Page 15 - Studio International - March April 1975

free up the centre, and let the centre be and all the rest. Sooner or later they will not in relationship to David Smith, and
so purely sensual. These things exist at all go their own way, and have their own not even in relationship to the things I
the beginning and at the end. They exist place. I see conceptual things once in a saw in the work, which I still think are
for Olitski when he is trying to figure out while that amuse me, and interest me, valid and important to see - but in terms
how to make the painting, and they exist but that's about as far as it goes. Most of of the implicit historicism in the
for me when I'm trying to figure out how it is dead and boring, even on it's own modernist position, historicism which
he made the painting - and in between terms .. . then projects those values forward into
is the art, and the experience of the art, `Painting and visible connected the work of the 'sixties, and therefore uses
and that's what counts. That's the only sculpture is where the best art is to be those as ways to exclude lots of work.
thing that counts : the experience, the found. There are reasons for this, and it I've seen that in Greenberg, not so much
judgement of it, and the pleasure from it. probably will continue . . . But everything in his writing, but in the position he
That's where the moral side comes in, a goes in cycles - painting can dry up, makes known, along with Mike Fried,
pleasure, a valuable pleasure, a pleasure look how sculpture was dried up for so Darby Bannard, and so on. In the late
without side-effects, that doesn't back- many years. Whether the best stays in 'sixties, I just simply felt that what was
fire or boomerang. I know this is vague, painting and sculpture doesn't matter. evolving out of that position, out of a
but it has to be, it's all experience. If you It's only important that there is some kind of notion of sculpture as
love art you know what I'm talking about, vehicle for the expression of whatever is tremendously pictorial and
if you don't, you don't. One of the good in art, and if it goes out of painting dematerialized, and involved in a
greatest pleasures - mental pleasures - and sculpture into something else, who certain notion of illusionism - the
that I know is the undefensive cares - who cares about canvas except the sculpture it seemed to be producing
appreciation of good art. You don't get canvas manufacturer ? Nobody cares seemed to me very inferior as sculpture.
it unless you work at it, any more than about the medium. The only thing is I mean I found all that English sculpture
you can paint well without working at it. where you find quality. really not satisfying to me as sculpture.
You've got to do your roadwork, keep in `Back in the middle fifties, when I was On the other hand I didn't really see the
training. I often think of athletics as an learning to paint, art magazines were terms on which one could relate to other
analogy, though of course it's imperfect. there to give us the word from the big sculptural phenomena. And at that time -
In painting, and in appreciating painting, city, in terms of pictures, though, and when I came back from England and
there's that kind of pleasure, when a we'd look through and read 'Art News' came to New York, what happened was
difficult body of work suddenly comes and study it very assiduously, as if we that I saw the work of Richard Serra, I
across, or when I put on that last layer were going to a gallery. This was the value simply became convinced. For me that
and know it's right. It is an absolutely art magazines had for us . . . was sculpture, without any question.
tremendously elating feeling, it can `How about magazines today?' Also I became convinced by - not even
change a bad mood to a good one, it can `I have mixed feelings about that. I am so much the work, which I hadn't seen
affect me very strongly.' very depressed when I go out to a place much of - Smithson's enterprise. So I
`How about the question of formal like Kent State to teach, as I did this had those two post-minimal phenomena,
development in modernist art?' summer, and I find students totally and so for me then criticism in
`Now that's really difficult. Is there, or intimidated by these magazines, and by relationship to sculpture became an
can there be described such a thing as an the garbage that's in them, and they're enterprise of understanding the terms
imperative, either general or specific, very humble - it's just pathetic. And if I by which I found these projects and
that is going to demand - and like quality, come from the east and all that, from works convincing .. . finding language
not "exist" anywhere - that such and such New York, and I say "Don't be that would hook up to that part of my
must be done in order to produce the intimidated, it's garbage", you can't sensibility which I knew was responding
best painting. I can't answer that question, imagine the relief that comes over their to this work. But I didn't have any
except to say that there seems to be - it's faces. They say "you mean to say this terminology, any language, any set of
always in retrospect - a pressure in art really is nonsense" and I say "Yes, it's aesthetic criteria, to understand that
making for invention of some kind, for really nonsense. Don't read it. Just fold work, to make some kind of sense of it,
working against what's gone before. up the magazine and go on painting." since I was completely formed by the
Whatever quality is, whatever is in art It's just inexcusable, that a magazine modernist position.
that makes it good, has something to do doesn't have a consciousness of that `One of the terms that the 'Sense and
with the pressure an artist puts against responsibility. That's what I object to Sensibility' article, for instance, is
what he's got in order to make something most, not keeping the stuff clear . . willing to accept in relation to sculpture,
else. Something about that process gets `Does some of the tentativeness of is an investigation of the
into art and makes it good. It's to do with the critical process get lost in the phenomenological situation, that is, the
human accomplishment, pressure for writing?' space between the viewer and the work
renewal - it's hard to pin down. `It gets thrown out. You know why ? of art, and the time that that space
Greenberg has been describing this Because you can't put it there. When implies. It wants to make an account of
process as it has appeared in the recent you get down to the typewriter you've the way that temporality gives rise to
past, quite accurately, but that has been got to come out as briefly as possible meanings, instead of simply legislating
taken not as description but as with the conclusions you've made. If you that time and space out of the aesthetic
proscription or dictation - it musn't be put your whole thought process on the experience. A section of the modernist
taken that way, it's not intended that way.' line, on the page, you'll bore the position, for instance as formulated by
`Do the people who make art of interested reader and open yourself up Fried in 'Art and Objecthood', really
lesser quality suffer from a miscon- to the illiterates. It's like a legal brief. wants to see the work of art as existing
ception about art or lack of ability?' All sorts of things go on, but when you in a transcendent space, and giving rise to
`Ability is nearer to it, in the broad present it it's got to be solid. Tentativeness a transcendental moment, which it thinks
sense, not the capacity to wield art- would make your writing more of as being timeless - or "presentness"
making tools. It's ability in terms of being sympathetic, but at great sacrifice. for him, is really a way of simply
willing to do something that's very chancy You say what you can as clearly as eradicating the temporality of experience.
and risky, and taking on the most possible. It must be clear.' • For me, for both the 'Sense and
difficult problems - no, that's not right, Sensibility' and Rauschenberg articles,
that's not reasonable, taking on the most lived time is absolutely central to seeing
difficult problems isn't going to make the those works as creating new forms of
best painting . .. but it's something like Rosalind Krauss aesthetic experience, and describing
that. They don't have the character, or certain kinds of consciousness, which is
the nature, to go all the way .. . There's `How have your views changed directly dependent on time.'
all kinds of contention right now about since 'Terminal Iron Works' of '7i ?' `Is the development of a new
which art form is best or right, which is `When I wrote 'Terminal Iron Works', aesthetic experience a value in itself?'
silly. The reason is that they all came I think that my critical position was still `It seems to me that question comes
up in the gallery-museum situation - very shaped by the whole modernist out of a notion of prescriptive aesthetics,
"formalist" art, earth art, conceptual art, thing. I had a kind of crisis after that - where you say certain things have a value )

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