A VERY SENTIMENTAL ARTIST
New York, April 2023
ANTHONY CUDAHY has an affinity for historical artefacts. Whether it’s archival images documenting queer experiences in the past century or forgotten works of art, the American figurative painter finds a rich source of inspiration in the untold stories behind the objects and gives them a new life through his intimate and tender lens. This summer, the artist celebrates his first museum exhibition titled Conversation, held at the Museum of Fine Arts of Dole in the French Jura region. In the show, Cudahy selected over 40 works from the institution’s vast archive – all of them unattributed – and assembled them thematically with a mix of his previously exhibited pieces and brand-new paintings created for the occasion. Ahead of its opening, we spoke to Cudahy about the process of conceptualizing the show, the shift in the way he approaches painting today and the role of intimacy in his work.
It seems that you’re an artist that’s very rooted in New York. How does living in the city inform your practice? Can you imagine being based and creating anywhere else?
I think it’s difficult to think of a place like New York without considering the world of artists and painters that I’m friends with, who really impact my work and the conversations that I’m having. That’s what makes it a very special place and that has been especially the case in the past five, six years. It’s funny – whenever I travel, I always think to myself, “Could I live in this city?” But I actually can’t picture myself moving somewhere else. New York is the only place that I’ve lived in as an adult, and for me, there’s a huge sense of community and friendship here.
You’re still very much in love with the city.
Yeah. Both with the city and the level of access you can have here. I think I’m too much of a night dweller to move somewhere where places close up in the early evening. [Laughs.]
During my research on your practice, I read that you once said that while you were in college, your work was way more out than you were and gave you the freedom to explore your queerness. Growing up as a queer person, in what ways has art – both when it comes to consuming and making it – become a tool in embracing your identity?
I think it comes down to the fact that I would never self-censor myself in my work. Whatever I wanted to draw or paint was more important than my personal discomfort. There’s definitely a period of time when even though you’re out to your friends and family, you’re not in that confident place where you’re also out at your day job or can easily talk about it with a stranger. And for me, art was an area where that mindset never entered my mind because it was always more important that the work I made said completely what I needed it to say.
Throughout your career, archival queer photography became a continuous starting point for you as an artist. Is that still the case or has the way you approach conceptualizing a painting changed?
In the past three years or so, there has been a pretty significant shift in how I conceive a piece. Formally, a lot of my work from four or five years ago was either monotone or duotone. Also, I really loved the feeling of things falling apart – the paint would bleed and bloom on the surface of the paintings. And at that time, I was working with a lot of explicitly queer archives because, in a sentimental way, I was very interested in vernacular queer photography from years past, which stemmed from this desire to connect with something about myself and my community. I would usually find a small moment in the photographs – a gesture or an expression – and that would become a painting. At the time, it made intuitive sense to me that these snapshots could translate into ephemeral-looking, vague paintings that didn’t have that much detail.
But then, over the years, I started to make paintings that were more complex color-wise, and that started to influence how much detail I was putting into the figures. So there came this point where it became strange that it felt like I was taking people and putting them into either symbolic narratives or more complex and layered scenes that played with the notions of allegorical painting. And eventually, I had a sort of crisis about using other people’s imagery like that, especially since they came from very personal papers and files that the archives hold. That led me to this shift of posing people in my life. The person that I probably paint the most is my husband Ian - sometimes they’re more conventional domestic portraits, and then sometimes he’s like an actor in a scene. I also include a lot of friends, thinking about their energies or essence and who would fit best for a specific role in the painting. Also, sometimes a painting can still come from a spark – I see a gesture or a pose and that gives me an idea for a narrative. I just try to be more careful with source imagery now.
In your work, you’re often depicting moments of intimacy and tenderness - what attracts you to these narratives?
I believe that intimacy is about opening yourself up to pleasure or pain. I think it has a lot to do with precariousness and leaving yourself vulnerable – whether that’s toward another person or just general uncertainty. And to me, that’s one of the very core things that recur in all of my paintings.
Does that reflect the everyday reality that you find yourself in?
For me, even outside of what’s happened globally over the past few years, uncertainty has always been present and I feel like one of the biggest projects in my life is trying to figure out how to live with it. When I think about every difficult thing that has happened – whether it’s a broader social issue or a more personal one – I feel that at its core is the inability to be okay with not knowing. And the thing that underlines it all is the fear of uncertainty.
This April, your exhibition Conversation opened at the Museum of Fine Arts of Dole in France. What can you tell me about this show?
I was asked by the museum to have an exhibition in which I would curate objects from their collection and then pair my work with them in a way that would respond to the pieces. Last year, I got to visit Dole for the first time and go through the museum’s storage. I saw all of the works up close and chose around 40 pieces that I felt connected to the themes I explore in my paintings. Then, we realized that most of them were unattributed and we felt that this was an interesting angle to take the show into. It really runs the gamut of things like tiny medieval sculptures, to strange smaller allegorical landscape paintings or witchcraft works in the tradition of the late Spanish Renaissance.
How did the fact that the details behind most pieces were unknown affect your process of working on the show?
It allowed for looking at the essence and power that an art object has by itself. Also, it became a place of imagining and being able to project onto them. I think I’m a very sentimental artist in general and the process felt tied to that same impulse of trying to extend images that were in the archives I was working in [at the beginning of my career as an artist]. A lot of these pieces are not what would normally ever be shown and I was worried that the museum wouldn’t agree to display some of them because they were in the process of being restored. But they were actually really excited about showcasing that because it brings visibility to the endless museum work that normally isn’t seen. So I was very happy to be able to facilitate that and give these works a new life in a way. The whole process has been reciprocal – the works that I discovered changed my paintings and my paintings changed them.
Interview by Martin Onufrowicz
Photography by Hadar Pitchon