when I was in New York is that there’s a real elegance there. I live in San Diego so a lot of times people aren’t very formal when they go out. In New York, when people go out they look beautiful wearing their best clothes, and at Cafe Boulud, even in the kitchen, I found a tremendous sense of professionalism. The design of this painting is to show that the kitchen is orchestrated at a very high level. There are extra little touches that show how much care of presentation there is in the people in the restaurant as well as the presentation of the dishes. FINE ART: I just love the way the background is abstracted, with bright red center of the floor.You have all this blue and the texture draws the eye to the canvas. CHRIS: One thing that draws me to painting the chefs that I meet is that I notice so many similarities as to what the chefs do as artists and what I do myself as an artist FINE ART: What are they? CHRIS: First the superficial things: their aprons, their knives, chopping, any little chore. The more that I worked out these paintings, the more I noticed deeper things like the way they used color and temperature and the same types of concepts of design and color that I have to use in my paintings. The sauces—there is so much life and color and vibrancy and I am so inspired to capture that. It reflects back on what I do, I have to have the same kind of dedication to craft and training as they have or the paintings won’t work. Many of the same stages are found in the kitchen as on my palette. There’s the prep stage, cutting and chopping, things getting cooked, delicate sauces and then it goes out. FINE ART: Presentation is key in this culinary art. CHRIS: It’s all about the presentation. I have my prep stage when I am laying out all my paints. Even as I do this, the painting is already starting. If I lay out my paints in a different way, the painting will be different. Then there are the initial stages in the kitchen. Middle stages of painting are like cooking the meal; when it gets framed and goes into gallery, it is very similar to a meal coming out of kitchen. FINE ART: You are capturing that memory in a vision… CHRIS: It’s a little poetic for me in that sense. Everything that I am doing is a metaphor of the subject he is addressing. FINE ART: Tell me about Chef ’s Table. CHRIS: The chef coming to the table to discuss the meal indirectly inspired this piece. It’s based on an experience at Oceanaire restaurant in San Diego, where chef Brian Malarky invited me in to see what his restaurant was all about.
Grand finale Mis En Place
FINE ART: So you’re going to be the artist’s choice for these top chefs. CHRIS: I was there with a friend we had dinner, Brian came out and introduced each course, very poetically explained everything from where the fish were caught to the artistic process of cooking FINE ART: So it’s the poetry of the living moment CHRIS: That’s a great way to say it. FINE ART: I see how you’re abstracting your backgrounds and placing your figures. It’s a great style. You have the Impressionists and the influences from the 1920s and 30s and then you have the current greats in there CHRIS: Order within that chaos. I love that cadmium because it so clearly shows passion itself, even if there’s a calmness in the expression of the chef - for myself, that’s how I am in my paintings. My passion drives me to be so disciplined and so careful and so exacting in my standards. I see that with some chefs, also, they need to be that disciplined to get things right. For them as well as for me, it’s a very demanding thing — art — any mistakes or flaws will show so you battle them constantly. FINE ART: Once you structure your piece, which is classically done, and then you add your technique, it comes out as the figurative pieces are almost floating in an abstracted atmosphere with realism. I haven’t seen anyone ever do this. CHRIS: It is possible the subject matter is influencing the style. Kitchens have completely abstract elements: color, movement and flow. The orderly elementd of those abstractions — of those hard shapes and large planes of color — those give a feeling of how organized a kitchen has to be. In this hierarchy, everybody knows what they are
supposed to be doing. FINE ART: In your paintings you are all of the above CHRIS: True. I am Executive chef, sous chef, the guy who has to wash the dishes afterwards. The depiction of the prep chef, when you are learning to cook, you are just starting out as a chef FINE ART: How did you get into the process? CHRIS: I did a couple of prototype paintings and then I started telling every one I knew this is what I want to do. I am still learning where the great restaurants are, nationally there are so many. I ask people to tell me where their favorite restaurants are and I get introduced to chefs. FINE ART: What inspired you originally to do this? CHRIS: Christian Graves, Executive Chef, watching as chefs were moving, I got a little hypnotized, noticed some of those similarities and parallels so I went home and did my first painting. When I showed it to my publisher Ruth-Ann Thorn, she saw a lot of potential that was there I wasn’t even aware of. She really encouraged me. I’ve learned. Some artists are painting in their own little worlds, not me. I am constantly learning from people around me; from Ruthann, from the chefs, from everybody. There’s some stuff that you said today that will probably come back to me. FINE ART: Did you study Bellows at all? CHRIS: He’s one of my favorites. Could be one of the greatest painters who ever lived FINE ART: You definitely caught the essence of what he had to communicate: the colors, the approach, the time. They’re uniquely your own. Fine Art Magazine • Fall 2009 • 27
les trois chefs
CHRIS: You don’t hear people speaking of him much these days. FINE ART: You are working on a propject with the Kimpton Hotels. CHRIS: I am going on a national tour to a number of their restaurants to research paintings and at the end of it we will have an art book with recipes to go with the paintings, to be finished a little later this year. FINE ART: Who is your favorite from the current group CHRIS: There are definitely a few different ones I like. Giada de Laurentiis- be really cool to meet her. FINE ART: Do you cook, Chris? CHRIS: I’m kind of learning. I’ll cook for myself, not yet for other people, I’m working on that. FINE ART: I love the concept of what you are doing, bringing it into their homes. CHRIS: There is one other thing that we do with our shows that I think is really cool. Because the restaurants I’ve been pairing up with Christian Graves and Rasthbun in Atlanta and went to their restaurants the first nights. Collectors invited to a special dinner - I paired a painting with each course, how the painting was affected by each course, the chef, how everything tied together as a somelier ties the wine to each course. The dinner, the food, the wine, myself and the music. FINE ART: You’re making these moments huge memories for people, spontaneity. 28 • Fine Art Magazine • Fall 2009
CHRIS: When times are a little rough or crazy that might influence one to strive for something that is optimistic, that celebrates things that are so great that are happening. It would be easy to do paintings that were moping FINE ART: Artistic articulation of the style and composition is very well planned and stated — and they open up a broader moment in memory, people can experience this wholesome life giving, soul feeding function, as is food. CHRIS: Because paintings have such a permanence, over the years your memory might fade, emotional experience in addition to the food, like a first date, painting anchors the memory. FINE ART: You’re taking the spice of both elements and marrying them to the elements. CHRIS: Ruthann pointed out to me one day that I am documenting a piece of history. The food networks — once there was one chef, Julia Childs — now it seems like we have so much more of an appropriate respect for the art of what is happening in the kitchen. Things are different now from what they were and documenting these great chefs is a reminder of this period of time. FINE ART: Are there other aspects of art you might like to try? You mean like totally different subject matter? For now, my real commitment is to this and I can see myself working with this theme for years and years. Each individual story, each individual chef all have new and different things to express.
Chef’sTable
FINE ART: About The Wine Cellar… CHRIS: That’s one direction I am going in. Wine is so important paired with the food. I am very interested in showing the relationship of wine to the food. FINE ART: There are multiple paintings within the paintings. They may be figurative yet they veer off into abstractions. CHRIS: Always fun to paint, but some paintings seem to paint themselves a little bit FINE ART: Do you walk into the settings or construct them? CHRIS: Sometimes I am in a setting and everything beautifully falls into place. But I also feel free to add something to the composition or emotion. I give myself that license. It is the painting that matters the most, not the reality, necessarily. FINE ART: Your work from life study is reflected in the colors. CHRIS: I go in and sketch. It makes me so much more open to color and mood and how I am connecting to everything. A lot of the sketches, even if they don’t get used in the painting, are a part of it. FINE ART:: So you marry the creativity through the thread of the palette of the artist to the palette of the plate of the chef. CHRIS: I am inspired and constantly interested to see a new connection FINE ART: You’re connecting everything so the viewer can experience… CHRIS: …An invitation. Everybody can come in and come along
Some Like It Hot is from Zensei in San Diego, a popular sushi place
with me. For further information, visit www.crownthornpublishing.com Fine Art Magazine • Fall 2009 • 29