Barry McGee Enters a New Era: ‘It’s a Rebirth, of Some Sort’

Inside Berggruen Gallery, at the opening of his first solo show in San Francisco since 2015, Barry McGee stood against the front wall, surrounded by a crush of 20 people. The gallery’s lights dimmed for closing time, but its large crowd stayed put: art renegades with skateboards, backpacks, sketchbooks and denim jackets, drinking Modelo and smoking blunts outside, and then another, far smaller contingent of obviously wealthy art-world people.

This is not a new dichotomy for Barry McGee. A globally known artist shown in major museums and biennials all over the world, McGee has retained the artistic approach that made him a key figure in the Mission School. His style has immediacy, and constancy; as a holdover from his graffiti days, he still prefers to work under pressure.

It’s a pivotal time for McGee. Having left the gallery Ratio 3 — now closed — and separated from his wife, the artist Clare Rojas, he’s immersed himself in working, often until 4 a.m. “It’s one of my favorite places to go, and just get lost and in the work somehow,” he told me. “With this new independence, I have to ground myself every now and then, and know when to stop, or to go outside and breathe.”

At this moment, which, at age 58, he calls “a rebirth,” it was the right time to get McGee’s thoughts on the San Francisco underground, his unease at success in the art world, the current graffiti landscape and what his art practice looks like these days.

Interview has been edited for length and clarity.

It’s been almost 10 years since your last big gallery show here in San Francisco. Why has it been so long?

I’m not sure exactly why. I’ve done things in other places, like Los Angeles. The San Francisco gallery scene has done the shift where young galleries are artist-run spaces now, and there’s John Berggruen and maybe two or three others that are true San Francisco galleries, that are still kind of putting along.

Someone had dropped out of a slot at John Berggruen, and I could tell they were anxious to have it filled. And somehow, in the art circuit, people know I can do something within two weeks. I’m like the go-to when someone drops out. So it was about two and a half weeks, a quick turnaround.

Over 20 years ago, John and I had done a project. So it seemed like the right fit, and a nice time to do it.

I was really impressed by just how much work is in this show. What made this show so robust? Have you felt more productive lately?

I like making artwork. It’s what I do. And it comes pretty easy to me. I like the pressure, obviously. If someone needs something done within a week, or better yet, like three days, I can usually get something assembled pretty quickly.

I want to get your thoughts on the current state of the art scene here in San Francisco. Rents are insanely unaffordable. SFAI has closed, and the only other art school here is struggling. And the underground, from which you sprung, is still alive, but, I think, nowhere near as strong. Are you worried about the future for artists in San Francisco?

I used to be worried more, but I feel like the underground art scene is maybe the strongest I’ve ever seen it, right now. It feels diverse, and completely detached from the system that’s in place for artists. Even the nonprofits that I grew up on, like New Langton Arts, Southern Exposure, the Luggage Store — from art school, you’d get handed fairly softly to these nonprofits to show your work, or to help you develop your work, or write grants. But now it feels like that’s completely eliminated.

So from what I’ve seen, it’s just kids just having shows in garages, or in any space they can find. It feels good in the best way possible, like it’s not for the commerce. I mean, it’s always good to sell something, or for someone to love something enough to buy it. But it feels like it’s coming from a really honest place that I haven’t seen for a long time.

It sounds like what you’re saying is, even in what was considered underground circles in the ’90s, there was an apparatus through smaller nonprofits to be in the system. And now people are saying, “We’re going to do our own thing, we don’t need you.”

Yeah, I come from the generation where there were still NEA grants. Like, you could write grants, and a lot of times you could get them. And now that’s not there anymore.

I see shows that are as good as any gallery at, like, Adobe Books, or garages in Daly City. I think artists always know how to get the work out there. When the system’s not in place, or if they never grew up with the system, the kids will just do it naturally. They’ll find the place for it. They’ll do it outdoors if they have to. Some of the best shows I’ve seen were in outdoor abandoned spaces, where they just do it for one night and bands play.

I think it’s going to be a great couple of years coming up. And in my honest opinion, it feels like nothing I’ve seen before. Which is always a good thing in the arts.

I walked to your opening past YBCA and SFMOMA, these giant institutions that have been criticized for being more about money than about presenting Bay Area art. And it was great to walk down the block and turn the corner, and see so many people spilling out on the sidewalk, and be like, “Yes! Look at this happening, in such close proximity!”

Yeah, that was nice. I mean, I think I understand the dilemma they’re in. They can’t be as spontaneous. Their decisions are like five years out that they’re making. So the art can be completely stale by the time it’s on the wall, or it’s not what kids are into. That’s how it was when I used to go to the museum, even when it was on Van Ness, in the old building. There was nothing that ever spoke to me, or connected. There’s fantastic museums in this country, but I feel like San Francisco’s a little bit still in New York or whatever the latest fashion is with artists.

You mean adhering to national trends rather than having a finger on the pulse of the Bay Area?

I feel like the Oakland Museum does a much better job being in touch and in tune with the community. I think SFMOMA’s gotten a lot better. But I don’t know. I’m not running that place. I know they’re trying.

At your opening, you were surrounded, filling sketchbooks and drawing on skateboards for fans and friends. And just 10 feet away was a price list that ranges from $6,000 to $250,000. I wondered: Do any of your old friends or people from the early Mission scene give you a hard time for essentially being too successful?

They should, for sure. I mean, I’ve had mild success. I’m aware of it. I know John Berggruen is a blue chip gallery. I know that they sell work that’s much more expensive, and historically sits in art history in a much cleaner way than my work would. So that’s part of the fun of it.

You mean people talking shit about your success is part of the fun of it?

No, there’s truth to that! I mean, the idea of success in America is a very, very peculiar thing. I’m super uncomfortable with it. I know what I need to get by, and to make everything happen to keep my studio afloat. I wish I had a little more success — it would make things easier at this age — but it is what it is.

Obviously you have to sell stuff to keep afloat, but success to me is not being a pig about it, and not screwing people over to get ahead. All the principles that were instilled in me at a younger age.

You’re one of the few visual artists I’ve talked to who seems conflicted about it. It’s refreshing that you acknowledge that tension.

The idea of success in America is just insane. It’s like a successful war somewhere, you know, “a successful operation.” That idea is disgusting to me. I’m into the whole community rising up, ideally, in a perfect world. That’s what happened with graffiti. It started with a few thousand kids, and now it feels like 100,000 kids, worldwide, that are interested in having something to say, and doing it on their terms, for better or for worse. I’m not a big advocate for everything that’s out there, but it’s grown in this way that’s both beautiful and scary at the same time.

Why do you say it’s scary?

Sometimes I look at it and I’m just like, “This is insane, how kids are hanging off of buildings and rappelling off of upper decks of bridges just to get their name out there.” It’s daunting. That’s what you have to do today to get recognized. I mean, this is coming from someone that doesn’t even do graffiti anymore, but I still look at it all the time, and I’m still enamored by it. But you have to be rappelling off a building or hanging off a ledge, and making your final piece look like you’re not twitching or shaking.

You mentioned lifting up the community, and it made me think of the act of giving over space in your exhibition to others, in the downstairs room, which seems to be a tradition for you. Why do you do that? Why do you say, “I’m going to cram this with hundreds of small framed works and photos by my friends?”

As I get older, a solo show is the epitome of the things that I don’t like in art. It doesn’t feel right to command that much space, or to have your name on that much square footage. My favorite shows are always group shows, or shows in a community center or bookstore, where it just looks good. And that’s one of the few things you can control in art, while you’re alive, is how you want your art to look. I like the way it looks when you have all that different visual energy in one room, sitting next to each other. I hate to say it in this way, but it feels healing to have that much visual information in a room. It feels warm, and inclusive. It feels the opposite of how the upstairs feels, with all the white walls and space, and the formula of selling artwork.

Is there a particular piece down there that you were especially happy to include?

John was kind enough to let us pull any of the artwork that he had in his inventory, which included these amazing Philip Gustons from the ’60s. There’s a Kiki Smith, who, when I was in art school, she was the blue chip artist at the time. And then there’s some Robert Crumbs in there that are two-sided, which I probably took out of a sketchbook, that are sitting next to some of my degenerate art friends. When I have the opportunity, it’s amazing to be able to put the work together like that, when it doesn’t belong, and when physically, it can’t happen in any other situation.

I like it as a sort of egalitarian equalizer. You have R. Crumb right next to Bozo Texino, you know? And, like, what really is the difference?

There’s no difference. They all hang equally in my world. I’ve studied line my entire life, and I like the Bozo Texino line just as much as Philip Guston’s. It’s just that one’s on a freight train, and one’s sitting in the vault of a museum for years and years, without people being able to see it.

There’s a story a lot of people have heard about you, about quietly slipping your art into the piles of amateur art at thrift stores around the Mission, so people who stumble upon it can buy it for, like, 50¢. Do you still do that at all?

I don’t do that anymore. But I do work under aliases, which is fun, to do something similar, under aliases. Where you just leave stuff, or have a cafe show — that style, where it feels more detached from myself.

Detached from Barry McGee, the personal brand that you probably never wanted to be a personal brand?

I definitely don’t want to be a personal brand, but yeah, it feels detached from that, which I like. That’s what graffiti is still good for. I like that you can still write a political statement about something, or about a shitty situation, along a wall, and nobody really knows who did it. Which I feel is one of the last great things. It’s amazing what a 99¢ can of spray paint can achieve still.

There’s someone close in my neighborhood in the Mission, an old anarchist type, that spray paints on bedsheets, ties shoes on the bottom and throws it over the freeway overpass. They get the message out there for the traffic coming into the city. And it looks good, it gets their point across, it gets you to think, and it sits there for a couple days before the city workers take it down. I like that crude, old-fashioned approach. It’s built into the DNA of San Francisco, a little bit. People in the Bay Area know how to get their point across, to get their dissatisfaction across in efficient ways. It’s better and faster than the internet, I feel like.

It seems like you’re in a prolific stage — what’s next for you?

Probably some things that you wouldn’t know that I did, for sure. I feel like I’m an activist in that way. And I’m mad that I still am, at 58. Because from 17 ’til now, it’s been nonstop protests with very little change. I understand change takes a long time, but there’s nothing that I could gauge in my lifetime that was just like, “Wow, that worked. That changed something.” Which makes me think that history just completely repeats itself, and so you have to do it constantly.

‘​​Barry McGee: Old Mystified’ is on view through Nov. 7, 2024, at Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco. Details here.