Page 26 - Studio International - December 1974

WHAT

SCULPTURE

IS

WILLIAM TUCKER

Sober Brown 1973. Oil on canvas, 24 x 24 in. Gimpel and Hanover Gallery, Zurich.

of colourist. I'm really descended from the The Girl Who Was And Is (The following is the first two of a series of
tonal painters. I'm a tonalist rather than a Describe in shaded line eight seminars given to advanced students and
colourist. a girl responded to my touch other sculptors at St Martin's School of Art
T R : Yes. I was surprised that Kramer, 36 24 35 in September — October this year.)
who wrote the short piece on you, I think about twice crossed her thighs
a show you had in the States, which one reads before she spread herself upon the sheet I will begin with averse from Wallace Stevens's
at Gimpel's, manages to slip in Matisse in some Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction:
Globes of Ivory moved with two pink discs,
context. You must become an ignorant man again
before the brown appears she must be drawn.
W S : Oh no ... not Matisse. I don't think And see the sun again with an ignorant eye
we've anything in common. Actually I was Naked pits she chose to show, the mount of And see it clearly in the idea of it. [1]
quite happy to get a review at all because very Venus still untouched, fair triangle guards For 'sun' I ask you to read 'sculpture'.
few Europeans ever get a review in America. that mystery place. Until now I have thought, and have
They dismissed us about ten years ago, apart encouraged students to think, of sculpture,
Conceal no more the movement of the line that
from Hockney who they see as an interesting especially recent sculpture, in the matrix of
stretches from the centre to the back and
illustrator. history: not the history of last year, or even of
back again to where the line began.
T R : Let's forget Hockney. You seem to the last ten or twenty years, but in terms of the
The line that leads the eye to other parts
have gone back largely to earth colours, really a total and fundamental change in sculpture's role
is sometimes blurred, where two forms
kind of monochromatic painting, yet there are that occurred in the time of, and largely through
meet divide the forms and let the
the occasional outbursts of vibrant colour. In the action of, Rodin. I believed — I still believe
space be seen.
the Gimpel Fils Show I remember one green — that by concentrating on the historic nature
canvas with an off-white configuration. A girl in Egypt stretched her arm like you of Rodin's achievement, and that of his
W S : That was a small painting. I couldn't and waited for five thousand years, outstanding successors, notably Brancusi,
have painted a big one that colour. growing no older as time passed by. Matisse and Picasso, in the first two decades of
T R : The tape's coming to an end. I like this century, that we could in some way focus
Let me incise that line again and you
your painting because there's nothing contrived and clarify what sculpture now was about,
become that Cairo girl, being today
about it. rather than by following the well-trodden paths
as she was then.
W S : That's a good word, contrived. That that lead from Cubism to the present day.
means so much. So much American painting is This time my purpose is quite different, even
contrived. Those drips, they are absolute opposite. I want to strip away all context from
masters at knowing exactly where the drip is (To be published later this year, opposite the work, so far as that is possible, the physical
going to stop. drawing Cairo Girl, by Martha Jackson Gallery). context, the cultural context, the biographical