He said he thought he could be the best living artist soon.
“Throughout the history of art, there was always someone who was the Man,” he said. “Picasso was the Man. It wasn’t Matisse, it was Picasso! When it was Velásquez, it was Velásquez! When it was Rembrandt, it was Rembrandt! So who is the greatest living artist right now? I’ve been asking everyone for 10 years, and no one can even answer.”
Mr. Tunney said Damien Hirst was an artist he respected, then challenged him to an “art-off.”
“Get a gallery, put a big red stripe right down the middle and put the exact same stuff on both sides,” he said. “Two basketballs, 10 canvases, a gallon of paint, some forks, some salad. You make your shit, I’ll make my shit. Let’s see what you got, big boy! I want to tell you something: I think I’m going to blow him out of the water.”
I offered to pay the bill.
“It’s impossible—not here,” he said. “No one’s ever paid for a check when they’re with me.”
Mr. Tunney, who has no cash, no credit card, no bank account, trades art for food and rent. He doesn’t have to pay for drinks at his various downtown haunts like the Pink Elephant, One, Capitale, because his art is on the walls. In a jam, he’ll find a piece of paper, doodle something, sign it “Peter Tunney” and give it to the maître d’, the cab driver, the doctor, the deli owner. He calls it “Tunney Money.”
“I could just sign this plate and maybe that would pay for my lunch,” he said. “I sell everything I make, amazingly, or I give it away to girls. I’m basically off American currency right now. I usually walk around with no money. I’ve been broke for the past year. I’m on a different paradigm, in a different life structure. My money’s no good in this city any more.”