![\"richard](\"https:\/\/stockx.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/IMG_1657.jpeg\" "\\"StockX")
Richard Estes, “Supreme Hardware” (1974) \/\/ Artstack.com<\/p><\/div>\n
Richard Estes<\/a> is widely considered the leading Photorealist artist in the world and the premier painter of cityscapes during the last 50 years. From the late 1960s to the present, Estes has been photographing and painting street scenes from around the world. His most enduring paintings capture the hidden beauty of everyday life in New York.<\/p>\n During Supreme’s SS18 season, two of Estes’ early 1970s’ works, “Drugs” and “Supreme Hardware,” were transformed into clothing. Estes’ paintings were featured on the rayon “Drugs”<\/a> shirt and “Supreme Hardware”<\/a> top, which released in Week 16, along with a series of “Supreme Hardware”<\/a> tees, which dropped in Week 19.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n To kick off our SS18 review, we sat down with Mr. Estes at his home in Mount Desert, Maine earlier this month, and asked him about Supreme, streetwear, and his artistic process.\u00a0<\/span>Below is a transcript of our exclusive interview, which has been lightly edited for l<\/span>ength and clarity.<\/span><\/p>\n Richard Estes – 1971 \/\/ WNYC<\/p><\/div>\n ***<\/p>\n StockX: Can you tell us how this collaboration with Supreme came about? <\/b><\/p>\n Richard Estes: They [Supreme] just approached the gallery [Marlborough Gallery<\/a>]. They suggested the collaboration. I didn\u2019t have anything to do with it. <\/span><\/p>\n Did Supreme talk about, or provide, product details? <\/b><\/p>\n I don\u2019t remember. I think they showed me some sort of a sketch, but I didn\u2019t take it very seriously. <\/span><\/p>\n Had you ever heard of the brand Supreme before? <\/b><\/p>\n No. Never heard of it. I still don\u2019t know anything about them. Who are they? Supreme? I mean \u201cSupreme Hardware\u201d was one of the paintings they chose, so that makes sense for them.<\/span><\/p>\n Did you know what paintings Supreme wanted to use? <\/b><\/p>\n They showed me what they wanted to\u00a0use. They\u2019re some of the first paintings I ever made that actually sold. \u201cSupreme Hardware\u201d and \u201cDrugs\u201d around 1969 or 1970 [editor’s note: 1974 and 1970, respectively]\u2026.I don\u2019t really remember, it was too long ago and the years have all merged.<\/span><\/p>\n Did you negotiate how you were compensated? <\/b><\/p>\n Supreme offered some money. I didn\u2019t have anything to do with it. The gallery did everything and they said it might be a good thing to do, so I said \u2018Ok.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n How did your paintings of the Supreme Hardware Store and the Drug Store come about? <\/b><\/p>\n It was my neighborhood. I was living on 75th street and Supreme Hardware was between 74 and 75 on Columbus. It was half a block away. The drug store was 72nd and Columbus. I\u2019d go out on Sundays. I had no schedule. If I needed photos I went out and shot photos. I did it all myself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n What do you think about a fashion brand featuring your work? <\/b><\/p>\n I don\u2019t know? Am I selling out? I don\u2019t know\u2026 The gallery said it would reach a younger generation. That was their argument to me. The shirts aren\u2019t cheap.<\/span><\/p>\n Yeah, at retail, the button-down and print shirts sold for over $100, and on StockX they’re reselling for even more.<\/b><\/p>\n Are people speculating on these shirts? They\u2019re taking chance on reselling; maybe they won\u2019t be popular or sell. I don\u2019t know, it seems like a risk.<\/span><\/p>\n It can be a risk! What do you think about reselling and the secondary market- people buying and reselling shoes and clothes? <\/b><\/p>\n I think it\u2019s bizarre. It is like art collectors, too. The whole art scene has become more like the stock market and speculating on value. People don\u2019t even look at the painting anymore, they just buy it and put it in a closet and hope they can sell it for more money later.<\/span><\/p>\n What do you think about the state of the art world and the secondary art market? <\/b><\/p>\n It\u2019s not very healthy, I don\u2019t think. Eventually, this whole thing is going to collapse at some point. [For example] t<\/span>hat drugstore painting that sold in 1970 went for about $20,000…I have no idea what it\u2019s worth now. I\u2019d rather not know\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n I remember Andy Warhol, just before he died, they said: \u201cPoor Andy, he can\u2019t sell anything, so we commissioned him to do our portrait just so he could get some work.\u201d Well of course he died and all his portraits are now reselling for lots of money. <\/span><\/p>\n Richard Estes, “Drugs” (1970) \/\/ Artnet.com<\/p><\/div>\n What was it about New York in the 1960s that made you want use photorealism to capture the urban landscape?<\/b><\/p>\n I don\u2019t know. I just decided. Photorealism sort of came about from my work in advertising. I worked for almost 10 years doing ad illustrations. There you\u2019d be working from photographs and a lot of times it would be of automobiles and modern things and I said, \u2018why not just do this as a painting instead of an advertisement?\u2019 <\/span>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n How did you get your start in advertising? <\/b><\/p>\n I got out of art school in \u201855. And then I started working in different art studios, in Chicago. I moved to New York in \u201857 or \u201858 and then it was 10 years in New York in advertising. It was 10 years in New York before I had a show. \u00a0[Indicating a figurative painting of his prior to the late 1960s] This is what I was doing for 10 years. This is what I was doing and no one wanted them. That\u2019s why I still have all of these [his figurative paintings].<\/span><\/p>\n Advertising was the only thing I could figure out so that I could survive. Being a painter, drawing, designing, I couldn\u2019t become any kind of executive, it\u2019s not my personality. I probably learned more from advertising than I ever did in art school. I had absolutely no technique whatsoever when I started out, even though I had been to the art institute for 4 years. You don\u2019t learn anything in art school, they just say \u2018feel it, express yourself.\u2019 <\/span><\/p>\n I worked in the bullpen. I wasn\u2019t the art director or anything. I was told, \u2018give me a headline and picture of an exploding tire\u2019 or something like that. You did it in ten versions to give the client a choice. I could knock out 4 ads in an hour. I was always on a freelance basis. I didn\u2019t really work for any particular agency. I would get called in, basically. This was one reason I could do the painting. I would work 3 or 4 times a week and then I could paint. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Early 1960s figurative painting, Richard Estes, “Untitled” \/\/ artnet.com<\/p><\/div>\n Without your experience in advertising, would your work have turned to Photorealism? <\/b><\/p>\n I don\u2019t know, maybe not. Through advertising, I started using photos. It was also viewed as dishonest to use photos for painting. But that\u2019s how it was done for a lot of artists- Rockwell, Thomas Aikens, Degas. \u00a0It was considered cheating, very bad and dishonest. In advertising it was ok. They were interested in advertising, not art. They wanted to sell stuff.<\/span><\/p>\n Why do reflections and reflective surfaces play such a big part in your work? <\/b><\/p>\n Mostly just to balance the composition. It was a question of design, to make the painting symmetrical. Also, I was just walking around the street and there it was in front of you. There\u2019s a lot of glass in New York.<\/span><\/p>\n What\u2019s the unifying theme in all the streetscapes you\u2019ve painted? <\/b><\/p>\n I don\u2019t know if they connect other than that\u2019s what I would see when I go out every day. It\u2019s the visual thing. It has no political meaning at all. I have zero theory. I think Theory is sort of like monks arguing about how many angels are dancing on the head of a pin. It\u2019s meaningless.<\/span><\/p>\n I have this column of three statements, talking about art, and a bunch of phrases where you could mix-and-match ways to talk about art and theory [by arranging the phrases in the three columns]. Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it doesn\u2019t. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Richard Estes – 2014 \/\/ Wall Street Journal<\/p><\/div>\n What are your thoughts on Pop Art? <\/b><\/p>\n At the time, at least they were drawing images and not just doing squiggles or dropping paint on a canvas. It was sort of a relief! But it was sort of amateurishly done, too. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Any favorites in the Pop Art movement? <\/b><\/p>\n Well, I wouldn\u2019t really want any of those paintings, frankly. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n With your work being featured on Supreme T-Shirts, does that move you closer to Pop Art? <\/b><\/p>\n It has nothing to do with what I\u2019m thinking or doing. All I do is make the pictures. In this case, it was very clear the gallery saw this as an advertisement in and of itself. But now my work has become an advertisement on the shirts of young people as an advertisement, which is great. <\/span><\/p>\n Why did your early paintings not have a lot of figures in them? <\/b><\/p>\n In the 1970s there wasn\u2019t a lot of people in my paintings because there were no people in SoHo. It was a ghost town. I liked [taking photographs on] Sunday morning because it was deserted, you could focus on the buildings and architecture. I didn\u2019t want to make it too sentimental. Sometimes if you put the people in and they start to ask, \u2018what does this mean? It signifies loneliness and this and that, like Hopper.\u2019 <\/span><\/p>\n But I did cultivate ugliness, I didn\u2019t want things to be too pretty. Look at \u201cThe Medusa\u201d by Delacroix you wouldn\u2019t want to be there and you wouldn\u2019t want to hang it about your dinner table. It doesn\u2019t have a lot of domestic qualities. A lot of paintings depict ugly scenes like executions and massacres and it\u2019s still a beautiful painting. <\/span><\/p>\n Talk about your relationship to the New York art scene…<\/b><\/p>\n I think I\u2019m much more accepted in places like Madrid than I am in New York. I had one show at the Met. I sort of lost interest in the New York art scene. I don\u2019t think I went to more than three galleries all of last year. The Whitney once, and most of it was up for installations so there was nothing up to even see. I\u2019ve never had a major show and at this point I don\u2019t think I\u2019d even want to. At this point, I\u2019m sort of sick of having shows. I mean look at what they are showing- Jeff Koons. Things like that, it\u2019s worse than Trump, actually. I certainly wouldn\u2019t want to have one of his things, his pornographic photos, hanging over my dining room table. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The more obscure and unclear you are, you have more currency. Well, I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s always been like that. Most of the artists we appreciate today were never well regarded in their own time. At least it\u2019s been that when since the beginning of the 19th century until now.<\/span><\/p>\n Now you go to the Met and there\u2019s a picture of something with a huge block of interpretation. No one looks at the painting they only read the interpretation. Tom Wolfe wrote about how the art scene had just become more about the word than the actual painting, in \u201cThe Painted Word.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n![\"richard](\"https:\/\/stockx.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/GettyImages535497297.jpg\" "\\"StockX")
<\/a>![\"richard](\"https:\/\/stockx.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Supreme-Hardware-SS-Top-Multicolor-e1534193125469.jpg\" "\\"StockX")
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“Are people speculating on these shirts?…I don\u2019t know, it seems like a risk.”<\/span><\/em><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n
![\"richard](\"https:\/\/stockx.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Screen-Shot-2018-07-23-at-11.40.16-AM.png\" "\\"StockX")
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“Advertising was the only thing I could figure out so that I could survive….I probably learned more from advertising than I ever did in art school.”<\/span><\/em><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n
![\"richard](\"https:\/\/stockx.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/RE_210_master.jpg\" "\\"StockX")
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“I have zero theory. I think Theory is sort of like monks arguing about how many angels are dancing on the head of a pin. It\u2019s meaningless.”<\/span><\/em><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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“Jeff Koons…I certainly wouldn\u2019t want to have one of his things, his pornographic photos, hanging over my dining room table.”<\/span><\/em><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n
![\"richard](\"https:\/\/stockx.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Supreme-Drugs-Rayon-Shirt-Multicolor-e1534193137647.jpg\" "\\"StockX")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"richard](\"https:\/\/stockx.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Supreme-Hardware-Tee-Pale-Yellow.jpg\" "\\"StockX")
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