RIP THESE PICTURES OUT
Los Angeles, April 2023
At 2am in the late 1980s, JACK PIERSON left an East Village nightclub and found vendor stalls lining New York’s Second Avenue. Cast up on blankets were movie star magazines, ashtrays, Art-Deco teacups and 1950s porn. It was not until later he realized that what he’d assumed to be stolen was really the contents of gay men’s apartments, men who had just died from AIDS. He told the Archives of American Art in 2017: “It was like a record of a life, in real stuff and in real time. And that’s what I started to produce in a really big way.”
It was these intimate objects and scenes that made Pierson’s name as a photographer in the early 1990s. Often grouped under the “Boston Five,” including photographers Mark Morrisroe and Nan Goldin, Pierson’s work incorporates everything from paintings to drawings to still-life installations and salvaged word art. Here, he sits down with Tony Wilkes to discuss his process, his upcoming exhibition at New York’s Lisson Gallery and leaving a trace of a good gay life.
You’ve spoken before about going to flea markets on Second Avenue and how the objects you found there came to embody your practice. In what way?
It’s the whole activity of it. Something about going there night after night and slowly waking up to what was at work. I realized that what I was seeing were these little lives laid out on a blanket. You could piece together every once in a while this whole life with snapshots and ashtrays from Capri and a few porno magazines. And you could tell from the ephemera that these were clearly gay lives, somehow. That spoke to me. I was a big fan, and I still am, of pointing out art as it occurred in life. Like being in a nightclub and saying, “Now that’s art. If you just took that and put it in a gallery...” And eventually, I started doing that. So I’d shop at those flea markets and think, “What more do you need to tell a story than this?”
You’ve said it was that same moment, “Now that’s art,” that led to a famous work of yours called Silver Jackie (1991). You would see stages for drag queens or go-go boys in rotten gay bars and you went about recreating one. What is it about certain objects that makes them art and not others?
At that point in my life, I was enthusiastic about things that didn’t last. The cheap, the tawdry, the things you don’t want to preserve. A little stage like that isn’t anything except tinsel and cheap lights. Except when it’s got a magical performance going on. When you’re just left with what’s there, it’s really kind of nothing. But there is still something...I like a backward glance. I like a shot held on something after the action moved on.
What made you realize that a cheap stage like that could be the subject of art?
It seemed to me at that point, in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, that if I wanted to throw my hat in the ring with art I had to be dealing with minimalism. So a lot of these early gestures of mine aped artists like Fred Sandback. Or Carl Andre. What they were willing to add to art history was, “Yes, a pile of stuffon the floor is worth looking at.” I felt that my work was embedding their very hetero stance with a little gay content. And a little life content. Because I felt that minimalism was trying to deny any narrative. It was just, “This is the material and that’s all there is and all we do is arrange it.” And I thought, “Yeah, okay. So you got that across. But I can add something personal to it.”
And you made your name with that personal art.
Much of my youth was spent on beaches, pretty places, and maybe there was someone handsome who you could get naked and take a pretty picture that seems intimate. I was known for these “intimate moments”! People would think that we’d just got out of bed. But unless it was a boyfriend, I’d never have sex with models or anything like that. But I could create that sense of real. I’m a big believer in my skill of creating real as a style.
I want to go back to “gay content.” What I love about the way you talk about your life is that it’s full of references to gay stuff. Like how as a kid you’d ring up Motown to see if Diana Ross was there. Or how you were asked at school what you wanted to be when you grew up and the other boys said policeman or astronaut and you said, “Nancy Sinatra!”
Well, that was gay culture until that culture began to die off. Some people still care. But is the message getting through? It’s like that Antonin Artaud quote about being burnt at the stake and signaling through the flames. And that’s what I’m doing, but the signals I’m sending are pathetic and I could be signaling about much greater things than... the way light hits a perfect ass. But these are the things that make me want to get out of bed in the morning. I’m overtaken by the unimportant things in life. And that’s how I want to send my message.
All we’re trying to do is reach our people. And I’m not saying all my people are old queens but I don’t mind if they are. It’s a very old queen mentality that I have. I saw it as a young person. And on the one hand, you can’t just whine and say, “Care about old things!” But that’s how I am, that’s what I like, and that’s how I got through this life. So I will celebrate those things.
I’m aware that we’ve been so far celebrating your older work. What are you working on now?
I’m working on a show for Lisson Gallery here in New York in September. It’s interesting to talk about these pieces I did thirty years ago because I’m now thinking, “What am I trying to do now?” I’m working through that. The show will be heavily focused on photography. A lot of my work has to do with just being jokey and off-hand and seeing if I can make a simple gesture resound somehow. And part of the reason I want to do this show is that it seems like photography is at such an... end-game scenario.
In what way?
Everybody’s a photographer now. I used to think, “Oh, I have a unique vision. And a story to tell.” Now, everybody has a unique vision and a story to tell. And, in fact, they can tell it quite well. So what can I do? I like to take pictures. And I like to look at pictures after I take them. And then I would like you to look at them. So I’m trying to create an exhibition that will make you want to even though we’ve been sped up to the point where we can look at a photograph very fast and feel like we’ve got it. I’m the same way. So it’s a challenge to see, “Can I make a photo show interesting?”
Can you tell me more about the subject matter?
I’m going to try and tell a story of thirty years, from the beginning of my career to now. And the subject matter always tends to be people. Or a pretty location. And the flesh, somehow. I’m kind of annoyed... Have you heard that thing about how if the Internet is a pie chart, a tiny sliver is everything we know about it - finance, the weather, everything - and the rest is just porn? I guess my point is: I don’t like how nudity has been stolen by pornography. Or sexuality. Maybe I’m deluded. But I’d like to be able to examine the body in terms of something other than sex. What other reason is there besides sex? I’m not sure. I like to be around naked people, but I’m not always thinking about sex. I’m thinking about painting and mood and light and line. And I would like to get people to think about nudity without it being... prurient.
When did you start taking these pictures?
Three to five years ago. I had a studio and I still wanted to make pictures and so I thought, “Can I make intimate, beautiful pictures without a narrative or background?” Just like a plant on a window sill. Can it still convey some sort of intimacy? I wanted to see if I could do that. I know sometimes I can do it. You can see that in... this is a story I haven’t told. Because of Covid and a million other things, I had plenty of time to myself. So I was sorting through boxes that came from my mother’s attic. She died four years ago and she was the person who kept all my clippings. And she had this story ripped out of the paper. I was trying to make pictures with printed pixels and this clipping was of a pretty famous picture of mine. So I thought, “Wow, I could take a picture of this newspaper clipping and make it huge.” And it looked great. So I went around looking for other ones.
Then on Instagram, this guy posted something and tagged me. It was another picture of mine and he was in Germany and it had been printed in some cheap gay magazine there, full page, and there were folds in it. You could see it was worn out. And I thought, “Oh my god this is so good.” So I wrote the guy a DM and said, “If I sent you a real print of that photograph and signed it, would you send me this magazine page?” And he said, “Oh, thanks for the oer but...that magazine page I’ve had for ten years. It goes everywhere with me. So I’d prefer to keep it.” That meant to me... my message works.
Because that’s how I feel. I don’t care about some stupid photograph. I care about a thing I’ve ripped out of some magazine. That whole contrivance of, “Ooh, there are only five and the artist signed only one...” No. Buy a fucking postcard. It’s the same thing. And keep it with you all the time. I’ve got stuff I used to pin up to my wall from when I was eighteen. And I still want it. So part of the message of the show is that photography is just material, and it doesn’t matter if it’s beaten up or if it’s clean. Part of the reason I bothered to get famous or do anything is so that it will be in magazines and someone can rip it out.
You’ve also said before that you want your work to leave a trace of having lived a good life?
Going back to the flea markets, what I realized was, “These gay guys, they had this beautiful life.” All I ever set out to do was to have a life that was beautiful, fun, going places, and to leave a residue of it somehow. And maybe someone else will say, “I’m going to quit my job and follow him down this path of utter creativity.” And who knows, maybe it will work out for them. I just took a chance on having a creative life. And it worked out. The bulk of my message is to just really look at your life. And enjoy it.
Interview by Tony Wilkes
Photography by David Macke