Stanford Arts Review: What first seriously drew you to
art, pardon the pun?
Peter Mann: I definitely drew all the time as a
kid. I was into cartooning and drawing action heroes and that kind of
thing. I first got serious about art in college, especially in my
semester abroad in Spain. My friend brought watercolors, and I just
sucked at them. My first reaction was that I sucked at art, that all
my cartooning had been no good. I had just read Nietzsche's The
Birth of Tragedy and had become
convinced that art was the highest form of living. God this is going
to sound so pretentious in interview. So through an act of will I
threw myself into art back in college.
SAR:
Who are some of your major influences?
PM: I love German expressionism. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Darger, who's this crazy outsider artist who was like a William Blake of the 20th century.
PM: I love German expressionism. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Darger, who's this crazy outsider artist who was like a William Blake of the 20th century.
SAR:
Do you find yourself trying to emulate their style?
PM: I find myself copying the German expressionist style somewhat, especially Egon Schiele. But mostly I try to do my own style. I do think that the best way to learn is to try to copy the masters. I draw from lots of photographs now.
PM: I find myself copying the German expressionist style somewhat, especially Egon Schiele. But mostly I try to do my own style. I do think that the best way to learn is to try to copy the masters. I draw from lots of photographs now.
SAR:
So you've just finished a series in which you made a unique drawing
on every page of Don Quixote.
Are you trying to sell those pieces?
PM: Actually, what I did was go to bookstores around the city and leave the pages inside of books with a label that had my website on it. I've already heard back from some people who got the pieces and responded and registered their pieces with me.
PM: Actually, what I did was go to bookstores around the city and leave the pages inside of books with a label that had my website on it. I've already heard back from some people who got the pieces and responded and registered their pieces with me.
SAR:
What was the selection process for the books you left them in?
PM:
Well, I think that since Don Quixote
was the birth of the novel, I had a kind of free range with which
books I could leave them in. So some were books that had really
affected me, others were books by authors that I enjoyed but hadn't
gotten around to reading yet. It was like stamping the books with my
own interests.
SAR:
Are you interested in this kind of guerrilla art?
PM:
This was my first foray into it. I was interested in street art that
could be privately or intimately experienced. Street art doesn't
really turn me on visually, so I guess in keeping with my bookish
nature I wanted to do it through this setting. Like street art for
neurotics.
SAR:
Who are some contemporary artists you're into?
PM:
Andrew Schoultz, William Kentridge, David Shrigley. I'm mostly into
graphic designers, like Joe Sacco and R. Crumb, if he counts as
contemporary art. He's still alive, right? The piece that's moved me
the most lately is by Christopher Marclay, “The Clock.” It's a
24-hour film of movie characters referencing the time of day. It blew
my mind when I first saw it.
SAR:
Do you have an artist's statement?
PM:
No, I'm very much anti-artist's statement. I wrote a manifesto
against them a while ago. “The Found Manifesto of Unhinged
Lyricism.” You can probably find it online.
You
most certainly can.
Great ending! I liked the interview, but I wish you had gotten more details out of him about leaving his work in books. So cool. Actually, I wish it was more detailed in general, like you skimmed over a lot of topics but didn't really dig into anything. Also, asking him about his influences might be informative if the names weren't so obscure. It might have helped to approach the interview as if you were coming from an ignorant perspective and asked him to explain more. Interesting stuff though!
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