Chip Kidd
Prolific
designer, author of
Cheese Monkeys talks with Robert Birnbaum for the second time
Manhattan journalist Choire Sicha has called designer Chip
Kidd "the 23 envelope of the book world."
He has recently had a rich plate of delectables to offer design
devotees, students of design, geeky comic boys and adoring fans,
including Yale University Press' monograph, Chip Kidd,
by Veronique Vienne, that reviews the perky designer's career. Pantheon
has published Mythology: the DC Comics Art of Alex Ross
edited by Kidd, as well as the soft cover, "newly expanded"
edition of Peanuts: The Art of Charles M Schulz. Additionally,
literary portraitist Marion Ettlinger's Author Photo features
a Kidd cover and includes a, uh, playful portrait of the designer.
He continues to design book covers for Alfred Knopf and is currently
working on the sequel to his novel The Cheese Monkeys and
lives in New York and Connecticut with his boy friend, poet JD
McCLatchy.
This is my second chat with the effervescent Chip Kidd.
Robert Birnbaum: Now about your portrait in Marion
Ettlinger's new book, which by the way, you designed the cover
of—
Chip Kidd: Correct.
RB: When I looked at it I said to myself, "Did he try to get
Herb [Ritts] or Bruce [Weber] first?"
CK: [both laugh] Of course. Yeah, they just don't return my calls.
Part of what I think is also interesting about Marion's book is
that many of those pictures are outtakes. They were pictures that
she would have chosen for the author photo. At least in the old
days, when they were actually paying for them, the publisher would
get the say over what image actually gets used as the official one
on the flap. Nowadays with budgets being what they are—I think
I paid for my author photo—the authors foot the bill more
than the publishers do.
RB: Wow. Really, that's true of so-called upper echelon authors?
CK: Probably not. That's why they are upper echelon. But my particular
photo is something we did as a goof. I was trying to look butch.
I don't smoke, and of course I am holding a cigarette. It was actually
something we did—ever see those ads, like, have yourself photographed
nude for your loved one? It was a supposedly more tasteful version
of that.
RB: You could have added a faux tattoo.
CK: No I hate tattoos. I really do. Piercing, tattoos—they
are amazing to me. Especially when I go and teach. I'm going to
teach a workshop in Atlanta and I just did one in Duluth…
RB: Hey, you are a far-flung kind of guy.
CK: You know, if people ask me to come and I can work it into my
schedule, I more often will do it than not. It's always nice to
be asked, and it's an interesting way to see the country or the
world or whatever. But [Duluth] was fun, and the people are really
nice. And they are really grateful that you came.
RB: What did you teach in these workshops?
CK: Well, I gave a lecture on design and showed my stuff and looked
at students' work and critiqued a little bit. But you know you get
up and it's like doing stand up in front of the world's most sympathetic
audience. And I am a big ham.
RB: No!
CK: [whispers] Yeah.
RB: Let me not lose sight of the line I was pursuing.
CK: The photo.
RB: Marion Ettlinger. And you. It would seem that Marion
Ettlinger's popularity and her own visibility or celebrity has
made having her take the author photo an earmark of success or achievement
for up-and-coming authors. In the same way that, perhaps, Chip Kidd
designing a cover for an author may also be a status symbol.
CK: It could be seen that way. Publisher's Weekly reviewed
both of our books together. Which I really thought was interesting,
but odd. Because they didn't link the two. They just paralleled
as opposed to intersecting us. They didn't mention that I was photographed
by her or designed her book. They just said—
RB: [laughs] Do you think they noticed?
CK: You know what, I don't think they did notice. They just said
that she's famous in publishing circles for doing what she does.
And he is for what he does. And these two books came out and isn't
that wonderful. But the review also said ridiculous things, like
he innovated the idea of putting type with a photograph on the front
of a book.
RB: [laughs]
CK: As if this was some seismic occurrence that had never happened
before. It was kind of insane. The last word on that picture was
this was something that we did to impress my boyfriend, who was
repulsed by it.
RB: [laughs heartily]
CK: Absolutely repulsed.
RB: She took his picture also.
CK: I was disappointed that we didn't appear together somehow.
I felt that it was odd that—
RB: Who designed the book?
A part of what I
feel is not great is when authors -- or authors and their
agents, or agents on behalf of their authors -- come to me
and they want me to design their books because they think
it will solve all their problems for them. And now I can safely
say, I designed my own book cover for my novel and it was
not a runaway success. |
CK: Someone at Simon & Schuster. It also should
be said as a piece of trivia that the back [cover] of the book was
actually supposed to be the front.
RB: [laughs] Not so trivial!
CK: The red band aside, [Chip is showing me the Ettlinger book]
this was the cover. And she loved it. And Simon and Schuster did
not.
RB: A photography book with no photograph on the cover?
CK: Scared the shit out of them. So basically they said we want
Truman [Capote], we'll let you do the type a la this [again points
to the cover] only bigger and whatever— and at that point
we just kind of said okay.
RB: And whose decision was it to use the Capote picture on the
cover?
CK: I believe it was her editor, David Rosenthal.
RB: Who is also Simon and Schuster's president.
CK: Yeah.
RB: So there you go.
CK: There it is. But you know, she was ultimately happy with it
and she emailed me and said that people had said to her that they
really loved the cover.
RB: Sincerely?
CK: [sniffs] Who can say?
RB: So can we go back to my question—
CK: Oh.
RB: Which is about whether or not an author picture by Ettlinger
or a cover by Kidd is a sign of arrival and status?
CK: Pfffft. I would say that to some people it might be. But a
big problem—and I don't know whether she encounters it or
feels this way. A part of what I feel is not great is when authors
-- or authors and their agents, or agents on behalf of their authors
-- come to me and they want me to design their books because they
think it will solve all their problems for them. And now I can safely
say, I designed my own book cover for my novel and it was not a
runaway success.
RB: [laughs uproariously]
CK: If I can't do it for myself there is no guarantee I can do
it for you, whoever you are.
RB: According to Veronique Vienne there are authors
that have it stipulated in their contracts.
CK: Yes, there are.
RB: On the other hand, in the preface, she related that you can
choose what you work on. That suggests possibilities for conflict.
CK: It's a much more organic and democratic process within the
office. For example, we are doing a new McSweeney's humor collection,
and I was not originally working on it. And then [pause] without
getting into the details of it, it eventually landed in my lap.
And I have been working with Dave Eggers on it, and we have arrived
at something that everyone likes. So it all depends. I'll be working
on something and it's not working out and then it'll go to someone
else in the office. We are pretty—what's the word?
RB: Egalitarian?
CK: In a way.
RB: The other note of interest in Vienne's book was that [art director
and CK's boss] Carol Devine Carson, for whatever reason, wasn't
able to respond to her inquiries whereas [Knopf president] Sonny
[Mehta] was readily available to discuss you [laughs].
CK: Yeah. I think that was more of a misunderstanding than anything
else. When Carol read that she came to me and said, "That's
not true and I blah, blah, blah." Veronique did a very good
job.
RB: What would be my stage direction describing your tone of voice?
CK: I am working for the UN right now. I'm Kofi Annan. She delved
in to the office politics thing, I think, a bit too much. I don't
think that really has much bearing on the work or not.
RB: I don't know if the issue was raised in her book or in the
Believer
conversation you had with Milton Glaser, who has the final say on
the cover?
CK: There's a very complicated answer. For example, I just was
working on the cover for an upcoming novel by John Gregory Dunne,
which is coming out next summer. And I was working with an extremely
talented young artist named Charles Wilkins. His one-man firm is
named Automatic Art and Design. He's really good. Dunne is very
particular. We arrived at a cover that we, I, liked, the artist
liked, Dunne really liked, Sonny Mehta really liked and Pat Johnson,
the associate publisher really liked. And there was a marketing
meeting and somebody from the sales force said, "I read this
book and I really, really love it. I think it's great. I think this
jacket doesn't make it look big enough."
RB: [laughs]
CK: Which believe me—and to that I would like to say somewhere
on the record, a month ago I went home for my Dad's 75th birthday
in Reading, PA. And they just moved to this new development, and
it's quasi-suburbia and quasi-farmland, but the closest marker of
civilization is a Barnes and Noble, which is the size of Rhode Island.
And they have a Starbucks in it so you can get decent coffee. So
I wander there on a Saturday morning at 10 A.M. and what's in front,
what do you see first? You see all the tables for the discounted
books from a few seasons ago or a year ago.
RB: The remainders.
CK: You know what? All the remaindered stuff looked really big.
RB: [laughs]
CK: They all looked big. They all had big titles and they had foil
stamping and they had lots of bells and whistles and they were on
sale for $3.99 apiece. So, I actually like our sales force a lot,
but they read and are dedicated to the books doing well. That's
their job and their sincere wish. But, I don't need to hear—
RB: If anyone knew the formula that would make a best seller then
you would have all best sellers?
CK: [whispers] Exactly. Exactly. Anyway, this doesn't happen a
lot, but Sonny asked me to —
RB: Tweak it?
CK: Well, he just said, "I want you to think about it and
work with it." I said, "Does this mean I have to start
over, or can I use elements of what we have?" He said, "It's
up to you." Basically, I used elements of what we had and everyone
likes it and hopefully it will be a go. Which it will and it looks
fine. It looks good and looks—it shouts a little more as opposed
to the whispering.
RB: One of the asides with Milton Glaser in the September issue
of The Believer —
 CK:
They asked me to do it and I thought, "I have met Glaser a
handful of times. Here is this Titan of design who lives and works
about a half a mile away from me, who I never see and I never call
on him. And I thought, "What a wonderful excuse." And
it was great. Interview? It's not really even an interview. It's
me shutting up and letting him talk. I am a firm believer, not just
in interviews -- I don't do many, but when I am with someone at
a party -- it's much better to let someone talk. At their foundation,
that's what people want to do. They really just want someone to
listen to them. I thought he was great. He went into this whole
thing about his incredible teaching assignments for the School of
Visual Arts and that got cut out.
RB: You missed the subtlety of my question. Most interviews in
The Believer, the interviewer, as in my case, when I have
interviewed people for them, is identified as The Blver
in the text. In your case, you are Chip Kidd in the text, talking
with Milton Glaser. It appears there is an inconsistent policy.
CK: Yes, there is. What parts of that don't you understand? Who
have you interviewed for them?
RB: Margot Livesey. Jamaica Kincaid. Sissela Bok.
CK: See, I have never heard of any of those people.
RB: Oh please, Jamaica Kincaid?
CK: Is that in Queens? No, just kidding. I don't know.
RB: Who's heard of Milton Glaser?
CK: That's a really good question.
RB: You are a young titan in the world of design, Chipster. How
big is that world?
CK: It's not a question of it being big but a question of it being
scattered. There are pockets around the country. Certainly every
design student knows who Milton Glaser is, and there are how many
thousands that graduate every year? The reason that I am named is
that they want a younger generation interviewing an older generation
of people doing the same thing, I guess.
RB: You said in that conversation something about why you were
in publishing—to the effect that it wasn't for the money.
Why do you work in publishing?
CK: Because I am lazy.
RB: Why do all these projects and fly around the country for workshops
and teaching?
CK: Appearances can be deceiving. The first job I got where I was
going to be paid to design something was being an assistant to the
art director at Knopf publishing in 1986. But the pay was nothing.
In 1986 to live and work in New York, I got $15,500 a year.
RB: [laughs]
CK: That laughter went on for eight minutes. And I thought, well,
you know, like the numbers actually worked. I was living in a semi-legal
unheated loft in Williamsburg for $389 a month with ten other people.
All that stuff’s cool when you are twenty-one. But they did
say from the beginning you can supplement your income by freelancing
-- it's okay, it's not taboo. So one learns how to do that. I have
been very, very lucky, especially since the computer has come along.
Things that would literally take five days to even put together
take ten minutes.
RB: I took to heart Glaser's remark that he is happy to use a computer
now because he didn't learn on one. How did you learn design?
CK: I was the last generation of designers before that didn't have
computers to learn on. The one teacher that we had that was part
of the composite teacher in my novel, The Cheese Monkeys,
who has since died. He was a genius. His name was Bill Kinser. And
he knew what was coming, big time. The other teacher who is the
other half of the composite of the teacher character is very much
a by-hand classical poster maker, still to this day. He was running
the department and the other guy wasn't. And so he was very reluctant.
But we did get one of the Stone Age Macs when I was senior.
RB: What could you do with it?
CK: Not a hell of a lot. I remember I made really bit–mappy
drawings.
RB: Was there even Quark at the time?
CK: I don't even know what the program was. We didn't even use
a mouse. It would allow you to make extremely heavily digitized
bit-mapped drawings, and it would spit them out and we would color
them by hand. Whoopdee do! It wasn't even a class that you could
take. But yes, I was of the T-square, blue pencil and Rapidograph
school of design.
RB: Do you do any web-related design at all?
CK: I surf it for porn.
RB: Besides that. Do you ever offer your [design] services to those
sites?
CK: That would be so smart. It would save me sooo much money. No,
I don't do any design for the web.
RB: Because?
CK: Why do I want to labor and labor over something that gets turned
of with the flick of a switch? I have seen some incredible websites
-- truly, profoundly interesting things that are worth your time
-- but I want stuff. I want to make a thing and I want to hold the
thing and I want to put the thing on my shelf and all of that.
RB: Are you perhaps of the last generation that will collect things
like Batman memorabilia? What is the age range of people collecting
that stuff now?
I am a firm believer
-- not just in interviews, but when I am with someone at a
party -- it's much better to let someone talk. At their foundation,
that's what people want to do. They really just want someone
to listen to them. |
CK: I was at the San Diego comics convention this
past summer, and parents are taking their kids and the kids are
into it. Very much so.
RB: What is it about comics that people continue to be interested
into their adult lives?
CK: Well, what is it about the Beach Boys that sustains itself
into one's adult life?
RB: Sometimes there is a calcification of interests.
CK: Certainly.
RB: But beyond your interest in Charles Schultz and Alex Ross you
continue to shepherd young cartoonists like—
CK: Chris
Ware and Dan
Clowes. In the book projects I try to bring something to it.
Especially with the Peanuts
thing. That was a huge leap of faith on the part of his widow and
on the part of United Media, which is about as big a conglomerate
as you ever want to be involved with and let me do what I did and
it was pretty extraordinary. A, I was making it up as I was going
along. And B, everybody was following me there. Then, of course,
on the Internet, as there is wont to be, a chorus of discontent
with—
RB: [laughs]
CK: Laughter for ten minutes.
RB: This might mean that you are becoming more acerbic.
CK: A chorus of discontent of how the grand master's work was portrayed.
There was one chat room thread that pretty much likened my treatment
of Peanuts to an act of necrophilia on Schultz.
RB: Are you almost forty?
CK: I don't know what you are talking about?
RB: [chuckles] I am just trying suggest that you have many productive
years ahead.
CK: I just turned thirty-nine.
RB: That's what you said the last time we talked.
CK: [laughs] Wouldn't that be sad if that were true. I just turned
thirty-nine. I am used to being the boyish one, the youngest among
a group of older people.
RB: You haven't aged a bit.
CK: It’s the moisturizer.
RB Let me turn off the tape and get your beauty tips?
CK: Certainly.
RB: Do you think and plan about the future?
CK: All the time. And then I keep on doing what I am doing. I have
been at Knopf for seventeen years and it's like, am I reaching my
sell-by date? But it’s still too good to leave. There is always
an interesting project to work on.
RB: That would be hard pass to up. And you are in a place in this
ugly corporate world of which the parent company is a full dues-paying
member and prime mover and you are still are able to do things that
are original and thoughtful and all that stuff. That must be a counter
argument to something.
CK: We're still intact. Which is pretty amazing.
RB: Two years ago you published your first novel. How many years
in the making?
CK: Six or seven depending how you look at it. I didn't work on
it non-stop. And I am trying to write the second one.
RB: It's not about an older woman that—
CK: I wanted to say that I felt like the biggest shithead. I never
should have gone on about that [in Chip Kidd, Part I, CK goes on
at some length about the next novel he intends to write.] Because
I still would like to do it some day. But there it all is. I went
somewhere and someone said, "How is the ballroom dance novel?"
And that's my worst nightmare. That's why I didn't tell anyone I
was working on the first one until it was done.
RB: This is Side II and still we're still talking to Chip Kidd.
CK: I can't find my underpants.
RB: [laughs]
 CK:
What did you do with them? I mean I have yours right here.
RB: Either standup comedy is your newest thing or you are exhibiting
some Tourette's-like symptoms?
CK: Stop tickling me.
RB: We were talking about the next novel.
CK: Yes, the next novel.
RB: Which is something of a sequel to The Cheese Monkeys?
CK: George Lucas has brought this term into—
RB: 'Something of a sequel'?
CK: No, Episode II. He's brought that term into the language and
so I am trying to —Scribner is going to publish it and I am
working with the same editor that I worked with, Sara McGrath, who
is great. I have had this plotted out for ten years now. And I know
who the characters are. I know what happens. And I have been stuck
on page 30 for a year and a half.
RB: Am I in it?
CK: You are, actually, very briefly before the decapitation.
RB: It doesn't matter, a moment of glory works for me. I am speck
of sand in all of this. And beyond the second novel?
CK: I have ideas for other things I really want to do. The problem
is that there is always something else to work on. And the phone
rings, and I say yes, and my boyfriend Sandy McClatchy is very finger-
waggy at me, "You are never going to get the novel written
if you take on this assignment or that assignment."
RB: I take it Scribner’s has not given you a deadline?
CK: Well, as a matter of fact I am contracted to deliver it at
the end of '04. I have to get serious about it real soon.
RB: Maybe you should take a sabbatical?
CK: Well, we are going to take a month in Italy next April. But
I have to do something seriously before then. We have a couple of
trips planned.
RB: When you do sit down, do you write quickly?
CK: No, I stare at the screen. The other thing is that designers—
when I am speaking to designers, they always laugh when I say this.
Maybe you'll laugh too because you know what it is —excise
this if I said this the last time—but I write in Quark. It's
such a bad habit, but now I'm locked in. Like this trip: I am barely
in Boston for 24 hours and I am going to Philly and then back to
New York. And I thought, "Should I take my laptop?" Which
weighs a ton. And I didn't. But that means I can't write, which
is pathetic. It's crazy.
RB: One of the outstanding features of the talk you had with Milton
Glaser was about the "I love NY" campaign and subsequently
after Sept 11 his —
CK: "I love NY more than ever."
RB: He's never made any money from that creation and he almost
got sued for his second version. Do you do pro bono public
service projects?
CK: Do you realize that you are interviewing me about an interview?
RB: Sure.
CK: I do work for a theater company called The Drama Department.
I do all the covers for the Paris Review. Lord knows that's
pro bono. But you know what, it was truly magical. I was
invited to all the parties and I got to know him [George Plimpton]
and I had not one but two book parties for my books at his apartment.
That was great.
RB: Do you ever see a public service campaign about an issue that
you feel strongly about, but that is so bad that you want to take
it over?
CK: No, I can't be bothered. [laughs]
RB: [CK raises his right eyebrow]
CK: Although a couple of the porn sites—I should probably
help them out a bit. If I were a better person I would probably
apply my skills that way. If friends were—
RB: Would you consider doing the cover of my book a public service?
CK: You see, this is what I was about to say.
RB: [laughs]
CK: Yes, it would actually be community service. Like I was caught
drunk driving, and to avoid jail time I would have to design your
book cover. Seriously, friends say, "I am publishing a book,
I have no money, and can you do the cover?" I always say yes.
Fantagraphics, I do stuff for them for free. The cartoonist who
did our portraits in The Believer -- Tony Millionaire --
he's great. He does a strip called "Maakies" and I have
been designing his books for Fantagraphics for years.
RB: I really liked the line sketch of you that was used for your
paperback instead of one the photos I took of you.
CK: By Ivan Brunetti? I am going to try to publish
him at Pantheon. He's a Chicago cartoonist. He's like the love child
of Charles Schultz and the Marquis de Sade. He does these one-panel
gags where these adorable characters are just saying and doing the
most appalling and horrible things to each other. The book is called
"Haw!" and it's brilliant.
RB: Vienne's introduction to her monograph Chip Kidd emphasizes
your love for photography and your unique use of photography in
book-jacket design. Of course, when you have a chance to use a photograph
of yourself for your own book, you use a line drawing.
CK: Part of that is because it's being printed on cheap newsprint.
It goes back to Schultz -- the cartoons work better. And I wanted
something different, and Ivan had done that.
RB: No doubt on a napkin?
CK: Yeah. Did I give you that? I had a napkin printed up with that.
That's so funny that you said that. I have an official napkin.
RB: So is the Pantheon
graphics imprint flourishing?
CK: Yes, I am sort of kept blissfully unaware of the hard numbers.
I don't get sales sheets everyday. But I keep aware. All the comics
stuff we do either breaks even or makes money, and in some cases
makes a lot of money.
RB: Mythology
[new Alex Ross] should be very successful.
CK: Yes, it should. We kept the costs down.
RB: Is there any white space in that book?
CK: I think there are two square inches.
RB: That's not a design concern. I just want to know where you
are going to sign my copy.
CK: There is one place that is not technically white space but
you can sign there. It's very clever. Yeah, that's the aesthetic
that—even with the Peanuts book—and in that book no
inch is untouched, or I would say unconsidered.
RB: Is Ross a cartoonist?
CK: This is the subject of intense debate among a very small number
of geeky comic book fan boys.
RB: And is there a Chorus of Vitriol on this issue?
CK: Oh yeah, big time. Even more so than the Peanuts
thing. The web chat people have lots of time.
RB: [laughs]
CK: There is this question of "Is what Alex does comics?"
RB: He paints.
CK: He paints, but what I really try to show in the book —you
are so used to seeing the final product of what he does— is
how he gets there. He pencils and inks, and he's incredibly good
at it. There are a series of line drawings of Superman that he did
for fun—
RB: I like the little puppets he made when he was a kid that you
persuaded him to include in the book.
CK: Yeah, yeah. [In a meek voice] "I don't want to show those."
"C'mon." Anyway, I don't know why I am doing this for
a verbal interview. I'm really silly.
RB: Let the record show that Chip is flipping through the book
showing me some black and white line drawings. Fondling them.
Why do I want to
labor and labor over something that gets turned of with the
flick of a switch? ...I want stuff. I want to make a thing
and I want to hold the thing and I want to put the thing on
my shelf and all of that. |
CK: Touching them. Making love to them with my
eyes. But you know he can do this too. He's more interested in the
other. But this is really hard. This is really hard to do and make
it look this good. And these weren't published anywhere and he saves
everything—thank God—as opposed to Schultz, and I came
across these and I said we have to show this stuff.
RB: So is Ivan next in the series?
CK: I'd love to do him, but he is not notorious for being prolific.
RB: That's some sentence.
CK: Yeah. I have been talking to him, literally, for years. And
this I can identify with because of the writing -- he knows what
he wants to do. He knows what it's about. He knows how it would
work— three separate books that would go into a slipcase and
it's all about his childhood. And it sounds great. And maybe someday,
hopefully he'll do it. At Pantheon, we are publishing a cartoonist
named Mark Byer.
RB: I remember him from Raw. And I think, actually, Pantheon
might have done a little book of his.
CK: We did a book called Agony. It's kind of an interesting
story. He became the Salinger of comics. In 1992 he dropped off
the face of the Earth, and I was doing a panel in Philly with Art
Spiegelman and Chris Ware and all these guys, and instead of taking
live questions we have everybody write the questions out on index
cards. Anyway someone wrote, "What ever happened to Mark Byer?"
I thought, "There's a question," and I threw it out to
our esteemed panel, all of who should have known something. Nobody
knew. So then -- power of the press -- the entire panel was transcribed
for the Comics Journal, which published it two or three
months later. Somebody who knows Mark read it and passed it on to
him. I get an email, and it's from Mark. He did a weekly strip on
and off for the New York Press and a couple other alternative
presses which I knew at the time, because I was really into the
NY Press, and I remember I was thinking, “these are
really amazing and I should be clipping and saving these.”
And then I thought, “at some point somebody will collect them
and do a book, and I'll get it then.” And, of course, now
it's us. It's three hundred strips. It's a major collection!
RB: Black and white?
CK: Black and white.
RB: People like Byer and Charlie Burns, who now does stuff for
The Believer, started with Raw?
CK: Charles Burns -- I'm going to publish him. He has been working
on an epic story called Black Hole, which is —it's
about a massage group—no I'm just kidding. He's has been publishing
it serially through Fantagraphics. I probably shouldn't say it.
But Pantheon would like to publish it and he knows that.
RB: Are there other Raw alumni that have gone on to some
success?
CK: Well, Gary Panter. He continues
RB: He was Pee Wee Herman's art director.
CK: Right. He is a big Dante fanatic actually. He did this whole
version of Dante.
RB: And Ben Katchor?
CK: We still publish
him. We are going to be publishing a new book of his called
The Cardboard Valise, and I am not sure when it is coming
out. I design all his stuff.
RB: Is he going to put into book form his Cafeterias of the
Great Art Museums lecture?
CK: He is hilarious. The truly astonishing thing about him is that
one to one you think—
RB: He's sedate and low key and somewhat deadpan.
CK: You would never imagine that this is human being that can get
up in front of other human beings and make noise, let alone human
speech and it's amazing. He's brilliant. Raw people, I
don't know. I forget. Kaz. I love Kaz, but we are not publishing
him. They all seem to be chugging along.
RB: First there is a group of artists that are underground, then
they are viewed as 'underground' and published in esoteric journals
and then the next thing you know you see some like Charles Burns
doing a cover of The New York Times Magazine. Is that a
shift in aesthetic or a natural evolutionary progression? Or a shift
in personnel at various publications?
CK: The shift in personnel. In 1984 when Raw number whatever
came out and Charles Burns did the cover, the idea that in 15 years
that he would be doing the cover of the New Yorker seemed
to be completely unthinkable except for the fact that the art director
of Raw # whatever and the art director of the New Yorker
fifteen years later are the same person [Francois Mouily]. That's
what happens, you get people who know and understand in these positions
of being able to hire and use these people. It's amazing.
RB: Do you do photography?
CK: I used to and I should because now it's the whole digital thing,
it's so easy. Again, like I said, I really am lazy.
RB: They are so small.
CK: What?
RB: They are so small.
CK: Oh, I thought you said I was so small. I should have one with
me at all times. I did that for a while —a digital video cam.
And I when I went to Japan I took a digital camera with me, and
I took lots of pictures, and they are still on my disk and I have
never downloaded them. I get stymied with certain things.
RB: Yeah, as I suspected, for many of us there is so much visual
information, and you who is drawn to so many visual details are
overloaded—
CK: Sure.
RB: Unlike other sensibilities, this is an infinite universe of
categories— numbers on doors, car wheels, refrigerators of
the '40s—when would you stop?
CK: I feel irresponsible that I am not doing that
[constantly photographing]. But I am not.
RB: Are digital images photography?
CK: Of course. It's a certain kind of photography. But it's undeniable
that it's photography.
RB: When I use my digital camera, I take digital images. When I
use my film cameras, my end use is a print. When I use my digital
camera—
 CK:
You think of it more as a tool—
RB: —it's a different visual information. The images are
not as precious to me, for some reason.
CK: I work with this incredible photographer Geoffrey Spear on
all my visual books. We shoot 4 x 5 film.
RB: Ah, the trusty Linhof view camera.
CK: And that's why they look the way they do. And he has a digital
camera, and we have done projects with digital photography. But
[with film] there's just that little something.
RB: Quality aside, as mega-pixel resolution continues to improve,
CK: There are digital cameras and there are digital cameras. I
should also add that those pictures that you took of me were some
of the worst I have seen.
RB: [laughs] I am going to improve on that.
CK: I hope so. I sympathize. I am the hardest person to photograph
well on the entire planet, because I have horrible features, but
boy, you really did a number on me.
RB: I am so sorry. And what a testimonial to your tolerance and
magnanimity that you still speak to me.
CK: Yes, I do speak to you.
RB: And have accepted my offer to let you do the cover to my book.
[laughs] Which will never be published.
CK: As payment for my sins.
RB: So what haven't we talked about? We have talked about Ettlinger,
Mythology and the Pantheon imprint, your Yale University
Press monograph, the Milton Glazer conversation—
CK: I know what I should add, if anyone cares.
RB: Yes?
CK: That whole book is strange.
RB: The monograph?
CK: I gave them my full cooperation. I sent them copies of everything
I have ever done
RB: 1200 covers?
CK: Well, I didn't send them 1200 covers. The thing about the 1200
covers is that's everything. That includes the crap, and there is
so much crap. There's a lot.
RB: Maybe there is an opportunity for me to do the expurgated,
unauthorized Life and Times of the Chipster?
CK: We'll talk. But anyway, that was it, as far as input that I
was able to have. I wasn't able to choose what was in or not in.
I wasn't able to design the cover [pregnant pause]. Finally, they
had to give me a Xeroxed copy of it to fact check and I wrote back
and said you don't have the cover of Katherine Hepburn's autobiography
Me in it. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel
Garcia Marquez. London Fields by Martin Amis. And yet you
have x, y and z authors—no one has ever heard of but it's
a cool cover. I think that's weird. I think the cover is not especially
strong. Which is weird. And they wrote back that, "we would
have been so disappointed if you liked the whole thing."
RB: [laughs]
CK: Gee. I said, "Don't worry, you won't be disappointed."
So it was a little strange.
RB: You are so young there will be other monographs.
CK: Not if I die tomorrow. Who can say what will happen? It was
just odd. I guess that's some sort of disclaimer.
RB: Yeah, but who likes their own photograph and who likes their
interviews and other people's representations of them?
CK: Yeah.
RB: Any projects that we haven't covered except for your overhaul
of some porn sites? Movies?
CK: Of the book?
RB: Is there a movie forthcoming of Cheese Monkeys?
CK: There is always talk about it and I am meeting with a director
in a couple of weeks. I would love to see it done— only if
it's done right. The first year Dustin Hoffman optioned it because
he wanted to play a teacher and was trying to sell it to Disney.
And I did the whole "sell your soul thing" and thought,
"The odds are they are not going to get this off the ground.
" And lo and behold they didn't. So I heaved a great sign of
relief about that. Now, I think that the only way it could be done
right is to keep it small and independent—that whole route.
RB: Given you are a visual polymath, any thoughts of doing your
own movie?
CK: Any visually oriented person thinks about that at some point.
Yeah, I'd love to.
RB: Well, who knows. Thank you, again.
CK: Thank you. And you look [DELETED] than ever, I should say.
|
Posted:
December 17, 2003
