Armed with my camera and recorder, I set off to see the shy and reclusive, British artist, Brett, at his studio; the meeting had been on-again, off-again for months, but he finally had agreed.
“My life is not very interesting and I am not very interesting.”
I was offered an unwashed, paint-covered mug of coffee…instant.
“No alcohol in the studio—fogs the mind and encourages people to stay longer.”
He removed a sack from a block of marble and kicked away brushes and tools on the floor to give me a place to sit.
“I like to keep my stuff on the floor; it’s easier to find.”
The massive studio, or ‘his private world,’ as he calls it, is chaos: canvases in various stages of abandonment, sacks of plaster, clay, incomplete sculptures, and, amid all the landfill mayhem, a pristine, completed oil painting on one of the many easles…if I were to take ‘the photo,’ this would have been it.
“No, don’t photograph that, I don’t know if I like it or not yet; it’s missing the magic. Sorry about the mess, I like chaos, there is always a possibility of making an image or something I hadn’t thought of before, in chaos.”
Clearly Brett did not want me here and was trying to avoid the interview. The works were so diverse (as are the lighting systems for his all-night working routine) ranging from Carravagiesque oil paintings to a huge clay monkey with a paint brush in one hand, squeezing a tube of paint between its toes…
“My first self-portrait!”
We both howled with laughter and the ice was broken.
To understand Brett’s work is to understand he is contradictory. He is a loner though loves company; his work is upbeat optimistic yet he has an innate pessimism; he is gentle but has little time for weakness in others, and no patience with human foibles or small vanities, and is easily bored.
Everything he does is different: his constant sense of the tragic and the comic, his fear of being pinned down or labeled; he has little time for posterity or for the trappings of fame. He has kept a freshness and the enthusiasm of a youth before life becomes muddied, and wears the surprised expression of a child who has just heard a marvelous joke and wishes to share it.
Our conversation: (TM = Thierry Mauder; B = Brett)
TM Could you tell me a little about your current work?
B If I could tell you, why would I bother to paint it?
TM Then why do you paint and sculpt?
B Our existence is so banal that one may as well try to make a kind of grandeur of it; I like to take the ordinary and make something extraordinary. I paint and sculpt to try and excite myself, which doesn’t always happen, so I try again and again.
TM Banal? Do you like life?
B Life, I love it! Artists are foolish romantics, lovers of life, but sometimes I think of the last great speech from Macbeth, it’s a race against time and sometimes I wonder about our significance.
TM You are a master of classical drawing, painting, and sculpture…
B Really? I don’t know. I believe art is for everybody but there are few concerned with painting today, that is, with attempting to make the idea and technique inseparable. Painting and sculpting is like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle except one keeps finding a fragment which does not fit. A bit like my life really!
TM Your work touches on both the classical and modern, how would you describe yourself?
B Do I have to do this? I don’t know; why make it so complicated? If I say ‘classical,’ people believe they understand it; if I say ‘modern,’ people think they need to understand it or feel hoaxed by it which is crazy because they are hoaxed every day of their lives by everything around them. Modern art is a very simple thing; it’s no more complex than art has been in the past. Modern art is the grin without the cat, or should I say, the sensation of life without the boredom of conveyance. I suppose my art is the grin and the cat.
TM So what do you make of the likes of Damien Hirst?
B Nice enough man though horribly self-satisfied because he is a successful artist; the fact that his work is terrible has occurred to no one! Tracy Emin, on the other hand, is lovely.
TM You know many of the great artists of today, would you like to tell me about your involvement with them?
B Gilbert and George are absolute gentlemen.
TM That’s it?
B Yes, that’s it, the rest don’t need defending.
TM I see you have returned to large scale canvases, what’s the reason?
B The gallery has big walls.
TM And do you work for a particular market or kind of collector?
B I used to work for others…I was a ‘people pleaser,’ but really the only pleasure is to work for oneself and hope that sometimes you’ll do something that you really want. Most artists are exhibitionists and I also maybe, but to myself rather than the public; art is a way of life.
TM And how do you know when you have made something you really want?
B When a piece works, it’s a creative accident. It works from the moment when consciously I don’t know what I am doing.
TM You make it sound so simple.
B Maybe, but it’s not cricket. The rules are there to be broken, and if you can break them to your advantage, you will find that the greatest luck goes to the artist who has the sensibility to make the most of the luck which one is given at any one time, and you hope the paints work with you and everything will come together with a bang, and for one moment one will have fulfilled what one wants to do.
TM Does that happen often?
B From time to time; I suppose that’s the reason why nine-tenths of even the greatest artists’ work is boring. I would love to go through my work and cut out all the boring stuff and just leave the best things, then I would have something very interesting.
TM How can an ordinary person judge what is good or bad art, and do you think there is any point in talking about art at all?
B Well, the critics tell them don’t they? And in the most complicated way, I suppose to justify their jobs. People cannot go wrong when they criticize; one is always more vulnerable when they praise! Anyway, what is an ordinary person? I am an ordinary person and art is a fascinating subject because people reveal themselves talking about art; you know, their attitude to life.
TM What do you think of photography as an art form?
B Firstly the cameras are pieces of art in themselves—sculptures, exquisite. Photographs brought me to art—in my Biology book as a child, I saw Muybridge’s motion photos, I was hooked—the movement! Munch’s Scream is second to the famous photo of the naked girl running in Vietnam—the sheer pain; the human cry is deafening; it makes me shudder to see it; no one could paint that feeling; just look at her shoulders.
TM So where do you think you fit into all this? We have had so many movements: impressionist, realist, abstract, action art, installation, video art, etc.
B Fit into what exactly? It’s all art. If artists stopped trying to be original and used their energy on doing good work, the art world would be a better and more exciting place; it’s becoming boring, the energy has gone. We are not here to reinvent the wheel. Realistic art is not real; abstract art is decorative pattern making and has nothing to anchor it by. Pollack’s paintings look like old lace; at least De Kooning was a little figurative. Rembrandt in his old age was the greatest action painter ever. Video art was done by Warhol, so what exactly is there to fit into? I just steal all the best bits from everyone and put it together as I see it.
TM So what interests you?
B Life. All artists are lovers—lovers of life. I want to see how one can set the trap so that life will come over more vividly and powerfully. So why do I paint for myself? Not to say how clever I am, but how can I trap this fleeting thing, this living sensation.
TM Do you ever paint the unhappy side of life?
B What I do now is just the shadow of that, but, yes, I did once…a series on homosexual despair. It was a dumb series because I realized that heterosexuals had the same despair, so I destroyed the series; I was stupid trying to be clever.
TM So where is all your work leading to? You paint academic portraits, marble sculptures, funky paintings, stained glass, classical paintings, crazy fiberglass animals in boots; what next?
B I don’t know, but what I do know is one day all of this madness will pull together to become something. There is a reason I have done all this and I don’t know how or when it will all happen, but it will when the time is right…a bit like the puzzle, but this time all these fragments will suddenly fit. Can you imagine how exciting that will be?!
TM We still have not really discussed your work.
B Good and why should we; it speaks for itself. Did you like your coffee? I put salt in it!
TM I know.
I left with a small bronze that Brett gave me but felt none the wiser after seeing so much wonderful work and unequalled talent. I left to let the mischievous monkey play privately and wondered if Brett lives in the reverse shadow of his work.
Brett Gallery 
