How to interview an artist

Cartoonist Robert Crumb with a sketchbook. Image: Geeks of Doom.

By now, all of the Hybrid Culture students should have contacted an artist to interview–these interviews will be posted on this blog as the culmination of the course.

Before contacting the artist, you should begin by:
– Reading other interviews with the artist (if any) so you don’t repeat questions he or she has already been asked.
– Familiarizing yourself with his or her work.
– Familiarizing yourself with his or her biography. Do not ask anything that you could learn from reading Wikipedia.

Here is a list of possible questions to ask. Keep in mind that what you learn in the interview should go both into your final presentation and also into your blog post about the artist. So you will want to ask interesting questions. Ask the things you really want to know.

Some questions to ask: (Don’t ask all of these, of course! Choose from the list.)
— What are you working on right now?
— Do you remember the first piece of art you made, and can you describe it?
— What influenced you to become an artist?
— Specific questions about the origin or process for specific pieces of art (always important to have these, this is what prevents interviews from being too general)
— Specific questions about the audience, the interaction of the work with the audience
— Specific questions about artistic cooperations, hybrid work, multi-genre work
— If you could go back in time and change any of your works or artistic decisions, would you do so–and why?
— What do you plan to work on in the future?
— What artists have influenced you?
— How would you say your work has changed over the course of your career?
— What advice would you give to a younger version of yourself?
— What is your working process like?
— If money were no object and you had no restrictions, what would you start working on now?
— Is there something about contemporary or popular art culture that particularly annoys or frustrates you? What would you change, if you could change something?
— What is the role of technology (or social media) in your work?
— In your interview with X Magazine, you said “quote.” Could you say more about what you mean by this?

Make sure to have extra questions prepared–in case the interview goes quickly, or the artist doesn’t like the question and asks for a different one.

Some sample interviews with artists to read, to give you an idea of good questions you might want to ask:
Paris Review interview with cartoonist/artist R. Crumb
Bookslut interview with writer Jane Vandenburgh–a great example of an interview conducted over email. (Many more interviews archived at Bookslut.com.)
Paris Review interview with playwright Tony Kushner
Complete archive of Paris Review interviews