Slideshow: Highlights from FotoFest Houston 2014
New York
New York
New York
New York
Moby and Shepard Fairey Talk Art, L.A., and Self Pity at Project Gallery
LOS ANGELES — Crossovers between art and music was the theme of the day as electronic music maestro Moby and street art star Shepard Fairey sat down for a talk this past weekend at an exhibition of Moby’s large-scale photo prints on view at the Project Gallery, just off Hollywood Boulevard. The strange mix of celebrity mythologizing and down-and-out reality that characterizes the neighborhood found its match in the rambling discussion inside the overheated gallery and cafe to which access was controlled by clipboard-wielding sentries in skirts.
Once Moby himself tinkered to get the sound system working, moderator Shana Nys Dambrot, a critic and curator and a friend to both artists, sought repeatedly to steer the conversation back to the art-music trope. She gamely tried to extract insights into interdisciplinary inspiration and similarities in the creative process, but didn’t get much further than Fairey’s paraphrase of Charles Bukowski: “If it’s worth saying, it’s worth saying with style.” To the punk-aficionado Fairey, that means that music has to hook the listener before delivering its message just as “number one for me, I have to make a compelling picture.” Moby brought the line of questioning to a conclusion when he somewhat apologetically observed that he finds little overlap. His photography practice — in evidence here in crisp images that achieved a minor-key surrealism by placing masked and cloaked figures in such mundane settings as a supermarket and a backyard pool — serves as a counterpoint or escape from his music making, he explained.
The most interesting moments came when the participants ventured to talk about the travails of being famous and how to deal with all the “haters” who don’t like it when people become successful. For Moby and Fairey, creativity is now a struggle to escape the pressures to please everyone else. Fairey’s remark that “No commercial success is very liberating,” drew agreement from Moby along with knowing laughter from the audience. The few dozen in attendance must have included a handful still in a position to know such liberation as well as others who have moved on, including the actors Joe Manganiello and Jim Carrey. Fairey tried to draw Carrey into the conversation by saying that he knew the actor had been secretly painting and predicting that if he goes public with that work he will surely be attacked. Carrey wisely demurred to engage on the subject.
When Dambrot asked at one point, “How did we get to this self pity thing?” Moby replied without missing a beat, “That’s where I live.” Throughout, Moby’s self-deprecating humor countered the musician’s reputation, which Fairey summed up as “a really pompous, self-righteous vegan guy.”
Eventually the conversation turned to the host city, logical for two recent and quite happy transplants — Moby even penned an open letter on Creative Time’s website extolling the city’s virtues. While the two creatives, as they are called out here, threw in a few jabs at New York’s increasing priciness and stratification, their embrace of L.A. on its own terms rang true. “You need disfunction to be creative,” explained Moby, “and there is an instability in Los Angeles that is inescapable.”
Click on the slideshow to see images from “Innocents,” an exhibition of Moby’s photographs at Project Gallery.