A Friend of the Artist: Michael Hafftka

I have been meaning to write this piece for the longest time. I may have succumbed to the pressures of the fear of disappointing someone you admire so much professionally is also a beloved friend… But no one better to kick off this series, that has been in my brain for years now. And friends often are catalysts for your wildest projects to flourish into reality. So here goes nothing: welcome to A Friend of the Artist, Edition 1: Michael Hafftka.

Brooklyn, June 2023

It started as our dinners always do. I arrive at the home of the Hafftka family: my home away from home, my NY parents, as I so fondly call them. We talk about everything: my love life, hopes, and dreams. In exchange, I hear their wildest stories as a bohemian artistic couple in New York and Brooklyn, back when it was truly cool. We’re talking brush-ups with Basquiat, Warhol, and collectors that would blow your mind. But I also get an extremely vulnerable glimpse into Michael’s life as the son of WWII concentration camp survivors. His grit is generational, with a sprinkle of that Bronx spice.

As for credentials, besides being a chronicler of the human condition, Michael’s paintings are held in the permanent collections of MoMA, The Met, the Brooklyn Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the New York Public Library, among others. His work has been shown internationally and is known for its visceral emotional depth, a kind of spiritual autobiography rendered in oil and soul.

We were chatting about art history and animating paintings when Michael asked me, solemnly, "Can I paint you?" I’ve never in my life felt both as ready and unprepared at the same time. And yet, I couldn’t say yes fast enough.

As we set up, Michael told me more about common practices in portrait painting. Many artists photograph their models, which yields different results from when someone is actually sitting in front of you. We are all so used to photography and are slowly losing the experience of working with a living model because their presence, words, and energy influence the work. A portrait done this way feels more like a dialogue, a collaboration even. Many artists, influenced by Lucian Freud, paint from photographs due to time constraints. The experience and energy exchange create a different dynamic, which informs how the painting is created.

Michael begins by preparing the space in a way that only true masters of their craft can achieve. The paint splatters around the easel speak to countless hours of dedication to his craft, vocation, and job. Being perceived by an artist of this caliber is both an honour and a monumental undertaking for someone as iffy about her own image as I am.

We exchange musings and dive into art, its corruption, and generational trauma poured onto a canvas. His portraits always focus on the person, their experience, and their life. It’s a wonderful way to capture someone and leave a shared legacy behind. There’s always a depth to his portraits, almost directly proportional to the person’s life experiences. He approaches these portraits with a mind as blank as his canvas.

We chat about his life in New York, including a mention of meeting James Francis in a park, and now, they’re working together on an intermedia jam, something Michael does incredibly well and incredibly often. "I don’t really work consciously," he says. The unconscious is a wellspring of emotions, and art is an opportunity to express it. He paints in a Freudian way. Michael often explores this subject in his book Conscious Unconscious. "People have a very trivialized view of the unconscious," he reflects. He mentions how we both carry the loss of our loved ones, a universal connector, despite our ages being so different. Our baseline, alongside trauma, and other elements of our human experience. As he puts it, loosely: the unconscious is stuff we know of, but don’t quite understand, what or why.

His voice remains calm throughout our chat, but his brushstrokes are furious. We hear more about his love story with Yonat and how deeply interlinked it was with his artistic path. He brought a rebelliousness that Yonat loved, and her nurturing personality encouraged him to pursue art. After this connection, Michael thanks me for allowing him to paint me, which is hilarious because, truly, I was the most honored. Meanwhile, Yonat was making us a delicious dinner.

As the evening winds down, with Yonat’s delicious dinner on the table and Michael’s brushstrokes laying on a canvas, immortalised, I’m reminded of how rare and precious these moments are, moments that allow art to transcend mere creation and become a shared experience, a dialogue. Michael’s work isn’t just about paint on canvas; it’s about connection, vulnerability, and the unspoken stories we carry with us. As I sit there, knowing my portrait is done, I realize that this experience will forever be imprinted not just on the canvas, but in my memory as well.

Thank you Yonat.

Thank you Michael.

Your friend,

–Joana