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 Ashley's Ben Brown Interview Review
"I set out to interview Ben Brown, who has set up his studio in the future SF 2.5 location in the River Market. The space is being renovated; the doors and windows are covered with brown packaging paper and there is a little window cut out so one may peek outside. When I arrived, he wasn't there. I had never met him before so I had to get my first impression of Ben through an empty space filled with his unfinished art.
 It appeared that he left in a hurry; he had been painting a mural that spans both sides of the room and extends maybe 40 feet in length. The mural, composed of several panels, focuses largely on animals -- cats, horses, lions and birds. There are not many human figures from what I could see. I observed each panel one at a time and tried to make sense of what is happening in each scene. His murals are painted on cardboard panels rather than canvas.
 I felt that a story was beginning to unfold, but I was unsure of the meaning. Because Ben was not around to translate, I tried to decipher his paintings on my own. I felt like an archaeologist discovering cave paintings -- or more like it, Lara Croft in Tomb Raider (minus the giant breasts, tight fitting outfit and guns.) I began to assume my new role as the art historian who is possibly in great danger, and I wondered (in an English accent), Who is this Ben Brown? Should I hunt Ben down? Should I contact my tech guy who parks his mobile home in my yard?
After scratching a note to the absent artist, he and I later arranged to meet for an audio interview. He told me that he was a little nervous about it. Frankly, I was too. We were both reassured by our sound producer, Patrick McBride, that he had the power to 'edit.' Ben, Patrick and I crammed into my tiny office and set up the equipment to delve into the story of Ben's art.
After trading chairs several times to figure out where we felt most comfortable, it turned out that I am almost never comfortable with a four-inch microphone in front of my face. We started the interview with some mild banter to test the sound and I chose to use the voice of Mr. Hanky (The Christmas Poo) from South Park. This is also the voice I use to prank call Jonetta Stewart, part owner of Scott Fitness and instructor of Project Poolside. I decided not to give up my disguise and just use my own natural voice...
Inspiration & Influence
Ben finds inspiration in children's books and states that, "The way images operate in children's books is radical…they are eloquent, simplistic and immediate." I think this is apparent in his much of his new work.
When looking at his paintings, I can't help but wonder what the story is behind them. For example, there are lions and cats participating in what looks like a ritual. The scenes have a certain fairy tale quality to them, yet there is an eerie sense of occultism about them. Since we were trapped in a small space together with only one exit, I nervously mentioned this to Ben. He smiles and says, "I feel a lot of kinship with children's books in the way that they marry words with elaborate pictures ... they have the sentiment to be charming, but acknowledge a certain amount of brutality."
When Ben mentions brutality in reference to children's stories, I immediately think of the original version of The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, which is sometimes dark and not all the endings are happy ones. You know, the one that kept us all up at night, staring at our dark closets as kids. For example, in the modern version of Cinderella the wicked step-sisters are punished with comic humiliation, but in the original tale their eyes are picked out by birds and they cut parts of their feet off in order to fit into the slipper. The evil queen in the original Snow White actually eats what she thinks is Snow White's heart and she is forced to dance at Snow White's wedding... in red-hot iron shoes until she dies. These are not the same tales that storytellers such as Hans Christian Andersen and Walt Disney tell. Was Ben influenced by creepy bedtime stories, I wondered?
Ben's Favorite Children's Book Authors & Illustrators
One of Ben's favorite children's book authors and illustrators is William
Steig, who wrote and illustrated Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, which is the story of a donkey named Sylvester, who acquires a pebble that grants wishes. Shortly after he finds the magic pebble, a lion scares Sylvester, and in his defense he wishes to turn into a rock. The rest of the tale tells of his attempt to change back into his true self and his parent's search for their son. The book won the Caldecott Medal, however it also ended up on the banned book list in school districts in parts of the United States due to a satirical portrayal of the police as pigs.
Another favorite of Ben's is, Roald Dahl -- who wrote the Matilda books, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach and many more popular books. These tales are definitely one of a kind, and I think very strange. Not as strange, though, as Tim Burton's rendition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory starring Johnny Depp. This is also a great example of the brutal side of children's stories. For some reason, I am oddly attracted to this movie. I can't bring myself to turn it off; it is just so disturbing and weird. Especially the part where a maniacal spoiled girl decides she wants a trained, nut-sorting squirrel as her pet. When she tries to seize one of the squirrels, they attack her. They pin her on the ground and tap on her skull. By listening very closely, they determine that she is a bad nut. Her fate is the fate of any bad nut, which is to be tossed in the garbage.
Tove Jansson, The Little Trolls and the Great Flood, 1945.
Ben's main inspiration is the late Finnish writer and illustrator, Tove Jansson. After viewing several of her books, I see why. I find great similarities between her work and Ben's paintings.
Jansson drew a comic strip about a character named Moomin for the London Evening News. Moomin's stories are mostly a series of adventures which sometimes involve magic, monsters and ghosts. Moomin is supposedly a troll but resembles a friendly hippopotamus that, I think, is somewhat reminiscent of a big, chubby baby. Jansson's stories are laden with satire and dark undertones; however, most of the endings are happy ones.
School & Film Reference
Ben spent four years at the Art Institute of Chicago studying new media, video and editing as a fine art but he abandoned the art for painting. He explains, "I feel that the profundity of the process (of painting) fits how I operate. I like to do something that doesn't depend on another device."
Ben seems more at ease with painting, and it seems to fit his style. When he talks about school and studying film, he sounds a bit stressed. "I got to a point where I was carrying my video camera around rather constantly," he said. "I felt oppressed by the idea that if there was an impressive interaction between a man and a duck that I just happened to walk by, I would think, 'Oh gosh, I don't have my camera today.' I was literally editing my dreams; I would go through the same process that I used to edit footage."
Upon finishing school, he made a very distinct decision to abandon video. When he did, his computer coincidentally broke down as almost a pat on the back. However, Ben still finds that the cinema plays a heavy role in his ideal of art as a visual language. "The cinema is a really complex language that people from all over the world can understand. It's a language in itself," he said.
Ben only took a couple painting classes during his years in Chicago. He described his first painting teacher as being very brazen: "He would call down to us, as if from a temple and say, 'if you are a true painter, you come up here with me, and the rest of you stay down there and wiggle around like the rest of the hobbyists.' I think it struck my confidence. I decided to stick with video and to keep painting for myself."
Historical References and Comparison
Ben defends his choice of medium and his preference to painting on non-traditional surfaces. "I have an inner struggle in that I acknowledge that I'm going the route of disposable and that my work is not archival," he said. "I think I have efficiency as an artist -- the willingness to take and recycle things that other people deem as trash."
One of Ben's most important ideas is that he wants to remove art from a sense of class -- anybody is capable of affording art that is originally produced to put on their walls. By using an unpretentious medium, he is, in a sense, taking the heaviness away from the idea that art is something that only the wealthy can afford.
Robert Rauschenberg, Bed, 1955. Combined painting: oil and pencil on pillow, quilt, and sheet on wood supports.
Ben's idea of painting on cardboard instead of more traditional items like paper and canvas is similar to an early 1960's period known as neo-Dada. A good representation of this type of work is by artists Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns -- who both used subject matter derived from the everyday world. Rauschenberg's Bed (1955), is a work composed of wall-mounted bedclothes smeared with paint. Johns' Flag (1954-55) was a painting of a U.S. flag on fabric and plywood.
Another artist that I tried to compare to Ben was Marcel Duchamp. Ben however, was very quick to disagree by stating, "There is the whiff of being part of a hugely disposable culture ... my work is disposable yet it stays outside of being mass produced and disposable."
Jasper Johns', Flag, 1954-55. Encaustic, oil and collage on fabric mounted on plywood.
Duchamp took his art to the next level of extremity in that he made 'readymade' art. He invented this term to describe his process of using mass-produced objects that he bought and then designated as art. Many people would recognize Duchamp's, Fountain, which is actually a urinal, signed 'R. Mutt.' Ben does not take his medium to that extreme.
Assemblage ... and Summation
One of my textbooks from college uses the word 'assemblage' to describe the idea of combining certain objects to produce art. Two key ideas are brought together to make this term: *"The first is that, however much the bringing together of certain images and objects might produce art, those images and objects never quite lose their identification with the ordinary, everyday world from which they were taken. The second is that this connection with the everyday, if one is unashamed of it, gives one free rein to use a wide range of materials and techniques not hitherto associated with the making of art."
The fact that Ben uses cardboard, which is an everyday item used for a purpose unrelated to art, he is in a sense taking the reins and riding into a land of creative freedom. In this land, artists are not inhibited by the usual rules. In this land, children are not raised to color inside the lines, or only on the paper ... they can run free and cover newly painted walls with tempera paint. In this land, my mother does not nag me when I use fingernail polish while sitting on the couch…
When Ben starts painting, he doesn't have a clear view of the final piece. "I never visualize before embarking on a painting. I see it as a visual exploration and a process of learning ... the more I try to articulate the bigger idea, the more I destroy it," he said.
I agree with Ben. I, too, feel that the more I try to pick out the small ideas that compose his work, the more I ruin the fun in enjoying it."
* Archer, Michael. Art Since 1960. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1997.
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Art Gallery :: 
Timothy Rowland
