Dr. Janina Ramirez:
Hello, and welcome to The Art Detective with me, Dr. Janina Ramirez. I’m an Oxford art historian, a writer, and a broadcaster, and I’m your chief investigator of images. I’m joined by a dear, dear friend as my guest today. You’re doing me a huge favour today – the legendary Philip Selway. I’m allowed to say that because I’m your friend. You are a total legend. Drummer of Radiohead, most famously, but my friend for many years and… just an extraordinary person who does so much in terms of music and dance and…what are you doing at the moment, Philip? You must be busy as usual.

Phil:
Well, involved with dance, but not actually dance.

Janina:
[Laughs] That’s only when we’re at weddings.

Phil:
Absolutely – oh, yes. But less said now about that, the better, I think. But yeah, the moment…well, first off, I’m just gearing it back up for Radiohead touring later this year. But I’ve just been over in Minneapolis and Chicago, part of a retrospective exhibition for Merce Cunningham, the choreographer. And it’s been, it’s a Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis and the MCA in Chicago. And they’ve just, I mean, it’s brilliantly curated. They’ve drawn together all the artwork, all the sets, all the costumes, and lots of video of performances over the years. But I was there as part of a concert series that they did to just look at the music which accompanied all the Cunningham work. And so doing pieces by John Cage and David Tudor, and I got to play with the musicians and composers who, you know, were very instrumental in that whole scene when it first started…so people like David Behrman and Christian Wolf, George Lewis, Joan La Barbara – many, many more.

Janina:
Oh, you have been hanging out with the legends since I last saw you then! [Laughs]

Phil:
I have been! I’ve been the one for the back of the room going: ‘hello…!’

Janina:
I can’t believe, I mean, it’s amazing, isn’t it, that this is a retrospective of so many of the things we’re going to be thinking about today. The real cutting edge of what art, music, performance has been doing over the last 30, 40 years. You have picked a fabulous artist and a fabulous set of paintings to look at today. Gerhard Richter’s…

Phil:
-Credit’s all his!

Janina:
Well, no, you came up with the idea. Gerhard Richter’s cage paintings. Now, why did you choose him and these paintings in particular?

Phil:
Well, I have an attachment to these paintings because…a couple of years ago, I was commissioned to write a piece for the Rambert Dance Company. Now they’ve just moved into, well, they had just moved into their new headquarters on the South Bank and they wanted to have a special event to mark that. So they, with a dancer from London, she’s a dance teacher now, but she used to be the rehearsal director and a dancer with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company…her name’s Jeanie Steele. So between Jeannie and Rambert, they managed to get permission from the Cunningham Trust to reinterpret, well, re-contextualise, some of his dance. So that would be looking at the scenery, and the images around that, and the music. So along with friends and fellow musicians, Quinta and Adem, we wrote the music for this event, this Cunningham event in London. And the images that we used, the artwork which we drew upon, were from Gerhard Richter, and it’s for his Cage Paintings, which are hanging at the Tate. And so they were using details from that for these marvellous wall hangings, the dancers’ costumes were based on the images as well. Unfortunately, we couldn’t as musicians have the unitards…we pushed for them…I’m really disappointed about that one. But these paintings have just become imprinted on my head now. They’re just very much bound up in the whole… event, everything that it represented to Rambert, everything that it keys into with Merce Cunningham as well, and everything around that.

Janina:
I think it’s so interesting…I was reading, I was reading up on Richter today, but it’s this idea that he is our finest living artist as well- this idea that actually… in terms of paint, he almost saved paint through a period where so many other mediums were coming in. It’s the quality of the paintwork, the real true artistry in these things, that makes them so prized today. And boy, are they prized! I was reading some figures… his work is the…the biggest numbers in terms of selling art of any living artist. He’s sold for millions!

Phil:
We reenacted the event last November at the Phillips Auctioneer’s Room down on Berkeley Square. And it was in their lovely room, which has got windows either side, so everybody was able to see from outside what was going on.

Janina:
That’s very posh!

Phil:
It was incredibly posh. I had my best RP for the whole event. And there was just, as you were going into the event, there was a little piece up next to the door. I tried not to lean against it. And I looked closely, and it was a Gerhard…and I looked at the price tag and went, ‘oh my god!’

Janina:
Whoa, so go on, what’s the little one going for?

Phil:
That was going for about 175…

Janina:
Jeepers.

Phil:
Pounds, of course.

Janina:
[Laughs] Yes, of course! It is mind-boggling. And I think, I mean, that’s something for Art Detective listeners here. We talked about value in art. And his stuff is off the scale in terms of what it’s selling for now. I think it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because he’s so diverse. When you look at his back catalogue, the things he’s done, the ones that really get me are the blur photo realism images, where he’s perfectly reproduced a photograph to the point that you can barely tell it’s not a photograph. And then just done that smudge – that blur over the faces that gives them that weird, eerie quality. But he’s interesting because this, of course, this is his abstract work. But this appeals to you…why? Why do you like the abstract stuff?

Phil:
Well, I think this keys in very much to, I mean, you know, they’re called Cage Paintings for a reason. And he was I think he did these pieces, I think it was kind of around 2005 – 2006?

Janina:
I think they were first shown at the, yeah, in 2007.

Phil:
And so whilst he was painting these, he was listening to John Cage’s music, you know, so he’s that kind of that minimalist, experimental composer.

Janina:
Famous for the four minutes, 33 seconds, isn’t he? Where it’s just the sound of a room.

Phil:
The very, the very one. And I think with, I mean, with John Cage and with Merce Cunningham’s choreography, they’re keyed in very much to that idea of chance and coincidence. And I think, you know, with these images, you get the sense that it’s really fed into that, but at the hands of a master who can, with all of these these kind of random elements, he pulls them all together – which is amazing textures – and you just lose yourself in them. You really do.

Janina:
I mean, I think that the musical connections are going to run really deep, and we’ll talk more about those as well. But this is a man who’s already in his mid-70s when he’s painting these – and the idea that these are almost, I don’t know, this whole life of experimenting with different techniques, different ways of creating, has led to this, I think, absolutely consummate abstract art. Because with all the abstract, you could talk about him as being part of German Expressionism to a degree, but unlike the German Expressionists, he didn’t want that sense of the connoisseurs signing. So the way you’d think, you know, Pollock strip paintings, you could tell it’s a Pollock because there’s always that signature element. You can tell a de Kooning is a de Kooning, he wanted to sort of escape that idea of the signature, the ownership. And so the thing he’s most famous for is the smudging, that use of the squeegee to sort of pull the paint across. But actually it’s trying to explore the real raw idea of what abstract expressionism does to you, which is that it’s supposed to free you as a viewer to not be subject specific, but to see something in it that’s in your own mind, in your own heart. And so you get those feelings when you look at them then, they free you up, do they?

Phil:
Absolutely. And it’s not an intellectual process at all. I mean, it’s kind of a visceral process where you do, you follow your emotional thread through the paintings. And I suppose coming to them from a very musical point of view, although that kind of didn’t feed into the actual writing process, but, you know, that’s where…actually what we were writing kind of – we tried to – tried to sidestep the ways that we would normally work and, but not wanting to make it too much of an intellectual process, because I think you shut out so many people then, but then to actually see, see these, well…I’ll backtrack a little bit. With the event that we did for Rambert, you know, we wrote the music independently. We didn’t see any of the dancing, we didn’t see any of the images before. We all brought it together for a dress rehearsal.

Janina:
I think I saw you going on the train the day you were going to do that, and you were really nervous about it all coming together. But that’s a huge thing then, to all have been in isolation, kind of coming to a concept. And then not seeing it till it will come together…my gosh.

Phil:
But then seeing when it comes together, but actually just seeing how, well, I mean, it is a chance, isn’t it? Bringing all those elements together and so your brain will try and find some kind of order within it and find links, but actually seeing very strong links, and you just get these serendipitous moments in there as well where everything is just like…bang on.

Janina:
Wow!

Phil:
And it becomes that much more powerful for it as well, I think, as well, because it’s not been the kind of a craft of one single person with their single vision trying to lead you down a particular route. You know, it has this abstraction, it has this point where…as a viewer, as a listener, you can connect with it and then make it a very personal experience as well.

Janina:
I find that incredible because again, there’s always a sense in when you encounter an artwork, like these are hung in the Tate, they’re big, they’re 3 metres by 3 metres, aren’t they? And they’re…it’s a white cube environment, you know, you are there to stare and appreciate the art. But actually, a lot of what Richter does as well, and his contemporaries, it was about actually seeing where these things meet up. So they’re not supposed to be in isolation, they’re part of a conversation, a dialogue with people in other fields, and you had that experience first hand of creating by chance.

Phil:
Absolutely! Yeah and…incredible, I mean it changes the way that, you know, I’ve approached music within the context of that particular event and…I think… I mean, I suppose in Radiohead, yes, there’s always been that kind of – that intersection between you know –

Janina:
There was always a big visual element, wasn’t there?

Phil:
Big visual element, absolutely.

Janina:
Because who was behind the OK computer artwork? Because that’s…

Phil:
That’s Stanley Donwood.

Janina:
And that’s got a definite Richter quality to it as well, hasn’t it?

Phil:
And then, you know, when we play live, Andi Watson, our lighting director, he comes up with these amazing sets. So, yes, I mean, there’s so I suppose, you know, I come from that background, to a certain extent. But to go into this context and just see it working, you know, something that was…grew out of kind of like 1950’s, 1960’s New York, where, you know, you had like Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol and, I don’t know, Frank Stella – and all of those artists feeding into it, and all these amazing musicians. And to actually, you know, it’s kind of like going to the touchstone, isn’t it? And trying to respond to that – and that’s kind of been the experience for me.

Janina:
But I think that’s one of the things that, you know, that I really absolutely hugely admire about you and the band as well. But this idea that actually you are part of a zeitgeist spirit that conjures up for me, you know, perfectly, the 90’s going through, we’re talking about 20 years, it’ll be your headline on Glastonbury….

Phil:
You can say all of that, I can’t say that…

Janina:
[Laughs] But no, to be part of a movement is bigger than just making music. It’s touching into the things that are happening around you. I think Richter is amazing because he trained in advertising and printmaking and all these, again, a bit like Warhol, these sort of disposable capitalist art movements – ways that art manifests. And a lot of what he does is in response to that much more mass media stuff. So the photo, the photo realism things – that’s all because he’s using a lot of photography and his advertising and that sort of work. And then, alongside all of that, he does landscapes. Have you seen his land – they look like Friedrich, Casper David Friedrich…beautiful, natural, you know, really gorgeous. But when he’s doing these, I think he’s trying another attempt at getting to the real sort of inner workings of the mind and the spirit. There was a really interesting exhibition in Venice where the six cage paintings were put up against four of his much brighter, redder, more sort of passionate coloured paintings.

Phil:
That kind of Mexican standoff –

Janina:
Totally, it’s the weirdest contrast, because these I think are quite calming, although the backdrop of this is the conflict in the Middle East, isn’t it? Did you…look into…

Phil:
No, see, this is where I get an education.

Janina:
Well, I am the Art Detective [laughs]. No, yeah, it’s supposed to be about conflict in Beirut, but there’s a sense in which there’s violence and cityscapes going on in these, and then the green that’s coming through, I think is, again, supposed to challenge you to think about the landscape, the contrast between the city and…and the natural world. But I find them…they’ve been described as violent, so if you look at that one up there with the red splatter, I think that’s two, that one – do you feel, I mean, what’s your reaction to looking at that one? Because that’s supposed to be quite a violent image, but I don’t know, I still find it…

Phil:
Well, from the starting point of red, I mean, that always brings out a certain reaction, doesn’t it?

Janina:
Yeah –

Phil:
And…you see, I find it very difficult to see them in a different context now, because I’ve seen them in the context of dance and the music. And…and it’s really interesting hearing more of the kind of the genesis of all the pieces, you know, where they come from, because then, you suddenly reassess and you go, ‘oh yeah…’

Janina:
That’s why they’re revolutionary. That’s why they sell for however many millions. I think he’s been described as being kind of the consummate ‘layerer’, that you layer up the paint – and there’s amazing things he does. So he adds red carnation to the paint to stop it drying up really quickly. So he puts layer upon layer. I mean, there must be a good few 100 pounds worth of oil paints invested in each canvas…but then peels them back and squeegees across them so that the layers underneath start to emerge. And it’s all this process of scraping, scratching, troweling…there’s a visceral kind of relationship with the paint. And then he stops when he thinks it’s ready. So this is kind of going back to Cage and this idea of chance and accident. And I mean, that’s why I find the musical connections really interesting. Because would you say then, that there is a sense of chance when you’re creating the sorts of music that you’re making as well? Do you kind of subscribe to it?

Phil:
The best, for me, the best ideas come when you’re just playing. Not just playing, but you know, approaching music with a very playful kind of uncritical approach, really, mindset. And…so much of that is down to chance. Yeah, I mean, there’ll be patterns that you follow and everything. And then you start generating ideas and you look at those, you step away from it, come back and look at those ideas…and you look at how you can kind of turn them on their head. So yes, initially, I think everything comes from that random response that you have. And again, doing the music for the event, you know, we tried to doff our caps to those chance elements. You know, there’s one piece we wrote where we would…one of us would write a chord and then we’d fold over the paper and you’d have, you carried on doing this series of chords and then try and fashion something out of that at the end.

Janina:
That’s so cool. What’s it called? Consequences, when you…

Phil:
Yeah, absolutely!

Janina:
[Laughs] It’s like musical Consequences!

Phil:
So those things…and actually, you know, you find that it just takes you off somewhere that you would never have gone before. And it can be quite pleasing. Some of it can be quite awful, but some of it can be really, really…I don’t know, if it’s just tapping into something, you know, much more subconscious in you, or…

Janina:
Also the collective conscious as well, the idea that you’re working with people. And I mean, that’s something I’ve always heard in Radiohead music – like when you get in the studio, there’s an, I suppose you’re bouncing things off each other together collectively –

Phil:
Yeah, that’s the thing –

Janina:
That’s the thing [laughs], bouncing literal things off each other! No, but there’s definitely a sense in which either you can, I think this is why I like Richter, because he collaborates, he talks, he communicates with people…and his work is part of a conversation with other people. So the fact that these are called Cage paintings, that’s in direct reference to Cage. Even though he hadn’t met him, again, he’s sort of starting a dialogue and saying, you know, what are you going to come back with almost? And I think that Cage, because Cage is really influential in so many ways, one of the finest artists and workers, but has he influenced your music? Because obviously you do a lot, your rhythm, I suppose your mind plays on rhythms primarily, does it? Or…how does the mind of a drummer work? [laughs]

Phil:
Oddly enough, rhythms come to me a little later on. I think I’m much more guided by melody and harmony initially.

Janina:
Well, that’s – I’m not surprised listening to your solo work. I love the beautiful melodies you write.

Phil:
Oh, stop it, stop it!

Janina:
You are amazing, darling! But no, so that really intrigues me – I just presumed you’d be programmed to sort of see patterns and rhythms everywhere.

Phil:
Yeah, I mean, but that’s… I suppose, maybe that’s just because, you know, those things that you do up close all the time, you kind of take for granted a bit, really. And I loved the whole approach, actually, again, coming back to writing the piece for the Rambert event, just being, you know, you don’t get too many directions, but one of the chief ones is, because this, you know, this dance, this choreography is all very self-contained, you know – the dancers got their internal counts going on, but you don’t want any strong rhythms, you don’t want anything that’s kind of strongly melodic which will cut across and actually distract them from the count. And so, you know, you start thinking…‘I do grooves. I do melodies. Okay…!’ [laughs]

Janina:
‘I do grooves. What are you going to do with me?'[laughs] Part the grooves, Philip. Part the grooves…

Phil:
Absolutely. And…so to actually kind of turn that on his head, that was a very interesting process. But then to see the patterns that emerge from that as well. And the patterns come from how everything talks to each other, how the images and the choreography and the music talk to each other – and it kind of doesn’t exist without the audience at all interpreting-

Janina:
I mean, the layers here where we’re going with the art, because again, it’s the interpretation of the viewer that’s so…the audience bring it to life and make that collaboration work. And I think, I mean, there’s this, it’s the performance element of making Richter’s paintings as well that really fascinates me, the fact that there is this movement, it’s all about linear, horizontals, verticals, moving across the canvas, shifting it about, and having that accidental moment where you just stand back and went…’yeah, that’s done’. It’s not perfect, it’s not finished, it’s not conclusive, but it’s, that’s it done now in its format. That’s how it’s going to stay. And I think that’s that, you know, sort of strikes me that you were having a similar sort of experience.

Phil:
Yes, it’s interesting though, isn’t it? Because, I mean, that’s kind of what you do as a child, isn’t it?

Janina:
Absolutely, yeah.

Phil:
And it’s kind of, so you just think, is that mastery? It’s just, you know, it’s retaining that in yourself. But, you know, learning techniques and just learning the ability to know when it’s…done. And that’s a lifetime’s work getting to that point.

Janina:
But perfectionism getting in the way of that as well. I think that, I mean, he talks about himself being a surrealist and I can see that because…if he wants to be a perfectionist, he can do it. He’s so highly trained. I mean, all the time that he spent in Germany training up, it’s all about this absolutely minute skill. So when he used to do his photo realism, he’d actually take photos and then project them on the canvas and then absolutely perfectly execute them so it looked like a photograph. And that’s how good he could be when he wanted to be. I think a lot of people look at abstract artists and go, ‘they just do it like that because they can’t paint properly.’

Phil:
But they all could!

Janina:
They all can! [Laughs] And then they mess around with it, and then they actually remove the subject matter in there and then they put the viewer into the process, which I think is much braver.

Phil:
But this again, musically, you just see this as well with the, you know, the composers who are working around – the composers that I was working with just the other week, they are these immense musicians. And then you will hear them apply that to something that actually sounds…very random. And initially, you know, I think there’s a part of you who thinks this could be unlistenable to some ears. But, then you actually realise the craft behind it and you recognise the patterns in there and you recognise the kind of…the emotional shifts that happen as well. And you just think, oh, that’s, you know, you’ve learned it all and then you’ve chosen to completely ignore that. And because of that richness of your, kind of your technique, your development, it just makes these abstract pieces just so, so powerful.

Janina:
I just, I love this conversation because it is absolutely at a parallel, isn’t it? I mean, I just find it so similar…and I think that Cage is this wonderful kind of meeting point, actually, because he was a visual artist too. But I mean, the things that he was trying to do with sound are, I mean – I find them quite difficult to know how to take. As someone who’s not a musicologist. I mean, he was, he was incredibly academic in his understanding of music. But the idea of just getting a group of people in a room and putting the recorder on and playing nothing for 4 minutes, 33 seconds, I think that’s so brave because it’s like tearing them off the – it’s tearing composers off the pedestal and creating something new in that space. Has he influenced you, would you say, Cage?

Phil:
I’ve become much more aware of his, you know, his approach, his work over the past… well, I suppose the first thing that I was involved with, with Cunningham Company, was – we did a piece called Split Sides back in 2006 with Sigur Ros as well. That was for Merce Cunningham’s 80th birthday. And…

Janina:
You hang out with all the stars…

Phil:
Oh yeah yeah yeah, sure…[laughs]

Janina:
Yeah, go on. Yeah, go on.

Phil:
And that was, as I say, that was the first, my first real engagement with that whole approach, you know, and what they took from I Ching and all of that. A kind of a philosophical premises behind everything, And…I don’t know, if it was talking about, kind of, my solo work, with drumming and bringing to Radiohead – you wouldn’t, necessarily think, ‘oh, he’s been listening to Cage, hasn’t he?’ But I suppose it’s all in there. It all filters through in some ways…

Janina:
I think Cage is quite… I can hear Cage right the way through your stuff.

Phil:
Yeah, but, probably more in kind of…some of the more angular parts of Radiohead, you might hear it there…

Janina:
Yeah [laughs], certain amount of accident and chance going on in some of those sessions and things. But I do, I mean, I just think this is – this is something we’re trying to do with Arts Detective as well, is get this idea that actually…where do you draw the line between an artwork and a piece of music and a piece of performance? And actually, broader than that, where do you draw the line between, like we were talking to Marcus du Sautoy, the mathematician – the mathematics – we talked about Pollock and the drip, actually with Richter I think you’ve got something even more beautiful and there is a sense in which abstract expressionists wanted it to be the hand of the of the artist through the brush that was somehow expressing a unique emotion to them, but something that could be more widely interpreted and understood. And Richter even gets rid of the brush, he brings in this squeegee – literally like a window cleaner’s squeegee – and it’s that process that is sort of trying to get the artist out of the equation completely and make it experiential, make it something that prizes us as viewers…in relation to it. And I think that the fact he chose to pair up with Cage, they’re very different people, the idea that these are in some way referencing Cage – it’s not about Cage, it’s not about Beirut and it’s not about the Middle East, it’s not about war – but all of those things are sort of part of the context. And then we do the work on top of that.

Phil:
Absolutely. And do you think that there’s a side of it as well, which makes it…it levels the playing field to a certain extent. You go along and see musicians, you know, dropping a pile of knives on the floor. I think, ‘oh, I could do that!’

Janina:
I could do that! Absolutely!

Phil:
Or, you know, working with a squeegee on a canvas. And of course, you know, with the squeegee, and with the knives on the floor, there’s a lot of musical decisions which have, and experience, which have led to that. But there’s something, that kind of primal nature of it, you know, I think that’s…everybody can tap into that really powerful expression within themselves. And I think that’s where, you know, where you see…I mean, it’s always hugely impressive going to see like a concert pianist or, or like one of the best orchestras around. We just think, ‘oh, I’d never achieve that.’ They’ve just had all of that, all those years, you can see the 10,000 hours.

Janina:
10,000 hours, exactly, yeah.

Phil:
But you feel quite excluded from that as well. You know, you don’t feel that you can achieve that. And not saying that necessarily I could achieve these pieces, but there is something that frees you up. Looking at how they worked and how, what they rejected in their training to get to that point. And I think that’s… I think that just really opens up the whole artistic process, the whole musical process.

Janina:
Absolutely, yeah. I think you couldn’t have put it better. It’s totally that experience that, again, a lot of people want to see the masterworks, they want to see the most minute brushstroke that they simply in a million years couldn’t do. And what I think is so special about Richter is that he could, and he chose not to. And there’s a democratising in that. There’s a sense of bringing people into the discussion, which I find really exciting. And I think he will be remembered. I think that he will be one of our generations big names, big artists that going forward, he will be the canonical political one. And that’s why people spend the millions that they do. So don’t go knocking them over next time you’re at the auction house. Philip, we have had such an amazing discussion. I love talking to you anyway, but having a chance to sit and talk half an hour about art and music is just the best pleasure ever!

Phil:
It’s been a complete pleasure for me too, so thank you, Nina.

Janina:
Oh, well, I hope you’ve enjoyed it too, Arts Detective listeners. If you’ve enjoyed it, you can subscribe to the podcast, which is… historyhit.com/artdetective. I’m on Twitter as Dr. Janina Ramirez. And Philip, you are too, aren’t you?

Phil:
Yes, as I don’t have a doctor in front of my name…but it’s just plain old Philip Selway.

Janina:
Find him on Twitter. Oh, you are an absolute star. Thank you so much.

Phil:
Thank you, Nina.