The Way We Live Now: Questions for Jonathan Santlofer – The New York Times Magazine
By Marcelle Clements Q: You’ve been an artist for more than 20 years. This fall you have two shows, plus a novel about a serial killer in the art world, ”The Death Artist,” that has just come out. What inspired you to write the book? Let me just say that the death artist may have killed five or six people in my book, but he happened to have saved my life, truly. I had lost several years of work in a fire. I had an exhibition in Chicago, which I had actually postponed twice because I didn’t want to have it. It opened on a Friday, and it burned down on Saturday. I came back to my studio and there was nothing, just ghosts on the wall where the outline of the paintings had been. What did you do? I hadn’t smoked in 15 years. Within a week I was smoking a pack and a … Read more