Menu

Gagosian Quarterly

November 30, 2015

In Conversation

MARY MCCARTNEY

Mary McCartney speaks with Derek Blasberg about the inspiration behind her photographs and the relationships that emerge while exhibiting alongside her mother.

Mary McCartney, Gently Holding Frog, Sussex, 1995 © Mary McCartney

Mary McCartney, Gently Holding Frog, Sussex, 1995 © Mary McCartney

Derek Blasberg

Derek Blasberg is a writer, fashion editor, and New York Times best-selling author. He has been with Gagosian since 2014, and is currently the executive editor of Gagosian Quarterly.

See all Articles

Derek BlasbergHave you always wanted to do an exhibition of your photographs with your mother’s?

Mary McCartneyYes. But I had always thought it would have been much later in my career.

DBWhy later?

MMBecause I try to keep my work and my family separate, and I knew putting a show like this together would be a daunting, personal project. But once I started thinking about it, I started enjoying it. Whenever my mother and I would talk about photography, we’d always have similar thoughts and a similar eye. That became the premise of the show.

DBTalk to me about your childhood. You once used the phrase “peace convoy” to describe it to me. What does that mean?

MMThere’s an image in the show of a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and a baby in someone’s hand. I’m the baby. In some ways that picture illustrates that I was more of a gypsy child rather than a rock royalty daughter. We grew up with food on our faces and clothes that didn’t fit, and it was all very funky—all of which was to our benefit. In the summer, we’d go to Scotland, and it was just us in a small house on a remote farm. That feeling of intimacy and observing people and striving for the intensity of characters evolved into why I’m obsessed with pictures.

That feeling of intimacy and observing people and striving for the intensity of characters evolved into why I’m obsessed with pictures.

Mary McCartney

DBHow dominant was your mother’s work when you were growing up?

MMShe was always taking pictures, but you didn’t realize it. She always had a camera around her neck and was at ease with it. You’d be talking and she’d pick it up, take a picture, and move on. Seamless. I have childhood memories of being in a darkroom with her when I was little, and watching a blank piece of paper become a photograph. In that magical moment, I became engaged in photography. Our styles are similar in that we’re both looking for stolen moments, as opposed to setup ones. We both find overly manicured situations really dull. We like to gain someone’s trust and get close to them and then snap. Collecting people’s stories is something I never get tired of doing.

DBWhen did you start taking pictures?

MMIn my early twenties. At first, I did picture research for a music company, because I loved photography, but didn’t think I could do it. And then, to be honest, I started looking at my friends’ holiday snapshots and they were so horrible that I thought, “Maybe I can do this.” Growing up around a photographer who made it look so effortless also made it intimidating as a career choice. But I learned from my mother that taking the picture is only part of the process.

DBYou once told me that being a photographer made you a participant and an observer at the same time. Do you think your mother felt the same way?

MMThe story of how my mother became the only photographer of the Rolling Stones on the SS Sea Panther [in 1966] is a good example of how she would be at the right place at the right time and just let things happen. I feel the same way: The best things happen by accident and then lead you on an adventure.

Mary McCartney

Linda McCartney, Brian Jones and Mick Jagger, New York, 1966, fiber-based print, 16 ⅛ × 24 inches (41 × 60.8 cm) © 1966 Paul McCartney

DBAdventure is important to the process?

MMSometimes I’ll be out and I’ll meet someone new, hear their story, and gain their trust. They’ll take me on their journey. The taking of someone’s picture should be a process that’s not a chore, because, c’mon, it’s not the easiest thing to do. People get quite stressed and tense in front of a camera.

DBRachel Feinstein once told me she thinks all artists are either trying to rebel from their childhood or trying to recreate it.

MMThen I’m extending my childhood. My childhood was about an interest in intimacy and intense situations. When I was shadowing the Royal Ballet [for an exhibition in 2007], I had a pass that let me go into the dressing rooms. I would stay with them and travel with them and share beds with them. I felt like an extension of their family.

DBAnd did that help you to portray them in a way they may not have presented another photographer?

MMI find people open up to me, and I don’t know why. Maybe it has something to do with my upbringing, which allows people to trust that I’m not going to take advantage of them. Or maybe they understand that I want to show them in a real way. My mother had that effect as well.

It turned out not to be just a mother-daughter show, but a show about the same eye that exists in two different people.

Mary McCartney

DBAnd how do you juggle being both a working woman and also a mother of four?

MMI’m frenetic, apparently! I think I grew up around it. My mum was a mother of four, and she was a photographer. I love what I do, and I love family and, to be honest, I don’t really plan things. Instead I just get on with it.

DBLet’s get back to this exhibition. Are the images labeled? Is it clear who’s who?

MMThey’re not labeled. Some of them you’ll know because it will be my dad in the ’60s or Rihanna today. You can figure it out that way. Otherwise, it’s nicer to let the viewer’s mind wonder, so they can have an experience and come up with their own stories. When it’s clear-cut, you lose the inquisitive nature.

DBThe images that I love the most are the moments of wanderlust and childhood innocence.

MMI want this show to be about moments, rather than setups. I love the innocence of not trying too hard. My mother was the most non-agenda’ed, most relaxed person. She never spent much time worrying about what other people thought about her. A lot of people say, “I don’t care what people think,” but it’s hard to really mean it. She did. How liberating is that?

DBHas your family seen the pictures in the show?

MMYes, I took a big box of prints and showed them to my father early on. Then he went away to America and saw them again there when I emailed him the finished pairings and groups. He phoned me, and he sounded excited. When he finds something interesting, it’s a good sign.

DBWas this whole thing therapeutic?

MMOh, absolutely. Exciting at first, and then daunting, then exciting again, and now there’s all this adrenaline. The whole thing reminded me of why I became a photographer in the first place, and why and how my mother and I influenced each other for so long. It turned out not to be just a mother-daughter show, but a show about the same eye that exists in two different people.

Linda McCartney and Mary McCartney: Mother Daughter at Gagosian 976 Madison Avenue, New York, November 20, 2014–January 30, 2015.

Louise Bonnet and Stefanie Hessler

In Conversation
Louise Bonnet and Stefanie Hessler

Gagosian hosted a conversation between Louise Bonnet and Stefanie Hessler, director of Swiss Institute, New York, inside 30 Ghosts, the artist’s exhibition of new paintings at Gagosian, New York. The pair explores the work’s recurring themes—the cycles of life, continuity and the future, and death—and discuss how the conceptual and pictorial structures Bonnet borrows from seventeenth-century Dutch still-life painting converge to form a metaphor for hard labor, basic animal urges, and the things we often try, but fail, to hide.

Oscar Murillo and Ben Luke on Franz West

In Conversation
Oscar Murillo and Ben Luke on Franz West

In conjunction with Franz West: Papier, the gallery’s presentation of paper-based works by Franz West at Frieze Masters 2023, artist Oscar Murillo and arts writer, critic, and broadcaster Ben Luke sit down to discuss Murillo’s collaboration in selecting the works on view, as well as his personal experiences meeting the late artist in London.

Georg Baselitz and Richard Calvocoressi sit next to each other in the artist’s studio

In Conversation
Georg Baselitz and Richard Calvocoressi

In conjunction with the exhibition The Painter in His Bed, at Gagosian, New York, Georg Baselitz and Richard Calvocoressi discuss the motif of the stag in the artist’s newest paintings.  

Jerome Rothenberg in a chair

In Conversation
Jerome Rothenberg and Charles Bernstein

Gagosian and Beyond Baroque Literary | Arts Center hosted a conversation between poets Jerome Rothenberg and Charles Bernstein inside Anselm Kiefer’s exhibition Exodus at Gagosian at Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles. Rothenberg and Bernstein explored some of the themes that occupy Kiefer—Jewish mysticism, the poetry of Paul Celan, and the formulation of a global poetics in response to the Holocaust—in a discussion and readings of their poetry.

Dorothy Lichtenstein and Irving Blum stand next to each other in front of Roy Lichtenstein's studio in Southampton, New York

In Conversation
Irving Blum and Dorothy Lichtenstein

In celebration of the centenary of Roy Lichtenstein’s birth, Irving Blum and Dorothy Lichtenstein sat down to discuss the artist’s life and legacy, and the exhibition Lichtenstein Remembered curated by Blum at Gagosian, New York.

Alison McDonald, Daniel Belasco, and Scott Rothkopf next to each other in front of a live audience

In Conversation
Daniel Belasco and Scott Rothkopf on Roy Lichtenstein

Gagosian and the Art Students League of New York hosted a conversation on Roy Lichtenstein with Daniel Belasco, executive director of the Al Held Foundation, and Scott Rothkopf, senior deputy director and chief curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Organized in celebration of the centenary of the artist’s birth and moderated by Alison McDonald, chief creative officer at Gagosian, the discussion highlights multiple perspectives on Lichtenstein’s decades-long career, during which he helped originate the Pop art movement. The talk coincides with Lichtenstein Remembered, curated by Irving Blum and on view at Gagosian, New York, through October 21.

Helen Marden and Kiki Smith

In Conversation
Helen Marden and Kiki Smith

Ahead of her exhibition in Athens this fall, Helen Marden met with longtime friend Kiki Smith at Marden’s home in New York’s West Village to discuss the bravery of color and the power of intuition.

Robbie Robertson

In Conversation
Robbie Robertson

The musician Robbie Robertson is having quite a year. The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer is rolling out a new record, for which he designed all the album art; a documentary based on his memoir Testimony; and the score for Martin Scorsese’s film The Irishman. Derek Blasberg met him at his LA studio to talk about how he’s created his music for decades and, more recently, his artwork.

Christopher Makos, Andy Warhol at Paris Apartment Window, 1981

In Conversation
Christopher Makos and Jessica Beck

Andy Warhol’s Insiders at the Gagosian Shop in London’s historic Burlington Arcade is a group exhibition and shop takeover that feature works by Warhol and portraits of the artist by friends and collaborators including photographers Ronnie Cutrone, Michael Halsband, Christopher Makos, and Billy Name. To celebrate the occasion, Makos met with Gagosian director Jessica Beck to speak about his friendship with Warhol and the joy of the unexpected.

Jenny Saville and Martin Gayford

In Conversation
Jenny Saville and Martin Gayford

Gagosian hosted a conversation between Jenny Saville and Martin Gayford, art critic and author, in conjunction with the exhibition Friends and Relations: Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews at Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London. Gayford also spoke with the artist about her works in the exhibition Jenny Saville: Latent at Gagosian, rue de Castiglione, Paris.

Three people, in mid-conversation, sit on chairs next to each other

In Conversation
David Adjaye, Frida Escobedo, Julian Rose

Gagosian and Judd Foundation hosted a conversation between architects David Adjaye and Frida Escobedo, moderated by architect and critic Julian Rose. In this video, the trio discusses the agency of art and architecture alike—confronting their potentials and their limits—and the significance of taking art outside the museum and into the city or landscape.

Artist Richard Wright sits looking at something outside the frame

In Conversation
Richard Wright and Martin Clark

Richard Wright and Martin Clark, director of Camden Art Centre, London, discuss Wright’s latest body of work, recent commissions, and new monograph, which provides a comprehensive overview of his practice between 2010 and 2020.