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Interview by John Seed, Professor of Art History
Oct. 6, 2013, 08:33 PM
Adam Miller has taken on a very ambitious task for himself: the creation of mythological and allegorical scenes that pose human figures in invented settings. The first phase of his career after art school -- painting large scale murals often inspired by Tiepolo -- came to an end after he realized that most of his clients simply wanted decorative backdrops. In his current easel paintings Miller has demonstrated an ambitious desire to re-visit and re-examinine mythological archetypes as they cope with challenging and contemporary situations. Miller has just turned 34 and his precocious transcendence of the norms of classical realism makes him an exciting and dynamic figure worth watching.
I recently interviewed Adam Miller and asked him about his work and his values.
John Seed Interviews Adam Miller
When did you first know that you were an artist?
I always drew and was lucky to have plenty of art materials around. My parents were involved in theater and my mother also painted murals so it seemed very natural to spend time creating and drawing. At first I was convinced I would be a comic artist, illustrator and writer. I would practice perspective, anatomy, and write stories.
At around 14 I discovered Michelangelo, Titian, Raphael and later Diego Rivera and Jose Maria Sert. I saw that they were using all of the same pictorial tools and devices I was interested in from comics but in a large simple language. They did not speak about individuals as contemporary fine artists tended to do but about the classical idea of the individual in the context of society. They were more interested in elucidating character through action in relation to other people who would react. As someone interested in writing and narrative this made sense to me as a way to build a pictorial language capable of expressing more than just a mood Which is what most modern figure painting seemed to be trying to do.
Adam Miller, "Twilight in Arcadia," oil on canvas, 100 x 72 inches
Detail of "Twilight in Arcadia."
In a recent interview you spoke about being a Humanist, and about disliking categories and systems. Tell me more about those values and how they affect your artistic practice.
From Voltaire and Swift to Kurt Vonnegut and George Carlin The Humanist role has been to say I think we can do better and to oppose authoritarian ways of limiting thought. As a way to explore this process I have become very interested in the idea of the transference. The way human beings have built in powerful archetypes and will transfer those archetypes onto an external object or idea enlarging that person into a celebrity or that idea into a dogma or religion.
Currently we do this with science. It has such power and I see people constantly taking it out of its realm and boundaries and inventing pseudo science in areas where we simply are unable to seriously apply scientific method. This can lead to absurd conclusions. One of the areas I observe this happening is in art.