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 Once more El faces the music with his usual blend of wit, candour and UNCOMPROMISING CRITICAL INSIGHTS Nationality? No tribal tendencies. Where do you live? Somewhere nice. Age? The Computer..... The Media...... Sex? Money and Art. Love? Lord above! Money? Art and Sex. Favourite game? Games are an abstract. My life is figurative. Words most commonly used to describe you? James Elliott. Where have you spent the most time abroad? On the Med. I love it there. Best erotic images you have done? I love them all. If I didn't they'd remorselessly hit the can. Who were the models? The world's best. Why settle for less? Where did you get your hat? The Elliott Mark 3 made them. El Mk 4 only wears them because everyone asks. Lucky number? Luck is a form of self delusion caused by laziness. What's your starsign? Retard. Favourite music? Nightwish. Listening to now? The same. Favourite birds? My favourite bird would be the pink flamingo in a sea of swans. The one who dares to be different. TV News? No TV. I throw objects at them. Gets expensive..... Health? Life's been good to me so far. I go to parties sometimes until four.... it's hard to leave when you can't find the door..... Want to touch wood? No I don't like wood so it couldn't possibly bring me luck. Belongs to the Hidebound Generation. Superstitious? Only when I'm doing a raindance. I'm superstitous it may all be nonsense. Favourite animal? A Robot. After that a Rabbit. Maybe a Robot Rabbit . Fave sea creature? A shark with turbos capable of skimming the sea surface at 500 mph. Favourite colour? The pinks have gone. The reds are back. I must be on fire with desire again. Jewellery? Only thing I wear is a Raymond Weil Othello watch. Very beautiful, elegant, wafer thin and of course, no longer made. Favourite female singer? Tarja Turunen. Your greatest talent? My ability to forget I have one. Mobile phones? Excellent for pebble skimming across the lake when you've had an annoying call. Time? I can't find the 'hold' button. Fave Photographer? Nicéphore Niepce. Nice. What do you think you are? The reductive epithet 'Artist Photographer' will do. Excuse me if I groan.... Fave Painters? Dali and Reno. Reno? Pierre Auguste Renoir. Fave sculptor? Sculpture is ice. Your biggest fault? My obsessive analyticomania. Evolution or Creation? Both. Clearly. Big Bang? As a theory it's like trying to retrace the billion trajectories of a smashed bottle of Champagne - i.e. the chances of getting it right are - quite frankly - nil. Death? Death Kiss Requiem. My latest masterpiece. Just finished it. Damn! I'm good! What's inspiring? Girls, Glamour, Money, Art. Best way to die? Fulfilled and with Faith. Fave meal? I'm not talking about food. Other peoples food is like other people's sex..... just incomprehensible. Meaning of Life? As with Art, so with Life, explanations are only necessary for those who will never know. Relativity? The importance of Relativity is Relative. Fave drink? Hot Chocolate in the winter. Strawberry Milk shake in the summer. Champagne in the fridge, always. Fave alcohol? Elliott like very much Bubbles. I decline everything else. Life's not short, but why waste it? Fave Drugs? Sex, Life and Art. Elliott has no added chemicals. Fave Nightclub? I've been to the best ones too many times, so they bore me these days. They've run on the same formulaic crap for decades. Do you always wear black? Yes, but not for any profound reason. It just looks great on me. Fave Car? Limos. Fave Time Of Year? Any time I'm ecstatic. Which words inspired you most? Rock music lyrics...... Montaigne...... stuff I write myself...... Favourite weather? Thunder and lightning, blazing sunshine and snow. Fave city? London. Fave part of London? St John's Wood. Or Sinjun as I derisively call it. Gambler? No, I just look like one. Favourite Tree? A pink and purple weeping willow. A scarlet fir tree. A blue oak. Which pictures took the longest? Metasphere, Superchromatic Spectrosynthesis and Ultrametamorphica Supercybersynthesis. Together about a thousand hours of actual work. Don't expect any more like that - there won't be any. Three of those in a lifetime is quite enough. Fave Classical Music? I don't like classical culture any more. It's all too old. I like classical contemporary though. Most Important Thing In Life? Whatever you lack. Fave Word In The English Language? Décolletage....c'est de rigeur. Haha. Fave Writers? Reading takes too long. Show me the movie. Fave Celebrity? I'm not a fashion and celebs photographer. I broke that mould. Fave TV Program? Pas de television. Quelle horreur. Your most important new millennium work? There's a load. I'm at my most prolific ever. In your lifetime, what has changed the most? Me. Either that or everyone else has. Is my train moving or is yours? What will your next photo be of? A gobsmackingly well proportioned drop dead gorgeous glamour bitch. Girls sexiest outfit? Bra, tight top, stilettos. Otherwise naked. Do you enjoy being in the Artworld? Yes, of course..... although like the music business, you sometimes wonder why so much of it is just so obviously crass. You know, inexcusably mediocre ......or just plain bad. But you stick with it because the best of Art and Music is just the greatest thing on Earth. There's no better place to be. Highest price for one of your images in your lifetime? Millions. I guess. Best Photos you have ever made? My batting average is high so anything not somewhere between superlative and a masterpiece hits the can. Ergo, the list is long and you would not take kindly to me reciting it. Fave Model? They are all fantastic. I wouldn't waste my time on less. Best thing about living now? I'm an adrenaline junkie. So anything that gets me naturally high. Worst thing about living now? I don't waste mind space on that. Which picture will become most valuable? The one that best captures the world's imagination. There's about ten vying with equal verve for that slot at the moment. From the 70s: 'Remorse' and 'Metasphere'. From the 80s 'Kiss' and 'Superchromatic'. From the 90s: 'Aftermath' and 'Hungerlust Capitalism'. From the Noughties it's hard to say as there's just so much of it, but my money's on 'Nemesis', 'Ultrametamorphica Supercybersynthesis' and 'The Diva Monumenta'. These choices are only enlightened guesswork though. Greatest recent masterpieces? Well in the last year or so: The Fleeting Inconsistencies Of Identity The Tortured Chaos Of Conflict The Blue Ghost Of Modernism And even simpler things like 'Dark Beauty With Bright Eyes'. Best recent erotica? 'Scarlet Siren', 'Elevations', 'The Fire Bitch' and 'The Red Tape Of Censorship'. They all have 'classic' written all over them. Do you smoke? I can't think of a reason to. Fave pleasures other than sex? Money and Art. We covered that. How would you like to be remembered? According to the work I create and I don't know what that will look like yet. I know what I have done so far and I am totally satisfied with that. I have exceeded my wildest dreams. I know my future work will be amazing but I don't know what it will look like yet or indeed what it will be about. Depends on which directions I evolve it in. Which trajectories I continue. Which I terminate. Which new ones I instigate. My movie is far from complete. The climax is yet to come. I have no doubt of that. How tall are you? Depends on my mood. What are your measurements? I know lots of girls' measurements - does that count?. Politics? Freedom first. Religion? The question of 'why?' goes on forever and always returns to haunt us. Reincarnation? No. How the hell would you explain the population explosion? What distinguishes your Art the most? Originality. Immodesty? Modesty I am not so good at, but I try (he said modestly). Ultimate fantasy? Fantasy is an expletive. I seriously detest the word. Blondes or Brunettes? Negotiable. Fire, Water, Earth or Air? Fire. Red, green or blue? Scarlet. Red leaning towards blue. Married? No, I'm too rich on paper to put something on paper. What influenced you most? A Scandinavian girl in an Italian soft porn movie and a Gordon's Dry Gin cinema ad when I was a teenager. And several thousand other things. Who influenced you most? Oh Dali, easily. In the beginning anyway. Not his work, specifically. He just gave me a standard to aspire to. In terms of originality and quality you can now hold my work up against any artist living or dead - and I'll write that down and sign it for you. That's not a boast, it's a fact. So I doubt that I have any influences now. Certainly I influence more than I am influenced. Nothing artistic influences me. All the people I liked as a young man - Shakespeare, Dali and so on - they no longer interest me. I am now someone else. Life influences me maybe, but little else. Any children? No, I'm too young. Worst thing in Life? People who sit on their asses making up rules to irritate the rest of us. What motivates you? The Gods, probably. I mean you find yourself creating art without even thinking about it and the results are always exponentially greater than I intended. Sometimes this is so remarkable that I gaze at my images and wonder who did them. Sounds mad I know - it's just that I'm not. Innovation? People call me an innovator, but the truth is I am just easily bored. Best thing in Art? Art is the only thing that expresses the spirit within us. The only thing that shows we are creators as well as creatures. Worst thing in Art? The ugly and the boring. Of which there is much. Is everything in a gallery Art? How you package something doesn't change the content. The perception perhaps, but not the product. Are all paintings Art? No. The worst thing that ever happened to art, with the advent of Modernism and the subsequent democratisation of Art, was the notion that everyone's creative efforts justify the term 'art'. Absolute bollocks. Conceptualism? Bad idea. Is your erotica Art? Some of it yeah. The rest of it's just dirty. In some ways I prefer that, as it's more honest. In which case it's probably better art. Classical painting? Classical culture no longer appeals to me, although I am aware of its influence on my work. Whether it's a Shakespeare, a Beethoven or a Raphael, classical no longer seamlessly speaks with these times. Well not unless you have a very old soul, which mine isn't. Whether Classical is visual, aural or literal, the language has changed and it needs reinvention to speak with these times. Girls eyes - your favourite colour? If a girl is gorgeous her eyes are my favourite colour. Best thing about living in London? It's fun and exciting. I love the sea though, so I'll likely end up on the Mediterranean Riviera. What's the most important thing in Art? That it reaches you without explaining itself. If you can rationalise Art, we don't need it. It should be the pure expression of an unrestrained human spirit. It usually isn't, I know, but that is what it should be. Describe your art in three words? Indefinable with words. Three words? That was three words. And your Life in one word? The word would explode. I'd need a picture. Probably a movie. It's different from the year before, as always. © JAMES ELLIOTT 2005 JAMES ELLIOTT .com |
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