Barry McGee - interview with painter also known as Twist - Interview

Interview, Feb, 1999 by Nayland Blake

Painter Barry McGee, also known as Twist, is quickly becoming the guy to watch in the art world. His openings pack them in the way Keith Haring's did when he first began

Interview by Nayland Blake

NAYLAND BLAKE: You were born in San Francisco. Was creativity emphasized in your house when you were growing up?

BARRY MCGEE: Yeah, creativity was big in our family. There were four kids, and while my parents didn't push us in any one direction or anything, they did support us in whatever we wanted to do. I drifted eventually toward drawing and things like that.

NS: What inspired you when you were starting out?

BM: Cars, mostly. My brother and father were both into them, and we were constantly going to car shows. I remember driving up and down the coast going to these shows and cleaning the beast and walking around looking at other people cleaning their cars.

NB: Were these cars that people had restored?

BM: Yeah. My father used to like taking these simple car parts and working on them really carefully. He was constantly polishing things till they were shiny.

NB: So that's why the metal and pieces of steel you use in your wall pieces now are so rusted.

BM: [both laugh] I definitely have a fondness for metal.

NB: Did you draw a lot as a kid?

BM: Yeah, I've always drawn a lot.

NB: What led you to the San Francisco Art Institute?

BM: For a while I was going to every city college in the Bay Area. Then I went on a surf trip with friends to Central America for a year. During that time I got more into drawing than ever. When I came back, I decided it would be fun to try and do art full time. At the time City College of San Francisco had a scholarship program people could use to go to the Art Institute. I applied for that and got it.

NB: Were you doing your street work at that point as well?

SM: Yeah. I'd probably been doing that for six or seven years already.

NS: How did you get into that?

SM: It was the '80s and it was just one of the things going on. I was really into scooters - they were part of this whole mod thing in San Francisco. I remember one guy used to carry a spray can on his scooter with him. At every stoplight he would hop off his scooter and write ZOTZ or something like that.

NB: Did you actually have a name that you were spraying at this point, or was it always images?

BM: Names - I've had a bunch.

NB: How was the reception for that side of your work once you arrived at art school?

SM: I'm not sure. I kind of kept things in different camps. I decided to go to art school because I wanted to learn, rather than having this attitude like, "Hey, I do graffiti. . . ." The more I learned about the art world, the more my interest in what was going on outside of it increased. I didn't have any desire to bring graffiti inside the school's walls or anything.

NB: Was it weird being a student after you'd been working as a graffiti artist?

BM: I think being older made me appreciate school more. You know, the climate was ripe in San Francisco at that time, too. There was Act Up, the Boys With Arms Akimbo staging protests, and all these artist groups like Survival Research Laboratory doing things on the street. People were really active and interested in making changes. It was a dynamic time. Things are definitely more apathetic now.

NB: Graffiti still has the power to really piss people off, though.

BM: It just has this really nasty image. People are like, "I know what that is. That's graffiti. I hate that."

NB: And yet in the past twenty years there's been a huge international graffiti boom with collectors, magazines publishing pictures of tags, and all that.

BM: Yeah. And when [interest in graffiti] started to decline a little in the United States, it got huge in Europe.

NB: So, what's the relation between the gallery and the street for you now?

BM: I enjoy the feel of work on the street - it's like a glimpse or something that you'll just catch.

NB: You've got a big show coming up [March 20 through April 24] at Deitch Projects in New York City.

SM: I'm a little bit excited about that one. [Most of the time the gallery scene has] a whole other climate that doesn't feel so good to me.

NB: Well, it's great that Jeffrey Deitch approached you. Because I think what to do with graffiti art has been a big question for a long time. Back in the early '80s in New York there was this intense street energy, and people really wanted to do something with it. For the most part, though, it didn't work for graffiti to be indoors.

BM: Looking back at that time historically, [it's clear] this was not the way to do it at all.

NB: People got kind of screwed.

BM: Yes. It's something to learn from, too - the translations of street onto canvas. But the whole thing crashed.

NB: Recently it seems like there's been a movement coming out of San Francisco of people who work both on the street and in a more formal art setting, combining different images and objects - like it's about trying to get a feeling of the street. It seems your work is trying to capture some of that.

BM: Yes, at certain times, I guess.