Artsy Interview: Times Square Like You've Never Seen it!Artist Thelma Appel discusses her recent series of paintings

Interview with artist Thelma Appel 

January 6, 2017

NW: How did this body of work  – your  “Times Square Series” of ten large paintings - come about?

TA: This is an interesting and complicated question. The idea had been in the back of my mind when I started thinking about the concept of Time. Then I started thinking a lot about the concept of Time towards the end of an earlier series of paintings I had been working on, the Journey of the Tarot, based on the Major arcana of the Tarot deck – each work representing archetypes of human experience as we pass through time.  (i.e. Death, The Wheel of Fortune, etc.)  Many of the symbols and images that I used in the Tarot series inspired my imagination in different directions.  But the images that really struck me were the ones I used to depict the “Judgment” card – one of the most powerful and consequential cards in the entire Tarot. [Editor Note: Thelma Appel’s paintings “Judgment I" and "Judgment II" can be seen on Alpha 137 Gallery’s page; links to those works are at the bottom of this page]. It’s the scene of the Last Judgment, literally, as described in many mythologies – before we meet our maker. The Judgment card deals with how one spends one’s time on earth; how one lives one’s life -  the things one has done, and the things one has not done during one’s time on earth. And in my painting “Judgment”, there are many images of Time, including, for example, the hourglass.  In fact, in “Judgment”, people are represented, literally, inside the hourglass; it’s the people, not sand, that are going through time. But when their time is up, they too will become sand.  So while I was painting and thinking about these images and concepts, I began to think even more about Time – but I wanted to get out of earthbound time. So after the “Journey of the Tarot” series, I began another series – called the “Cosmic Dance” series – an imaginative depiction of my travels through time and space.

NW: Almost like the Journey of the Tarot, but from the perspective of the planets, not humans?

TA: Yes, it was a different journey, through time and space, and the life cycle of the planets and the universe. For those works, I used gesture -  a very different technique; it wasn’t controlled, yet I was able to depict movement through time and the cosmos.  The “Cosmic Dance” series was comprised of 18 large paintings in which I explored motion through color and gesture, as if I was traveling in time and space; and in fact I got into a trance myself while I was painting those works. It really was an out-of-body experience. That series took me a long time, and it was a different kind of traveling through time. When I went through what I could express through that body of work, I returned to thinking of my time in different places here on Earth – the times of my own life.  And I thought about my time in New York City where I lived more than 30 years ago  – and Times Square is in New York City. But what’s interesting is that when I was in New York City, I was doing landscapes, and my mind was still in Vermont, where I lived years earlier. [Appel lived in Bennington Vermont for many years prior to moving to New York City, where she, along with the late Carol Haerer, was the founder of the Bennington College Summer Art Program.] But now that I’d left the city, I was ready to paint it, as I hadn’t been when I was there. But I didn’t know how or where to start; it was still daunting.  So I started painting other cities, painting cityscapes of places that appealed to me, like Santorini, in Greece -  to ease my way into this project.  After doing a few of these cityscapes, I felt ready to return to Times Square – and again I thought, “what can I do here with the concept of Time?” To state the obvious, the very name – Times Square – embodies this concept of Time.  So I wanted to show a bit of irony there. Also, I was asking myself: what was the most emblematic thing that I remembered about my own time in New York - and that was Times Square. [Appel lived in Chelsea, not far from Times Square.] And I thought: bingo, it’s another time travel. I’m going back in time – 30+ years ago – to my time living in New York City.  And there I am, time traveling once again. So Times Square, as a place, as well as a time in my life, became the theme of this series.

TA: Prior to doing the cityscapes like Santorini, I realized that the last time I really took depicting cities seriously was my “Dream Cities” series, which was a group of fabric collages about imaginary cities of the mind; ideal places I could call home after being geographically displaced from my own homes in Israel, London, India and later on, other places throughout my life.  So to get into the “Times Square” series, I started by making a small fabric collage of Times Square with people lining up for tickets. It was playful, and very, very time consuming, because each piece of fabric had to be painstakingly placed down. In my first work in this series, "Times Square I" —like in the earlier Dream Cities series - I painted the fabric scraps before gluing them onto the canvas. It was a very arduous process, but it gave me more time --

NW: There it is again - Time - 

TA: Yes, it gave me time - to think more about Times Square, my impressions of it and how I wanted to do the rest of the series.

NW: Where did you get the imagery for your “Times Square” series? Was it done from memory – or, alternatively, from photographs?

TA: Sometimes I use photographic references – an image from the newspaper, or the Internet, a stock photograph or one in the public domain -  but I alter them. For example, I might depict a person from one of those images, but I’ll dress them differently. I don’t even remember where I see the images – wherever I can find them!  I’ll fish for them here or there and I say “oh, I better sketch them.” Or I’ll sketch them directly on the canvas.  I’m not a photographic realist. I don’t have a studio with cameras and models posing for me. I have to do it in a way that works for me. I’m interested in a theme and the subject matter and here the theme was Time and the subject was Times Square; the emblematic meaning of Times Square. To me, to New Yorkers and to the world, there’s a very important symbolic meaning to Times Square. I think in fact it started off as a hub to the New York Times so that was a very significant aspect to the place. But when contemplating the series, I put a different meaning to it.  I couldn’t just choose any place in New York for this theme of time. It had to be Times Square. It couldn’t be anywhere else.  And the way I work is that I do composites.  I take a photograph from here, an image from there – and I make up the rest. You will recognize Times Square in these paintings- but not exactly. So I said to myself, not only am I going back in time to my period of living in NYC, but I’m going to see it in a different way now. And what I saw this time, in retrospect, that I didn’t see when I lived there, was a kind of geometric architecture of the buildings.  To me, there was an interesting kind of dialogue, or juxtaposition, or contrast if you will, between the geometric architecture of the buildings and windows, and the organic morphology of humanity; the buildings would be meaningless without people, so I began to introduce people into the dynamic of the buildings. At first people were just suggested, but now they became real. And then I became very interested in the billboards of Times Square.  Sometimes I made up the words, but mostly I found the words there. In Times Square VII and VIII, the words I found in actual photographs of the place really spoke to me. [Appel’s “Times Square VII” features the words LIVE FOR NOW on a billboard; and a billboard in her painting “Times Square VIII” blasts the message LIVE YOUR LIFE.] With all the hucksterism that was going on there, those words -nevertheless - actually spoke to me: “Live Your Life”;  “Take a Stand;” “Make your Mark”; "Let Your Life Speak". [Times Square VIII]  They weren’t just there to advertise a product that nobody needs or wants; you can actually take them another way - a way that gives you personal meaning. It’s like listening to a banal pop song that’s sort of schlocky, but you can take it personally and say, “yes, this has real meaning to me”, in spite of the schlock. So I began to take these words from the advertisements, and they became very meaningful to me. Remember these paintings are composites of photographs that I’ve seen from magazines and the Internet, etc.  And I’ve put them together and made them my own. Another example: one of the buildings in the series [in Times Square IX] says “DALLAS BBQ”. Well my husband Bob is from Texas, and he’s always complaining about barbecues back here in the East. And that was personal to me. And I met Bob in New York. So the Texas BBQ was a sort of homage to Bob, but nobody would know that except me.

NW: Was there an actual Dallas Barbecue in Times Square at some point – did you see that image somewhere -  or was that particular signage on the building of your own invention- to do the homage to Bob?

TA: No, it was really there!  I found a photograph on the Internet of the Dallas BBQ in Times Square – and I used it. I don’t know if the Dallas BBQ is still there today – but it was at some point.  So there’s always a dialogue for me, and sometimes even a conversation between the architecture, and between fact and fiction and past and present. That is because the images in this series are part real and partly made up; they’re also partly altered and re-constituted, while others are faithful to a reality that is no longer.  And the colors I used in the series are so different than the actual colors of Times Square; so I’ll make changes for the sake of the color, because it’s my color, not the real color. As I said before, what’s most important to me is that the images must always work as a composition, because I’m an artist; that’s more important than any faithful representation of reality.  Like my landscapes. They were not a mimetic representation of nature. They were composites. I’m not interested in realism; I’m interested in representation. When you see those paintings, you recognize my landscapes -  but they’re not actually real places or real landscapes.  Likewise with my “Times Square” series.

NW: Would you say these works [the “Times Square” series] are impressionistic?

TA: No. They’re not impressionistic. They’re imaginative re-creations. I re-create Times Square through my own memory, but it’s not an impression. and it’s not exactly what you see. It’s taking different elements from Times Square and putting them together as a compositional whole.

NW: Are any elements in these works exclusively from your imagination - or are they all images you’ve seen, somewhere or another at some point?

TA: I think they’re mostly images I’ve seen – either through photographs or with my own eyes, but I put them together in a unique way.  Some elements are made up – in fact several elements of all the buildings are made up. I tried to keep the integrity of the buildings, because they’re so wonderful, but I can’t do that and do the people. So I have to select; I change the proportions. These paintings are equivalents; they’re not exactly faithful to the subject; in fact they’re not faithful to the subject at all. But I give an equivalent, so when I add the people, the proportions of the building to the people make a coherent composition. Otherwise, if I were being more faithful, you’d see people in the paintings, but you’d only see small parts of the buildings – you wouldn’t be able to see both.

NW: Let’s talk a bit about the people in your paintings. Your “Journey of the Tarot” series that preceded this group of paintings featured people – but they were depicted as human archetypes: “The Empress”, “Temperance” [a woman], “The Emperor”, “The Star” [a woman]; the Fool [a man], The Magician [a man] the Hermit [a male] Strength [a female] etc. Then the “Cosmic Dance” series was gestural, almost gestural abstraction, with no figures whatsoever. Where do the figures from the “Times Square” series come from?

TA: 99% of the people I added in this series are made up. And that’s where my training as an illustrator comes into play. So it was not difficult for me to make up people and add them to the scene, because that’s what I did as an illustrator.

NW: Can you tell us more about your background in illustration?

TA: I was educated at St. Martins School of Art in London. [now called Central St. Martins]. I studied painting with Derek Greaves – a British painter and illustrator.  For design I had Joe Tilson. Tilson was always known as a designer in his day. Later on, he became greatly influenced by Jasper Johns, but when he was a young teacher at St. Martins, he was a design instructor, and I learned a lot about composition and essential design components from him.  I also had a lot of work with the figure in art school – as all art students do throughout the world - and I trained as a book illustrator.  

As a bit of an aside, interestingly enough, when I left art school, the paintings that I did in that time were actually street scenes in London, of the buildings and the marketplaces. And now – 55 years later, 60 years later, I’ve gone back to painting street scenes and buildings. I’ve gone back in time again. Literally. And here I am, nearly 80 and I’m able to look back at my life in art, all these milestones, and it had a trajectory and a consistency that I only see in retrospect.  Landscape loosened me up which I wouldn’t have been had I stayed in England and just done illustration. And now with the cityscapes and in particular the “Times Square” series, I am seeing new York the way I never saw it before because, again, when I was in New York,  my mind and my eye was in Vermont, or in landscape. I thought not just about Vermont landscapes, but the Southwest where I also traveled. When I was doing commissions for corporations in the Southwest, I would travel there – I’d actually go there, and take lots of photographs, then paint from the composites of the photographs I took.

NW: Back to the “Times Square” series…In the three decades since you’ve left the city, Times Square has undergone some dramatic transformations. Was there a particular era that you wanted to focus on, from where you mined your source material – and did you deliberately avoid depicting Times Square as we know it today?

TA: Excellent question. Yes it really has transformed. Well today, everything is so electronic. Loud, bright, flashing neon lights -huge signs.   You can’t reproduce color like that in an art work unless you use day-glo colors. So yes, I tried to fix a moment in time in this series that was simultaneously not the present and not the distant past; somewhere in between. I wanted “Times Square” to be timeless.

NW: Another unintentional pun.

TA: Yes!  None of my paintings in this series are as bright or as colorful as the real Times Square. I couldn’t possibly compete with that.

NW: Did you think about using those day-glo colors? Why not?

TA: It’s a totally different way of making art, and I didn’t want to change my style completely. It could be that when my eyes become weaker that I will need to use incredibly bright colors in order to see them, but for now I tried to actually subdue the colors, and give a feeling of something that you remember; celebrating Times Square  as a place to meet and to think – but without nostalgia, sentimentality or wistfulness.  My characters in this series are all in their own worlds, and Times Square is like the stage for them. They are the actors in their own lives, and each has a role to play. 

NW: that seems to harken back to your painting “Judgment” in the “Tarot” series, the one you spoke about earlier as the inspiration for the present series - a work that sums up the times in peoples’ lives, with all that temporal imagery you described:  the hourglass, etc.

TA: Yes – but in “Times Square” the people are not at that point in time yet; they’re still on stage and their time is not up.

NW: One of your works in this series, [Times Square VII] features large text on a billboard “LIVE FOR NOW.” And another [Times Square VIII] also features the text “LIVE YOUR LIFE”.  Times Square VII – the one with the bold text - which has sold.  As a dealer, I could have sold that work several times over. Maybe it’s because the work has sold,  everybody wants it - [Laughs] but the message LIVE FOR NOW really seems to resonate with people.  Why do you think?

TA: Because all you have is now. All we have is now.  That’s all there is.  I actually saw that message in an image of Times Square – I saw both those messages in photographs  – I didn’t make them up. It was part of a commercial or an advertisement hocking something - of course it was trying to sell something, but I didn’t remember or care what -  because it meant something so profound to me, outside of its original commercial intention.  I just saw it and I said “I’m going to use that." It was more like “I have to use that.”

NW: I notice that text in art is very popular, and as a collector and dealer, I know that art with words - even sentences and full paragraphs - is very saleable. Even artists [like Stephen Powers here in the US or EINE in the UK] who are primarily graphic designers and sign painters -- making billboard-style limited edition prints with catchy phrases, sell very well.  Or take Tracey Emin - one of the YBAs. Her poster and handkerchief multiples with simple messages of love (whether truly romantic or semi-subversive) do remarkably well. Likewise with Louise Bourgeois' "Hell and Back" or "Be Calm" text-based works, which spawned some of her most popular multiples ever.  And a place like Artsy, for example, has certain categories galleries use for listing their art works. I’m told it’s based upon user search algorithms and scientific analysis of collector interest and demand. Not surprisingly, one of the more popular search categories for subject matter is “Text” – so "Text" is, literally, not just a subject category - but a sales tool.  Superstars like Ed Ruscha and Jenny Holzer and the generations of artists they’ve inspired, built careers, even cottage industries, using text and words in their art. With that in mind, how do the “Times Square” paintings of yours  – the ones that feature printed messages on a billboard -  relate to that popular and lucrative genre?

TA: I don’t know how they relate to the genre. I never thought about it - not for one minute. I was entertained and inspired by the words that I saw. so I put them in my pictures.  Jenny Holzer makes up the words and messages in her work -- which is great. But I didn’t make those words or that billboard up. I’m not inventing the message - it was already there.  I found it and used it. The invention is how I put these powerful messages together and use them to make a visually and pictorially coherent statement. For me it must work pictorially: the painting has to have a visual and dynamic and pictorial integrity. It’s actually a lot more difficult than it sounds. One's shapes must be dynamic; the contrasts have to have meaning. Yes, “LIVE FOR NOW” is the message that people respond to from that work  -  but everything around that image is very carefully painted. The words aren’t just on the canvas; they’re in the context of the entire composition.

NW: We just celebrated New Years in Times Square here in New York. And yout “Times Square II” and “III”, for example, which I know were painted back in 2014, look eerily similar to a photograph I saw on the Internet from this year’s Times Square celebrations. Did you use photos from New Years for those works?

TA: Definitely. I used photography from Times Square celebrations, but I had to extract and edit and put other things there to be equivalent. The photographs [of the celebrations in Times Square] were wonderful and evocative just as they were. My paintings had to remind you of what you saw -  but not be that. They had to stand on their own.

NW: How would you describe your artistic style, just with respect to this series? [Times Square]. Funnily enough, you used the word ‘representational’ before – but according to Artsy’s scientific algorithms, once again, that stylistic category doesn’t even rate for collectors. Nobody searches for representational art. They don’t even search for realism.  They look for figurative art, and they look for hyperrealism or photo realism. Knowing all that, what relevant category would you put yourself in?

TA: I can’t put myself in a category. My work is definitely representational, as I said, but it’s not mimetic and it’s not realism.

NW: You did some of the works in the "Times Square" in acrylic; others in oil. Why?

TA: I prefer to use acrylic when the works are very large. Acrylic is very forgiving. You can paint over it many times, but still maintain a flatness of surface. Whereas in oils, you have to start with very thin washes, and layer over it gradually. You have to do many washes with oils; start very thin and build it up and build it up, which takes longer time. Plus oils are more expensive and I really cannot afford to do large paintings in oils. It’s easier to do them in acrylic. They dry quickly – and they cost less!

NW: Times Square, in all its transformations since the Seventies and Eighties, has a very seedy side to it. When I was growing up, there were muggers, junkies, homeless, prostitutes. I don’t know if they’re still there, but you didn’t try to explore the dark side of Times Square at all -  did you?

TA: No I didn’t. I didn’t want to go there, emotionally.  I deliberately didn't want to go there and dwell on the dark side of humanity - that wasn't what I was trying to do.  I was trying to say something that was visually interesting and maybe thought-provoking - to celebrate the inclusiveness and vitality of Times Square. If you paint dark things you feel darker, and I don’t want to take myself to that place. I just can’t. I’m sure there are a lot of artists who can do that – and very well. Disasters, car accidents, mutilated bodies. 

NW: It makes me think of Andy Warhol’s Death and Disaster series. Really interesting works of art  – but you can’t get darker than that!

TA: I think of Leon Golub, who painted floor to ceiling images of people being tortured and interrogated. Sort of cartoon-like. They’re still very frightening works. He couldn’t have been a happy man -  living with those scenes and thinking of those images every day! 

NW: I just sold a Leon Golub print called “They Will Torture You My Friend” (about the politics of injustice and terror) from the portfolio “Conspiracy: The Artist as Witness.” The artist might not have been happy making it -  but the client was very happy to buy it! 

TA: Some artists really want to do those kinds of works; I just can’t allow myself to go there.

NW: How long did it take you to do all ten works in your "Times Square" series  – and is it complete?

TA: The series took two years and is probably not yet complete. I do not remember how long each one took as I became involved in other urgent issues in between. Sometimes it took months to do one work. Sometimes I had to leave it for weeks on end because it just wasn't working. The last one [Times Square X] took the longest to work out composition-wise and in execution, as I had to balance out the dynamics of all the forms and colors to integrate them into a coherent and interesting composition. For some reason it proved more difficult . . . I was also struggling with health issues at the time.

NW: With respect to the Times Square series in particular, is there a thematic or chronological progression between Times Square I and X? Do they need to be seen or understood sequentially, or are they simply numbered in the order that you painted them?

TA: They are numbered in the order that I painted them. I do not yet know whether I am finished with them or not. They took an awful lot of work and - yes- Time!

NW: You’ve discussed several series you’ve completed over the last decade: the "Journey of the Tarot”, the "Cosmic Dance" and now the “Times Square” series. But for many years before that, you were known primarily as a landscape painter – especially during the era when you were represented by Jill Kornblee Gallery [on 57th Street in Manhattan] and later the Fischbach Gallery in Manhattan, during the 1970s and 1980s, for example. Did you work in series during that era when you did landscapes? And when/why do you choose to work in series?

TA:  Yes, I also worked in landscape series — for example, I did one called the “Equinox” series when I lived in Vermont. I think I may have done about eight large paintings in these series over a period of years. I also did many horizontal ”Field” paintings for years. Other landscapes were not in series. Working in series simply meant that I had not finished expressing a particular concept and felt I had more to say about the subject at the time.

NW: You mentioned earlier that your career has come full circle with the “Time Square” series - going back to your years as an art student painting London street scenes and architecture.  So what's next?

TA: Yes, that’s true for now. But who knows what next year will bring?

NW: Do you think you could have painted the “Times Square” series 30 or 40 years ago? If not, what techniques,  perspective, or wisdom do you bring to the work now, that you might not have had earlier in your career?

TA: Each period in an artist's development has its unique qualities. When I was young I worked with watercolor, gouache and colored inks. My work was much smaller and had a sensitivity about it that I could never have now—being a different person than I was then. (Sadly all my early work was stored at my mother’s house in Queensgrove, London. When I asked her to send them to me in Vermont she told me tearfully that they had all been stolen. . . I felt very bad for leaving her with such a responsibility— but I never expected to stay in Vermont as long as I did.)  As a young artist in London, I never could have painted the kind of big bold “painterly” works I was able to do in the U.S. My work then was intimate in scale and in feeling. Not so now. I do wish I had those works with me. Today I am very aware of the integrity of the whole picture plane – meaning that every part of the canvas has to be accounted for in terms of interest and focus. I did not think of it back then.

NW: What was the most important lesson you took with you to America from your education in London?

I think the most important lesson I learned from all my teachers at Saint Martin’s [in London] was that no matter what imagery or subject you paint - it does not necessarily have to be exactly what you see before you — it just has to be BELIEVABLE. I tell that to my students to this very day. Also, I have to believe the imagery myself.  And one has to be consistent in terms of style; you cannot depict everything in flat bold shapes and suddenly introduce perspective, volumes shadows etc.  So today I am aware of composition, pictorial integrity, consistency of style, and a choice of subject matter that should have importance to the artist. Choose your subject and go with it as far as it takes you!

NW: Thank you so much -  Thelma Appel.

N.B. To see Thelma Appel's "Times Square" series, click below:

https://www.artsy.net/show/alpha-137-gallery-thelma-appel-times-square-series

Click below to see Thelma Appel's paintings "Judgment I"and "Judgment II" from her "Journey of the Tarot" series:

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/thelma-appel-judgment-i-from-the-journey-of-the-tarot-series

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/thelma-appel-judgment-ii-from-the-journey-of-the-tarot-series