The steve keene art book
Published by Hat & Beard + Tractor Beam
OUT NOW
Now Available For Pre-Order
CONTACT:
DAVID ELKIN // PUBLICIST
ROSIE BOYD // PUBLICIST
“Steve Keene is the Johnny Appleseed of art.” — Elsa Longhauser, Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (Time)
Virginia-born Brooklyn resident Steve Keene, who has created more than 300,000 paintings, is one of the most prolific artists of all time. First gaining notoriety via his album covers in the mid-’90s (including albums by Pavement, Silver Jews and the Apples in Stereo), his bright, colorful paintings have become embedded in our lives and decorate spaces across the world.
Six years in the making, The Steve Keene Art Book was born out of a 2016 exhibition at Subliminal Projects gallery, curated by Daniel Efram and gallery owners Amanda and Shepard Fairey. While some see Keene as an outsider artist, he has two fine art degrees and has shown his work at prestigious events such as Frieze New York, Marlborough Gallery, the Brooklyn Public Library, where he was artist in residence and painted live on Grand Army Plaza for months, and in cities such as Melbourne and Cologne.
Efram, a music and media producer and photographer who has developed live projects, documentary films and television for stages and screens, curated Steve Keene’s Brooklyn Experience. Efram began working with Keene back in the ’90s after seeing Keene’s work at Threadwaxing Space, a venue in a loft space on Lower Broadway in Manhattan.
The Steve Keene Art Book collects commentary, essays and quotes from art and music world luminaries such as Chan Marshall, Will Oldham and Ryan McGinness. Writers, critics, musicians, and art-world folks help create the narrative to accompany hundreds of hand-painted artworks by Keene. Nearly the same size as an LP, it is a love letter to this ubiquitous, fantastic American artist that is long overdue.
Efram started photographing Keene’s work for the Subliminal Projects show in 2016, and continued the process for the book, including paintings from dozens of personal collections. The book includes long-form essays and insight into Keene’s life, space and process, and would not have been possible without 600+ crowdfunding supporters.
“I feel like I’m a craftsperson,” Keene says in the book. “I’m a person making bagels or a pizza. Or coffee mugs. I feel like I am making a craft for a different need. You might need a coffee mug, and you might need a little painting.” Keene is famous for selling his work for anywhere from $1 up but in the early days it was $2 to $5 and buyers would drop their money into a box.
Keene works at his Brooklyn home in what he calls “the cage,” a room constructed of chain-link fence, filled with paint, brushes and plywood, and paints for eight hours or longer. He cuts plywood, attaches the hanging wires, secures the boards to the fence, pours paint, and just walks around painting. For multiples of the same image, he works from the larger color fields and broader brushstrokes down to the details and finer strokes. Horizontal strokes first, then vertical ones. He works out the scheme in his mind
beforehand, much like the screen-printing process he studied at Yale. His average output is about 50 paintings per day.
“Keene’s democratic approach to making and selling artwork allowed me and many of my friends to buy original artwork for the first time,” says Efram. “His work was informed by our scene and fit in perfectly with the attitude of the time. It has always been affordable and continues to be sold for just a few bucks.”
Keene’s artwork is as much about process as it is about his eccentric delivery experience. Despite being the most prolific producer of hand-painted artworks of all time in the U.S., he hasn’t always made sense to the art world. But the Faireys chose to show his work at their Subliminal Projects gallery in 2016, and that show was the catalyst for creating this book. It was the first time that Keene’s work had been consciously photographed for archival purposes.
The book features hundreds of photos of Keene’s paintings, figures and 3-D tattooed plywood artworks, along with some of his most treasured Album Art Tributes, themes of abstract landscapes, architecture, historical, and local landmark pieces, most with his trademark non sequiturs.
“This is consumer-based art, and anyone can participate. With his assembly-line painting approach, Steve is mass producing his work for the masses. Accessibility is at the core of this whole artistic gesture,” says artist Ryan McGinness in his interview with Keene in the book.
“Steve Keene has been making art for the people for ages,” says Laura Ballance from Merge Records/Superchunk. “He devised a method to scale up production such that he makes hand-painted multiples, making art that is unique, approachable and affordable.
“It’s like problem solving,” Keene shares. “It doesn’t feel like I’m creating something. It’s my art, but it’s also my craft. It’s like making a hundred pizzas, or a hundred birthday cakes at the same time.”
This is the first art book dedicated exclusively to Keene’s work, and it has been made possible through a crowdfunding campaign that included hundreds of supporters, from Keene’s former hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, to fans all over the United States who contributed pieces from their own personal collections.
Essays in the book include those by musician Hilarie Bratset, writer Sam Brumbaugh, Elle Chang, Efram, Shepard Fairey, journalist Karen Loew, McGinness and Christina Zafiris, along with comments from Starling Keene, curators Jonathan LeVine, Leo Fitzgerald and Talia Logan, alongside 280 Steve Keene works and photographs of the artist at work taken by Efram. The book was published and produced by Daniel Efram and Tractor Beam. Tractor Beam is Efram’s company that releases music, art books and film productions.
The book was designed by Grammy-nominated graphic designer Henry Owings, who has worked with Unwound, Lee Hazlewood, Mr. Show, Charley Patton, Pylon and the Jesus Lizard, among others. Owings also published Chunklet, wrote four books, produced countless records and is archivist for the Elephant 6 Recording Company. He purchased his first Steve Keene piece at Threadwaxing Space in 1994.
The Steve Keene Art Book was edited by Gail O’Hara, editor in chief of the “legendary indie nerd bible” chickfactor. She was the Music Editor at Time Out New York, and an editor at SPIN, ELLEgirl, Kinfolk, Washington City Paper, and EW. Her photographs fill chickfactor, many album covers, and have been used in the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Guardian, etc.
Critic Michael Azerrad and Karen Loew provided additional editing, while additional photography was provided by Sam Brumbaugh, Ted Catanzaro, Lu-Mei Chang, C. Taylor Crothers, Kevin Doyle, Tammy Ealom, Sam Graham, Ken Greenlee, Mick Jeffries and Hunter Kennedy.