In true David Byrne fashion, the artist, writer, and all-around icon arrived by bike. At 74, the former Talking Heads frontman shows little sign of slowing down. In between an appearance on one of the final episodes of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and gearing up for the European leg of his ‘Who Is the Sky?’ tour with Ghost Train Orchestra, he has mounted a new gallery show at 125 Newbury in New York, placing his drawings and never-before-seen banner works in conversation with watercolors, prints, and drawings by the legendary New Yorker artist and illustrator Saul Steinberg. At the opening of the exhibition, he reflects on his drawing process, how his images converse with Steinberg, and the role of humor in his work.

Sarah Isenberg: We’re at your exhibition, which is a duet of sorts between you and Saul Steinberg. Can you give a quick overview of what the exhibition is and how it came together?

David Byrne: I’ve been represented by Pace Gallery for a while, and they also represent Saul Steinberg. So Arne Glimcher had the idea of combining a show with both of us, since we both do mostly black-and-white drawings. He thought it’d be interesting to pair them, and I have to say he found some similarities between some of the drawings, which is kind of nice. I’m a big fan of Steinberg’s drawings, so it’s an honor to be mixed in with his stuff.

Do you remember the first time you encountered Steinberg’s work?

It was probably in The New Yorker magazine. That’s my guess. I was probably pretty young and saw it on some covers of the magazine, and I loved it. Yeah, they were really inventive, funny, insightful.

You’ve said that your drawings started pouring out of you during COVID, when you were locked down in your apartment. How do you keep track of your ideas, and what is your process for starting a new drawing?

Sometimes I just start sketching and see what comes out. Sometimes I write down an idea, and then try to figure it out or sketch it out really, really simply on a little piece of paper and go, okay, can I expand on that? Where will that go? And so, I make a to-do list and then find some time and just start working on it. I usually do them first in pencil and that way I can erase, change things, and move things around. Then I go over it in ink when I’m happy with the way it’s going.

Both you and Steinberg often reference buildings, highways, cars, and other bits of urban infrastructure in your work. How has living in New York City impacted the way that you make your art?

Well, a lot of my drawings here were done during the pandemic. Not all of them, but a lot of them. When I was in my apartment, I did okay, but we were isolated. I found that I couldn’t write any songs – I found nothing was coming out. I tried, but the stuff that came out was kind of amusing and I thought, no, this is really serious. So I started drawing. After a while I realized, oh, I see my concerns in the drawings, what’s going through my head in regard to being isolated, being locked down during the pandemic. I thought, oh, I’m saying things in the drawings that I don’t say to myself or to other people out loud.

Your drawings and Steinberg’s are both quite humorous. Is that something that you’re consciously thinking about when you’re making them, or does it just naturally come up?

I suppose I find that if there’s a little bit of humor in the work, you can deal with things that are maybe uncomfortable in a way that is more acceptable. It’s a way of disarming myself and the viewer or the listener, which is true for all kinds of comedy. It’s a way of saying things – visually or musically or whatever – that are sometimes kind of uncomfortable. But if you can say them in another medium and that has a sense of humor about it, it’s kind of disarming and people can deal with stuff that they might not want to face otherwise – at least I can.