This is the Problem: A Conversation with Billy Childish

“Art” is bullshit. For how much plastic cup rotgut you’ve swilled at gallery openings, how much “art” do you actually remember? And for all the music you’ve listened to; for all the stacks of indie sound shot through your ears and into your brain, how much do you actually like, and how much is just butt-sniffing fodder for cocktail conversation?

If certain aspects of our cultural milieu are to be propped on the firing line, you’ll surely find there’s a lot of shooting to be done. And while Billy Childish’s goal isn’t just target practice, his work and artistic perspective are impossible to articulate without some semantic collateral damage. Of course, his bone to pick wouldn’t be so painful unless he had the creative meat to back it up. An original punker out of Chatham, England, Childish has recorded over 100 LPs (needless to say that he’s not much of a studio perfectionist), written some 40 collections of poetry, produced thousands of paintings and an untold number of woodcuts. His prolific bent, sardonic treatments, inciting manifestos and pertinacious independence (he’s spent 15 years working off the dole) have elevated Childish to the realm of an international cult figure—even Jack White likes him. His various exhibitions, such as a 2004 homage to Van Gogh, are exercises in non-conformity. But like most things in the land of Childish, this is all besides the point.

The point—and it’s just one amongst many that Childish makes—is that mystic art is a great big lie…not even a sad lie, but a lamentable one. According to Childish, creative work should not be concerned with building a fortress of ego around the artist, which is often a façade for substandard work. In fact, if he had his way, there would be a lot fewer artists in the world and a lot fewer people wanting to write their ticket to fame on the back of two-bit posters and generic art prints. The juicy part of art has always been in its making rather than the finished product itself—and Childish is no bashful kid when it comes to explaining the reasons why.

You were involved with the original punk movement and in the last 30 years, there is this indie ethos that has developed from it. Do you feel a connection with whatever indie is right now?

You say “whatever indie is.” I don’t know what indie is. Indie music is more of a style, like you get mainstream groups that are indie. Indie music doesn’t mean “independent.”

Not anymore…

I think it’s a style; not a thing that is independent. I stopped listening to music after 1978. I know that there’s something where people called their music “indie,” but it’s like calling it “George” or something.

Have you stopped listening to music because you want to block everything out?

It’s not a matter of blocking other things out—I’m not interested. There’s no effort involved. I don’t listen to the radio or watch television or read newspapers, but that’s not because I’m willfully ignorant, it’s because I’m smart. I’m willfully smart I’d say.

With that said, are you surprised when people try and describe you in terms of the art world? Or, describe you in comparison to trends in the art world?

Not really. I’m quite opinionated and people don’t like that. They don’t like you to be too creative or too opinionated because they assume that if you’ve got an opinion, you must be angry. They’re used to people voicing opinions because they’re angry and not because that’s what they think. So, I’m surprised and I’m not surprised.

But for instance, in your manifestos—it’s almost like you’re taking things on in a pugilistic manner.

I started writing manifestos in 1996 with a group called Hangman, and yeah, they are a bit…contentious, because that sort of fit in with my sense of humor. If you want to be awake, it’s more fun to be contentious than agree with everybody. There’s no point in writing a manifesto unless you’re gonna be contentious.

I was also in a group called the Stuckists for a year or so. I left them shortly after and I wrote a few manifestos with them and one of my favorite parts was that “artists that don’t paint aren’t artists.” People were very upset with that.

Why do you think that all these different endeavors, whether it’s music or photography or what have you, need to be shrouded in art? Why is art so valuable?

Well, art isn’t valuable per se, but value is attached by calling it “art”. If you’re an art photographer, you’re gonna be paid a lot more than if you’re a photographer. The idea is to attach yourself to a sort of aesthetic—like if you write songs, you’re not really that brilliant. If you’re a poet who writes songs, you’re given special credence; maybe you get first to the trough. If you’re an artist, it means you’re more special. The idea is to be above other people and of more importance and significance. And this is in a world where people don’t do anything; where people don’t have real jobs. Not like my great-grandfather who worked in the dock yard and was a ship’s carpenter. Now, he made watercolors, and he probably did more painting than a lot of painters do. That was his hobby, and he would never call himself an “artist.” But nowadays, because people don’t do anything, if they write a few lines of verse or arrange some colored pieces of paper on another colored piece of paper; then they’re an artist. People want to be loved and have sex and be paid more and be admired by doing as little as possible, so it’s best to call yourself an artist.

It seems like there is this cultural predicate that once you call something “art,” there is this whole new criteria for understanding it. But, you still have all these creative endeavors that you’re involved in and all these things you’re making. What do you call it if not art?

It’s a matter of honesty and integrity, and that means not lying to yourself or other people, and that goes for whether you make a picture at home or if you bought it down at the shop and told someone you made it. Lying is not a good idea, and trying to bolster yourself up is probably not a good idea either. I think that the best way to do work is to work at something that you would work at anyway.

People think that if you present something in a gallery or on film—which is actually very, very boring—it’s art. But if you look into it, there are many other possibilities. If it becomes interesting, that proves that you’re an artist. Actually, everything is interesting if you look at it, and you’re not just pitching ideas that might stick. An artist is somebody who works at something for a long time because they have belief or genuine interest in it. In a lot of contemporary culture, if there are no takers, then they’ll go and try something else.

Would you take it as a sign of decadence that our society can support such an amount of materials that are considered artistic?

I would say it’s more of a case of mass delusion rather than decadence, but maybe there are decadent aspects to it. I think it’s just mass delusion. People are not glued into reality very much; they’re in some sort of half-assed spiritual experience of life which is totally ungrounded and worthless. And in desperation, they cling to notions of what they think is special because it might pick them out from the herd and might get them an extra ladle of soup.

What elements in society are aiding this quasi-spiritual notion of half-assed artistic experience?

Endeavor as opposed to experience. I suppose things within the unconscious that are projected onto the world and onto other people and onto objects. It’s a lack of self-discovery, because it’s very difficult to discover yourself in a world that doesn’t demand any engagement by actually having any craft or ability to do something. What happens is people cannot identify themselves very easily by their background or their job. Instead of realizing that this is a great freedom, they need to identify themselves by what they do and it’s usually something like they’re a secret poet or a great artist. I think the phrase “everybody is an artist” comes to mind. Obviously, they’re not. If you don’t do art, you’re not an artist. People can’t be what they don’t do. This is the problem. F