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
