Renowned artist Aaron Gillespie has shocked the art world with the admission that he lost interest in his work some time ago and isn’t even trying any more. In an interview with Art Monthly magazine he reveals that the passion and commitment with which he approached his early work has deserted him over recent years.
Aaron first started painting during a difficult time in his personal life and found it a great outlet for his emotions. His first piece received widespread critical acclaim and he quickly established a reputation as one of the brightest British artists around.
‘That first painting still means a lot to me, to this day I can tell you what every single brush stroke represents. But as I got more famous people seemed to lose interest in what the paintings represented and just start saying how wonderful they were before I’d even had chance to explain them. Surely without knowing the story behind the picture it’s just a collection of coloured lines.’
He claims that after realising that his new found reputation meant that critics were happy to gush about his work without actually understanding it, he stopped trying so hard.
‘It really started with my ‘Eye of the beholder’ piece. I’d chucked a few tins of different coloured paint at a canvas and was struggling to come up with any appropriate sounding bollocks for what it represented. So I said that it could represent different things to different people, that I didn’t want to influence the viewer one way or the other and they had to make their own mind up. It was the ultimate cop-out but people actually bought it.’
After his 2 year old son used some crayons to scribble on a cornflakes packet Aaron signed the bottom of it and released it as his own work entitled ‘Inner child’. The piece was exhibited at the Tate Modern for 2 months and later sold at auction for £150,000. This was the catalyst for the next phase of Aaron’s work, which he calls his ‘rattling off any half-baked toss, signing it at the bottom and selling it for tens of thousands’ phase.
Celebrity art critic Brian Sewell is sceptical about the sincerity of the claims ‘This seems to me to be a classic piece of post-modern irony aimed at gently mocking those people who do not fully understand or appreciate the beauty of modern art. The idea that such an influential piece, with such imaginitive use of colour and shape could actually have been painted by a 2 year old is laughable’.
There are also rumours that a full transcript of the interview, smeared with bovine excrement and titled ‘The art of the bullshitter’ is actually set to appear as Aaron’s next work.