Page 44 - Studio International - September 1969

The making of

a multiple

Peter Hobbs in discussion

with Gene Baro

BARO: Box is made up ofgeometric modules and dealing with structural and formal geometrical HOBBS: Roughly speaking, yes. I had been
is intended to be issued as a multiple. How do problems. This was my initiation into the thinking of box-formed sculptures for some
you see this project—as closely related to your fundamental beauty of pure geometry, which time. This led me to think of the box as con-
earlier paintings or as a departure from paint- until then I had always avoided. tainer—the whole box and content were to be as
ing interests? This doesn't mean that I went wholly for im- aesthetically and sculpturally valid. That is,
HOBBS: I think of Box as sculpture. It relates maculate anonymity. For instance, the sculp- as a container in a necessary structural rela-
to an architectural project I did in Italy in ture that I'm making currently is realized tionship to its contents. This was the basis of
1964. This was most of the design of a luxury through traditional rough sand-casting tech- the present modular project.
summer house; I provided conceptual draw- niques. This method gives approximate BARO: The elements of Box are capable of a great
ings. In painting terms, I have been interested results rather than exactitude of finish. Also, number of arrangements. Do you take the
in the box form from roughly 1961. From it allows a flexibility of relating the separate view that anything goes, or do you have pre-
about 1959 British painting became accus- cast parts in free composition. ferred configurations in mind?
tomed to Action Painting and Abstract In the case of sculptures where I work through HOBBS: Both. I started off with one configura-
Expressionism, but also was beginning to take industry, I can and do predetermine the tion in mind — there's no ideal formulation—but
on a secondary American influence — hard- precise shape and surface. naturally others began to suggest themselves.
edge. It seemed to me then that the response BARO : You don't see any conflict in working There are 192 elements in Box; all of them are
of artists in this country was in some degree in these two apparently opposite ways? based upon cubes and rectangles. It's possible to
academic, though I recognized the painting HOBBS : No, I don't. For the reason that I'm build many basic formal compositions, regular
problems involved as valid. In my own work not concerned with pursuing a stylized image and static arrangements. But also it's possible
of the time I tried to develop a new kind of through the various media in which one works. to make dynamic, irregular compositions— to
pictorial space in order to express a personal I'd rather get to the expression of content be as romantic and expressive as you please.
content. I thought of the box form as meta- through the natural marriage of the idea and One isn't stuck with symmetry and/or regu-
physical, a world. In some of my paintings the particular medium, its distinguishing larity. The vocabularly of forms is sufficient
of the period I populated the boxes. I was qualities. for complex expression and depth of feeling.
bringing personal expressiveness to formal BARO: Box, then, is closely related to the box You might say that Box covers all the archi-
problems—a kind of relaxed spatial geometry. form— the spatial vision—that pre-occupied you tectural plots and scenarios from the Assyrians
When I worked on the Italian house, for the in painting. The problem is merely projected— to Mies. And abstract sculpture being less
first time in actual physical experience I was extended and modified—in another medium. complex, all those too. In practice, different