Michael Balderi was born on May 1, 1975 in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. At the age of six, he moved with his family to the suburbs of Denver, Colorado, where he lived until moving to Manhattan to attend New York University in 1993. He spent his first year at the university contemplating a major in World Literature or Poetry, but ultimately opted off the literary track entirely and enrolled in the school's internationally renowned film program. Although his trials with what he calls "... a disappointing majority of the teachers' self-important interest in devising a mini-studio system for immature and even debatable talent" overturned his hopes of a film making career, Balderi soon rediscovered an opening through which he "...could show simple things like alfresco lunches, bicycle riding, international love interests or cleaning up the apartment, without having to deal with other people...without a small crew" in drawing and collage. He initially took up the latter mode during his teenage years after seeing the Museum of Modern Art's comprehensive 1992-93 Matisse Retrospective on a visit to New York. Upon graduation from NYU, he accepted a job as manager of a Soho bakery, traveled to Rio De Janeiro, Brazil for a brief vacation, then abandoned his job and the States, departing for Italy, where he served as an apprentice to his great uncle, the mosaicist Vittorio Venturelli. Seven months later he returned to his apartment in Brooklyn, New York where he currently works and resides.
Balderi cites R.B. Kitaj, David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin, Elizabeth Murray, Terry Winters, Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossof, Lucian Freud, Leon Golub, Gary Panter, Avigdor Arikha, Antoni Tapies and Susan Rothenberg as the living painters he most reveres; the first four on this list sustain a presiding influence over his work. At present, he unevenly divides his time between a children's book project, computer generated essays with drawings, collage/paintings on canvas or cardboard, reading Hunter S. Thompson's The Great Shark Hunt, listening to music (of late, Phil Spector's 'sixties "wall of sound" productions and The Beatles) and spending time with family and friends.
On the vital importance of the aforementioned people in his life, Balderi continues at length, saying, "...that's actually the strongest influence, even though my penchant for the recluse's way of life--for long walks and lonely rooms, for occasionally screening my calls, you know, or sometimes being sort of irritable--might suggest the contrary. Without my family and the handful of friends I spend my time with or telephone, I wouldn't really have the slightest idea what to draw, not just because they usually serve as the subjects and inspiration for my pictures, but more significantly because I always, always approach a subject with them in mind as an audience. A giant, recent step for me was when I simply realized that--you know, whenever I was committing something to the canvas or computer screen or sketch book--that ultimately, the underlying drive came out of a desire to say, with a touch of brio, literacy and distance (really a mixture of the three to avoid corniness or cuteness) is 'look, you guys are always with me, important in my life, even though I'm far too sensitive to admit or show it in real life, where it truly matters.'"
Beyond that, I found myself saying stuff like, "this is what's up with me or this guy or girl I know, or my mom and dad.' You see, it's everyday, intimate subject matter that deeply interests me, so, in the grand scheme of things, this work's never going to be wildly dramatic; it won't necessarily even be accessible! Besides, I certainly never think about being formally innovative, or socio-political or anything. But I should qualify that last remark concerning formalism by saying that if I use a schematic drawing or what my sister, the textile major, would call a repeat pattern, its use is dictated to me my feeling for or knowledge of the subject, not out of a need to be intellectual, allusive or fancy about making art. Now, that's obviously not an original idea. So, at the same time, I set great store by the tradition of art historical continuity and the painfully long and difficult process of discovering what you like, then studying it, absorbing it and messing around with it--saying for example, 'I'm absolutely humbled by fantastic artists like Diebenkorn, Matisse, Picasso, Ingres (forgive my pronunciation) etc, etc. Those are the only things I think about doing or not doing when I work..."
It's funny because at the moment I'm quite incapable of handling any real intimacy in my personal life--nonetheless, for a million different reasons, it seems natural that I aim for it [intimacy] in my pictures. But I think that contradiction is where the disequilibrium, the waywardness, even the stylishness and discursiveness of my work probably come from. I admit these aren't such very complex or grandiose ideas to attempt to get across, and talking about them now, they strike me as totally hair brained and overly self-aware, but. it's like what Willem DeKooning repeatedly said, '...painters don't have particularly bright ideas' anyway. Then he really summed it up by saying, 'they're just talented at painting pictures, I guess.' So I can only hope, and pretty ridiculously at that, that, at the very least, the people I think and care about meet me halfway and pull some degree of pleasure from the pictures."
These days, especially among people my age, this attitude may not be very popular, or dazzling or marketable or whatever, but my work is infinitely the poorer when I stray too far afield, I mean, get too abstract, or more indefensibly, hip--if and when I feel a picture does aspire to those types of conditions I send it straight into the wastepaper basket or the little trash can on the Mac. I always go back to the movie director Eric Rohmer, who, when asked about what the interviewer termed 'the sad endings of his films', simply explained, 'it's not exactly happy, but that's what the films are all about.' So, anyway, sorry I'm not so terribly concise when it comes to discussing that weird relationship between people I love and these dumb little pictures!"
Close Window