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I first encountered Butt Johnson about ten years ago, when we were in school together. It is not a well-kept secret that Butt Johnson is a pseudonym, but his origins date back to around 1999. If I remember correctly, his first public appearance was in front of an ultra-serious panel of 3 professors who were meant to critique him. Butt arrived, no longer a 20 year old art student, but a balding middle-aged cartoonist, and refused to answer to his real name. What began as a game of shadow identities is shaping into a lifelong commitment of assumed identity. Since it was my turn to grill someone for Rereveal, I decided to grill Butt. -David Kennedy Cutler APRIL 2010
David Kennedy Cutler: When
Butt first came on the scene, did
you anticipate that he would stick around for so long? Butt Johnson: Ha… I had no idea what I was
doing back then...I guess I was trying to get at a more flexible artistic
identity as a student. So for my
1999 (or was it 2000?) year end critique I shaved my head into a bald cul-de-sac
and wore a cheezy suit from a thrift store and told them my name was Butt
Johnson. They actually got pissed
at me, which I did not expect, and the critique of my work did not go well. I
later posed in this costume again a
year later for another performance where I made up a biographical history of
Butt Johnson...which was pretty well recieved. I haven't appeared in public as the character
since college, but I've continued to make artwork under this name...and I think
it's come to represent something entirely different, and definitely not what I
expected those 10 or 11 years ago. I may end up looking like Butt Johnson someday,
but I don't think I'll ever be him again.
DKC: I think your drawings
strike a great balance between humor and seriousness. It's
interesting that you mention "old masters", because I believe we have
certain myths about "old masters" as being obsessional in their
craft. We imagine the labors that go into these masterpieces. Your
drawings convey not only a lot of labor, but also compile a whole set of
obsessions: from engraving to video game nerds, punk rock logos, monastic devotion,
the search for
extraterrestrial life, and to repetitive and mathematical symbols, etc. I
could go on and on. But what seems to unify your subjects and your labor is an
introverted obsession. There seems to be this panoramic study of obsession, a unity of
nerds throughout time. Do you feel in some way that you are a voice for this channeled
nerdiness?
BJ: Thanks Dave… glad
you think they strike that balance. I think I may take issue
with the idea of obsessiveness as a unifying principle though. For me
that term has connotations that bespeak an end rather than a means to an end. I
would associate it more with outsider art or art made in prisons, in
that such works are made so with such a singular purpose and devotion that the
end or "finished" products are almost arbitrary. I do
find work like that interesting... but I think my drawings are based more on
specific ideas, rather than just following a thread and seeing how far it will
unravel. I usually start with some defined intent of where I want to go
with an image, or some concepts that I think would speak well to each other. I do
love sub-cultures, and you're right at thinking that it might hint at an
interest in nerdy obsessions. I sometimes think of myself as giving a historical voice to some
of these sub-cultures, but mostly I depict them as either something lost and
ruined as a Vanitas, or they are used
to talk about something metaphorical to hint at some larger schema like
unrequited love (the SETI project), narcissism (the graffiti drawing), or war
(car bombs over Islamic geometric ornament). We live in a time and
culture so abundant with images, sub-cultures, and the identities borne from
them, I want to use them and their visual accoutrements and try to
apply them to allegory and see if it works.
BJ (cont'd): The labor and craft, I think, are a necessary part of the language, and I really
wish they weren't so labor intensive...but I don’t think the drawings would work
without it. Again, the "old master" language enables me to render things
like video game controllers, the SETI screensaver, and pop-culture characters like Spongebob Squarepants in a way that takes them out of their normal contexts and allows them to talk about something else. DKC: Thinking about
unrequited love makes me realize how potentially sad some of your drawings can
be. And speaking of unrequited love, I've just been looking at an
image of your drawing, Operation Iraqi
Freedom. You made that from 2005-2007, working away while the 'Operation'
was turning into a catastrophe. It’s interesting
that such a drawn-out meditation has such immediacy. Your
patience was the opposite of most Americans. And now you are drawing all
of these blooming flowers. Thoughts?
BJ: I think sentimentality
and nostalgia are themes that run throughout my drawings...not sure why I am
attracted to these...I think opening up a certain kind of vulnerability in art
is something I’m after, and though that core of sincerity be sometimes wrapped in
irony, I think it's important that it's there. The Iraq war drawings were my
way of interpreting the folly of the American adventures in the Middle-east, on
all sides. I find the boundaries between western and Islamic civilizations really
interesting...and I wanted to try to use symbolism from medieval heraldry and
Islamic ornament as visual stand-ins for some of these encounters. I also
wanted the blown up cars to represent a kind of exploded frustration from
within the Islamic world, and superimpose them as almost floral forms over the
complex webs of geometry derived from the classical age of Islamic art.
Patience seems like a relevant topic, and is surely something that is lacking
in our national discourse. With the Iraq war in particular, it was so hastily put together
there was literally no plan for what would happen after we took Baghdad, which
of course led to many tragic and horrible circumstances. Surely the shortness
of our national attention span is somewhat culpable for the failings in our
statecraft. Unfortunately, in the
"information age" I don't know if there is a way of slowing down.
BJ (cont'd): The flowers are twofold...I
am working on a bunch of drawings of roses for my upcoming show, "The Name
of the Rose", as the rose is a symbol so loaded with meaning that it tends
to cancel it out...and then I did a series of drawings for a show in January
called The Language of Flowers, which
were kind of just exercises in formal compositions rather than a conceptual
trope.
Butt Johnson’s upcoming solo exhibition, The Name of
the Rose, at CRG gallery, is scheduled for November 2010.
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