I’ve never really trusted autobiographies written by creative figures. The autobiography always seemed too much like a history, aspiring to completeness, like a grand tomb where lesser mortals can come to pay their respects and leave flowers. Not a place to appreciate afresh. Memoirs are even worse. The pretense of objectivity and proportion is absolutely thrown to the wind. Reading a memoir is to be subject to a barrage of anecdotes, boasts and self-congratulation — the agonizing post-prandial ramblings of an ego-maniac, without even an opportunity to put a question or ask for clarification.
That was why I decided that the account of my life as an artist in London would be a novel. I would craft the story like a grand narrative painting — something a Victorian academician would construct, teeming with colourful characters and telling encounters, exposing the coming of age of a flawed ingenu. The Naked Spur was written to be an outlet for my frustration. I was disappointed by my friends for letting me down, art school for filling my head with lies, gallerists for supporting pretentious inanity and most of all myself, for not seeing my own failings. I was also angry with London for spurning my rightful (and righteous) advances.
I had studied fine art at Goldsmiths College in the 1990s — alma mater of Damien Hirst and many of the Young British Artists — and was on the fast track to the Saatchi Collection and international fame. Or so I thought. I was actually heading down an abrupt cul du sac. As the extract of the novel below shows, whatever commitment, tenacity and ability I had, I had totally failed to master the art of cultivating dealers and collectors. I walked unannounced into galleries with a clutch of 35mm slides and a photocopied CV, which I thrust into the hands of startled gallerists, who were aghast at my gaucheness. I acted like an undergraduate painter at Stoke Poly, come to flog his wares in the capital. Michael Craig Martin, doyen of the Cool Britannia artists of 1997, had never taught me that.
The Naked Spur is 70 per cent factually accurate and 20 per cent exaggerated, compressed or reordered
If I had been paying attention to Craig Martin and been cannier, I would have paved my way by spending time at private views and artist parties. Instead, I was reading Charles Bukowski, listening to Dubstep and painting uncompromising canvases of nudes. I “had no game” because (naturally) I took everything too seriously. Any such artist who considered his art to be above contamination by commerce was going to make a mighty poor job of selling himself and his vision to art dealers, the gatekeepers of the pre-internet art world. “The Naked Spur” was the name of a project I cooked up with a friend in order to get commissions as the Scarlet Pimpernel of the 2003 London art scene. I would be an anonymous artist painting risqué pictures of pop starlets, hip actors and uber-cool socialites. The art would become a cult sensation among Hoxton hipsters. I could remain detached from the conventional art world yet earn money. That was the plan.
Here is an extract of The Naked Spur, showing the protagonist working his inimitable blend of arrogance, abruptness and abjection at a Clerkenwell gallery in 2001:
When the traffic lights changed to red, A. crossed Holborn under the dragon of the Corporation of London. He turned left at Hatton Garden.
It was noon. Newspaper sellers were at their pitches. Figures carrying paper bags and cardboard cups filled the pavements. Outside a sandwich shop, a line of people waited. Where a large puddle had formed, traffic splashed the pavement. A couple of young women paused at the limit of the splash zone, watching the oncoming traffic.
A. crossed the railway bridge on Clerkenwell Road and halted at a doorway. There were brass nameplates at the entrance.
- TLD Accountants
- Nicole Giapetti Art Projects
- Thamesplus+ Recruitment Ltd (staff only)
- Thamesplus+ Recruitment Ltd
A man in a white raincoat cycled by, coat tails flapping behind. A. entered the building and climbed the stairs.
The gallery had white walls. Its floorboards were painted with grey vinyl gloss. Ceiling-mounted halogen lamps warmed the room. At a desk near the entrance a woman with a Roman nose and gold jewellery was looking at a computer monitor.
A. looked at photographs displayed in the gallery. They were not framed. They were attached to the walls by double-sided tape. The photographs were of puddles, balls of chewing gum and screws lying on work surfaces. A. almost stepped on a length of thread which was fixed to the ceiling by a drawing pin. A label on the nearby wall gave the title of the work.
The woman looked at A. then returned to her computer.
After circling the room again, A. approached the desk. The woman said “Hello”. From his bag, A. withdrew a plastic sheet holding 35mm mounted slides.
“Oh, you’re an artist.”
“Yes,” said A. unfolding a photocopied page.
“Let me see.”
“You don’t have to look at them now. I have a self-addressed envelope here.”
“No. I can tell you now.”
She glanced at the page and held up the sheet of slides to the light. A. went to stand facing a photograph.
She sighed.
“They’re a little … obvious.”
A. said nothing.
“And you don’t have a gallery.”
“No.”
She put the slides and page on the desk.
“Well, I’m sure there is a place for your art but I’m not sure there is anything I can do with it.”
A. collected the slides.
“You can keep the photocopied information.”
“No, thank you.”
A. put the page and slides into his bag.
“Good luck with the show.”
“Yes. Goodbye.” She said, looking at her screen.
A. walked west along Clerkenwell Road and bought two contact magazines on the way back to the office.
This incident is completely accurate. Obviously, the gallery director comes out looking like a snob and a purveyor of the tritest of conceptual posturing; but I did not spare A., who looks (and is) clueless about engaging with a dealer whom he wishes to promote his art. The gallery was wrong and the approach was wrong but the artist was also wrong. When I wrote The Naked Spur, I wanted readers to feel empathy and engagement with this awkward central character but also frustration at his self-sabotaging behaviour and his failure to properly use what advantages he had. I wanted to portray the characters in a scathing manner; most of all A., who is the agent of his own downfall, should be under more scrutiny than any other.
Writing the story, which covers the last few years of my life in London, I had to leave out a lot. Mentioning modest successes, family interactions, multiple friendships and mildly well received group exhibitions would have undermined the image of a failing artist becoming dangerously detached. The story is essentially true but those extra elements would have demanded explanations that would have proved tiresome and distracting, so they had to go. An autobiography would have required me to include those aspects and hobble the taut propulsion of the narrative; a memoir would have reduced the Naked Spur Project to a convoluted comic escapade, without poignancy or poetry.
Overall, The Naked Spur is 70 per cent factually accurate and 20 per cent exaggerated, compressed or reordered. That leaves 10 per cent invented. That is a small amount that didn’t actually happen but could have happened. I won’t declare which 10 per cent it is, but if I have made a decent job of the “novel” (my first) then readers won’t be able to identify which incident is fabrication and which testimony. I am not proud of the depths I reached at lowest ebb, but I see the descent as inevitable and awful. I am proud of the art I made — those intimate, touching and strange nude paintings — and pleased I made it out the other side, bringing with me this peculiar story of “The Naked Spur”, my partial self.
The Naked Spur by Alexander Adams is published by Exeter House in paperback and digital format at £15.95. Adams’s art is currently on display at S7 Gallery, Warsaw until 20 July.
