PBS Arts Talk

-Tonight on "PBS Arts Talk"... -[ Laughs ] You look great!

-Oh, thank you so much for having me.

-...artist Nathaniel Mary Quinn, who persevered through a troubling childhood to become one of the most celebrated artists of his generation.

-Let's have fun.

[ Laughs ] -Alright, alright, alright.

-Let's have fun!

-He sits down with tonight's host, groundbreaking ballerina Misty Copeland.

-All identity is constructed like my work.

Anyone standing in my work, you are seeing yourself.

-On this edition of "PBS Arts Talk."

-I want to start from the beginning, you know, and just -- When did you first realize that you had a talent for drawing?

Like, what was that like for you growing up?

-In one of my earliest memories, was me as a child on the floor with a coloring book in front of me, perhaps a box of crayons, and I was coloring this book.

And I remember just the sheer excitement and joy racing through my body doing this particular activity.

Then I used to draw on the walls of the apartment -- of our apartment there in Chicago.

-Did you get in trouble for that?

-I suspect that my mother initially was not pleased with me marking up the walls, but my brother, he noticed something in those drawings.

He stopped my mother and he says, "Wait, Mom, look at what he drew.

It's actually pretty good."

And so my mother would allow me to continue making these drawings on the walls, and then she will just wash the walls down so I can do it again.

So the walls of my apartment in a tenement housing complex in Chicago were, in effect, a first drawing pad of my life.

-Oh, my gosh, I love that.

-Yeah.

So I knew even as a kid that I had this ability and how it made me feel to draw.

I felt special.

I felt different.

-It seems like your brother and your mother had interest in what it was you were doing, your drawing on the walls.

-Mm-hmm.

-Like, what role did your family have overall in your interest in drawing?

-Of course, we grew up on the South Side of Chicago, in the Robert Taylor homes.

At the time, I think it's fair to say that the Robert Taylor homes were considered perhaps the most infamous public tenement housing in America.

So you had your medley of gangs and violence and severe lack of resources, poverty, joblessness, things like this.

-Yeah.

-Every family living there were in the same boat.

So then we focus on my family.

So you had my mom, my dad, my four older brothers, and then me.

I was the baby.

My parents were illiterate.

They could not read or write.

My mom was crippled from two strokes, so the left side of her body was partially immobile.

My brothers, all being much older than I, were drug addicts or alcoholics of some sort, they all dealt with addictions.

-Mm-hmm.

-They were all high school dropouts.

Maybe one of them finished high school but never attended college.

This was not a unique circumstance in this community.

-Right, of course.

-But my father, when he caught wind of my love for drawing, he would sit with me every weekend at the little kitchen table and he would draw with me.

In fact, my father would take brown shopping bags and rip them apart to make them flat.

And he would have me -- -[ Chuckles ] Canvas!

-And he would rip the erasers off the pencils.

-So, I was going to ask you about this, because I heard, this is really brilliant.

-Yeah.

And my father said to me, "Every mark you put down needs to be a thoughtful mark."

-Mm, intentional.

-So you must -- you know, your mistakes can become your success.

You will not erase.

-Amazing.

-So you have to make marks with intention.

-I want to take a look at an image here if we can pull it up.

-"Big Rabbit, Little Rabbit," yes.

So my -- This piece is called "Big Rabbit, Little Rabbit."

This is a work on Coventry vellum paper, which is the kind of paper I work on.

It's great for the texture that I like to use because it helps to break down these soft pastels and the black charcoals very well.

It's a large-scale work.

It's currently in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

The work is essentially about my dad and me -- simple as that.

My father was a pool player, and would take me to the pool halls with him.

He was a good pool player.

And he got the name Big Rabbit as a result.

-Okay.

-And they will call me Little Rabbit.

Did you play?- -No, I was a child, of course, but I would sit back and watch my dad play, you know?

But that's -- I remember that as a kid.

And that's what my dad did to earn money, you know?

-Right.

-Remember, he could not read or write.

-Right, right.

-He would take odd jobs, normally as a chef, and he would make money doing that.

And then he would go to the pool hall in hopes of doubling his income somehow.

-Right.

-Gamble 100 bucks, maybe win $150 or something to this nature, then use that money to provide for the family.

-So I think we have similar, you know -- just what we've experienced growing up and, you know, adversity.

And I know that my own childhood and, you know, not often having a roof over our heads or food on the table definitely impacted the person that I was or that I am today.

-Yeah.

That's right.

-And I think that it brings a different something, you know, in my approach to my art, a groundedness and maybe a humbleness.

What do you find about that experience of growing up the way that you did?

Like, how does -- how does that affect your artwork?

-I really want to make it very clear that I am deeply, humbly grateful for the way my life turned out.

I really am.

Because I know it did not have to turn out this way.

-Yeah.

-And that fuels my art practice.

Let me put it to you like this.

So, imagine, first I was able to attend a private boarding high school in Indiana, which is my escape from the perils of the Robert Taylor home.

I did not think I would live past the age of 18.

So now I'm in this school.

I went back home for Thanksgiving break, walked into an empty apartment.

My family was not there, no furniture.

So there I was, abandoned by my family.

This is just weeks prior to getting the news that my mom died.

So everything is ripped away from me.

So it was very simple, the choice I had to make: Do I stay here in Chicago, risk losing my life, perhaps not surviving at all?

Or do I go back, go back to the school where I have a full academic tuition waiver or scholarship and see where that road takes me?

I decided to go back to the school, obviously, and my understanding of school shifted right away -- now it was about survival.

I went back to the school because you lived on campus.

So, there was room and board.

They served you three, four meals a day.

That's food.

-It's consistency and stability.

-Yes.

And you had to wear a uniform, so I had clothes on my back.

-Yeah.

-And that just changed the entire scope of the trajectory of my life.

-Wow.

-And then as I'm about to finish high school, I thought, "I have nowhere else to go, I might as well go to college."

So I went to college.

-Yeah.

-So by the time I was done with grad school, for me, I had already made it.

-School seems to have played, you know, a big, a big role in your growth as a man.

-Yes.

-And, you know, taking it back -- because you drove in and started to share a lot of your story, which I appreciate -- but taking you back to eighth grade.

-Yes.

-You went to Culver Military Academy.

-How did that change your life and even prepare you for those next steps?

-So, yeah, this is "All the Lost Awards, All That Was Lost."

This painting indeed represents the uniform that we would wear at this particular high school.

I was ambitious, academic student.

I really believe in doing well academically.

Well, I kind of had to because the grade point average was the currency that allowed me to benefit from the resources that continue to aid in my survival.

-Right.

-So the GPA was absolutely paramount.

But during parents' weekend, my peers, their parents would come to the campus to celebrate their success.

My parents obviously couldn't come to parents' weekend because my family was gone.

So I was winning all these awards.

But yet, the awards I really wanted were already lost.

And that is what that -- this piece is essentially about.

-Wow.

That's really powerful.

It's really incredible.

I mean, so when I look at, you know, these works, can you talk a little bit about your approach to, like, actually putting whatever it is you're putting on the paper?

-Yeah.

Yes.

-You're not using a paintbrush, are you?

-Well, sometimes I use a paintbrush, but normally I use -- well, I mean, my primary material is a soft pastel, which is like a chalk-like material.

You rub it across the surface of paper, on canvas, and it leaves a pigment and color, things like this.

Or black charcoal, similar thing, except it's black.

And oil paint.

And I use palette knives to move the material across the canvas however I see fit.

So I don't normally use brushes very often.

-Mm-hmm.

-There's something about the distance that the brush create between me and the tactile experience of touching.

I like -- I like to touch the canvas.

-Well, it makes -- When you -- When you talk about this, it makes me think of you as a child.

-Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

-When you first started out on the walls, and that seems to be very similar.

-Yeah, exactly.

I like -- I like that.

So every piece I make first begins with a vision, it's like a mental picture that comes to me.

Every piece.

I have many visions.

I have visions of works that I've yet to make, that have been with me for years, but I haven't made those works yet because currently I am not proficient enough as an artist to make them.

-Okay.

-Have to wait until I become better.

-Do you have, like, just this amazing memory bank where you, like, kind of keep that in mind when you think about?

-Well, visions are born from how you feel.

-Mm-hmm.

-You don't forget how you feel.

-Okay.

-Visions are born from here, from the gut.

It's not -- It's organic, it's visceral.

So you don't forget that.

It's like in the fibers of my being.

I never forget my visions.

Now, I don't know what the visions are about, and I don't waste time trying to understand them either.

I just operate from a, like, a visceral response to them, and I am compelled to make them.

And then I make the work, and then I let the work speak to me.

The process has to be carried out within the context of being present.

So you have to remove excessive thinking and be at peace and at one with yourself in front of the canvas.

-Yeah.

-And it's like -- it's like a harmonious dance and I'm putting these things together and you go on based on how you feel.

And then when is done, the work speaks to me.

Oh, "Big Rabbit, Little Rabbit."

-A lot of, like, what you're saying, it reminds me of my own experience of, like, being on stage and perform-- -Yes.

-You know, and I've often thought that a lot of artists don't have the experience of, like, performing live, like, what that's like.

But it sounds like your need to be present and in the moment, like, it feels like a live performance, like you kind of treat it that way.

-It -- It -- [ Laughs ] It is actual -- Except I'm the only one in the studio, right?

But it does feel like a live performance.

I mean, let's face it, being a full-time artist is laborious work.

I mean, it takes work and a lot of effort.

-Yeah.

-And you have to have a very consistent work ethic.

-Right.

-And I work in a studio every day.

-Who are the people in your paintings?

-Well, most of the people in my paintings, obviously, are family members.

Like my brothers, mom, and dad.

Or people I once knew in my community in Chicago, in that neighborhood.

Or teachers, educators.

All kinds of people.

People from my current community -- the guy on the corner, the guy at the liquor store I speak to from time to time, that homeless person I just see walking down the street, whom I've never spoken to.

I know these people.

I spoke to them.

I met them.

They actually exist.

-I want to look at another image, "The Lesson of Cut-Rate Liquor."

-"The Lesson of Cut-Rate Liquor."

-Yes.

Tell me about this.

-So this is a work that is a reflection of my brother Eugene.

-Mm-hmm.

-We called him Baby Gene.

-Okay.

-And my brother was an alcoholic.

And there was a liquor store on the South Side of Chicago called Cut-Rate Liquor.

-Mm.

-And, on occasion, if I happened to be walking down that path, I would see him outside that liquor store, stocked with alcohol, drinking himself to misery.

-Mm-hmm.

-And, you know, every memory I have of my brother, Baby Gene, is him being drunk.

-Mm.

-I don't have a memory of him being sober.

None.

And alcoholism is a -- is dangerous to the family unit.

It's destructive.

-Mm-hmm.

-And it causes a lot of strife and pain.

So I got to see that firsthand.

But many people, many families deal with... -Right, of course.

I've experienced it in my own family.

-...people with alcoholism, you know what I mean?

So it's not just my story, you know?

It's the story of many, many people around the world -Yeah.

Universal, yeah.

-You know?

So that's what this work is about.

You know, I like hats.

-[ Laughs ] -There's something about hats that I really like.

You know, the great painter, Rembrandt, many of his figures wore these black hats.

These Dutch paintings, everyone's in these black, large-brimmed hats.

Well, my father wore brimmed hats as well.

-Okay!

You tell the story of your -- of your life.

And it's beautiful to hear, you know, the depth, the layers, the textures.

It makes me think of your mother.

-Yeah.

-And, you know, the fact that you took her name your as your middle name.

Can you share her name?

Why you decided to do that?

-Sure.

In my senior year at Culver Academies, so grade school, by the way.

I was so happy that I was graduating from this school.

And, yeah, at the same time, I was so sad that my mother -- my mother would not be there to witness this.

But I remember, you know, my mother never went to school.

She never had an education.

So I am going to start a tradition and I will adopt her first name.

And now my name -- my name would be Nathaniel Mary Quinn.

So on that degree, it would say, "Nathaniel.

Mary.

Quinn."

So it was like my mom also got a degree.

-That -- Oh, that is so beautiful.

-It is like that on everything from -- in college, it says "Nathaniel Mary" on my bachelor's degree.

On my master's of fine arts, "Nathaniel Mary Quinn."

When I graduated, you know, magna cum laude, you get a plaque, "Nathaniel Mary Quinn."

Phi Beta Kappa, "Nathaniel Mary Quinn."

It's everywhere.

This is a, I would say, a reflection of my mom.

Not portraits.

I don't do portraits.

-Mm-hmm.

-Now, of course, portraits in a traditional sense is the idea that the work captures the likeness of a person that you're painting.

Well I, in my practice, try to capture the essence of a human being.

Because my materials are not just black charcoal or soft pastels or paint, I also use as materials empathy, vulnerability, insecurities, honesty.

Those are as important of materials as anything else.

And this is just a reflection of my mom.

-Yeah.

-I imagine my mom encouraging me to keep going.

And she would say this saying, "Come on and walk with me."

-Has the way that you tell these stories about your life changed over time?

-No, it hasn't changed.

I think I've changed.

-Okay.

-You know what I mean?

I've evolved.

-You don't have like a different outlook or perspective that might change when you talk about it?

-Well, I think I used to carry myself around as a victim.

-Hmm.

-Because I was a victim of family abandonment and separation, which is legitimate, no doubt about it.

And then I went to therapy for five years, and therapy proved to be very helpful.

During the final days of therapy, something dawned on me that, you know, I'm not a victim.

I'm a victor.

-Hmm.

-You know, that -- that somehow I believe my mother conspired with a higher being -- God, whoever, the sun god, whatever you want to believe, the universe -- to set into motion a journey or a pathway that would lead to an optimistic outcome.

And that is the way I tend to talk about my family, my life, my upbringing.

And I also try to talk about it from a place of -- of power, encouragement, that it is possible to overcome trials and tribulations and to transcend barriers.

So if you can shift the way you perceive your life, if you can shift the lens through which you see and interpret the world, you can then make physical shifts in your real material life.

-Mm-hmm.

Such power in that.

Like, power over your future.

Power over who you are.

-Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, you know, life doesn't have to be an existence that just happens to you.

Life can be something you can make.

-Yes, yes, yes.

I'm connecting so much with what you're saying just in, you know, in my own experiences of the pressures you feel and, you know, the responsibilities and all of that.

I feel a lot of different things that -- it's evolved throughout my career, but being a Black artist is so much a part of my identity within my field.

Being the first Black, African-American ballerina at American Ballet Theatre.

-Sure.

Yeah, that's right.

-The expectations, the pressures, you know, are very much attached to my race, you know?

I just wanted to know, have you felt pressures to fulfill certain expectations as a Black artist?

-That's a very good question, because it allows me to talk about this piece I made called "Charles," which is about my brother Charles.

-Yes.

-This work is very important to me.

It's a significant piece.

It was a turning point in my studio practice.

Now, prior to making this work, I was in the busy process of making works about American race issues, you know?

-Okay.

-And race -- race relations and things like this.

And I was making works like that because I was a Black artist, and I felt like it was sort of my responsibility to explore these ideas, simply by virtue of being a Black man.

-Right.

-And for the first time, it dawned on me: You know what?

I am Black, but the loss of my family knows no color.

That pain hits the same way to anyone.

-Yeah.

-It's just, it's humanity.

I was just a human being who is in pain from the loss of someone I love from my family.

All people go through this.

-Right.

-Societal belief systems and modern notions operate to try to subjugate those feelings, giving one a false impression of what they are actually experiencing.

But, of course, if you happen to be white and you lose your family, you're gonna feel like me.

It's painful because we are human beings.

And it was from that sort of awakening that I had relinquished myself from any sense of responsibility or duty to make work from that particular place.

I'm an artist, by all means.

I have the freedom and the power to make works about anything or anybody I want.

-Yes.

-I don't feel pressured to do it because I'm Black or anything like that.

That has no bearing on my practice at all.

Not in my studio.

I am free in my studio.

I am as free as any other artist who came before me and any of my colleagues who exist today and those who will come after, 'cause that's the point of being an artist.

-Yes.

-To have true humanistic expression.

So my work is an attempt to... to explore the spectrum of humanity, or what it means to be a human being.

And because of that, I think my work is actually very radical because I am showing through my figures, while they may appear on the surface to be Black, I am showing the complexity of your humanity.

Anyone standing in my work, you are seeing yourself.

No matter who you are, you're see you in my work.

I'm painting you.

All identity is constructed like my work.

It's crudely put together.

No one has a perfect life.

This is what identity is.

It looks like this.

But we find a way to make peace with it.

We find a way to create harmony with the disparate pieces and parts that we have to put together, because those parts are coming from the experiences and the history of our lives.

You are living through it.

-Ah, I love it.

-You are living through -- you have no choice.

You must contend with it.

You must!

-Yeah.

Yeah.

-It's -- That's it.

You must deal with it.

-Well, it comes across so vividly in... -Yeah.

-...in your works, everything that you just described.

And, you know, as a dancer, we train and train, and there's a sense of perfection and -- and, you know -- but we're these complex characters and human beings, and that's what makes art so interesting.

It's not about fitting into a certain type of mold.

You know, I'm thinking about ballet in particular... -Yeah.

-...but it's how you make people feel.

It's bringing the complexity of all that you are as a human being to your art.

And you do that so beautifully.

You talk about family and how that was such a big part of, you know, inspiring you for a collection and -- what drives you today?

-Well, what drives me today is -- well, in my art practice, well, one specific thing that I am pursuing -- Now, look, intellectually, this may not make sense, but emotionally and spiritually it makes complete sense to me.

I want to someday become proficient enough to make a work of art of my mother, that she can walk off the surface of the canvas or paper and back into my physical life.

Intellectually, I know that such is physically impossible.

I know this.

But when I am in that studio, that is driving me.

I'm governed by this passion because I miss my mother.

-Mm-hmm.

-That's it.

And I want my mother to be here.

You know, Misty, I'll tell you, I -- I... [ Exhales sharply ] I mean this.

I -- I am -- I am blessed, man, for real, man.

I am fortunate.

I am, I know that.

I am blessed!

Whew.

-We are blessed to have you.

To have your works, for, you know, especially -- and I know that your art is for everyone, but what it means for the Black community to see your journey, for so many young people looking at you to see what's possible.

It is such an honor to have you today.

Really.

-Thank you.

I'm very happy to be here.

-Yeah.

Oh, I just... [ Laughter ] Aww.