A Conversation with Graham Routhier

Graham Routhier (grahamrouthier.com) recently closed his first solo exhibition in the List Art center. His work– inspired by the processes of photography and printmaking– emerges from a time-intensive process of hand-tracing and painting dots from his own photographic work. I sat down to talk with him about his artistic background, artistic influences, and the success of the recent show. The following conversation has been edited for clarity. 

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Charlie: I like to start these interviews outside of "art talk" specifically, because the artists I speak to are all people you see around on campus--they're our peers-- so I'd like you to start by just introducing yourself. Where can we find you on campus typically? What are your interests beyond visual art specifically?

Graham: Graham Routhier here. I'm a junior studying visual art and art history, mostly it's just been those. I actually kind of hate art history now, because it's often like "this is what art has to be." I took a couple of philosophy classes which were good. You can often find me in Bolt coffee in the RISD museum, and I’m always with my friend, Peter. I'm also really into classic cars.

Yeah, seeing your car for the first time was surreal. Like, it's so, so cool.

Yeah. I bought it like, a year ago for $900 and spent a year fixing it up, so it's really been a trip.

Given that you're taking a lot of art and art history I wonder, has that always been a core interest of yours?

Yeah. Both my parents are graphic designers. We'd often go to MoMA–I'm from New York, just outside the city. So we'd always just go into museums. I think that was definitely the way into art and design for me for sure. I like design and visual spaces and it's always been an interest.

My dad's the kind of guy where if you have a really big wall he'll put like a small, little picture on it and then a chair beneath it, centered perfectly–weird quirky shit like that has always been in the spaces I live in.

Speaking more on art and design, this is a question I always get when visitors on campus or family talk with me about my concentration, so I think it’s worth asking you. Especially given our proximity to RISD, Why didn't you apply to art school? Did you? What drew you to Brown?

I didn't apply to art school. My mom went to college saying, "I want to be a painter" and then was like, "Oh shit, I should figure out a way to make money"--all the famous painters and artists she knows and knew [from art school] are just the children of really rich people or famous artists to begin with. Like, she went to school with Robert Ryman's son. I did definitely look into going to RISD, but I didn't really care enough to get a portfolio. We had to do all those prompts and I wasn't really interested in that. I like the idea of like a liberal arts college--learning a bunch of random stuff. I was interested in the Brown/RISD dual degree thing, too, but I didn't want to go to college for five years. 

So now that you're here, what have you thought of the arts department? Any specific professors or classes you've really connected with?

I think the classes that I really loved have been that way because of the professor(s). I took  Painting 2 [with] Tala Worrell, a visiting professor from RISD who'd just graduated with an MFA in painting. It was amazing, she had such great knowledge, good recommendations. I took a history of photography course with Doug Nickel and that, like, really changed what I was interested in. I think before that I was interested in painting, but after seeing photography, that class was just mind boggling.

And then Teresa Gans, she's really fantastic. Just talking with her about art and artwork is really interesting–that doesn't happen in the art history program. So yeah, I think there's been a lot of really great professors and less of like, "This class is inherently really good". It's just the interactions you have with the professors.

Could you talk a bit about what inspires your work? What work inspired you?

Yeah, I'm very into modern and contemporary, you know, minimal artists, that's definitely been the stuff I've always gravitated towards the most. I think the stuff that was in museums really guided what I've been interested in, a lot of them modern, contemporary--the minimal weird stuff. For me, the way into art is strictly just, “Do I think the thing looks pretty?” And if it does, like, I like it, if not, I really can't care about it.

It's funny that you say the minimal weird stuff is what draws you in, because I feel that when people aren't well versed in the context of modern and contemporary work, when they visit a museum--like MoMA for example--they're oftentimes resistant to that sort of hard-to-read work. Why do you think you're drawn to it?

Personally, it's what I find really pretty. For example, yesterday I went with a class to Yale to go see their collection, founded by a bunch of cubists, those guys in the fifties, and all that stuff I just couldn't care about. Like, it's weird, I don't find it visually pretty. but I like right next to that is the modern and contemporary gallery. It's got Cy Twombly and Rothco.

MoMA, for example, has a bunch of this, like, cool feminist video art, and the pure visual of it is just beautiful. The ideas behind it and the intent are interesting as well, but for me really, the way in is if it's visually engaging or not. The minimal stuff, at least for my sensibilities, I like a lot.

Speaking of the art that draws you in, could you talk about your personal practice, and how it's been developing?

Yeah, I started painting in high school. I was always into art but I was never an "artsy kid", but I took AP Art and made this series of these heads painted on backgrounds of color with numbers all around them. Sort of abstract and minimal and weird. The painter I was interested in then was this guy Emilio Villalba–he does these really expressive brush strokes, and it got me into oil painting and portraiture.

How about your work in college?

Yeah, I think people are the most interesting things in terms of subjects, at least for me. That's why I love photography, because it's so rooted in experience of the world and it's very--I don't know--you can't help but feel something when you see a picture of a person in a place, there's something so tangible about it.

So when I got to school I started doing these dot paintings, these large-scale dot paintings. I really like them even though I'm not the first person to be doing something like them. They've totally been done before--I knew that going in.

I think they're super effective. And I definitely think they do feel new, despite there being that art-historical precedent for similar stuff. I know your work relates to photography as well. Could you talk about that?

Yeah, I think photography is a really easy medium as someone interested in the real world--I love it. Photography is a way of capturing pretty stills that you see, "This looks really pretty--I'll take a picture of it", and I paint from projections of the photographs I've taken.

Speaking of which, could you speak specifically about your recent show, and what works you chose to include in it?

Yeah, so mostly it includes all of the dot paintings I've done. I had three and I I knew I wanted to have four. That's why I finished the fourth one the week of the show. They're all of the same person. They're painted from images that I really liked, where I thought that the proportions were interesting or the contrast in the composition spoke to me. What drew me to the images was those formal aspects, and that's kind of it. I put the show up and I didn't put labels or any description. I think art is so subjective--whatever anyone gets from it I don't really care. I think I'm happy with whatever people see and they take from it.

Yeah! The choice not to include labels is so unique to the show you've created. Another thing which I'm so drawn to in the show is the sense of scale and space within it. It's all 2d work, but it really makes a space and interacts with it well--could you speak on that?

Yeah, they're all on these panels. I hand paint them with silkscreen ink. I wanted to silkscreen them, but realized that there's no way to do it [with the resources I had]. I said, "OK, I got to project them and paint them."That was my backup plan. And so I did it on these sheets of paper like 18 by 24 and, they're, like, really movable. For example, I would lay them out on the floor to see the panels I'd painted so far and how they look, you get cool angles and perspectives. I think that started the consideration of space.

The further you get away you see it differently and if you're up close, you see it differently. So I think they interact with the space naturally. In terms of scale, the first one was the biggest one. Then I did that long, thin one because I thought that created an interesting contrast of scale and proportion.

And when I I did our first crit [on the long, thin piece] I was like, "Ah shit, I'll just hang it on the floor" because I couldn't figure out how to hang it off the floor and where to put it. So yeah, I think a lot of it was a process of what I thought looked interesting.

Could you talk about the dots themselves and that process? I know the hand-painting must be challenging for such large-scale works.

For me it's actually really, really easy to do. I know what it's gonna look like getting into it, and for me that's something that I really like. If I go into a work, I wanna know exactly what it's gonna look like when I'm done with it.

That makes sense, and I think overall it was a really successful show. Was this your first solo show?

Yeah, I guess so?

Congratulations! That's such a major accomplishment. You mentioned that you're thinking about what comes next, beyond the dots. Could you talk about that? Any preliminary ideas?

Yeah, I was talking with Theresa Ganz, my concentration advisor, who said that I've gotta eventually move on beyond these, and I definitely agree. For example, when I saw Alex Katz' show at the Guggenheim, he only paints this in one certain way and it's actually really boring, seeing it all together--despite the paintings themselves being great. I really liked his work when I saw them individually. Theresa was saying that sometimes the only way to get through it is to go through it and just make a shit ton more and get exhausted by it. I think that's pretty easy to do for me--one of the dot paintings takes like three or four hours and by the end of it, I'm like, never gonna do dots again.

So, you’re wrapping up this body of work?

Yeah, I think I'm gonna do one more where it's colored--I wanna figure out how to do a CMYK version so that when you take a step back you can see what it's gonna look like in full color-- instead of black and white. I think probably at that point I'll be done.

That's a cool full circle moment back to the printmaking inspiration guiding the work. Actually, one thing I want to talk about is silkscreen. We [me and Graham] are taking a studio for it right now. Do you see that becoming a part of your practice? Your work right now is definitely within a lineage of pop artists thinking about it.

I'm really interested in silkscreen. Though I don't know if it's the way I work best. You have to really plan everything out and make all your colors and do all these swatch tests, and it's a little tedious. But I think the visual rhetoric of silkscreen is really inspiring. I've always loved Rauschenberg's prints--they have a great texture and layering.

Mostly, I think it's just fun to do--it definitely is like the rhetoric I'm engaging with. I've talked to people [about my work] who'll say "there's a hand in it, and you're painting from a projection so it's all about bringing the hands and technology together" and, like, maybe? But I do it mostly just because I wanted to do it, to paint these dots, and so I wasn't very conceptual. But silkscreen, it's nice.

I am definitely interested to see if and how the medium emerges in your future work. Again, huge congrats on the solo show--if people are interested in your work, where can they find you?

I have a website, grahamrouthier.com. Thank you!

Thank you!

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