Mysticism and Mark-Making: Artist Philip Smith On Channeling the Sacred in the Static

In 1977, artist Philip Smith was part of Douglas Crimp’s original “Pictures” exhibition at Artists Space alongside Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Sherrie Levine and Robert Longo—the show that was the seedbed of what became known as the Pictures Generation. But when the Met canonized the movement with Douglas Eklund’s 2009 show of the same name, Smith’s work was conspicuously absent. A lot of critics and art insider types (Holland Cotter, Jerry Saltz) had something to say about Eklund’s oversight. Smith himself sent a letter to Art in America expressing a degree of confoundment… but then he got back to work.

While other Pictures Generation artists became associated with conceptual cool, Smith took another path—more metaphysical, less postmodern and thrumming with a dynamic spiritual current. But if you know Smith, you know he was always going to do his own thing. Well before “Pictures,” he was part of New York City’s avant-art constellation, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Basquiat and Rauschenberg, filing dispatches for Andy Warhol’s Interview (which led to a stint as GQ’s managing editor) and taking his art in directions that diverged from that of his contemporaries. While others were deconstructing the image, Smith was looking for something sacred in the static.

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“I was always attuned to metaphysical imagery and the idea of information coming from an ethereal, intangible source,” Smith told ART + AUCTION’s Doug McClemont. “I was always fascinated by Jain paintings and drawings from the early 1900s that purported to chart other dimensions or human energy fields. So, in my mind I was working toward connecting with the type of information that comes from trance or hypnosis. I wanted to make large images that induced a state of awe.”

Smith has consistently made work that has jostled with art-historical tradition, Jenifer P. Borum wrote in Artforum in 1990. “Philip Smith: Magnetic Fields,” his first-ever career survey and major institutional solo show, opens on April 30 at MOCA North Miami with fifty-six works spanning five decades and several metaphysical registers. Early works from the Pictures Generation era showcase his ambitiously scaled drawings based on found images, while several chronologically organized sections trace Smith’s artistic evolution. “Black Paintings” draws from his studies of mystery schools and ancient rites, while his “Modern Paintings” draw lines—literally and spiritually—from Barnett Newman and Jasper Johns. The exhibition culminates in Smith’s newest series, “Energy Paintings,” which synthesizes elements from earlier series with charged gestures and chromatic dynamism.

Observer recently caught up with Smith to learn more about how his practice has evolved, the role mysticism plays in his life and what he hopes people will take away from his most recent work. As it turns out, he’s still doing his own thing—only now, the art world is ready for it.

I’ll start with the questions I’m sure everyone asks. How did your work come to be included in Douglas Crimp’s 1977 “Pictures” exhibition? What was that experience like for you at the time? Did you have a sense that the show would go on to be so influential?

At the time, when Douglas Crimp was visiting studios looking for artists who were working in a way that would fit the classification of a Picture artist, I was exhibiting slide show performances downtown galleries, including Artists Space. These performances were based on found images that I would re-photograph and present with a collaged soundtrack of found sound from spoken language records from the New York Public Library that included Persian language lessons, interviews with scientists and Gertrude Stein reading her work.

Additionally, I would use these slides as source material to create large-scale pictographic drawings that referenced cinematic storyboards as well as walls in ancient temples.

Helene Winer who was the director of Artists Space and went on to found Metro Pictures suggested to Douglas that he visit my studio. Given Douglas’s working definition of a Pictures artist, my work seemed to meet his criteria. On that day I was magically anointed a Pictures Artist, a label that has followed me for my entire life.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I assume that neither Douglas nor any of the artists realized that this exhibition would be written about, taught in schools and influence future generations of artists. This branding of the five of us didn’t really change the trajectory of our work. We just kept working.

In the years since, you’ve made a lot of paintings. First, let’s talk about the process. Yours, if I understand correctly, was or maybe still is pretty complicated. How has it evolved over the years?

With regard to the process, starting with the large Pictures drawings, I was always interested in mark-making. It is one of the most fundamental and immediate human activities. It is a way to communicate that can travel distances and remain as a record through time.

I wanted to make paintings that were drawings and drawings that were paintings. Using a brush for mark-making did not deliver the immediacy and the information that I was interested in. After a few years of research, I developed a mixture of cold wax, various aromatic oils and pigment that allowed me to draw directly into the paint with a screwdriver. I used the screwdriver to give me a somewhat neutral line that was not filled with emotion or subtlety.

This mixture slowed the drying time and allowed me to use the canvas in a similar way that a theoretical physicist uses a blackboard to map out ideas, then erase and redraw.

However, all things change, and in the last few years, I started working with sticks of compressed pigment mixed with wax. While the imagery is consistent with my earlier work, the use of pigment completely changes the radiation and sensation the work gives off.

Over the years, people have seen various bodies of my work in Europe, Asia and throughout the U.S. But until this survey exhibition at MoCA, North Miami, people have never seen the full spectrum of the work nor had an opportunity to experience the cohesive narrative that connects its different periods. Some people may label the entire endeavor as an evolvement, but it is really periods of exploration.

Now let’s move on to themes. I, and a lot of others, find some of your older work super visually intense. Has that changed? What should I be looking for in your more recent work?

Every few years, the work shifts. Originally, the work, which was pre-digital, anticipated the flood of imagery that now surrounds us, transforming us from a literate to a visual culture. In addition to sensing the coming visual culture, those works referenced ancient sacred spaces such as Indian or Egyptian temples, where one is just overwhelmed by images that short circuit your neurons and move you into a different state of perception.

As a kid I would study books on Egyptian hieroglyphs along with exhibition catalogs of abstract painting from MoMA in the fifties. The idea of an ancient, mysterious pictographic language and a visual painted language resonated with me as they both seemed to be communicating something important and needed to be deciphered.

Since my twenties, I have traveled throughout the ancient world. My experience in these sacred sites, with their astounding, mystifying architecture, inspired me to incorporate the hallucinogenic sensation of being overwhelmed by imagery that scrambles your mind and reorients your perception to a higher plane. If there is a theme to my work, it is illustrating the possibility of accessing different dimensions while we are still in this miraculous body. Those dense paintings were also maps of the cognitive process as well as the experience of communicating with other dimensions or energies.

The more recent work, which I call Energy Paintings, still contains a universe of images, but they’ve become more abstract and less about physical cultural artifacts.

Many years ago, during one of my trips to India and Nepal, I saw monks painting Thangkas. While to some, they may look like gift shop pictures of Buddha’s life, they are actually alive in an energetic sense. The purpose of these paintings is to transmit something to the viewer that they need. It could be a blessing, insight, a solution to a problem or a healing. As I watched this process, I realized that with my training from my father, I could do something similar, that is, make paintings that were not just visual entertainment but were activated and could interact with the viewer in a way that was beneficial to them. These recent Energy Paintings are about changing one’s frequency in a very generous way.

Talk to me about mysticism. Your work incorporates alchemical symbols and handwritten texts. How did this interest in mysticism, dream logic, etc. emerge in your practice?

As a child, I grew up in a house where there were talking spirits and miraculous healings occurring on a daily basis. It is the only reality I know. Our house was a kind of Lourdes where those who had been given up by the medical profession came to be healed. In the sixties, my father, a designer and artist, suddenly discovered that he could heal the sick and talk to the dead and our lives were profoundly altered. Often, spirits would appear by blinking the lights or tickling my father’s nose and then they would start talking to him to reveal information not available on this plane. This period was and is the strongest influence on who I am and the art I make. I wrote about these experiences in my memoir, Walking Through Walls.

My father taught me his methods and educated me to understand and work with the invisible world. What is unseen is often more important than what is seen. For my father, artists were magicians who pulled ideas from the ether and translated these signals into the work they made.

In addition to the influence of my father, I also spent 25 years in a martial arts dojo studying moving Zen. It would take hours for me to discuss these two influences in depth and how important they are.

Your background includes interviewing artists such as Jasper Johns for Interview magazine under Warhol, as well as other magazines. Did that experience influence your artistic approach, particularly in relation to language and image-making?

Because my work is pictographic and somewhat narrative in an abstract way, I was interested in writing, which I enjoy. I don’t think the writing influenced my work, but my work definitely influenced my writing. I’ve been told that my writing is very visual and that readers feel they are watching a movie when they read my book. And they are, as I sit at the computer and just transcribe the movie I am seeing in my head.

Knowing Andy did not influence my art-making, but it was an important friendship for me. In our interactions, I found him to be quite profound. He operated with a keen understanding of Zen even though his public persona was somewhat frivolous. He asked me to be the editor of Interview when Robert Hayes passed away. Unfortunately, I was busy with my work at the time, and I didn’t feel I could do both.

Given the renewed attention, do you see your work being recontextualized in a way that feels accurate to you?

I wouldn’t classify this as renewed attention or being recontextualized. Neither ever went away. What has happened is that the culture is finally starting to catch up with the ideas in the work. As the culture shifts, people are more open to the ideas I am working with. There has always been strong interest and support for the work in Europe and from museums in America.

Many of the metaphysical ideas integral to the work were not widely known or discussed in America over the past several decades. However, there has definitely been a major shift in people’s awareness of the energy around them, their practice of yoga and their other spiritual beliefs. This awakening has definitely increased people’s understanding and response to the work.

It’s not unlike my father’s work with healing frequencies. In the 1960s, he was seen as dangerous and would be arrested for practicing medicine without a license, even though he never charged or touched anyone. Today, his work is seen as completely contemporary. His methods did not change; the culture finally woke up.