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Contemporary Artist Nicholaas Chiao

Nicholaas Chiao from 2013: Contemporary Art: Questions and Answers 2013 (corrected in 2022)

Q: Nicholaas, what is the most important in the age of Contemporary art?

A. In the era of fabrication, mass production, and overproduction of nearly ALL types of goods (cars, houses, paintings, watches, just anything else) - what is the most important? The Brand, I suppose, is the authority; the relevance and aura of the artist and their fame levels are criteria. See - oil paintings are very old products. It was produced in crazy numbers previously. Some museums have storage facilities many times exceeding their public galleries. With the new methods and technologies, it is increasingly easier to produce paintings. Mass produce, some time. Artists, sometimes, don’t have to know how to draw anymore - you have photography, software, projectors, you’ve got ink-jet printers and the art of painting becomes different. Many artists use industrial methods to produce their art. Is this bad, or is this good? Doesn't matter how, matters “what”. After all, this is all about branding your aura and qualities and promotion of your style, it is about making the highest quality items possible and getting media coverage about it.

Q: Nicholaas, can you try to briefly describe your art?

A: My artworks are the reflections of the realities in my life. The experiences accumulated over the years of life in Belarus and the United States. It is an autobiography through art. They are revealing, shocking, and breathtakingly beautiful sometimes.

Q: Nicholaas, some of your work is extremely provocative, how can you get people to accept these ideas?

A: Certainly, I have many works of a controversial shock value, often very disturbing and displeasing in character. Some of them are on themes of terror, suicide, politics, and insanity, and some of them on the issues of medicine and ethics. Some themes of my paintings often are the same as what is persistently delivered to the public by news agencies, so people deal with this daily. I can not force anyone to accept this as art. All that I can do - is just to explain the work and thus to give the people an opportunity to look at these problems through my eyes. I think the deepest art is life itself in all complexity, and I tend to think my work is a strong reflection of life.

Q: Why do you have so many styles in your work?

A: Yes, of course, some people might have a question - why one artist should have several styles in his work. My photo-based paintings sharply reveal and reflect the physical world, whereas the deconstructivist and other styles tend to penetrate the complex abstract world of the soul and experience. Life is complex, so my art is the response to pluralism in modern culture/world. Also, I will be bored (perhaps the same as the respectful public) to paint in the same style all the time.

Q: Beside your conceptual and deconstructivist oeuvres you produce a lot of photo-based paintings, especially the images of museums. Tell us more about these paintings.

A: Why are there so many images of museums - the question is easily answered. There is some constant demand for it from the collectors. Paintings of museums with visitors are an image of authority in the art world; also it is a good metaphor for human life. The birth. aging, death - all could be found in the multiple museum galleries. Visitors are also usually of all ages. Of course, the images of museums are visually rich and have a complex surface, a great subject for any painting.

Q: Nicholaas, how do you explain works such as A Thousand Years and Midday Suicide?

A: A Thousand Years, this sculpture is just a drop of semen on a square of glass. Damian Hirst has an iconic work with the same title. This is a slight humor to his side. Thousands, millions of years since the beginning of life the sperm (or any similar mechanism) transmitted the life of one organism to another, hence the name. Well opposite the meaning of generations of dead after dead and unspeakably simpler than Hirst's masterwork. Midday Suicide is a very sadistic piece of art. It depicts the collapse of a young and sexually attractive woman on a candy-colored background. The reason for the suicide is unknown - perhaps denied religion of her love, or midday excessive heat, excess hormones, just an unfortunate accident? I think this artwork is quite an iconic representation of the controversies of modern life.

Q: What will be the art of the next century?

A: Not much different from Contemporary. Something in relevance with the lifestyle and values of the future. At best, this will be something like the results of sensations produced altogether by knowledge of the CIA, KGB with science, and psychiatry. Maybe we will just contemplate life in new, more intellectual, and richer ways. We have a color, form, art mediums, composition, certain rules of philosophy and aesthetics - and multiple ways to endlessly combine them on a larger scale.

Q: What influences you?

A: Life, literature, music. I Liked a lot of music. Richard Wagner, Bach, basically all classical music, Depeche Mode, Lily Allen, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, different music could give a lot of different moods, which I try to use in art. In literature, this is “Stranger” by Albert Camus. Friedrich Nietzsche, Bible, Torah, Sigmund Freud. Cinema: I do like Ingmar Bergman’s movies, Quentin Tarantino, and David Lynch. Also biographical movies about artist’s lives, like the film Basquiat by Julian Schnabel. And... Science and technology influence everyone.

Q: Politics and Art, enemies or friends?

A: Once art served the Church and Kings. Now it also serves the Government - Presidential prestige, economic goals, patriotic propaganda, education, even so-called Potemkin villages - all of this. The questionable thing is that the current history of art is often stronger written by institutions and more rarely by artists. Only the biggest artists shadow institutions. Your art will bring little money (if any) unless someone with political and economic powers is triggered by you to become interested in it.

Q: Themes of the September 11 terror seem to be important for you, why?

A: I follow the logic of a historical precedent and impact that needs to be recorded. And I try to do it as delicately and truthfully as I can. And beautiful, sort of holy beauty. I hope to produce a final record for tragedies. I try not to produce too much work themed by global disasters. It is not ethical sometimes.

Q: What is your opinion about art as a business practice?

A: Unless you manage to make your own instantly recognizable and known brand, art is simply an investment of time into manufacturing quite personally important and interesting items. And then you start to develop certain publicly wanted qualities which could bring you to the top after years and years of serious art practice.

Q: What do you think people expect to receive from the experience of art?

A: This was always a strong sensual and spiritual experience. Art is a substitute for travel sometimes. Time and technologies are changing forms and media, but messages are always still the same… They get new Ideas… Inspiration… Different moods… Desire to follow artists and live… Finally, it’s called to experience love, I assume.

Q: Who among twentieth and twenty-first-century artists is most important to you?

A: I will not pretend to give any final opinion and no such thing is ever possible in art. You can calculate the cultural value of art or artists. How? All we have is a measurable social impact. I just must mention Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Max Beckmann, Marc Chagall, Kazimir Malevich, Arshile Gorky, Yves Tanguy, Roberto Matta, Piet Mondrian, Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon, Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Jean Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, On Kawara and I love much more names. I name Damien Hirst, Maurizio Cattelan, Eric Fischl, Tracy Emin, Neo Rausch, Gerhard Richter, Takashi Murakami, Andreas Gursky, Yayou Kusama, Marlene Dumas, Luc Tuymans, Ghada Amer, Pipilotti Rist, Peter Doig, Dana Shutz, Lemour Pelli, Andrei Molodkine, Boris Zaborov, Gavriil Vashenko and so much more. About everyone can achieve 15 minutes of fame, or paint an outstanding work of art. But the matter is, how to make a lasting impression and historical impact to last hundreds of years, which is capable of doing just a few chosen ones in the good sense among people. I believe the masters listed above are important in many aspects of artists.

Q: Do you agree that people like Charles Saatchi are responsible for much of the dull and speculative character of the contemporary art market? Do you think this speculation has inflated the value of contemporary art? Do you expect the market bubble around Contemporary Art to burst soon?

A: There are some trends, and there are trendsetters. Also, there is a demand for different art by different level groups of collectors. You know, most wealthy people know each other in person. For example: Warren Buffet will call everyone in this Forbes Top 100 list to greet every person with being there. There also is something common about the set of quality marks required for acceptance of value in Art by the wealthiest group; there are fashions to own works by certain artists coming up and down. Charles Saatchi, when he was more active in sales, was for the art market the same as Warren Buffet for the stock market, he is a guru that many follow. His collection of Contemporary art is challenging to Tate and MoMA collections. There are some speculations and prices for some artists are rising higher and higher. The global Contemporary Art market likely will not burst, but besides high points it could also decline for decades, crashes and "bankruptcies" may occur for markets of some individual over-hyped artists.

Q: How many artists could make a living from art?

A: A lot of famous artists plus some emerging if they win fellowships and grants, or have a flexible art dealer(s). A lot of artists manage to achieve government, business, and private commissions, and sell online or to their clients without dealers and classical gallery representation.

Q: Whom, if anyone, should you listen to for a bit of advice while acquiring art?

A: You should listen to your necessities, feelings, and reason. To whom should you listen, choosing your husband or wife? Same with the art. You should buy art you will be comfortable with every day. If you like someone, and they were quite happy owning this art before you, go ahead and acquire some of it. Emotionally, physically, and intellectually. Start collecting from some posters, books, and cheaper studies. I advise you to become familiar with the History of Art, before investing anything in it. I had a great library of all historical and contemporary art. I admire all of art starting from Ancient Egyptian Art and caves. I admire a lot of contemporary artists. If you are planning to gain while buying art then be careful - art is rather philanthropic. Some people trade art like they trade stocks and they are in profit. Then you should think about how many other people could wish to buy work by this artist or could present on their client waiting list.

Q: Do you believe in the necessity of philanthropy in Art?

A: Yes, a lot of masterworks could have been impossible without it. Just remember Medicis and Church commissions. It's not only philanthropy for them, they gained a lot of prestige.

Q: Do you think Art should be popular?

A: Yes, it must be popular. Acceptance of different Art should be a widespread deal. Mass Acceptance. We have Mass Media and Education for it. Art should be taught in every school. Popularity could be achieved in two ways - it could be done by the means of education of the public in schools, or you have to use primary instincts and mass media to attract a lot of the public to certain exhibitions. Both ways are rational. For example, Street Artists, most famously Banksy, use quite risky but logical ways to get a lot of attention, making art in public places.

Q: Are paintings a better investment than sharks in formaldehyde? Diego Velazquez canvases still look terrific for 400 years and it is much easier to keep unrotten.

A: Art is an Investment only when fashion and demand for it will not quickly disappear. Science will never disappear. Most historical masterpieces are above fashion, it is timeless historical records, like science. Preservation is an important issue and it's quite doable for sharks too.

Haunting Beauty, Fear of Death and Protection We live in the informational age when the importance of an image and the relation of the viewer to it often comes from endless repetition of the image by media outlets.

But is it necessary for art to be repeated by the media to be any good? Not, but if it is about making it important to the audience, then it does.

Contemporary Art is still playing with simply good drawing, novel and interesting composition, and striking and harmoniously balanced color at first instance; but games with the authority of the artist are also essential; heavily utilizing instincts, addictions, and beliefs of the audience.

Nicholaas Chiao does not have a singular style. Instead, he has many. Life is too complex to fit in one style, he affirms.

In his work the artist seeks not only beauty but often a different measure of importance - it could be the fame of a sitter in a portrait; the importance of a thing, event, or place; memorable style of the work.

His first commercially successful project was “Museum Paintings” where artists used the authority of museum backgrounds in figurative scenes to produce and sell “acceptable” looking paintings. Then he went further with implying a new style, which he called deconstructivism. The mix of cubism and abstract expressionism, this style produced memorable results using unconventional treatment of form.

People always fear Death and the end of something, but there is always the end, as well as new beginnings exist. And in the end and above everything is theory and ways to use it. Paintings, Drawings, Installations, and Sculptures could be endlessly produced in exceptional and varied forms. But which is important for them? Promoted by museums and media? Hauntingly beautiful? Sold for millions? Historical Records? Or those having a clear explanation of importance? Maybe all of this? And Chiao's medical series came into play. Utilizing the Warholian approach to the design of pieces with Hirst’s shock value, Chiao created the “Last Judgment” series. Just a bright package, a reminder of the possibility of synthesizing the human body, and supporting the life of the cells and tissues. These works were partially lost. End of nature and triumph of science, victory over death (likely available finally for a crimeless man in the situation recalling the Biblical story of the Last Judgment and resurrection of all dead), but also, the end of the history of a man and beginning of Uberman… Beyond the death of Homo Sapiens, there is a demand for ultimate Genius only.

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