Questions for Val, an Interview with Claus Laufenburg

[TO VIEW IN ENTIRTY SCROLLING DOWN IS NECESSITY]

Interview started on Saturday 14th May 2005 and continued on Sunday, 15th May 2005

How are you today?
 
Cheerful, slightly intoxicated by alcohol, a slight feeling of anxiousness, which is usual for me, apart from that, pretty good, which is also usual for me.
 
When don't you feel slightly anxious?
 
When I’m asleep, when I have the warmth of someone who loves me, for example being cuddled by Gail or when Stalker the cat is lying on me, calming me, telling me it's all right.
 
What is the first picture you remember?
 
Often children have security blankets, a piece of cloth to comfort them, I however had a security book which I carried with me constantly called "The Living World of Science“ it was published in 1962, so I must have been about 5 years old. Although I couldn’t read the words in the book, it was filled with colour pictures of astronomy, chemistry, and biology, which I loved to look at. It had a section on Leonardo Da Vinci and a very bad reproduction of "The Virgin of The Rocks“ although I must have seen this picture every day it didn’t impress me as much as the picture of the astronaut on the cover of the book. I was determined that when I grew up I would be an astronaut like John Glenn; I made a huge model of the Gemini capsule out of Plastercine. So I suppose the first proper piece of art that I saw in reproduction was Leonardo’s "The Virgin of The Rocks", curiously I can see its influence in my work now, I still love angels and divine looking women.
 
What is the first picture you remember painting?
 
When I was very small I used to spend a lot of time copying illustrations out of medical books. I was fascinated by anatomy. I remember one summer afternoon outside our house and my Grandmother watching me draw; she turned to my mother and said “This boy will be one of three things, surgeon, artist or priest“ and she hoped it was the latter. However I knew I would be an astronaut but I was wrong and she was right on one of those vocations.
I also remember being quite small and doing a quite realistic drawing of a beautiful woman crying with the legend above it "I hate everybody". I remember Uncle Jack being particularly disturbed by this image. Uncle Jack was a cross between Elvis Presley and Hank Marvin, a dapper dresser and something of an eccentric. The first painting I ever sold when I was about 13 was to him for £ 8. He wanted a painting of a clown and I did a self-portrait of myself as a clown, which curiously enough is a subject, which I have returned to in recent years now being mature enough to understand its underlying psychological irony. I couldn’t explain the image of the crying woman then, although now to anyone who knows me it is blatantly obvious. 
Uncle Jack drew Disney characters, stuff like that, not profound, but he was interested in art. I loved him. The only other one in the family that I know of who was interested in art was my Grandfather; I have a photograph taken during World War 1 of him tattooing other soldiers.
 
What is your favourite work of art?
 
That is a hard question, a very hard question. (He thinks for moment and then rushes off to check the title). I think it would have to be this picture, which always moves me “The Blind Girl“ by Sir John Everett Millais, which he painted in 1856. This might seem to be a surprising choice to those who know my work, as it is such a sentimental image, but to me it is deeply profound. The landscape reminds me of Yorkshire. This is how the world looks when you take LSD; hyperrealism and the subjects are female, the blind girl looks like Mary, also it portrays music with the accordion. I think it is a work of genius.
 
What is your favourite among your own works?
 
If the house was burning down it would be one of two; the portrait of "Max In His Mother The Sky" or a book called "Dysphoria, A Book of Obsession" filled with paintings, drawings, writings and collages, which is the most painful thing that I’ve ever produced and the most profound, it's so painful that most of it has never been seen, except by Gail, and my ex-wife who tried to destroy it.

Would you consider publishing this or any other of your private books (how many of them are there?)? What would a potential publisher (Benedikt Taschen, are you listening?) have to offer you to get talking about a book of yours?
Have you considered doing other Val products (postcards, posters, t-shirts?) for people who cannot afford to buy an original but would love to have a ‘piece of you’ anyhow?

Ha! Claus, you're funny! I love Taschen books, I have hundreds. I recently saw a facsimile of a sketchbook by David Hockney and I really thought that it was a real sketchbook! but for the price, which was £ 50, I would never have known that it wasn't the real thing! It even had coloured paint fingerprints reproduced exactly on the matt black cover! I would love to see one of my own books done like that. I've done about 25? of the Val books maybe, but they are finished works in their own right, complete with wording etc. I'm sure this stuff will be reproduced one day, sadly not in my lifetime. I mean realistically who would buy them? Only small amounts of people are truly clued in to my work and me at this time!
I think I'd do such a book free, just to own one!
I've had a few postcards and t-shirts, posters etc done before and yeah, they sell pretty well, but I'm open to doing more as I love to see my own children reproduced.
 
Do you see other contemporary artists (painters/musicians/poets) covering the same sort of ground/themes as you do, someone you admire or feel a close affinity to?
 
Probably the only one that I can think of is the late Pierre Molinier. I find his attitude to art very similar to mine in many respects. The fact that his art was divided into two sections - his painting and photography, both of which are the same thing; although Molinier’s photographs are fetishistic they also portray his inner femininity, which I also do but in a coded and less fetishistic way, where as his work is purely sexual I am dealing with conventional images of femininity and gender. However my self portrait-photographs are of equal importance to my hand created images.
I also seem to have a lot of similarities to Austin Osman Spare. In our obsessiveness and our personalised and figurative symbolism. (Gail thinks that I have a 10% affinity with Pablo Picasso because I codify my sexual relationships in my art).
Some people think that I have an affinity with Grayson Perry, but I don't because his work is political and in many respects strangely masculine. His work is filled with messages to everyone. My work is about messages to myself. I have no interest in politics or portraying myself as a contemporary artist at all. I am an anachronistic artist of the old school and I don’t need to impress anyone, not even myself.
Being on the web is peculiar, so many people seeing what is a private enterprise, chiefly a dialogue with my self. I have been asked to do exhibitions by many people but have only ever done one, and even that I was pushed into. I am flattered by the attention of people who've contacted me through the web, but it isn’t frightening in a way that doing an exhibition is, as it's so removed and less public which helps me, as fundamentally, I can be very shy.

 
Do you collect other artists‘ work? Whose?
 
As I am not wealthy! I don't collect very much art. I recently bought a painting by a young artist called Richard Benjamin Allen whose work I think is very accomplished; I love the obsessive nature of his work. I bought a painting from my friend the artist Miklos Papp whose work is very fluid and organic and his representations of nature remind me of Graham Sutherland.
Some years ago in the mid 1980s I was present at an exhibition of William Burroughs's paintings and I regret not having bought one, seeing as they were selling for only a for hundred pounds each. What a mistake that was.
If I was wealthy and could afford to collect, then you would find that I’d bought the works of Gilbert and George, Pierre Et Gilles, Picasso, Matisse, John Everett Millais, Robert Williams, HR Giger, Henry Darger, Atkinson Grimshaw, Warhol, Richard Dadd, Pierre Molinier, John Martin, (I have two huge 19th century Bibles with some of his engravings in which are superb), Blake and that guy Joe Coleman he's cool.
 
 
What is your favourite period in (art) history? You seem like the late great-lost British Surrealist to me.

My favourite period is possibly the turn of the last century that's when art really became experimental as a reaction to photography.
I would consider myself a surrealist in some respects as I tend to deal a lot with the subconscious, however I think a more accurate description of my art would be personalised figurative psychological symbolism. "Late great lost British surrealist?" That would be quite something to live up to! although I'm not sure that it is true.

What do you think of your place in contemporary art? Young British artists like the Chapman brothers or Damien Hirst who seem far less talented than yourself (from a purely technical point of view, business-wise they obviously could teach you some lessons) and much more gimmicky and focused on concept (rather than content) reap all the laurels, where as you have hardly had any exposure in recent years other than the website (correct me if I'm wrong)– social commentary versus, personal iconography? Shock tactics versus visionary content? On the other you don‘t seem to be a darling of the 'cult-art‘ collectors either (the ones with paintings by J.W. Gacy or some less notorious killer in their collection who don‘t get enough air living in their mum‘s attic).

I wouldn't consider my work to be contemporary at all.; contemporary equates to fashion. I only had that one exhibition and that was not something I volunteered for, rather I was persuaded to do it. I have been asked over the years to do exhibitions and have declined. A portion of my work is now exhibited on my website. This is the website that Graham Moore very kindly suggested and created for me. It suits me to work over the net as it gets around my innate shyness.
Unlike many of the contemporary British artists I do not have a desperate need to be recognised, loved or understood by an invisible public. My work is done whether or not it is seen; I am compelled to create. I have a genuine compulsion to create these things, maybe its all part of the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? Who knows, it's almost as if these works have to exist in the real world. Often I'll start a work and I'll think "Shit! I wish I hadn't started this! This is really hard" yet I force myself to complete it, almost as if it's not my choice. You have to ask the question – is art a form of neurosis, a type of mental illness?
Yes, I do seem to have a very small (and select) cult following and in many ways it is a lot of fun to connect to those peoples who appreciate and have an affinity with my work. It creates energy in me when people are excited by what I'm doing, it makes us connected; it has also provided opportunities to work with other people, especially musically, which is a great joy to me.
It is also fun to show the photographs of myself, which are truly as important to me as the created art and could be seen as a connection to Duchamp's Rrose Selavy. I should mention, that I love the work of the Chapman brothers.

Do you believe in irony?

If I paint a nice picture of a pussycat, am I being deliberately subversive? or do I have no idea about the rules, codes and small print of what we have been conditioned to accept as 'High Art'. Who makes these rules anyway? What would be really subversive would be Charles Saatchi buying a Jack Vettriano painting and calling it high art. This is why I sometimes make the images, 'illustrative' which is currently the dirtiest word in the realms of 'High Art'; am I being genuinely Kitsch or am I taking the piss out of notions of what is acceptable for a contemporary artist to do?
Is Jackson Pollock a better artist than Rolf Harris? Yes! of course he is a superior artist because he has an underlying philosophy, but has anyone bothered to ask Rolf Harris if he has a philosophy? Jackson Pollock never made a record as good as "Sun Arise". Now that's what I call irony.
So the answer to your question is yes, I truly do believe in irony.

How important is humour in your work?

I am a very humorous person and sometimes this does come through in my work; let's face it we all need a good laugh as we hurtle towards our certain deaths. I wouldn't say humour is important in my work but it leaks through it involuntarily. I make people laugh a lot; I'm a bit of a comedian!
 
The thing that‘s most easily identified with your work and closest to being a trademark of yours are those really big and expressive almost live-like eyes – what is the importance of that? The windows of the soul? Are you aware of Georges Bastille's "Story of The Eye“? Do you attach any erotic quality to the eye? Or is it just because you are a Residents fan boy?
 
No, I am not familiar with Georges Bastille's "Story Of The Eye".
I like eyes, because eyes are without gender. They are the only visible part of the brain. The eyes are called the window to the soul and I use mine in an expressive way. Often outside I wear sunglasses. My eyes reveal a lot about me; Gail can tell when I'm tired, ill, lying* just by looking at my eyes. So sometimes my eyes reveal too much. On a more basic level I have observed my eyes a great deal through years of wearing make up. If we see eyes on a painting we are instantly drawn into the image and completely forget about the two dimensional reality of the surface as we are seduced by the power of the iris.
*He cannot lie to save his life!!! - Gail

How important is sex in your work? A lot of images depict genitalia, but I wouldn't call them 'erotic‘ or stimulating per se, on the other hand they don‘t seem done for shock value either?
 
Yes, I would agree with that, I do show genitals quite a lot, as they are the most obvious markers of gender. It has practically nothing to do with eroticism; the genitals in my pictures are not there to arouse the viewer; they are merely a device to indicate male, female, or transgender
 
Do you think you would be an artist without the 'gender issue‘?
Looking at the pages from Dysphoria it becomes clear that you had considered getting hormone treatment. Did you in the end decide against it? Do you think your art would differ (or do you think the creative juices might have stopped flowing altogether?) if you had opted for a sex change or therapy early on?

Who knows if I would be an artist without the gender issue? Gail thinks that I would, but that I'd be a very different type of artist, less driven by my internal neurosis and probably more driven by external forces such are money, employment and competition. Perhaps as a child I forced myself to be an artistic prodigy simply to avoid the constraints of typical male behaviour. Maybe I have continued this into adulthood? As a child art was the protective shield for the confused boy against a world that he could never make sense of. Perhaps if I'd been out paying football then I would never have developed into the creative person I am today. I spent so much time behind my shield it enabled me to keep sane. Gail says that I am the most creative person she's ever met or will ever meet; poetry, musical composition, song writing, and painting.
This is all I wish to say on this matter at this time.
 
Do you see art as therapy or just as form of diary keeping? Sometimes looking at the paintings, especially those from the early 90s, one feels like a peeping tom, seeing into your inner conflicts.

I would agree that my art is a kind of therapy yes. It is not diary keeping in the sense that I use it to record the present; my life is reflected in it because my work is about myself. There is less of my day-to-day life appearing in my work at present because I am in a peaceful and stable relationship.
Anyone who looks at my work is seeing me intimately, which is why I present it, even to myself, in a coded and symbolistic way so as to protect myself from the raw intimacy. My art is how I explain myself to myself. I explore my subconscious and the painting is a rationalisation of the internal conflict that is perpetually within me. It is worth noting that I often change styles; this is a device to continually challenge myself as I take the journey towards understanding my own psychology. Style is irrelevant, content is all.
Gail is able to 'read' my work perfectly; if I show her any of my images or poetry she is able to interpret the work and sometimes notices things that I've been too close to see. Gail has known my work for 30 years as we met at Art School. She likes to look through my portfolios and drawing books as she can tell what frame of mind I was in and what was happening to me in the past when I was in London.

Do you consider yourself a product of England/typically British?

Not at all, it makes no difference to my work where I live, as it has nothing to with the external world but only the internal landscape of Val Denham. Of course the landscapes in my paintings are Yorkshire ones, but that's incidental. It wasn't until I moved back to Yorkshire after 20 years in London that I realised that all the time I lived there I was always painting Yorkshire for any landscapes I needed.
 
Where do you take inspiration? How important are dreams, (drugs?) - do you have visions (the lovely detailed work has more often than not an 'illuminated‘ quality) or do some of those intricate and immensely detailed compositions take careful plotting? How easy does inspiration come and has there ever been an idea you couldn't fully realise? How finished is a concept for a painting before you start-putting pen to paper, how much room is there for improvisation in the process of creation?

My dreams are very important to me and but I do not have visions. So important are my dreams to me that I consider my sleeping time to be of equal importance to my waking time. The majority of images stem purely from the subconscious and I have very little trouble realising the works as what is in my head comes out exactly as I visualise it. My inspiration is myself. There is total room for improvisation although this happens only rarely. Usually before I sit down to paint I have an idea of what I am going to paint. It is usually a complete visualisation, I seldom deviate from the idea. For instance the Jhonn Balance portrait is exactly as visualised except for the demons on the wall and the Black Sun symbol, which were necessary to add for compositional reasons.
The only drugs I use are alcohol and nicotine but I am always sober when I work on visual things. The only exception to this rule is that I cannot write poetry when I'm sober!
 
 A lot of the images have a strong religious/iconic quality, a sort of self-contained universe, it seems that in your work you have very little time for the 'outside world‘/social commentary (thank god!), do you agree?
 
I am spiritual in a very non-conformist manner. I would describe myself as an agnostic, which fits perfectly with my notions of duality.
I do love the over the top imagery of Catholicism, Byzantine Orthodoxy and the Hindu religion. I also respond strongly to the imagery of Alchemy (The Divine Androgyny). I used to be fascinated by the symbolism of the occult however this has faded with maturity.
There is no room for political comment in my work. Occasionally I do take a foray into the outside world for example after 9/11 I did some visual work about the destruction of the towers, but there again maybe I was fascinated by the fact that they were 'Twin' towers?
 
How important is the transgressive nature of the images? (Sometimes you employ different techniques (collage/drawing/text) into one and the same image, and content-wise the transformative blurring of gender boundaries, but even the human/plant/animal lines are oft-times less than well defined.
Transformation/transgendering is a very big theme in your work, whilst hardly a 'new' theme it has attained a new and widespread importance, beyond the obvious very personal meaning it has for you, with plastic surgery and body modification having gone from taboo to acceptable social practice, transgendered people also have become media darlings and at least a bit demystified- how do you see your role in this?

Obviously my work is to do with gender identity or perhaps gender Dysphoria, but one thing we're not taking into account is also the fact that I am obsessive compulsive, using different techniques within one type of artwork could be seen as overworking the image. I don't see myself as an artistic crusader for the transgender cause; it's just my own personal obsessions flooding out.
 
Another recurring image in your work is the (more than) Janus-headed creature, looking back and forth (and sometimes at the onlooker too), what is the importance of that?
 
The double-faced people or creatures in my work are simply a metaphor for duality. We are all multiphrenic; call it Cubism of the mind.

What sort of reactions have you received as a result of going online with your website last year?

It has brought me into contact with many more people; I've got more friends as a result from various corners of the globe and it's got me back in touch with some old friends too. It's been very fruitful, I'm rather proud of the website! The thing is, I just send the text and pictures to Graham and he does all the work! I never would have dreamt in a million years that so many people would dig my art. 
 
You are most closely associated with the post-industrial 'family‘ of musicians, TG/PTV/TOPY spring to mind, what is your take on all of that now?

I love those people! They are often highly intelligent, very creative, and one's sexuality is meaningless; I can relate to their avant-garde experimental approach to their work. The strange thing is I completely lost touch with all those bands and artists for about two decades of my life whilst I was being a father and househusband; I was a part time graphic artist and tended to work in complete isolation on my own art. So I kind of lost touch, which I regret in many ways. I first met those people through Genesis P. Orridge, who I got to know in the late 1970's. I was drawn to Genesis because he seemed to be very similar to me in many respects, an artist and musician who has always been a true gender terrorist.
I suppose these like-minded individuals found me again, because of the Internet, and I'm very glad that they did. I love weirdo's maybe because I'm one.
 
Why was there never a release by your band the Death And Beauty Foundation and more crucially how come no book of your art is available? Were there ever plans to do one?

The "Death and Beauty Foundation" were the most awkward band in the world! We changed our line up every time we played, the only constant members being my friend Oli Novadneiks and his guitar plus myself. We would insult our audiences and usually play what the audience didn't want to hear. We often got booed off stage! Many times we had to leave by the back exit. People who wrote fanzines would be invited to drink a can of lager filled with my own urine! Needless to say, they never wrote about us. We were truly Punks of the avant-garde, nobody would touch us. Imagine coming to see a gig of your favourite Industrial mayhem and having to listen to the DBF doing renditions of Bing Crosby! Sometimes I would intersperse the music with lectures on art! Only a very small number of 'fans' got what we were doing and the fact that we were being ironic, there's that word again. I should mention that on many occasions we did go down very well! Nobody ever wanted to release any of our stuff on record; fortunately I still have hundreds of tapes in a case from that period. As for your second question no, there isn't a book available of Valart, maybe one day?
 
In the November 2004 news update on your website you announced that your „next commission is an album cover for the superb British band Coil“ – what ever happened to that?

Well, I think we know the answer to that one, Jhonn Balance tragically died last November. I was in negotiations with him about the cover for a live album, which was to be printed in yellow and black only. We were emailing each other about this cover right up until the week before he died. It was going to be very surrealistic, something along the lines of a piece of art on this website called " The Incredibly Lame Cowboy Chirps" which is a painting of cowboys upside down on the ceiling with legs coming out of their mouths. I was going to do characters with legs emanating from their mouths for the fold out digi-pak and CD label. Jhonn liked this image because it came totally from a dream that I'd had. Alas, it never was to be. 

Why did your X wife call William Burroughs "A senile old git" to his face?

Ha! That's funny and kind of embarrassing too. Someone once said of my x wife, "She doesn't stoop to dignity!" One of the leading figures of 20th century literature! And she called him "a senile old git". It was at a thing called "The Final Academy" in Brixton, London; I think it was around 1983? William Burroughs was reading passages from his work. Genesis P. Orridge invited us backstage after the event, and I asked old Bill to sign me a bag full of books, which he very kindly agreed to. However he kept spelling our names wrong! Now our names are very simple! "VAL and E…." maybe he was drunk or drugged up, who knows? But anyway he had a little trouble getting it right. That's when she called him "A senile old git"! Fortunately he found it highly amusing, but I knew that she was serious! It went silent except for old Bill and myself laughing.
 
What exactly did Derek Jarman show you in his flat?

Photographs of Adam Ant……………..naked!

Is that it? Okay, thank you Claus! You asked some very interesting questions there and I must say it's been fun talking all about little ol'me! I enjoyed it.
Big hugs and love in space
Val x