Julian Opie Interviews and Texts – from his own website Guardian Online – 2003

 
Dominic Murphy

 
Artist Julian Opie believes "public art" should mean more than prosaic local authority-commissioned sculptures of shopping bags outside malls. Dominic Murphy meets a man determined to bring his work to the people

Some people relish a stroll round an art gallery, but there are many others who loathe the idea and would rather eat their coats. So what if the work is taken out of this potentially intimidating environment and placed in the street or on the side of a building? Would more people be receptive to it?

 
So, with one of his new pieces, we are treated to a giant landscape covering the entire west wing of St Bart's hospital, London - not the first place you think of as a venue to see some art. And despite the size of this work, you still end up stumbling across it, tucked away in a square at the centre of a rambling collection of buildings. The surprise, however, is punctured by the blandness of the subject - a computer-graphic representation of a B-road in Hertfordshire - and the lame, neutral way it has been coloured in.

 
Opie's images consist of reality reduced to outlines, and strong yet flat colours where nuances have been swept away. It's a world of universal signage where landscapes evoke those catch-all instructions on children's toys and flat-pack furniture, and figures look like cardboard cut-out or the male and female silhouettes on toilet doors.

 
He begins by scanning a photograph of his subject into a computer, then draws the outline he wants. This can be output in a number of ways, depending on what Opie wants the finished result to be. He's collaborated with road sign manufacturers (to create, among other things, his animal sculptures outside Tate Modern) and has recently been working with a company in Sweden, emailing them his finished image which is then translated on to vinyl.

 
His two other new works - one up the road from St Bart's, in the foyer and facade of Sadler's Wells Theatre; the other at the front of the new Selfridges department store in Manchester - have been created this way. In the former, Opie depicts swimming figures and stretches of water in lengths of wallpaper; in the latter, it's lines of people walking past one another.

 
This adult master of the stick figure was, as a child, actually very good at drawing. He had a middle class upbringing in London, the son of a schoolteacher mother and an economist father (Roger Opie, who presented the Money Programme in the 1970s). By the time he was 14, Opie tells me, he would be painting every night, stretching his own canvasses and thinking how he could improve on a work in progress. "People said I should go to art school," he says, "which I thought was for losers." Encouraged by his mother, though, he attended Chelsea art college and then, in 1979, Goldsmith's, where his tutors included Richard Wentworth and Michael Craig-Martin.

 
He graduated with a first, but in the early 1980s there was not much of a culture of going on to become a professional artist (Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Gary Hume et al would not reach Goldsmith's until later in the decade, and the arts-bashing Thatcher administration was in its heyday). "The idea was you'd get a studio for the first 10 years or so, go travelling, maybe do an MA." But, typically, art-swot Opie got his head down straight away and within a year had an exhibition at the Lisson Gallery, in Marylebone, with whom he still works today.

 
Moving out of the gallery and into a public space, he says, has its risks. After all, Sadler's Wells foyer, where theatre-goers have their interval ice-creams, hardly has the industry prestige of Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art (he's also exhibiting there, from February 20). But this comes from someone who, like Andy Warhol, has never shied away from themes of mass production and commercialisation. In 2000, he produced the artwork for the hugely promoted Best of Blur CD. And for his last show at the Lisson, Opie designed the catalogue to look like a freebie product brochure you pick up somewhere like B&Q.

 
He's either a gambler or he doesn't really care.

2. South China Morning Post 2009

Julian Opie

 
I have around 35 artworks going, which are effectively focusing on the human figure. There are a few relating to landscapes, but most are centred on the human face and figure. There are some 3D works (statues), and also some which are moving/animated on computers.

 
There are some LED works - dancing and walking figures, which are fairly large.

 
The Primary gallery was where my first gallery shows started about 25 years ago.

 
There is a gallery in Seoul, called the Kukje gallery, where there is a show, and I have a gallery in Tokyo called Scai, and there are various works at each.

 
I have just had an exhibition is Seoul. I don't tend to go to art fairs myself. They are exciting to look around, but are not really an exhibition - more of a show.

 
I have worked with Alan Cristea. It is a print and multiple gallery, so I run the web shop through them.

 
I work with about 13 galleries around the world - they are all listed on the website.

 
I don't really know Hong Kong that well, I have visited there, and seen some of the islands, and spent a little time in Shanghai.

 
Computers are very central to what I do, as they act as a tool or a lens through which most things pass at one point. Some works are shown on computers/LCD screens, and LED (light emitting diodes) are generally used for larger scale, and are linked to/run by a computer. Paintings and sculptures are generally drawn on computer.

They may start with a real figure or landscape, which will then be transferred onto a computer to be out put in various ways.

 
I am focusing on commissioned portraits again to a degree, in the style of Manga/Japanese animation.

 
I am also moving towards 17th/18th century portraiture, which used to be used as the process of commissioned portraits, so I quite like mimicking that in a way. I have also done a family group.

 
I have done work on dancing and walking figures at the Royal Ballet, which was a project with a choreographer named Wayne McGregor. That was on stage earlier this year, and lots of projects have come out of that linked to dance. Some of these are on display in Hong Kong.

 
Seoul focuses on a ballet dancer and human movement. This can be close up - eyes/fingers moving, or more distant - whole body moving/people walking.

 
I have also done some outdoor commission work, which often focuses on large moving figures. I was reading about Hogarth - he said "true human beauty was in movement". I don't quite know what he means by that but thought it was interesting he thought the same. Humans are always moving, and especially humans we don't know we often see moving, on the street, walking, or outdoors.

Even sitting down humans are quite animated, so to depict humans in a realistic way we need to use movement, which is available now with computers.

Making images move used to be less easy, and used to be only available as films, with time stretches and a story to engage people. A painting in a gallery doesn't need a time stretch or a story; we can include movement but keep to a single picture. I am not the only person to do that - Warhol was doing that but without computers.

 
I have always combined movement with non-moving images, and to a degree I have solved that now.

We spend a lot of time and energy looking at screens, and I don't tell my kids not to got on the Internet, or watch the television too much - just tell them " not too much screens'.

They are the common denominator, and are a threat to the real world, but are also a great way of processing the world and understanding it.

 
I don't confine myself to working on the moving images - often even still images contain a lot movement.

 
I have spent a lot of time looking at Japanese wood block prints from the 19th century like Hiroshige and Utomaro, as lots of their works involve suggested movement:

Birds flying across the picture

People punting boats

Rain falling

Somebody smoking

Somebody playing with a child

 
I have made a series of landscapes after Hiroshige, and I also collect his work as did Van Gogh.

I set off in Japan with a GPS guided car following Hiroshige's route around mount Fuji.I took photos, and then put these images together.

 
I have always liked Japanese culture, as it is quite particular and refined, and has a certain melancholy to it. I think Hiroshige is one of the great geniuses of it. I have double computer screens that hang on the wall and show his landscapes - if you look closely you can see they are all moving, if not only small things:

Clouds pass by

Aeroplanes go over

Water ripples

Insects/birds fly around

 
This adds a narrative without there being a story, and makes people slow down when looking at something. There are so many images everywhere now, and something simple moving allows one to slow down, and gives time to stop and listen. It allows one to focus on our surroundings and allows it to enter your consciousness. Making pictures with small amount of movement allows people to just look, and let the art work or not work for you.

 
I am careful not to use the phrase "computer generated" as it suggests that the computer generated it. It doesn't, but simply acts as a sophisticated drawing tool. It is simple, sensible, and is easy to copy and change. I think of Digital cameras more like a mirror. We can use it to record images and information, and then take it back to the studio. It works like a series of mirrors.

 
Technology used to be more expensive and difficult, but can now be used as a constant feed for you. I don't think it is further away from reality. Art instead is a processing of reality. It is seen by someone and thought about and processed, and then drawn by someone. It often allows us in a strange way, to see things more clearly. Sometimes books or films are more understandable/digestible than real life.

 
Insight teaches us about the world through other people, whether they be a filmmaker, writer, or artist, and it adds to our understanding of the world. Artists process and dream about, and complain about, and praise the world around them, and it is the results of that that what we as an audience enjoy. It is a tool in order to look at reality, and enjoy it. You can use a pencil or computer, really what works best for you. Do, in a certain sense, what is easy, but take it to the level where it is better than you could ever expect to do.

In the 90s I used to copy the way computers imaged things, but do it by hand.In the end it is easier just to draw on the computer.

 
Generally, so far, I have felt websites are good for information as opposed to being artworks themselves. I am producing a new site now, and like an artwork it will have a theme or idea, it won't just be an online list of lots of my pictures. It is a means of communication and information. I also have an online shop. It is frustrating that I make a few multiples for museums, and they very quickly disappear, so it is an opportunity to have them available. My outlet is for prints without edition numbers for multiples, posters and catalogues. It is another option for getting work out there. Galleries and museums are relatively modern, there never used to be a system for showing work. I have made billboard projects and CD covers, installed works on building facades and on street corners, made book covers and my own artists books.

 
The Lisson Gallery stand at the fair will be just my work; I have tried this once or twice before. I think it gets away from the feeling that it's a bit of a jumble sale, as most galleries tend to show all the artists that they represent. Some galleries try to show just 1 or 2 artists, and it makes more sense for people who don't know the work that well. In China my work has not been shown so much there's a chance for people to catch up with it a bit.
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Sandy Nairne

 
Essential Portraits – Preface for Julian Opie Catalogue 2008

What is the essence of a portrait? What is the absolute minimum by which a person can be represented? What are the intrinsic elements that convey a person's specialness? How can a mix of colours and line convey someone's character or personality?

 
Julian Opie's portraits depict specific individuals, but simultaneously explore such longstanding and intricate questions. They engage with a five hundred year-old tradition - that of making two dimensional representations of people around us, whether in genre scenes as part of everyday life, or whether specially arranged to 'sit' or pose for a portrait. The questions span matters of recognition - is it this person? - through to those of expression - what is this person feeling?

 
In daily life, we instantly recognise people that we already know, whether meeting friends, family or colleagues, and this is equally true when observing public figures transmitted through the media on TV, the web or in newspapers or magazines. But after the first moment of recognition we naturally watch the person or search their image to understand the occasion and the mood. In doing so we take in the very finest gradations of facial expression, bodily shape, posture and shadow.

 
Perhaps even more closely than looking at a person, we survey and scan a portrait. Portraits are there to be interrogated.

 
Through his art, Julian Opie has long been examining how we, as viewers, see things. Even before his portraits, his sculptures and reliefs provided a way of depicting the world in which he balanced the apparently more nuanced styles of western art with graphic traditions of caricature and illustration (and even cartoon). His radical approach, which for a period involved offering his works to be ordered from a catalogue, has caused him to perfect the translation of object and person to art: from reality to artifice. Opie's are brilliantly constructed images, shaped and honed, whether sketched in metal, or crafted through computer software.

 
Julian Opie's more recent work makes links with British and Dutch painted portraits (from the 17th and 18th centuries) and Japanese prints (from the 18th and 19th). These are periods of art and culture when presentation - both pose and poise - had a special place. Whether from Europe or Japan there is something especially confident in these figures, something in their stance, that is often intended to convey wealth or intellectual substance. The source materials are generally public portraits for public consumption, with symbols and allegorical references sometimes added to offer additional references. But these costumes and poses are translated by Opie to contemporary individuals or families, from public to private, from the formal to informal, from the historic to the contemporary.

 
Once again the portrait is constructed in order to present an individual, but equally to question the nature of portraiture itself.

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SIGNS, 2006

 
In 2000 I was commissioned to make a work for a Munich based insurance company. I used a local company to produce two large glass wall panels back painted with portraits of a male and a female employee of the firm. The glass panels mimicked the corporate look of the offices. A number of wall mounted, glass paintings followed but these three statues were the first freestanding works. The paint is sandwiched between two sheets of glass, visible from both sides, creating a two dimensional sculpture. The backgrounds are left as clear glass allowing the figure to float free above the plinth.

 
Kiera has appeared in a number of projects. Originally she was the nanny of my elder daughter and was later employed as a studio assistant. She is now an artist working and exhibiting in London. She usually dresses in a grungy studenty way but turned out to be a great model.

Bijou is a professional fashion model, the first that I ever used. She also appears in a number of works in many different poses. This is the first frame from a film titled "Bijou gets undressed."

Monique, an art collector and businesswoman living outside Zurich, commissioned me to make portraits of her entire family in 1999. In 2003 she asked for another portrait of herself and I used the occasion to undertake an entire project based on her and her wardrobe. It became a kind of "mega portrait" looking at her from all angles in many different media.

The sighting of these works in a niche in front of a grand corporate building attempts to combine references to classical statuary and shop window display.

 
Having served as a design advisor during the building of The Baltic art museum in Newcastle, I was asked to create a system of signs that would alert people to the opening of the museum in 2001. Five versions of thirteen different animal signs were proposed and museums around the U.K. were free to choose a group to be installed outside their building. Three to thirteen animals can be installed together in any configuration depending on the location and the viewing angles. The physical objects and the colours are taken from actual road signs but the animals themselves are traced from small wooden toys.

 
When driving on the motorway I am often admire the huge signs on poles that stand beside the road in the countryside. Although they are there to give information they seem to also act as giant paintings. For a 1996 commission for Volkswagen in Wolfsburg I created a row of eight giant motorway signs along the canal opposite the car factory. Each sign depicted an animal, a person, a building or a car. Official road sign coding colours were used and the drawings mimicked the diagrammatic depictions found on actual road signs but retained some elements of other sources.

 
The animals depicted on these signs are from the countryside, if perhaps an imagined one. They have escaped into the city or are on their way back out, they seem to stay together for safety. The piece was originally conceived for a traffic island where the multiple poles might remind one of trees. There were no available traffic islands in Indianapolis so we settled on a busy street corner.

 
In 1996 I bought a set of toy animals in Vienna for my daughter whilst installing an exhibition. The shop specialised in wooden toys made in the Black Forest region of Southern Germany. Once home, some of the animals were removed to the studio, scanned and redrawn. At first they were painted on the sides of wooden boxes that could be moved around to create sculptural installations. When asked to make a lakeside project for the opening of the Kusthause Bregenz in Austria, I used a local wood company to create this life-sized, ( at least for some of the animals ) version.

 
The animals are solid wood like the originals, with a thin layer of paint, which reveals the wood grain. With a few pieces of painted, shaped wood, children are able to animate an area and enter into a different world. In a sense it doesn't matter too much what the elements represent. I have shown these sculptures in many countries, different arrangements tell different stories. In Bregenz the animals were arranged in a loose line following the direction of the lakeshore. In New York they grazed randomly beneath the trees. In Indianapolis they mount the ridge of a hill against the sky.

 
Even when there is no actual movement, the eye can read movement into a series of still drawings as it scans across them from left to right. This is how cartoon strips often work. While working on an animated film of a figure walking I noticed that placing the drawings in a row had this effect. For a large-scale commission in Manchester, England, I broke three walking films down into single frames.

 
The resulting string of drawings animated the glass facade of a department store and a number of interior walls. I went further for a poster campaign in the Tokyo subway and had two or more figures walking in both directions in the same strip. The IMA's glass facade is made up of four rows of forty-five vertical pains of glass, almost acting as blank reels of cine film. It was a simple matter to place every other frame of four walking films on every other window to create an image of movement and because the facade is curved, of circulation.

 
I have used dancing as well but walking has proved the most useful and natural human movement for me. A person walking is as likely as one standing still, in fact when it is people we don't know, it is more likely. My experience of strangers is that they are most often seen walking. By drawing a lot of walking people I have realized how different and telling each persons gait is. I walk in an ape like fashion, arms hanging forward. Some men and most women keep their backs straighter and their arms sway behind them as well as in front. Men take varying but longer strides, some people glide while others bounce or sway. I can keep detail to a minimum while gaining a sense of character by drawing these particularities.

 
I have used vinyl again on this project. Vinyl is poured plastic and therefore similar to paint but instead of being brushed into shape it is cut from a roll by a computer guided knife. It gives me a flat characterless surface that is quick to read and is similar to the look of the computer drawings. I first noticed vinyl in America and it has become the common look of public imagery and signage in most places that I go. I like to use standard, predictable materials and then insert my own language and thoughts.

 
Bruce is a professional dancer with the Ballet Rambert in London. His partner commissioned me to draw his portrait and in the process I used him as a model for this film. Suzanne is a fashion designer and writer but she also collects art. She was buying one of my prints when my gallerist noticed her walk and suggested that I might like to draw her. I have made five films of her walking so far. In both cases the model was asked to walk on a walking machine in various outfits and at various speeds.

 
The resulting video footage was downloaded onto the computer where the necessary section can be edited and stored as single frames. At twenty-four frames per second a double stride is described by around forty frames. Each frame is drawn over and these drawings are laid on top of each other and "smoothed out". A friend then animates the frames and after further smoothing to eradicate any jumps, the film is translated into a format that can be played by the LED ( light emitting diode ) panels. I link the first frame with the last creating a loop that allows the figure to walk continuously, (easier said than done).

 
The figures are drawn in a diagrammatic fashion based on public signage systems. They employ a minimum of detail omitting neck and feet, whilst retaining, through stance, clothes and movement, particularities that reveal the identity and presence of the model. One of the inspirations for these works was the small LED horse to be found on taxi meters in Korea. These are simply animated to appear to gallop whilst the meter is running. Such a small, pathetic animation seemed to have such drama and I liked the way that motion became almost still. The first three resulting, double sided, walking LED monoliths were placed on marble plinths in the lobby of a Tokyo office building in 2002. The plinths emphasize the statues like quality of the figures.