Q. Was Tanya difficult to work with?

 

JL: No not really but she was 27 back then and relatively new at this game and could be a bit aggressive at times but she had a good eye and I respected her abilities especially with what she did with my Separation of Church and State show. I think she was being pressured from outside sources and that's the reason why she kept on postponing my show. I mean because of people I had displeased with Pig magazine or in one way for another. At the time my work and my behavior was making some people nervous, since it was really rocking the boat so to speak.

 

She did tell me once that "people got really freaked out" when I show my work for some reason but did not say who these people were or why. I think she may have been talking about other artists.

 

As a result of this we ended up having a fight over something really petty, (a tiny piece of vanished urinal cake).  When my show was postponed again, this was all documented in detail in the Year of the Pig, as were my interactions with Damien about my sexworks and many other incidences, etc.

I apologized to Tanya in a letter because there was a bit of back and forth cursing going on and she said that I had destroyed her soul because I had called her a "fucking merchant" and she had called me a "fucking peasant" and that "it was irreparable".

 

I also think it had something to do with all the fights with art critics such as Charlie Finch and Adrian Dannett.  As well as some of my foolish social behavior like getting drunk at parties and throwing wine bottles across the room and dozens of eggs at art openings at the 303 gallery. I was doing Pig magazine and was going under the name of John Decay back then and it got a bit outrageous and out of control and I was told I would "never show in this town again" as a result of this. That I had basically "fucked up my art career" which was not completely true because I think others deliberately helped this along. 

 

Q. When did you decide to stop using John Decay?

 

JL: I got rid of the John Decay persona around 1994 and wrote a story that he set fire to Windsor Castle and got burned alive because some people were confusing him with who I really was. John Decay was my shadow self and a theatrical creation, like Marcel Duchamp's Rose Sélavy. I was very much into Carl Jung at the time and was exploring this sort of thing.  It was based on Diogenes, Aristophanes, François Rabelais, Lenny Bruce; a parody and play on words like Johnny Rotten and things like that. It was really just a joke. There is a condition in Erik Fromm's book (The Heart of Man) called "The Syndrome of Decay". John Decay was a mask and an exaggerated caricature.  Decay was kind of a post-modern day social critic; a punk version of Erasmus.

 

(I created him for my book The Year of The Pig.  I mean it's funny when people would meet me, they would behave as if they had just seen a ghost and would be shocked at how nice and polite I was in person and nothing like this Decay character in Pig magazine. It became quite ridiculous. The problem was when I drank, John Decay would really come out.

 

Q. What does it feel like to not show your work?

 

JL: At that time, not showing my work at first felt like my hands and legs had been cut off and I felt frustrated and angry at some people who I thought were behind it, but also foolish for self-sabotaging it as well.  Making art is all I really knew. It felt like it was all washed down the drain and I knew the reality was that I had no one to blame but myself for my excessive drinking and argumentative nature back then and I also knew I could have handled it much better.

 

 

JL: After a couple of years, it shifted and felt kind of liberating since it opened up all this free time to pursue other things that interested me besides art. In a way, it was a real blessing to be able to study all these other things.

 

So I made the best out of a negative situation and accepted my karma. I stopped drinking and went into therapy and really got my life together. That's all I could do other than apologize with letters to as many people that I knew whom I had offended, including Postmasters Gallery, which I did.

 

Q. What kinds of things did you study?

 

JL: Buddhism, Hinduism - (Advaita vedanta) Taoism, Sufi mysticism, Tai chi, Qi gung, many kinds of yoga and meditation and things of that nature. 

 

Q: What are your thoughts about the current art world?

 

JL: From my perspective, I find it to be a bit commercialized. I think it has become much more commercialized than ever, but also think that's going to change because of the market and economy. I think hard economical times and not selling one's work is always good for art making.

 

Q:  What do you think being an artist is about?

 

JL: I see being an artist as a way of life. It's a calling, not a career.

 

Q.  Are you still making art?

 

JL. Yes, sculpture and paintings and I will always make art.  I think it's the type of thing that once it's in your blood you really shouldn't stop yourself or even try to. But these days I just make it for its own sake, for the beauty and fun of it.

 

Q.  Do you think that being "politically incorrect" in the early 90s was the root of some of your difficulties in getting the sexwork shown?

 

JL: The problems were not just political and the work being sexual in nature. I think it was also economical and the fact that work like my sexpieces was considered "virtually non-transactionable".  Just like any other part of society, the emerging art world can be a misoneistic and very competitive place. The art world talks about change but in reality they really don't want it at all because they are scared to death of it.

 

Q.  What do you mean by economical?

 

JL: I don’t like to make generalizations or sound jaded, but an art gallery is not exactly a philanthropic organization. I think the majority of commercial New York art dealers are primarily concerned with three types of artists:

The first type is the artist that sells and gives them what they want; which is usually a transactionable product.  These days, some galleries and artists put a lot of capital into fabrication, public relations, persona formation, marketing strategies, advertising, merchandizing, consumer testing, trial balloons, projecting and analysis, socializing and room-working to maintain their No. 1 position. 

 

The second type, No. 2, is an artist who receives a lot of attention, which could be for many other reasons, such as controversy, politics, fashion, interesting artwork etc.  Attention is almost as good as sales because it is a form of free advertising and once the fish is in the gallery, the dealer can take this fish into the back office and sell and promote type No. 1. 

 

No. 3 is neither a best-seller or an attention getter.  This type has no description. Their function to the dealer is to fill in time and space in the program or unexpected cancellations or to set up No. 1 or No. 2.  Dealers have a difficult task, juggling all the different types of artists and their egos, who shows first, who follows who and filling up the voids.

 

Q.  How, when and why did you come about writing the "Year of the Pig"?

 

JL:. I completed the first couple of chapters in January of 91 with a tape recorder, but really began documenting it and continued it on a daily basis  the end of 95. It started out as a kind of private journalistic experiment in jotting down different people's reactions to my "Sexwork" before, during and after studio visits.  Later on, the unanticipated sequence of events - strong reactions to the sex work, made me change my direction with it and so I decided to make others aware of what I was doing, while conducting the experiment.

 

Q.  Would you describe it as an accurate account of events or is it leaning towards a fictional interpretation?

Joker 1991