Philip Stanton

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He was born in Florida and raised in Cape Canaveral. He studied visual arts in New York and came to Barcelona in '88, seeking the Mediterranean inspiration for his work.
He is a professor and post-graduation co-ordinator in Design at DEIA.
We met him at his studio, in Sarrià where he and his team work for clients such as: Mercedes Benz, UEFA, Caixa Catalunya or the Generalitat (Catalan Autonomous Government)

When and why did you come to Barcelona?
I finished my master’s degree in NY at School of Visual Arts and decided I wanted to do some travelling. I was in London for three or four months, working for some magazines and editorial groups but I got cold there. I had some friends here in Barcelona, so I came to visit them. At the fourth time I decided that I wanted to stay.

What major differences can you see between art done here and in USA?
Art has become a global activity. Everywhere somebody is doing art work. You can find real cutting edge photography in NY, or in London, Paris, Barcelona or Madrid. There is so much diversity everywhere… In the USA there are many currents of art, the same way there are here. Maybe there is a little bit more painting here, which is something that I like.

Is this the right place to develop an artistic career?
It is a really good place to create art. It’s a very inspiring city. At the same time, it is a not an easy place to promote your work, especially if you're from outside Spain. It is a city where the collectors tend to buy works from local artists, and for a foreigner it can be quite difficult, I think. You really have to show you're here as a part of the city, and not just as somebody just passing through. However, in terms of creating work, and comparing with other cities, I think it is a great place, and very inspiring.

And what difficulties?
Sometimes it is too local. We're missing a big art fair, like ARCO (Madrid), or Basel (Switzerland). Artexpo is just not it. In the future, nobody will stop creating, whenever there is money and a local to exhibit, but I think we're missing Government subsidies. A lot of other European Governments and the Americans have prizes, scholarships to help people to create.

Some curious arguments appear in the local media, comparing Bcn and NY, because the "Big Apple" is the chosen city for this year's Grec Summer Festival. You live there. How can you comment that?
That’s a question that is often asked. I really think Barcelona and NY are two completely different things. NY is an international capital, a centre; Barcelona is a Mediterranean capital, a European capital, perhaps. The scale is important, but that doesn’t mean that in NY they produce work more profound or more interesting than here. Although Barcelona is a really vibrant, creative city. All kind of people are creating things: fashion, music, painting, design or architecture. It is almost too much creation considering the potential market to employ them all.

Your work has some peculiar details
I just work. I like to create things. I try to combine work done for public projects. A lot of pieces that I do are public projects. They can range from covering a building, advertising campaign, or a television commercial, a little bit of everything.

Which are you major influences?
Your paintings show the colour and the happiness of life…
I've been influenced by living here, in a Mediterranean culture. Colour is something I tend to use a lot because I'm trying to find new combinations. I think it is an item has not been sufficiently explored. I try to give a physical reaction. Colour is something that affects us emotionally. I find interesting and I like to transmit energy with my works and think that my works can make somebody feel better.

You’re one of the artists chosen to recreate Gaudí in the metro Stations, but you show something new there
I decided to do something completely different than I used to do. It is a 300 square meter of photo-collages. I’ve been working with this kind of material for almost ten years, which I never showed. Even with a small studio, I like to do large-scale projects. From all Gaudí's works, Sagrada Familia still a living organism, it is still under construction and I try to express that idea.

And Gaudí's works have an influence on your regular pieces?
Gaudí now is a boom, and people have a more profound idea about his work. When I came here I was struck by how unusual his buildings were. Once you live in Barcelona, you are automatically influenced by his style, which doesn’t mean I was directly inspired on his work.

To finish, what was Gaudí to you as an artist, in his 150th anniversary?
He was a genius and had a revolutionary approach to architecture. One hundred years later he's still revolutionary. If you look at the three dimensional sense he had it, is something amazing, in a time when there were no computers, and just looking at the simplicity of nature and finding structural possibilities to make a 100 meters tower, something almost impossible! Strangely, after the modernism you didn’t see the progresses he achieved in any kind of contemporary architecture afterwards. Only the Bauhaus innovate, but in an opposite way. In some sense, it's funny, they were "anti-Gaudí", but today Spanish architects like Calatrava or Miralles, or even Frank Gehry are influenced by Gaudí, one century afterwards…


Ricardo Nuno::
Friday, July 19th '02