Page 13 - Studio International - March April 1975

Activity Part

Interviews with Max Kozloff, Darby Bannard,
Rosalind Krauss, Harold Rosenberg by James and
Caryn Faure Walker.
of This is the first of a two-part series of interviews with

critics in New York, taped at the end of 1974. The
second part will contain interviews with Jeremy Gilbert-
Criticism Rolfe, Roberta Smith, Paul Stitelman and Lucy

Lippard.

Max Kozloff are psychological ones . . . had an historical word or two to say at a
`We're hardly conscious of certain certain moment, when it was most
`I think that in the 1970's, while one beliefs, habits, reactions, that absolutely readily received. Let us say Donald Judd
might, as a critic, continue to speak of trigger all kinds of biases in the way we or Robert Morris. If you look back at
personalities — a typical sixties concern, look at aesthetic phenomena and in their this criticism now, you can judge it as
(which personalities were important, or social implications. I find that so much you would, I suppose, other critical
needed to be isolated) — the important of our working doctrines can be phenomena, as particular expressions of
question now is issues. What are the described as a kind of pollution, in that taste, of intellectual aspiration, and the
important issues, the situations that they do not accord very well with our like. Where it tends to differ, obviously, is
affect us all and that we have been actual functioning psychologies. So that that it is infinitely more intensified as a
ignoring up to this time. Personalities there has been an enormous schism vehicle of self-expression, and of style,
then become secondary to this, or between the way we behave — the way we and of dominance, above all. It tends to
played out of the notion of the act as human beings in a normal fashion, be extremely manipulative criticism,
phenomena, the context, the pressures and our response to works of art. This extremely parti pris — not that critics are
that we all endure.'
almost becomes a root problem in our strangers to parti pris positions. But this
'Do you reflect the issues raised by culture, in that we have been schooled to is an escalation of such a degree as almost
the art or do you instigate them quarantine our aesthetic experience into to make it a difference in kind. One finds
yourself?' a really very impacted area of our this quite natural, given the voice, given
`Well, there's some hubris involved ... consciousness, a hot-house mental the necessities behind such statements.
since to write criticism is in a sense to environment. If one breaks open even That is, the ultra-competitiveness of the
assume that one is producing ideas one pane of this structure, the fixed position of the artist, finding
rather more than consuming them.' transplants within are all threatened. expression in words now as an extension
`How does reviewing fit in?' `I have been misunderstood as a great of the physical or visual artefact... . It
`Reviewing goes on, that is to say it is objector to abstract art, or certain forms becomes a double-barrelled kind of
on the spot coverage of art in process .. . of conceptualising in art. If that presence. On the other hand, its strengths
However, it has been clear that this role impression has gotten about, it's either also become its weaknesses : its blinkered
is very obviously part of the support because I've not verbalised clearly, or rigidities, its extraordinary intolerance,
system. It is not a questioning mechanism audiences have misread me for their own its imperious attitudes, its historical
at all. It's really involved with input purposes in thinking that they had to deal determinism, its refusal to see the field,
that will keep the various interested with a very prescriptive kind of creature. its spot-lighting and canonization of two
parties in some kind of traction with I am, on the other hand, exercised or three individuals . . .
each other, so that there will be turn-over. against abstract thinking about art. `If as a critic you are putting all your
It's a processing kind of activity — I'm This is something else. A recourse to ideological eggs in one idiom's basket,
not terribly interested in that . . . abstract formulae when discussing art, there will eventually come a point of
`There are many possible interests in criticism, or in art history: this, for me, critical disappointment. When that
that may be served under the term is a very self-defeating factor. To the happens to a critic who has performed
criticism. A critic obviously has in extent that artists participate in this in in such a fashion, then that critic drops
common with any other art viewer the their thinking, I find it somehow a kind out, there's nothing further to say. It is
interest of having an experience. There of malaise that really must be combated; definitely a long haul occupation: to be in
will be some of us who will put that a cure must be sought for it. We deny any sense responsive to aesthetic
experience on some kind of a pedestal, our own situations, our own carnal conditions over a period of time, when
and presume that a specific account of envelopes, our own specific historical your own generation is superseded
that experience is the penultimate moments, the more we yield to the by later ones. A number of workers in the
critical act. I must say I find that a very tendency to imagine ourselves floating field have felt very demoralized for some
hospitable activity. It's almost a free in time and in space. To the extent years now, in that they cannot see as it
primordial base of criticism. What the that modern criticism, modern once existed, the continuing vitality of
critic in this case does, is take historiography, is a party to this kind of the avant-garde hypothesis. Without
responsibility for verbalizing, projecting abstract thinking, to that extent we're that notion of there being an elect group
outwards his various responses. That was, in a dilemma. We become victims of our of singularly processed individuals who
of course, the basis for my earlier own ethnocentrism, our own cultural would reclaim the historical tradition of
`Renderings' essays. It doesn't, imperialism, our own fetishising of works what was indeed a very dynamic period,
however, give anywhere near a of art. In other words, we cease to be the outlook seems to certain critics
comprehensive account of what is aware of our limitations — that is, our own extremely bleak. And then they fall back
possible in the exchange between authenticity as feeling organisms. It's either on eclectic attitudes, or become
ourselves and works of art. To stop at not real.' academics, or they talk out of prepared
this point seems to me to insulate our `You say artists and critics have and more and more besieged positions.
aesthetic experience in a fairly divergent interests. What do you I'd like to avoid that — it requires a great
solipsistic way, without extending to our make of artists who write criticism?' deal of thinking .. .
critical intelligence the full potential that `We have had a little history of certain `One doesn't want to see the
it might have, insofar as we are artists — at least in this country, writing repetition of clichés, or stereotypes
constituted as social beings, as well as we influential criticism, criticism that has that have long ago been exhausted, or

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