Chris Saines talks painting with Michael Zavros

“There is a cocktail of conceits here, drawing, as Zavros does, on the history of art, on fashion, the selfie generation and more.” Chris Saines

Watch the complete interview between Chris Saines and Michael Zavros, and view the work at the top of the escalators on Level 2 at GOMA.

Find out more | Support the Foundation’s 2016 Appeal to acquire Bad dad 2013

QAGOMA Foundation 2016 Annual Appeal Launch GOMA Michael Zavros Bad Dad 2013 Zavros’s accomplished and compelling painting Bad dad was shortlisted for the 2013 Archibald Prize and will be familiar to many as a highlight of our ‘GOMA Q: Contemporary Queensland Art’ exhibition last year. Continuing an art-historical tradition that stretches from Caravaggio to Koons, this self-portrait reflects the artist’s interest in narcissism in the contemporary world, and is executed in a medium that superbly displays his technical virtuosity.

QAGOMA Foundation 2016 Annual Appeal Launch
GOMA

Michael Zavros Bad Dad 2013

Zavros’s accomplished and compelling painting Bad dad was shortlisted for the 2013 Archibald Prize and will be familiar to many as a highlight of our ‘GOMA Q: Contemporary Queensland Art’ exhibition last year. Continuing an art-historical tradition that stretches from Caravaggio to Koons, this self-portrait reflects the artist’s interest in narcissism in the contemporary world, and is executed in a medium that superbly displays his technical virtuosity. / View full image

It was with great delight that Foundation President Tim Fairfax AC and Director Chris Saines CNZM launched the 2016 QAGOMA Foundation Appeal to acquire Michael Zavros’s oil on canvas self-portrait Bad dad 2013 on Friday 22 April 2016, featuring an exclusive interview with the artist.

The discussion with the artist revealed nuances in the work and Zavros’s process. Bad dad, the focus of the Foundation’s Appeal,represents two months of what Zavros describes as ‘technical, hard work’, modelled from carefully constructed photo shoots of the artist staged in the family swimming pool. Draped over a bright white inflatable bunny and accompanied by an entourage of buoyant pool toys, Zavros peers in deep contemplation at his cool, aquatic reflection which he meets – fingers to fingers and arm to arm – in a quiet almost-embrace.

QAGOMA Foundation 2016 Annual Appeal Launch GOMA Michael Zavros Bad Dad 2013 Zavros’s accomplished and compelling painting Bad dad was shortlisted for the 2013 Archibald Prize and will be familiar to many as a highlight of our ‘GOMA Q: Contemporary Queensland Art’ exhibition last year. Continuing an art-historical tradition that stretches from Caravaggio to Koons, this self-portrait reflects the artist’s interest in narcissism in the contemporary world, and is executed in a medium that superbly displays his technical virtuosity.

QAGOMA Foundation 2016 Annual Appeal Launch
GOMA

Michael Zavros Bad Dad 2013

Zavros’s accomplished and compelling painting Bad dad was shortlisted for the 2013 Archibald Prize and will be familiar to many as a highlight of our ‘GOMA Q: Contemporary Queensland Art’ exhibition last year. Continuing an art-historical tradition that stretches from Caravaggio to Koons, this self-portrait reflects the artist’s interest in narcissism in the contemporary world, and is executed in a medium that superbly displays his technical virtuosity. / View full image

ZAVROS, Michael Bad dad 290.2015 Non-collection Painting Oil 110 x 150cm

ZAVROS, Michael Bad dad 290.2015 Non-collection Painting Oil 110 x 150cm / View full image

Find out more | Support the Foundation’s 2016 Appeal to acquire Bad dad 2013

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    Bad dad: An interview with Michael Zavros

    Queensland artist Michael Zavros’s painting, Bad dad 2013 was the subject of the 2016 QAGOMA Foundation Appeal. Peter McKay spoke with the artist about the work, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Archibald Prize. Peter McKay / Audiences often appear attracted to the quality of your images as much as their content. Your technical ability has evolved considerably in recent years and is perhaps edging closer towards photorealism, yet I tend to think of your visual style as being more charmed or seductive than realistic or literal like a photograph. It’s as though the polish itself is an integral part of the content. Michael Zavros / When something is nearing completion or is starting to look good, I find myself losing time looking at the work, enjoying it. There’s a luxury in the looking. And whilst I think you’re right that the paintings at times edge closer to a photorealism, I’m never slavishly mimicking the source material. I still pick and choose information, taking what’s required. There are always parts of a painting that I consciously or subconsciously focus on, that my eye goes to and my audience then follows. The polish you describe and the technique itself are mirrored by the content. Looking back I realise most of my portraits have either come from the world of fashion or advertising: perfected and slick. And even when they’re not models, they’re cast as if they were or with an awareness of their place in such a world. Peter / Bad dad certainly appears to make reference to Caravaggio’s masterpiece Narcissus in its composition. How important is the link? Michael / The work was certainly made in response to Caravaggio’s Narcissus in the Barberini collection in Rome, which I saw when I was on residence as part of the Bulgari Art Award. It is a contemporary response to his painting, but it also extends on previous works I have made about the myth of Narcissus. V12 Narcissus 2009 was a small oil-on-board painting I made of myself looking in to the bonnet of a V12 Mercedes Benz sports car. Peter / Bad dad is very distinct, much brighter and more colourful than Caravaggio’s interpretation, which is heavy on the chiaroscuro. Are these themes losing their drama, becoming ordinary? Is sunlight the new shadow? Michael / Perhaps there is a new ordinariness to narcissism. Certainly within social media platforms it’s becoming commonplace and I find this phenomenon fascinating. Few contemporary artists employ anything like Caravaggio’s palette without it looking twee. My palette reflects my love of Pop, and in Bad dad, crucially, it turns up the volume, emphasising a paralysis and the curious stillness of the family pool. I have been looking a lot at David Hockney and his swimming pool works, which I have always admired. I recently finished a large painting for Art Los Angeles Contemporary called The Sunbather, which riffs on a Hockney painting of the same name but extends on the Narcissus theme. I have taken up swimming for fitness, and it affords me great thinking time and epic swimmer’s tan lines. I have just made a new film work with my daughter, Phoebe, called Phoebe treads water, which is an amalgam of the ideas in Bad dad and The Sunbather. All my work this year, including a small painting of Phoebe in the pool entitled The Mermaid, has a water theme. I am waterlogged. Peter / Continuing with that discussion about colour, have your methods changed, and what prompted the shift? Michael / Yes. How I paint has shifted profoundly in recent years. I started to employ Old Master techniques, building my paintings in monochromatic layers before finishing with bright, pure and transparent colour. Bad dad was made this way and it’s more saturated, richer for it. This also marks a dramatic shift from typical photorealist painters who finish sections at a time. I have also changed my practice in other subtle and significant ways. I used to work mostly with found imagery, but I now spend a long time making my subjects before I photograph them, and then I paint them. So previously, the creative moment was immediate, but now it can last days, weeks or months. The still-life works I have been making, for example, are a big production, from the buying of flowers, finding props, arranging, lighting and photography to reach the final paintable image. I create my own tableaux and that has become an important part of the process. It is almost performative and revealing the hand of the artist more so than the painting process. Peter / When I think about your works, I interpret them as representing pieces of the world that interest you most. By extension, I take them to form a de facto self-portrait: luxury goods, gardens, flowers, family, palaces and pedigree animals. In Bad dad, however, your own likeness becomes the centre, and we are directed by the title to think of your family and surmise why you’ve been labelled ‘bad’. Are you acknowledging, in a light-hearted way, the foibles of practising such perfection, or is there a moment of deeper self-reflection at play? Michael / I think all artists make work about the thing that interests them and it’s what they do with it that makes them a good artist or not. What interests me deviates from what interests most artists or curators, hence your question I presume, and the requirement to defend my choices. I’m an unashamed aesthete. I like to make work that is beautiful and then to gaze at it. Bad dad is mockingly circuitous in that way. And my idea of beauty is often keyed to luxury or status but I never seek to cast a moral judgement over my subject; if anything I think I hold a mirror to other people’s relationships to these things and their personal feelings of desire, guilt or distaste perhaps. If people read...
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    Foundation Appeal launched for Michael Zavros ‘Self-Portrait’

    At an exclusive launch at the Gallery of Modern Art, this striking self-portrait Bad dad 2013 by Michael Zavros was announced as the focus of the QAGOMA Foundation 2016 Appeal. This is the first time a work by a contemporary Queensland artist had been the sole focus of the Foundation’s Annual appeal. With the help of supporters, the Gallery is aiming to acquire the critically acclaimed autobiographical painting, a work shortlisted for the 2013 Archibald Prize and included in the Gallery’s 2015 exhibition ‘GOMA Q: Contemporary Queensland Art’. The 2016 Appeal will help the Gallery represent one of Australia’s leading artists with this accomplished and compelling work. Bad dad brilliantly captures a contemplative and complicated moment in which Zavros has cast himself as a contemporary version of the protagonist from Caravaggio’s Baroque work Narcissus c.1597–1599. Viewers are easily enticed by the languid world of this impressive self-portrait. To strengthen our holdings of work by Zavros, we are appealing to our supporters to help us bring this vivid moment in Australian art into the Collection. Zavros was inspired to create the work having spent time at the Palazzo Barberini in Rome, home of Caravaggio’s Narcissus. Bad dad is an outstanding example of Zavros’ talents as a figurative painter and astute observer of social conditions. In this reflexive gesture Zavros describes himself in oils as someone who looks deeply into the range of emotional experiences associated with materialism. View the work at the top of the escalators to level 2 of GOMA QAGOMA Foundation 2016 Appeal Join the QAGOMA Foundation Sign up to QAGOMA Enews The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) Foundation raises crucial funds to develop the Gallery’s Collection and present major exhibitions and community-based public programs, including regional and children’s programs.
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