Page 36 - Studio International - March 1967

No? I think it is beside the point. I think this would be a very
No, never. Not hurt them. offhand response, simply to react like that.

Does it make them water? Well, believe me, it can go on. I've lived with one of your
No. paintings.
Yes, but surely you get involved with the painting? And
I don't see how you could get involved with the painting
Doesn't it give you a pain?
No—no pain! It gives me pleasure. if you only experience this eye-hurting effect.

No, I didn't say I only experience it as that. I think it's rather
Does it give you that famous admixture, pleasure-pain?
like certain music by John Cage and LaMonte Young, which,
Possibly, in that it is a stimulating, an active, a vibrating
while one responds to it aesthetically, is nevertheless undoubtedly
pleasure.
painful to hear. And there's no getting round the fact that it is
painful to hear and that it really produces a noise level or a pitch
Comparable to what?
level which makes it in some sense disagreeable. I don't think
Running . . . early morning . . . cold water . . . fresh
one ever reaches the stage when this ceases to be an element in
things, slightly astringent . . . things like this . . . cer-
one's experience of it.
tain acid sorts of smells.
Yes, I see that.
Really? You enjoy certain acid sorts of smells? But you've certainly no aggressive intention towards the
Yes. I don't like heavy smells. I like light, buoyant spectator, have you?
smells. No, not as such.
Like ammonia? Do you think of your work as aggressive?
Oh no ! Like wood being cut. Not necessarily. I think of there being colossal energies
involved ... in the medium ...in the units, intervals,
Yes, but what about wood being cut when the saw gives a sound lines ... I know that they are high-voltage, potentially.
like a squeaky chalk on a blackboard?
I don't mind that. That blackboard sound has never Does that mean you want the spectator to get something like an
bothered me. electric shock?
I want the spectator to experience the power of these
Well, that's very interesting. It may throw light on why you elements. For instance, I called one painting Static in the
sense of a field of static electricity. It is visual prickles.
don't worry about the eye-erking effect of your paintings. Because
But I don't find that a painful physical thing. It's a
I think there's no doubt...
Don't forget I see them grow. That could make a quality: as velvet is smooth, so this is a sparkling texture —
difference. visually. The key to this, I think, is in the actual stuff I
am dealing with—the elements themselves. This may
strike you as a strange comparison, but I feel that when
I don't think it's that, because it seems you don't mind other
Michelangelo said that he let a figure out of the stone, so
things which tend to get most people on a nerve. But the fact that
I feel that I let the energy out of the forms, the elements,
you see the paintings grow—does that make a difference? The
via the relationships.
painting I have, for example, I've had it for years, but it still
hurts my eyes.
When do you think of the titles?
Well, only in that I can never see a painting of mine
Sometimes while making the drawings, rarely while
quite as other people do.
carrying out the painting, sometimes after it's finished.
Don't they have an optical effect on you, for example? You say, for example, that Static is so called because of the
Of course, certainly they do. idea of a field of static electricity. At what point did that
association first come to you?
Now, if they have an optical effect, don't they have an eye- At one stage I thought of calling the painting Discharge,
hurting effect also? with the idea of arrows, say, being discharged in your
No, these are different qualities. I don't experience this face as you looked at it. I rejected that, but it led me to
eye-hurting business but I experience the optical effect. the other. Actually, I thought of the painting itself when
I was going up a mountain in France which had a vast
You see the lines moving to and fro? expanse of shale at the top. It was an extremely hot day.
Yes, but I find that an exhilarating thing, a stimulating I was getting anxious because we were going in a car up
sensation—never painful physically. a steep narrow road. Visually it was total confusion; I
felt there was no possibility of understanding the space
That sounds very masochistic, Bridget. of this situation. You couldn't tell whether this shimmer-
I have been accused of that, but I don't think it is that. ing shale was near or far, flat or round. One of us said
it was like the desert. We found it so alarming that we
If other people, while liking your work, find it eye-hurting, what got out of the car, which of course intensified the sensation.
do you feel about that? But it was much cooler at the top, and into my mind