Podcast Summary: The Grand Tourist with Dan Rubinstein
Episode: Tom Sachs – “It’s All Sculpture to Me”
Date: November 12, 2025

Episode Overview

In this season finale, Dan Rubinstein sits down with American artist Tom Sachs, known for his boundary-pushing explorations in craft, consumerism, design, technology, social critique, and performance art. Sachs’ inventive, often subversive works ask viewers to reconsider both ordinary objects and the cult of luxury. The conversation tracks Sachs’ creative journey—from a Connecticut childhood surrounded by crafty, resourceful women (including a pre-fame Martha Stewart) to his stakes-raising early exhibitions, through to his approach to making, organizing (knolling), and his views on sympathetic magic and the blurred lines between art and design.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Roots, Family, and Creative Upbringing

• Sachs’ family history of Jewish immigration to NYC, ascending from humble beginnings (“My great grandfather was a rag and bone man…”) to relative affluence in Connecticut. (03:22)
• Westport, CT, framed as a former hippie alternative to posh Greenwich, full of artists and makers, now changed by gentrification. His family is “the last small house on a big piece of land,” surrounded by McMansions. (06:30)
• Being raised around “a community of women that made stuff,” with craft-based affluence—a world predating today’s consumer culture (“Before Martha Stewart, you couldn’t buy balsamic vinegar in the supermarket...”). (07:38–08:40)
• Insights on his parents’ professions: his mother a nurse, his father in insurance. (08:42)

Cultural Influence and Early Aspirations

• Discusses a secular Jewish upbringing where consumerism was the real family “religion.” (09:13)
  • Reflects on aspirational branding: “I remember painting on the skis...the logos...Rossignol St Comp...” (10:28)
• Connection drawn between class aspirations, branding, and later artistic inquiries into luxury and logos.

Martha Stewart & Early Design Experiences

• Martha Stewart as the caterer for his bar mitzvah—a detail he jokes about, but which sets the stage for the era and his world.
• Early experience with graphic design through his bar mitzvah invitation: “Probably the first time...I can remember being sort of a creative director…” (13:48)

School, Punk Influence, and Making as Transformation

• A self-described “unsuccessful” student until college, Sachs discusses finding community and inspiration in the American hardcore punk scene at the legendary Anthrax club—a formative, anti-corporate environment. (16:00)
• Pivot from painting desirable logos onto possessions to removing “badges” from them as he became more aware of the “power of consumerism and brand loyalty and all the negativity around that.” (18:10)

Art School, London, & Mentorships

• Studies at Bennington College, then the Architecture Association in London—drawn there by his advisor, and deeply influenced by mentors like Tom Dixon and Richard Wentworth. (20:50–23:01)
• Dropping out to work for Tom Dixon, Sachs credits this humble, hands-on experience with solidifying his preference for making over theorizing. (23:01)
• “I’m not happy if I don’t have a little blister or a scab or callus on my hands at any given time.” (23:16)

Knolling: Order, Process, and Flow

• Sachs introduces “knolling”—the practice of carefully arranging objects at 90° angles to bring order from chaos. As coined by a fellow Bennington artist, inspired by Knoll furniture. (27:16)
  • “If you could also explain what it is so Knolling...it's a way of organizing your stuff neatly so that your mind can see it quickly...” (27:16)
  • Comparison to mise en place—“Exactly. I think it’s the same word.” (29:19)
• The epistemology of creativity: Knolling and similar rituals as a way to bond with tools, warm up, and overcome creative blocks:
  • “I don’t really believe in writer’s block. ...If you spend that time cleaning and setting your tools or sharpening your chisels...that’s important to do because it bonds you with the process...” (31:20)

Barneys, Breakthrough, and Art as Provocation

• Early NYC days, from window installer at Barneys to creator of the infamous “Hello Kitty Nativity” for the store’s holiday windows, which led to protests, death threats, and debates over art, religion, and commerce:
  • “I made Hello Kitty Nativity...Barneys pulled it out of the window and issued a full page apology in the New York Times. There was a cover of the New York Post: Away With a Manger.” (32:29–35:34)
  • “It was scary because there were death threats, there was antisemitism… my family were mad at me… ‘How dare you insult someone else’s religion after our people have been persecuted for so long?’” (36:33)
• Notes both the excitement and fear around controversy and artistic risk-taking, and how it opened doors for him professionally. (39:51)

Bricolage: Making with What You Have

• Contextualizes his art as “bricolage”—making with limited resources, a value stretching from Arte Povera to conceptual art:
  • “Bricolage is making with available limited resources…use what you’ve got to get what you want.” (44:34–46:00)

Sympathetic Magic: The Art of Making Reality

• Explores the concept of “sympathetic magic,” where making models or representations of things (from voodoo dolls to branded sneakers) can alter reality or perception:
  • “If you are sick and injured and you believe that you will get better, you might get better. And might is a whole lot better than won’t.” (47:22–48:30)
  • “If you say you’re an astronaut. You are one.” (48:40)

Art vs Design: The Blurred Line

• On the question of whether his Nike collaborations are art:
  • “I don’t draw a distinction between a poem, a video, a sculpture, or a painting or a sneaker. It’s all sculpture to me.” (50:27)
  • Advocates for durability and repair—“owning less and doing more...showing that they’re worn but they’re clean and that they have a life and that their stains and tears and things are all scars of labor.” (52:00)

Satire, Luxury, & Changing Times

• Reflects on how once-subversive critiques of luxury labels like Chanel or Prada have become normalized by “collab culture”:
  • “At the same time as I was attacking it, I was also admiring it...that duality is what makes it art and not propaganda.” (54:25)
• Art’s purpose: To show both the allure and the emptiness of consumerism, rather than take a singular stance. (57:20)
  • “People are going to pick one side and there are very few people... who see both because we’re aligned politically. And I think that’s sophistication of it.” (57:20)

NASA, Aspirations, and Performance

• Describes his NASA-inspired works and lavish “space program” performances as acts of “sympathetic magic”—by constructing highly accurate models and “live demonstrations,” the experience becomes more real, even leading to offers to go to space:
  • “These are Gesamtkunswerks. These are total works of art. ...Our spacesuits are sealed, so we really have to pump breathable air into them.” (60:27)
  • “If you build all those details, then the experience becomes more real for you. ...I’ve had multiple invitations to go to space as an astronaut because of my work in the space program.” (62:00)

Legacy & The Viking Funeral

• On posthumous plans: a meticulously designed Viking funeral at sea—a signature act of blending performance, engineering, and ritual:
  • “It’s a Viking funeral. 50 miles offshore, international waters. Tyler Hayes and I designed the boat. It’s a steel boat filled with kerosene...” (64:44)
  • “The crew of 12 people go back to whatever Pier 29 or wherever they came from and they have to listen to the Pogues and they can only drink Jameson so they get all seasick and drunk and hate me.” (65:54)

Memorable Quotes

• On childhood craft:
  “I grew up in a community of women that made stuff...They had this opportunity to make stuff to make their lives better.” (07:38 – Tom Sachs)
• On branding and aspiration:
  “The religion of our household was consumerism…As a result, I became interested in the aspirational power of brands.” (09:13 – Tom Sachs)
• On knolling:
  “It's a way of organizing your stuff neatly so that your mind can see it quickly without getting caught up in it...” (27:16 – Tom Sachs)
• On writer’s block and process:
  “I don’t really believe in writer’s block...what you do with that time, you know, if you spend that time cleaning and setting your tools or sharpening your chisels, stuff that’s important to do because it bonds you with the process.” (31:20 – Tom Sachs)
• On the Barneys window controversy:
  “The Catholic League protested and sent death threats...It was scary because there were death threats, there was antisemitism. People in my family were mad at me.” (35:34–36:33 – Tom Sachs)
• On bricolage:
  “Bricolage is making with available limited resources...use what you’ve got to get what you want.” (44:34 – Tom Sachs)
• On the art/design boundary:
  “I don’t draw a distinction between a poem, a video, a sculpture, or a painting or a sneaker. It’s all sculpture to me.” (50:27 – Tom Sachs)
• On cultural critique:
  “At the same time as I was attacking [luxury], I was also amplifying and admiring them...that duality is what makes it art and not propaganda.” (54:25 – Tom Sachs)
• On legacy and death:
  “It’s a Viking funeral...the crew of 12 people go back...and they have to listen to the Pogues and they can only drink Jameson so they get all seasick and drunk and hate me.” (64:44–65:54 – Tom Sachs)

Noteworthy Timestamps

• 03:22 – Sachs describes family background and Westport upbringing
• 08:40 – Parents’ professions and the craft-based household
• 09:13 – On secular Judaism and consumerism as family “religion”
• 13:48 – First design/creative direction experience (bar mitzvah invitation)
• 16:00 – Punk scene, brand consciousness, and early art influences
• 20:50–23:01 – Architecture Association, mentorship, and Tom Dixon
• 27:16 – Invention and ethos of knolling
• 31:20 – Strategies for overcoming artist’s/writer’s block
• 32:29–39:51 – Barneys “Hello Kitty Nativity” and aftermath
• 44:34 – Bricolage, resourcefulness, and making with constraints
• 47:22 – Explanation of sympathetic magic in art and life
• 50:27 – “It’s all sculpture to me” – on blending art and design
• 54:25 – Evolution of art’s relationship with luxury fashion
• 59:49–62:50 – NASA series, performance, and “total works of art”
• 64:44–65:54 – Viking funeral and death ritual plans

Final Thoughts

Tom Sachs emerges from this engaging conversation as a restless, hands-on thinker—committed to both the poetry and provocation of objects, and as enamored with process and resourcefulness as with high-concept ideas. He is at once a critic and a celebrant of consumer culture, and above all, a believer that to make something—be it sculpture, design, brand, or ritual—is to change the way we see and shape the world.