Noah Becker
noah​beck​er​art​.com
Vic­to­ria BC,Canada

Noah Becker is painter, writer, pub­lisher, and jazz sax­o­phon­ist. His paint­ings have been exhib­ited at muse­ums and gal­leries across the US and Canada includ­ing Claire Oliver Gallery in NY and the Van­cou­ver Art Gallery. He was also nom­i­nated for the RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) Paint­ing Prize in 2009. Noah is the founder and edi­tor in chief of White­hot Mag­a­zine as well as a con­tribut­ing writer for Art in Amer­ica and The Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Curbs and Stoops: How did you first become inter­ested in art? Did you have inten­tions of run­ning a mag­a­zine when you started out?

Noah Becker: No, I had no idea I would have an art mag­a­zine. I guess art was some­thing I started with as child.

Curbs and Stoops: How did White­hot Mag­a­zine come to be? How did the cre­ation of the pub­li­ca­tion affect your per­sonal work?

Noah Becker: It was strange how it began. One day I said to a bunch of friends “I’m start­ing an art mag­a­zine” then the next morn­ing I had 400 emails from inter­ested writ­ers in my hot­mail account. Then I opened a gmail account to man­age the vol­ume of com­mu­ni­ca­tions. I have a large oper­a­tion now with an inter­na­tion­ally based edi­to­r­ial team and a large group of writ­ers so it’s really great. My career is really tak­ing off too so I guess it’s affect­ing every­thing pos­i­tively. But yes, the major art mag­a­zine part was not antic­i­pated at the start.

Curbs and Stoops: How and when did the “islands” start appear­ing in your work? What is the mean­ing behind this symbolism?

Noah Becker: It started as some­thing like islands but now it’s just a way of cen­tral­iz­ing imagery and abstract­ing forms. They are also con­tain­ers for con­tent or arma­tures for con­tent so to speak. The pre­sen­ta­tion is about lib­er­at­ing images from the rec­tan­gle or at least mak­ing a paint­ing that has the free­dom to be more than just a depic­tion of some­thing using tra­di­tional means. It’s also a way of using the influ­ence of old paint­ings or art his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ences in a con­tem­po­rary context.

Curbs and Stoops: The “islands” are cre­ated to rep­re­sent a cos­mos or planet upon which you cre­ate a nar­ra­tive land­scape. From where do you pull your narratives?

Noah Becker: They are abstrac­tions of forms set in a way to inter­act with the rec­tan­gle with this kind of figure/​ground rela­tion­ship. I think of them as almost a kind of sculp­tural thing but not really. Also abstrac­tions of ideas or the clar­i­fi­ca­tion of abstract con­cepts can be inves­ti­gated. You might think wow this is bor­ing shit but actu­ally it’s a very com­plex dis­cus­sion for the painter to con­sider. I’m also inter­ested in paint­ing the fig­ure which can cre­ate the­matic chal­lenges. Also we will get bet­ter search results for this arti­cle if I just keep say­ing words like Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, John Lennon, the Rolling Stones, Lady Gaga, Justin Beiber and Banksy. The art world is sadly a lot of sound bites now, you see it in online mag­a­zines a lot. Every online arti­cle has the word Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst in it because they think it will boost web stats, it’s sad. But yes in actual fact his­tory is impor­tant but it should not con­trol an artist. Many artists do not work off the track of mod­ernism either. So this varies depend­ing on the per­son and the sit­u­a­tion I sup­pose. If you are just a necrophil­iac and wor­ship the dead then what’s the point? Some­one also said “Art is made by the insane for the rich.” I’m not insane or rich and I’m involved in art, so go figure.

Curbs and Stoops: Could you tell us a lit­tle bit about your process? Where do your ideas stem? How do you get them from idea to final product?

Noah Becker:
The fol­low­ing are 10 recent dia­logues I have in my head:
1. It’s not a Banksy kind of idea, a one liner or some­thing.
2. God I really like Rob Zom­bie bet­ter than Slayer but don’t lis­ten to those bands any­way.
3. I have not eaten gummy bears recently, or gummy worms.
4. Gilbert and George.
5. Is George Condo a good artist or not?
6. Char­lie Parker.
7. Basquiat.
8. the Tate Gallery
9. One’s con­cep­tion of the world.
10. Is a tra­di­tional palette impor­tant, with all the col­ors orga­nized from warm to cool? All the great painters had messy dis­or­ga­nized palettes, espe­cially Van Gogh and Picasso.

I’m addicted to con­stantly mak­ing chal­leng­ing paint­ings and writ­ings, pub­lish­ing writ­ing and learn­ing dif­fi­cult jazz tunes on my alto sax or writ­ing music. I might put on a Kings of Leon album and paint all night (actu­ally I don’t lis­ten to that band at all). I’m not out to be like any­one but myself which sim­pli­fies mat­ters really. Some­one like Justin Bieber is more famous than Leonardo DaVinci but maybe that Tom Hanks movie makes my the­ory false. Really we live in a cul­ture of slid­ing val­ues and pop cul­tural ref­er­ences and infor­ma­tion over­load, I like the term “Intel­lec­tual Pol­lu­tion.” I like it to be an ongo­ing search is what I am get­ting at here and a pio­neer­ing effort. I look at a lot of art from the present and the future draw­ing ideas from the his­tory of art and my life as it hap­pens every­day. Any­one can be king in the art world and it is within this atmos­phere that emper­ors are dethroned and heroes emerge. But some­times things change for the wrong rea­sons. My pub­lish­ing White­hot Mag­a­zine is infor­ma­tive in terms of see­ing every­thing that is hap­pen­ing and being in touch with all the art jour­nal­ists of the world, so that influ­ences my paint­ings for sure. Chang­ing things can seem impos­si­ble but we try. When one learns that the art world has no king but many slaves then you begin to see the shape of it. It all helps inform my process in sur­pris­ing ways this mechan­i­cal knowl­edge of how things work. I’m get­ting to a point where I’m feel­ing my own influ­ence more and more in terms of the actual art his­tory we are a part of. Every­thing I do is part of my process basi­cally, inter­est­ing Ideas seem to find me.

Curbs and Stoops: Your newest work included self por­traits. What is the sig­nif­i­cance in adding imagery of your­self into your paint­ings at this time?

Noah Becker: I’m into artists like Cindy Sher­man and Velasquez. So hav­ing an inter­est in artists from dif­fer­ent eras brings for­ward ideas relat­ing to their work. The ideas become prob­lem­atic in terms of how some­thing could be made or how the influ­ence can rest in one’s own process. Influ­ences can be bad and just dis­tract an artist from what they do. In this case I just wanted to paint myself there was no real deep meaning.

Curbs and Stoops: You play jazz sax­o­phone and are a tal­ented writer, so you are obvi­ously a very cre­ative per­son. What other cre­ative prac­tices influ­ence your work?

Noah Becker: Funny you should ask this. I just fin­ished my first fea­ture film with a young Cana­dian direc­tor named Steven Lane. We are in the process of fin­ish­ing that up as we speak.

Curbs and Stoops: What does the future hold for you?

Noah Becker: As you are aware I am show­ing a new paint­ing (a por­trait paint­ing) in a group show in Chelsea NYC in Sept. There is an open­ing in LA soon at Tor­rance Art Museum curated by Adela Lei­bowitz fea­tur­ing one of my paint­ings in a cool group show. I wrote the cat­a­log essay along with Dan Cameron for the Saratoga Col­lec­tion fea­tur­ing Louisiana based artists. I’m always look­ing for new venues to show my work or to write about art. I’m also play­ing the sax a lot writ­ing new music and prac­tic­ing the dif­fi­cult tunes. Once I fin­ish the new nude paint­ings I will orga­nize an exhi­bi­tion with a dealer or museum. I’m also com­ing to New York to launch the White­hot Magazine/​Curbs and Stoops Artist Res­i­dency Pro­gram. The fea­ture film is fin­ished and will be com­ing out in major film fes­ti­vals (more on that soon). So things are look­ing up!