Artists & Illustrators. November 2009
Colouring Boo
In less than four years, mature RCA graduate Boo Ritson has become a prominent figure in contemporary art, thanks to an unusual approach to colour and storylines.
Words: Martha Alexander
At first sight you are convinced they are sculptures; hunks of manipulated clay, or moulded metal coated in liberal layers of thick, tutti frutti-coloured paint. They could be unwanted mannequins, dolled up for one last turn. When first encountering the seminal work of Boo Ritson - whether coming face to face with a neat and knowing air stewardess or being floored by a wall of oozing burgers - it takes a while to grasp that behind the juicy facade are actual objects: in most cases, living and breathing human beings.
Since graduating from the Royal College of Art three-and-a-half years ago, it has been the 40-year old's prerogative to transform the genuine into the hyperreal, aided by lashings of household emulsion. The results are photographed immediately after the paint has been swiftly yet painstakingly applied by Ritson and her assistant Rebecca Mears in her studio.
The images pack quite a gaudy punch - although, unexpectedly and by complete contrast, Ritson herself is understated and relaxed. The work is born out of a fascination with Americana, cultivated during her first degree in English Literature. 'I was particularly interested in the American section,' she says. "Since then I have loved American cultural products - the films, books and art. In literature, many gothic novels were made by women imagining far-off places that were very sublime. It wasn't a great stretch for me to imagine what America was like from the products that I receive on television."
To this end, what she creates are definite stereotypes, a fact that she freely admits. "That's all I have got to go on, so they are a cliche and deliberately so. It's quite important for me to not go to the States too many times because I want a received view of it." Her current show, 'Back-Roads Journeys', is split across two separate Mayfair venues, each with titles setting a typically small-town American scene: 'The Diner' at Alan Cristea Gallery, and 'The Gas Station' at Poppy Sebire. Running simultaneously, both displays are inextricably linked via a short story in the exhibition handout.
"It's a minor narrative," she explains. "Having that narrative enables me to get to grips with the subject matter so I can get on with the real stuff, the painting and sculpture. It's not necessary to know the story but it would be nice if people did look at the subtext, as it's this structure that makes me make choices."
However, much of the storyline can be followed via Ritson's use of colour. "The language of the paint is about interaction," she explains, citing a triptych in 'The Gas Station' titled 'By The Roadside'. "The left-hand panel shows a totally white figure - the hitchhiker, then you have got the waitress in the central panel with her right-hand side painted and then on the right-hand panel, the trucker's left-hand side is painted. It's the painted bits that are relevant. The white character needs to be there to set the scene but he has no coloured paint on him because he is not relevant. The colour is the story."
This idea came from unfinished portraits from the 18th century, when Ritson realised that a story can be told without so much colour. She set about reducing the colour in her work; a departure from her previous pieces, which teemed with colour. "In the newest works, the colour is very pithy so that it becomes punctuation rather than the sentences," she explains.
Keeping the colour so neat is clearly no mean feat, especially as Ritson has little over 40 minutes to play with before the paint starts to dry and the effect is lost. Complete organisation is a must. "You have to cover absolutely everything and lay the brushes out and the paints. I use up to 50 pots of flat emulsion."
Ritson then puts barrier paint on her models. She almost always chooses her friends and family, or even herself, because it is less nerve-wracking for her in what is essentially quite an intimate experience. Paint is only applied a little further than what needs to be seen, as everything else can be cropped out of the final frame. Her photographer, Andy Crawford, is on hand throughout, although Ritson will not know if a shot has worked until after the paint has washed off the models in the shower at her studio.
Her technique has gradually altered in the last few years and there are more changes in store. She is currently working on a project involving a row of panels leading on from one another, snaking like a second wall around the room. Two gaps in the string of flat images will be filled with life-sized figurative sculptures. It will be, she hopes, like a cross between the Bayeux Tapestry and a comic strip.
If there's a sense of ambition to Ritson's personality, it is perhaps borne out of the fact that this is something of a second chance for her. She only started her first art degree at the age of 30, following a successful career in advertising. "It was a chance to get it right. I was so crap at art at school that I wasn't even allowed to take it at O-Level and it had always been a big regret. It's easier to study when you're a bit older, because you have experience and are passionate that this is something you need to do."
Boo Ritson studied for a BA in Fine Art at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College and then trained in sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London. She has exhibited widely across the UK and the US, where she had a successful 2008 solo show at BravinLee Programs in New York. She lives in Middlesex and works in London.
It's Nice That. Issue #2 October 2009
Boo Ritson
Sitting for Boo Ritson brings new meaning to the notion of being painted. You may be asked to sit still and strike a pose, but more remarkably you are also asked to be the canvas. Swapping tubes of acrylic and oil for pots of glossy household emulsion, she creates poignantly arresting portraits and still lifes, the likes of which you will have never seen before.
Hi Boo, your work has a very recognisable aesthetic, can you tell us a little about the way you make your pieces?
I trained in sculpture at the Royal College of Art, and just before I left I became aware of the fact that just making sculpture wasn’t enough for me because I was thinking of a way to do all of it at the same time; painting, sculpture, performance, video… I’ve always been fascinated by paint, and I wanted to be able to explore it, so I left the RCA deciding that using paint was what I would do. I can’t paint flat, I’ve tried and tried and tried, but it doesn’t happen. So one day I was in the bathroom and I painted myself and my husband took a shot. It seemed to me that this was going to lead somewhere, so I hired a photographer and that’s where that started. It was obvious to me that there was an intersection between the statue and the canvas: what was different was that I was being provided with a shaped canvas – the person’s face. I was actually making decisions about whether to go with it or fight it..
As a result, do you see yourself as a painter or a sculptor?
I can’t choose, I’m just an artist, so I use whatever the means necessary for the idea at the time. Even three years in, I’m still completely out of my comfort zone.
When you started, were you applying the paint in a similar way to the way you do now?
No, I’m trying to take a more structured approach – I’m using a wider range of colours and more shading, with various degrees of success and failure. Early on it was, “Quick, cover him and take a shot!”
So why were you painting yourself in the bathroom?
David Risley had taken me on and said I could be in a group show just before I left the Royal College and I’d made some work, which was fine. He then said I should have a solo show the following March. I had so many other ideas and none of them worked, and I kept asking, “What would happen if I painted myself?” In the end, out of desperation, I did it, and it was that quiet voice that was right. The best ideas are the ones you don’t trust.
You said previously that you were sure that your idea existed elsewhere, how did you go about researching whether or not it had been done before?
You just talk to people, look in books, look online and in galleries. Everything in a sense has been done before, but you kind of hope that what you’ve done is startling enough and somehow different in a new way. Hopefully your contribution has added something or asked a different question.
Do you think that you’ve influenced people to do a similar thing?
I have no idea but it would be lovely if it were the case. I did hear that some photography students are looking at my work for their A-level projects, which is great.
You use household emulsion paint, are they all premixed?
I have an international colour palette that I use, and then I choose the colours in varying shades. I go and get them mixed, arrive with my two suitcases, get them all out and then the chaos starts. I love making the work and I dread it because so much is required of me on that day, and I fail from time to time. And I can’t afford to fail. I wake up in the morning knowing that a day in the studio costs about a thousand pounds, which is a pressure, obviously!
Do you think that makes the work better or worse?
Sometimes it can just make it not happen. You pull something out of the bag sometimes. Still lifes have been my nemesis from the very beginning; there are eight in existence from my previous body of work and I’ve shot 17 in total. Of my newest work, I’ve shot four and have got two.
What makes a still life more difficult?
Because people, although they’re sitting there like a statue, appear to be animated or inanimate in an appropriate way. Food doesn’t do anything, it just sits there, and so the paint has to be more animated.
Do you think it’s maybe to do with being totally alone while working?
Yes, in a way, but then I’ve always found it easier to think straight when I’m on my own. With the portraits, it would be perfect to have some time alone with the wet painting with no one else around, but that would be impossible.
When you decide you are going to do a shoot, do you know what the final image is going to look like?
Obviously I choose the colours and the costume and I’ve got a picture in my head to work from. We sit the person down and take some test shots to try and get them to sit in the right way. I work out the majority of it on the day because the face is there in front of me. I stop when I consider I have the finished painting, and then we start documenting it. I don’t look at the person anymore because what I’m seeing is three-dimensional, and what I’m looking at on the screen two-dimensionally is what’s going to exist. The work is in two stages; the real, painted person and the unreal, computer-based image and that’s really crucial: from the image on-screen, I then adjust the paint on the person. So I’ve got two pieces of work; one in the real, and the one to be reproduced.
And then from each shoot you get one image?
Yes, I choose one image. Sometimes I choose three because I lose confidence in my selection, and I have to go away and look at them to be sure.
Does it frustrate you that you could never have a show of just the painted people, rather than the photographs?
Initially, it did frustrate me, but now I love the prints, and I love what they do because it’s something very different. They’re forever there, not drying, not over-dripping; they catch the moment when it was perfect. But I suppose that’s why I went to do a performance painting during the museum show that I was in in Seville. It was great because everyone got to see that bit of it.
Are you quite guarded about that part? I’m about to film for a morning for a documentary with the BBC about Baron Simon de Pury, where I’ll be painting him, and that makes me a little nervous!
Is it something you mind showing people? I just hope it ends up being interesting! I made a piece called Nina in front of an audience, which is of a woman sitting on a blue double seat sofa with a phone, wearing an ill-fitting red bra and shorts. There are some photographs of me that were taken as it was in progress and they helped me to see how I might be able to make my process a little easier.
Are the final prints life-size?
They end up larger than life-size – the portrait sizes I’ve used have gone from 40 inches tall up to 47 inches tall. They’re that large because I want to show the detail. Classically a portrait is a way of capturing someone and their personality. In your work, you try and get rid of that personality, so are they still portraits? Like T.S. Elliot and his ‘skull beneath the skin’, I’m interested in the bone structure, I want to put something on top and see what happens. Because someone has a bigger nose or a smaller nose or a different tilt of the head, I get a different canvas and I want to see what changes occur from person to person. I paint my friends a lot – I’ve painted Poppy [Sebire] the most times – and it changes my perception of them when they are put into different characters.
So in that instance they’re taking on a new character?
I read somewhere that you’d love to do a Hollywood actor, is that true? I have painted an actor, he was fantastic and we only took five shots. We got it the first time but I couldn’t believe it so I took another four shots in case. He was absolutely splendid and totally in character. I’m desperate to get more actors because they can take any character on and make it happen from underneath the paint. At the moment I’m imposing it in paint, it lives or falls by how bad or good my painting is. With the actor, it was there in front of me before I’d even started – he was already in character.
If you were to paint a famous actor, say George Clooney, would he still be George Clooney in the photo, or just a stereotypical actor?
That’s the problem you see, that’s why it would be difficult to paint George Clooney because it would be disappointing if it were still George Clooney at the end of it, and I would have failed. But on the other hand, I might think it’d be really nice to take one part of the sitter’s life and make the painting about that. I have done that quite a lot, and it adds something for me. Primarily at the moment, I want to include a narrative across the pieces, so for this next show Poppy is going to be a diner waitress. It’s a two-site show, with the action based in a diner and a gas-station – Poppy’s character is going to chuck her job in and hitchhike off to a new life: in the second triptych she’ll be standing at the side of the road with a sign which will have something like ‘Alabama’ on it. She served a trucker in the diner and he offers her a lift, so the story for me is about the beginning of their relationship – it was nice that I was able to paint her boyfriend for the trucker character.
What do you think makes someone themselves? What are you trying to eradicate?
I don’t know. Life?
Do you think the audience know what they’re looking at when they first see them?
No. Half the people say, “OK, so it’s a painted person,” and the other half say, “That’s a painting on canvas that has been photographed.” I like the fact that I’ve managed to do it well enough for someone who hasn’t seen my work before to be unsure. We’re rarely astonished in life, and I make work because I really need to be surprised and excited by things, so if other people are sharing that enjoyment, seeing what I see and just having a response, that’s brilliant.
You recently did a piece for the new Maccabees album cover that’s been widely consumed, is that a good or bad thing?
I think it’s great! When Poppy and I first saw it on a tube poster we were excited because the work is out now in a wider context. The Maccabees cover was a strange one because I knew that this was the rare occasion where I was going to be able to explore what collaboration would be like. And so, I was very clear from the start, both in my head and with them, that they were going to choose their costumes, and therefore they were going to make decisions about their image, because it was more important to me that their image was right for their music – at the moment when they are finally revealing themselves to the public they were unlikely to want to be a pimp or a cowboy! I’d love to paint them again, and I’d love to paint them how I would do them in terms of their American characterisation.
How do other commissions work? When someone comes to you, what are they trying to get? Are they putting themselves in your hands and saying, “I’ll be any character you want me to be?”
Letting me choose how the work will be is the only way I’ll paint a commission, which is why I say the collaboration was a one-off with the Maccabees.
With those other commissions, do you meet the people? Do you talk to them? Do you get to know a side of them that you want to then portray?
I’ve just been up to see someone to talk about a commission, and we spent an hour together and we talked a lot. He was brilliant because he said to me, “Do what you want,” which is how it will work best! The next time I see him we’ll make the painting.
Can you see where your work might be in 12 months?
The pieces have to become these beautifully glossy, white, full-sized sculptures of people with beautiful enamel on them. Hats off to Duane Hanson again, but hopefully with a bit more gloopy paint going on. They are pushing out now from the photographs, which they had to do at some point.
So we’re going to see physical things?
Yes definitely, absolutely, I can’t wait. It’s so nice that with this new work, there’s some sculpture padding about underneath.
I read that you’re going to be doing something in Amsterdam, is that still happening?
The plan was to hire a window in the red light district, paint myself, sit in it for a short while and have it filmed. I’d like it to still happen, but there’s a slight fly in the ointment in that they’re closing down a lot of the brothels, which is good in a lot of ways but is inevitably making it much harder to see the project through.——How do your self portraits work? Someone holds a mirror, and I paint myself into a corner and then the sunglasses are put on me and we take the shots.
And then do you look at it on the screen to choose the right shot?
I can’t, not at all. I have to pre-arrange what I’m trying to get. With practicing poses, I’m quite good at holding the poses because I know what I want.
Have you ever painted someone and not used barrier cream on their skin first?
No, I used barrier cream from the beginning because I worked that one out.
What do you think about Madame Tussauds and the way they represent people?
Popular cultural or other culture, it’s all about the same things. In my minds eye I live in a small town in America, so I’m constantly running a film in my head of people who might live there; all the people I see are dressed differently, and they’re doing different things, and I become fascinated by their relationships to the point where I can’t turn it off. Celebrities are of less interest in my world purely because it’s unrecognised extraordinariness that is so beautiful to me.
Why do you think your work has struck a chord with so many people?
I have one response; I’ve just been incredibly lucky to have work that people have looked at at the right time, because there is a lot of original work out there. I’ve been at the right time and right place. If we’re honest, what we were most worried about when we saw the work was that in ten portraits or fifty portraits time there’s a danger of getting bored with the images… I’ve moved on from the previous body of work for the same reason – it feels as though I have answered enough of the questions to be able to move on – if I have any others then I may re-visit it in the future. It’s of no use to anybody, if I can’t see a way forwards, or if I just keep doing the same thing. I have to adapt and change because that’s what life is, and without that I will have failed.
Design Week. Volume 24, no. 34. 27th August 2009
Shooting Stars
For aspiring photographers, finding your voice is just half the battle - you've got to get noticed first. Liz Farrelly presents three practitioners at the top of their game who are using some clever ideas to establish their niche.
Boo Ritson's nomadic gallerist, Poppy Sebire, stages London shows and promotes Ritson via a website. This unconventional approach mirrors Ritson's category-defying artwork. Put simply, she costumes and paints willing friends as 'characters', creating layer upon layer of materials and meaning. An arduous process for model and artist, the result is captured on camera.
While studying sculpture at the Royal College of Art, Ritson went 'hybrid' and took up the brush. 'It made me think about the differences between images and objects,' she says.
If the 'portraits' look familiar it's because Ritson mines pop culture, invents stories and adds 'characters, larger than life, to quickly communicate complex visual and narrative values'. She's fascinated with Americana, and moments, notably the 1950s and 1980s, when sartorial theatricality peaked. Her research hones in on details - 'a description of a colour or person could be taken from a novel written in the era,' she says.
Most of her output is presented as digital prints, but Ritson doesn't press the shutter release. 'I work with photographer Andy Crawford,' she says. 'He documents my work and makes sure the image accurately represents what I intended.' Their long-term collaboration foregrounds experimentation. 'We share a love of technology. When a new, larger digital back becomes available, which offers more detail and clarity, we try it out. The images are crisper and more highly detailed,' says Ritson.
Recently, she collaborated with indie-band The Maccabees on a cover image for the album Wall of Arms. 'They offered the opportunity to try a new flavour, reference a different cultural context,' explains Ritson, adding, 'I'm open to commissions, if they're non-restrictive.'
Art World. Issue 12. August/September 2009
'Hardboiled fiction, Hardboiled art...'
Boo Ritson, whose Air Hostess was the cover star of Art World issue 1, has a particular liking for ‘hardboiled’ American detective fiction. That provides the backdrop for many of the characters she creates by literally painting – and then photographing – people. But she confesses that she is a compulsive reader with far too many books covering this genre and others. Here she talks about five recommendations for enjoyable reads – hardboiled and more – which also provide some context for the work she makes:
Lee Child: One Shot. I’m a big fan of Child’s Jack Reacher thrillers. Jack is the impossibly successful hero, a man who is lean, tough, and knows what to do no matter what. Whatever the situation, however crazy, he finds a way through it, sorts everything out, then walks off to continue hitch-hiking his way across small-town America.
Michael Connelly: The Concrete Blonde. Everything you need to know about the book is in the title. These books are a series about an LA detective called Hieronymus Bosch. Hieronymous, or Harry, is the son of a hooker who (after his mother’s murder on the streets of LA) is compelled to solve difficult murders, however tough and dirty the cases become. He’s a bit more thoughtful that Jack Reacher, and a lot more likely to keep his gun holstered.
Raymond Chandler: The Big Sleep. This one speaks for itself - perhaps it’s too obvious? You’ve probably read it, but if you haven’t then you should!
Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451. In Bradbury’s brilliant story about the destruction of knowledge, the idea that appeals to me most is how people are allocated a particular book of which they then become the custodian: the book is committed to memory, because owning books has become a dangerous crime, so that person remains the only witness to the knowledge within. It is compelling to think of which book you would choose, if you had to – sometimes I wonder about which work I would choose to know best out of everything that has ever been made…
David Sylvester: Interviews with American Artists – unmediated conversations with 21 artists including de Kooning, Rauschenberg, Stella and Lichtenstein. They knew Sylvester well-enough, and spoke over a long enough period to be able to relax and really talk about the heart of their practice.
Aesthetica Magazine. Apri|L May 2009. Issue 28.
Hybrid ART
Boo Ritson
As she furthers her inspirations from Pop Art, Boo Ritson’s painted people examine the cultural stereotypes of the collective imagination, and effortlessly fuse sculpture and painting into a completely new form.
Exploring the confusion between artificiality and reality, stereotype and individualism, sculpture and portraiture, Boo Ritson’s work straddles mediums and represents a unique attitude to the artistic subject. Ritson’s method is both literal and figurative. She paints people using mostly friends and close acquaintances to style them into the popular figures that haunt our childhood memories and TV screens. She preserves these icons beneath a thick lacquer of paint, and simplistic blocks of bold glossy colour.
With a history of both solo and group exhibitions in London, New York, Santa Monica, Cardiff and Stockholm, Ritson’s idiosyncratic transformations of the real into the artificial have grown in reputation over the last few years, a fact cemented by her latest solo display, The Hobo and Friends, showing as Adler in Frankfurt, Germany. The works available in the collection include: The Synchronised Swimmer, The Singer, The Bellhop and of course, The Hobo, and they all embrace the concept of Americana and kitsch cultural preconceptions.
Focusing on the stereotypes that have pervaded collective consciousness through cultural imperialism, most of Surrey-born Ritson’s inspirations stem from “the exported Americana of literature and films. I love the places they portray and the stories that they tell, from the sunlit sets of Hollywood to the lit-by-neon bars, and the accents that run through it all.” She acknowledges that homegrown ideas have not proved to be so forthcoming: “I haven’t yet found a way to look at English stereotypes that is full of enough of the same kind of colour.” Colour holds an intrinsic importance in the sculpture itself. Ritson is naturally drawn to decades whose fashions have embraced the use of block colours that can easily facilitate broad stereotypes, and a 1950s and 1980s mood encompasses the clothing of her creations. Rather than an aesthetic preference, Ritson is keen to make the contexts of her subjects clear: “I like the way that visual styles from the past are fixed and recognisable, so it is a conscious decision at times to be accurate to whichever time a stereotype is most identified with.”
While taking significant inspiration from Pop Art, Ritson’s practice also draws parallels with artists such as Richard Phillips and the early works of Cindy Sherman. Without the overt eroticism and sexuality, however, Ritson extends the repertoire beyond exclusively female stereotypes. Symptomatically, cowboys are a particular subject of Ritson’s fascination and, where many artists informed by Pop Art have concentrated on the female construction, and an air of vulnerability, Ritson avoids this cliché. Even Hooker, one of the artist’s earlier pieces from 2007, conforms to a one-dimensional, tawdry imagery, far-flung from any real sexuality. It is in presenting these stereotypes in such an oblique way that Ritson encourages us to metaphorically look beneath the physically impenetrable layers of her impasto-covered subjects.
The Hobo and Friends is showing at Adler Gallery, Frankfurt, Germany until 2 May 2009. For further information visit www.galerieadler.com or www.booritson.com.
Having a cross-genre academic grounding (Ritson studied English Literature and History before returning to university in her late twenties for a Fine Art degree, and ultimately a Sculpture MA) has created a keen awareness of today’s overlaps in artistic processes. “I need the form that a three-dimensional structure offers in order to paint, and it seems to me that the person I use as a sitter, or the donut that is held in a hand, is indivisible from the image that I paint on top of them.” Furthermore, for many of the pieces, Ritson’s creativity began on the page with jottings and musings on the cultural stereotypes that she chose to embrace at any one particular time. “I find it good shorthand for all the images that I want to explore, because it is the quickest way to get them all to interact.” Unlike many visual artists, Ritson finds the progression and movement between verbal narrative to visual is a normal consequence of her imagination – “words are a bit like sculptures, you can deploy them at different speeds and weights and they ultimately have a life of their own and surprise you. They live on the page on my desktop like the work does in the studio, and I move them around frequently until they find the right place.” Despite her background in literature, Ritson has no plans to publish her initial musings: “The words don’t replace the work, they just run alongside it, but I don’t feel that publishing them would add anything.”
This facile transgression from one medium to another, all containing the original imaginative message, is furthered in the next stage of practice, the photography. The fact that the photograph is the ultimate work of art, and the ultimate commodity for Ritson and her gallerists, is important because it belies the interdisciplinary emphasis of the exhibition. The artists’s formal training as a sculptor, and the accompanying image to this piece, could draw a sculptural categorisation; but when practicalities are considered, that Ritson’s sculptures are indeed real people, we see that perhaps the artist is really a painter. Then again, in a double bluff, once Ritson’s accommodating acquaintances have washed off their gooey veneer, the focus must come to lie on a photographic interpretation. At this point, Ritson must focus exclusively on the finalised image, and adjust her earlier work and story-telling accordingly: “My final set of decisions occur when I stop looking at the painting in front of me and refer only to the on-screen shot of it – this leads me to alter the painting to take account of how it looks in the image. It is really important to let go of some pre-held ideas at this point, because the document is all that remain of the painting – inevitable some adjustments are needed to help the transition from what I see in the flesh to the print that it becomes.”
Many of Ritson’s sitters are close friends, “mainly because they’re incredibly tolerant and let me do my worse without complaining”, but this adds a dimension of intrigue to the works for the viewer. By projecting her pre-conceived imagery onto a friend has Ritson already associated them with that particular character in her head? Or has she sought to obliterate personal ties and continue from a blank canvas? “Sometimes they have already seemed like a particular character to me, but a couple of them have the ability to look completely different each time I’ve painted them.” Using a familiar face has also enhanced her study of the human form, “it has added to my understanding of how the faces and images sit together.”
It is commonly held cliché that the eyes are the window to the soul, and the recurrence of dark glasses and goggles in the exhibition hints at the distance, and generality, which the figures maintain. The result is to make “the character more of a statue and therefore more remote.” Here Ritson admits to inverting the common practice of most art, of tampering with the real to make it seem artificial. “I want to see how the paint sits and collects in the contours of one face and costume versus another – how the identity of the face beneath is always apparent in the image on top, and how they both alter each other.”
In addressing the one-dimensional, predictable figures of American popular culture, Ritson has provided and exhibition, which is at times superficially beautiful in its simplicity and colour, and at times almost grotesque in masquerading the self-imposed barriers of reverting to type. Ritson explores the possibility of her subjects hiding, not only behind dark glasses, but also behind society’s notions of how they should look. She invites the viewer to question the boundaries of making such assumptions of a character based on cultural pre-conceptions. “Many of the characters I’ve used are recognisably cultural stereotypes – they have a language of colour and narrative that has built up over time and it communicates very clearly from the beginning.” In utilising a palette of block, bright, glossy colour, Ritson has paradoxically invited us to explore the grey area of life, that moment when the real and the art intersect and mingle into one. “I’m in the point at which the face of the sitter merges with the face of the character, where the metamorphosis of the two can’t progress any further and the real and the artificial are the same thing.”
Art in America. December 2008.
BOO RITSON
BravinLee Programs
Boo Ritson’s digital prints are the photographic manifestation of the idea of the living body as a support for painting. The London-based artist (b. 1969) physically transforms her subjects by applying a highly viscous latex house paint over a protective cream to skin, hair and costume. Friends and colleagues (and occasionally common objects, although not in the pictures for this exhibition) are styled as types in narratives of her devising. Posed before neutral backdrops, they are shielded from bright studio lighting by sunglasses appropriate to each character.
Ritson addresses her subjects in enthusiastic and painterly fashion. Thick and wet, the latex is applied with confidence. During a three-hour session, with only 15 to 20 minutes available for photography, she occasionally mists her subjects with water to delay drying and cracking in the vulnerable area around the lips. At her direction, a photographer equipped with a super high-end digital SLR camera shoots as many as 20 to 50 exposures, from which she selects the most sharply defined, high-intensity images for printing. Perhaps to acknowledge the transformative self-portraiture of Yasumasa Morimura and Cindy Sherman, for her first New York solo, ‘Then and Now and Forever,’ Ritson herself plays The Starlet in a digital print of roughly 44 by 33 inches (all works 2007). In an image that finds the artist not quite ready for her close-up, the acrylic –covered flesh of her cleavage has begun to weep onto what may be a gleaming black trench coat or a motorcycle jacket. Her painted straw-yellow hair hangs lank along her neck. Fat red rollers crown her head, and the black lenses of her white-framed sunglasses gleam with reflected light. Cracking has already begun to appear around her mouth.
In a slightly larger image, The Hustler sports a Vandyke beard and a jaunty, small-brimmed corduroy hat, paint raked into the ridges of the fabric. A caramel-colored jacket shows broader strokes, and a skinny tie is composed of a few vertical strokes of crimson paint over a white shirt. The Elvis Impersonator appears in a white suit with upturned collar, signature pompadour, gold-rimmed shades and an electric-red scarf that seems to melt around his neck. With Ritson’s offerings, the funkier objects of Claes Oldenburg’s ‘Store Days’ come to mind.
Edward Leffingwell
Arte & Mercato, July 2008
Francoforte. Si gonfiano e si sformano perdendo la fisionomia. I personaggi misteriosi delle performance di Clarina Bezzola (Zurigo, 1970) diventano sculture viventi, ci raccontano storie di metamorfosi. I loro corpi si trasformano in rifugi, si ibridano con oggetti, stoffe, cuscini e materassi. L’artista ha una carriera da soprano alle spalle e un forte legame con la scena e le regole della drammaturgia teatrale. La sua opera è stata di recente acquistata dalla Maison rouge di Parigi e da altre importanti collezioni private. Fino al 16 agosto espone alla galleria Adler (Hanauer Landstrasse 134) con Thorsten Brinkmann, Boo Ritson e Hannu Karjalainen nella mostra sul ritratto e il tableau vivant, senza volto, dal titolo Who are you? A settembre una sua performance sarà ospitata alla Kunsthalle di Vienna. I prezzi delle opere della Bezzola, disegni, foto e sculture, variano da mille a 15mila euro.
Art World. Issue 1. October/November 2007. Boo Ritson.
‘I stood in the bathroom, covered myself in paint and my husband took a photo… then I said, ‘Ok, now I’m going to paint you’.’
Boo Ritson achieves a skewed take on the intersections between sculpture and painting, expressionism and realism by painting people and objects as forms of themselves. This was at its most literal in works such as a melon smashed on the gallery floor and then painted to confirm its appearance, or sticks overpainted with caricature bark patterns. She also crushed a Mini, repainted it so that it appeared new in its altered form, and exhibited the finished piece as a painterly sculpture.
How did you get the name Boo?
It’s been a family nickname from when I was a baby.
What was your work like before you began painting objects, and how did you make the move to what you do now?
I trained as a sculptor, but something was missing – it was as if I had to choose against painting, which felt wrong. I guess that deep desire for painting led me to paint the sculptures I was making. When I finished the sticks (left), I whittled them and they came out as three separate colours – it was like painting by numbers, and seemed a way to address painting without feeling too ridiculous about it. I realised it was an image of the thing on top of the thing – image plus object. My interest is in what the thing actually is and how it addresses painting and sculpture.
Do you feel any other artists have foreshadowed your own approach?
A wide range from Bertrand Lavier, to Cecily Brown and Pop Art, especially Warhol and Oldenburg – and an eclectic mix of mainly painters rather than sculptors.
What made you turn to painting people?
It felt like a natural progression because I wanted something more directly figurative, so I used myself. You have a stupid thought and think you can’t possibly do that, but it was Christmas Eve – I stood in the bathroom, covered myself in paint and my husband took a photo…and then I said, ‘OK, now I’m going to paint you’. Then I went to the gallery and said, I think this is the way forward for me and I’m going to need to get a photographer with a really good digital camera to do it properly. That cost £750 per day, which was a lot of money for me, having just left college.
What does the process of painting a person involve?
I write stories – just for myself – to develop characters, then find a person who fits that character. I cover them with barrier cream and dress them in costume which I’ve made from charity shop stuff. My assistant, George Buckland, hands me the paint from 20 – 50 pots on the go at a time and sprays water to keep it wet – I’ve got 15 – 20 minutes before the paint dries. My photographer, Andy Crawford, takes anything from six to 40 shots; there’ll only ever be one that really works, where they sit like a statue and the painting is right.
Who are your models, and do you see them as subjects, or as the characters?
My friends, family and other artists are the models. And now I’m also painting commissions, which is harder as I’m more comfortable with people I know. I see them as who they might be if they weren’t the people I know, their alter-egos.
Is it the process of painting that’s important to you, or just the result?
I never thought I was interested in performance separately, but I think the event is becoming increasingly of importance to me. Before this work I did a performance in Amsterdam in which I dressed up as a cowboy, played Amazing Grace and Desperado, then sat in the installation for half and hour. And next year I’ve hired a room in the red light district and I’m going to sit, painted, in the window! And that will probably become a video.
You mention Pop Art, but you use paint in a really expressive manner. Why?
The process is so quick, it lends itself to gesture – though I am working on a print project with Alan Cristea. I’ll take a picture of a much-simplified still life and paint on top of it. One thing I hope to achieve working like this is a reference to the edges within the work, whereas in the portraits I’m painting beyond the image that you see and choosing the edges afterwards. I think that some of the thinking for this work did come originally from looking at Chuck Close.
And now you’re producing still life works – though still with people in…
Yes, the same characters come back as just their lap. I’m hoping to combine all three elements working in sections. I’ve always been interested in how I can fuse the figures with the backgrounds, in the same way that the still life elements recede into the clothes. And the floor is painted as well as the wall in the full-length pieces. The approach lends itself to painted sets.
Can you say something about the scale of your work?
Yes: they are life-size plus twelve inches for a full-length figure, because that’s what you need to give the appearance of life-size – if you do actual life-size, the eye sees it as smaller.
You mentioned your writing. Do you publish your story fragments?
I’ve only used one so far, as background to my show Hot Dogs and Heroes. I did an English Literature degree, so writing has always been there.
And what do you read?
In the last year, exclusively trashy American murder novels, which are brilliant at setting a scene in five seconds flat. I enjoy reading them to relax, but they also feed into my work. I like Raymond Chandler, too. But I’m less interested in the English equivalents, I think because my characters relate to the received stereotypes of Hollywood films and American culture. And American characters feel more vivid to me, the English ones seem comparatively cramped and internal in their fictional worlds.
Is that reflected in your choice of music?
Yes, I love Elvis, Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond – the open road and story-telling.
Finally, if you could live with any work of art ever made, what would it be?
A Warhol Electric Chair.
The Guardian. Thursday 4 October 2007.
Boo Ritson's best shot “'The burgers sat still and didn't say anything, so I had 40 minutes before the paint dried”
Interview by Leo Benedictus
These are real cheeseburgers, painted with emulsion paint, then photographed and printed. I have been using the same technique on people to depict various American stereotypes - the cop, the hooker. The idea of doing food came from thinking about what they might be eating.
First I went to Sainsbury's to buy all the ingredients, then I cooked the food, which was unpleasant because I had recently become a vegetarian and had - and probably still have - a love of cheeseburgers. Then I spent hours covering everything with glue so that it had a plastic surface I could apply paint to. When I paint people I've got about 20 minutes to work with, but the burgers sat still and didn't say anything, so I had about 40 minutes before the paint dried and disintegrated.
This image was shot from above by Andy Crawford, the photographer I work with, using a Mamiya 645 AFD camera and a 120mm macro lens. Once the shot was set up, I painted the burgers with the camera above me. I chose the backdrop and lighting so the burgers would pop out from the wall with a vivid, over-saturated, excessive look. Subtlety is not something I aim for. I also wanted the paint to have a physical quality. If you look at the second bun in, on the second row, there's a shadow cast by the paint.
Each shot went straight to a laptop. The cheeseburgers all looked very rich and vibrant and juicy when I was staring at them, but on the computer they were lacking something. I went backwards and forwards, looking, then adding more paint, until after about 35 shots I said: “That's it. We've got it.”
I'm not a photographer; I'm an artist who uses photography. In its raw state, my work can only be seen by me and the people I work with, so photography is essential. I can't show my work without it.
Curriculum vitae
Born: Woking, 1969
Studied: Royal College of Art
Inspirations: "In terms of the true greats, it's Picasso, Warhol and Hirst."
High point: "The last few years have been extremely exciting."
Low point: "On a cold winter's day, when I'm sitting on my own in the studio, it can feel a bit lonely."
Pet hate: "The frustration of not being able to revisit my work: when it's done it's done."
Dream subject: "Hollywood actors - but they're very difficult."
The Saatchi Show. The Daily Mail (London, England). May 11th, 2007.
Move over Charles, Kay Saatchi has the best eye in town says Bronwyn Cosgrave. Here are her six picks for the future of art.
Is it possible to stage a sequel to Sensation? Ten years on from the Royal Academy’s exhibition – which, displaying controversial works from Charles Saatchi’s collection, launched the careers of London’s Young British Artists – Kay Saatchi, the advertising mogul’s ex-wife, is certainly ready to try. Her new offering is Anticipation, a group show championing 25 of the capital’s rising stars.
Seated by a grand piano dominating the salon of her art drenched Pimlico home, Saatchi, a 54-year-old blonde with 20 years of curatorial experience, is in a buoyant mood. ‘Anticipation sums up a feeling young artists often have at the start of their careers’, she says, although the artists aren’t as young as they were when the project started: ‘We worked on this show for two years.’
The problem was to find a space, but eventually property mogul David Roberts chose it as the inaugural show for One One One, his West End gallery. Saatchi and her two co-curators, Catriona Warren, Art Review’s former director, and Flora Fairbairn, an artist’s agent, former gallerist and consultant, visited hundreds of ‘up-and-comers’ studios in the intervening two years and they scoured art colleges for the freshest talents.
Unlike Sensation, their show isn’t out to shock. ‘Art can be beautiful again,’ says Saatchi. ‘Artists once pronounced the word ‘beautiful’ with a sneer’, adds Warren, referring to the Nineties YBA conceptualists. ‘There are no penises in this show!’ declares Saatchi.
Photographs by Frederic Aranda
Another Magazine. Autumn/Winter 2006.
BOO RITSON
A pair of bloodshot eyes peer blearily from what appears to be a painted bust, but the unmistakable glint of something living lets us know that this is not a straightforward portrait. If Boo Ritson were to offer to paint you, she means that she will paint literally on you. After applying barrier cream, she slathers the sitter with household paint, following the contours of their face, hair and clothing with simplified cartoon colours, which she describes as ‘painting by numbers, but with the real object as a guide instead of the numbers’. Working with a professional studio photographer, Ritson records the painting before it dries, capturing the all-important wet, shiny vitality that is lost in regular portraiture.
The whole process is fast, pivoting on chance accidents during the ten-minute session as the image is reworked until it is no longer malleable. The results are difficult to categorise: these are neither paintings nor sculptures nor photography; the brushstrokes refer to expressionist painting, but the characters are more Pop. Ritson is obsessed with the stereotypes of Americana, casting her friends, other artists, her gallerist and herself as cowgirls, cops, Mafiosi or crass tourists. This is the world of Duane Hanson, where character is exaggerated to the point of pure fiction. Ritson describes her approach as ‘imagining who these people might be if they weren’t the people I know. The current series are like extras from a bad film, making up the generic landscape of America as we have come to know it. The characters are empty ciphers that stand for freedom and a lifestyle that no longer exists. Perhaps it never did other than in our imagination.’
Text Sally O’Reilly
All images courtesy the artist, Boo Ritson and Andy Crawford.
Selected Web Links (Open in new window)
- Saatchi Online: Hotdogs and Heroes
- Saatchi Online: Boo Ritson
- Saatchi Online: Boo Ritson, Girlfriend
- Jalou Magazine
- The Guardian
- The First Post
- The first Post 2
- The Telegraph
- Art Futures