Bruce and Naomi Chat Art Three
Bruce Wang Citizen Wang Studio
Article By Bruce Wang @ citizenwangstudio.com
Bruce
They’re not buying the prints. How are your books selling?
Naomi
So, when the book was first released, I sold about 100 within a month, but now it's just drips and drabs.
Bruce
Oh.
Naomi
My books don't have an ISBN number. I can't sell in mainstream bookstores. But I keep trying, I keep writing to publishers. Did I tell you about the writer that I contacted? Um, he sent me an email. He read my book and was so nice about it and he recommended his agent. And so I've sent the book to his agent. I haven't heard anything yet. They always take a long time; they take a few weeks minimum. Yes. The problem is I forget who I've contacted, I need to be organized and it write down. Well, I do write it down, but they're all separate but if paper. I get a lot of encouragement at Core Arts, it keeps me pushing forward. Then I find the motivation to visit independent bookshops and pitch my book. Shops in north and east London so far.
Bruce
wow. Could get soul destroying though?
Naomi
Well, it's funny because, you know, it seems there are good days and bad days. The other day I went out, no one was interested. And the previous time I went out, they all took one or two. So, that day I thought, ‘this is great’. And then the next time I just thought I'd wasted my time. But you just have to keep pushing, don't you? And grab the days when you feel motivated to sell yourself. We're selling my work. It feels like I’m selling myself, as my work is so personal, it’s all about me.
Bruce
All you need is a manifesto. Why you're doing it.
Naomi
I kind of do have a manifesto, I think. You’re right, there's something in that. What's your manifesto?
Bruce
Oh, my manifesto is my biography of my involvement with artistic people. And my ambitions. I just describe how I see photography and what I try to do with it. It's in my blog.
Naomi
Yeah, I've read your blog.
Bruce
Your manifest.
Naomi
Yeah. I guess I do have a manifesto. I mean, what I want to do is to talk about things that people don't like talking about. I want to talk about body parts, mental health, death too. Because you can approach things with art in a way that doesn't threaten, so people don't realize it is getting in and then they're having a conversation about it.
Bruce
I think men talk about the mind more and about fantasy relationships.
Naomi
Women talk about the mind a lot as well. Fantasy relationships…maybe not in the same way. There's different ways of talking about the mind. I guess there's the emotional mind and then the cerebral mind.
Bruce
The male approach is about wish fulfilment. The idea of the perfect woman being passive naked with big breasts. This isn’t something that is of so much interest to women.
Naomi
No, I remember once. I was with my mate, when I was a teenager and she bought this porn mag, you know, with men in? And we just sat there laughing. Looking through it and laughing.
Bruce
Oh no. I think that was a magazine for gay men.
Naomi
Yeah, it must have been. I don't think women go for that. I think the interest is less visual.
Bruce
Yeah, men need to see things in black and white. There's a need to see the naked female. Don’t think I’ve ever photographed a naked woman.
Naomi
yes, you're interested in something different, aren't you? Your pictures aren't porn, you wouldn't be an artist if they were. There's a much more complexity to your pictures.
Bruce
There’s someone who keeps posting pornographic pictures on my Facebook page. Women thrusting their breasts at the camera. Although, he recently posted one of a woman, where 90% of her body parts were hidden, due to how she was sitting, I ‘liked’ that, as it was in better taste.
Naomi
Yeah, that's different. Because I find as a woman, even soft porn is quite disturbing. A woman might say, well, I chose to do this, but why would a woman choose to do that? What’s happened in her life for her to be ok with this?
Bruce
Some gay women have pictures taken of their naked bodies, to inspire other women to do the same. They don’t have the idealized figure.
Naomi
That’s interesting.
Bruce
Quite a big hoo-ha in FB magazine. Actress, Adriana posting daily pictures of herself completely naked. Weird, a sort of hobby?
Naomi
I mean, I guess I could understand it, I wouldn't do it myself though. Something I have considered, quite a lot and I think I might do, is sit as a life model in a class, because that feels different.
Bruce
Yeah.
Naomi
And when I've gone to life classes, it's been the bodies that look lived in that I found beautiful
Bruce
Yes.
Naomi
You know the lumps and the bumps and the wrinkles that's great. If somebody is completely trim and you know muscle clad, I find it less interesting.
Bruce
Naomi
Yeah
Naomi
Bruce
I have met all sorts of people, in my time in hospital.
Naomi
Do you think those experiences have inspired your creative process?
Bruce
Oh yes it informed me of what I did not want to do in relationships. I saw him once a week and found his stories fascinating, like research. Fascinating to hear how low people’s standards can drop, while still being regarded as mentally healthy.
Naomi
Yes, that's an interesting one isn't it. There are quite a few people in our public eye, we could say the same about. I think maybe then the people deemed mentally ill are the ones that are having a more rational response. Who said that mental illness is a sane response to an insane world?
Bruce
Was it RD Laing?
Bruce
I've actually stayed in RD Laing house for six months, and a few years later, saw a documentary on the same house. The first thing they did is ask the family to accompany the patient to do a therapy session. The therapist then drives a wedge between the patient and their family and then they end up blaming their family for everything.
Naomi
That sounds a bit much yeah.
Bruce
This is a few years after he died, but then again, he was an alcoholic, so he was ill too.He wrote his book, while under the influence.
Naomi
I think a lot of well known psychiatrists had their own problems. I find it hard to imagine how you could be passionately interested in something like mental health unless you've had an experience.
Naomi
It makes me think of something I heard. Maybe it in ancient Rome. I can't remember exactly, but the idea was that ideas and intellectual conversations, were generated whilst drunk and that was thought to really sort of open the mind. But then the ideas would be checked again when sober. Hmm. So that that was thought to be the best way to really bring out the best ideas and to free the mind, which makes sense.