By The Gorgon

No one aspires to become an outsider.  Outsiders have it hard:  they have to break all the rules, or do things differently, or think differently, and that means they inevitably piss people off, and no one helps them.  When you’re an outsider, you also have to do things for yourself and by yourself.  It is agonizing work.

Realizing that you’re an outsider is a slow process –but once this revelation makes itself apparent, you can either fold your cards, or as Trent Walker, Vince Vaughn’s character in the 1996 film “Swingers” would say, “You double down!”

Tim Biskup is an American Painter and self-admitted outsider who ‘double downed’ for the sake of his art.  ‘Outsider’ is a descriptor he’s used often, in several interviews and publications.  More recently he invoked the term in a 2011 lecture at his alma matter, the Otis College of Arts and Design, where he was invited by the Illustration department to give a talk about his 25-year journey and education as an artist.  Tim talked about what inspired him to pursue art, when he realized he was an outsider, and how he ‘double downed’ and made all the wrong moves that were right for him.

An artist since childhood, Tim’s casual interest to his craft took a renewed vigor in 1984, during a family vacation to Europe.  It wasn’t your typical road trip –there was no playing of slug bug with siblings, or eating soggy egg sandwiches, or crying at dirty rest stops.  This was radically different:  16-year old Tim stopped in Paris and paid a visit to The Pompidou Center, the premier museum for modern art in France, and everything changed.  He took in the kinetic painting style of Robert Matta and the cartoonish sculptures of Niki de Saint Phalle; he saw the work of Jean Tinguely, and the seemingly simple abstract paintings and sculptures of Jean Dubufett, and was literally moved to become an artist.

The mind altering and transformative moment at the Pompidou inspired Tim to pursue art as a profession.  He enrolled at the Otis College of Art and Design in Culver City, but was disappointed by what he found there.  He felt professors were teaching students how to behave like an artist, rather than how to actually become one.  Tim explains, “There was a lot of talk about defending your work…coming up with a reasonable explanation of your work.”  “I came to Otis in ’86,” Tim recalls, “because I wanted to become an artist.  I left Otis in ’88, because I no longer wanted to become an artist.”

Making art is a physical process.  One has to draw a composition with their hands, mix the pigment with their wrist, and apply paint using a brush with the aid of their fingers.  But art is equally an intellectual and emotional endeavor too.  Whatever the artist is feeling is expressed on canvas, and they must consider the message they are conveying in each piece.  Every facet of expression, from the physical, to the intellectual, to the emotional, matters.  One cannot take precedence over the other. 

Art school seemed to relegate the importance of physical, or craft of art, to the background.  When Tim was a student in ’86, the focus was on selling the concept of the art rather than learning how to make it.  It seemed to favor a sound defense of one’s work to peers and professors instead of encouraging creation and creativity.  The tension between these two demands was a source of strain for him. “The idea of the intellectual side of art being more important than the physical side,” recalls Tim, “was really frustrating to me.”  After all, even the great artists were once considered avant garde, and their lack of explanation about the work did not detract from the power of the their work to capture beauty or inspire awe.  Are Monte’s lilies any less beautiful without an artistic statement to accompany them?

Still, art school was not all frustrating defense classes; Tim did enjoy some time there.  One of his favorite classes was Art Theory, with famed photographer Christopher Williams.  “Talking to him about art theory,” Tim fondly remembers, “was really fascinating, but it was also very boring.”  He was interested by the intellectual concepts behind some of the artwork Williams introduced to him, and bored because they were devoid of craft. 

In the end, simply behaving like an artist –as narrowly defined by its emphasis on over intellectualizing and defending one’s work –felt like a parody of the real thing, Tim was uninterested in any of it.  He was 19-years old and still had a hard time getting out of bed; trying to piece together an explanation of his art didn’t conform to the whims of the art establishment at the time.  An unnamed painting professor told him, “You’re never going to be taken seriously.”  But he refused to succumb to the pressure.  “It wasn’t what I wanted to do,” he firmly states.  And then, changing course, he ‘double downed’ and turned to music.

Just like the modern and abstract paintings and sculptures that first caught Tim’s eye at the Pompidou, it was the contemporary music of John Cage, Krysztof Pendirecki, and Meredith Monk that drew him in and made him think.  He focused his energy and was inspired by the music of the Residents and Steven Stapleton’s band, Nurse with Wounds.  All of it was high-concept, low melody stuff; none of it was what an average 19-year old might want to listen to and certainly nothing that might make the Top 40 playlist on the radio.  But it inspired him, and in 1988, he formed Big Butter with his brother Mike.

Big Butter Record

All images are copyrighted by Tim Biskup

Big Butter released a record for one of Tim’s class projects, and the high-concept music was well received by his professors.  The deeper he delved into music, the more it began to influence his art –the better he became at composing and performing, the more ‘fun and cartoony’ his art became.  Finally, he found a medium where he was free to say what he needed to say:  his music embodied all the he aspired to express in his visual art. 

Tim dropped out of Otis in 1988.  For five years, he toured with Big Butter and opened a record store, his dreams of being a painter seemingly just a relic from his past.  But that all changed in the Summer of 1991, when Tim recalled, “I discovered the THING that made me want to become an artist again.”  That THING was the Ren and Stimpy show.  With eyes and mind wide open, he recalls, “It was Pompidou all over again.”

Part 2 - “Inspiration from a Bloated Sack of Protoplasm”