You say, “You mentioned in an e-mail note that there were so many other things you wish you'd said in the interview but that the interview hour had run out. What are some of those things? Links and images welcome.”
The list of interviews is at The Art World Podcast, or download the mp3.Thanks for asking, Joanne. Eva did her homework, and she asked lots of good questions. We had met in Portland, and she came to the opening and saw the show. We deliberately did not talk about my art in-person so that the interview would not sound like a kind of call and response retread. I was excited about doing the interview, but at the same time apprehensive, worrying that I wouldn’t represent myself well.
Some of the questions I had anticipated, some I hadn’t. There were some specific things I wanted to talk about in order to better get at what I think my work is about, but I was surprised at how quickly the hour went by, and by how I didn’t get around to these topics.
One of my concerns was that we not talk about the HTML work as a novelty medium. I wanted to talk about the images, the content behind the images, and the possible meanings of the more conceptual aspects of the work. I’d wanted to talk about the performance-like aspect of making and exhibiting an image daily, but didn’t. I’m afraid that we did not actually get around to discussing the images, although I did talk about how images are found, not just made. I’ve encountered this tendency in some to think that working on the computer is not actually a creative process (not that Eva thought that) and I wanted to be more clear about that. It was just one of many things that somehow I didn’t bring up because of the flow of conversation.
Eva did ask about influences of Malevich and Ellsworth Kelly. I kind of accepted the Malevich connection, but ultimately feel it’s a superficial comparison. And I quickly dismissed the Kelly connection, so much so that a friend of mine commented about it, thinking that I was maybe dismissing Kelly’s work, which was not my intention. Related to this, I also wanted to talk about how I don't think of this work, or any of my work, as geometric art.
I wanted to be more clear about why working in series is important to this work, and how when I show these images as objects (for example, Jukebox, shown both at Chambers and Marcia Wood) it is the collection of images that is the work, not the single images. I wanted to move the discussion towards this by discussing some other artists. Here is who I wanted to mention:
I wanted to talk about my visit to the Scrovegni Chapel in 1980 to see Giotto’s frescoes. I recently told a friend how it has been a turning point for me (and he said, well, it was a turning point for all of Western art) not only because of the frescoes themselves, which are magnificent in every sense of the word, but for the overall conception: the entire inside walls and ceilings of the chapel are covered in frescoes of scenes of the life of Christ and other decorative panels. Being in the chapel is to be inside a complete and total environment, a work of art working on many levels, from narrative to genre to design to decoration, with landscape, portrait, still life, trompe l’oeil, and fantasy. The form in the compositions is very architectural, and also very abstract. There is consistency and rhythm and rhyming among the images. It is incredibly ambitious and integrated. I have carried the memory of this visit with me for twenty seven years. Not that I have wanted to paint in the same way, but what I’ve wanted to make is a body of work that can have some kind of impact similar to the chapel. I wouldn’t compare my work to Giotto, but I think that the larger borders of my project—an image a day, everyday, in themes, for a particular environment, an attention to form and color, images with strong abstract quality sometimes bordering on representation, a sense of visual narrative—this may be as close as I’ve ever got in my own work to some of that ambition.
In a more modern vein, I wanted to mention Jacob Lawrence’s well known series of paintings
The Migration Series,
The Frederick Douglass Series, and Harriet Tubman Series of 1938-40. All of these are tempera on quite small panels (in the 12 x 18 inch range). Although he is painting representationally the abstract qualities of the images are inventive and strong. He takes on very specific subjects that are of interest to him because of his background, stories that are unlikely to be told in this format by anyone else- this is ambitious, like Giotto, and to see these series is to be immersed in his graphic, intimate world. I wanted to particularly mention Lawrence not only because he has influenced me, but also because in the world of abstract painting that you and I traffic in he is a very unlikely influence. Yet I didn’t give him his due in the interview, even though I wrote a note to myself to do so.
There are a few other specific works by artists that I wanted to mention to emphasis even more this idea of an artwork that is expanded into a series, or where many small units make a larger single artwork. These include:
Jennifer Bartlet’s
Rhapsody, composed of 987 painted steel panels, each 12 x 12 inches, which occupies 153 running feet of wall space and “reads like a piece of music or poem in a carefully planned rhythm and repetition of images (
ref) (
ref).”
Thomas Nozkowski and Judy Linn ‘s
An Autobiography, "a series of abstract paintings and photographs based on geographic regions along the Hudson River… the twenty works in
An Autobiography reflect important experiences and memories in Nozkowski's life. Each painting is defined by a different five-mile increment of the valley. The artist recalls: ‘Everything that I hold important to my life has happened along a hundred-mile stretch of the Hudson River valley. For each painting I would try to find visual images from my memories and in the physical reality of the place.’
After finishing the series, Nozkowski invited Judy Linn to interpret the region in photography. Working without having seen the paintings, Linn's photographs are also defined by the same five-mile increments (
ref).
I also would’ve talked about Sol Lewitt more, and mentioned Mary Heilmann and Raoul de Keyser. I wanted to talk about my own work, of course, but also to talk about these artists as a way of opening up a larger conversation about how images are used to make meaning, how the notion of a single painting or drawing or print as
the work is limiting to me, and how I am really interested in visual narratives, a way that viewers create and tell themselves non-literate, non-linear stories or meanings in response to what they see. Some of that
telling is even nonverbal- we do it through gesture, through the body, by recalled memory, by internal sound prompted by form, color, or movement. It’s a complicated thing, something I haven’t been able to adequately explain, and it was all too much to talk about in one hour.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Images top to bottom:
- Giotto frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, Italy
- Jacob Lawrence's Harriet Tubman series No. 10, 1939-40, Casein tempera on gessoed hardboard, Hampton University Art Museum, Hampton, Virginia (ref).
- Jennifer Bartlett's Rhapsody, 1975-76. Enamel on steel, 987 plates, Each plate 12 x 12" (30.4 x 30.4 cm); overall approximately 7' 6" x 153' (228.6 x 4663.4 cm). MoMA, New York. Gift of Edward R. Broida (ref).
- Thomas Nozkowski Untitled, 1994 (7-55). Oil on Linen on Panel, 16 x 20 inches, from An Autobiography (ref).
