During the seven years chronicled in this riveting documentary by Tamar Halpern and Chris Quilty, artist and musician Llyn Foulkes creates, destroys and recreates a pair of large-scale, three-dimensional paintings — including one that cost him his marriage — while trying to keep afloat in the fickle art market. This provocative look at “the most famous artist you’ve never heard of” includes interviews from veterans of the 1960s Los Angeles art scene such as Dennis Hopper and George Herms. The film reconstructs Foulkes’ up-and-down career as he was kicked out of the legendary Ferus Gallery and walked away from a successful career as an L.A. pop artist. Structured like one of Foulkes’ constantly reworked paintings, the documentary tracks his artistic struggles, ending as he is at last rediscovered by the international art world at age 77. With music written and performed by Foulkes on a massive, fanciful, self-invented musical instrument he calls “The Machine,” Llyn Foulkes One Man Band is an intimate portrait of an artist battling his own demons as well as the perceived demons of the art world.
I spoke to filmmakers Tamar Halpern and Chris Quilty about this wildly entertaining film which opens May 7th in New York and May 16th in Los Angeles.
Danny Miller: I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed this film even though I am not that well versed in the L.A. art scene. I was utterly fascinated by both Llyn Foulkes and his amazing artwork.
Tamar Halpern: That’s great! We really wanted to make it an even playing field — if you’re an art buff, of course you’d be interested, but we also wanted to appeal to people who are not experts at all as well as people who know about art but who may not be that familiar with the L.A. scene.
Llyn Foulkes is such an incredibly engaging subject for a documentary. Given his past issues with the art community, was he reluctant to open himself up for the film?
Chris Quilty: Llyn is actually one of the most open people I’ve ever met. He loves to talk and for the most part, he always welcomed us in.
Tamar: When we started filming him eight years ago — and we don’t really mention this in the film — he was trading art for rent. The people who own the building he was living in downtown now have a very nice collection of Llyn Foulkes paintings!
That was generous of them, and as it turns out based on the recent resurgence of interest in his work, probably a great investment!
Chris: Yeah, he’s more successful right now than at any time in his life so there is finally some money coming in.
How do you explain that turnaround?
Tamar: The big shift for Llyn started because of a curator named Ali Subotnick who came from New York to the Hammer Museum in L.A. She was young, had fresh eyes, and wasn’t at all jaded. When she first came here, someone said to her, “Oh, you’re new to L.A.? I ‘ve got something very interesting to show you!” and brought her down to meet Llyn. The Hammer had started putting together this show called “Nine Lives: Visionary Artists from L.A.” that we show in the film, and Llyn ended up getting the first room with all these great pieces from the 60s and also the amazing piece we show him working on, “The Last Frontier,” which the Hammer later purchased. Ali felt that was a seminal, important piece and she was right. That was the turning point.
In the film, we see Llyn putting together a show in New York, several years before the recent retrospective, that he felt was a total disaster. Was that just his own skewed perspective or did it really happen that way?
It was a disaster for him because no one paid any attention. But one interesting thing that we didn’t show in the film was that he was obsessed with this New York Times review of that show that he thought was so terrible. He had me read it aloud on camera and after each line he’d say, “Oh wait, that’s not as bad as I thought — but keep reading.” So I’d read more and he’d say, “Oh, I thought that was worse!” But at the end he still said they’d completely misunderstood his work — it just made him crazy.
It seems like a lot of his problems early on were related to his inability to act in a way that the art world demanded or to keep doing the kind of paintings that people wanted him to do.
Llyn is someone who can’t help but speak his mind.
Chris: And he admits that he’s not overly friendly.
Would it be more accurate to say that he’s unable to say what people want to hear or act in a way that helps him in the art world?
Tamar: Right. He’s just unable to play the game.
Which, of course, as a audience members, we just love. What a rebel! What brutal honestly! But then, we’re not the ones trying to find success in the art world.
We started interviewing people for the film and asking them if they thought Llyn had been written out of history. Everybody had a different point of view. Dennis Hopper said, “Yeah, he hasn’t gotten his due.” Paul Schimmel said, “No, he’s been there all along.” Raphael Rubinstein said, “Yes, but it happens to lots of artists. He may not be discovered until after his death!”
I’m glad that he didn’t have to wait that long! His personal story is so interesting, too. Was it hard for him to hear what some of his family members say about him in the film?
Llyn is so honest and open — he doesn’t really have any secrets. But I had a long talk with him after our first screening last year at the Los Angeles Film Festival and he did seem a little traumatized after seeing his life up there on the big screen.
Chris: I think he’s still processing it.
There are so many poignant parts of the film. You can see moments where he seems very sad about the years when he was rejected and largely forgotten.
Tamar: Right, and the truth is, if he had just kept doing a certain kind of work that people wanted him to do back then, he’d probably have ten million dollars in the bank today.
That’s why his current success must seem especially sweet since he refused to compromise no matter what pressures he got from the art world, his family, or anyone else.
Yep, he really stayed true to himself.