Molly Crabapple PHOTO AERIC MEREDITH GOUJON
By Elizabeth Bissette Molly Crabapple is a lot like her art work; original, vibrant and inspired. Her art collectively seems to form a marvelous, surreal peep-show and, though only 26, she’s a rising force not only in the New York art scene, but in art communities all over the world via her Dr. Sketchy’s Anti’Art schools, now in 96 locations. Her new graphic novel, Scarlett Takes Manhattan, has just come out on the heels of her clever and entertaining Dr. Sketchy’s Rainy Day Activity Book. Her work has also been featured in “Weird Tales” and is going to be included in Marvel’s upcoming “Strange Tales MAX” Indie anthology. She’s also contributed to “The New York Times” and a number of other publications. Ms. Crabapple recently travelled to ComicCon and also organized the first SketchyCon earlier this year. People came from all over the world to, “meet each other, sharpen their skills and stir up a little mayhem.” Ms. Crabapple said in a recent interview with Newsarama.com. Molly is arguably today’s Queen of Neo-Burlesque, a popular part of nightlife in New York and other cities. Events draw huge crowds and Dr. Sketchy’s has recently been organizing some in Times Square, broadening the audience in an innovative way. Today’s Burlesque shows range from showcases of dancers to grand spectacles including acrobats, magicians, comedians and circus performers. It is not unlike it was when it began as a launching pad for Vaudeville and, in some instances, Vaudeville itself. Like now, the other periods in history that have embraced burlesque have been times of political upheaval and socio-economic inequalities. Examples of this are the heyday of the Moulin Rouge, the staid façade of the Victorian Era, the Edwardian Gibson Girl, and the Follies that foiled the grim realities of the 30s. Burlesque is a way to escape from reality, to distract, entertain, amuse and excite. Ms. Crabapple has created a new dimension for us to escape to and placed doorways to it across the world. By doing this, she has helped re-define Burlesque for our time. The fine art world begins to shift a little too. “I started reading books about Paris in the mid to late 1800s and was inspired by them. They got my mind churning; why not have that? I looked for something like it but found nothing. So I just did it. You can create the New York you want each day. In my dream of New York, artists aren't isolated in studios or ivory towers. I want an art world that's fun and talent-loving and decadent, a 21st century Montmarte.” As an artists model she had romantic expectations but found the reality dull, de-humanizing and not particularly well-paying. So, along with friend A.V. Phibes, she created Dr. Sketchy’s. She describes it as, “a 60 • Fine Art Magazine • Fall 2009
Dorian Deconstructed, 2007
place where models could make a fair wage and express their amazing personalities, while sketchers could partake of that pseudo-bohemian atmosphere so many of us went to art school for." Now her events are often sold out and receive 5 star reviews. She’s interjecting new life into art scenes everywhere, and is fast becoming a classic. “The schools are very diverse.” Molly says, “The definition of a flamboyant underground performer is different in Singapore than in San Francisco; each is influenced by the people running it and the theme around it. "We comb New York to find the most glamorous and subversion underground celebrities. Then, twice a month, you guys get to draw them. Did we mention you can also drink?” Thus says Molly Crabapple. Her paintings are a little like Lautrec’s were. As he was, she is immersed in a Fin de Seicle scene and renders it. “Lautrec didn’t do the classes,” she laughingly reminded me. Ms. Crabapple paints the New York scene in a sensual yet often sarcastic and a little sinister way. Though quite different in execution, her work is a bit Goya-like with subjects caught unawares in private moments. The moments are sometimes beautiful, sometimes grotesque. Though in some ways light hearted, many of the visions
she creates have cynical, wistful or slightly a home to wayfaring artists for over 50 years.) foreboding tones. She describes it as “a gorgeously bohemian “I want my work to show the aching place with thumb sized roaches, squat toilets backs, the fake smiles, the low wages, the and no working showers.” greasepaint and the sweat of performance as Of the Middle East, she says that it well as the tassels and sequins. We live,” she wasn’t the Burton-esque perfumed garden she said, “especially in NY, in a fame and celebrity expected. “In Turkey, there was this place on the obsessed culture, and people create these border I wanted to see—a castle with arches, a elaborate personas. I think that’s interesting. weird fantasia with domed stropped turrets still I don't condemn at all—we live in a time of crumbling. I went there and I couldn’t believe elaborate promotion. I find it fascinating. I it. The Government had hideously restored it try to expose what's underneath it.” by putting on plastic roof architecture. It was As with Durer, her subjects encompass horrifying, sort of like a McDonald’s roof.” a broad range of human experience. In her Done with world travel and moving paintings and drawings we find beautiful forward from pen and ink to color, what women growing old, useless rich and can we expect from Ms. Crabapple next? drudging poor, lovely young girls making a She’s thinking more large scale paintings living appealing to really unappealing men and theatrical design. A 30 foot theatrical and much more. These are reminiscent of curtain she designed for New York mayor the work of artists from the mid 1800s-early Bloomberg’s annual summer party whetted 1900s. However, like burlesque itself, her her appetite to fuse visual and performing work also contains a heavy dash of humor. arts. “I suppose an ultimate for me,” she says, “Where other people might denounce,” “would be to design for some ultra decadent she says of her sexy sideshow of subjects, “I opera, perhaps La Traviatta.” poke fun.” She’s recently collaborated for Dr. It is artifice itself that fascinates her Sketchy’s with legendary New York artist most, she says, as she describes it as the Ron English. English is perhaps best known very basis of Western art. She is, in a way, for his guerilla billboard paintings, often its knight in spangled armor, a magician Scarlett Takes Manhattan, cover of Molly Crabapple’s bitingly sarcastic and usually painted over new graphic novel with longtime collaborator John who transforms a blank piece of paper actual billboards in broad daylight while he Leavitt. Published by Fugu Press, 2009 into something entirely different. The arts, posed as a regular sign painter. Her work is performing and fine art in particular are, for Crabapple, a sort of black also going to be featured in an October exhibit at Richmond, Virginia’s magic. “It’s trickery,” she says. Gallery 5. Other artists participating include Katelan Foisy and Wes She describes Burlesque in similar terms. “I love how, onstage, you Freed, a musician and visual artist best known for his cover art for the create an entirely different self in the same way you create a canvas.” She Drive By Truckers. said. “I love the power of being what you’re not. A good photograph doesn’t Whatever shape her future paintings take, wherever they are found, so much as capture a moment as invent one a moment far more poignant they will, no doubt, continue to be reflective of an extraordinary everyday and symbolic than the one when the picture was taken.” life. Ms. Crabapple has long blurred the distinction between artist and “I don't think of my subjects as extreme because, for me, it’s the way subject, between creator and muse. Like Andy Warhol, Molly Crabapple life is. In the East Village performance scene, everyone is doing things has made herself her art. Not unlike Studio 54, Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art like that. The idea of doing it myself seemed normal to me. I’m a loner. Schools provide a set for her and the brilliant circle of Sketchy directors. What most people think is impossible, I think, ‘of course I can do this or that.’” For example, the sideshow acts she once did. “A friend taught me,” she said. “I haven't done it in a while.” When I mentioned to her that I had read that she can eat fire, drive nails up her nose, walk on glass and chew light bulbs she said, “But I only ate light bulbs once. It’s hard on the enamel of your teeth." As she now, in adult life, lives in a fantastic world that to most seems dream-like, as a child she didn't really see the difference, she says, between books and real life. Her imagination was captured by The Arabian Nights, for example. She said that, by adulthood, they still seemed alive enough to her to merit trips across the Middle East. Another time, inspired by Anais Nin, she traveled the globe with just $300.00. She’s a sort of real life Alice, visiting a series of exotic wonderlands. While filing five notebooks with travel sketches, she visited four continents, snuck into mosques, was detained in jails, drew for bread, and resided in attics. She even lived in bookstore in Paris, where she slept on the floor in exchange for working the Portrait of Simon Hammerstein, 2008 cash register. (The bookstore, “Shakespeare and Co.”, has been Fine Art Magazine • Fall 2009 • 61