Thank God Tattooing Is Dead

When I hit up the artist that I’d followed for so long — and thought I knew — he was en route to the Italian countryside, where there’s no internet. We discussed his decision to delete his account, his recent show, and his plans for the future — that is, for when he returns.

To a lot of people on the internet, including me, you’re known as Maison Hefner. But you recently deleted the account that I and everyone else was following in order to go by your real name, Monty Richthofen. Tell me more about that.

Monty Richthofen— I first started using social media in 2015. At the time, I had just moved to London and started tattooing. My friend Joe Fox told me that I should get Instagram to promote my work. I wasn’t really into the idea of social media and didn’t have a smartphone, so I asked him to make me an account. I was living and tattooing out of a tiny attic but I thought it would be funny to have a username that implied something different. And that was the birth of me posting tattoos on a cracked version of Instagram on my Blackberry.

But I see “Maison Hefner” as a character from my twenties when I was traveling a lot and doing tattoos. COVID slowed things down and I began focusing on painting. Now, I'm confident in who I am and what I do as an artist. And as I've developed my practice, I’ve decided I want to show under my real name.

It felt important that I put an end to the persona and pull the plug. I feel that a lot of established people in hype-based industries have missed their chance to quit. They're in their 50s and still carrying on a persona that has little to do with their current reality.

That’s real. But I can imagine people wanting to hold onto that, especially if they feel like that’s the only reason that they’re relevant. How do you let that go?

Fuck it. I wanted to jump in the cold water and see who’s actually interested in my journey. Sometimes, just like a snake, we need to shed our skin in order to continue growing. I believe as an artist, it’s my duty to leave my comfort zone to challenge not only my own perspective but also the perspective, conventions and realities of others. As an artist, you are where you are in your career because you've done the work. By deleting a social media account you don’t lose the success nor the work nor the connections you’ve made. After all, Instagram is just a platform.

Did you hold any type of memorial for Maison?

I didn't want to make it a thing and just went dancing after I deleted the account. I had a really fun time dancing by myself, feeling the weight off my shoulders and realizing that I now have space and time for other things. It felt good to let go. The account gave me a lot of independence and stability but it was a burden at the same time.

R.I.P. Maison Hefner.

Where do the statements that you’re known for come from?

My texts are like snapshots, similar to photos. They’re memories or notes from certain moments in my life: observations from things that happened to me, things that I thought of, dreams, etc. I basically just write whenever I have time and I write until my head is empty. I have a lot of input and I need to let all of it spill out. It’s how I process things. I take out the trash.

Love that.

And I keep them all in shoe boxes, like time capsules.

That reminds me of when I go home and get to flip through the box my mom keeps all of my stuff from growing up in. I give her a hard time for it sometimes but I’m actually so glad she’s kept it all for me.

It's 100 percent like that. There's no order whatsoever. I can only roughly guess what time things are from based on the style of my handwriting or the content.

It’s interesting seeing how my handwriting has developed over the last decade. I have multiple different styles of handwriting depending on what I’m writing or how I’m feeling.

How important are these statements to your work?

Text is always the foundation of my work, but not always the visible end product. It is the basis for my ideas but from there my thoughts develop. I think of it the same as writing a script. You might start with black words on white paper but it eventually becomes a vivid moving image.

To be honest, because of Maison Hefner, I mostly know you for your tattoos. What has your art journey looked like though outside of that?

Although I went to an art school I didn’t learn to paint until after. I taught myself. And I started doing small shows with my friends, which is how I met my gallerist, André Schlechtriem. He gave me the opportunity to have my first big gallery show at Dittrich & Schlechtriem. I developed the idea for an installation called “If This Is You Who Am I”. It combined poetry and painting with sound and light and was brought to life in collaboration with Yasmina Dexter and Elias Asisi.

Do you want to talk more about the show you just finished at NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, THANK GOD GOD IS DEAD?

My father died when I was only 18 years old and I felt alone trying to confront my thoughts and questions about it. Writing was a way of processing this grief through a creative channel. It helped me understand myself better as a human — a human that will also die at some point. Sooner or later. I feel like death is a subject people do not necessarily feel comfortable talking about so I wanted to create a space where one can engage with it as part of a collective experience.

The main piece incorporates three coffin-like beds and a sound piece, made again in collaboration with Yasmina Dexter. It repeats a long list of aphorisms: “THANK GOD CAPITALISM IS DEAD,” “THANK GOD SOCIAL MEDIA IS DEAD” and “THANK GOD NOTHING IS DEAD.” The audience is invited to lay in the coffins and I personally found it interesting looking at the people and just wondering what they were going through as they listened.

So are you done doing tattoos… forever?

Maybe not forever. I don’t like the word “forever,” for obvious reasons. But I think for now, I’ve done everything that I wanted to do with tattooing.

Do you have a favorite quote? One that’s not yours.

I have a cap by the artist Jenny Holzer that states, “PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT.” I stole it. It doesn’t always work.