Aaron Rose interview
HUCK talks to Beautiful Losers director, Aaron Rose, about how outsider art become the flavour of the day.
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Back in the nineties, a loose-knit collective of outsiders gave birth to an underground art scene that would go on to take the art establishment by storm. Fusing the West Coast influence of skate and punk with the hip hop and graffiti seeping onto the streets of New York, they helped turn vandalism into 'urban art' and made 'street culture' a bona fide term.
As curator for the Alleged Gallery, NYC, Aaron Rose found himself at the centre of the storm, bringing together artists like Shepard Fairey, Barry McGee, Margaret Killgallen and Chris Johanson before the world woke up to the importance of their work. Beautiful Losers the film tells their personal stories. And as the dude credited as director, Aaron Rose gave HUCK the inside scoop on life as a loser – when you’re at the top of your game.
The artists behind the Beautiful Losers collective are some of the most influential creatives around today – guys like Shepard Fairey, Geoff McFetridge, Thomas Campbell. How did everyone come together in the first place?
It was a very small world at that time. There weren’t as many people making this kind of art as there are now. There were like 25 - 30 people in the world. So you just kind of heard about each other through word of mouth. Someone would come over from London or from LA and be like, ‘I met this guy’ or ‘I met this girl and they’re doing this thing, you should check it out.’ A lot of it was that but a lot of it had to do with opening the gallery space [Alleged] because it was the only venue in New York that was interested in that kind of thing so if there was a showing there, people would gravitate at least to check it out. And when you’re there you’d meet other people, and then friendship happens, and then collaborations, and then a scene!
At what point did you think you should start documenting what was happening? Well we were just filming, not with the idea that it was going to become a movie, it was more about documentation because it was very obvious that it was no longer just about a couple of kids on the Lower East Side anymore. It had become something else. So it was just like, ‘Document it. Who knows what it’s going to be.’ But once the exhibition hit museums and there was a catalogue... a book that went out that had very mainstream distribution in like every major bookstore... people had been talking about making a movie but that, if there was going to be a film, it should probably come from the inside; tell that story from the inside as opposed to letting someone who knows nothing about it come in and make an unpure story. The artists were all very involved in the making of the film. I have a director credit because somebody had to have a director credit, but it was a very collaborative process.
How did you know there would be an audience for Alleged, when you started it up back in the nineties?
I didn’t. There wasn’t an audience. I never really considered it a business. I didn’t even know that you could sell art. I had a lot of friends that drew, and I drew too so I was like, ‘Let’s just hang our stuff up and get a load of beer.’ There was never a price-list or anything so when somebody offered to buy something it was like, ‘Really? OK twenty bucks.’ I lived there too, so it was my house and just a place where we could show our work to each other more than anything. Over the years it started to grow. Skateboarding got more popular and we were all skateboarders so some magazine would come over and be like, ‘There’s a skateboarding gallery in New York, can we talk to you?’
Did you guys feel pigeonholed as ‘skate artists'?
All the time. It was a drag. It took a long time for it to fade out and I still think it’s pigeonholed. The idea of ‘street art.’ What’s happening with street art now is very different to what we were doing and I don’t think we fit, necessarily, into that new version of what street art is, it’s almost like it’s got a different personality. It was ‘skate art’ only because we grew up skateboarding. The art wasn’t about skateboarding. It wasn’t like drawing skateboards and drawing ramps or painting the curbs. The art was totally unrelated to that action, it just happened to be there. It was a generation that skateboarded you know, and there happened to be millions of us and some of them happened to be artists.
How do you see ‘street art’ now? Is it becoming elitist?
Oh yeah. I mean, I don’t want to be a hater like, ‘I hate all this new art’ because I’m always happy if someone’s choosing to make something and put it out into the world on their own volition. That’s a positive thing, always. But I think what happened was people saw career opportunities there so a lot of the motivations are not necessarily just about communication or just about reclaiming public space, all the exciting things about street art. It’s now, like, a career move for artists and it’s become like an advertisement for a larger goal which is more like, ‘I’m gonna do this and I’m gonna become famous and I’m gonna become rich.’ Like, ‘This is gonna be my thing. I’m that guy who does that weird mouse,’ or whatever. And that’s a little bit depressing to me sometimes because it’s not really what it’s about, you know? Street art was always about making things on the street that were a reaction against media overkill, all the billboards and all the crap we have to look at everyday. And now it seems like a lot of it is just the same thing as that.
At what point did people start picking up on what you guys were doing – more to the point, when did The Man [read: mega brands] first come knocking at the door to collaborate?
I’ve never ever thought about who was first. It seemed like it just happened. I’m trying to think now why I can’t remember and it’s because the skateboard companies were our first supporters. So collaborations with corporations were happening from the very beginning but it was always like a skateboard company or a small hip hop clothing company or something like that. So it wasn’t like all of a sudden there was a call like, ‘Do a collaboration.’ It was just sort of a part of it. It was like, ‘Oh, I really like your paintings will you do a board?’ It happened over 2 or 3 years but there was definitely a moment where the term ‘street culture’ was invented. There were like skateboarders and there were punk-rockers and there were graffiti artists who were into hip hop and there wasn’t a lot of crossover. They were like separate scenes, you know? People like the Beastie Boys had a big effect on it because they played both sides of the fence and that sort of made it okay for hip hop and punk to mix. And then graffiti and skate bulked together into what they now call ‘street culture’. It didn’t exist before that. So right when that happened that’s when the marketing people were like, ‘Millions of kids!’
Now that the scene is more established, do you think the artists have more of a say when they collaborate on a commercial project?
Certainly. From my experience when I’m approached by corporations to do a project, it’s like, ‘You just do your thing and let’s figure out a cool way of attaching our brand to it.’ I know recently there was a project with Nike where they decided to just use text and not the logo. So somebody up there thought about that.
How’s things going with ANP Quarterly [the ’zine Aaron co-edits with Ed Templeton for RVCA]?
Yeah it’s our little ’zine we’ve been working on for 2 or 3 years now and it’s become a bit of a job in its own way. We never know if the next one’s going to come out or not. It’s like, ‘OK so we’re working on it but is it actually going to come out?’ It’s fun to do. I wish we could make more but we don’t have the ads so it’s free and there’s a lot of people who want it and we can only afford to make a certain amount so now they’re like gone in a week which sucks because that was never the idea. We didn’t want it to become like a collectors thing you know. It was against all that stuff and now it’s become that unfortunately.
And how’s the Make Something Initiative [a series of art workshops] coming along?
Good. I’ve been thinking about doing a school for sometime. Over the years I’ve met so many artists who were stuck in art schools that didn’t understand the kind of work that they were making. So this is my way of dipping my toe in the waters of education. We did 30 classes last summer and taught like over 1000 kids. I hope we’ll be able to bring it to London at some point. It’s fun. Kids are so creative, they’re so much better, their ideas are so good. It’s very rewarding. It’s difficult and trying at times but it’s such a pay-off when the class shows up and they start getting into it and you’re in a room of 30 kids and they’re all drawing like crazy and they’re quiet because they’re drawing and it’s like, [whispering] this is awesome.
Is it nice to be in London and see how people are receiving the film? It seems like the UK looks over to the States to see what’s happening, but is there an interest in what’s happening over here, art-wise?
Yeah I said at the premiere, that actually the UK accepted the art - Beautiful Losers, and what the movie’s about - long before America, like five years before. We were coming over here doing shows way before America even cared. The grass is always greener. It’s like, ‘What’s over there?’ So it’s really nice to come over here and stand in front of an audience and say the London scene helped so much furthering these artists careers. It felt good to show the movie here.
Beautiful Losers launches at the ICA, London SW1 on August 6. The DVD is released on August 24.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/arta.....raffiti