Bob Recine: The Alchemist

Alchemist, hairdresser, artist — Bob Recine is a man of many hats and talents. He transforms hair into fine art whilst constructing a new language with each creation. Dedicated to lifelong quest for beauty, as documented in his book The Alchemy of Beauty, he is equally comfortable working on red carpet hairdos or an elaborate coiffure for a fashion editorial. Here he talks about his career and what really makes him tick.
Do you think of yourself more of an artist or a hairdresser?

What I see in my work is a kind of builder, somebody who is constructing and making things. I don’t know what more charming a profession than a hairdresser [to] really to look at hair as a fabric — to be able to manipulate a fabric, and to make someone from this fabric. The difference between me and other hairdressers is that I understand that inside a hairdresser is a designer. A hairdresser is a creator; you look at that as a job, and you can look at it as a passion.

I don’t see the difference between a piece of paper or the fabric of hair. We live in a society [of information overload]. For instance computers information, things we would never be able to find … But I don’t think anything is really focused on what it costs a mind to have such access to things. Does it make a person wider, or does it make a mind duller? I think the only thing that could bring an evolution to hairdressing and to fashion is a passion. I think that when you have a really spoiled mind, it sacrifices this passion. That’s why I like to use really mundane objects: matches, glasses, hair pins, anything that is mundane, objects which people don’t think about anymore can be something. alchemy of beauty.

How do you choose these objects? Can you give me an example?

I did some berets that Lady Gaga loves, using the geometry of the gun: this is my way of acknowledging myself in my own time, and what I feel is a part of society.

I have no interest in the gun, but I can use the gun for other interests in a way to demean it, to bring it to beauty. Lessen its importance as a gun, more as … a point of view for all to see…

Your work is all about finding beauty in ordinary details. Can you point out any strong influences on it?

I always feel the haircut of a child is something really beautiful, because a loving hand does it, a mom does it. And the youthfulness of not knowing that your hair is crooked makes something very charming and powerful for a child that maybe sometimes is lost in translation
in maturity.

We have the same birthday! January 17th. I think style wise it wasn’t something that I was attracted to, but no one can deny the amount of influence this man had on my profession. I think what I have in common with him is a sense of that revolution. It’s color, it’s a matter of taste, but I think that was our connection as Capricorn minds.

If you look at my work you see passion, someone who is going to say he’s going to take a chance. And that puts me in the category of doing what I love as opposed to what I need to do.

I never had any interest [in having] a ‘job’: my interest is to be able to create things on my own level. When you do something for a long time (I don’t care if it’s journalism or photography or an athlete), you need evolution: that makes it a quest in your life as opposed to a job. I think there are many levels and many ways of looking at what you do and still know that you are evolving in an alchemist environment. I believe every single one of us has an artistic gesture to make but they have to recognize it, they have to be able to understand that, “you know what, I can say that! I can put matches on the face! I can put a shoe on the head.”Your book, the Alchemy of Beauty, is a collection of all the different work you do and it portrays different and sometimes opposite visions. What is beauty for you?

What is beauty? I happen to like what Salvador Dali said: it’s too early to know what beauty is. We could look in a dictionary and it could give us a description, but it can’t give us an answer. Beauty for me is purity; it’s honesty, more than anything. I don’t think it’s a line; I don’t think it’s a skin type; I don’t think it’s a hair type; I think it’s an honesty, beauty. I love what I do because I realize that it is infinite.

Back in the day you were part of the punk movement. What did that engrain in you?

Back in the late seventies as a teenager I had many friends that were hairdressers, but none knew how to destroy hair, hence Vogue magazine’s first interpretation of myself was of a punk hairdresser. I wasn’t afraid ever to take the scissors and cut a friend’s hair or even my own for that matter.

I was only looking for my own game, my own life, my own world. I always felt that it was too boring for me to be a part of what everybody else was doing. Most people find that security, I find that claustrophobic. I need my own universe of worlds and possibilities and guides and idols. I can’t differentiate; I can’t feel that I am a part of society, that my life is already foreseen for me.
When we talk about life that people have already figured out: retirement, vacation, it seems to be this premeditated text of life. And I think I reflect that pretext in a kaleidoscopical fashion.

Did you envision a goal?

I understood that what I wanted, what I needed — if it wasn’t available to me, that was my guide. Hence my dissatisfaction with the Internet is that before anyone has dared to experiment, they already have been educated up to a college degree on it, stripping the passion right from your gut. You need to be hungry to go to a level understandable only to an individual, and then hopefully later to the mass, hence my book and my own projection of beauty. I think you need to be in a position to understand that you’re about to endeavor into something uncharted. The Internet is charting everyone’s life for them.

Bob Recine is a hair artist living in New York. His book, The Alchemy of Beauty is out now