The Art World Works From Home: Artist William Wegman Is Doing a Lot of Non-Dog Paintings and Playing Ping Pong Four Times a Day

The art world may be on
lockdown, but it certainly doesn’t stop. During this unprecedented
time, we’re checking in with art-world professionals, collectors,
and artists to get a glimpse into how they’re working from
home.

We recently caught up with
artist and photographer William Wegman, who’s taken refuge in
Columbia County with his family and two Weimaraners, Flo and
Topper. In his sunlit studio in the Hudson Valley, he’s been
painting up a storm and recently debuted a virtual show of new
work at Sperone Westwater. 

Read on to learn about how
corona times have shaped Wegman’s recent work, how he’s spending
his spare time upstate, and how his famous dogs are holding up with
everybody at home.

Where is your new “office”?

We’re upstate in Columbia County
near the apple orchards, where I have a home and studio. We had a
good reason to leave town anyway since our residence in New York
City is being renovated and they had to stop construction there
abruptly, in early March. So we moved up here and that worked out
really well for us—we’re lucky that we had a place to go
to. 

My wife Christine’s here with
me, and our son stays with us. Our daughter is here now, too. She
was in Venice during the peak of the corona stuff, but she got out
at the end of February. She works at the Guggenheim. It’s nice to
be here together, all six of us—with the two dogs, the two kids.
It’s different. 

What are you working on right now? 

I recently opened a virtual show
of paintings I made over the last three months, which incorporate
postcards from a collection I’ve amassed over the years. I didn’t
go into that intentionally, I’ve just kept a lot of them and people
have given me theirs—other artists, collectors, my sister, friends,
and so forth. If I ever need
one specifically and it gets ruined in a transfer or something,
I’ll look online for [a replacement]. I probably have about 10,000 postcards. What’s
funny is I kind of know every single one, in a
way. 

When I first started painting
again, after giving it up in art school in the ’80s, I turned to
the encyclopedias that I loved as a child—The New Book of
Knowledge, dreamy ones like that—and used the images I’d find
inside for my paintings. Somehow the postcards remind me a little
of those. They present sort of a starting place. 

Lately, I’ve also been working
on some new paintings without postcards, inspired by television,
frames, Mondrian, and wood paneling. 

How has your work changed now that you’re doing it from
home?

I’m more intensely painting.
Before, I would come up on weekends and use the studio here since
my studio in New York was in such upheaval.This is really my
painting area. I’m doing much less photography compared to what I
do back in the city, mostly because I don’t have my assistants with
me, like Jason, who hooks up the lights and helps with the staging.
So I’m really concentrating on painting, and it’s just been really
thriving. 

I think what’s also been
different is that the days go by much more quickly. There are these
patterns that are repeated over and over again that you sort of
fall into. Every day is the same—you wake up, you bike ride with
the dogs, you walk across the field, you go to the studio, and then
go for another bike ride and grab something to eat in another
building, then you go back to painting. So you’re always going back
and forth to it.

Since my family’s here, I do the
same things outside of work, too. My son and I play four ping pong
games a day in the afternoon and through the evening. I go for a
walk on the ridge with the dogs almost every night after that. And
then I begin again. 

What are you reading, both online and off?

I’m reading The Man
Without Qualities [by Robert Musil] which is about 3,000
pages. I finished the first book, and now I’m starting the second
one. I’m also reading Elective Affinities [by
Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe]. I read a lot at
night. 

I tend to like really long books
that I can spend practically the whole year on. I remember
reading War and
Peace and
Remembrance of Things
Past in school and
breaking down after I finished them. Because you sort of
live with those stories for so long, and then suddenly
they’re gone.  

Have you visited any good virtual exhibitions
recently?

When things pop up on my phone,
I usually look at them. A lot of my friends have done things, like
Robert Kushner and so forth. I’m also always sending pictures from
my phone to everybody that I know and asking how they’re doing.
It’s good to keep in touch with people digitally. I’ve been writing
more emails. 

Have you taken up any new hobbies?

I would say no
[laughs]. But one thing that I don’t miss, which
surprised me, is watching sports on TV. Besides being addicted to
playing hockey, I was addicted to watching it and watching all of
the news about it, and I’m actually happy that that’s not
there. 

This isn’t new, but I’ve been
listening to a lot of classical music, especially 17th century
music, which I love. I named my daughter Lola—her middle name is
Bird—after William Bird, the Elizabethan composer. I always listen
to music in the studio. And I tend to listen to 20th century music
sometimes, too, so I don’t get too romantically attached and
delusional about what I’m doing. 

If you’re feeling stuck while self-isolating, what’s your
best method for getting un-stuck?

I’ve never had a problem with
getting stuck for more than 45 minutes, but that 45 minutes is kind
of terrifying. I usually just go out and come back and look at the
work again, but the paintings always sort of haunt me. It’s always
the upper left-hand corner or something that’s a problem, and with
the postcards I have to sift through thousands of cards that will
get me into that area or out of it. It’s constant.

What was the last TV show, movie, or YouTube video you
watched?

I’ve been watching a lot of
shows and movies with my son. We’ve plowed through all of the “Ray
Donovan” seasons and “Fauda,” the Israeli show. That’s another part
of ‘the pattern.’ 

If you could have one famous work of art with you, what would
it be?

I like [Hans] Memling [laughs]. One of those Flemish things. I think an
altarpiece would be fun to look at. Roger van der Weyden, something
like that? Could be interesting. 

Favorite recipe to cook or thing to eat at home?

I always make fires outside, and
as the men do, I grill the meat. So today we’re grilling salmon by
the fireplace. That’s my job. Shopping’s interesting now, because
you have to quietly tiptoe into stores and bags are left outside
for you. So cooking and preparing food when you can’t go to
restaurants, not that I ever did that often before, is a totally
different experience. 

For breakfast, I like to have
espresso with steamed milk. Everyone else has breakfast and I
don’t. There’s a joke about me in this house. My parents used to
visit us when they were alive and we’d always make lunch for them
after their three-hour drive from western Massachusetts. We’d have
this whole lunch spread for them. But when they got here they’d
say, “That’s okay Billy, we ate at Cracker
Barrel.” So that’s my
joke when Christine makes breakfast or lunch for me here. I’ll just
say, “That’s okay Christine, I ate at Cracker Barrel.”

What are you most looking forward to doing once social
distancing has been lifted?

Playing hockey. I miss the
Chelsea Piers and my friends there and my team, my coaches, and the
ice. I really love skating, and I’m actually going to play in a
senior tournament for people over 70 in Nashville, unless it’s
cancelled, at the end of July. That should be
entertaining.

If it happens, my son, Atlas,
who has his own airplane, will fly me down there. We’ve been flying
a lot together. We flew up to Maine two weeks ago and visited my
sister. The plane is about one mile from our house, and Atlas has a
hanger there, in Columbia County airport.

I feel a little guilty about
it. I’m definitely
having a good time, but you feel for people. I’ve been thinking
about all the people at the Chelsea Piers, and the barber that I
went to, the pilates person that I trained with, the Chinese
masseuse down the street… all of those people and places that are
very dear to me. I don’t know where they are right now, and I’m
sure they haven’t reopened yet. 

How are the dogs?

They’re great. They’re
slumped down beside me right now. Wherever I go, they go.
Especially the boy dog, Topper, who looks like me. The girl dog,
Flo, sort of follows Christine around. They sleep in bed with us,
with both dogs sort of crushed against Christine, but Flo in
particular claims her and Topper just stares at me
always.

These two dogs love both the
city and the country so they don’t suffer as much as my past ten
did. They’re half brother and sister, so they’re very competitive
and friendly at the same time with one another. And of course they
love being able to run all over the place and have us all
here. 

The post The Art World Works From Home: Artist William
Wegman Is Doing a Lot of Non-Dog Paintings and Playing Ping Pong
Four Times a Day appeared first on artnet News.