Meet the Wildly Prolific Painter Who’s Made Album Covers for Pavement, Silver Jews, and Extra

Indie bookstores; scuzzy rock bars; quirky espresso retailers; that bizarre older man’s home the place the school children hang around; a David Chang restaurant; numerous report shops. In the event you’ve ever hung out in any of those locations, there’s a great likelihood you’ve seen a Steve Keene portray—and when you’ve seen one, it’s laborious to not see them in every single place. Keene has bought or given away greater than 300,000 works over the course of his life, with a method made much more distinct by his explicit style in music. His most recognizable works are his album cowl tributes, facsimiles of basic indie rock albums rendered in daring, chunky strokes. In the event you’re into the indie rock of a sure period, Keene’s work feels notably acquainted, since he’s made unique album covers for his buddies in Pavement (Wowee Zowee), Silver Jews (The Arizona Report), and the Apples in Stereo (Enjoyable Trick Noisemaker), amongst others. But regardless of his ubiquity, he’s remained in relative obscurity as hovering skyscrapers have surrounded his one-story studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. You should buy six random work for simply $70 on his web site.

The Steve Keene Artwork Guide is the primary retrospective of his profession, a sprawling and lovingly organized assortment of high-resolution pictures of Keene’s decidedly low-res artwork. His apply is as a lot artisan as artist, rooted in a handbook printmaking course of designed to provide as many individuals as potential an opportunity to have the visceral expertise of proudly owning a bodily piece of artwork. Fairly probably essentially the most prolific American artist of all time, the Yale artwork school-trained painter has remained an outsider in a “conventional” artwork world that seeks to maximise artwork’s monetary capital, as an alternative discovering neighborhood in a DIY scene constructed on a love for the music. “A number of folks say ’artwork must be accessible to everybody’ however Steve actually put this into motion,” says Superchunk’s Mac McCaughan. And in case you’ve ever been fortunate sufficient to attend a Steve Keene present, it seemingly resembled a rock live performance, with Keene posted up at his customized easels amid dozens of work and a boisterous crowd, furiously swiping from canvas to canvas with the identical colour on his brush. Onlookers climb up and seize completed items they need to take dwelling, shoving a couple of {dollars} within the money field on the best way out.

In an interview at his dwelling studio, Keene spoke with Pitchfork about his life in and round music.

Pitchfork: I’ve learn quite a bit about your exhibits, the place you do reside demos and paint lots of of works, and folks declare them with little stickers. The interactive nature of it sounds very very similar to a rock present.

Steve Keene: It’s meant to. They’re good work, however the entire ritual is what provides it which means. I didn’t actually develop up on punk music, however my spouse and I have been on the school radio station when she went to UVA. You’re surrounded by a lot creativity—the opposite DJs are artistic, but additionally the tens of hundreds of albums from the previous 40 years, all their funky, bizarre paintings, all their liner notes. It’s simply so jam-packed, and 99 p.c of them are forgotten. It was kind of this completely different thought about how, gosh, I’m gonna be forgotten too. So why don’t I’ve enjoyable with this? And why don’t I make artwork really feel such as you’re going to a present, shopping for a T-shirt or a CD?

I by no means actually bought turned on by concepts in regards to the artwork world, or the way you’re speculated to promote your work for $9,000. As soon as I began mainly making a gift of my work, I felt actually wanted, you realize? It felt like, wow, folks actually admire you doing one thing completely different. I’m beginning to really feel like the complete nation is my artwork gallery now, as a result of they’re throughout—there’s 300,000 of them.

After I lived in Williamsburg, I visited considered one of your open studio days and acquired a pair of work for like $7. Now it looks like you promote most of your work in your web site, in random batches; lots of them flip up on eBay with important markup. Does that trouble you?

One of many causes Dave Matthews grew to become large is as a result of followers have been inspired to make tapes—copying, just like the Grateful Lifeless. It’s so bizarre that folks wouldn’t like that, as a result of that’s the way you get the knowledge out. It’s like seeing any person from highschool who you forgot about for 30 years or one thing like that—it’s actually great.