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Taken from The New York Times (Feb 10, 2022)
George Clinton on Painting, P-Funk and His Artistic Legacy
The artist's influence is indisputably far-reaching. When asked about his own inspirations, he cites Lauren Halsey, as well as Fab Five Freddy and ancient Egypt.
by M.H. Miller
George Clinton. Video Snapshot |
George Clinton has been ahead of his time for most of his life, and he knows it. In the early '70s, he began refining his artistic vision - one that combined elements of blues, R&B, gospel and immersive science fiction imagery into something altogether different from anything that had come before - with the musical collective Parliament-Funkadelic, which he formed and lead. "I knew then that I was doing something I would have to explain 20 years later", Clinton told me on a recent phone call, speaking from his home in Tallahassee, Fla.
The artist and legendary musician with the Parliament-Funkadelic collective discusses the work of Lauren Halsey. By Tony Floyd
Clinton (far left) and Parliament-Funkadelic, photographed at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, 1977. Credit: 2018 Bruce W. Talamon All Rights Reserved |
It would be hard to overstate just how influential a figure Clinton has been in the history of American culture. P-Funk, as it's known to admirers, quickly became a unique artistic movement. In concert its members celebrated Black identity and condemned American racism to the backbeat of some of the most danceable music ever made, all while dressed in costumes that were better than anything on "Star Trek" (Clinton is a self-professed fan of the show) and in front of an enormous stage prop known as the Mothership, a large spacecraft that seemed to suggest they were not of this world. The group's impact still reverberates in the pop culture ether. For one thing, its music is among the most sampled in history, providing the framework for hip-hop classics from early '90s G-funk, as well as British trip-hop and the neo-soul of D'Angelo and Childish Gambino, among countless others. And if Clinton didn't single-handedly create what we now know as Afrofuturism - a term coined in no small part to retroactively help define the mix of Black musical traditions, elaborate costumes and utopian fantasies that P-Funk fostered and celebrated - he likely gave that movement its clearest, most distilled expression. Or, as Clinton put it in our interview, "I did my thing".
George Clinton's "Black's Live Masterfully" (2020). Credit: Courtesy of the artist and Spring McManus Advisory |
In more recent years, Clinton has become a crusader for artists' rights, as well as a prolific visual artist. P-Funk always had a rich iconography thanks to the artists Pedro Bell and Overton Lloyd, who designed many of the collective's album covers. (Bell's artwork for the 1973 Funkadelic record "Cosmic Slop" still looks as if it landed on earth from a distant, much more enjoyable planet than our own.) Sometime in the 1980s, taking a cue from Bell and Lloyd, Clinton began doodling when he'd sign autographs, and he started doing more serious paintings in the 1990s. He'd sold a few works by the turn of the century, but at the onset of the pandemic - which led to the cancellation of a planned tour and left him, at least for a time, without much to do - he took refuge in his art studio. "I felt good doing it", he said, "and I started getting something out of it, until it actually felt almost like making the records. I was up early, at 7 o'clock in the morning, and couldn't wait to get to the art room and spend all my money on canvases". If he ran out of canvases, he'd paint bird houses instead. "Anything that I could paint on", he said. (Last year, he had solo shows, curated by Spring McManus Art Advisory, in New Orleans and Miami, roughly coinciding with Clinton's 80th birthday.)
Clinton cites a diverse array of influences on his work as a painter. In addition to P-Funk, they include Basquiat, Fab Five Freddy, ancient Egypt ("every time I see a painting or carving on the side of a mountain, I'm like, 'Damn, somebody was thinking about that [expletive] that far back?") and Salvador Dalí. "I like his frame of mind", he said. "You know, the contrast of a watch melting on a cactus plant - I always wondered: 'Where was his head at?' "
An installation view of the artist Lauren Halsey's "The Crenshaw District Hieroglyph Project (Prototype Architecture)" (2018), at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles's "Made in L.A". show in 2018. Credit: Courtesy of the Hammer Museum. Photo: Brian Forrest |
Halsey. Credit: Czariah Smith/Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles. |
Another major influence is the Los Angeles-based artist Lauren Halsey, whom Clinton chose for this iteration of T's "My Favorite Artwork" video series. Halsey, 34, was not yet born when P-Funk was in its prime. She came upon Clinton's music as a child through the Los Angeles hip-hop scene (Dr. Dre famously sampled the P-Funk anthems "Mothership Connection (Star Child)" and "P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)" on his landmark 1992 record "The Chronic"), and through her father and a cousin who were",hardcore Funkateers", she said in an interview. The group's mythology became "my cartoons", Halsey continued. "It empowered my imagination very early on". She described the overall project of the group as "Funk as an armor, as a crown to help exist and transcend the mess of the world".
Halsey's "betta daze (loda land)" (2021). Credit: Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles |
Halsey's "Untitled" (2020). Credit: Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Lee Thompson |
In 2018, Flea, the bassist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers (Clinton produced the band's 1985 record "Freaky Styley"), took Clinton to the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, where he encountered Halsey's "Crenshaw District Hieroglyph Project", a sculptural installation that "remixes", as Halsey put it, Afrofuturist imagery as a celebration of the culture of South Los Angeles. Clinton realized then that "everything that we did had been pertaining to some kind of artwork", he said of P-Funk. "It's the backdrop to the culture for the last 40 years".
Clinton in his backyard in Tallahassee, Fla., in October 2021. Credit: Tony Floyd |
Halsey said it was one of her dreams in life to design a stage for Clinton to perform on that would match the scale of the maximalist P-Funk concerts of the 1970s. And why not? If nothing else, Clinton's career has been an ongoing argument that anything is possible. He has a handful of live performances on the horizon, and when asked if he was planning to ever go back on tour, Clinton responded, "Oh, hell, yeah".
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