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Not two minutes into my Zoom interview with the revered L.A. artist Henry Taylor and he starts speaking to me in Swahili. I instinctively answer in Spanish because it’s the only other language I know, and then he asks me where I am. I tell Taylor I am home, in my neighborhood, which as it turns out is also his neighborhood. “You better get over here and do this interview in person!” he says in a way that indicates he’s allergic to any false sense of pretense or formality, instead more interested in letting the moment lead him and allowing the moment to shift and mutate. I’m down. Why does no one want to be spontaneous anymore? I drive the 73 seconds it takes me to get to Taylor’s Craftsman, greeting him in the front yard where he’s watering a lush landscape, a congregation of monarch butterflies fluttering around him. In his living room, I pull up an ottoman as Taylor leans back in a worn-in caramel leather armchair close to an open window. Sunlight and the smoke of an American Spirit that Taylor is inhaling fill the space, which is scattered with his own work and that of others, including his young daughter, Epic. On the small table in front of us there are two printed photos from one of his last meetings with his mentor, James Jarvaise.
I’m here to talk to Taylor about his show at Hauser & Wirth, “Sometimes a straight line has to be crooked,” which puts his work in the literal and proverbial room with the work of Jarvaise, a California Modernist who was a part of the iconic survey “Sixteen Americans” at the Museum of Modern Art. Jarvaise worked as a beloved art teacher and the head of the fine arts department at Oxnard College, where he taught Taylor in the ’80s and encouraged him to attend CalArts. Jarvaise’s mythology looms large in Taylor’s lore. He conjures him in conversation whenever possible, for as long as I can read back, and has said if he could relive anything, it would be time with his mother and a critique with Jarvaise. Taylor credits Jarvaise with being the first person to see him — really see him — as an artist. We’re led to believe that without Jarvaise, there would be no Taylor.
The title of the show “Sometimes a straight line has to be crooked” is a reference to a Jarvaise-ism about painting. In other words: Let things flow, allow for moments of spontaneity. It resonated with Taylor on a subterranean level — maybe because it already reflected his natural mode of being — forever shaping the way he makes work. In some ways it feels like we’re following Jarvaise’s advice while having this conversation. In reflecting on his connection to the artist, Taylor also talks to me about growing up close to his mom, his dad having the same birthday as Picasso (Oct. 25), being the youngest of eight siblings in Oxnard, sports metaphors, the way he remembers Michelle Obama’s face when he was painting her portrait (sphinx-like), doing studio visits with Kendrick Lamar, who featured Taylor’s work in the set design on one of his tours, or Pharrell, who incorporated Taylor’s work into his debut Louis Vuitton collection and this year invited Taylor to the Met Gala, where he again included Taylor’s portraiture in the pieces that walked the carpet.
There are digressions, sure. But all of them, in their way, are connected. Through Taylor’s life and career, a profound energetic exchange has happened between the people he sits across from — subjects to mentors, translated in his emotive portraits, in his sculpture. Nowhere is that more obvious than in this show, than in his relationship with Jarvaise. In the photos Taylor shares, Jarvaise is at his dining room table, a glass of wine sitting next to him, and he looks to be discussing two of Taylor’s paintings, which are now featured in the Hauser & Wirth show. Jarvaise has a cool that’s magnetic and obvious — even through a grainy 10-year-old photo taken while he was in his 90s. Sometimes there are multiple straight lines and they all have to be crooked, but with Taylor they lead to the same place: paying homage.
Julissa James: What I really loved about this show was that your work and Jarvaise’s work almost seemed to be kicking it, hanging out.
Henry Taylor: I liken it like this: You get somebody that’s, say, fresh in the NBA, or fresh in any kind of sport, and there’s an All Star Game, for example. You’re 22 and you get to play with Kobe. You’re excited to be on the same court. That’s how I felt [with the show]: I’m up here hanging with my mentor, and it’s humbling because it’s an honor for those rookies to be playing with veterans. When I walk down the street, somebody might say, “You inspire me.” I’m like [confused look]. I’m kind of shocked because it was such a struggle when I was coming up. There weren’t a lot of Black artists. So it’s like that: “Damn, I’m here with you? I can’t believe it.”
JJ: How many times did you take Jarvaise’s class at Oxnard College?
HT: [Eight times between spring 1984 and fall 1989.] There were students there that took him for eight years, 10 years. He would just retitle the classes so the students could come back and repeat, because he was revered and loved and admired. I’d see some of the same students there: retired military men, housewives, a very eclectic mix of people. Those people who just kept coming.
JJ: What about him resonated?
HT: Aura, aura, aura. Swag. And [he was] articulate. Maybe I saw a little bit of his work. Sometimes people just talk the talk but then they can’t walk the walk. First you heard him talk, and he talked the talk. He could be critiquing a landscape painting, a still life, any genre of work, but it was always like going to church. Sometimes you have a good preacher and you get engrossed in what he’s saying. You just paid attention. When he talked, I listened. He was the man. He was the truth. It’s like being in a cult. And I think he almost had a following: We keep coming back. My first mentor was probably my seventh grade teacher who took me under her wing. She was my English teacher, but she also painted. And she took Jarvaise. I graduated, I’d come back, and I told her about this guy at Oxnard College. I introduced a lot of people to him that lived in Oxnard. Anybody that liked art? I said, “This is the guy.” But unlike a cult he wasn’t exploiting you, just enhancing you. He made me a better artist.
JJ: How?
HT: The title of the show is “Sometimes a straight line has to be crooked.” That’s something I think about because you might have to apply that to your work — bend it a little bit. Like when Bruce Lee says you got to be like water. [Flexible] and vulnerable and all of these things, but also not to be afraid. [Jarvaise] taught me how to be fearless, and I didn’t know that it took courage to be a painter. Some people don’t take chances. I know when I haven’t taken a chance. Sometimes you gotta shoot that three-pointer, you know what I mean? Something might look good to you or may look good to somebody else, but doesn’t mean it’s right.
JJ: Walk me through what a critique with Jarvaise was like.
HT: I’ll give you an example. Say it was a color and design class, and it was an assignment that I might have gotten wrong. In other words, “Oh, Henry did it wrong.” He’d say, “Well, wait a minute. Let’s see what he did.” He was always trying to find something redeeming. He didn’t just tear people apart. I don’t care whose work he talked about, he was very thorough about critiquing the whole composition and was always sincere. It’s having bedside manners, like a nurse or a doctor. He was able to reveal things about each painting. Even if it wasn’t your style, you were able to benefit in some way from every critique no matter whose work it was.
When I was in his class, I didn’t feel like I was all that even then, yet he suggested I go to CalArts. He said, “You need to go to art school.” I have since learned, when I was teaching a class, that the person that could draw Tomb Raider the best, versus the little kid in the corner all by himself doing something totally authentic, totally original, who didn’t have all the girls flocking around — I went to him. I had friends like Gilbert Hernandez who had comics already and I never thought I could draw as good as him, even to this day. But that’s draftsmanship. It’s a different thing. Just because you can’t shoot 30-footers doesn’t mean you can’t be a good basketball player. You can be Dennis Rodman. We need rebounders too. Everybody doesn’t sing like Smokey [Robinson]. Some people sing like Bob Dylan.
JJ: Did you have moments with this show where you felt like you were communicating with Jarvaise?
HT: I’m always asking for help. Sometimes I would get stuck in Jarvaise’s class and I’d say, “Where the s— is that teacher at? You need to come out here and help me with this.” When he comes, he’ll just fix it. It’s like a math problem. He’s a problem solver. He might just shift something: “Oh, Henry, the leg is too short. That’s your problem.” He comes and adjusts. He doesn’t destroy your s—, he doesn’t do too much, he just does enough to make it better.
JJ: Did you feel like, on some level, spiritually, you were channeling him while doing this show?
HT: At various times — not just during the show, even yesterday. I told [Jarvaise], I said, “Let’s do a quick painting.”
JJ: Do you remember the day these photos were taken? Can you walk me through?
HT: I went to Sotheby’s with A.C. Hudgins, who was on the MoMA board, and Laura Hoptman, who’s a curator. We were just sitting there, sort of idling, waiting for the talk to begin. And I was like, “I want to Google somebody for you, my teacher.” Not knowing what would pop up — I had never Googled him. It said Jarvaise was in “Sixteen Americans” [the group exhibition curated by Dorothy C. Miller]. I didn’t know. I said, “I gotta go see him.” How many people live to be 91? When I got back to L.A., I searched, and I found his number. I was communicating with him sort of intermittently over the years, but the fact that he was still alive, I couldn’t believe it. On Bastille Day the following year — he was French and Turkish — I went over there. This was about 10 years ago.
We were just talking. I think sometimes you wish you could remember something a little more vividly. And that’s how I feel about him. It was like euphoria. I was just so glad he was still there, to see that he was living well. We were talking about art in general, passing the baton. Real painters this and real painters that. He put my name in the same sentence as his and I was like, “Ohhhhhh!” I think I felt like he had some respect for me. I went back the next year after he died. His son [said], “Henry, we’re still going to do Bastille Day, you’re welcome to come up.” So I went up there and [spent the night]. I’ll be damned if my paintings weren’t on either side of his bed in his bedroom.
