Text by Julia Masi / FFanzeen, 1983 / 2021
mages from the Internet
WALTER
STEDING: Essence of an Artist [1983 Interview]
This
article was originally published in FFanzeen, issue #11, dated 1983. It was written
by Julia Masi.
Currently, Walter Steding is a painter and actor who writes film scores and is in the group Crazy Mary, based in New York City where he resides. This is a companion piece to one Julia wrote in Issue #10, reprinted HERE. – RBF, 2021
His special loft on the Bowery is
littered with the canvases of his labor. Portraits of pop-culture aristocracy,
like Andy Warhol and Deborah Harry, sit on the chairs and sleep on the floor. A
painting of a bright blue chair rests against the wall. The furnishings are
sparse: a table, his synthesizer, and a clock. In the corner, he’s sectioned
off a rustic little bedroom, so neat and compact that it looks like it was
built for a movie set, furnished mostly with things he’s found in other people’s
garbage.
Simplicity is the essence of Walter Steding’s
style. His music and his art, like his loft, are uncluttered. There is a child-like
wonder in his work. Some of his paintings show cheekbones or eyes much wider
than God would mercifully bestow on anyone. And his songs and performance style
are as unpretentious as entertainment can get. Yet, there is great sophistication
in how every line, note and color is calculated to transmute his feelings.
“To be a musician and live on the Lower
East Side, there is a kind of feel about society, about the way things are. Graffiti
artists or whatever, there is always a movement that suggests how people are.
That’s always the way it is with art,” comments Walter. “The paintings come
from the same kind of thought that I live and experience what is happening. I
try to express the way things are through the music and the painting so they’re
similar in the sense that I see colors. Like green – a typical industrial
restroom color. It really doesn’t say much, but in not saying much, it says a
lot. And the same thing with my tunes. I try to keep them really simple. I work
with a really simple formula. Even though the format is simple and I only use a
few colors it’s the combination of those colors that create the music. Maybe I
just use the standard 4/4 beat, but it’s what I apply to that.
“I’m painting portraits but I’m not
painting portraits in the same way as (John Singleton) Copley (d. 1815) or any
other great portrait painter painted because they wanted to create a likeness.
I’m painting portraits in an era when photography has existed for almost 100
years. And it’s easier to take a person’s image and have that image reflected on
chemicals that separate various tones of light and create an image instantly.
Then why do a portrait? It’s much easier to take a picture. But what I am is a
portrait painter working with paints in the year 1983, and that’s what it is.
It’s me, the portrait painter. It’s not the portrait itself. The painting is insignificant
compared to the fact that I’m doing it. And by the looks of my paintings, that’s
immediately revealed.
“I try to make it look like there’s a
background. There’s no portrait there then – flash – someone is there! And they
are portraits that you can see are done after the invention of photography to
help me get a likeness, but I really work from a mental perspective or how a
person would appear.”
Actually, Walter doesn’t even need a photograph
to create a mental image of a person. He has that special kind of sensitivity that
gives you the impression that he can read a person’s face as easily as he can
read a letter. And when he reads letters, he absorbs every detail and nuance of
a person’s personality so fully that he’s able to create a convincing character
on canvas. Some of the faces in Walter’s exhibit at the Semaforte Gallery last
Spring were inspired by a box of letters that he found in the garbage. Some of
the letters date back to the early 1800s. Most of the correspondence in between
three men – Jordean, Matheson and Dent – the families who set up the Hong Kong
Shanghai Bank, the institution that, in this day, sets the standard for gold
prices in the Western world. These letters document the beginnings of our economic
system, the common market, opium/slave trade and economic crash.
It’s doubtful that anyone who has
attended Walter’s exhibit really knows exactly what Jordean, Matheson or Dent
looked like, but Walter’s images are so strong you believe that they’re
accurate.
And just in glancing around his loft
you can see what he’s learned from the letters and get a clue to his perception
of the evolution of America’s society.
“In the olden days, even though you
didn’t have any dollars, you had opportunity because you could go out West,
meet some savage Indians and give them trinkets for furs and sell them and get
cash for it. And if not cash, you could take those furs to a foreign country,
like in China, because furs became fashionable, so they could take those furs
and trade them for tea. And then they could take the tea and bring it back and
sell the tea here.
“People came to this country with
nothing, like John Jacob Astor and Steven Gerard and Vanderbilt. Individuals
who could actually go out and make a fortune.
“In today’s world, an individual can
no longer go out into the wilderness and start a trade. It’s all tied up by
those original families who have kept their money and survived the crash, ‘cause
they never had it to lose in the first, since they were the ones who were
causing the crashes. Today, for anyone to accomplish any achievement
monetarily, the only thing you can sell is a kind of software, and that’s
selling an idea that’s selling yourself. You become a famous actor. You become
a famous pop musician. You can start from nothing and make a lot of money. But
you can’t go into the world and dig up Uranium and convert it into nuclear
energy on your own. You have to have a whole team of physicists and a whole
complex of other people. The only way you can do it today, the only field, is
this kind of mental activity.”
In the not-so-distant future, Walter worries
that history will repeat itself. When he reads the daily newspapers, he often
notices how certain events are similar to situations cited in the letters. For instance,
a recent report claims that the U.S. government will be printing more money to counteract
inflation. When this situation was tried in the past, it had quickly led to an
economic crash. He feels fortunate to have found these letters and to have
learned so much from them.
“Because I have this knowledge, I see
my position as being a communicator, even through my music. My music is part of
my art. It says on my contract ‘recording artist.’ It doesn’t say ‘pop star’ or
anything like that. It says recording artist because that’s what I am. I write
all of the songs. I produced them. I carry the records on my back and take them
to the stores. And what’s in these songs is what I feel. What’s in these songs
is a kind of message. They’re not saying ‘Let’s revolt’ or anything like that.
They’re saying, ‘Let’s have compassion for one another, ‘cause we’re all in
this together.’
“That’s why I don’t want to stand up
there and create an antagonistic mood. The whole punk thing was great because
it made its statement, but now let’s definitely go on. You have to find
compassion for your audience.”
If there is any gift Walter could give
his audience, it would be “non-violence. Just getting along with each other.
There’s always a way for people to become one with their environment or nature
or whatever.
“I always try to be close with nature.
I make sure I get in the woods.” His basic philosophy of life is “not to
believe in anything except what exists. It’s not my will to believe anything.
Whenever you say, ‘I believe,’ you don’t believe. Because it’s not your will to
believe anything. It’s your position to accept what is correct. And then you leverage
your mind open for that source to come direct and without your will interfering.
“It’s when you start to think that these
ideas are your own, that’s when they stop. What I do, I don’t feel is my own
(ideas). I like to get ideas out and perpetuate. Let someone else take over.
Just set it down. I feel that there is a never-ending source. The more things
that you can express and you put out, the more ideas you will get.
“I hope I can paint now, and if I get discouraged
with the painting, I can be a writer or play music.”
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