While Tony Tasset may modestly credit a large portion of his creative inspiration to “more successful artists,” the art world has long been eyeing his large-scale multimedia works with enthusiastic appreciation, fittingly so as his enormous “pop conceptual” monuments are meant to be ogled. From “Eye,” a three-storey retina sculpture that rolled around Chicago to the sneaky trompe l’oeil snowman that refuses to melt and the fittingly titled “Artists Monument” (which featured 392,486 artist names etched onto a candy-colored metal monolith) that featured in this year’s Whitney Biennial, Tasset’s work spans the spectrum from delightfully grotesque to playfully daring.
With the launch of the benefit auction for the Anderson Ranch Art Center (which includes one of Tasset’s signature multilayered resin food paintings), we sent the artist multiple choice questionnaire to quiz him on his preferences in food, film and back-up profession. His responding words and selections were, of course, as wittily eclectic as his works themselves.
