“Can 50 million people be wrong? Probably” is the strap line for one of Bret Easton Ellis and Alex Israel’s new paintings that went on show last week at Larry Gagosian’s smallest London gallery (until 18 March).
The American Psycho author says the work was conceived long before 62 million people voted for Donald Trump to become the 45th US president, but that time has “altered the meaning” and many people “now think the painting is about Trump or Brexit”. The text in fact refers to the popular television show, American Icon, Israel says.
The pair have created six new paintings in total, but only two are on show at a time. (They debuted their collaborative works in Beverly Hills last March.) The second hanging in London in two weeks' time is about “the Los Angeles landscape” and the third “has a more noir and surrealist tone to it”, Easton Ellis says.
The writer drafts the texts, while Israel sources and buys the images online. “I came up with these very dark, very violent and very sexual texts and Alex tempered them,” Easton Ellis says.
Speaking at a talk at the Royal Institution of Great Britain last week, Easton Ellis says he did not vote in the US election, but that he thinks it is “awesome” that Trump “has destroyed the GOP and levelled the Washington establishment”. He adds: “I don’t know why he’s not getting more props for that.”
Responding to Hans Ulrich Obrist, the artistic director of the Serpentine gallery, who described the situation in the US as an “unfolding nightmare”, Easton Ellis says: “Half the country is very happy about the outcome and how fast this administration is moving. It happened, he was elected. #whytrumpwon”.
The best-selling author says one of the most astounding things about the election was the bias of the media. “There didn’t seem to be any neutrality. Both candidates were demonised and mischaracterised by the press,” he says, noting that the “lens of misogyny and sexism” through which presidential candidate Hilary Clinton was viewed was “shocking”.
Of Trump’s ban on refugees and immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries entering the US, Easton Ellis says there are “far better ways to handle” the issue. “That’s what you get when you have Trump; we have never been here before.”
Patrick Bateman, the demented lead character in American Psycho, reveres Trump in the novel, but Easton Ellis says that today’s Trump is “nouveau riche” and would not appeal to “Patrick Bateman the snob”. He adds: “Twenty-five years ago Trump was part of the reality of that moment. I didn’t know it would end up being so true today.”
