sico carlier & ben laloua
persistence of memory
Mystery
is the fuel of any legend, be it dead or alive.
In
Amanda Lear's case the most persistent mystery is the
rumor
that she once might have been a man. Was she?
or
Wasn't she?
As far as I'm concerned she might once have been a frog. I can tell
you, however, that not only is
Amanda
very much alive, she is denitely a woman.
We
all know, as well as she, that the uncertainty adds
to
the mystery and makes it all so
much
more... entertaining.
According
to Amanda her mother has been English, French, Vietnamese, and/or Chinese.
Her father has been at times English, Russian, French, or Indonesian.
Amanda's
place of birth ranges from
Hanoi
to Hong Kong. Her date of birth ranges from
1936
to 1946, which would mean she is, or could be anywhere between 55-65
years old. It is extremely difcult to fathom this when meeting her in
person, considering her flawless and youthful complexion.
One
of the things we do know for sure is that Lear came to notice in London
shortly after she moved there from Paris in the mid-sixties. Lear's
first roomate, Anita Pallenberg, then girlfriend of Rolling Stone, Brian
Jones, Amanda would later date him as well introduced
her to the London scene. She instantly became an icon of the nightclub
circuit, and her circle of friends included Brian Eno, Keith Moon, and
Marianne
Faithfull, to name a few.
According
to one version of the story Amanda met Salvador Dali while having dinner
in a Parisian restaurant with Brian Jones, and the Guinness heiress
Tara Browne. Dali told her she had
a
beautiful skull.
Another version is that two years earlier Dali paid for her sex-change
operation, which was
carried
out in Casablanca. Whatever the story, she met
Dali
in the early sixties, and for more than 15 years Lear
was
his muse and companion.
Her
androgynous appeal continued well into the seventies, when she was asked
by Bryan Ferry to pose for the cover
of
Roxy Music's 1975 album For Your Pleasure. David
Bowie saw this famous image of la Lear and they became lovers.
Persistence
of Memory
It
was Bowie who encouraged her to pursue a career as a singer. Their relationship
ended because Bowie was in love with a picture. Fittingly, Lear titled
her first album I Am A Photograph.
Dali
told Lear she was a lousy singer and that if she
wanted to sell records, she would have to find something
other than the music to attract people to buy her records. Dalis
statement that she was unlike any other women, who were simply
made to produce embryos, along with her guttural baritoned voice,
fuelled the already existing rumors about her sex.
Amanda
Lear, the model, turned into Amanda Lear Disco Diva. She became a notable
success with her brand of deep-voice disco pop. Andy Warhol put her
on Interview magazine and became one of
her friends. Meanwhile her assessment of her appeal was as cynical as
it was clever. With her atypical
self-invention
Lear became the prototype of the Postmodern celebrity age, erasing and
reinventing herself as she went along.
In
the eighties, Lear turned TV chat show hostess and
eventually
movie star. After acting with Gerard Depardieu last year, she just finished
shooting a film produced by
Pedro
Almodovar, and has a new film scheduled.
She continues to host her prime-time televison show in Italy and after the release of a planned single this summer, will be returning to the recording studio in the fall to record a new album.
Sico
meets
Andrew
an interview with Andrew Logan
I
meet Andrew in his Glasshouse in the Sky near London Bridge, gunshots
across the Thames salute Her Majesty the
Queen
on her birthday.
Andrew
has been described to me as a star and as a widely respected precursor
of, for instance, Boy George and Leigh Bowery.
He
rose to fame by doing enormous fibre-glass
flowers
for Biba's Sculpture Garden in 1974, but discovered the noxious disadvantages
of sculpting in that material and chose
to
work in mirror glass from there. Among 1000 other
things—he
designed jewelry for Divine and last year exhibited his
Universe of Smiles in the Basic Needs pavilion at Hannovers Expo 2000. My interest in Andrew arose from both of us being included in 'Not A. Lear' a group show around Amanda Lear, which travels to New York and Boston this fall.
Sico
I became aware of your existence because of a portrait you did of Amanda
Lear, can you tell me something about it?
Andrew
Why the portrait?, well it might have had to do with Ulla, you know
Ulla? She is a very old friend of Amanda's, she's Swedish, and she lives
in Chelsea, she was the one who suggested how nice it would be to portray
Amanda, and as I knew Amanda and thought she always looked so fabulous,
it seemed a good one to do. Ulla, she is fantastic... Ulla knew Amanda
long before I did, very early on in Berlin, so
if you want any information on Amanda, Ulla's number is
76----00.
Sico
What is very early on in Berlin about then?
Andrew
Well before anyone knew her, before Dali and all, it's part of the Amanda
mystery I suppose, I do not really care...
Sico
For me, as a boy, seeing Amanda on television was all about mystery
too, everyone seemed to know about her and still no one could figure
her out.
Andrew
Yes laughs.
Sico
So what was portraying her like?
Andrew
It is a flat portrait which was done from a photograph, with
3D
portraits. I insist on working from life but not with the flat ones,
there I use photos. Ulla has taken many photographs of Amanda over the
years, so she supplied me with this particular one, it is of the disco
period.
Sico
She was one of the major disco queens?
Andrew
Absolutely, disco queens! Yes and it is Ken Lane's jewelry she is wearing
in it, I do not know if you know Ken Lane?
Sico
No I don't.
Andrew
He did lots of that kind of black diamond stuff, still does it, it's
still going around. Jackie Onassis had it, everyone had to have it in
that period.
Sico
So Amanda had it too.
Andrew
Oh yes, she was draped in it! So I thought this made a very good image.
You see that particularily with those arms up it is kinda... well difficult
on the face... working in glass is very difficult because it is such
an opposite of flesh.
Sico
I love the way you do hair in glass, do you always work in glass?
Andrew
Yes, I am obsessed by it, and mirrors, it is such a dangerous brittle
material and of course, flesh is just soft and yet there is something
very human about the glass & mirror portraits as well.
Sico
Amanda herself suggested to Jimi Dams, the curator, of the Not
A. Lear show, it should be included.
Have
you spoken to Amanda since the death of her man and his friend in the
horrible fire at their place in the south of France last winter?
Andrew
No, not since the tragedy, but I hear through Ulla. Ulla speaks to her
all the time—they are really good friends and they speak on the
phone a lot. When Amanda comes to London, she tends to come to Chelsea.
She's from the old school who think over here where we live is some
god-for-saken area—it’s really peculiar with that generation,
they just think it's Chelsea or the West-End and that’s it, if
you go elsewhere you are into dangerous territory. However, the last
time Amanda visited the Glasshouse she was doing a photographic session
in London, a french magazine was doing an a day in the
life of Amanda feature, and they ended up here for some reason.
I do not consider myself a close/close friend of Amanda; she lives in
France, I live here, she comes to London once in a while to see Ulla,
she's always very quick and leaves again. But I've always liked her,
she's a very good energy. I like her because she has dedicated her life
to what she believes in really, and she is funny as well. We were very
shocked to learn about the tragic accident.
Sico
It is strange you mention Amanda hardly leaving West London when
she visits. Ray Oxly quotes you describing the West End around 1980
as vraiment affreux, les gens tellement insensibles,
pas assez tolérants but London still being your city; la plus
civilisée de toutes les villes que je connais.
Andrew
I do travel a lot nowadays, but yes, I have been based in London for
31 years now, a long time in one city, and things here have happened
once and then twice, but when you see them the third time around, you
think, oh. Although being one of the great cities in the world, London
is still 20 years on from New York really. Strangely enough, people
here now have developed the idea for themselves that London is the capital
of the world again, which, of course, is ridiculous and boring. I liked
London when it was obscure and no one wanted to come, I am kind of perverse
like that.
Sico
The same feeling seems to prevail in New York nowadays, my friends there
complain all obscurity has faded and almost everything is clean by now.
Andrew
Yes I know... I like to go to Russia alot nowadays. Russia very much
has the feeling of perhaps London in the seventies, although there it
is changing quickly too.
Sico
Are you considering leaving London?
Andrew
No, but the winters are getting worse. I can cope less and less with
the winters here, starting sort of in October and lasting through late
April; I really would like to set up somewhere hot, perhaps in India,
and be able to work there during the winter. The winter is surely as
dark here as in Rotterdam, I bet, very wearing. But I
love rain when in a big car and adore wind in my face, dress properly.
England is best for the complexion and mind.
Sico
Your beautiful glass studio structure here is certainly getting all
the light there is, it has sort of a Memphis feel to it.
Andrew
Yes, if there is any light we get it here. That was the idea, it was
built after my friend Michael’s design, we feel very priviliged
to be here.
Sico
Can I come back to things happening a second or third time that you
as described in the midst of the advent of punk.
Derek
The Andrew Logan All Stars have dominated the social
life of London since the beginning of the decade—since David Hockney
went into tax exile with the other working class heroes of the sixties.
They missed the sixties but inherited the daydream which they tried
to make reality for a second generation. But they were the flash of
the super Novae before darkness. Now the seventies have caught up, and
been pulled from under their feet by a gang of King's Road fashion anarchists
who call themselves punks. They have stolen the All Stars' hair-styles,
taken them to an extreme, and turned them on their heads. Unlike the
glitterati, these boys and girls have the music business behind them
to give them a real high—with its coke rolled banknotes of international
finance. They've turned our gentle ineffectual friends into Demons of
Nostalgia.
Andrew
Derek Jarman was a great fan and a very good friend and I think he always
felt I was being underestimated, but that happens in life doesn't it?
It is just time & place & everything. You live your life and
do the best you can and try to have a good time on the way.
Sico
Another striking thing for me in terms of revival once, twice or a third
time around lately has been the Egyptian theme.
Andrew
Oh yes, the Egyptian theme...
Sico
In Paris, André Walker was sending these absurdly huge shoulderbags
over the catwalk for his R.A.S.T.A. summer 2001 collection, decorated
in Egyptian style leather. In New York Miguel Adrovers' Fall 2001 collection
had an Egyptian theme to it as well. Top hit Walk Like
an Egyptian I suppose was its weird eighties peak. I understand
you did a scaled down mirrored replica of the pyramid of Cheops in that
period?
Andrew
In '78 I did the Egypt Revisited a sand and light
spectacular super-tent on Clapham Common, the pyramid of Cheops was
part of it.
Sico
And then, like Amanda now, you were victims of a fire, and all the Egyptian
material
burned?
Andrew
There was a fire, yes, but that was a year later at Butler's Wharf'
but nothing burned, I escaped, though I lost my studio.
Michael
It was miraculous: The whole block was on fire, we had this steel fire-door
closed, smoke came in and everything went jet black but nothing was
destroyed, it was all still there.
Sico
Luckily, your work is in glass, easily cleaned.
Michael
Everything was restored—but the clothes and costumes, those dry
cleaners went mad.
Andrew
In a strange way, again it was a wonderful occasion. When we actually
could go back into the condemned building to get everything out. The
telephone was still working so my friend, Luciano, she started phoning
everybody and they all thought they were coming to a party—there
were all these people arriving Dressed to the Nines
with gloves and fabulous outfits and gorgeous hats. They all stayed
and helped, we were 6 floors up, this snake of party-people going down
and then 3 floors up again into a storage nearby. Everything we
owned went from hand to hand it was fascinating and funny.
Sico
You make no distinction between art and life, party and life?
Andrew
No, not really, no no!
Michael
The fire was a big shock though, and it took us a long time to settle
down again. It sort of marked the end of an era for us. Others were
less lucky and lost everything. Derek moved out of the building just
before, but there were Peter Logan and Diana; she was one of London’s
top hatmakers at the time, like the Philip Treacy and Steven Joneses
of today, she never looked at a hat since, isn’t that sad! They
saved their rabbit, nothing else.
Andrew
Our love birds survived all the smoke too.
You
like avocado?
Sico
So who were these Andrew Logan All Stars?
Andrew
Oh that's Derek's invention, he was so good at quotes—another
one recently came up where he said I was famous among
the famous (It is only words, but mind you having seen words—people
writing history of times I remember.) I haven't done a book yet myself,
the one I want to do will be mostly pictures though—I have been
working on a book for 20 years now. Anyhow, These All Stars I suppose
were Luciano Delarosa, Dougie Fields, Kevin Whitney, Zandra Rhodes,
there was definitely a group of us.
Sico
Zandra Rhodes lives on the West Coast now doesn’t she?
Andrew
Yes, but like me, she has her museum here.
Sico
In terms of media attention, designers Zandra Rhodes and Vivienne Westwood
stand out nowadays from that London punk era, why do you think that
is?
Andrew
Well fashion I suppose! And Zandra has had an incredible sense of publicity
always, Saatchi & Saatchi have nothing on Zandra, she’s fantastic,
amazing. Vivienne Westwood I suppose is kind of... well I sort of admired
her work, but she isn’t a nice person; she just isn’t nice
to people, and in my life I like nice people, I don’t care who
or what they are or how rich or famous, if they are not nice people,
I’m sorry, I am just not interested. All my friends, like Derek
was a lovely person, all the people I have known, Amanda too is a very
nice person, I’m sure that in her world, the entertainment world,
it is difficult, it is quite tricky all that. What is interesting is
that Vivienne and Zandra now have become very similar in what they do.
At one stage they were very very different, Zandra starting out with
like high-couture and Vivienne being about punk and street fashion.
Zandra was pure fashion from the start, but now they've met in what
they do, with Vivienne even becoming for a while sort of a guru of fashion
designers. I had a lot of fashion designer friends in the seventies
but I must admit I got very bored with them.
Derek
How would you like to dress yourself?
Andrew
Very cheap. I love to feel that one can dress unconciously
with a bargain. Definitely, I prefer glitter and colour, the sombre
doesn't suit me.
Derek
What would you like to wear in heaven?
Andrew
Nothing. Just a solid gold harp.
Sico
Some 2 years ago I did an internet-work in which I used a text by Timothy
Swallow from Gold a magazine from the late seventies.
A
party is described where Paul Cook, Poly Styrene, Malcolm MacLaren,
Vivienne Westwood—the lot, are all screaming and cursing at each
other.
Andrew
Oh yes, and we threw the party, of course!
Timothy
Swallow On the dance-floor Punkdom's Poly Styrene, out
on the tiles again, shimmied her weight problem from foot to foot almost
in time to the music which was organised by Peter Logan, Andrew's talented
and kilted artist brother. Trade was represented by Teddy from ACE Keith
from SMILE and Christian from PLAZA and the volatile New York crowd
was headed by Big-Apple Stephen Holt, I love his voice, Styles Caldwell,
so good in KLUTE and Glen O’Brien the ex-editor of Andy Warhol's
Interview who arrived with a woman who was as ill-mannered as she was
unattractive and whose pimply fourteen year-old son was causing havoc
in the kitchen. Doesn’t she know that children should be seen
and not turd?
Sico
So the first Sex Pistols'gig ever was at one of your parties?
Andrew
We threw their first party and their last party! In that last party
Vivienne punched Johnny Rotten in the face. Things were getting a bit
out of hand, and we just had this brand new colour TV, so Michael said
something like mind our television set. So it
was like you bourgeois whatever and the fire extinguishers were set
off. But that was towards the end of the Pistols. The beginning was
when they arrived and played on stage in that same place, somewhat earlier
but not much earlier really 'cause you know punk didn't last long, only
a few years, not like the Beatles Later there
were all the New Wave people and Romantics. We got to know all of them
too, and they were such nice people, it was all very exciting. Aren't
we longing for a new movement right now? Commercialism has completely
caught up with new movements nowadays, anything interesting that happens
now is immediatly taken up by the likes of Saatchi, swallowed up. I
still believe one needs freedom to lay a base first, and then maybe
later your art can become a business.
Sico
So we need more time...
Derek
What time do you wake up?
Andrew
Alone, 8:30 to 12 o'clock. With a guest, when the sun rises.
As
an artist you need a lifetime. When I see all the YBA's now...
Sico
Europeans seem to have become rather fed up with the YBA's. Critics
have even started mentioning it being interesting when no
YBA's are involved in group shows. How have you experienced their
advent through the nineties, how did they affect London's atmosphere?
Andrew
It's partly just the grabbing of publicity—what they seem about,
can you imagine living with it here? In the end it's really what is
in the media, how much of Tracy Emin media coverage can one take? And
there certainly is an art-maffia here; Serrota, Goldsmith, the Royal,
Saatchi, they work perfectly alongside each other. Like in India the
most beautiful things have been made out of cow dung for centuries;
this whole thing with New York's mayor was a perfect set up. Saatchi
is brillant at it, if you can create a conservative government then
art is an easy one. We were in Hoxton Square the other day to see Storm
at the Circus theatre there and also looked at this new White Cube building
on the way, White Cube 2 it is called. We were
so amused to find it looking exactly like an American bank building
from the midwest, amazing! How are we doing, lunch? I suppose we just
have to live through this YBA marketing period, a true spirit is also
still here for sure! Our young friend Pierce for instance runs a lovely
club called Show-Off, people just go there to
show-off and eventually he gives them awards,
it’s lovely, innocent isn't really the word though, people flock
there because it's a little haven hiding inbetween all the big-business
parties.
Michael
Our own parties are always motivated by fun, never money.
Andrew
Coming back to Amanda, do you know she was one of the judges at our
1975 Alternative Miss World, the one that Derek
won as Miss Crêpe-Suzette?
Derek
This time I was going to win. On stage I act: I fall
in the swimming pool with a bottle of gin as a drunk from the Titanic.
As Joan of Arc, I conceal Josephine Baker's J'ai deux amours on a small
tape recorder beneath my armour. Seizing the mike, I secretly switch
it on. No one knows where the sound is coming from as I mime to it.
I win.
Sico
Are you still organising Alternative Miss Worlds?
Andrew
Oh yes! We are planning one next year, I hope things will work out.
Michael
We have some lovely young people willing to help us.
Andrew
The last one was in 1998, it was on the Void the
fifth element and the winner was Miss Panny Bronua from Moscow, who
I believe is 78. Somehow, we had a lot of Russian entrants that year.
She was brilliant and she won the audience, that’s what it is
all about.
Michael
What happens is that there is a feeling, there are the judges, and the
audience, but if the contestant manages to engage with the audience
and win them, the judges feel this, you always just know at some point
who is the winner.
Andrew
I call it The surreal art event for all-round entertainment.
The costumes where getting bigger and more elaborate again lately, they
were becoming whole little acts. Then she came on with Pat Luro, a performance
artist from Moscow, who brought her over, and her winning look was an
off the shoulder pink satin little dress, I mean so simple—but
so glamorous and extraordinary at the same time. Her mother used to
be a ballet dancer and she also moves in a sort of ballet kind of way,
a divine little old lady who has been through the revolutions, all of
them, and took the audience by storm, took everybody's hearts, little
innocence came in and changed everything. That is what is great about
the Alternative Miss World's, that all over the years this happens,
there is always an unexpected twist.
Michael
Somehow it never is the most flashy contestant who wins. Nothing
about sex or age or beauty is in there, it's performance and how you
carry it off, so you can just have one person, or you can have a whole
team of 15 trying to do it, but when it is 15, it often gets lost somehow.
Andrew just creates the stage and leaves it open.
Andrew
There's no rehearsals.
Michael
It's all spontanious and not rehearsed to death, so of course,
people get more and more drunk during the evening and start falling
over—just adding to the spectacle, a lot of flesh laughs
there is definitely a lot of flesh in it, but our crowd is unshockable.
Andrew
And we just do it by word of mouth. It’s been through so many
transitions since it started in '72, the height of it, I suppose, being
'78 and '81. It had huge amounts of publicity then.
Derek
Andrew's Miss World competitions had grown like Topsy to gargantuan
proportions, in 1981 he had the great hall at Olympia and filled it
with a fairground for one thousand people. The highlight a Miss who
appears with a whole troop of guardsmen, real ones not transvestites,
in evening wear and swim wear. Her act climaxing with a huge choir ranged
around the balconies which sing her to her coronation. There were fire
eaters, and stilt-walkers, a ferris wheel, and a score of side events.
There was also a life size tyrannosaurus rex, twenty feet high and hideously
lifelike, which waddled in led by Beardsly androgynes.
Andrew
Now it is sort of an institution, people know, but media response is
rather lacking. It is notorious.
Michael
And people just see it as drag which, of course, it isn’t.
Andrew
A German television journalist who was here the other day said it is
the only event he knows that has resisted corporate image.
Derek
Why do your parties swing?
Andrew
Preparation, thinking about them for a few weeks, decor
has to be exotique and don't forget the people. Concentration and joie
de vivre, the right guests, surprises. The recipe for a swinging soiree
!
Sico
My friend Yuko here in London seemed to know all about you too, as party
boy par excelence...
Andrew
Oh! A party boy, that's me, yes.
Michael
Like Ulla, upset being called a party girl! Imagine a party with Ulla
not being at it, Ulla has such charisma.
Andrew
You see, there is Ulla again.
Michael
Nothing wrong in being a party girl at the age of 60! She’s wonderful,
a spark of joy and light.
Sico
What do you think of the posthumous Leigh Bowery attention right now?
Andrew
We follow it a little—there was an exhibition here, and that book
is very good, a lovely book. Leigh was a genious
you know, but he was in a world of constant transition.
Sico
This spring I saw how they showed his costumes in Au
delà du Spectacle a show from the Walker Art Center which
had traveled to Paris. They completely missed the point, showed his
costumes like artifacts, dead birds, it was quite sad...
Andrew
The way to show his work now, of course, has to be in film, and
he did quite a lot of film.
Michael
He was quite a special spirit.
Andrew
Leigh was definitely special—we first met him at Michael
Colendus's didn't we? He was in his Blue period
at the time, with the Alternative Miss World's, he seems one of those
people where it changed their life.
Sico
He contested?
Andrew
Oh yes, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing when he first came.
He once contested as Miss Bucket running around naked with nothing but
a bucket.
Michael
He didn't win of course!
Andrew
Oh no laughs but it has given him a springboard
to carry on the rest of his life and work, I think it gave confidence.
Sico
Charles Atlas is doing these films on clubs, one on the Jackie 60 and
another one on Leigh’s Taboo F=for Freak recently
throwing this reunion party here in Soho for footage.
Andrew
Yes, Charles from New York, I think he asked me for that, I know he
phoned me about something—probably about this, but I wasn't here,
unfortunately.
Sico
His project seems to make more sense than putting costumes in a curated
museum show.
Andrew
Definitely... Leigh's legacy—as far as visual arts—in that
sense, I suppose, is his modeling for Lucian Freud. I think with him
knowing about his AIDS... from all that elaborate bodychanging he used
to do, the transformations, just to lay himself bare to the canvas and
to the world...
Andrew
What are you up to tonight?
Sico
A club called Duckie.
Michael
Who runs that one?
Sico
Must admit I don't know... my friend Joshua Sofaer is fond of the place,
as he performs there now, and then and he is keen on seeing Tim Etchel
perform tonight. Joshua once did this series of performances there,
hiring several beauticians every Saturday night. He was on stage getting
waxed, facials, nails, the lot, while the club was in full force. This
week at Eve he is taking Polaroids of the genitals of the guests and
making them into personalised armbands—so that clubbers can visually
check out each others soft/hard spots on biceps-height...
Andrew
Sounds perfect!
quotes:
Derek Jarman’s Dancing Ledge, London 1984 Ray Oxly in Magazine Trimestriel, Paris
1979
Timothy Swallow’s Gold, London 1977 Andy Warhol’s Interview, New York 1974
Jimi
meets
Amanda
an interview with Amanda Lear
Jimi
When exactly did you decide to be an artist?
Amanda
Right from school. I was always playing with pencil and colours . .
. so when I settled in Paris, I went to the Academie des Beaux Arts.
Jimi
How did you end up being a model in
those
days?
Amanda
Because I was kind of pretty, people called me and asked if I wanted
to be a model, so that started it. The modeling also paid my room.
Jimi
It didn’t prevent you from doing your art?
Amanda
No, even when I moved to London I went to St. Martins School of Art
and I followed some classes there, but not really full time. Anyway,
I realized that what I really would love the most, would be to express
myself on canvas, and at this time I met Salvador Dali.
I
told him I wanted to be an artist and he put me off. He was the first
person to say No, it's not a woman's job, it's
woman
painter which I disagree with completely, of course. He kept telling
me my art was a woman's art, and that woman's art has got nothing to
do with real art, it's wishy washy, and it's children's portraits, pastels,
etc... only men have this capacity to express themselves through their
balls. So that was a bit off-putting, and I thought, perhaps, he was
right, because I mean Dali being a genius and
he knew so much about art. Who was I to discuss his statement, after
all he knew better than me. So for a few years
I
started thinking that perhaps it was not right to carry on painting,
at least the way I was painting. Eventually, I went back to Dali and
I
said, listen I really love painting, I really want to express myself
on canvas, please will you teach me. And so this time, I started painting
a little bit more seriously with his colours, with his canvas in his
studio and slowly my painting came along. Unfortunately, it was then
Surrealistic painting à la Dali, and that was wrong obviously.
After
a
few years I realized that I was wasting my time following Dali's teaching.
Dali was teaching what he did, it was Surrealistic art, following one's
dreams and metaphysical stuff, and I realized this
is
wrong... I've got a good eye for colour and I should perhaps stick
to
what I see, and not what I've got in my imagination, you know.
Jimi
So your interest always went basically to painting, not
sculpture or any other discipline?
Amanda
No it was always painting and always traditional painting—not
acrylic, oil painting, you know, with firm sketches on the canvas. It
was very traditional, my approach to painting. I played a little bit
with sculpture as well, playing with Plasticine and clay, and stuff
like that. I made some plates, I did some ceramics, but painting was
my first love.
Jimi
Your move to Provence, obviously, created some change
in your
work.
Amanda
When I moved to Provence, I realized that my favorite painters, right
from school, had always been the Fauves with their
bright colours, and I realized all those painters actually lived
in
the very place where I live now, which is in Provence, and obviously,
they saw what I am now seeing with my own eyes. It is
the
same landscape and I realized that’s why I was so attracted to
this place, because those were my favorite painters, bright colours,
bright colours, bright colours and nothing to do with Dali. My paintings
then started changing radically. I started painting landscapes, but
again through different eyes, changing the colours of the skies, of
the trees and so on.
Jimi
When a painting is finished, in your mind, what is it
you wish people to see?
Amanda
Well the big problem is, that the painting is never finished, it's permanently
questioning. When I think it is finished in my mind I say okay. I want
people to understand the violence that I'm trying to put in the painting.
If I paint a couple embracing, making love, I want them to understand
that. I see this like a fight . . . like somebody trying to dominate
somebody else, you know like a rape perhaps, something soft I try to
avoid . . . because I remember always Dali's teaching . . . I want to
avoid being feminine in the painting, which is pretty . . . and the
idea of prettiness, I try to erase. I don’t mean them to be ugly,
but I would like them to pass on an idea of strength . . . of continuity,
of long lasting things. Ultimately, after I see my paintings in a gallery
. . . very often . . . I wish I had worked a little longer on them,
I’m never quite satisfied with them.
Jimi
I think that's a healthy approach.
Amanda
There is something very . . . erm . . . how do you say this . . . I
mean, how would I dare to say, now this painting is achieved, that's
it, it's perfect, you can take it. I mean who am I to say look I've
done something great, you know . . .
Jimi
How exactly do you start a piece? Is it intuitive? An
intellectual concept?
Amanda
I used to start, like I was still at school, by first the drawing .
. . carefully with a pencil and then fill in the color. Now my approach
is completely different. I start right away with bright colours straight
from the tube you know, with a brush, no sketching before. And very
often I start a painting, and as the painting goes on, it changes completely.
Sometimes I start making a man and later on it becomes a woman or two
women or a horse . . . I follow . . . I follow instinct . . . and once it’s finished, it's never
quite as I visualized it.
Jimi
Do you see relations between your paintings? Are they
interdependant?
Amanda
Yes, there is . . . there is a recurrent . . . there is some colour,
currently the bright red, and bleu d’outre mer, those are colours
that come recurrently, but lately, the whole of last year, strangely
enough, all paintings have had one thing in common. They have been .
. . pretty dramatic paintings, with this lack of quietness, this turmoil . . . most of them black
and red, and it's only recently that somebody pointed out to me that
there was some kind of premonition in those paintings, because what
I painted was the colour of the fire, red, and of the ashes, burned,
which is black. And everything I painted was black and red and . . .
strangely enough . . . I had been painting like this for six months,
including a self portrait of myself . . . like a Madonna with my heart
pierced with knives and arrows, all I painted was martyrs and bodies
. . . so perhaps there was some kind of premonition there Amanda
Lear's house in the Provence burned down last December which led to
the death of her husband, and a friend of the couple
I
really very much would like to get out of this phase of . . . sad, tortured
paintings, but again, my paintings reflect my state of mind, which is
tortured, which is troubled at the moment, which is in turmoil.
Jimi
There's this duality in your paintings . . .
Amanda
Yes there is, it's true. I very often paint . . . two faces of the same
thing, a man and a woman, or the same men, but twice you know, one is
black, one is red, There is a sort of duality, it is true, because
I
found there is in everybody a sort of ambiguity. There is a real person
and a person they pretend to be, or there is the real them and the subconscious
them. I found that nothing is as it seems, there is always another thing.
Jimi
How can you combine the life of a showbiz star with the
life of a painter?
Amanda
Unfortunately, I am confronted with another life which is all sequins
. . . and shows . . . and television . . . and frivolity . . . and I
am very much disenchanted with this life, I find it frivolous and useless
and I try in my painting to find what's behind the mask. At the beginning,
I was painting a lot of people wearing masks, I would never show their
face. I would paint them from the backside or their face was done away
or wearing a mask. It is hard for me to find smiling faces. I realize
that everybody behind the mask is in fact, very unhappy, and very angry,
there is a lot of anger I think, in my painting because I am frustrated.
I feel frustrated in my work and that frustration shows in my painting.
There is a lot of splashing painting and angry emotions. I am obviously
the complete opposite to Leonor Fini, who desperately wanted to be on
show all the time—Leonor Fini kept putting on a disguise, and
dressing up and having her photograph taken. She wanted to be in show
business and so did Dali, I mean he loved being photographed and to
appear on TV. I have my TV days and my photographs and I’ve had
enough of all that. I would like it very much if people were to look
at my painting and not at my personality anymore. I say to them, don't
look at me, don’t look at me, look at my paintings. People say:
Oh, you paint? . . . and that frustrates me, because
I realize that nobody has paid any attention whatsoever to my paintings,
and I've
been
painting for 30 years. I’ve had, I don’t know, 30, 40 personal
exhibitions of oil paintings and still nobody knows that I am painting
. . . it is a great frustration.
Jimi
It would be great if you could find a balance between
the two things.
Amanda
Yes, that's true, the ideal would be to find a balance. I mean, it's
like Dali—when he was painting he was really the painter, nothing
counted but the painting. And then suddenly he had this capacity to
put down his brushes and clean them up, and say, all right now let’s
go and have fun, and then he suddenly would be somebody else, you know.
Andy Warhol was doing this too, he was always going around to parties
and everything and then, when he was painting, he was actually painting.
It’s great when you can find this balance. When you can stop being
a painter and become a socialite. Strangely enough, I thought when you
are a painter, you are a painter all the time. You are a painter when
you walk the street, when you go to parties, when you have dinner—because
you see everything through the eyes of a painter, and . . . I thought
that was very much the way you see everything around you.
Jimi
Through the lyrics of your songs and through your paintings
I get the impression you have a very melancholic personality.
Amanda
It's all . . . it's all very . . . It’s some kind of desecration
you know, very Saint Germain-des-Prés, Baudelaire, spleen . .
. and isn’t life a shit laughs Yes, I think
it is true that I am rather pessimistic and people don’t realize
that because I’m always playing the part of party girl, the jet
set girl. I play the part that they expect me to play great
laughter making puns and jokes and everything, people think that’s
my personality... and there is, again, this duality, there is the other
side of the personality which is quickly . . . depressed and tortured
and sad and melancholic. But that part nobody sees, it only comes across
in my paintings; it doesn't come across in real life.
I
was always trying to put into my lyrics something a little melancholic,
but unfortunately again, there is some kind of frustration there. I
was writing what I thought were intelligent lyrics and nobody gives
a shit, you know laughs because actually nobody
listens to lyrics when we're talking about disco music and dance music.
Obviously, you just move your body, but you don't pay any attention
to what you’re listening to. So I picked the wrong music to express
myself. If I had been a rock singer, or if I had been . . . I don't
know, a ballad singer, then people would have listened to the lyrics,
but only a few fans bothered to actually read the lyrics. Yes, again,
that makes me really sad, because I thought I wrote nice stories laughs
and nobody's interested.
Jimi
Do you have a wish?
Amanda
Well . . . I would like . . . prrffff . . . I don't wanna leave my mark
and go down in history, that's not my ambition, but when I come to the
end of my life, in a few years, I really would like to have . . . the
satisfaction of saying, okay, I am now about to go, but at least this
painting and this song and this movie are really good . . . I'm gonna
disappear, but the least I've done is really a good job, I'm really
proud of it and . . . until now . . . I haven't got that feeling. I
know I wrote about a hundred songs, I don't think any of them will be
remembered. I've done hundreds of paintings and there's not one of them
that the whole world would know . . . even if it's just one painting
and the rest is crap at least you know, I would have the feeling that
I have done one good thing in my life. Until now I haven't got that
impression and that makes me sad. Perhaps by working together with several
young people, creative people, like you, like artists in New York, in
Antwerp you know, I know they are young people and they are creative
and they are ambitious and that’s . . . stimulating. It is not
stimulating to be with people who've made it, because they've made it
and they're not interesting for me. I want to be with the people who
are still on the make, because they are willing to move things, they
are willing to provoke, they are willing to shock, they are willing
to make things happen, you see.
Jimi
Are you ever pleased with what you do?
Amanda
I'm not at all the type you know, who looks at an old cassette and says,
oh wow, I'm great. No, I'm not like that at all. I see every fault,
every failure, everything that I did wrong, shouldn't have done. It's
true, I'm a perfectionist . . . and such is my nature.
