I interviewed DAVID BYRNE!!!

I usually shy away from talking too much about my day job on here, but a few weeks ago I had a personal and professional dream come true, and it was too good not to share:

I interviewed the one and only DAVID BYRNE!!

We did two video interviews, which you can watch here and here, and I’ve reproduced the full written interview for Art Basel Stories (plus a bonus question that didn’t make the cut!) below for your reading pleasure.

Nothing else I will ever do in my life will be cooler than this.

It’s not every day that you get to talk to the guy who is the literal password to your computer.1

David is probably one of the artists I look up to the most, due to the fact that he has constantly reinvented himself over the course of his 50+ year career. At 74 years old, he is still pushing the envelope of his artistry. From his work in Talking Heads, to his film True Stories, to his Broadway play America Utopia (which I saw five times, brag) to the black and white line drawings that now pepper the walls of Gallery 125 Newbury, Byrne refuses to sit still.

That is, until he sat down with me for our interview.

SI: We're at your exhibition, which is a duet exhibition of sorts between you and Saul Steinberg. Can you give a quick overview of what the exhibition is and how it came together?

DB: I've been represented by Pace Gallery for a while, and they also represent Saul Steinberg. So Arne Glimcher had the idea of combining a show with both of us, since we both do mostly black and white drawings. He thought it'd be interesting to pair them, and I have to say he found some similarities between some of the drawings, which is kind of nice. I'm a big fan of Steinberg's drawings, so it's an honor to be mixed in with his stuff.

SI: Do you remember the first time you encountered Saul Steinberg's work? 

DB: I probably first saw Saul Steinberg's work in New Yorker magazine. That's my guess. Can't say for sure. I was probably pretty young and I saw it probably on some covers of the magazine, and I loved them. Yeah, they were really inventive, funny, insightful. 

SI: This exhibition is framed as a conversation between your work and Saul's work. Are there any two works in the exhibition that you feel are most in conversation with each other?

DB: I saw a few where he has a drawing of a couple dancing, and I have a drawing next door of these figures dancing, and these figures enveloping one another. Yeah, they fit together pretty well.

SI: You've said that your drawings started pouring out of you during COVID, when you were locked down in your apartment. How do you keep track of your ideas, and what is your process for starting a new drawing?

DB: Sometimes I just start sketching and see what comes out. Sometimes I would actually write down an idea, and then try to figure it out or sketch it out really, really simply on a little piece of paper and go, okay, can I expand on that? Where will that go? And so I make a to-do list, do this one, do this one, do this one, and then find some time and just start working on it. I usually do 'em first in pencil, and that way I can erase. And change things. And move things around and do all that. Then I go over it in ink when I'm happy with the way it's going.

SI: You're a very multidisciplinary artist and I would say a true collaborator. You've worked with so many different people across your career. You've made albums with St. Vincent and Fat Boy Slim, performed with singers like Hayley Williams, and Olivia Rodrigo, even worked with John Mulaney on comedy and Maira Kalman on some set design and illustrations. Does this feel like an extension of your collaborative process even though Saul isn't here, and is no longer with us?

DB: I wish he was here. Yes, in a way, yes. Showing us side by side is, in a way, a kind of collaboration.

SI: Your work and Saul's work both visually often reference buildings, highways, cars, and other bits of urban infrastructure. How has living in New York City impacted the way that you make your art?

DB: Well, a lot of my drawings that are here were done during the pandemic. Not all of them, but a lot of them were. When I was isolated in my apartment, I did okay, but we were isolated. I found that I couldn't write any songs—usually that's an ongoing process. I found nothing was coming out. I tried, but this stuff came out as kind of amusing and I thought, no, this is really serious. So I started drawing, and the drawings started coming out. After a while I realized, oh, I see in the drawings my concerns, what's going through my head in regards to being isolated, being locked down during the pandemic. I thought, oh, I'm saying things in the drawings that I don't say to myself or to other people out loud, which is I guess one of the things that one can do.

SI: Both your work and Saul Steinberg's work are quite humorous. Is that something that you're consciously thinking about when you're making these drawings, or does it just naturally come up when you're making the work?

DB: I suppose I find that if there's a little bit of humor in the work, you can deal with things that are maybe uncomfortable in a way that is more acceptable, both for myself and for someone looking at it or listening to a song. It's a way of disarming myself and the viewer or the listener, which is true for all kinds of comedy. It's a way of saying things—visually or musically or whatever—that are sometimes kind of uncomfortable. But if you can say them in another medium and that has a sense of humor about it, it's kind of disarming and people can deal with—least I can— deal with stuff that they might not want to face otherwise.

Thank you so much for reading! Just a reminder that THIS SUNDAY is the Craft Club Collage Picnic—I’d love to see you there. RSVP here.