Page 38 - Studio International - February 1968

The lines were deeply etched
on the map of her face 1962
oil on canvas
66 x 78 in.
Coll: Mr and Mrs Robert
C. Scull, New York

bama; Aspen, Colorado; Fargo, North Dakota. Four beautiful girl to the top of this thirty-foot tower; it was a
cities like rear projection beauty, like everyone is watch- high tower, but the length of the diving board was only a
ing television or some communication; then these can be foot long. They took the girl and held her out over the
named cities, as locations. If the location of all the people thing, and she started to scream and scream and scream,
watching is poured into a broadcasting television station and then they let her go. What fascinated me was the
of some kind, then the illustration of the broadcast could length of the diving board. It was like a distance of chang-
be a city. It's like inside-out. ing your mind. If you've ever jumped off a diving board,
or—I used to work up high, on buildings, and one step
Or like feedback? and I could be dead. That would be the end, but in
Like power failure, or maybe feedback. This idea also sport that kind of thing is the distance between a change
came from another geography. Once I painted a huge of mind. Even walking between rooms is like from night
side of a face and it appeared to me as geography instead to day.
of a figure; it was called The lines were deeply etched on So at the curb while waiting for the bus, I thought I was
the map of her face. Another analogy I felt at that time standing on my own face. Then when I got on the bus, I
and didn't do anything about was: I was standing on a was out of it. I mean I was back to being normal, back
corner smoking a cigarette waiting for a bus, and the bus to bouncing along on a bus again. I didn't step down on
came along and I was about to step on the bus. I noticed the street, just from the curb to the bus. I feel like that,
the difference from the curb to the bus step was, like, too, sometimes when travelling from one place to another.
only this far. I was thinking something when I was You really don't get into it. You step from one carpet to
smoking the cigarette; when a bus came and I stepped a conveyor belt, to a bus, to a plane, to another bus. And
from the curb onto it, that distance changed my mind. you never hit the dirt. The dirt isn't interesting; it's only
Another analogy, when I was swimming out in Minne- the polarizing idea of it. We don't get down to it. That is
sota in this lake, Lake Nakomis. Two guys took a young much like this feeling I have.