ANDREW MONCRIEF
THE CANADIAN ARTIST WORKS FROM EXISTING IMAGES TO MAKE PAINTINGS IN WHICH MALE BODIES INTERTWINE. NUMÉRO ART TEAMED UP WITH GUCCI FOR A FASHION SHOOT THAT MONCRIEF HAS USED TO PAINT A SERIES OF NEW WORKS THAT WILL BE SHOWN DURING THE NEXT MEN’S FASHION WEEK IN PARIS.
Numéro art: Can you tell us a little bit about these images? What are we looking at here? This is an editorial, but it’s also the framework for something else? Andrew Moncrief: Basically I’m creating a series of paintings related to the subject of masculinity and masculine identity. My work is ongoing process that deals with my identity as a gay, queer male. To create these collage-like paintings I had to create reference images and source other imagery. Traditionally I use nudes, but here I’m doing it through a fashion lens, looking at the body in clothing, referencing classical drapery and Renaissance painting. I feel the images stand on their own as a fashion editorial, but they were made as building blocks for a series of paintings I’ve done that will be displayed at the Gucci store in Paris during men’s fashion week there.
These paintings are about the body and masculinity, but to me they don’t really seem to be a complete celebration. There’s something discombobulated or possibly even dysmorphic about them. Is what I’m picking up on correct, or am I just totally projecting?
I feel that’s a correct assessment. As young queer people, we have to form our identity, which is at odds with the norm, so to speak. And so I’ve always been interested in the psychology of what would go through your mind if you could fix or change the things about you that you perceived
as flawed. So often – maybe it’s not the best analogy – I think of Mr. Potato Head. What if I could just put on these lips or these eyes, etc? What would I actually look like if I could just swap out the things on me I perceived as flawed? In some of my previous work, I was collaging fetishized body parts and creating these hybrid forms that represented the skewed way I see myself. I’m interested in the dichotomies between seduction, beauty and dysmorphia. There are ideals of beauty that are specific to certain types of canons, and we’re bombarded with them on social media, and this causes me a lot of body dysmorphia. When I was younger, I saw myself as this skinny, effeminate kid, which was in direct contradiction to the working-class Candian logging family I grew up in. I was ashamed of my body, like I wasn’t strong enough to be a part of this macho ideology that surrounded me.
The people in the editorial, and therefore the body parts in the paintings, possess many attributes of an idealized body. Or at least as idealized by the cis-male gay community – toned, six packs, no body fat, hairless etc. We cast five models, trying to get a full spectrum of masculinity, which is impossible to do with five people. I was really trying to focus on the tension in the clothing as a metaphor for the body. It was about the folds and creasing. We were also referencing Francis Bacon. During the shoot, we had all these images of his paintings: his depiction of the body is both really beautiful and grotesque. And I mean, he was this self-loathing homosexual in the post-war era. His work is very “heavy” in a certain way, at any rate it’s not what you’d call light, but there are still these beautiful paint colours, these soft pastel pinks and greens. I hope we managed to capture some of that.
I believe some of your archive imagery was sourced at the Schwules Museum in Berlin?
Yes. It happened by chance and I’m so grateful! The Schwules Museum, which is also a research centre, library, archive and more, focuses on queer art and history. I was invited by my friend Peter Welz, and I was blown away. They had like three copies of every Physique Pictorial, a 1950s beefcake magazine that showed nearly nude men in classical poses. It didn’t explicity say it was for gay men, but everyone knew it was. They had all these leftover issues that were damaged or didn’t fit into their overflowing archives and so they let me take a bunch!
As creative people, we use various mediums to express our thoughts and feelings. But sometimes I get frustrated, since those mediums don’t let me express all the things I want to say. Do you ever feel that?
That’s such a fucking good question! I mean, I’m making work about the body. I’m making it with my body. I’m in my studio. I’m moving. Sometimes I listen to music. I almost feel like my painting is so inadequate, like there’s no sound, it’s not happening, it’s sort of frozen in time, you know what I mean? To be honest, I really wish I knew how to dance or express myself more in a physical way. I mean, you go to a concert or a club and you dance about and stuff, but I wish I knew how to do all those beautiful fluid movements, because it’s something I’d like to try to express in painting. Sometimes, in my studio, I get rushes when I’m working, and it’s exciting, and I have music going and I’m sort of in it. But then, inevitably, there comes a moment when I’m just like, “Ugh,” since I still feel stuck, because I’m trying to make a version of that with this other medium, so it doesn’t fully translate. You know what I mean?