Born in Manhattan and reared in Connecticut, 25-year old art publisher Nicholas Weist's made a name as one of the art world's most-watched young publishers. After graduating with a photography degree from Bard, Weist headed back to the city to join the ranks at powerHouse Books.

Starting as an editorial assistant, within months Weist worked his way up to managing editor, helping the Brooklyn-based company land Slava Mogutin's wildly-publicized, Lost Boys. With that under his belt, powerHouse offered Weist his own "split-imprint": an entire collection of books edited, produced and - yes- marketed by Weist. Named after Gustave von Aschenbach the lead character in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, Aschenbach will offer art-fags a more cerebral alternative to the muscle-head photography dominating the gay art book market. In addition to his work paper-based work, Weist also curates powerHouse online gallery, pHytonics.

After the jump, see what Weist had to say about the new imprint, what he looks for in an artist and why he's tired of barrel-chested men.

(Rather than include a baby picture of Weist, we decided to include the above shot snapped by Mogutin.)

Andrew Belonsky: How do you go about acquiring your titles? Do you approach the artist or do the artists come to you?

Nick Weist: It works both ways. powerHouse has an extensive network in the art community that is so far reaching that we are sort of delivered exclusive and amazing projects. For the books that I work on, it’s much – I’m much more pro-active. I really go after the artist that I’d like to work with - a lot of them, well there aren’t that many – but I do know some of them just from my work in the industry or some I’ll approach cold and say, “Okay, I love your work, I think that there’s a book there and I think that we should talk about putting something together”. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t.

AB: What’s your mission with Aschenbach?

NW: I think that the gay market is a huge source of revenue that’s been tapped in ways that I find disappointing. The book business has really locked on to this stultified, over-blown sort of photography with barrel-chested, waxed dudes and soft light. It’s a shame because the books are a way for the public who don’t largely have access to the art world at large to find out what’s going on and what people are looking at here. I think there’s a giant hole where intelligence should be in the books that are marketed to homosexuals today.

AB: The barrel-chested guys – that’s a huge market, people make a lot of money from that, but it seems to me that there's a generational divide – I don’t know many people our age that really buy those books. It seems to me that you are in a really powerful position to be ushering in a new era of queer art. Do you feel that way?

NW: I hope so. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I think that there’s a huge untapped portion of the population that need to be cultivated. I was talking to one of my future artists, Bruce La Bruce, who makes very aggressive films and I think he was concerned about diluting his message and after being reassured that it wouldn’t be diluted, we had a long conversation about the idea that people need to be taught how to look.

AB: How to look at art?

NW: [Yeah.] I think as far as what I do, all of these artists have, to some extent, reinvented their own medium and it’s really difficult for people to access new ideas sometimes because they don’t understand how to approach the ideas or how [it] can be incorporated into their own lives. A book is a great way to sort of ease into things. There’s a lot of material there for you to go through at your leisure. There isn’t the same pressure of seeking out work, of being in public when you’re looking at it. I think that books are a gateway in a lot of ways, especially because we have such a strong publicity machine, which a lot of artists that I work with really don’t have access to otherwise.

AB: Do you go to a lot of art openings? I imagine you do.

NW: I do, yeah.

AB: How do you feel about looking at art in public?

NW: How do I feel about it?

AB: I always get very nervous if I go to an opening. Just because I feel like I need a lot of time to process things. You’re always asked, “What do you think?”

NW: I think that looking at art in public is…it’s a useful tool in some ways. Institutions are very imposing for some people, I think. The idea of contemporary art is extremely scary to a lot of people and I think the gallery system especially where you can just walk in anywhere and sort of demand of the staff in a way that you couldn’t in a public institution is a great way for people to get a ground level understand of work. And, I love openings because I never get to go to openings during the day. But, it is – it’s a lot to take in at once, but that’s what the art world is right now – there’s always the work and a really strong under current of socializing and business.

AB: Do you find that your age impedes you in any way?

NW: Well, fortunately I do a lot of phone business, but I think the largest stumbling block that I’ve come across is not that people are wary of inexperience, because – if nothing else – our culture’s so focused on youth right now. But I think people think that I’m a little bit evie – out to take-over, which in some senses is true, but I’m not gunning for anybody else’s job, I’m doing it for myself.

AB: How do you feel about our generation? Are you hopeful?

NW: I am, but only because I have seen such strong leaders. I think in general I’m not particularly impressed by people my age, but I know that I’m very fortunate to have the friends that I do. I think they are all incredible people - my friends notwithstanding, some of the people I’ve met within the industry and outside are so talented and so intelligent and so aggressive with what they do that I really think they’ll be able to pull the rest of them up by their boot straps.

AB: What do you look for in an artist?

NW: Primarily, I look for work that engages my very particular sensibilities. Although they’re not narrowly defined, I do look at different kinds of work, I look at work across mediums and practices, but in terms of books, it’s very important for me to find work that can be well represented in a book. I have a lot trouble with people trying to make books out of sculpture or conceptual art. I think it’s very difficult – you walk a fine line – trying to represent work that shouldn’t [classically] be represented in book form. It can be done, but it’s very difficult. So my primary criteria is that the work is largely two dimensional and then after that, it anything goes. If I like it, I’ll keep on it and hopefully be able to work with the artist. I look for work that has a strong visual sensibility underpinned with a framework of intelligence.

AB: Let’s talk about one of your artists, Paul P. I’ve never heard of him…

NW: Paul P. is a young artist from Toronto. He studied in Canada, began making art while he was at school. His work has been progressing very, very, very quickly. His first major bodies of work were suites of colored pencil drawings – the figures in which were based on figures that he’d seen in pre-AIDS gay pornography. And since that time he’s just been developing leaps and bounds and now makes water-colors, collages and oil paintings of a similar field, but much richer. The New York Times has described him as in the style of Caravaggio. He’s an extremely talented technician and a very, very bright and well-read person. A lot of his work is very referential. He is strongly influenced by the Aesthetic movement that was championed by James McNeill Whistler and Count Robert de Montesquieu – that 19th century sort of towering aesthete in Paris.

Actually, Montesquieu’s a very important figure for Paul. You’ll see that he links to his life and work throughout the paintings. And there’s something that’s so dreamy and inquisitive at the same time about his paintings that I really engage with and all just so redolent with history. I’m sort of obsessed with that time period, as well. I think the work speaks to me on that level, as well. I have faith that his work will be seen and appreciated by a huge swath of people that might not even that they realize that they like work like that - people who would never go to the Met or the Frick will see this work – it can speak to them on a meta-level of art history and at the same time, a very kind of surface level of visual interest.

AB: It’s interesting to me that you’re starting this imprint with an artist who references the past. Did you do that on purpose?

NW: Um, well, in part. The name of the imprint is also a reference to history. I think almost all of my artists would agree me – and you’ll find these ideas in their work – that gay culture has really lost something profound in the past fifty years. I think a lot of the vibrancy of the culture was a direct result of its secrecy. I have such joy in discovering references that are sort of hidden inside of layers of text and I’m full on obsessed with writers like Jean Genet who have this sort of – there’s this glory in their explosion of their culture – the culture of their time, not necessarily homosexual culture. I think that what a lot of artists that I’m working with [explode] the homosexual culture, which is art that I’m certainly drawn to.

AB: What about the show The Male Gaysze (spring, 2007)? How’s that going?

NW: Well, it’s going…it’s going. The show’s going well. I’ve managed to pull together a lot names. Fortunately I have direct access to a lot of the artists that I’m interested in – the show is sort of based on the idea that at the same time that a lot of these artists are turning out and exploding their so-called culture, many are doing that by turning in and exploring their interiority and creating these cultural dreamscapes, these idealized worlds that may exist in some form, but they’re largely spaces the artists create for themselves. The gaze is turning.

AB: Do you think you live in reality?

NW: [Laughs] No. Absolutely not.

AB: Do you want to live in reality?

NW: Not this one.

AB: Is there anything else you want our readers to know?

NW: I just hope that they will discover this work and absorb it and past it. In some ways – not that I want any of my work to be disposable – [but] I want it to be a stepping-stone. I hope that some kid in the middle of nowhere sees Bruce La Bruce’s book and it just blows his fucking mind.

Images:
1. © Slava Mogutin, courtesy Aschenbach Editions/powerHouse Books
2. © Paul P. , courtesy Aschenbach Editions/powerHouse Books
3. © Bruce La Bruce, courtesy Aschenbach Editions/powerHouse Books