Love Bite: Laurie Lipton and Her Disturbing Black & White Drawings

Laurie Lipton: There is nobody on the planet who's drawn more than me.

Nobody.

That's all I've done.

I haven't cooked.

I haven't made children.

I've just drawn.

That's all I can do.

That's all I do.

Douglas Chrismas: The very act of making drawings like this consumes an amazing amount

of time.

What we're witnessing here she has pulled from her imagination.

And that is highly unusual.

Terry Gilliam: What she's dealing with is what everybody has inside them in one form or

another.

And probably most people are frightened to recognize it.

You put it down in the basement and keep the trap door shut.

Laurie Lipton: I've been drawing now for over fifty years.

I'm isolated.

I'm in my head.

I'm in this piece of paper.

And what goes on between me and the paper, everything comes into play, my entire life.

My father gave me rapidograph pens when I was about nine or ten, and I used to take my

little book into school with me and just draw.

Phallic things going on.

Very weird.

There's a very hurt child in all of my work.

Very alone, very confused.

And out of it.

And she is still in me.

She is very much in me.

1960's news report: Good morning, here's the news.

Civil defense headquarters announced today that the sharp increase in the number of cases

of illness during the last few days have lead authorities to suspect that a biological

warfare attack may have taken place.

As yet, the cause of this outbreak has not been identified.

Laurie Lipton: Black and white is the colour of ghosts.

It's the colour of old television shows.

It's the colour of memories, old family photographs.

It's the colour of past and longing.

It's almost the colour of thought.

Sean Sorenson: I don't think I've ever seen another piece of art that affected me

in such a way.

When I saw "love bite" I felt a stirring inside of me.

I felt like, like I found a connection to some...

I felt connected, you know.

I felt a need to get to know her.

Like a kindred spirit or something.

I felt like somebody understood me too, you know.

It was extraordinary.

This is "love bite" by Laurie Lipton, and the reason it's not hung is that this is my office.

And often when important clients come in...

We have to hide it.

We actually have to hide it.

There's some people that come by and they look at it and they feel frightened, and other

people come by and they think it's amazing.

It's not 50/50.

It's probably something more like... 90/10.

We've had people come in here that are terrified of the work, terrified.

Which is great right, because it's fucking art, okay.

It's not a doberman or a pitbull, it's art!

What are you afraid of?

Well, they're afraid of Laurie Lipton is what they're afraid of.

Laurie Lipton: I am a very private, introverted creature.

A lot is hidden in my work.

And a lot is hidden in me.

People are always disappointed when they meet me because they think, oh, my god.

You look so normal - well, whatever normal is.

And your drawings are, you know...

You look like you bake cookies, and your drawings are so gothic.

What's going on?

It's as if there's another being inside of me and it's taking me for a ride.

I've come to accept it now.

I used to fight it a lot of times and think, why am I in this room alone, wasting my

life?

But this is my role.

This is why I've been put on earth, to draw, basically.

Some people are put on earth for more important things, but I'm a pencil pusher.

A lot of people have compared me to a monk or a nun.

And my life is very simple.

It's very, very simple.

The art world has fashions and in-crowds, and I've always been on the outside.

So no one really knows me.

No one knows who I am.

People ask me, "why don't you make nice things?"

As my grandmother used to say, "why don't you make something I can hang on my living room

wall?"

But, I just for me personally...

This is what it looks like to me.

I draw about things that bother me in life.

And death began to bother me at about the age of six or seven.

I was always drawing, always.

Mother: Come on, darling, play with your brother.

Little girl: I don't want to.

Laurie Lipton: That's how I amused myself and my mother was very worried about me,

because I didn't like going out and playing with the other children.

I liked lying on the floor of my bedroom and drawing.

Mother: Oh, be nice to brother; He's our baby.

Little girl: Send him away.

Laurie Lipton: I was a perfect little girl.

I was very, very polite.

I was very adorable.

But, I had an alter ego.

I was a tomboy.

And I hated dresses.

The minute I got home from school, I'd rip off my dress and I'd put on my cowboy

outfit.

And I was doing these horrible, painful, angry drawings.

My parents always brought out my stuff when my aunts and uncles came to visit.

And they were horrified at some of the stuff I did.

I mean, it was really disturbing some of it.

My parents were just, "look what Laurie did.

Isn't this amazing?

Isn't this wonderful!"

Boob chin.

The typical boob chin.

I think that's masturbation but I'm not quite sure.

Instead of having me sectioned or put on medication, they praised me.

My parents were sort of middle class suburban anarchists.

They did do the suburban schtick.

My father worked hard.

My mother worked hard.

They gave us a good life, on the one hand.

And on the other hand, there was a little bit of a demon in there, and they were sort

of like - bleeeh - to authority all the time.

It was post world war ii, and there was a boom time in america.

People were living the best they'd ever lived in their lives, much better than their

parents.

But on the other hand, there was a threat under the carpet.

1960's man: You'll know when it comes.

We hope it never comes, but we must get ready.

It looks something like this.

If you were not ready and did not know what to do, it could hurt you in different ways.

Laurie Lipton: I was in third grade.

They rang the bell and we had to get under our desks and put our heads down and face away

from the window in case the Russians dropped an atomic bomb.

1960's man: It could knock you down hard, or throw you against a tree or a wall.

It is such a big explosion.

Laurie Lipton: To a child that is such a frightening thing.

Our whole world could explode.

It was insane!

1960's man: There might not be any grownups around when the bomb explodes.

Then, you're on your own.

Scientist: It can't be.

My eyes are deceiving me.

Woman: People fear what they don't understand, and what they can't see.

Laurie Lipton: I read a lot of Sci-Fi when I was a child.

My father used to read analogue and Sci-Fi magazines, and he'd leave them all over

the house.

And these stories were about reality splitting in two.

All of sudden we're having a nice, wonderful day and then suddenly something weird

happens and you're whisked into another dimension.

I got the sense that reality was very, very thin and any moment it could just crack

apart and you could fall through the hole.

I had a lot of very, very powerful feelings swirling inside of me and I had to have

a way to deal with emotions.

Yup, there we go with the penis and everything.

Oh, dear.

I love this one.

I was constantly the outsider.

And I wanted so desperately to fly away.

And I did fly away.

I did, literally, to Europe.

In the '70s I went to Amsterdam and I saw these amazing 16th century paintings

like Van eyck, and memling.

The flemish masters.

I thought, how do you do that?

The reason these artists were so successful in their right - I don't mean

monetarily, I mean as artists - was because they had achieved something unique.

Looking at Michelangelo's "David," I was bowled over by his work.

So I was trying to figure out, how did he do this?

He did it by being Michelangelo totally.

So I thought, okay, none of these guys were ever Laurie Lipton.

If I can be the most Laurie Lipton ever and touch my essence of Laurie Lipton-ness,

somehow, some way, do something I've never seen before, then I will be successful.

Then I have a chance.

I have not lived in the states for more than half my life.

I love London, I've lived there the longest, anywhere in the world.