Artist Walton Ford on Creativity | Louisiana Channel

“It’s a trendy thing to talk about, but….”
Hear great American painter Walton Ford reflect ambivalently upon one of the big buzzwords of our time, namely creativity.
“We create a lot of waste, you know. And we create a lot of stuff which we don’t need. We create a lot of really bad designs when we started out with good ones.”
“It’s a neutral word. Like in the Buddhist tradition they talk about fire. Your fire cooks your food, but it also burns your house down. Fire doesn’t have any quality of good or bad.”
Walton Ford was born in 1960 and grew up in the Hudson Valley, New York. He received a BA from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. He lives and works in New York City and Berkshire County, Massachusetts.
Walton Ford’s monumental watercolor paintings and editioned prints expand upon the visual language and narrative scope of traditional natural history painting, mediating the often violent and bizarre moments at the intersection of human culture and the natural world. Drawing from an extensive research practice that references scientific illustrations, field studies, fables, and myths, he develops stories about animals as they exist in the human imagination. Although human figures rarely appear in his paintings, their presence and effect are always implied.
Ford’s mid-career survey, Tigers of Wrath, opened at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, in 2006 and travelled within the US through 2008. Ford’s first institutional exhibition in Europe opened at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof-Museum für Gegenwart in 2010 and travelled to the Albertina in Vienna and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, through 2011. In 2015-16, the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris staged a solo exhibition of works by Ford, which was integrated into the museum’s collection of artwork and historical objects related to hunting, nature, and taxidermy.
Taschen has published four editions of Ford's monograph, Pancha Tantra. His work is included in several private and public collections, including the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Walton Ford was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in June 2023. The conversations took place in Walton Ford’s studio in New York City and Berkshire County, Massachusetts.
Camera: Sean Hanley
Edited by: Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan
Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2023
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[@doramc3155]

We've created a lot of crap! Agree 100%

[@user-yk1cw8im4h]

I like how the video editor cuts his rambling off abruptly at the end

[@dortebuttenschn3764]

This is fun! The little boy from The Emperor's New Clothes. Thank you.

[@EdCarolipio]

Agree with the premise but the modern key fob is a terrible example. For intelligently designed cars, there's a metal key in the key fob, and you can start your car with a dead key fob battery. (Our 2010 BMW and 2019 Subaru both have these features.) The design integrates two items that used to come separately - the metal key and the remote - into one unit.

[@Islandmidfielder]

Geez i love this guys mind. I think exactly like that. Complexity and overly manufactured things have ruined society and yet everyone wants to validate themselves with more creative complexity. If a painting of a rainbow does not feature 136 bands of color, it’s not really significant. Oh please, give me the metal key like he said.

[@mrcalvinwalker1]

I didn’t mind this video but….he’s not talking about creativity so much as ranting about bad design. Change the video title? 😅

[@Islandmidfielder]

Splitting hairs? Your take on it is exactly what he’s trying to caution us about. Try and be introspective and not literal.

[@AgentFascinateur]

The word has been usurped. It has. Usually it's an absurd abstraction like "content creator".

[@mamumonkan]

Louisiana is content creation !?!

[@sajiste]

I love this channel, fuck

[@Acquavallo]

3min of complaining

[@bigjohndavid1]

Disagreeable know-all.

[@lilnutty6821]

Why don't you like him?

[@mamumonkan]

because he is not as original as he claims/seems to be ( true artists are judged by their development - this artist just propagates his rather contrived style over and over and over again @@lilnutty6821

[@esmepoms]

I’m guessing he never had to have his starter replaced in the middle of a parking lot.

[@swirlinember1974]

Totally agree about the fob

[@beckywebb1916]

True!

[@ed_leonardi]

100% right

[@annazabar]

How true.

[@Tenensanabandi]

I agree, we should strive to simplify as artists or even designers.

[@thirdrockjul2224]

👍

[@gregmosch]

FACTS!!!

[@revrevreviews]

I was listening to the bit about old-fashioned keys vs "fobs" and my mind daydreamed and imagined Walton was talking about old-fashioned metal hard hats vs his hat. Then I went back and rewatched it and swapped it all in my head. I enjoyed it. Try it for yourself. Actually, maybe I will make an edit of it.