Signing off a letter to a much missed friend, Oscar Wilde wrote: “Let us soon, for God’s sake, go and look at pictures together!” It’s a line quoted by Stephen Fry in a recent episode of the gloriously inclusive Talk Art podcast, hosted by actor Russell Tovey and his gallery director pal Rob Diament. Alongside conversations with Tracey Emin, Rachel Whiteread, Paul Smith and Grayson Perry, the Fry episode is one of 24 discussions transcribed in a beautiful new book: Talk Art: The Interviews.
“Looking at pictures together is what it’s all about,” enthuses Tovey, calling from the flat he shares with his partner, trainee architect Steve Brockman, in “cool, queer, arty, foody” Margate. “Art is a communal thing,” he expands. “It still blows my mind that you can go with a friend – or a stranger, actually – to look at a painting somebody made 400 years ago on the other side of the planet and it can tell you something new about who you both are right now.”
The 41-year-old knows his strongly Essex accented voice isn’t what we usually associate with the kind of in-depth discussions with the artists, curators and collectors who appear on the podcast. But his plain spoken enthusiasm has opened a door for many listeners who felt excluded from the art world.
“Art is a subject that’s usually discussed in such lofty, academic, excluding tones,” he sighs. “But it shouldn’t be. Because art is fun. It makes me happy. It’s f**king entertainment, after all. When people use terms or reference ideas that my mum wouldn’t recognise, then I feel a responsibility to explain it, because my mum listens to every episode. There’s no shame in saying you don’t know who somebody is, or how to pronounce somebody’s name. I’m not trying to patronise anybody. Even though I’ve been an art nerd since I was a kid I’m often learning along with the audience.”
Art may be a longstanding passion of Tovey’s, but he’s of course best known as an actor. He made his name (first on stage, then film) as the bluntly insightful, working-class Rudge in The History Boys (2006). Following that role, he was advised to pin back his cute jug ears and to stick to straight roles, even though he came out to his parents at 18 and to the world at 20.
Despite feeling himself to be “a scared, skinny rat” back then, he’s always known his own mind and wisely resisted both suggestions. In HBO’s excellent Looking (2014-2016) he played a video game designer getting those luscious trademark ears licked by the show’s hero Patrick (Jonathan Goff). In 2019 he was the conflicted Daniel in Russell T Davies’s dystopian BBC drama Years and Years. Last year he starred in a season of the long-running anthology series American Horror Story as a closeted NYPD detective hunting a serial killer of gay men in the 80s.
Born in Billericay in 1981, Tovey is the youngest of two boys born to a couple who ran a coach business. Looking back on his education he’s angry at the culture of “toxic masculinity” that left him “feeling shame about loving drama, art and literature. I had a shame about giving a f**k. I was told all that was ‘gay’. That really affected me. It took me a long time to accept and embrace those enthusiasms. Too long. I wish I could go back in time and tell the people who tried to make me feel small to just f**k off.”
Tovey always had a collector’s instinct. He asked his parents for an original mono print called Dog Brains by Tracey Emin for his 21st birthday and now admits he spends most of the “good money” he makes on his collection of over 300 pieces.
His current favourite possession is an “amazing photograph by Wolfgang Tillmans of Kate Moss in a chair from the 90s. I’m so fucking lucky that I can sit in my house and look at that. That it’s just there for me.” He admits that he did, at one time, attempt to emulate Tillmans’ photographic style. “I took photographs of my underwear on a radiator. It was shit! I’ll stick to acting because I’m very ambitious about that. If I can make a film that ends up in a museum? Great!”
On their podcast, which has over 6 million listeners and has already spawned one bestselling book, Tovey and Diament always invite guests to participate in a fantasy museum or gallery heist, taking any piece of art they want. “That began when Pierce Brosnan came on,” explains Tovey, “because of course we were thinking of The Thomas Crown Affair.” Many listeners won’t have known that the James Bond actor began his career as an artist and his interview is – rather surprisingly – one of the most moving in the book.
Calling the podcasters from the studio he has built for himself on the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i, Brosnan described how art had given him a sense of continuity when he left Ireland for England aged 11, then relocated to the US at 26. When his late wife, Cassie, was diagnosed with cancer in 1987 he described how “the fear and anguish of dealing with such a disease kept me awake and I set up the easel and started painting with my hands.” He describes the rush he got from letting the bright colours “roar”. “I just take off with colour. It was very much a surprise that night.”
Elton John’s appearance, in which he reveals his “absolute addiction” to tiny photographs, was equally surprising. “We’ve done over 300 episodes of Talk Art by now,” says Tovey. “So you’d think we’d find ourselves covering the same ground. But everyone brings something fresh and new to break down. And there’s no hierarchy. The big stars get as much time and attention as the emerging artists.”
When I tell him that my aspiring artist 13-year-old son was recently crushed by an art lesson in which 90 per cent of his fellow students voted that there is “no point in studying art”, Tovey gets angry. “Art education in our schools focuses way too much on the old, dead white dudes. There are so many contemporary artists – not white and not male – who could speak more directly to kids. Get them excited. When children see themselves and their experiences on gallery walls they’ll get the point. I find it offensive that art is treated as superfluous by schools. It’s in everything. It’s maths, coding, clothes, cars, the furniture of the classroom… art goes into everything we make as humans.”
He believes The Turner Prize shortlist would make a great annual art lesson because of the strong opinions it generates. “The red tops hate it every year, but they write about it every year. I love that it moves around the country. It brings in huge audiences.”
Tovey – who recently made a documentary exploring the life and art of David Robilliard who died of Aids in 1988 at the age of 36 – feels a deep sorrow that “queer art was overlooked and pushed aside for many years. Now we have so many queer artists with shows and profiles. But it feels to me that the queer artists who came before didn’t get their moment. I feel a responsibility to close the gaps in the art canon.”
He exhales. “If I’m sad I will go down the path of looking at the artists we lost to Aids: Peter Hujar [the photographer who died in 1987], David Michael Wojnarowicz [painter/ filmmaker/songwriter who died in 1992] , Keith Haring [the pop artist who died in 1990]… Haring died when he was just 31. Yet look at what he did! Their art changed the world, it’s everywhere, people don’t even know they’re wearing political images that these men made on their T shirts. That makes me…” – he gropes for the right word – “ooof, happysad. So sad for the loss and so happy for what they left us.”
At a recent party in LA, Tovey met Madonna who he’s keen to get on the podcast so she can talk about her friendship with Haring. “She didn’t know who I was, but we got talking about art and now she follows us. She only follows about 505 people so that was phenomenal. Madonna’s never been given credit for her contribution to the art world. She’s been art. As well as hanging out with Haring she dated Jean Michel Basquiat and she has supported so many female artists who were overlooked. So many people know Frida Kahlo because of her. But she hasn’t had the platform to discuss that. I think we could show the world a whole new side of her.”
Talk Art: The Interviews is out now (Ilex Press, £25)
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