Inside the Painter's Studio, by Joe Fig

Inside the Painter’s Studio Joe Fig

Inside the Painter’s Studio

By Joe Fig “Inspiration is for amateurs, the rest of us just show up and get to work.”

—Chuck Close Inside an art gallery, it’s easy to forget that the paintings there, beautifully framed and perfectly lit against clean white walls, are the end products of a process involving not only creative inspiration, but also plenty of physical and logistical details. It is these “cruder,” more mundane aspects of a painter’s daily routine that motivated Brooklyn artist Joe Fig to embark almost 10 years ago on a highly unorthodox, multilayered exploration of the working life of the professional artist. Determined to ground his research in the physical world, Fig began constructing in his living room a series of diorama-like miniature reproductions of the studios of modern art’s most legendary painters such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. A desire for firsthand references led Fig to approach artists for access to their studios. Armed with a camera and a self-made “Artist’s Questionnaire,” Fig began a journey through the workspaces of some of today’s most exciting contemporary artists.

Inside the Painter’s Studio collects twenty-four remarkable artist interviews, as well as exclusive visual documentation of their studios. Originally intended to serve as research material, these collected interviews emerged as an incredibly useful resource for painters or anyone curious about how and where art gets made.

Featured artists—ranging from those already in the history books to those on the cusp of renown—are asked a wide range of questions about their day-to-day creative life, covering everything from how they organize their studios to what painting tools they prefer. Artists open up about how they set a creative mood; how they choose titles, and even whether they sit or stand to contemplate their work. Ross Bleckner describes how he used to use a blowtorch to split layers of different colored paint on his canvases. Gregory Amenoff reflects on the responsibility he feels to work as fiercely as he can in his studio in exchange for the privilege of making things the world doesn’t necessarily ask for. Malcom Morley describes his fifty-year battle with studio “stage fright.”

Also included are a selection of Fig’s meticulously detailed miniatures. In this context Fig’s diminutive sculptures—reproducing minutiae of the studio from paint-tube labels and paint splatters on the floor to the surface texture of canvases—become part of a fascinating new form of portraiture as diorama. Inside the Painter’s Studio offers a rare, firsthand look into the self-made universe of the artist’s studio. It is both a celebration of the wonders of the creative process and a revealing look at the real, intimate, and sometimes mundane tasks involved in making art. Inside the Painter’s Studio features interviews with Chuck Close, Will Cotton, Inka Essenhigh, Eric Fischl, Jane Freilicher, Barnaby Furnas, April Gornik, Jane Hammond, Mary Heilmann, Bill Jensen, Ryan McGinness, Julie Mehretu, Malcolm Morley, Steve Mumford, Philip Pearlstein, Matthew Ritchie, Alexis Rockman, Dana Schutz, James Siena, Amy Sillman, Joan Snyder, Billy Sullivan, and Fred Tomaselli.

Published by Princeton Architectural Press October 2009 7 X 9.5 in / 18 X 24 cm 240 pp / 200 color Paperback 978-1-56898-852-8 $35.00 / £22.50 / CDN $45.95

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