Jonathan Yeo on King Charles and collages made from porn
Jonathan Yeo has painted them all, from super models to Presidents and our very own King. When he unveiled his vast portrait of Charles III last year, the monarch appeared, for a second, to recoil at the sight of the bright red canvas. The moment became a meme and the portrait was fervently discussed and dissected across the world. Some – me included – loved its vibrancy and ethereal beauty, while others described it as “cursed”.
In reality, of course, the King had already seen the portrait. “He liked it, I think,” says Yeo. “He said ‘I don’t know how you do it’… though I suppose that could be taken either way…”
Dressed in double denim, Yeo radiates a youthful energy despite being in his mid-fifties. I’ve been an admirer of his work for decades and over the years we’ve met at galleries, parties and once at Soho Farmhouse where – fangirl that I am – I recognised the back of his head as he cycled by and shouted “Jonny!” so loudly he almost fell off his bike.
We meet in his Shepherd’s Bush studio, which unfolds Tardis-like from behind a heavy black curtain to reveal high ceilings, towering jungle plants and a black spiral staircase. Sunbeams fall from windows onto an assortment of sculptures and paint splattered canvases. It’s an enchanting place, full of comfortable corners stacked with books, leather armchairs and various curiosities. It is from one such corner that Yeo is holding court about the King.
“He turned up in his guards’ jacket, which is very red and that’s one thing I’m wary about. Normally if you paint something red, that’s what the eye goes to. It’s often used as a device to draw the eye and make a painting primarily about that. So I thought, either I change the colour, which would probably upset the traditionalists, or I take the colour and put it everywhere”. Yeo went with the latter idea. “It’s obviously a very striking and unusual colour. I was trying to make it ‘fairytale’ rather than ‘blood’, which is what some of the media have said”.
Yeo is one of the most recognisable artists of his generation, a name to rival the Damien Hirsts and Anish Kapoors of the British art world. He’s best known for portraits that combine the figurative and the abstract, often featuring photo-realistic faces swimming in an ocean of colour. Given his body of work, which encompasses portraits of Prime Ministers, aristocrats and national treasures including Sir David Attenborough, you could argue he is the leading establishment painter in the land. But ‘establishment’ feels like a loaded term, especially given his subtly subversive work – not least his portrait of Charles. I wonder what he makes of the royal family…
“They’re in a funny job,” he says. “We don’t buy into their mystical power as in previous centuries, and we know from the tabloids their quirks and failings and that they’re normal people like you and I. But we do buy into the fairytale a little and I wanted to show that. We put them in this world that we keep alive as a kind of contract between us and them, so the idea was to make the piece feel slightly otherworldly”.
It occurs to me that sitting for a painting is not for the faint-hearted. There is the physical discomfort of maintaining a pose, the boredom of not doing much of anything for hours on end, the self-consciousness of being scrutinised. How was the King?
“He’s great. He’s funny and happy to chat about all kinds of things. But he wasn’t the King yet when they first came to me to paint him, so that relieved the pressure a bit. And I’d met him a few times before”.
It turns out his painting did pose some logistical challenges, however. “I’ve never done [a portrait] that big before. It was nearly eight feet tall so there were certain practical difficulties. I had to stand on something when painting and he had to stand on something to be at the right height. It was quite the production.”
Yeo says the key to a good painting is often working out how to get his sitters to relax. “The studio is full of objects and pictures that can distract people and get them interested in something other than themselves”. If after a couple of sessions someone is still stiff, he will take them for lunch and open a bottle of wine. “That’s when I can see them relax and that’s the point when I get to see what I need”.
Yeo is a notable wine lover and during our interview he produces fine stemmed glasses from a vast selection kept at his studio and we crack open a lovely bottle of Central Otago Pinot Noir. He lapses into silence for the first time as he swirls the wine in the glass before sipping. He drinks slowly, appreciatively, commenting on the its colour and lightness. Wine, he says, is an almost daily pleasure, and after a glass or two, this interview is all but forgotten as Yeo and I chat about grapes and old times.
Jonathan Yeo and Hollywood royalty
Though sought after by the powerful and prosperous, Yeo is now in the position where he can choose whom he paints. “It’s a lovely way to get to know interesting people but I don’t just do the famous ones, I mix it up. I keep in touch with most people I paint and some wind up being really good friends. I pick people who I think are going to be good company”.
Mixing with Hollywood’s finest and bonafide royalty wasn’t what Yeo expected from his life. “I enjoyed art as a kid, and it was one of the few things I was good at but there weren’t many people making a living as an artist around me. In recent decades it’s become more of an industry, but it wasn’t at the time. It was an affliction. It’s something you have to do if you really can’t stop yourself doing it”.
At 22, Yeo had Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which he says steeled him. “That kind of being ill makes you more determined. Also being so ill at that age… no one wants to give you bad news if you’re having cancer treatment, no one wants to say ‘Go get a proper job’, so it bought me a bit of time in my early twenties, which is when most people give up or have to go and do something else”. Yeo never intended to paint portraits but says it was a way of making a living while learning how to paint.
His first big break was his portrait of archbishop Trevor Huddleston, founder and president of the anti-apartheid movement. “My dad knew him, and I think it was out of sympathy more than anything because I was going through my cancer treatment. I started one and made a mess of it, so I decided to bin it and try something looser, have fun with it basically, and it was so much better. I think it startled everyone I knew at the time because they were like, ‘Where did that come from?’”. It was a pivotal moment for Yeo and the piece made it into the newspapers. “It gave me a bit of kudos and made me think, ‘Maybe I can do this’”.
Then there was his infamous collage of George W Bush made up out of porn clippings. Yeo says he always felt his style would suit collage because of his abstract way of working. “If you’re going to do a portrait as a collage then the logical thing to use is pornography,” he says matter of factly. “Because it’s all skin tones. And, of course, I thought it would be kind of funny”.
It sat in the back of Yeo’s mind when, separately, he was contacted to do a portrait of Bush by an American collector, who had seen Yeo’s 2008 portrait of Tony Blair. It was in the middle of the so-called War on Terror and Yeo describes Bush’s team as being extremely suspicious of him. “It was a paranoid time, and they kept asking me to jump through hoops and provide information and proof of where I was born, where my parents were born and send sketches of what the portrait would look like, which I wouldn’t normally do”.
Yeo went along with it but suddenly things went quiet. “They’d asked me to do it just before the end of his first term. I think they didn’t expect him to get re-elected and when he did, they stopped returning my calls, so I got a bit fed up”. Never one to miss an opportunity, Yeo decided to use his sketches to create his first pornographic collage portrait. “I thought it would be a bit of fun but actually it took a long time. You have to flick through hundreds of porn magazines to find exactly the right bit of the right colour, and where you can see that it’s a naked body”. A tough day at the office…
Yeo’s plan was to send it over to Bush’s team and see if anyone noticed but Steve Lazaridis of Lazarides Gallery in Soho wanted to do an unveiling. This was during the heyday of street art and Lazaridis was at the centre of it. “He was opening shows with Banksy and people like that, so I said yes, of course. It was my first experience of going viral. If you get your work on the right websites, in the right underground places, it goes all over the world, which was amazing but also spoiled the fun slightly because then the White House knew about it and that little game was over.”
Jonathan Yeo: Bush has a sense of humour
I wonder if Bush reacted badly, but apparently not: “For all his failings Bush clearly has a sense of humour, I don’t think he would have minded, really, but for a while in the US I was known as ‘the porn guy’ and not for my painting at all”. The mind boggles imagining if the portrait had been of Trump…
From this mischievous seed, other collages sprang, such as Falling Leaves, a whimsical series which, at first glance, looks like beautiful autumn leaves until you notice they’re made of cut outs of pornography. When I first moved to London, a friend showed me one and I have coveted one ever since. It is a major regret of my life that I failed to buy a piece when I could have because now, as one of the youngest living artists to have a solo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, his work is far beyond my reach.
Currently Yeo has been sidetracked doing technology-related projects. “I find that whole area really interesting. My usual work is seen as something quite traditional, so people are surprised I’m interested in this as well – but to paint is actually quite a technical process anyway.” Yeo has created a sculpture with Google (a self-portrait created in virtual reality using Google’s Tilt Brush software, 3D printed and cast in bronze, which ended up in the World Academy) and made an award winning app with Apple, which allows users to virtually visit and move around his studio. Now he is working on an immersive project he hopes will come to fruition by the end of the year. For Yeo art is about experimenting, trying something new and having fun while doing it.
“It’s important to do stuff you like, something you yourself would want to own. Hard as it is when it’s your job, I try to do things without thinking too much about the consequences and how others will see it. Ultimately the best work is stuff that you do for you”.
