Painter of graves Scott Covert to exhibit 'C'est la vie' at Studio Voltaire

A major exhibition of works by renowned "grave-rubber" Scott Covert opens at Studio Voltaire this week.

In Clapham C'est la vie, the artist's first solo presentation outside the US, can exhibit only a fraction of Covert's vast collection of works.

For nearly four decades now, the New Jersey native has in cemeteries the world over sought out graves of celebrities - composers, poets, serial killers and their victims. From their headstones, he uses oil wax crayons, myriad pigments and varying amounts of pressure to make on-site rubbings.

It is a practice he brought to life on the gravestone of Florence Ballard. One of the founding members of the Supremes, Covert wrote: "She's the dead Supreme—the tragic one, kicked out of the group in 1967, alcoholic, flat broke and gone by the age of 32.

"I called up Michael Musto and asked him if he knew where Florence was buried. He said, 'No.' Then I asked him if he thought making a grave drawing was a good idea and he said, 'Maybe.'

To Detroit Memorial Park Cemetery in Warren, Michigan, he went.

"Florence had been married when she died, and the stone said 'Florence Glenda Chapman, June 30, 1943–February 22, 1976.' A brass marker lay flat on the ground. I placed a sheet of paper on it, wiped my crayon across the paper to capture the name and dates. The paper shifted. I didn't want it to become muddled so I took another crayon, a different color, to finish it. The second color made it pop, and when I looked at it, I heard that little bell that Gertrude Stein writes about. I've been doing it ever since".

Covert would later add Billie Holiday's epitaph to this canvas, The Dead Supreme, posthumously uniting the two legendary stars on one canvas.

In explorations of celebrity, legacy and infamy, there is a Warholian quality to Covert's paintings.

But behind every piece is a pilgrimage - Covert's physical undertaking to the far-flung corners of either hemisphere where, if celebrity never rests, the final resting place of a celebrity nevertheless lies.

"I've been to some very remote graves," wrote Covert in Hauser & Wirth, "an insane journey just to reach a tombstone. Richard Burton, for example. He's buried in Céligny, Switzerland, near Lake Geneva. It's a tiny village. When you ask how to find the grave, it goes something like this: 'Go to that corner. Make a right.

"When you come to a road, make a left. You're going to pass the cemetery. That's the new cemetery. Keep on going down the graveled road, until you hear bees. When you see the beehives, there will be a path at your right. Go down that path. When you hear the brook, make a left. Then you'll be there.' It has maybe only 20 graves. You stand there knowing that Elizabeth Taylor stood there, too."

Often working on multiple canvases simultaneously - "I usually have 12 or 14 pieces going at once", Covert has said - it is with baited breath that the artist's followers wait to see which of his Monument paintings will exhibit at Studio Voltaire.

Visit Scott Covert, C'est la vie at Studio Voltaire from January 25 until April 23, 2023.