The past year has been more than a little momentous for Henry Taylor. In addition to his collaborations with Pharrell Williams (for the designer’s first collection as the men’s creative director of Louis Vuitton) and rapper Kendrick Lamar (at whose concerts his paintings were projected onstage), the Los Angeles–based artist opened two big shows that remain on view into January: “Henry Taylor: B Side” at the Whitney Museum of American Art (the survey exhibition’s second iteration, after debuting at MOCA LA last year) and “From Sugar to Shit” at Hauser & Wirth gallery in Paris. Taylor told A.i.A. a bit about his work on this issue’s cover, a detail of a larger painting shown here in full.
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As told to A.i.A. I was in a funk and I just painted it. I was like, Damn, it’s my birthday, and I’m really 65—shit! I can go get me a Big Mac for half-price, get me that Senior Melt. I was feeling all sorry for myself. Then I was reading this [Paul] Gaugin book and saw “no atou,” which is something Tahitians would say that means “I don’t care.” That’s how I felt, just at the moment. It’s like being bipolar and you shoot yourself: you’re in Hell or Heaven, and you think, Damn, I shouldn’t have done that. I should be happy I’m alive. I love it!
I never cut the cake. I started it on my birthday, but I was still painting the cake last week. I wanted more details. I actually started two paintings on my birthday. One was another portrait that was really bad. I sometimes just do that to document myself. But for this I had a cake and I was thinking about Wayne Thiebaud. I thought, Shit, I can’t cut this—it’s the most beautiful cake I’ve ever had. Then there’s my little 3-year-old daughter in the background. You want to celebrate with folks, sometimes.
My partner bought the cake for me. I was watching a Korean film the other night on Netflix and they had a cake similar to that. I was like, Damn, it must have come from a Korean bakery. I get all my croissants in LA from a Korean bakery. Anyway, I cherished it, and I probably had it in my refrigerator for a month or two. I was working on so many other paintings, so I would come back to this, and I like to actually have the real thing. So did Wayne Thiebaud. You want the actual cake, you know what I mean? Do you know Wayne Thiebaud? You don’t know him personally—you’re not a time-traveler, are you? He’s a California painter. You’ve got to know your people.
My daughter in the background—her name is Epic. I actually made a painting of her, and it was behind me when I started this one. I was alone and missing my daughter. Of course I snapped out of it. Sometimes I exaggerate my emotions. It’s like being in Iraq and you’ve got to FaceTime your daughter. But really, honestly, I was just going, making paintings. I didn’t want to overthink it. I was just sitting there and it was like, Bam—this is what I’m going to do.
It also reminded me of a painting I made in Somerset, England, of a butcher shop that had all these meats. Anyway, there are a lot of things that give me incentives. I just want to tell a little story. If I were writing in a journal, it would say “Alone, with a beautiful cake, in my studio”—and that would be the work. It’s basically just me talking about a day.