Short Answer Sunday: Brian Barr

Meant to elicit quick, intuitive responses, Short Answer Sunday will introduce readers to a wide variety of artists, educators, writers, curators, arts professionals, art enthusiasts and art adjacent individuals whose inclinations I admire. With the intent of getting to know the person behind the artwork as well generating new avenues to artistic discovery, participants may respond with only a few words or an artist’s name, always with the opportunity to elaborate if they wish!

Brian Barr is an incredible artist, professor and curator. I can attest to all of this because I am married to him. One of the things that I admire most about Brian is his integrity, in both artmaking and curation. He is a supporter of the beautiful and the strange, and does not succumb to trends. He is sincere and does not care about being cool (which, in turn, makes him the epitome of cool).

Although Brian started his artistic career as an oil painter, these days he works with drawing, print media, collage and sculptural installation. Manipulating found imagery is at the center of his practice. Conceptually, his work confronts ideas around the limits of human understanding. Do we have any hope of understanding the past when our own temporal, cultural framework imposes limitations upon us? If we can’t understand the original context of an image, where does that leave us? With Brian’s work, I find myself sitting with the shifting instability of the image, in the place between aesthetics and context, between abstraction and figuration, between certainty and doubt.  It is precisely in this state of mystery where experiences beyond language exist.

I was excited to have Brian answer these questions because even though I’ve known him for 20 years and definitely had an inkling of what a lot of his responses might be, I knew there would be a few surprises (and I was right). For more about Brian and his work, take a look at his website and follow him on Instagram.

xo, Lauren

Name: Brian Barr
Occupation: Artist/Professor
Astrological data: Cancer
Hometown: Detroit, MI
Current location: Richmond, VA

Other than Instagram, how do you find new-to-you artists?

Galleries and word of mouth from friends mostly. I also an art book addict. I love the Phaidon Vitamin series. Vitamin P4 just came out and is one of the best since the original Vitamin P.

 

An artwork that makes you laugh?

 

Trenton Doyle Hancock’s The Former and the Ladder. I love word play and a good pun! 

 

Trenton Doyle Hancock, The Former and the Ladder, Ascension and a Cinchin', 2012,
Acrylic and collaged canvas, 84 x 132 inches
Image Source

An artwork that makes you cry?

 

Anything my kids make for me; especially with words like "I love you" or "best dad ever”!

 

Most underrated artist?

 

I am going to list two, with the caveat that I am biased (and extremely biased) in both cases having curated both of their work and liking them both as people! Ian Pedigo and Lauren Rice. Ian is one of my favorite artists and has been for some time. As a curator, I worked with him for the 2014 show, Ad Infinitum, at the Katzen Art Center Museum in D.C. His work has continued to evolve over the years and is as smart as it is strange and beautiful. His work and career are incredibly well respected, but in my opinion he deserves as much recognition as possible. 

 

Lauren, on top of creating this questionnaire, is my wife, best friend, partner in all things and studio mate, so of course I am biased (but I am also not wrong). My proximity to her creative practice is a blessing. Her work and studio ethic push me to work harder, take more risks, and value creative growth above all else. Ditto on her work being beautiful, strange and smart (my trifecta for what makes great art)!

An artwork that you'd like to live inside for a week?

 

A week is too long for me, but maybe for a few hours I could check out Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights (for purely anthropological research purposes of course).

 

An artist whose work you can't stop thinking about?

 

I love risk takers and artists not afraid to change, grow and evolve. This is increasingly rare. Robert Rauschenberg, David Hockney, Njideka Akunyili Crosby are examples of artists that have done just that. I will also be forever obsessed with the ultimate irreverent trickster, Marcel Duchamp, and his legacy for the history of art. He is the world’s forgotten boy, the one who searched and destroyed. He exploded both the classical and modern structures through which art had been made and understood. This was freeing, but the creative freedom he bequeathed the world was also immensely heavy to handle. 

 

What's your favorite characteristic in an artwork?

I touched on this above, but the right combination of intelligence, beauty, and strangeness. I have no formula, but I know it when I see it.

 

Erotic artwork? (editor's note: this is a multiple choice question)

Other: It depends on how it's handled. For example Bonnard's paintings of his wife in the bath are subtly erotic. They are very much about the erotic nature of the sensual pleasure of both paint and flesh.

 

What's an artwork that doesn't look like art?

That is impossible to answer because since Duchamp, anything can be art. 

 

What is an artwork that you know you shouldn't like, but you do (guilty pleasure)?

No guilty pleasures for me. If I like it, I like it. But an artist who wasn’t “cool” to like back in my art school days was Tiepolo. Goya was punk, Tiepolo was Neil Diamond, but I like Tiepolo (and I love Neil Diamond). I would add Andrew Wyeth to this list. He is too often dismissed as a technician, but his drawings and gestural studies are incredible.

 

What's an artwork that you secretly hate?

 

I do often complain privately about things I think are overrated or soak up too much attention but I prefer to share what I love. I will say an artist a lot of people love that doesn’t do anything for me is Mark Rothko. 

 

Most insane art piece?

Ryan Trecartin’s entire oeuvre. It is incredible, disorienting, and so prophetic in understanding today’s internet culture. To me all the work that deals with internet culture today is second rate knock offs compared to Trecartin’s work. 

 

Fav monograph or art book?

As an obsessive book lover it’s impossible for me to list just one so I’ll give a list of the ones I return to over and over for inspiration: Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Arturo Herrera, Phaidon Vitamin Series (P and P4, T, C), Kerry James Marshall, The Painting Factory: Painting Since Warhol, David Hockney Drawings, Ian Pedigo, Corin Hewitt: Seven Performances, Jessica Stockholder, Mark Bradford, Dada and Surrealism, Phyllida Barlow, Albrecht Durer, I could go on and on!

 

Fav museum or gallery in your current city?

VMFA and Ada Gallery

 

Last exhibition you saw irl?

Naomi Chung, Continuum, at 715 Bowe and Giants at VMFA

 

An artwork that packs a spiritual punch?

I don’t know about spiritual, but an artwork that has always deeply affected me, and continues to all these years later since first seeing it, is Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry mural at the DIA. As a Detroit boy, this work is certainly a point of hometown pride in that it was in my city and internationally recognized as significant. It is incredible. I go see it every time I go back to Detroit.

 

A detail from Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry at the DIA
Photo: Getty Images

Image Source

An artwork that you'd like to see before you die?

I have to see the Prado to see the monumental Velazquez and Goya paintings before I shuffle off this mortal coil.

 

What art material do you love to nerd out on?

Colored pencils, graphite pencils and oil paint

 

What was the last thing that you listened to in the studio?

I usually split my studio listening between music to get me going when I am in the creative discovery/play phase, and podcasts to engage my brain while in the more technical, execution phase. Most recently, I first listened to my "Crank it Up" playlist of songs to listen to loudly. It has a lot of Detroit Punk, MC5, The Stooges, White Stripes etc., but also James Brown, Joan Jett, and The Eurythmics. I also listened to the “Where are We Going? Societal Collapse-Origins" episode of the Past, Present, Future podcast hosted by the political philosopher David Runciman. The guest was Luke Kemp who discussed the origins of the state in hierarchical societies, and patterns leading to societal collapse. It was fascinating and deeply alarming. 

 

What's a book that changed your life?

Again, cheating here, but I can’t possible name just one. The first book I read that ignited my love of reading literature and complex books when I was young was William Faulkner’s Light in August. Some of the books that have had the strongest intellectual and emotional impact on me are: John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, Benjamin Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World, Rebecca Solnit’s Orwell’s Roses, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, Robert Heilbroner’s The Worldly Philosophers, and Thomas Hobbes Leviathan.

 

What song, book, podcast or film do you think everyone should know about?

Benjamin Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World. While slim in size at under 200 pages, it is an intellectual powerhouse and a whirlwind of a read. It is brilliant. I have read it 3 times since it came out a few years ago, and each time it has the same impact. I can not recommend it highly enough!

 ❤

Brian Barr is an artist and independent curator from Detroit, currently based in Richmond, Virginia where he is an Assistant Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. He holds an MFA from American University and a BFA from the College for Creative Studies. Barr has been awarded fellowships at MacDowell, the Kala Art Institute, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and completed a residency at the Luminary Center for the Arts in St. Louis. He currently serves on the city of Richmond’s Public Art Commission. 

Barr frequently collaborates with his wife, artist Lauren Rice. Together, their work has been exhibited at Vox Populi (Philadelphia), Flashpoint Gallery (Washington, DC), Purdue University, Current Space (Baltimore), the Neon Heater (Findlay, OH), Artist Alliance Inc.’s Cuchifritos Gallery and Project Space (New York), and Alabama Contemporary (Mobile, AL). His solo exhibitions include Popps Packing (Detroit), Skylab (Columbus, OH), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington (VA). His work was featured in New American Paintings No. 95. 

Prior to relocating to Richmond, Barr founded and directed PASSENGER, a nomadic Center for Contemporary Art in Detroit. As a curator, he has organized exhibitions at PASSENGER, ORG Gallery (Detroit), Purdue University, the Museum of New Art Detroit, Delicious Spectacle (DC), and the Katzen Art Center Museum (DC). As Executive Director of PASSENGER, Barr forged partnerships across the public and private sectors. He worked with Mayor Michael Duggan’s office to curate local artists into the mayor’s residence and municipal offices. He also collaborated with Dan Gilbert (Founder of Rocket Mortgage) and Rock Ventures to activate vacant downtown properties through public events and art exhibitions. Under his leadership, PASSENGER received a grant from the Knight Foundation to support community programming in Rock Ventures spaces. This initiative contributed to the revitalization of a formerly vacant business corridor—now a thriving commercial, arts, and entertainment district. 

For more about Brian Barr and his work, go to his website and follow him on Instagram!