Today we're in Kansas City outside
of this hard-to-miss shop that's the brainchild of fashion
designer Peggy Noland, who splits her time between here
and Los Angeles.
Peggy is well known for her fearlessness
in fashion, using wild prints, bright colors, and sometimes
a plethora of logos.
Her work is about the celebration
of fashion as performance, as well as a critique
of the ubiquity of branding.
We're going to talk to Peggy as well as her dad, Garry
Noland, who's also an artist based here in Kansas City.
Gary's had a long and successful career.
And his most recent works include textile-like paintings
that use tape and contact paper to form multiple layers,
as well as inventive sculptures that
explore surface and pattern.
I'm going to be talking to Peggy and Garry about influence,
and how we are and are not shaped
by those whose work we admire.
So let's go meet them.
I'm Peggy Noland.
I'm Garry Noland.
And this is your Art Assignment.
I think like any high school girl,
I safety-pin my clothes to make them fit differently,
or cut stuff up, or-- but it was never something
that I was originating looks on my own.
And then I started working at a boutique after high school.
And I feel like that's where I kind of first
learned oh, I would like to see this.
I would like to wear this.
It wasn't until I opened my own store did I really
start making my own clothing.
I think that I remember being very impressed
and influenced by designers like the Vivienne Westwood or Jeremy
Scott.
And kind of growing up in Independence,
we would go to the Barnes & Noble and get a coffee.
And my friends and I would just pick up magazines
and look at them.
And those were the designers that would, like, repeatedly
catch my eye.
I think that my parents are used to me doing crazy things.
And I think that it's not crazy to them.
Really, having a dad as an artist,
I think, really helps that, where
kind of having an individual spirit and an individual voice
was always encouraged by both my mom and my dad.
And feeling satisfied and feeling
happy with what I'm doing, I think,
was their first priority, whether I
became an artist or not.
Well, Peggy and her brother Eric
were both amazing kids to have around.
And for a little while.
I was a stay-at-home dad.
And I had my studio at the house,
so they both were immersed in what
it was like to have a parent making artwork in the house.
And I think that they just thought that that
was a normal part of life.
And I think at the time I was so indoctrinated
with the ideas presented in Western art history
that I thought there was only one way to do things.
And as I've aged in the process, and gathered experience,
it's not only that Western art indoctrination, but also
the work of the younger artists that I'm around-- including
Peggy, and including so many others around here
and other places-- that they're pushing me
from behind in a way.
But then they also see that there's
somebody who's 60 years old still in studio every day.
And so I know that that's important to them.
This is your art assignment-- find somebody
who's in your close circle-- it could be a relative,
could be just somebody down the street-- who's a maker.
It could be stamp art.
It could be quilts.
It could be painting.
Find something out about their studio
practice, what they do with their hands, with their heart.
And make something to get into their space.
Or it could be somebody that you don't know-- an artist
outside of your inner circle that has influenced or inspired
you.
And then make it something in the style of their work.
And then tell us who they are, and how and why
they've influenced you.
I think that I'm going to make a work in the style of Garry
Noland, my dad, and try to get into his head using
his materials, and make something
that you would maybe make.
And I think that I'm going to work
in the style of Peggy Noland.
I've always been attracted to the glittery,
to the kind of aggressive fem quality of the work,
a little bit of the glam.
And I think that I want to employ
some of her puffy paints, either on the materials that I already
have existing in my studio, or in something, maybe,
that we find on the way to studio.
So I'm really looking forward to that.
So what do you think of this one, John?
I really like it.
It reminds me of that exercise where you retype a novel,
like Hunter S Thompson famously retyped
The Great Gatsby to learn what it's
like to write a great book.
Right, did you ever do that?
I did, of course.
Yeah, I retyped large parts of The Catcher in the Rye.
Oh, of course.
But when you think about the idea of influence in art,
there are so many examples of people you could talk about.
But I think we should talk about Picasso.
Everybody knows him, and he's hugely influential even today.
I don't think I'm familiar with his work, actually.
Well, he talked a lot about his own
influences-- Rembrandt, Velazquez, and Matisse.
And he was open about his debt to those who came before.
He said, a painter always has a father and a mother.
He doesn't emerge out of nothing.
And I assume that Picasso was father and mother
to many artists.
Metaphorically speaking, yes.
I'll show you.
While Picasso famously never set foot in the US,
he still had a huge impact on American art.
In 1939, the Museum of Modern Art
put on a major exhibition of Picasso's work
that drew large crowds and budding artists,
like Louise Bourgeois, who was so blown away
that she said all she could do for a month
was clean her brushes.
But then she got over it, and took Picasso's style
of fracturing an image into various profiles
and made this self-portrait using his tactics to define
her own mode of image making.
Jackson Pollock also saw the show.
You can see aspects of "Guernica's" composition
and the free brush work and palette
of "Bull Fight" in Pollock's 1946 painting "The Water Bull."
Challenged by Picasso, Pollock soon after found
his breakthrough drip style.
Jumping forward to 1982, Jean-Michel Basquiat
made this forceful portrait, "Pater,"
which explores his relationship with his biological father,
as well as Picasso, his art historical father.
You can also see echoes of Picasso's "Les Demoiselles
d'Avignon" in this 2004 painting by George Condo.
It may look familiar, because Condo painted a similar image
on a bag that Kanye West gave Kim Kardashian-- proof positive
that Picasso's legacy is strong.
Am I right?
I think we get a chance to learn about ourselves when
we learn about something that we're not.
And so, while I am familiar with some of Peggy's techniques,
and what some of her ideas are, I
don't know what it's like to actually put,
for instance, the puffy paint on a fabric
or whatever material there is.
So that might open up some sort of door for me--
maybe not next week, but maybe 5 or 10 years from now.
And maybe I'm doing puffy paint, or-- that would be fantastic.
Because I don't want to rest in any one certain area.
For me, if I was to make a work in the style of my dad,
it would be something sculptural.
And it would be with found materials, probably
things that you might have in your studio or in your house
already.
So not necessarily spending a ton of time thinking
about what I need to buy in order to make this happen,
but what can I use that already exists, that I can turn
into a piece of artwork now.
So we're going to pack up.
And we're going to head over to my studio.
I have a lot of materials there.
Peggy's bringing some of her paints.
And we're just going to see what happens.
PEGGY NOLAND: I feel like that's something
I'm always negotiating-- that I'm still
kind of learning for myself when to be influenced,
and when to kind of stop looking at other people's work,
and really just making your own.
Because it is inspirational to see people
that are doing things that you aspire to.
But then it also can be, like, really hard.
It can be really damaging, I think, too.
Because it's great to be inspired.
But you don't want to be making work
so closely to another artist's work
that you're just straight-up copying.
GARRY NOLAND: I had a situation a few years ago
where a family of four is walking in front of my exhibit.
And the father goes back, "I can do that."
And at first, I was sort of-- I was
chagrined by the whole thing.
But then it occurred to me that he was, on some level,
questioning his-- you know, what he could do
or what he couldn't do, even if it was superficial.
PEGGY NOLAND: I mean, it's cool that their family
was at a show--
GARRY NOLAND: Yeah.
PEGGY NOLAND: --in the first place.
GARRY NOLAND: Absolutely.
PEGGY NOLAND: And then who knows what industry he's in.
Like, I really love architecture.
But I don't do that.
But you can go past a building, and you're, like,
if I had the background or the experience,
I could make that building, too.
You know what I mean?
It's like a little bit out of what you expect of yourself,
not necessarily out of place of like any sort of negativity
towards your work, but it says more about that person of what
you would like of yourself.
GARRY NOLAND: Thing that I'm most
gratified by is how you're able to be fearless with the work.
Thanks, Dad.
That's nice.
[MUSIC PLAYING]