Page 56 - Studio International - December 1970

of the day may be more interesting. dots on _ ground, I JC I presume the various modern heads in
JC Doesn't the very limited palette of colours tell an assistant to mask out the required areas the prints and the sculptures take off from the
you use ever bother you? and make the changes. I can then see what this many J awlensky constructivist heads you once
RL No, it doesn't. Though once in a while I like and that saves me two days saw in Pasadena Art Museum's collection?
think, wouldn't it be great to extend my work. I don't have to use an assistant, but it RL Yes, somewhat. I mean they get pretty .
colour range-but then it always seems it frees my energy for use Moreover, far fromJawlensky, but the idea started with
would be weaker and more artistic. I usually if I had to make the marble, brass, wood and his paintings.
prefer an even more restricted range, and if I glass sculptures myself, I would have to pains­ JC Was it the thirties' stylization inherent to
can do a thing in two colours, I do. I still use requi techniques these paintings of J awlensky that interested
primary colours, but in these prints I try to and skills. I would tum out only one sculpture you?
get as many variations as I can. a e ye_ r tha RL I guess what interested me was-'what in
JC However, in the prints your colours are several diverse sculptures in one year. the world a modern head could be about' -I
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very mixed, very secondary. JC But you like to do part of your painting? mean to make a man look like a machine. It's
RL Well, they are the same colours and I try RL Yes, be sc a done the machine quality of the twenties and
and get as wide a range as possible. It's ,not d th sa the thirties that interests me. Picasso and Braque
that I'm trying to get purple by using a prints or the Cathedral paintings. The fact that in Analytical and Synthetic Cubism weren't
mixture of red and blue-that's not what I so stencil the particularly intetested -in the machine asp�ct.
mean-it's the range of combinations, such as dots exactly the way I would leaves no parti­ It got consciously much more that way in
using black and white and a small amount of a fo m to do l do a Leger's painting and with the Futurists and
primary colour in ·one painting or print and of ted I Constructivists, the people portrayed becom­
in another, using a riotous combination of don't think it be sit a desk ing dehumanized by being related to ma­
bright colours with graduated do�s. I want to and j be b marsh­ chines. This relates strongly to comic book
be blatant. I don't see that I gain anything mal time- myself images which are not machine-like but are
by changing red to orange. The colour ra ge some work to do.on the paintings. largely the pr�duct of machine thinking.
�
I use is perfect for the idea, which has always y u your Then the fact that in the comics the rendition
been about vulgarization. I've always us.ed paintings? of a head, for instance, is so altered by the
the same colours-red, yellow, blue, black RL don out economics of printing. Dots; black lines,
and sometimes green on white-but I think painting like _ grow yellow hair, etc., are primarily the product of
my use of colour varies considerably. whole time-saving economies, thus the forms they
JC In some paintings or prints the image as painting while this is going on. I like the free­ take on are the product of the economics of
such doesn't seem to be terribly important to dom d in relationship to the printing. The art moderne idea of making a
·you in comparison to the overall colour. my head into something that looks as if it's been
RL Once I know what it's going to be, it isn't days. made by an engineering draftsman deals with
important. I want to give it whatever power p m more industrialization and manufacture, which is
I can as an image. I mean, I don't :want to ab a of what my painting has 'dealt with since '61 or
lose the quality of the image, but once I've the dots to delineate the cathedral, you so.
decided on it, I don't allow it to be an issue. use them to disrupt the surface. JC Do you think the thirties' style consciously
JC But the Cathedral prints are very abstract. RL Yes, I do it in a couple of ways; in one, all arose out of the idea of combining. man and
RL Y cs, that's the idea. I follow to a logical the dots have the same centres, but some are machine?
conclusion Monet's general idea in a much t others,, so a divided RL Yes, I really do. It's a concession to
more mechanical way. Of course, they are the inevitable industrialization-the opposite of
different from Monet, but they do deal with others, the dots in the darker areas are double pre-Raphaelite thought.
the impressionist cliche of not being able to shaded. JC This may be a little offbeat, but has there
read the image close up-it becomes clearer as JC The latter cluste to form the image? RL been anything written on your iconography
you move away from it. Yes, and the lighter, areas are also dotted. The that really interests you?
JC I understand that for the Cathedral paint­ prints are done over a flat colour such as red, RL Yes. I'm intrigued by unusual insights­
ings you used an assistant quite extensively yellow or blue, so it's possible to obtain a things I haven't thought of. I think of them as
to cut the stencils. la co even inventive, but not necessarily true. I mean
RL Yes, and to paint the dots in, too. using only four colours. I'm sure my own insights are just as askew as
JC But all the tedious work is done by your JC But some of the Cathedral prints are mono­ anyone elses. I ·have certain feelings which I
assistant? chromatic, for instance, the blue one. try to put into words, but I really don't
RL Yes. RL of course l the believe in the words. I think one tends to
JC As· a consequence, your productivity has in one 'colour. think up things that sound logical or insight­
increased? Or your leisure? The blue represents the arrival of evening. ful about one's work anyway.
RLBoth. JC The colours are all used logically to denote JC What do you think is the essenti l differ­
_a
JC You mean without an assistant, you the time day, like yellow for noon? What's ence between your prints and paintings, apart
wouldn't have been able to tackle them­ morning? from the obvious things such as medium,
they'd have been too boring to do? RL I' sure-I· gue a scale, etc. Your Haystack paintings and prints
RL I don't think I thought of that. It wasn't pretty abstract idea, but the purplish ones in · are about the same size, I think?
too boring for Mpnet. I like to work. I even red and blue are evening too, course. RL The prints are a little smaller, but that's
like repetitive jobs-but it would have taken , JC What's the black one? not significant. The paintings are all different
me years, and I would rather carry out my RL The black is on a flat blue colour; that's images. In terms of exactness in placement
other ideas. midnight, it's almost invisible. and register, the prints are better, because
JC In fact, using assistants gives . you more JC You seem to have trouble indicating day­ they can be better controlled in this medium.
freedom. light. Working on canvas isn't controllable in the
RL I don't like to repeat myself, but if I get RL Well, just a little bit of trouble,...red and same way. The paintings bear the tracks of
the idea of changing black dots on a white yellow stands for daylight. corrections of various things. The prints are

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