Artist Alex Israel talks about drawing inspiration from media mogul Oprah Winfrey in launching his own unique performance art project, a celebrity talk show.
The idea of a talk show meshed well with Alex’s fascination with popular culture while growing up in Hollywood. “It also came from growing up watching television, and going to the movies, and going to theme parks, and just being a consumer of those things and being a fan of those things.”
The show he started was called As It Lays, named after the Joan Didion novel Play It as It Lays. As host of the show, he would ask his celeb guests sometimes rather mundane questions in complete deadpan style, with the goal of trying to get to the true selves of the guests.
“I made it in a completely independent way, I made it for myself – for my own website – which was going to be the method of distribution for it,” Alex explained.
“I wanted to figure out how to make a portrait of L.A., or portraits of L.A. people. So As It Lays was something I did to figure out how to make portraits. I knew that I couldn’t carve a portrait out of a block of marble, or I couldn’t make an oil painting of someone – because I don’t have those skills – so I started thinking about, what does it mean to make a contemporary portrait.”
He says his idea was to structure the show like The Oprah Winfrey Show, which he became especially interested in during her final season.
“I figured if there was a way to use the talk show format, but strip away all of the kind of promotional aspects that are embedded in it as we know it, I might just be able to get likenesses of people – in the traditional sense of portraiture as something that’s meant to capture someone’s likeness.”
Watch the full episode to also hear Alex discuss his current projects and how he’s dealt with the rise in popularity of his art and the accompanying financial success.
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