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'Actress Model no 9 Paris & Roma'

Martin Maloney's intentionally grungy, joyfully child-like paintings and collage of ordinary English people doing everyday activities in average urban settings appeal to many viewers as the casual observations of a contemporary flaneur. Yet Maloney adamantly maintains that his images are rooted in a deep engagement with Western art history. Like the photographer Tom Hunter, Maloney carefully recreates acknowledged art masterpieces using everyday, mainly working class characters in rough and raw urban settings, and often deriving inspiration from local newspapers and magazines. Yet unlike Hunter's high-level precision and the realism created by the camera, Maloney's low-rent versions of high art incorporate a distinctly updated style and choice of subject.

Maloney's garcious palette consists of bombastic plastic-toned pinks, yellow, oranges and other hyper hues can be overwhelming or envigorating. His gawky, spastic-looking figures have hair that Adrian Searle described as resembling "marmalade" and rubbery bodies closer to Gumby than any person you might know. And they seem to be sloshing around in space, like binge-drinking teenagers. Yet there is no hint of darkness or bitterness in any aspect of his art. Maloney's paintings are as messy, loud and out-of-control as a boozy family reunion, but they are just as fun and festive. His style was brilliant captured by the name of a 1999 group show at the Saatchi Gallery in which Maloney contributed 10ft paintings of swingers swinging in seedy Sex Clubs: "New Neurotic Realism."

Despite the debauchery depicted in Maloney's paintings, critic Julian Stallabrass has dismissed his work as "childishly sweet and banal figure paintings." But Stallabrass's criticism misses the mark because these are the very traits that give Maloney's art its significance and power. As his subjects, Maloney has chosen sections of society who are often overlooked, mistrusted and stigmatized by crippling stereotypes. In a very supportive 2000 profile by Adrian Searle for the Guardian, Maloney explained that his motive for one painting was to redeem the image of working class single mothers. "In culture, the working-class single mother is usually seen as a victim plagued with social problems," he explained to Searle. "I wanted to paint the opposite of that."

Yet Daniella Peled, reviewing "New Neurotic Realism" for a arts blog entitled "Overground," confessed to being deeply disturbed by Maloney's paintings and wrote, "I am amazed at the time and expense that must have gone into the production of this homoerotic odyssey. I wonder if he'd done similarly botched up paintings of flowers, puppies, or his mum, would anybody have awarded him the slightest bit of credibility?"

Maloney's 1997 large-scale oil painting "Rave (After Poussin's Triumph of Pan)" borrowed its composition and spirit of bacchanal elevation from Poussin's 1636 depiction of nymphs and satyrs in a pastoral orgy fuelled by Pan's intoxicating horn music. For his version, Maloney brought his revellers indoors. Unlike Poussin's bawdier image, the piled-up bodies Maloney paints in his loose, expressionistic fashion are mostly clothed (except for two leaping lads stripped down to their white Y-fronts), but the fleshy pink colour of the walls behind them adds a hint of unbridled sensuality. Whereas Poussin's painting was an image of exaggerated debauchery and carnality, Maloney's exposes the innocent charm of drug-fuelled silliness. The kids snogging and jumping around to the pulse of throbbing music might be acting wild, but they are miles from the earthly intensity of Greek mythology.

Now Maloney is using references closer in content and style to his own as a jumping-off point. At the Timothy Taylor gallery, he will present "Actress Slash Model," his first show of collages inspired by William de Kooning's "Women" series.

'Actress Model no 3 Ruby Green'

AFH: How did these works evolve?

MM: If you mean how did I make them technically, then I took a page of The Sun, put it on a projector and traced it as an outline onto canvas with charcoal. Then I spend some time gluing down areas with cut-up pieces of previously painted canvas, which came from old paintings which hadn't worked out and were heading for the bin; flat colour or vigorous brushwork or patterns or textures I could reuse in these new paintings. In making my female nudes I was thinking about making a depiction of a person with a face and hairstyle and personality. I was also making an abstract arrangement of colours and shapes within the outline of a body.

AFH: Were the scraps of discarded canvas mostly from recent series?

MM: No. Mainly from a time I was depressed and made work where I was trying to do something different from what I would normally do and when the depression lifted I could see the work wasn't very good. So it was good to go back and cut up them up.

AFH: Do you consider those failures part of an evolution toward this project or do you consider them failures because they felt like dead end experiments?

MM: A bit of both.

AFH: How has the series evolved?

MM: The works changed in the series as I made more of them. There was an evolution in the palette I used which changed from being timid and naturalistic in the first paintings to being wilder and more colourful in the last ones.

AFH: Alright, then how did the works evolve conceptually?

MM: If you said to me a year ago you would be making a series of female nudes, I probably would have said: "You're having a laugh aren't you?"

AFH: The nude has been a reasonable subject for artists throughout art's history. Why would you have dismissed it as a subject for your work?

MM: Because I am a homosexual.

AFH: What changed?

MM: I was looking for something to make in the studio and I didn't know what direction to take with my work but when I made the first one I could see a connection with an art historical genre, the female nude, and I could see a way of thinking about the presentation of the female nude in a modern way. Before I started I had spent a few weeks being listless looking for a project. At first I wanted to make a transcription of a modern master and I was attracted to the complexity of Willem de Kooning's nudes and I had spent some time trying to work out how he had made them. I liked their teeth and savage smiles and multiple body parts but after a discussion with an artist friend I thought de Kooning's work would be too hard to copy as a transcription as he did too many things in a painting. He seemed to be able to make paintings which were clear and emotionally direct but physically his paintings looked like he had changed his mind a lot. They were clear in a way and then very vague and changeable and that was a quality I thought would be difficult to copy. I admired that he could make something static yet moving and the moving thing was also emotionally moving as well as physically a body changing so I thought he was way too hard to copy and I knew I need to start with something more graphic. I copied a pin up girl from one of the popular British tabloid newspapers, The Sun, and once I had copied the model in charcoal on canvas I could see my drawing had the look of a classic female pin up, slightly old fashioned and coy and the starting point of The Sun disappeared. I was surprised how the first drawing took on a life and personality of its own. I never looked at the model from The Sun after I had drawn the outline from it. I then got on with making a painting and benefited from having an outline as this allowed me great license in how I could treat the jumps of colour and tone and pattern and brush work in the paint as I went about constructing a woman's body.

AFH: How does the origin of these images make these paintings different from traditional nude studies?

MM: I think you might mean conventional nude studies. Then I would say that I follow the conventions of a contemporary artist, who mediates with contemporary culture and his own subjectivity. That means I look at what is out there, the world around me, and make something from it, something psychological and internal. De Kooning's nudes originate from pin ups from cigarette adverts. He was following a tradition of borrowing from popular culture and making something different from it, and Picabia too made his nudes from what would be considered low cultural source material, so in that way I am working on solid ground by finding the easily dismissed and injecting it with a different kind of life.

'Actress Model no 4 Melanie K'

AFH: So you're saying that despite their apparent contemporary context, they are conceptually within a now-established tradition of Post-Modern appropriation?

MM: No, these works are not within "the established tradition of Post- Modern appropriation." To do that, I would have to treat the source material like a ready-made and reproduce it without too much intervention like Richard Prince does with his photographs of biker's girlfriends. I haven't done that. I am not trying to do that. I am not copying my source material.

AFH: Fine, but Richard Prince's copying was a unique and witty conceptual gesture, whereas you just seem to be emulating historical greatness. Do you think history is treated too delicately by artists or viewers?

MM: If you are referring to art history I don't think artists treat that delicately at all. All artist engage with art history on a daily bases. I am interested in the art, which has gone before, and how it has changed and how radical changes soon became conventions and how these conventions were revised or changed. Art history is attractive as it suggests a constant revolution. It is not a delicate passing of the baton. When I was at art school I wanted to shout very loudly at lots of the art that was held up to be great or good or interesting, "This is total shit". That seems to be the main point of art education - to show people art that gets them hot and bothered and then the search is on to find the few artists that support your view of the world. If artists treated art history in a delicate way then there would just be five paintings and everything else would be a copy, never really changing, and that is not my experience of going to look at art in exhibitions or visiting museums. I think viewers like to see how art changes and how the past can connect with the present without being in imitation of it. When I look at good art I am always thinking in admiration, "how did they get away with that!"

AFH: So, essentially you are using an artistic medium that was developed by Braque and Picasso to replicate the intent, appearance and spirit of paintings by de Kooning. And you are doing this decades after Post-Modernist theory and artistic practice popularized appropriation. Why? What are you challenging? How are you not "imitating"?

MM: Your interests in looking at art history are probably different to mine. This work is not about appropriation. My paintings do not look like de Koonings so it would be dishonest to say I have replicated in mine the appearance of his. If I had, I would be making work like Sherry Levine. I have not. That is not my interest. Artists can be moved by the work of other artists without feeling they are trying to make Post Modern work. I understand your argument but it is not either what I am doing or what interests me. In fact I don't know if artists like Sherry Levine are moved by the work they have made copies of. But if you think that is what I am doing then you are on the wrong track.

'Actress Model no 7 Ambrosia'

AFH: What was the work you saw in art school that inspired your impassioned rejection?

MM: All of it - at times. You know the usual suspects: Picasso, De Kooning, the work made in the long decade of Post Modern theory and appropriation. In art school I liked certain art, then hated it, then
liked it again. I think in art school one feels one has to have a point of view on something and make an impassioned declaration of which side you are on. So when I was an angry art person I made declarations but later on I lightened up a bit and became more generous towards art made in ways different to those I championed or admired.

AFH: What is your interest in women who make careers out of their appearance?

MM: None.

AFH: So, were you just looking for updated versions of the cigarette girls de Kooning painted?

MM: Yes. No. Maybe. I was looking for something to work with and work against. I wanted to copy the tabloid model as an outline to reduce it and fill it in with colour, texture and pattern. My aim was not to reproduce what was in front of me like a photo realist painter but to transform my source material into something else.

AFH: Feminist art historians and scholars have been offended by de Koonings "Women" on the grounds that he visually reduced his subjects to teeth and tits. Is that why you selected a particular sub-culture of model whose only professional requirement and professional purpose is to have nice teeth and tits?

MM: They probably think about his work very differently than I do. I like the tits and teeth in de Kooning's "Women" paintings but I also like the wobble. By that I mean the rich handling of the paint full of a variety of marks and gestures, descriptive and yet abstract. I like his wild colour clashes and his amazing ability to make a static image look like it is full of movement. I see the confidence he has in painting his fears and desires and also how he explains through paint his own vulnerability. The fact he allows the viewer to see how he changes his mind in a painting, that is brave. But most of all I see his humour which rests alongside his seriousness. He makes paintings which are full of laughter. The laughter that occurs when looking at the banal things in the world and knowing they contain truth. He asks his viewers to laugh at the banal because it is both ridiculous and wonderful. I have not picked the subject or the source material because I deliberately wanted to offend Feminist art historians or scholars. I do not want to denigrate or offend topless models either. I can't speak for de Kooning but if I have offended Feminist art historians and scholars, I would apologise. I wouldn't want to fall out with Feminist art historians and scholars - I've heard that they can be a ferocious lot. And if they organise a bus and all come and see my show together and let me know a little bit of time in advance I will be on hand to apologise personally. And if they are in the area I suggest they go around the corner and see John Currin's show to see if he will apologise too.

'Actress Model no 10 Lolita'

AFH: Do you consider your work specifically English in any way?

MM: Well I hope an international audience can understand my work. We are living in a global world right? But I like the aspect of punk thinking that contemporary British art makes use of. I like that contemporary British artists are not intimidated by the grandeur of art history and art is open enough to allow in the seriousness and irreverence which comes from an engagement with popular culture. Making art is a serious business even if that means taking the piss. I like that British artists are serious about that too. Art making seems very open and gives people an opportunity to have their voice heard whether it is angry, rude, negative or nihilistic. I like the idea of cultural equality and British art making has encouraged a sense of democracy, it lets people have a voice and say: "This is me, this is my take on the world." Art gets treated seriously even if that art mixes up the serious with something more debased and irreverent. British artists find so many inventive ways to say "Fuck You". That is something to be proud of and enjoy.

AFH: Do you consider the paintings portraits of these specific cuties or are they just representative of their demographic?

MM: They are not portraits of Zoë from Basildon. The original material is so bland and uniform it is hard to tell one model from another. To think of Page Three girls in The Sun as portraiture is pushing it. Page Three topless models belong to another time. They are an anachronism. When you can get the most explicit nude models in full action at the click of a button why do Page Three girls exist? If you buy The Sun everyday you will see that the newspaper doesn't use very many models in the course of month, so the same girls get recycled with a different pose hairstyle or pair of knickers. Once I had drawn the model on canvas I didn't look at the source material again; it had served its purpose. I did not choose them for any qualities of portraiture. I chose a particular photograph because the model is facing the viewer or her head is tilted. I don't think Page Three girls, in how they have been photographed, have much to offer in terms of portraiture. Using this source material I was taking something that was around and known but not valued and making something else from it. It is not the starting point that was interesting to me; it was what I could do with it. I don't think of people as demographics. I suppose when I was making these paintings I was thinking more like a psychoanalytic feminist than a marketing man concerned with representing a demographic.

AFH: How did you decide which girls to paint?

MM: Usually the decisions were made for me. I bought the newspaper on the way to the studio and who was in the paper on that day was the woman I was going to paint.

AFH: What does your collage technique express about your subjects, or the state of being a "model/actress"?

MM: Collage is the medium of art making of the last hundred years in art, film, literature, architecture, and photography. It is very conventional. The idea of cutting up and showing the process of cutting up reassures the viewer about the modern world. Collage passes some power back to how we mediate the experience of the given world and it seems like a conventional yet modern thing to do. I suppose when I was making these paintings I was thinking about change and disruption, which is an idea contained in the technique. I was thinking about the outside and the inside of the body and what is important to show. I wondered if you looked hard enough, would you see the thorax or the liver and would that make a better pin-up but I suppose I was too lazy to find out where all those bits of the body are located inside. Then I was thinking about disguise and camouflage. I suppose I thought about flesh and how lots of people got off on painting it and some people got off on seeing it and I was curious how people could get such mileage out of the flesh palette. I did think about what it must be like to be subject of the male gaze and how much do you need to see to satisfy that desire. But more often I was thinking if I could get in three nipples or make three eyes or what was it like to be a Cubist or how much red I could put in a painting or would blue hair seem naturalistic or could I leave bits of the painting unfinished or how should I treat the background. But you know what, I never once thought about being an actress/ model. I am quite happy with my day job.

Martin Maloney: Actress Slash Model
Until 17 May
Timothy Taylor Gallery
15 Carlos Place, London, W1K 2EX
21 Dering Street, London, W1S 1AL