Page 38 - Studio International - November 1967

Preoccupation with colour : conversations

with Gene Davis and Albert Stadler

Gene Davis and Albert Stadler, both in their mid- 40s—Davis was born in 1920, Stadler in 1923—
are among the outstanding in their generation of American painters. They share a seriousness and
intensity in their preoccupation with colour and a personal daring in their approach to its creative
exploration. Both of them reject system in an ultimate confining sense. Davis's stripes, based upon
colour interval, are the means for stating his intuitions of reality. Stadler' s work proposes colour as
sheer experience. There are no objects in the worlds of these artists—no things—but only processes to
instruct the eye and release the feelings.
But similarities end there. The appearance of their paintings is radically different. These artists
express distinct sensibilities—even, it sometimes seems, opposing ones. However, each has progressed
notably in his own way to reach the forefront of importance in recent American colour painting.
Gene Baro

1 Gene Davis rocks and gravel and with poured paint; one of these
works, I remember, weighed 65 pounds. I knew so little
Baro: When did you start painting seriously? that I had very little to lose. I didn't know enough about
Davis: In 1950. It was a childhood interest that I returned art to know how daring some of those works were.
to after spending some years as a professional journalist. My strongest early influences were Gorky and de Koon-
ing. This was in late 1953 and 1954; I was led to their
Have you ever studied art formally? work by Kainen. In those days, I equated quality in art
No, and I have never regarded this as a disadvantage. with force or wildness of expression. These influences and
Even before I thought of making painting my career, I the attitude that went with them were dead ends for me.
had spent a good deal of time looking at modern art. This It was a number of years before I worked through the de
was at the PHILLIPS GALLERY in Washington, D.C. In Kooning influence.
those days, my great admiration was Paul Klee. Jacob
Kainen and I— he was already Curator of Graphic Arts When do you feel you began to assert a personal style ?
at the Smithsonian Institution—used to visit the Gallery What were the factors that brought you to it ?
together perhaps once a week, more by habit than by My first intimation of a personal style was in 1958. Out
arrangement; we discussed the work we saw there. When of pure whim, I painted an edge-to-edge, equal width
I began painting, I showed Kainen my work. I didn't stripe painting. This was a time when I as well as some
study with him, but you might say he opened my eyes to other painters were coming to realize that expressionism
modern painting. was worn out as a major art form—that is, the kind of
expressionism practised in America in the 1950s. The
What was your painting like during the early and middle art schools were turning out legions of de Kooning imita-
1950s? Were there any conscious or discoverable artistic tors. Virtuosity seemed to become an end in itself; it
influences on your early development ? became a cliché. Like a few others, I was looking for a
At first, I was wildly experimental, but without con- way out. I was looking for a concept of painting that
sistent direction. For instance, I poured paint after the didn't depend on virtuosity.
example of Pollock. (My admiration for Pollock led me to I thought then that I was merely picking up on an idea
buy a drip-period painting of his in 1952, for $250—a from Barnett Newman, but the stripe—or the stripe
small sum, but one I couldn't afford; I had to return the painting, as it became—turned out to be quite a different
painting to the gallery after a while.) A bit earlier, I had thing. Once having painted this picture, it was possible
made a series of shaped pictures. I ordered masonite for me to paint new pictures again. Taken against a back-
panels from a lumberyard, specifying that they be cut into drop of predominantly expressionist work, this painting
odd, straight-sided shapes, but leaving the decision of the offered a personal solution. While I didn't realize it at the
particular shape to the yard; on these panels, I painted time, this concept offered the possibility of almost endless
expressionist abstraction. Again, around the same time, variations. I've been painting stripe paintings for nine
I painted heavily textured pictures with additives of years, and I've only begun to understand the implications