Kenny Schachter is an artist, writer, and lecturer based in New York whose writings and opinions on art are far-reaching, vigorously forthright, and consistently indiscrete. Never far from his line of thought are the lessons he derives from his heroes, and among that group formed chiefly of artists is Paul Thek.
As a passionately vocal early collector of Thek’s work, Schachter also commits his appreciation through curating and writing, including advising on the artist’s retrospectives at the Reina Sofia and the Whitney Museum, as well as contributing to the publication Paul Thek: Artist’s Artist (MIT Press, 2009).
This week Paul Thek: Seized by Joy. Paintings 1965–1988 opens at London’s Thomas Dane Gallery, which Schachter has co-curated alongside fashion designer Jonathan Anderson. Michael Polsinelli spoke with Schachter about how Thek’s work not only occupies his intellectual ruminations on art, but has seemingly seeped into every fibre and perspective of his life.
Kenny Schachter. Courtesy Kenny Schachter. Photo: Andrea Klainguti.
Paul Thek, Untitled (Latin America) (1984). Oil on canvas. 61 x 91.5 cm. © Estate of Paul Thek. Courtesy Pace Gallery, Galerie Buchholz, Mai 36 Galerie, and Watermill Center. Photo: Ben Westoby.
MP: Tell me about your first encounter with Thek’s work?
KS: I’d seen his work in books but in the mid-90s I saw the most extraordinary retrospective called Paul Thek – The Wonderful World That Almost Was, which began at the Witte de With in Rotterdam and toured Europe.
I lost my mum very early in life to a brain tumour. As a child, over the course of a year, I watched this degenerative physical disease take hold of her body and it was devastating. Then, to see Thek’s Technological Reliquaries sculptures—commonly known as meat pieces, which irked him no end—in all their goriness on an intimate scale, encapsulated the fragility of life in a way that made me mortified and covetous simultaneously. Thoughts, emotions, and insights co-existed on the same plane in a way I’d never seen before.
Paul Thek, Birthday Cake (c. 1964). Beeswax, hair, candles, stainless steel, plexi. 48.2 x 62.2 x 62.2 cm. Exhibition view: The Wonderful World That Almost Was, Witte de With, Rotterdam (3 June–8 October 1995). Courtesy Kunstinstituut Melly. Photo: Bob Goedewaagen.
Paul Thek, Fish Man in Excelsis (1970–1971). Exhibition view: The Wonderful World That Almost Was, Witte de With, Rotterdam (3 June–8 October 1995). Courtesy Kunstinstituut Melly. Photo: Bob Goedewaagen.
MP: They’re chopped limbs and oozing flesh, meticulously crafted in wax: they feel like brazen meditations on mortality. How do you understand Thek’s relationship with death?
KS: He jumped into its face, grabbed it by the lapels, and depicted it in a way that I’d never seen before or since. He spat death back out to us. The hair is standing up on my arm right now as I’m recalling that. We’re dying from the day we’re born and I think Thek grappled with that thought: when he was a healthy, good-looking, strapping guy, terribly busy his whole life, he dealt with life head on, but then it was short-lived. For me, his paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations all embody existence itself.
‘He spat death back out to us.’
MP: Religion often appears in Thek’s work, whether through iconography or ceremony. What do you think religion meant for Thek?
KS: He was very religious and his notion of god was of his own making. There was a famous Thek show in the late ’70s called Processions at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia that was steeped in religious symbolism and import. Thek was gay and he smoked whatever he smoked, so certain characteristics of his life put him outside the good stead of the church, but he took religion very seriously. I think religion for Thek was not slavishly adhering to the tenets of any church; in a way he crafted his own theology. I’ve read his journals and he said, ‘succeeding is doing’. If he stopped for ten minutes he had incredible remorse. For him, art was life and life was work, and consequently he had a work ethic you could only be in awe of.
Exhibition view: Paul Thek, The Wonderful World That Almost Was, Witte de With, Rotterdam (3 June–8 October 1995). Courtesy Kunstinstituut Melly. Photo: Bob Goedewaagen.
Exhibition view: Paul Thek, The Wonderful World That Almost Was, Witte de With, Rotterdam (3 June–8 October 1995). Courtesy Kunstinstituut Melly. Photo: Bob Goedewaagen.
MP: Thek often took very specific aim at particular artistic styles at different times in his career. For example, what he saw as the austerity of Minimalism, humourless text art, or painting trends. How do you think Thek wrestled with legacies?
KS: He was a contrarian in the extreme. He was self-wrought. Generally he wasn’t cynical, but I think that changed when he came back to New York and contracted HIV.
Even when he was taking the piss out of Donald Judd or Andy Warhol, he still managed to get Warhol to give him a Brillo box, which, by flipping it over and incorporating a meat piece, he transformed into one of the most extraordinary sculptures I’ve ever seen. This was early in his career and he was positing his own stance by going against the consensus of the art world, which was radically and dramatically smaller at the time; there weren’t the ‘isms’ that we have now dominating the consciousness of the art going public, institutions and galleries.
He came back to New York after living abroad for over 20 years, and noted that the work of the likes of Julian Schnabel, as well as Francesco Clemente, Sandro Chia, and Enzo Cucchi—known collectively as part of the Transavanguardiamovement—were all the rage. He made a series of small paintings that he viewed as bad: he made bad art because he thought that’s what the public wanted. It was cynical, but he made crap-looking art in the most beautiful and special fashion, making a comment on what later became known as neo-expressionism of the late 80s.
Peter Hujar, Paul Thek (IV) (1975). © 2025 The Peter Hujar Archive/Artists Rights Society, New York; DACS London, 2025.
MP: Tell me more about the works in the show at Thomas Dane Gallery.
KS: Some of the paintings of the sea and people on the beach were made on Fire Island, New York. Others were made when he lived in Ponza in Italy, where he was wildly smitten with the landscape, and the works translate that. He painted on the roof of his East Village building, where he had a rent-controlled apartment throughout his life, which he returned to intermittently and where he spent the end of his life. These works celebrate nature as well as the cities he lived in. They’re all done with this intense, unerring passion for verisimilitude yet abstract simultaneously.
Thek’s life covered the gamut of all languages known within art. I don’t see any chronological transformation of his skillset or his vision. You look at his work from any era and it’s not like he was some prodigy, he just worked with incredible perseverance and tenacity.
Paul Thek, Untitled (Seashore) (1987). Watercolour, pencil on paper. 47 x 60 cm. © Estate of Paul Thek. Courtesy Pace Gallery, Galerie Buchholz, Mai 36 Galerie, and Watermill Center. Photo: Ben Westoby..
MP: These later works are often whimsical and ephemeral, which contrasts with the more canonising feel of the earlier works.
KS: If I could represent the life of Thek in any element or category, it would be the newspaper works because they’re the crappiest material, non-hierarchical, non-precious. He elevated their mundane surfaces. He hated the fact that the meat pieces needed extraordinary levels of care. I don’t care how greedy, covetous, and materialistic you are, you have a shelf-life, and I think Thek’s work is a reminder of that. His art is a nurturing of his psyche and his loves, which included the world, art, religion, and his relationships.
MP: How did the curatorial collaboration with Jonathan Anderson come about?
KS: I set a Google alert for the people I love, which obviously includes Paul Thek. Around eight years ago I got a notification that a fashion designer had designed shirts influenced by Thek. I reached out to him and said ‘You and Paul Thek? And of all things you’re a fashion designer?’ A week later he was at my house and we connected. He’s curated many shows, and with Loewe he instituted a craft prize and he made Arnault fill the brand’s stores with art. I’ve never seen an integration of disparate art forms in such an interesting way, and he’s also installed shows extraordinarily creatively, so I asked him if he would install the exhibition at Thomas Dane Gallery. Some of the works in the show are from his own collection that he’s been building over the years.
Paul Thek, Untitled (South America) (1984). Acrylic on canvas board. 61 x 46 cm. © Estate of Paul Thek. Courtesy Pace Gallery, Galerie Buchholz, Mai 36 Galerie, and Watermill Center. Photo: Ben Westoby.
Paul Thek, Untitled (rooftop water tower) (1983–1984). Watercolour, chalk on paper. 46 x 61 cm. © Estate of Paul Thek. Courtesy Pace Gallery, Galerie Buchholz, Mai 36 Galerie, and Watermill Center. Photo: Ben Westoby.
MP: You’re incurably passionate about Thek’s work… Is there a piece, maybe unseen or even a page on a sketchbook, that you’ve really fallen for?
KS: I love that you’ve mentioned a sketchbook. I’ve owned one of his bound sketchbooks for more than 20 years. I’ve wrestled morally with the idea of separating the pages for so long; I’ve had permission from the estate to do so for around 15 years, but couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I decided with a conservator to finally remove some of the pages and frame them. Nine of them will be in the show. They include self-portraits, text, thoughts about work. In fact, just before we started talking I wrote to the gallery asking if I could take some works out. I want them under my arm so I can spend the rest of the summer with them.
I write stupid articles about the machinations of the art world, ‘red paintings sell the most’, ‘green paintings sell the least’ etc, and it disgusts me no end. Instead, just spend time with the immediacy of Thek’s pencil on paper from 1969 and 1970: they’ll astound.
Paul Thek, Untitled (1969–1970). Pencil on paper. 27 x 21 cm (each). © Estate of Paul Thek. Courtesy Pace Gallery, Galerie Buchholz, Mai 36 Galerie, and Watermill Center. Photo: Eva Herzog.
MP: Who do you think are the biggest beneficiaries of Thek’s life and influence?
KS: Unfortunately in the art world, success affirms success. It’s driven by affirmations. Go to biennials, contemporary art museums, art fairs and auctions, you’ll see the same artists compounded by the same artists. Thek’s boyfriend from the 1960s, Peter Hujar, is one of the most celebrated photographers of today, he died of AIDS the year before Thek, both of them penniless.
Every day of my life for the last 30 years I’ve thought about Thek’s work. Thek never capitulated even though professionally it was more bad times than not. He persevered. He inspires me every day to fight through adversity, hardship, and work. He wasn’t thinking about planning a legacy, it was all about the here and now and fulfilling what he felt to be a responsibility to do what he loved and felt born to do. Some artists are just born whole.
Paul Thek, Untitled (cityscape) (1972). Acrylic on canvas. 166 x 142 cm. © Estate of Paul Thek. Courtesy Pace Gallery, Galerie Buchholz, Mai 36 Galerie, and Watermill Center. Photo: Ben Westoby.
After initial success early in Thek’s career, sales were few and far between. He suffered in the same way as another of my heroes, Vito Acconci, because they both frequently moved from one body of work to another and that’s how you get punished in the art world. He was the opposite of most of today’s contemporary artists: when he hit on something that resonated, both institutionally and commercially, he baulked. You would think that restlessness and boundless curiosity would be the most celebrated aspect of an art life, yet those are the things that you pay a price for, and Thek paid that price.
Thek’s work defines for me what the best art can do to people. It’s restless and above all it was his life: a constant insatiable curiosity to live life in a creative fashion that he defined the parameters of. He created his own universe. —[O]
Paul Thek: Seized by Joy. Paintings 1965–1988, curated by Kenny Schachter and Jonathan Anderson, is on view at Thomas Dane Gallery in London from 29 May to 2 August 2025.