Making a scene

Damian Loeb's work is sometimes overshadowed by his lifestyle which is more it boy than artist. But who's complaining? David Bowie, Francesco Clemente and Angelica Huston all turned up to his latest show. And Plum Sykes nearly married him.

By Daisy Garnett. Portrait by Christian Witkin.

Picture this: I am in Damian Loeb's studio interviewing him when his mobile phone rings. Loeb is a 31-year-old artist who recently had a sell-out show at the renowned Mary Boone Gallery in New York, where his paintings fetch up to $55,000. In London he is represented by Jay Jopling, Damien Hirst's dealer. From this information alone you can see what kind of an artist Loeb is: a successful one; a star. While we talk about his work, we are joined in his studio by a young man who is filming our interview as part of a documentary being made about Loeb.

Also in the studio is a large television monitor depicting, via a security camera, any passing activity on the street outside. On the wall opposite us hang several small works in progress and nearby, perched on the end of a waist-high pole, stands a sliver of a computer screen. Silver tubes of coloured paint, fastidiously squeezed from their bottoms up, are laid out in neat rows next to the television. Rolled up above some canvases is a projection screen on which Loeb likes to watch his favorite movies, an activity crucial to his latest series of work. Two cats, one black and one slate grey, pace about on the studio's stripped wooden floorboards. So here it is: a Tribeca studio, one film camera rolling, two cats slinking, a journalist taking notes and one fantastically handsome artist on the telephone. 'Elton,' says Loeb, his voice becoming high and a little bit squeaky, for the caller is Elton John. 'Hi. I'm so glad you called. I'd love to show you the exhibition. '

Elton John was not at the opening of 'Public Domain,' Loeb's third show at the Boone Gallery, in March this year. But Loeb's best friend - the musician Moby - was, as were David Bowie, Iman and Anjelica Huston. So too were the painters Francesco Clemente and Anh Duong, and such fashion tastemakers as Visionaire editor Cecilia Dean, photographer Steven Meisel and fashion designer Stephen Sprouse. Then, of course, there was Loeb's dealer Mary Boone, who made her name in the Eighties representing Jean-Michel Basquiat and Julian Schnabel, and who looks just as she should, with flashing eyes and jet-black hair, and clothes that are a little bit tarty and avant-garde. Finally there was the documentary crew, filming all the glamorous art lovers who, in between talking to each other, were looking at Loeb's paintings. Although inspired by claustrophobia, sex, childhood and death, his paintings actually depict specific cinematic moments from films - including Carnal Knowledge, Boogie Nights and Rain Man - that Loeb has frozen and translated with meticulous care into paint. The sight of Michael Lynne, president of New Line Cinema, staring at Do I (Dig That Girl) - a 10 ft-long, $55,000 painting of some poolside flirting: an image lifted from Boogie Nights, a New Line film - did not even cause a stir among the assembled partygoers.

Ironically, for an artist who is accused of generating more buzz than is considered good for him, the most memorable thing about Loeb's show wasn't its opening, but its art. However you rate Loeb's paintings, there is no doubt that when you see them hanging together they are undeniably affecting and startlingly painterly. Not surprisingly the six large paintings from 'Public Domain' and 10 smaller works were sold long before the show had even opened. There is a lengthy waiting-list for Loeb's work, and buyers are selected on the basis of their current collections and whether those collections might at some later stage find their way into a public gallery or museum.

And yet, when I bump into Jay Jopling at a Chelsea party and tell him that I am writing about one of his boys, he says, 'I hope you are writing about Damian's work, about him as an artist.' As opposed to what, I want to say: Damian Loeb, the missing link? But I know that Jopling means as opposed to Damian Loeb, the media-savvy social animal and local celebrity. It was only a year ago, after all, that Michael Kimmelman, an art critic from the New York Times, concluded a damning review of Loeb's work with this thought: 'Mr. Loeb is just playing a role. Every circus needs a clown.' This year Kimmelman underlined his point by ignoring 'Public Domain' altogether.

Meanwhile, other parts of his newspaper are happy to feature Loeb. He has appeared in The New York Times's 'Day In The Life Of' and 'Night Out With' columns, and been described as 'the art world's current downtown dude.' His party-going is regularly noted on the gossip pages of the New York Post and he has been seen at Hugh Hefner's Playboy mansion in California. Now single, until very recently Loeb was engaged to the English journalist, American Vogue contributing editor and New York girl about town, Plum Sykes. Together they formed one of Manhattan's hippest couples. Anna Wintour, American Vogue's editor-in-chief, threw an engagement party for them: Bowie and Iman delayed their holiday for day so that they could be there to celebrate. But in July, after almost a year together, Loeb and Sykes decided to go their separate ways.

As you might imagine, it seems to many that Loeb is just too much of a good thing. 'My lifestyle is taken to task by those who haven't the ability to see beyond what an artist does in his free time, which in my case is very limited,' says Loeb about the chagrin he encounters. 'The irony, says Moby, 'is that Damian is the least debauched of any artist that I know.' And he is right. Loeb does frequently have nights out on the tiles, and he does smoke cigarettes, but he is not a big drinker, nor a drug user, and he doesn't appear to misbehave. He paints every day and often long into the night, lives in his studio, and loves nothing more than rigging up a new home entertainment centre or a complicated computer system. He is both personable, funny and charming, yet understated and quiet; he doesn't show off and never holds court. Brought up in a small Connecticut town, the eldest son of parents who divorced, he is a high school drop-out. When he was dating Sykes, many thought an Old Etonian or a smart City boy would make a more likely swain for an Oxford-educated Brit girl in Manhattan.

Is Loeb glamorous, I ask Sykes. 'God no,' she says. 'Everyone says it must be glamorous to be a successful artist but you know what, it's awful. The pressure on an artist who has had some success is enormous. And they suffer so much because of all the sacrifices they have to make.' What sacrifices? 'Oh, Damian would sacrifice his happiness for his work, or, if it was destroying his work, he'd sacrifice his relationship. I mean, all he wants to do is paint.' She continues without rancour. 'It always comes first. But at least he's honest about it. On the other hand, meeting him totally changed my life. He affected the way I see things enormously. He said to me, go after your dream, because if you don't now, you'll never do it. He knows, because he's already done it. '

LOEB'S DREAM wasn't a straight line from fantasy to reality. The story that he and Moby packed up a U-Haul when they were still teenagers and left small-town Connecticut to head for New York City in search of fame and fortune is not exactly apocryphal. There was indeed a flight. But it wasn't as romantic a journey as it might sound. 'There was a period of many years when Damian spent the vast majority of his time just being depressed, sitting around watching TV and eating ice cream,' remembers Moby. 'And the thing that was exasperating for me was that I knew that he had this remarkable mind. When he applies himself he can apply this really remarkable genius to whatever he is doing. Once he started doing that he went from doing half-assed work to producing great work and then, suddenly, in 1996 he was signed to his first dealer, Jeffrey Deitch .'

Not bad for someone who, though encouraged to paint from an early age (his mother gave up painting herself when she had children), never had much confidence in his abilities. 'I never felt I was very good,' says Loeb about his decision to become an artist, 'only that given my meagre talents I should focus on the one I seemed to have an aptitude for.'

In 1989 Loeb arrived in New York and rented an apartment with Moby. He painted a bit, got depressed a lot, studied a good deal (looking at everything from old masters to graffiti and local theatre), and did various odd jobs for money: graphic design, video editing, and a stint as an artist's assistant. He hung out with clubkids, musicians and DJs rather than any specific art crowd. More importantly, he became a father, a profound event that inspired many of the feelings that inform his work.

As the Nineties progressed, Loeb painted more, sat around less, and at the end of 1996 he showed his work for the first time at the White Columns gallery. By this time he had met Cecily Brown - they were both young figurative painters, and they went to the same coffee spot - who brought her then dealer, Deitch, to see Loeb's work. He signed Loeb, and in a stroke of inspired public relations, secured the young artist the June 1998 cover of Flash Art, an influential American art magazine. Suddenly Loeb, a painter whom no one in the art world had even heard of, no artist had ever taught, no critic had met (Loeb rarely goes to openings) was causing an awful lot of buzz. And for a moment in Loeb's career that's all there was - buzz.

The problem was that, unlike Damian Loeb's recent works, which look to the movies for their content, his earlier paintings, such as 1998's Sunlight Mildness (part of which appeared on the Flash Art cover), were created from images he had found - in art, fashion and advertising - and copied. The foreground of Sunlight Mildness features four teenagers cruising in a convertible car, taken from a photograph by Lauren Greenfield, against which Loeb juxtaposed the painted image of a white policeman shooting a group of black people.

'The matter is simple for me,' says Loeb. 'The images I saw were in front of everybody and so I commented on them.' However, Greenfield considered the convertible image hers and sued Loeb for copyright. He has since settled with her out of court. In addition, the lawsuit meant that Jeffrey Deitch, after falling in love with his new protege's work, couldn't show it to the rest of the world.

Cue Mary Boone, who was thrilled to take on the young artist, and the controversy and the lawsuit which accompanied him. 'For me,' she says happily, 'taking risks only enhances an artist.' To prove it, 'Public Domain' (hardly an accidental title), is the third Loeb show that Boone has mounted in three years. AIl of them have been talked about, written about and photographed. It is just that none was properly reviewed. 'The reason the critics loathe Damian,' Moby explains. 'is because he has become successful without them. Collectors love him because he is making beautiful, archival work, but the critics only care about theory.'

Deep South, 1999

Do you mind, I ask Loeb, 'I think the show was taken seriously by the people who matter,' he says. 'It is unfortunate that a few art critics were so vitriolic about my lifestyle there was little room in their articles to discuss my work. Now I think they feel they can't say anything to put their earlier views in jeopardy. Either that or I really suck.'

Damian Loeb knows that he doesn't suck. The film director Mike Nichols recently spent $55,000 on Loeb's painting Man-Eater, Ballbuster, Castrator, which uses a scene from his film Carnal Knowledge. Michael Lynne bought the Boogie Nights painting. Mike Ovitz, founder of AMG (Artist's Management Group), and film director Barry Levinson also splurged. Tom Ford is a fan. There is a long list.

On the other hand, Kimmelman is not Loeb's only detractor. More than one artist I spoke to expressed concern that Loeb had prioritized his career over his art - distinction less worrisome for Loeb perhaps, who so far has managed a successful career as an artist. But many of them had a point: Loeb is a young painter who has received an extraordinary amount of exposure while he is still in his formative years.

'Damian is very down to earth,' says Mary Boone, who has a reputation for not being afraid of her artists' notoriety. 'I have no doubt that he can handle the attention,' she adds, and her confidence seems well-founded. So far it seems nothing can hinder Loeb's rise. He is about to start work on a series of celebrity portraits that will be shown in Los Angeles next year. Natalie Portman, Bowie, Moby and Ben Stiller have all sat for Loeb, who, rather than prop up his easel in front of his subjects, will paint their likeness from the photographs he has taken. He will also continue to work on the movie series he began with 'Public Domain.'

Finally, his response to praise, doubts, criticism, hype and attack is simple - simple and yet complicated, of course. It is to paint. A few days after our interview I receive an e-mail from him: 'I have never been so afraid of disappearing into self-created obscurity (one predicted by a majority of the art intelligentsia after each of my previous shows),' he says, 'than I was when I was finishing my last two paintings. This was despite the fact that Mary had already sold the entire show to collectors I see as heroes. I am still not sure how to assimilate such a response, which is probably for the better since I have to create a lot more work immediately.'

And yet, for all his reassuring words, part of me wishes I could test Loeb. I know that he spends his days in the thoughtful labour of applying paint to canvas, but still I want to see what would happen if he was shut up in a room with a paintbrush, a canvas and a bowl of apples. Paint that, I want to say.