Molly Crabapple: The Mr. Skin Interview

You are equally renowned as an illustrator and as a pin-up model. Is this a first? Has anyone else of note straddled these two realms of expression either in the past or now? How do the two media in which you work complement one another?
Suzanne Valadon's the closest. Before becoming a fancy Impressionist painter, she worked as Toulouse-Lautrec's model and rode wild horses naked in the circus. If anyone else is doing this, I want to meet them.

Modeling helped my illustration by giving me the money to do it. Most illustration grads have a long future manning the desk at the local art-supply store. Instead I got paid $100 an hour to take off my clothes. Modeling gave me a goodly appreciation of makeup, artificiality, playing on men's egos, and how truly rotten guys can sometimes be. It also gave me awesome photos for my press kit, a love of great photography, and great photographer friends.

But art's my love. Modeling's my (very enjoyable) side business.

Who are your favorite illustrators (both contemporary and from the past)? Why?
I love Toulouse-Lautrec and Brueghal. When I draw, I feel Breughal's mean spirit behind my own. When I was fourteen, I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and saw Brueghal's etchings of the seven vices. He charmingly pilloried everyone. I've been copying him ever since.

Now, I don't draw like Toulouse-Lautrec. But too many nights as a burlesque girl, schlepping a heavy bag to an empty show for way too little money, shows me that Toulouse had a dead-on eye for the truth of a performer's life. Plus, he had the graphic sensibility of a god--if the drawing skills of an art-school drop-out.

Who are your favorite pin-up models?
Like every fetish chick, I love Dita Von Teese. I don't just admire her for her hotness, but for how she's made her own market and shaped her own image. Apnea's (www.apneatic.com) modeling is consistently creative and seethingly sexy. I really dig Victorian-era and Weimar-era dirty postcards. In fact, that's where I rip off my styling.

You're also a burlesque performer. How did you get started in this field, and in what ways does it complement your other modes of creativity?
I've always had a Toulouse-Lautrec fantasy--an image of myself in a smoky bar, effortlessly tossing back sketches of the dancers on stage. I got started as a poster artist for Ixion Burlesque. Before I knew it, I was powdering Dirty Martini's breasts backstage. Guess you could say I'm just a poor art-chick corrupted by dancing girls.

I'm not a natural performer at all. I couldn't step on a beat if my life depended on it. But I love the paraphernalia of dancing. I love the sweaty backstage, breathing in glitter and surrounded by woman-flesh. I love spangly costumes. I love hot jazz with its double entendres. Some off my pieces--"Trixie and the Tapeworm", for example--are direct riffs on dancing. But all of them show burlesque's gleeful artificiality.

Who are your favorite burlesque performers?
New York has a booming burlesque scene. I really dig Anita Cookie and Dottie Lux. They're not just sexy (though hot damn, they are!), they're funny and tragic, lurid and mean. Anita Cookie plays a perpetual drunk. Dottie, a vicious clown.

General influences? Drag queens. Fire breathers. Belly dance. Mae West. And alcohol, for letting me get up on stage.

Your artwork powerfully evokes the time and place of its subjects. If you could live at any point in history, what would it be? And what would you do there?
I like living now. It's the only time when a girl like me could draw dirty pictures, model in corsets, and dance naked on stage without raising too many eyebrows. But aesthetically, Paris or New York in the 1920s. You know, somehow, I'm the bastard daughter of Dorothy Parker.

You've lived a life of adventure. How has that influenced your work?
Well, I learned to draw portraits in Paris and haggle in Marrakech. Spending lots of time living with professional paupers made me cheap, cunning, and money-hungry. And, with all that free time on my hands, I learned to draw. Well, sort of. It got me off to a good start.

Many of your illustrations and paintings are sexual in nature. How do you feel about viewers getting aroused by them?
I don't think too much about the viewers. And I don't usually show my own brand of kink. You can't draw my preferred tattooed brutes with a curly Victorian pen. The way I show sexuality is mostly silly and often mean. Hopefully my viewers laugh as well as get hard-ons.

Have you ever wanted to expand from photographic modeling into acting in/making films? Why or why not? What kind of movie would you most want to appear in/make?
Once I decided to do a reading of Confessions of a Naked Model. There I sat on the stage at a beery Village dive bar, wringing my paws, stuttering nervously into the mike. And then I started thinking. "Why are all these people looking at me? Do they expect me to entertain them or something? Make magic? Why can't they make their own goddamn magic? And what am I supposed to do with my hands?"

This is when I realized that I'd never be an actress.

But if I could be an actress, I'd like to make snotty, funny, Tim Burton-esque Victorian movies which nonetheless make high-falutin' points and get chicks to cry by the end.

What actresses have you found inspiring?
Mae West! You take a woman who's over forty and not particularly beautiful, and through brains, funniness, and sheer force of will she turns herself into a sex symbol.

What female celebrities do you find the most sexy?
Salma Hayek (Picture: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4). She's razor smart, shaped like an hourglass, and when she took off her dress in Frida I gasped. Eva Green (Picture: 1 - 2 - 3), that winsome lass who played the lead in The Dreamers. I'm thinking of her freckled face, her fantastic breasts. I also gasped when she first took off her shirt. Jennifer Tilly (Picture: 1) for being so soft and curvy. Gina Gershon as a swaggering butch in Bound (Picture: 1 - 2).

Past celebrities? Marilyn Monroe all the way. So vulnerable and fuckable and wounded.

What are your favorite sexy movies?
Gladiator and X-Men. X-Men first. Was there ever a better condensation of male-hood than Wolverine? During his introductory scene, caged-boxing in the bar, all seething and brutish, hulking muscle and dripping sweat. I nearly wet myself. Oh Wolverine, paragon of silent, violent masculinity! You see, I'm just a fan-girl at heart. Did you notice that Wolverine rips his shirt off in every other scene?

Then, Gladiator. I'm going to start blushing. Look at the characters! Joaquin Phoenix all sinister and corrupt. Russell Crowe basically plays a walking cock. The whole movie has homo-erotic subtext a river wide. Every scene where Phoenix and Crowe are together I expect them to burst out with "Kiss me, you fool!"

Are there any movies that you feel a special kinship to? What movies have influenced your work both as an illustrator and model/dancer?
Much to my boyfriend's annoyance, I view Chicago the way a lot of people view Tony Robbins motivational tapes. See, it's all about ambition, and fame, and showbiz. Okay, it's sort of obnoxious to sing the lyrics in my horrid atonal voice, but sometimes a girl gets excited.

All About Eve for snappy dialogue. The Dreamers for Parisian romanticism and interior decorating.

What is the first movie nude scene that you remember seeing?
When I was eleven, I saw A Clockwork Orange. I had been trying to draw naked ladies for a while, but my own mosquito bites weren't doing it for reference. Then I saw Alex, in a test of programming, confronted by a naked girl (Picture: 1 - 2).

This woman, voluptuous and Nordic, is the first nude chick I consciously remember seeing on screen. I was fascinated. And I was amazed at how off my drawing was.

Boobs didn't hang like tent flaps! They were round! And a whole lot larger than her waist.

As Alex shrank away in horror I ran for my sketchpad. Since then, big round tits have become the best features of my life drawings.

Your illustrations have graced Screw magazine. Did you have any experience with or knowledge of Screw before you worked for them? What do you think of Screw?
I'm a young'un, so I started working at Screw long after the Goldstein regime breathed its last. But I knew that Screw was a bleary, dirty porn rag with a history of good art. I wanted in. So in my sophomore year of college, I made a packet of porn drawings with the tagline, "No one draws tits like Molly C."

When the art director called me back, I did a little dance of joy.

I've done covers for Screw and sold them my first comic (a parody of transvestites in Weimar Berlin). I've even interviewed their editor, Charley Mordechai. I think Screw needs to do some restructuring. There's no more market for smeary, black-and-white paper porn. But, as a magazine with smart columns, dirty jokes, hooker ads, and lots of sex, Screw has a long future.

Good luck to the Greatest Magazine on Earth!

What does your family think of your work?
My family's been nothing but encouraging, especially when they see their friends' kids living at home until they're twenty-eight. My mother, though, gets a bit nervous when I talk about eating fire.

What is your all-time dream project in each of your fields?
As an illustrator, I'd love to write a book and design it top to bottom. I'd cover everything from the luridly illustrated pages to the leather cover, the bookmark, the wrapping in mean-spirited Victoriana. Then, accompanied by a bevy of corseted promo models, I'd do readings across America. Critics would applaud me, princes throw themselves at my feet, innocent young wrestlers give themselves over to be corrupted.

Modeling? Well, Vogue would drop its well-known prejudice against short chicks with big asses and give me a giant spread of lurid Victorian fashion, fought over by Steven Meisel and David LaChappelle.

Simultaneously I'd magically learn to dance like Liza Minnelli and do complex Weimar cabaret numbers at The Cutting Room (fire breathing included). Supporting me would be a harem of buff male dancers. And I'd pirouette in a gown of Swarovski crystals. Of course, I wouldn't miss a single beat.

A girl can dream.



All illustrations by Molly Crabapple courtesy of MollyCrabapple.com