Today we’d like to introduce you to Bruce Rubenstein.
Hi Bruce, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I was born and raised in New York. I began painting when I was very young. I grew up in a period of time when the New York Art scene was exploding in NYC. I witnessed first-hand the birth of the graffiti movement in Soho made famous by Keith Haring, Jean Michel Basquiat (aka SAMO). Back in the early seventies artists living and working in New York began questioning the very essence of art, transforming the way contemporary art was created, exhibited, and experienced. In the summer of 1975, I was fortunate enough to find a job as a window dresser at a fantastically chic clothing boutique called La Rue Des Reves (The Street of Dreams) located on the corner of Spring & Wooster. The owner Gil Cohen was a very eccentric and well-known entrepreneur who was born and raised in Brooklyn. Apparently, he saw something in me, an untapped creative caldron of sorts, bubbling from deep within my soul. At that time, I was fairly young and not really sure of who or what I was yet or what I wanted to say as an artist. But Gil trusted that if he let me run wild, I would eventually find my voice, and that’s exactly what happened. I was in charge of dressing all four windows that wrapped around the entire face of the store. This was a huge opportunity for me. And I took full advantage of it. I had a full carpentry shop in the basement to create and build anything I could imagine. And Gil allowed me to hire two assistants to help bring my vision to fruition. We re-dressed the windows once a month on a rotating basis. The interaction from the hard-core NYC urbanites were always quite unique. Everything from an enthusiastic thumbs-up and shouts of encouragement to people knocking on the glass and telling me to f*ck off and die and that I suck. There was never a dull moment. But in retrospect, those were the best and most informative years of my artistic life that helped shape me into the artist I have become today. The edge, the stench, the gruffness of my days growing up in that city has never left me. During that time, I got heavily involved in drugs. I began dabbling with weed & pills at the age of 15. It was a few years after Woodstock and drugs were pretty much a big part of my entire generation. Eventually, I began sniffing heroin. Then heroin & coke mixed together. Then the sniffing turned to shooting. By the time I was 22 I was a full-blown junkie, as were both of my brothers and many of my friends. I spent the next 20 years in and out of drug rehabs and on methadone. Neither one of my brothers were as lucky as I. I lost them both many years ago. My older brother dies of AIDS, my younger brother overdosed on Fentanyl. My father was an angry alcoholic who berated me daily and called me a loser for pursuing a career as an artist. I guess he would have preferred if I were more like him. Thank God he lost that argument. In 1993 I wrote a screenplay entitled Bullet. It was “loosely” based on my crazy life. I sent the script to Bernie Brillstein who at the time was the biggest and most powerful and respected manager in Hollywood. After having read it, Bernie called me at my home on a Sunday morning to ask me if the stories that I had written about were true. I told him they were. He said he couldn’t believe what he was reading, that a Jewish family had never been portrayed in such a horrible light and that he though it was important to make the film. Two months later the film was fully financed. Bernie hired Mickey Rourke as my older brother, Adrien Brody played me and Ted Levine played my younger brother. The nemesis of my brother’s character was named Tank, portrayed by the late, great rapper, Tupac Shakur. The movie was directed by Julien Temple and was released by New Line Cinema in 1996 and has since become somewhat of a cult classic.
Art saved my life. And it’s not as though I had any other choice but to be an artist. I have always believed in the concept of reincarnation. I believe the soul of any artist is passed down through thousands of years of evolution. Initially, from birth, it is more of “knowingness”. From there these artistic feelings must be nourished, not so much by external forces, but more through self-examination, commitment and experimentation. Eventually, the artist will emerge and discover his/her own true voice. But make no mistake about it. Making great art is a lifelong struggle. It has no beginning, no middle, and no end. Art is the one true universal language that binds us together as human beings. It transcends race, creed, color, sexual orientation, etc.
I thank God every day for blessing me with the ability to express myself as a painter. If I didn’t have my art and my beautiful and supportive family, I know that I would not have survived. I would have been just another drug-overdose casualty of my generation.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Bruce Rubenstein Art?
I am a full-time artist. I specialize in large-scale abstract paintings, although as of late I have also been working in smaller scale sizes to fulfill the may requests I get
I am represented by a few physical galleries as well as three or four online art gallery sites. In Florida, I am repped by MAC Fine Art. In Los Angeles, I am repped at Artspace Warehouse on Beverly
I offer custom commissions in and also sell quite a bit out of my home studio.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts, or blogs that help you do your best?
Wallpicture _ great app for superimposing art into decorative settings
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.brucerubensteinart.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/brucerubensteinart
