PrintI’m a Barnard girl. I mean woman. Freshwoman. First-year? Any way you say it, I haven’t had many dates this year. Blame it on the dorms, or my lack of flirting prowess, especially when attempted over the salad tongs at John Jay. So you can’t really judge me for getting needlessly excited for my interview with a certain artist, a big-deal badass of the art world. He had everything I wanted in a man—tattoos, motorcycles, fame, and a love for Norwegian heavy metal. It was a match made in heaven. Or perhaps hell.
Not that I thought anything would come of it. I was going to keep our interview strictly professional. But I couldn’t help imagining my life as a member of his art/motorcycle crew, ditching school and dedicating my life to making light installations involving doom music. I would rename myself, just like he had.
I would take on a flashy moniker and forsake my humble Wisconsin roots for the glamour of my new identity. Like Madonna, or Cher, or Tila Tequila.
He seemed friendly enough in his emails. Excited, even. But when he confirmed first on the date and time but never on the place, I sent another one.
After I received no response, I assumed we were not meeting that day. I later received an email from him apologizing for things being “really crazy.” I said it was no big deal. I mean, abstraction can’t be held down by a formal schedule. And artists need their freedom, right? Little did I know that those emails would be the start of a long and arduous journey: a lesson about persistence and failure and expectation, art and abstraction, Google Calendars and broken phones, but mostly, a lesson that artists are just like the rest of us—not as cool as they’d like to think.
He rescheduled for a different day, but said we could meet at his studio in Williamsburg. I was excited, prepared, and with my photographer and notebook in tow, I made the long journey to the borough most synonymous with plaid and PBR. His studio door had a sticker on it, saying something about a “glock.” The area outside was littered with green shards of old Rolling Rockbottles, cigarette butts, and chicken bones. So rock n’ roll, I thought. A radio blared inside as we knocked against the metal door. No response. We banged a couple more times, now louder. No response. I pressed my ear against it to try to listen in. Only radio. Tried the door handle. It didn’t open. Perhaps he’s just playing hard to get, I thought. So we knocked a couple more times. I know he sticks to sculpture or print, but maybe he’s dabbling in performance art—a real life farce titled “Unsuspecting Reporter Makes Fool of Herself by Coming All the Way out to Williamsburg and not getting Interview.” We returned to Morningside Heights empty handed.
The next day I received a profusely apologetic email from him, which opened with several expletives, and included explanations about a laptop crash and an aversion to communicative technology. He gave me his phone number. I thought our relationship was really progressing, even if it was one of constant deferment. We rescheduled. He said he’d be around the studio all day, but had to run a quick errand to Union Square. The photographer and I made the trip again. Went to the studio. Same old chicken bones, bottles, and cigarette butts, same glock sticker, now a little less rock n’ roll, a little more disgusting trash. And again, he wasn’t there. We waited for a couple of hours. We got pizza. Twice. We came back. Not there. In a last-ditch attempt to investigate the situation, we did the creepy thing. We got down on our knees, and peered through the mail slot. The studio was filled with various manly materials, steel tubes and coils of wiring. Directly in our view sat a Harley Davidson gray with dust. As an artist, he works in symbols, and I took this one to mean that my dreams of art notoriety and badass adventures were probably not going to be fulfilled.
I sent a final email. He never responded after that. Alas, with a DVD of Pride and Prejudice and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, my editor and I assuaged our sadness that night. “I mean, what a douche!” was said several times. “He’s almost 40, right? Like, get it together man.” Like a girl who got stood up at the prom, we hypothesized on what could’ve happened to him, teetering between hoping he got in a car crash and realizing he just didn’t come. “Maybe he got arrested.” “Maybe his mother is sick.” “Maybe he’s running from the law.”
I realized I had been blinded by the artistic glow. We looked over his emails. Words were spelled incorrectly; the grammar wasn’t always spot-on. The press photo we had of him showed pockmarks, and, was that premature balding? His name no longer had a mysterious luster, either. It was a cliché wrapped in an alternative spelling, like “donut” or “kool.” Nevertheless, I felt hurt. My questions about what he thinks of the “archaic form of painting” or his impressions of contemporary art today would go unanswered. I’ve decided, though, that I have learned from my spurned journalistic adoration. For all the glamour and badassery enveloped in the artist’s persona, and the experience behind this creativity, I’ve gotten a lesson in the realm of politesse.
Being aloof doesn’t make you an icon, and being impolite doesn’t make you cool. By all means, break the rules, combine high and low culture, and be really into noise music. But don’t forego consideration and reliability. While it often seems impossible in fast-paced New York, I don’t believe brilliance and courtesy are mutually exclusive. Keith Haring was known for being quite cheerful. Frida Kahlo threw fabulous parties and accepted—and tried to seduce—almost everyone. Even van Gogh at his craziest was relatively kind. After all, when he chopped off that ear, he gave it as a gift. The fact is, all I really wanted was a good interview (and maybe a first date).