Art
Jump to the beat
by Andrew Paul Wood
No stranger to controversy, Paul Hasegawa-Overacker fires up the art world.
As art documentaries go, Paul Hasegawa-Overacker and Tom Donahue’s Guest of Cindy Sherman is a remarkably watchable record of the New York art scene at the turn of the last century. Footage of superstar artist Sherman, with her wigs, novelty plastic torsos and deliberately caked-on make-up, making art – something even her assistants do not get to see – is a little like the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin Super 8 footage of Bigfoot: rare, surprising, and of dubious authenticity.
Sherman, celebrated for her photographic self-portrait personae, art-historical masquerades, imaginary film-stills, gender caricatures and Belmer-esque grotesques with Vesuvian carbuncles (the Venus Anadyomene of Rimbaud rising from the zinc bath with a cyclopean boil on her rubber bum) was probably the first artist to successfully inject a real emotional experience into art about media.
But this documentary (still a work-in-progress, opening with a festival cut in New York at the end of April) is also about Hasegawa--Overacker’s relationship with Sherman, from the initial -televisual flirting to his -eventual decline to consort and hanger-on – the “famous spouse” -syndrome. Notes are compared with David Furnish, Elton John’s partner, and Valery Lameignère, Molly Ringwald’s husband from 1999 to 2002.
Did Hasegawa-Overacker intend to become the poster child for celebrity handbag holders?
“Yes, I remember being a small child and thinking that. Wouldn’t that be grand? America’s great handbag holder! As for consorting, you haven’t lived until you’ve consorted, and done it well, or f---ed it up. I think Guest of Cindy Sherman will become part of a cultural lexicon, though people won’t know why.”
Arriving in New Zealand to catch up with friends, -Hasegawa-Overacker (Paul H-O, to his friends) has taken the opportunity to tour the country, showing a near-final cut of Guest and exhibiting footage from his -television show at the University of Canterbury’s School of Fine Arts gallery SOFA.
H-O reminds one of an affable and laid-back Japanese-American Drew Carrey. From 1993-2002, he, with Walter -Robinson and Cathy Lebowitz, was responsible for GalleryBeat Television, the cult cable art show on New York’s -Manhattan Neighbourhood Network. Armed only with personality, a smile and a camera, over that decade H-O interviewed Sherman, Andre (Piss Christ) Serrano, the slovenly-but-intriguing Tracy Emin, Brit crit Matthew Collings, and many other movers and shakers.
Much of the show’s popularity was down to various well-known gallery figures behaving like pretentious arseholes; Julian Schnabel not at his gallery opening, Julian Schnabel in full-blown pomposity; the presenters being chased from galleries such as Dia, Marion Goodman, Andrea Rosen and the Whitney; and a mixture of art world facts and gossip.
The footage of Schnabel pouting like Paris Hilton is most unflattering: “Schnabel is Schnabel,” says H-O, “He’s an artist. He’s great at being himself. I think the art world is more interesting with Julian – never mind the art – it’s sort of a by-product to his movie career. He’s an Oscar nominee. I can’t help but love him because he’s like an old school T-Rex Picasso-style, burly, chest-thumping male. Not many of those left. Not in the big leagues.”
Strangely, the New York art scene stopped hating H-O when he shacked up with Sherman (which is a kind of logical arrangement, when you think about it – an artist obsessed with media-inspired impressions of herself, and a media person obsessed with artists’ impressions of themselves), whom he met when GalleryBeat shifted its emphasis from gallery exhibitions to artists in the studio. They had chemistry. They were clearly warming to the idea at a Charlie Clough opening when Sherman was still seeing comedian Steve Martin. This is just an example of how interdependent the art and celebrity worlds have become.
H-O and Donahue began work on Guest in September 2003 based on the GalleryBeat recipe. H-O is the “guest” and through him so are we; he is our surrogate agent infiltrating the art elite.
Justin Paton might be the Louis Theroux of New Zealand art, but H-O has the man-child thing down pat. Sherman seems to be playing along knowingly, but is also rather vulnerable. The footage of the two together is -punctuated by the screeches of Sherman’s psychotic pet macaw Frida. As one might imagine, this kind of public airing of laundry is bound to create tensions. H-O’s relations with Sherman are slightly strained: “Could be better. We had a few differences over the film in 2007 and that was a marvel. It’s always a blast to talk through lawyers.”
That’s a shame, because Sherman comes off positively saint-like: cute, sexy, -vulnerable and sweet. The interviews with her family are touching and heart- warming – they’re like anyone’s family.
As for the reception by the New York art scene: “I don’t know. Probably good in some areas, hard to say until the film comes out. Could be kudos or a lynching. I don’t spend much energy in that sector because Tom Donahue and me have been editing and re-editing like madmen for a year.”
Prior to GalleryBeat, H-O was an exhibiting artist, making graceful work that sat somewhere between carpentry, sculpture and furniture. Then the show became his primary focus. I asked him what he intends to do now that the documentary is nearly ready for release: “Starting up the new GalleryBeat Television website and a new short doc, working on a goat farm in Vermont and writing a book.”
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