I've Found Philip Smith!

Philip Smith was one of the artists involved with the Pictures exhibit of 1977. His work was omitted from Douglas Crimp’s critical essay about the show for October (1979) and thirty years later completely absent from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s retrospective exhibition The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984. In a previous post I questioned Smith’s absence from Pictures history along with the lack of information about him available on the internet. My curiosity piqued, I did some in-depth searching and found him!

Philip Smith not only paints but is a writer and was formerly the managing editor of GQ magazine. Last year he came out with a memoir entitled Walking Through Walls in which he relates his experiences growing up with a father who was obsessed with the paranormal—talking with the dead and healing the sick. In fact, if one finds the book on Amazon one is treated to an Amazon video of Smith talking about his book and his art:

“To me being an artist was like being a magician. You were able to see things no one else could see and you were able to take that invisible vision and make it tangible and share it with other people—it was like a magic trick. My paintings became kind of like a mystical obsession but I wanted to take some of [my father’s] ideas and the way I could do it is through painting. And for me the paintings happen almost in a trance state not unlike when [my father] would be healing. And I go into this state where I don’t know anything else that’s going on, the painting is talking to me and it’s telling me “put this image here, put this image here, this image is talking to each other, this energy is coming up this way”, and that’s how I make these paintings.

Interestingly, while I wrote the book I couldn’t paint because I realized that I’m telling the story of my father and my family, which is the same story I tell in my paintings, this time I was putting it in words, as opposed to paint. I didn’t want to be redundant so I stopped painting, now that the book is done I can go back and start painting.”

Smith’s official website is www.philipsmithart.com and it is complete with a gallery of work, exhibitions Smith has been involved in, and contact information.