“I needed to be stopped…They did the same with Basquiat”. How black artist Leonardo Drew pushed for his landfill-inspired art

In episode 23 of The Pearl Lam Podcast, international gallerist Pearl Lam arrives in Los Angeles to meet Leonardo Drew, a former Marvel cartoonist-turned-artist whose works draw inspiration from a landfill surrounding the project he grew up in.

In 1998, art critics gave the then 19-year-old artist Leonardo Drew a hard time. Being a black artist in Bridgeport who was increasingly known around the same time as Basquiat, Leonardo faced challenges from the art world and the press, who questioned the non-traditional materials he used to make his works. Instead of paint, Leonardo used “dead animals”, he told gallerist Pearl Lam for episode 23 of The Pearl Lam Podcast which was filmed in Los Angeles.

When he made his seminal work, Number 8(1988), which he has previously described as “the mother” of his work, Leonardo said to Pearl Lam that magazines “couldn’t stop writing about it”. “But mostly they were writing negative things because the idea is to stop you — if you are a black artist — from coming into that door. So, I needed to be stopped,” he said, adding: “They did the same with Basquiat”.

“[They] were trying to bar you from entering the art world…what were they saying?” Pearl Lam asked Leonardo, who then replied that they were questioning his choice of materials, which are often discarded wood, cloth and in some cases, dead animals.

Having grown up in a project, Leonardo draws inspiration from his childhood home located within an impoverished neighbourhood in the city of Bridgeport, Connecticut. “It’s like a version of Detroit, you know, always bankrupt. And growing up in the hood definitely honed my survival skills.” He was inspired by the variety of materials disposed of in the landfill which dominated every view of his apartment. “No one else actually saw worth in that material, but I did.”

However, things have greatly changed since the late 1980s. Leonardo said: “But now, I was, like, forerunner to a lot of the artists who are using this material now. So they’re interesting that they chose that as a way of sort of like, not allowing me to be part of the canon.” The previous challenges Leonardo faced made him more determined to push on with his art. “That’s kind of like the point — if you’re a fine artist — that you actually should be asking questions and adding to the overarching language. So you should be a part of the push forward,” he said.

Pearl Lam was impressed. “So, in 1988, even with all the press going against you, it did not pull you down,” she told Leonardo. The artist, who was scouted by Marvel and DC as an illustrator at the age of 13, replied: “You know, they always came and got me. DC and Marvel came and got me. It wasn’t like I was a kid in the projects going out saying, ‘Okay, you please look at [me].’ Oh, they came and got me then, and they came and got me later, you know.”

To truly experience Leonardo Drew’s art, he told Pearl Lam that one must try to simply “stand in front of it”. “It’s a mirror. Find yourself. It’s very simple. It’s not complicated. And these black holes anywhere would draw you in…if you go around looking for the placard with my, you know, description of what you should be seeing, you’re not gonna find it. You’ll see a number, you know. Good luck.”

Pearl Lam responded, calling Leonardo a philosopher. “Just look at the work and it reflects yourself. This is a mirror of yourself because you have a dialogue with the work and you understand [it] yourself,” she iterated.

Leonardo agreed, saying: “There you go. That is correct. You hit it, honey.”

Written by: The Producer, The Pearl Lam Podcast

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