Page 24 - Studio International - December 1974

WILLIAM SCOTT (Below left) Egypt Series 4 1972
Oil on canvas, 80 x 100 in.
Martha Jackson Gallery, New York.
(Below right) Black with It 1973
66 x 88 in.
IN CONVERSATION WITH TONY ROTHON Gimpel Fils Gallery, London.

T R : You're the man who 'does pots and about is the exact relationship between each of An extremely important aspect of drawing is
pans'... those forms, and that fundamentally they related to material, the ground structure and
W S : The subject of my painting ... would should be irregular. the choice of material used will determine the
appear to be the kitchen still-life, but in point T R : Is it the Matisse thing? Displace a final character to a large extent, as one cannot
of fact, (and I think I've said this before) my shape half an inch and the whole deal's off? make calligraphic marks with a ball-pen, the
subject is the division on canvas of spaces, and W S : Yes, and I feel that if the spectator touch and mark of charcoal on canvas or paper
relating one space or one shape to another. looked at one of my paintings and felt like will immediately make a mark that determines
That is the fundamental sort of reason for my moving one of the forms even a quarter of an the form. In many of my drawings that I have
painting. inch from its neighbouring form, the balance of wished to be fluid, textural and tonal and on a
T R : On a flat plane? the painting would be thrown out. I'm what large scale I have used charcoal as the means of
W S : On a flat plane. I place what appear Americans call a compositional painter. I paint securing change and movement. For smaller
to be symbols of the kitchen still-life and ... compositions in the old-fashioned sense. drawings, and amongst my more recent drawing,
well, what I'm concerned about always in the T R : Yes, I can see that. Would you tell me I have resorted to the use of pencil on paper to
painting is to have the exact balance ... about those 'fin' shapes which occur in the help me achieve the effect I wish to gain whilst
relationship between one ... I don't like calling 'Egypt' paintings? working towards a more abstract concept. A
it 'object' because it has almost ceased to be an W S : Well, that triangular thing, I don't book of my drawings is going to be published
object. actually know the meaning of it. It's a at the end of this year. The publisher is the
T R : Would 'figure' be the right word? hieroglyph, like one of my saucepans only Martha Jackson Gallery, New York ...
Motif perhaps. No that's a revolting word. turned up the other way. (A series of Scott's poems will be published
W S : Well it is a figure; it's figuration. The T R : Perhaps we could talk a little about beside the drawings. One of these poems
kind of works, you see, that have been done your drawing. appears at the end of this interview.)
before me, in the past, are paintings that, like W S : I find that there are times when the T R : In a little 50p catalogue at Gimpel's
Egyptian paintings, were concerned with the scribble, if it has been made spontaneously, can you were written about by an American
flat on the picture plane. be for me the starting point of a more developed critic, Hilton Kramer, who put you somewhere
T R : One doesn't have to look too closely drawing. I collect many of my own scribbles between a Malevich or a Nicholson and a
at your paintings to work out the order in and re-look at them in the way that many other Rothko or a Whistler. How do you feel about
which coats of paint have been applied. Egypt artists find their source material in popular that sort of classification?
Series No. 3 at Gimpel's is a configuration of photography or nature scrap-books and period W S : Well I know that I'm a painter who has
seven shapes, four left the colour of the ground, postcards. Pavement graffiti by children and taken a good deal from the past, and perhaps
a white, as an orange/earth wash covers the the hieroglyphics incised on stone by the I've turned it into my own, but I'm always
canvas. The remaining three are left the colour ancients are constantly in my mind. The perfectly happy to say who the artists were I
of the wash as a dense ochre covers the surface. relationship of children to early man and their took from. My painting is built on the painting
W S : This is quite interesting. You counted significance to myself is important. I also find that went before me. I took from Whistler,
the number of forms in my painting. Well it important to keep around me some of the I was very interested in Whistler in my youth,
actually you find very often the title of my objects that were the subject of my early but then I was very much interested in the
painting will speak of, we'll say, two forms. paintings ... as time passes they change and painters whom Whistler had taken from, that is
It's as simple as that. But what I'm concerned offer me a renewal. Japanese art ... and he owed a good deal to