Editor’s Note: This story is part of Newsmakers, a new ARTnews series where we interview the movers and shakers who are making change in the art world.
Singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus‘s newly released album Forever Is A Feeling has been widely anticipated by her fans, but art aficionados have good reason to be excited too.
The cover of the album features a portrait of Dacus painted by artist Will St. John in a Renaissance style. In the work, the 29-year-old singer wears a draped cream ensemble that falls off her shoulders as she reverently gazes downward toward a fake tattoo of the album’s title on her chest.
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Art references abound across the album’s 13 songs too, the most overt being the song “Modigliani,” in which Dacus sings of missing her friend, Phoebe Bridgers, whom Dacus performed alongside in the band Boygenius. (The third member of that band, Julien Baker, was recently revealed to also be Dacus’s romantic partner.) One line in “Modigliani,” which was largely inspired by visits to the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, refers directly to the Italian painter and the women with almond-shaped eyes that he painted. “Modigliani melancholy got me long in the face,” she sings, referencing the elongated proportions of his subjects.
Ahead of the album’s release, Dacus has underscored these art references with performances staged at such institutions as the Legion of Honor in San Francisco and Saint Eustache Church in Paris.
Last week, ARTnews sat down with Dacus at the Barnes to discuss her art influences, her infatuation with museums, and her efforts to resist irony.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and concision.
ARTnews: How did your interest in art begin?
Lucy Dacus: My dad is a graphic designer. He went to art school in Mississippi, with only three people in his graduating class. He studied graphic design before there were computers, and he would have to order things like fonts and boxes. When I was young, we would make drawings together. He has a very tactile understanding of art and design, and I think I got that from him.
The art programs through school and the free museums were also formative. I grew up going to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and many museums in Washington, D.C. Art always felt really accessible, and I didn’t realize that’s not true everywhere. Even something as simple as going to schools where art materials were available was huge because I couldn’t buy a whole bunch of paint, a canvas, an easel, and brushes when I was younger. It takes a lot. I’m very thankful for public education and adults who made sure art was part of my early life.
How did the Barnes Foundation and its artwork inform your music practice?
Museums are perfect places for me to write. I write in my head, usually on walks, and I love to just walk through a museum. You don’t need to give every painting a full five minutes of your time, but when something catches your eye, you learn something about your own mind and taste.
I love that the Barnes is set up like a house and that [founder Albert] Barnes’s taste is so preserved. Unlike most museums, I like that there aren’t title cards anywhere—it’s truly just about the art. Sometimes context can feel cumbersome, and if the piece was meant to speak for itself without explanation, I like having that opportunity. I also like how jumbled everything is [arranged in a salon style] because it allows you make connections between objects that you might not have if you were seeing each piece one at a time. Connections between things are always verdant grounds for new ideas. Specifically, the song that I wrote at the Barnes for my record was “Modigliani” because there are so many Modigliani paintings here. They were really freaking me out because they are pretty scary. They’re so flat, elongated, and harsh.
There’s such an intimacy within the Barnes collection, which is a feeling also captured in your music, specifically in your delivery and writing. I think this sentiment also extends to the album cover. Can you talk about the process to more explicitly incorporate art?
I realized the record was mostly love songs. I really wanted to resist irony, which is kind of hard to do since a lot of art is ironic or referential. Sometimes it’s fun to make a reference to something, but I wanted to do something I haven’t really seen and is going feel refreshing or off trend with this very highly rendered portrait of me. This is the first time that I’m central on an album cover. I did it to press myself, and I’m honestly still not that comfortable with it. But Will did a really beautiful job, and it has been like such a guiding motif through everything. For example, in the “Ankles” music video I came out of a painting and went back into it in Paris, and that was done on film. It was very high effort just like the painting was. We’re starting tour tomorrow in Philly and, for all of the visuals, we hired artists to paint some of the sets. A lot of it is hand done, even though it’s ultimately on an LED screen. Most people will also see Will’s painting through a screen. But I am just delighted to know that we hired people to make the art. I like being able to hire artists and I really don’t like AI.
Painting of Lucy Dacus by Will St. John.
Photo Francesca Aton
In terms of the album cover, you talked about being uncomfortable with being at the center. On your other albums, you’re not centered, if not even shown at all. There is something so vulnerable and immediate about positioning yourself front and center. Tell me about your experience collaborating with artist Will St. John.
He did a painting of the band Satine and another of model Hari Neff that I thought were beautiful. So, I saved his information thinking, “Maybe one day.” I kept bringing it up, like maybe the album cover will be something in that style. Then my label asked if I wanted to hit him up. I didn’t realize that was allowed. We met up and talked, visited a studio, and then we did a reference shoot where one of my tattoo artists Nicole Jacqueline Smith put Forever is a Feeling across my chest in eyeliner. She did the stencil like a regular tattoo and then went in with like a little brush of eyeliner. It looks very convincing.
It’s kind of funny to have the phrase “Forever is a Feeling” as a temporary tattoo that can ultimately be wiped off.
I have a lot of friends who are tattooers that say that it’s the most temporary form of art. Most other art is going to live on. But with tattoos, there’s no preserving it. People always question getting tattoos, like, “How could you commit to that?” All tattoos are temporary.
How has your perspective shifted since releasing “Modigliani”?
It was one of the first art references that I made when creating the record because you write the songs before you make any of the visual art. In addition to inspiring that song, being in the museum made me feel like you pay attention to your own thoughts in a new type of way.
As part of your concert tour, you’ve been singing at a number of unconventional venues like museums and churches. What does this mean for you?
I had this idea, “What if I did shows in museums because people are used to having to be quiet and thoughtful?” I ended up going on this tour before the record came out across four places in the U.S. and four in Europe. Over half of them were museums, and people could not break the socialization of being quiet. It was great. That was the point. Usually at my shows, people are singing really loud and it’s more hype, but it was nice to play new music that wasn’t out yet to crowds that were really paying attention. It’s a really specific state of mind that you have when you’re in museums—more reverent and open. The place itself really helped those songs have a patient audience.
I imagine that was different for you to experience on the receiving end as well.
It was different. A lot of these churches are basically museums today. One of the places we played in Paris was Eglise Saint-Eustache. It made me feel so tiny in the scope of history. That’s a nice feeling I get in any church or museum, where I think, “Wow, I’m nothing. My life is a blip.” And it’s very humbling. It also reminded me of the early days of music for me at house shows and before having recordings, where the point of playing was just to share with other people or have it be an excuse to get together. It was nice to play for some smaller crowds and not have people anticipating their favorite parts. It reminded me more of how I started playing music than anything I’ve done since then.
I’ve seen some of your videos and photos in museums on social media. Do you have any favorite artworks or experiences?
Boygenius filmed a music video ourselves on an iPhone. One of the places we went was the Getty Villa in Malibu, which is just a really fun and ridiculous place. It’s camp in a way because it’s built to evoke a style way after the fact. But it was really fun to kind of bop around there. Art shouldn’t require stuffiness. I always love going to museums and seeing school groups there and kids who, no matter what they’re being told—it doesn’t really matter when it was made or why it was made—they’re like, “I like that one” or “I don’t like that one.” That’s just very pure.
Is there anything we didn’t touch on that you would like to discuss?
Maybe this is the place to say that all the museums housing stolen art should return them to the place they were stolen from, or at least negotiate purchase or loan from the original places where they’re from. I love museums, but a lot of them have ugly underbellies of how they conducted business. I need to learn more about this, but I’ve learned enough to know that should be on the docket for the art community.