‘The eighties ended on November 6, 1990. That night, at Sotheby’s in New York, the audience applauded when a painting by Julian Schnabel, its broken plates emblematic of the decade’s heedless excess, failed to elicit a bid. (Apparently, the same crowd that inflated the art-market bubble took perverse pleasure in watching it burst.) The results of the sale were so brutal—less than 50 percent of the lots sold—that Time magazine dubbed the auction “The Great Massacre of 1990.” Ten days later, Sean Landers opened his second solo show in New York.
‘If it seems like bad form to open with money in an essay on art, consider the impact of the crash on Landers, who came of age as an artist at the height of the hoopla. He moved to New York’s East Village in 1986—the same year that Jeff Koons exhibited his Luxury and Degradation series just a few blocks away. By 1989, Landers had been pegged, in print, as a star of the next generation.
‘But success was the new failure. In 1991, Landers wrote (and went on to exhibit) a series of absurdly personal letters to his student-loan officer explaining why he’d fallen behind on his payments: “Miss Gonzales, not one single artwork sold from my show in Chicago. This dizzying fact has not only squelched the raging fire of my artist’s ego, it also rendered me penniless for the ensuing four month period before my show here in New York.”
‘Or was failure the new success? As Landers later wrote in Frieze magazine, “I was lucky enough to have been one of the ‘1990s artists’ who suddenly emerged after the irrationally exuberant New York art scene of the 1980s crashed. I felt like a singer/songwriter wearing thrift-store clothing and playing a worn-out acoustic guitar, thrust on stage directly after a spandex-wearing, hair-sprayed, heavy metal band with their double-necked electric guitars just exited in a blazing pyrotechnics display.” Landers may have been down-and-out, but at least he was down-and-out in the spotlight.
‘The fact is that there is no “bad form” when it comes to the early work of Sean Landers. Formally, he’s promiscuous, moving between text, painting, sculpture, video, drawing, audio, and performance. His practice swings from the de-skilled (setting a chimpanzee loose in the studio, as he did in 1995) to the traditional (casting figurative statues in bronze, as he’s done, off and on, since 1991).
‘As for content, bad form is Landers’s stock-in-trade. He established his reputation by shamelessly disclosing the details of his life, from the banal to the painfully personal, in stream- of-consciousness texts scrawled in ballpoint pen on legal-pad pages (one lengthy text was published as the 1993 book [sic]), then written on giant sheets of paper, and eventually painted on canvas and paired with images (breasts, clowns, monkeys). In all these texts, Landers simultaneously indulges and sends up ideas of narcissism, offering a portrait of the artist that recasts James Joyce’s semiautobiographical “young man” as a comically confessional bad boy.
‘No subject—not his debt, not his doubt, not even his dingleberries—was off-limits for Landers. From 1996 to 2000, when Spin magazine gave Landers the last word every month in his hilarious back-page column “Genius Lessons,” he could be so politically incorrect that Howard Stern seemed like a spokesman for the FCC by comparison. (See “Genius Lesson #20: Soapsuds Afro,” chronicling a pubescent mishap involving hygiene, onanism, and the artist’s urethra, or “Genius Lesson #18: Send Naked Photos,” a plea to his female readers.)
‘Landers didn’t escape censure for skewering political correctness. When Artforum magazine reproduced one of his text paintings on the cover, in April 1994, the issue included a dismissive take on his work by the African-American artist and critic Lorraine O’Grady, as well as a more favorable analysis by the art historian Jan Avgikos. But bad press did not thwart his progress. By the mid-nineties, Landers had installed solo shows in New York, Los Angeles, Zürich, Chicago, Paris, Cologne, London, Berlin, Athens, and Milan. Yet, just as a reversal of fortune had helped launch his career at the start of the decade, a return to “business as usual” would soon change the rules of the game.
‘Ironically, it wasn’t Landers’s words that altered his circumstance—it was the lack of them. As he shifted his process, from working on paper to painting, he began to experiment with imagery for its own sake. Satire persisted, as in the colorful stripe painting I’m With Stupid, which pairs a T-shirt slogan with a riff on Duchamp’s rejection of “retinal” art—specifically, the apocryphal anecdote that he dismissed painting with the old French expression “bête comme un peintre,” or “dumb as a painter.” Then, in 1996, Landers shipped his gallery in Los Angeles five entirely figurative canvases, all based on William Hogarth’s 1733 painting of colonial-era male bonding, A Midnight Modern Conversation.
‘Landers later confessed, “The end of the ’90s for me was the instant that the crate containing these paintings was pried open and [my dealer] got her first glimpse of them. In a fraction of a second, her big pretty brown eyes shot me a look that said, ‘Your career is over honey!’ I’m not saying that it wasn’t a sympathetic look but it was like buckshot through the heart just the same. What I didn’t realize was that ‘playtime’ was officially over and ‘business’, which had been suspended since the late 1980s, was back on.”15 Sean Landers had failed again. There was only one thing to do: try again and fail better.’ — Andrea K. Scott
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Further
Sean Landers Site
Sean Landers @ Petzel Gallery
Sean Landers @ Andrea Rosen Gallery
seanland81 @ instagram
Book: ‘Sean Landers’
It’s Not Easy Being Green
December 2011: Sean Landers Interview
TO EVERYONE’S CHAGRIN
A Former Slacker Artist Gets Real
Writing the Song of Myself
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Five videos
Νάρκισσος [Narcissus], 1993
Skyline Pigeon, 1995
Singerie: Le Peintre, 1995
Day and Night Potatoes, 1992
93% Sincere, 1992
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Extras
A Discussion with Sean Landers
Sean Landers and Jason Rosenfeld, with Jeffrey C. Wright
On the Work of Sean Landers
Sean Landers-Video Artist at Armory
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Interview
GARAGE: Your last two solo exhibitions at Petzel were comprised of colorful canvases depicting animals dressed in Scottish tartan and lone clowns sailing ships. What made you return to the textual focus of your earlier work?
Sean Landers: For as long as I’ve been making art there’s been a pendulum swinging back and forth between relying purely on image and purely on text, as well as moments where those things get mixed. I see my tree paintings as a “mixed” moment, and my new yellow legal pad paintings as a homecoming, in a way, because it’s how I entered the art world in the late 1980s and early ’90s.
How did you develop your stream-of-consciousness way of working?
From the time I was a teenager, whenever I experienced turbulence, I would write to calm the waters. When I moved to New York, I experienced a big shift in my work and my personal life, which resulted in a “get real” moment. I picked up a legal pad, starting writing and created a character to say things that I normally wouldn’t express. I taped these notes to my studio walls, and when my art friends responded positively, I started to make it part of my practice.
When did your writing become the art itself?
Once I removed the fictional character from the story it became more about me. I turned writing into drawing, and then writing into painting. When I confronted a big piece of paper or canvas it became like action painting or process art, and I loved how that married into art history. Having felt stuck between being a writer and a painter, it gave me a way to fuse the two things together in an honest and purposeful way. Instead of swashbuckling with a big brush, it was just some guy’s thoughts.
Over the years you’ve found many ways to incorporate language into the context of figurative imagery. What is it about that mix that fascinates you?
I often paint an image that stands alone, which is fine, but at other times I feel like I need to put more of my soul into it. Some paintings arrive extemporaneously, where I make a lot sketches and wipe them off so that there are all of these overlays, which lead to the final subject. I seek something in it to access the subconscious and then I just stream-of-consciously add some text.
Why do you like using a yellow legal pad paper, which in the case of the current works is pre-printed on canvas?
I’ve stuck with the yellow legal pad paper ever since I first started using it. It’s always been what I use to jot things down on, like when I’m planning a painting or sketching out ideas. I don’t make many conventional drawings, but I have scores of yellow legal pad pieces.
Your work of the 1990s was sometimes identified as “slacker art.” Were you that apathetic or was that just a cool subcultural tag?
That was at a time when I was doing maybe three solo shows and a dozen group exhibitions a year, which made me anything but a slacker. I was working my ass off. But because I was just emerging, I thought any attention was fine. It was only later that I realized the slacker label didn’t really fit—even though some of my work might have fit the characters in Richard Linklater’s 1991 film, or the grunge movement of that time. The tag stuck, however, and because of the Internet, it still has a long tail.
You were definitely more angst-ridden when you were emerging. Are you becoming more philosophical and sagacious with age?
I hope so! Because I used to write when I was in emotional turmoil, more of that content found its way into the world than when I was walking to my studio without a care in the world. I was writing when I broke up with my wife Michelle, before we were married. It happened only once, but it famously became the basis for my book SIC. Unfortunately, I recorded it for all time, which means it could become a major motion picture some day.
Are you parodying your earlier self in the current work?
No, these yellow legal pads have always been a part of my practice. I just haven’t shown them to anybody. All of my work comes into the world on these pads. The guy in the work is less self-abusive now, but that’s because I’m further away from my Catholic past, where one’s taught that if you show pride, you have to beat yourself down and get back into the flock.
What kinds of thoughts have shaped these new word works?
They’re very existential, which goes back to the question of what does an artwork say? It says that the maker was here. Art is a transaction between a genuine gesture by its maker and an empathic reception by the viewer. The more truth you put into the work the more it will stand the test of time.
Should we be reading between the lines?
Always—you should be reading between the lines when you read anything, particularly my stuff. The character that you find between the lines is the true character of the work. There are cracks and fissures where I’m naked as hell.
What about your doodles, where a mouse is caught in a trap or a guy in a barrel is about to go over the falls? Why so dark an outlook for such a successful guy?
There are doodles and there are doodles—some are subconscious while others are meant to illustrate precise thoughts. It’s very heavy-handed to have a guy in a barrel going over a falls or a mouse caught in a trap, but both of those images are allegories for aspects of art making.
Applying the text to your tree paintings, where you make it look like it’s carved, is visually quite clever. Are you aiming at a juvenile delinquent look?
No, the carving in the trees is actually inspired by a glade of heavily carved trees that I stumbled upon near the Prado Museum in Madrid. However, the trees in my paintings are Aspens, which are linked underground by their roots, which I find to be a wonderful metaphor for an artist’s body of work.
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Show
Plankboy (Narcissus), 2019
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, 2015
At Least We Have Wine, 2019
Sailor Jack and Bingo, 2016
Snowman in Brueghel, 2016
Jaguar (The Urgent Necessity of Narcissism for the Artistic Mind), 2014
Here Lies, 2010
Id, 2009
Success Is the New Failure, 2006
Andy Kaufman, 2004
7095, 2001
The Robot Poet, 1999
Alone, 1996
36 Hours, 1995
Chris’s List of Truths, 1990
Wood Chimp, 2020
A Voir, 2020
Goosebumps, 2006
A Midnight Modern Conversation (Boredom), 1996
The Feverish Library, 2012
Say Your Goodbyes, 2017
#1 Dad, 1999
Plankboy Redux, 2016
Jesus, 1999
100 Year Storm (Clogher head, Ireland), 2022
Brown Bear, 2021
Beaver, 2014
Captain Homer (Seven Pipes for Seven Seas), 2016
My Existence is as Tenuous as your Attention, 2017
I’m Not Cool and I Know It, 2005
Home Alone All Grown Up, 2008
I Live, 2023
Iceberg (Greenland Sea), 2022
Yellow Dog, 2022
The New Englander, 2018
Around the World Alone (Coxswain Moon), 2011
Le’Go My Ego, 2007
Anger, 2002
I am still this guy, 2017
*
p.s. Hey. ** Guy, The really best slaves seem to live very, very far away, like in dreamland. And you can never physically have them as a result, but at least they don’t have to be relocated. Yours maybe visiting you in the summer is a coup! Tentative congrats. Well, I mean, it’s possible that that TC-ish slave has a chin like the Wicked Witch of the West and a mouth like an alligator, but I do have a tendency to anticipate the worse case scenario. Nah, you’re right, he’s probably dreamy. Who’s gonna write a poem about him first, you or me? ** Dominik, Hi!!! LA is weird and great because it’s kind of not one thing. It’s like every kind of city kind of stitched together except without the historically pretty buildings and stuff. Me too: I actually spent a minute trying to figure out how to look and sound like a wind chime, but no luck unfortunately. Well, of course I think you should write the story of that odd isolated couple. Or make that the rules of a SCAB writing contest. It does have promise, for sure. Love making the Block function of my email account work when I ask it to block something called FluffCo Affiliate that sends me literally 18 spam emails at least every day, G. ** Steve Erickson, I’m on it. I hope the doctor helps. But I fear you’re going to have to grow a thick skin about the American media now that we’re in the scariest election year ever, for one thing. Everyone, Steve has reviewed two things for the world including us here today. Here is his review of Bertrand Mandico’s new film SHE IS CONANN, and here is his review of Chelsea Wolfe’s new album SHE REACHES OUT TO SHE REACHES OUT TO SHE. Gisele really likes Chelsea Wolfe. Our ideal with the audio novel is that would come packaged in some kind of book-like object, but we haven’t figured out what would be in that object yet other and than a download code or sound file drive. I think we’ll probably decide that after we’ve recorded it. Thank you asking about that. ** Justin, Yeah, right? I tried really hard to find a video of it moving, but no luck. I don’t know NewDad. I’ll look/listen once I’m out here. I didn’t know there was a new Gacy movie. Huh. Okay, I’ll find it, and I’ll hope your ‘yikes’ is the good kind, ha ha. Thanks a lot, Justin. Enjoy the waning hours of the pre-weekend week. ** Bill, Yeah, me too on hunting a video of that piece. I mean I guess it’s not hard to visualise, but still. No, I don’t know that site. On first peek, it looks very mysterious and weird to navigate. Cool, I’ll scour it in a bit. Thanks, Bill. ** Uday, Hi! I saw your email in my ‘box’ this morning but I hadn’t incorporated enough caffeine at that point to dare to open it attentively, but I will in a bit. Thank you, that’s cool, I’m excited! A favorite wind? That’s an interesting question. I can tell you my least favorite: the hot Santa Ana winds that blow allergy-creating hell on earth into Los Angeles a few times a year. Favorite, though, … nothing pops to mind. If I stuck to the options in the post, I saw Pope.L’s ‘Trinket’ in person, and it was one of the most beautiful things ever. What about you? ** oliver jude, Hi, oliver! Hm, you know, it’s strange but I can’t remember writing about poppers being used in my fiction. Almost every other drug. It does seem possible that I would have referenced poppers in ‘The Sluts’ because it would sees weird if I didn’t, but I don’t remember. Anyway, nice prompt there for a future fiction piece. Thank you. What’s going on with you? ** Okay. Today my galerie hosts a show by the charming and dumb/smart and deliberately kind of annoying and faux-self-deprecating artist Sean Landers, and I hope you’ll find something there. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
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Hi!!
I like Sean Landers’s work, especially the text-based pieces. Thank you for this compilation!
Sounds like LA is hard not to love – I mean, based on your description, it probably has something to offer to everyone, almost regardless of their notion of “the ideal city.”
A SCAB writing contest! That doesn’t sound like a bad idea at all – even if it doesn’t focus on snarky humans and broody vampires.
Ugh… Yeah, some of those spammers manage to slip through the block function; I don’t know how. There’s an account on Instagram that sends me an invitation to become their “brand ambassador” every single day, each time from a different empty, no-name account. I’ve blocked them multiple times, but nothing seems to deter them.
Love feeling proud of himself for accomplishing everyday tasks such as cleaning his apartment and going to the pharmacy, Od.
Dennis, We’re supposed to get sun all weekend. I’m happy about that. I hope your weekend goes well.
I’m going to my friend’s daughter’s birthday party tomorrow at a place called Scary Strokes in my city. I’ve known the girl since she was a baby and have been at every one of her birthdays. She’ll be 17. Scary Strokes is this place that has a spooky miniature golf course. In the dark, lots of black light stuff, ghouls and ghosts and monsters and stuff. They also have arcade games and a VR room. Her daughter chooses this place for the VR room and the arcade games. We’ve never done the miniature golf.
It’ll be interesting to see if her friend, that “Young Elio” I told you about who came out and his dad freaked, will be there. He’s come to all the others. I’ve not seen him since that happened. I’d at least like to say hi. I’ve known him and his mom since he was like 9 or 10.
Otherwise, we’ll just be playing games.
Next weekend, I’m going to my best friend’s place in VA to teach her how to lift weights, haha. Her doc told her she needs to do resistance training, so that’s what we’re going to do. Really, it’s just an excuse to hang out.
In the meantime, at my gym, I’ve become friends with this guy Alex. He’s 20 and bi and fit and cute. And quite different from others his age around here: he doesn’t have his face buried in his phone 24-7 and actually holds decent conversations. He’s quite funny too. At the gym now, we pretty much just hang out and lift weights together. He was very nice the other day and said I’m in the top 5% of 52-year-olds, hahaha. 😉
Anyway, onward and upward. Dominate this weekend, sir.
hey happy friday. it’s carnival season and i think new orleans is done with its two weeks of winter, i’m very happy for it. am trying to cram as much work in as i can before sunset, i will not be sober for the next week and a half hopefully.
how is post going for your movie? did you make it out of post sound alive? i thought about yall when i was processing footage for a friend the other day. post prod is probably worse than purgatory. xx
What a diverse and curious body of work today, Dennis.
We’re in the middle of this Pineapple Express weather pattern here. Pouring for a bit, then we get some sun. I keep thinking of the movie (which I’ve never seen). Apparently it’s also a cannabis hybrid.
Just heard Stanley Crawford died, RIP. His novel Log of the SS the Mrs Unguentine is a favorite of mine. Totally need to revisit.
Bill
Hi Dennis, your response was so funny I kept reading it and laughing like a mad person, especially at the alligator-mouth of the TC-ish slave. Oh, I’m so here for a slave coup! It is high time, indeed… The dreamy slaves of the worlds really do need to reunite and learn to relocate – of course temporarily so… Forget about poetry, this is honestly material worthy of a manifesto – “Slave Manifesto”? Speaking of poetry, though… Did you cringe at the poem I emailed you two weeks ago? I’m truly sorry if this is the case; I was just overstimulated and overexcited when I wrote it. Artistically though, I am proud of it. I hope you understand. Anyway, thanks for today’s awesome post. I didn’t know Sean Landers at all, and I really love his depiction of Narcissus, Alone, 36 Hours, The Robot Poet, and MY EXISTENCE IS AS TENUOUS AS YOUR ATTENTION. Interested to know your faves too if you’re happy to share?
My anxiety has been off the charts the last week, and my doctor thinks that’s manifesting in symptoms like feeling feverish all the time. I seem to be OK, physically. I’ll be calling neurologists on Monday, and I hope I can calm down this weekend. If that goes well, I’d like to see Argento’s INFERNO or TENEBRAE in the theater.
My concerns about the media are more about my own position within it. When mass layoffs are taking place at some of the most prestigious newspapers and websites, I worry a lot about what may happen to the outlets I write for.
Here’s the link for my new single, “Bond Villain Motivational Music”/”Loro Piana Caps Erupting in Fire”: https://callinamagician.bandcamp.com/album/bond-villain-motivational-music
Do you plan a Gig Day for February? I downloaded Hakuna Kulala’s first album of 2024, Ratigan Era’s ERA, today, although I haven’t had time to listen yet. I enjoyed the new album by Liquid Mike: lo-fi power pop with lyrics about dead-end, drug-fueled life in the rural Midwest. They sound like Guided By Voices fans. I’m excited that NTS is releasing an extensive compilation of new baile funk songs in March.
Will you able to do much this weekend, or do you need to keep working on the film?
I love monsoon winds. I have all the time in the world for monsoons and the rain. That’s also the first time I’ve seen somebody use box for inbox. I should get on that. Love abbreviations. Re: Oliver, I feel like poppers would be cool as like a skin pattern thing. I’m excited for tomorrow!
You and Zac must document me in a feature-length moving image.
Hello.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HwPqn9lvbo
Im listening to this as I type. Its a high-security mental institution in Cadillac, France. Have you been there? haha.
It gets worse as people get older. Metal illness. I don’t know where I’ll be in 10 years.
Oh! Have you heard about package? Its Friday! I can check just have to look for the paper I had with the tracking number. I’ve been losing a lot of things, sorry.
That’s all I wanted to ask.
Running low on monster. Will have to get more.
DC, January is such a non month but here we are in February. I hope you are doing well and the film editing has gone fine, did you ever see a copy of King Kong yet? I’ve had such a “fun” week, my book got on a conservative banned list that was then blasted out on a newsletter to christian moms trying to get “deplorable” books dropped from libraries, my book got a “5” rating as in the most lurid and disposable. My publisher was getting calls from librarians in different states saying they’ve been getting to requests to drop my book from the library. I emailed you the news byline about it, to check out. It’s just annoying and lame. I’m wishing you a beautiful upcoming week. – A