Fur & Toys

Art Fart & Mark Hadjipateras

I was on the subway, as you can see below, & I became curious, as a puppet is wont to do — who made these colorful little wind-up robot creatures that seem to be living so carefree on the walls of the 28th street station? Even as you emerge onto Broadway into the chi-chi neighborhood of Nomad, as they’re calling it these days, the little characters seem to be following you up the stairs & onto the street like lost ducklings looking for their mother. You turn around & realize, nay, they have returned to their mothership: they are one with the MTA, & their home planet is New York City.

I couldn’t get a word out of the creatures themselves — they’re embedded into the walls, after all — so, as an investigative art journalist with decent typing skillzSokjasdof, I sent off an email to their originator: Mark Hadjipateras (not a typo, just a long Greek name), & wouldn’t you know it, our man was in town for a brief tick & invited me over to his fabulous loft in downtown New York. It was one of those apartments you’d need a time machine to rent nowadays, & it was full of the artist’s silly-meets-graceful drawings of forms that are almost alive — little alien cyborgs on the cusp of sentience, spheres & cones & cubes that combine to make characters with distinctly curious personalities, much like those on the walls of the subway that led me to this very apartment. 

This was a lifetime of work I was looking at, with dips & turns into various isms: Minimalism, Surrealism, Existentialism. Together they combine to make their own kind of ism, as yet unnamed, a frisky, buoyant collaboration between author & character: indeed, it felt like a story was being told, one where the characters take hold of the narrative & run away with it, writing their own little poetic odyssey with breezy twirls into isms galore. Maybe this is just how the creative process works. Maybe it’s not uncommon for the work to take on a life of its own….like a puppet come to life? Maybe we’ll call it Humphreyism! Mark Hadjipateras is certainly a whimsician with a serious streak, & as luck would have it, he has a monograph coming out this month. The timing is uncanny!

And so: the artist sat down with Yours Truly to discuss the subway commission, the monograph, &, essentially, his life’s work. Don’t tell Mark, but I took a teeny lick of one of his pieces: the flavor, according to this hungry art monster, was sweet, bold, round, & talkative. Yum!

—The Art Fart

Tell me about your work.

Well I’ve been working for 45, 50 years now. Actually a book came out about a month & a half ago. It was published by a publisher in Greece called Melissa, they’re one of the oldest publishers, they publish primarily art books, design, architecture. It’s being distributed here by Abrams. It’s being released March 18th. 

Oh so it’s hot news!

I just met with them yesterday. I mention the book because it starts at some point in the 70s, it’s 304 pages, & it covers mid-70s to 2024. Obviously it’s not everything, but it gives a good idea of my work, which has been sculpture & painting mostly, photography too, costumes — but to a large extent sculpture, installations & paintings. I could tell you about the mosaic series, that came about in 2000, it was an open call by the MTA Arts for Transit Program, & I put in a proposal, it was actually four stations on the Broadway line, the N/R/W line, 28th, 23rd, 8th & Prince. They were going to renovate & install the art, they stipulated that it had to be mosaics, because firstly, it was in line with what was there before but also because it’s very durable. At the same time they clearly said that they didn’t require the applicant to have previous experience in mosaic, but whatever is proposed, it just has to be realized in mosaic. 

From fabrication to installation it took about two years. My project manager was Kendal Henry, who’s actually now the Assistant Commissioner of Public Art in the city in the Department of Cultural Affairs. He’s an artist himself, he was a fantastic project manager, he basically didn’t in any way limit me, he said at one point, “If anything, feel even freer — you can go beyond the walls.” And I did, there’s a figure, balls come out of his hat, they kind of disappear into the edge of the wall, then further down they seem to be dropping down, not literally. But I tried to go beyond the walls.

Tell me about these figures.

There’s two main things happening — because my studio for many years, when I had my second child, & I had to move out my studio from here because there was no longer enough room for it, I started renting a space on 27th between 6th & 7th, very close to FIT. So when they said it was these four stations that they were looking for art for, you could choose which was the station of your preference, you weren’t guaranteed it was what you would get, but I did say 28th street because I knew the neighborhood quite well, & I was the only one who got the station they asked for. It’s a block away from FIT, also it was a toy district in the past — I looked at the history, you see. There was also a fur district nearby.

Fur & toys?

Yeah. Not on the same block, but yeah. And it’s the flower district, too wholesale plants & flowers — & furthermore it had some printing presses as well. So a lot of my imaginary, hybrid creatures, quasi-anthropomorphic creatures, are like flower-costumed figures. Flowered — making a reference to the flower district, & costume, as in theatrics, a reference to the Fashion Institute of Technology. I literally looked at flowers, & based on the colors & the design of flowers, designed my imaginary creatures, imaginary people.

I almost think of them as little houses, but they’re people. They seem like little houses with arms & legs.

(Retrieves book, flips to the subway mosaics)

Now this is the Bean family, Mr. & Mrs. Bean & Baby Bean — again, making a reference to the plant world, however they also seem almost as if they’re costumes. This guy, he’s sort of like Hermes, the god, a little bit of a theatrical persona but also like a flower or plant. This is Jumpy. This is House Dog. This is Lancelot — & he’s kind of falling over but leaving his shadow on the wall. We were talking about the fur district, the furriers were mostly Greeks from Kastoria, in the north of Greece, there’s a lake there, the Lake of Kastoria, there’s a boat that’s indigenous to that area, to that lake, you still see it today, but it’s the same design as it was 2000 years ago it’s called a pava boat — so what I have here is a pava boat with people in Greek garb — now this is something that’s just bizarre to someone that sees it, or maybe a little amusing, but to the Kastorians that live in the area, I’m winking at them because they’ll recognize the reference.

The printing press, that’s actually based on a big printing press that was on 29th street, I visited different places, you know. My mother thought this one was in bad taste, but it’s kind of a Dumbo elephant but also a rat, they’re part of the inhabitants of the subway so it’s kind of funny. Now with other things, they’re kind of just the things I painted anyway. There are comic references, pop culture. Some of them are like robots. There are 37 glass mosaics spread out between the northbound platform & the southbound platform & the exits. There’s also references to water hydrants & water towers, that are anthropomorphized, there are these water towers kind of looking out, which were just part of New York. 

And at the same time they’re a bit toylike, a bit robot-like. Obviously the MTA liked it, there were like 600 applicants, & I understand they liked the fact that I did make an effort to reference the neighborhood, which is why they gave me that station that I asked for. I wanted it to make sense to anyone riding the subway, but also to the residents maybe a little more. But also I wanted — not all my work, it’s not depressing, it’s not always happy work, sometimes there are different layers to it, sometimes the work is more light & has a sense of satire or humor, some of them are more serious. But for the subway I wanted to hopefully bring a smile to people’s faces, I wanted to put them in a good disposition — because they’re going to work, they’re coming from work, for the most part. The MTA Arts for Transit in 2002 they were awarded Best Public Work by New York Municipal Arts Society. So I suppose I share that — my station along with the three stations that happened in that year were awarded.

You’ve been in this apartment that long?

In this apartment? When I came to New York in 1982, I lived on 13th street for five years, next to the quad, I rented a loft there. I came from London, I was born & raised in London, but of Greek heritage, my parents were Greek, but because of work they lived in England. After high school I did art studies, it was over seven years because I felt pressure from my family but also from myself as well to be doing something where I could earn money. So as opposed to getting my degree at 22 or 23, in England you have the foundation, then three years for the BA — I got my degree at 27, because of working in between, dropping out of art college, working for two years, then going back. I had my foundation in a place called Chelsea School of Art in London, then my degree at Center of St. Martin’s, then I dropped out of that, then when I went back, I went north to Liverpool just to be away from my family & because they had big, large studio spaces — & I like to work big. I had been told you were given a big studio. There wasn’t much happening in London at the time, funnily enough, a little later there’d be a lot happening, but in the early 80s there wasn’t much happening, so I thought the place to be really was New York. So I came to New York, not knowing how long I’d stay. I met my wife, Valerie. I ended up staying 20 years. We left 13th street, came here in 1987, we bought this loft, there was nothing here, just a shell. We fixed it up. 

I was painting when I came to New York, I wasn’t doing sculpture, my studies were in painting, & I went on painting, it was only around 1987 that my work became more abstract, more organic, it seemed to say in & of itself, “You know, I could be three dimensional.” It led me to sculpture. I hadn’t done my studies in sculpture, so I took a lot of classes at Parsons, at Cooper Union, at School of Visual Arts. I took classes in welding & wood workshops. When we moved here in 1987, the School of Visual Arts sculpture workshop, it was just down on 18th street, it’s moved since, but then it was on 18th street, which was great because for three years I would sign up for an adult class for let’s say welding or casting, the foundry, once a week for three months, but that allowed you — I read the fine print — it said that you could use the premises at any time as long as you weren’t interrupting a class. So my studio was the School of Visual Arts for three years. The teachers there were fine with it because they liked the idea of younger artists seeing someone more experienced & older than them, & it was good for me because I got to see what the young people were doing. After three years I felt a little embarrassed, I eventually got my own studio & my own machines. 

Studio space is always a tricky problem, especially in New York. 

This place I had was maybe 400 square feet. When I went to Greece in 2002, for less money I had a space that was five times larger. So we were here for a good twenty years, Valerie was born here, she’s Greek-American, & then we went back when our kids were just six & eight, so they could spend a bit of time with their grandmothers, learn Greek, the original intention was to go for two years but we just ended up staying there.

You’re now based in Greece?

I am based in Greece. We’ve kept this space as you see, we come back once or twice a year. We kept a gallery here. We have friends & work connections. The kids were using it, they went to college in Ithaca & New York, they worked a few years, & there were staying here. 

I am lucky to have caught you!

(Flips through book) This guy is like Oz. A lot of my figures will exist in a small scale, then we cast them in fiberglass the size of small children. But then some of them, when someone would pay me, I could make them big. There’s a whole cast of characters, as you see. Smoke. Cactus. Pinocchio.

Are they friends?

Yeah, their friends. Briza which means “plug” in Greek. Juggler. All these characters. At a certain point the characters decided they wanted to build monuments for themselves, so they built some of these. This is Bourgeouis, because it slightly references Louise Bourgeouis. This is Tear. I have some public works, this is in Thessaloniki in the north of Greece, that’s quite a large work, actually, 4 meters. But before, when I started I was painting more realistically.

It seems like you merged the abstract with the figurative.

Yeah, even back then I had a side of me that was more geometric, abstract. It was a little surrealist, a little existential. This is my sister Catherine, she’s an actress actually, she was in Poor Things, she’s the bordello lady with the tattoos. She was in the Coen brothers’ Macbeth, she was the three witches. 

So this was about isolation, trying to make a connection. But even then I was doing more abstract work. These were works, I called them Gucci, a Gucci daughter put them in the windows of the store back in 1984. My first one-person show in New York was in 1984, I was lucky, I was in group shows almost as soon as I came, so that encouraged me kind of, if someone had said don’t expect things to happen in the first two years. But I was a little lucky, things happened right away & it didn’t prepare me for the years going on, because it’s extremely competitive, you know, it wasn’t easy. My first show was in a 57th street gallery in 1984. Not the happiest work. This is called the Burden, this one is Rape, as in rape of the Third World, rape as in rape, exploitation, war, beyond memory — I was troubled by what America was doing in parts of the world, El Salvador. Eventually the figure leaves — no more figure, & the work becomes more abstract & organic, I was influenced by some early American modernists like Arthur Dove, there was a show in Washington, so these are more about the cycles, the rivers, the essence, the archetypal symbols, the elements. 

It’s almost like the figure leaves & you start to look at the landscape instead & the symbols within. 

And then I started moving into sculpture. 

Is that a room full of sand?

Yeah, that was Entertain Gallery in Soho that Howard Scott had, it’s an installation I did there called Kitty City, & it’s like sand castles but you can pick them up. And then the room was full of sand. 

I was making these at the School of Visual Arts, they’re like ancient relics or offerings, part organic, part plantlike, part almost ritualistic. I was trying to do a lexicon of symbols, archetypal forms & so on. You see these in 1989, you can see how sculptural they are, then twenty years later I rendered some of these. 

It’s like you removed the figure, then went to the landscape, then dug things out of the landscape, & that’s were you sort of remained. I guess you can just keep digging forever.

I’ve done a lot of what they call monotypes. I also like working with discarded materials, things you find in junk yards. This is a series called Excess Luggage. Jewelry. But I was also influenced by Minimalism, being in New York at that time, so these are wooden bows, in a way they reference body parts but they’re also just modular, very simple forms. I have multiple entrances in a way. Part of it is abstraction, part of it is organic. It could be ancient, it could be futuristic.

"City Dwellers" is at the 28th street station on the Broadway line (N/R/W) of the MTA in New York City. His monograph, Homeward, was released March 2025 from Melissa Publishing House.