Zak Smith ( SG Member ZakSmith), "The King of the Art Punks," is currently on his way to art world domination. His paintings of girls have sold to some of the most prestigious art institutions in the US; his portrait of SuicideGirl Sawa was recently sold to the Whitney Museum in NY, and MoMA now owns his portrait of SuicideGirl Charlie. He is represented by the Fredericks & Freiser gallery in NYC, and is soon to be exhibited at SF MoMA. Zak Smith was born in 76, grew up in DC, and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY, where he eats fried chicken almost every day. His new book, Pictures of Girls is out now in fine bookstores, and is also available in the SG shop.
Get your very own copy of Pictures of Girls right here.
Charlie Suicide: So here we are in your fucked-up, punk-rock bachelor pad. Is living in Brooklyn a personal preference?
Zak Smith: You mean, like why don't I live in some fabulous Manhattan loft? Because it's cheap--when artists get used to spending a lot of money all the time, then the market can control them. Whereas this way I could, like, not sell anything for years on end and still be ok.
Plus, y'know I figure it doesn't matter if you live in a fucked-up place since everything good in life either happens when you're not at
home or when the lights are off.
CS: But at the moment, one could hardly say you're having problems with getting exhibitions, or selling work, and now you have a book? With the growing success your gallery/museum career, what made you decide to collect your work?
ZS: Well any young artist would crawl through eight miles of sewage pipe to get a big publisher like DAP to put their book out. I did it 'cause I got the chance, basically. Originally I went to them with a
different idea, but it would have cost too much and they figured only
people who already knew my work would buy it. But, the publisher liked
my work and figured that if I just did a book of only my girl paintings it'd sell ok even if people never heard of me.
CS: The ladies seem to be a favorite subject for you.
ZS: Yeah, I do small pictures of all kinds of things, but the big
ones are all either girls or they're totally abstract. See, it takes me about a month to finish a big painting and girls seem to be the only real-life subject that can hold my full attention 14-hours-a-day 7-days-a-week for a month.
CS: Ah-ha! Yet I see that you've just completed a portrait of SG
Co-founder Sean. Does that tie in to your pictures of girls somehow?
ZS: With Sean, it was like--I don't like myths, I guess, and it
seemed to me that I had an opportunity to make a picture that was like
this is what the guy was actually like before the whole early-21st-century punk-porn-era became some legendary thing that happened years and years ago. I also did a painting of Eon McKai, the guy who did Art School Sluts and the Kill Girl Kill movies, too--I guess maybe I'm developing a sort of series of guys in the naked girl business, just, y'know, because I'm there and I feel like somebody should do it.
CS: Is there any particular reason why, out of the plurality of naked girl websites, you selected many of your models from SG for your series (prominently featured in Pictures of Girls) Girls in the Naked Girl Business?
ZS: I'm working with a lot of girls from a lot of places, but SG
has just been better than most about returning my phone calls.
CS: In Naked Girls the models are often shown at home, in various stages of dress, but they aren't nearly as sexualized as they often are required by their various avocations- the theme of the sex
industry and the Girls in the Naked Girl Business is present but not explicit in the images themselves. Why?
ZS: Well, out in the world there are two traditions: pin-up
pictures--which are traditionally about making the person look hot and
are usually all about this fantasy that the hot person is looking right at you and waiting for you to fuck them, and then there are portraits, which are traditionally about telling you something about the way that person's mind works in real life and what the world is like from their point of view. I guess in the portraits the idea is to try to do both, to say 'look, there's this real person walking around all day, doing their laundry, eating cheerios, thinking things and being way hot' because that's what life is like, really--some waitress will look at you because she wants to know if you want soup or salad and you're thinking about her cleavage and any honest reflection of the situation would have to be equally concerned with the soup, the salad, the cleavage, the pencil behind her ear, the guy behind the counter who fucked her on the table after closing last night, the fact that she's worried she'll lose her job if anybody finds out, the boss who'd never fire her because he wants to fuck her too, the waitress' little sister who's going to have to drop out of school if the waitress gets fired, blah blah blah. I guess the idea is that sex is great, but it's also mixed up with all the boring things
in life.
CS: But in the series 100 Girls and 100 Octopuses, the pictures border on the pornographic, tentacles in various orifices and cum shot faces...
ZS: Well, the painting with 100 girls and 100 octopuses was totally different, that wasn't concerned with reality at all, that was just
about making totally decadent, ravishing paintings and not having to
worry about anything else. Every single decision was like 'now what'd be the sexiest place to put this tentacle...' but even in that piece, a lot of real-life stuff was sort of strewn around, maybe to give it more weight. Y'know, like, 'this is all made up but it's not so much different from something that could happen...'
CS: Yeah, there's also a pizza party in one segment.
ZS: Yeah, well as I worked on it I slowly started to realize that
it had this atmosphere like this weird slumber party and I liked that
so I pushed it. Plus the pizzas were really fun to paint.
CS: You're unique in that most contemporary artists aren't equally appealing to the fine art world and the underground, hipster, and/or art punk dregs like the rest of us.
ZS: The fine art world is funny--on the one hand, they totally ignore anything that isn't in Artforum or Entertainment Weekly, but on the other hand, anything you show them that doesn't come from that world seems breathtakingly exotic to them. That's why you can put a rusty screwdriver on a pedestal in a gallery and all these people will be like 'I've never seen anything like it! Here's 2 million dollars!' so underground art people might see my stuff and say 'huh, that's kinda new and different'--but imagine how different it must look to some rich art world person who wouldn't know Jack Kirby from a hole in the ground.
CS: Your recent show inaugurating the new Fredericks & Freiser location in NY was entitled Exquisite as Fuck. That's kind of intense.
ZS: Well I thought it up and I liked it, basically. But I guess
looking back it reflects kind of the way those paintings are: punk rock and DIY and all about sex but also very finely made with a lot of attention to detail. People in the art world seem to associate quality and craftsmanship and beauty and grace with being a tight-ass and
using expensive materials and paying lots of assistants to work on your paintings for you. And I want to kind of be like 'I did it all myself in this tiny room using the cheapest paint they sell and it still looks like Jesus fucking Christ came down from heaven for a few months just to make these paintings.'
By SuicideGirl Charlie
Get your very own copy of Pictures of Girls right here.
Charlie Suicide: So here we are in your fucked-up, punk-rock bachelor pad. Is living in Brooklyn a personal preference?
Zak Smith: You mean, like why don't I live in some fabulous Manhattan loft? Because it's cheap--when artists get used to spending a lot of money all the time, then the market can control them. Whereas this way I could, like, not sell anything for years on end and still be ok.
Plus, y'know I figure it doesn't matter if you live in a fucked-up place since everything good in life either happens when you're not at
home or when the lights are off.
CS: But at the moment, one could hardly say you're having problems with getting exhibitions, or selling work, and now you have a book? With the growing success your gallery/museum career, what made you decide to collect your work?
ZS: Well any young artist would crawl through eight miles of sewage pipe to get a big publisher like DAP to put their book out. I did it 'cause I got the chance, basically. Originally I went to them with a
different idea, but it would have cost too much and they figured only
people who already knew my work would buy it. But, the publisher liked
my work and figured that if I just did a book of only my girl paintings it'd sell ok even if people never heard of me.
CS: The ladies seem to be a favorite subject for you.
ZS: Yeah, I do small pictures of all kinds of things, but the big
ones are all either girls or they're totally abstract. See, it takes me about a month to finish a big painting and girls seem to be the only real-life subject that can hold my full attention 14-hours-a-day 7-days-a-week for a month.
CS: Ah-ha! Yet I see that you've just completed a portrait of SG
Co-founder Sean. Does that tie in to your pictures of girls somehow?
ZS: With Sean, it was like--I don't like myths, I guess, and it
seemed to me that I had an opportunity to make a picture that was like
this is what the guy was actually like before the whole early-21st-century punk-porn-era became some legendary thing that happened years and years ago. I also did a painting of Eon McKai, the guy who did Art School Sluts and the Kill Girl Kill movies, too--I guess maybe I'm developing a sort of series of guys in the naked girl business, just, y'know, because I'm there and I feel like somebody should do it.
CS: Is there any particular reason why, out of the plurality of naked girl websites, you selected many of your models from SG for your series (prominently featured in Pictures of Girls) Girls in the Naked Girl Business?
ZS: I'm working with a lot of girls from a lot of places, but SG
has just been better than most about returning my phone calls.
CS: In Naked Girls the models are often shown at home, in various stages of dress, but they aren't nearly as sexualized as they often are required by their various avocations- the theme of the sex
industry and the Girls in the Naked Girl Business is present but not explicit in the images themselves. Why?
ZS: Well, out in the world there are two traditions: pin-up
pictures--which are traditionally about making the person look hot and
are usually all about this fantasy that the hot person is looking right at you and waiting for you to fuck them, and then there are portraits, which are traditionally about telling you something about the way that person's mind works in real life and what the world is like from their point of view. I guess in the portraits the idea is to try to do both, to say 'look, there's this real person walking around all day, doing their laundry, eating cheerios, thinking things and being way hot' because that's what life is like, really--some waitress will look at you because she wants to know if you want soup or salad and you're thinking about her cleavage and any honest reflection of the situation would have to be equally concerned with the soup, the salad, the cleavage, the pencil behind her ear, the guy behind the counter who fucked her on the table after closing last night, the fact that she's worried she'll lose her job if anybody finds out, the boss who'd never fire her because he wants to fuck her too, the waitress' little sister who's going to have to drop out of school if the waitress gets fired, blah blah blah. I guess the idea is that sex is great, but it's also mixed up with all the boring things
in life.
CS: But in the series 100 Girls and 100 Octopuses, the pictures border on the pornographic, tentacles in various orifices and cum shot faces...
ZS: Well, the painting with 100 girls and 100 octopuses was totally different, that wasn't concerned with reality at all, that was just
about making totally decadent, ravishing paintings and not having to
worry about anything else. Every single decision was like 'now what'd be the sexiest place to put this tentacle...' but even in that piece, a lot of real-life stuff was sort of strewn around, maybe to give it more weight. Y'know, like, 'this is all made up but it's not so much different from something that could happen...'
CS: Yeah, there's also a pizza party in one segment.
ZS: Yeah, well as I worked on it I slowly started to realize that
it had this atmosphere like this weird slumber party and I liked that
so I pushed it. Plus the pizzas were really fun to paint.
CS: You're unique in that most contemporary artists aren't equally appealing to the fine art world and the underground, hipster, and/or art punk dregs like the rest of us.
ZS: The fine art world is funny--on the one hand, they totally ignore anything that isn't in Artforum or Entertainment Weekly, but on the other hand, anything you show them that doesn't come from that world seems breathtakingly exotic to them. That's why you can put a rusty screwdriver on a pedestal in a gallery and all these people will be like 'I've never seen anything like it! Here's 2 million dollars!' so underground art people might see my stuff and say 'huh, that's kinda new and different'--but imagine how different it must look to some rich art world person who wouldn't know Jack Kirby from a hole in the ground.
CS: Your recent show inaugurating the new Fredericks & Freiser location in NY was entitled Exquisite as Fuck. That's kind of intense.
ZS: Well I thought it up and I liked it, basically. But I guess
looking back it reflects kind of the way those paintings are: punk rock and DIY and all about sex but also very finely made with a lot of attention to detail. People in the art world seem to associate quality and craftsmanship and beauty and grace with being a tight-ass and
using expensive materials and paying lots of assistants to work on your paintings for you. And I want to kind of be like 'I did it all myself in this tiny room using the cheapest paint they sell and it still looks like Jesus fucking Christ came down from heaven for a few months just to make these paintings.'
By SuicideGirl Charlie
VIEW 25 of 32 COMMENTS
spamtwo:
it's always good to hear that someone is doing well at something they enjoy 
charlie:
He's still doing well and hasn't let anyone make him their bitch, and if he did, it would be for fun. He is consistent, to a point where you could consider it integrity. 
heh heh.
heh heh.