Page 89 - Studio International - September October 1975

Richard Smith

An interview with
Barbara Rose

BR If you were to analyse your
work could you say that there were
certain consistent concerns?
RS Yes, there is a consistent
approach in the physical
attributes; in the way I use paint.
It almost gets to be a cycle. The
Tate Gallery show* is arranged
with the latest work next to the
first work, and I think we see a
tremendous relationship just in
the sheer quality of the paint. It
does not seem to have altered:
I do not appear to learn anything
about it or be able to do anything
better. Perhaps in my kind of
painting one cannot do better.
BR Why do you change your
mind and suddenly reverse a
direction? You mentioned the
word 'cycle', and I perceive in.
your work a kind of cyclical Richard Smith
development. have moved to the country, you RS 1 do, but my information is Tate installation showing
RS You have a surfeit of doing do not paint landscapes. so sparse. I do not really know Diary 1975
something and want to change, RS No, I don't paint landscapes, what people think. I like to know Photo: Rowland Scherman
and you can build in a change. but 1 do not think my paintings what my friends are doing but
BR Do you think there is a are quite 'city' either: they are even that gets very difficult RS Sequence has been very
strong conceptual element in not glittery. . because none of it is imported important in my work, and a lot
your work? BR But it is very typical of your any more: the reproductions are of the recurring forms are
RS Yes, I conceive it almost work, I think, that there is an not enough. I'll never see any of sequential. They are to do with
totally, and when I am left to unconscious or undeliberate Frank Stella's new paintings in paring away an image so that
work out certain technical things. absorption of anything that London, for instance, because you can get down to something
Like with the rod paintings, the happens to be around. There is a Kasmin no longer imports them. that is not the image any more.
way in which they are made seepage. There are very few new names BR That way of creating a form
has changed but the change in RS Yes, 'seepage' is the right that I am interested in. has to do with the influence of
structure is hardly visible. word. Sometimes I think there is BR There is a very clear photographic cropping and
BR Why do you have to embody a wholehearted welcoming of it. relationship between your work thinking.
it in a physical object ? BR Do you think of yourself as a and, say, some of the most recent RS I wonder. It is the cutting
RS My concepts are physical. geometric painter? things that artists like Alan that makes the image, and so you
They have to be made, to be RS I am concerned with verticals Shields, Dick Tuttle and have less, and you actually make
visualized. and horizontals. I use a ruler Dorothea Rockburne are doing. another shape. You make a non-
BR What do you think the much more than is apparent RS I am conscious of those symmetrical shape by cutting off
biggest change has been in your when the paintings finally come people. With Alan Shields, for one corner and get one shape
work? out. instance, his earlier things were that is symmetrical, and break
RS In terms of actual structure, BR Is there something about very like mine - the ones on the symmetry again and go on to
the radical break is between the your personality that explains wooden structures: there was a the next thing. I cannot think of
big three-dimensional paintings your thoroughness and big tent-shaped one. I had a it as cropped photography.
and the new paintings. In methodical investigation of every tremendous fellow-feeling about BR There is quite a bit of
concepts the break is between the conceivable permutation on the them because they had the same sequential imagery where there
first 1963 three-dimensionals, the one hand, and on the other, kind of problems. is a before and an after, a past,
and the next three-dimensional your aversion to the strictly BR Why did you decide to leave present and future, of a particular
paintings which were flatter and mathematical? New York in 1966? image. I also sense that you are
more consistently one colour, RS I find I do start off with a RS New York became much less not giving it away any more. In
not picking up on very allusive regular idea, but the works attractive because it was ceasing order to perceive the whole image
material. The allusions were and themselves actually turn out to to be a cosmopolitan city where the viewer is required to make a
are very deeply buried. be bizarre in that they are off- you could live as an alien. rather active and difficult mental
BR Why did you give up popular centre and not right. BR Do you think that leaving effort. I find that a crucial change,
imagery in 1966? BR Why do you think that keeps New York affected your work? and perhaps something else one
RS Too many people got into the happening? RS I think it might have. 1 do might say is that the mental
act. It became less interesting, RS I do not think I am a solid find I am affected by where I am, exercise you require is part of the
and the source material is for me enough character. I am too who and what I see. evolution of modernism.
not that sustaining. wandering in my ideas, really. BR Is painting really in a kind of RS That is something you can say
BR The picking of a theme and BR Do you think first of final phase? Is this the end of better than I. I find the paintings
the reconsideration of it occurs limitations, or of possibilities? painting as we have known it now simpler to understand, in
in your work, but your bias is RS I think of possibilities, but since the Renaissance? that there is less going on and
towards formal concerns and not I am very quickly conscious of RS One does work through that. there are fewer basic tenets.
towards subject-matter, which my limitations because, in certain It is like backing into a corner, BR Are you aware of theoretical
is extremely incidental. What are ways, ideas can be conceived and you are pressed up against the concerns or is there just a sense
consistently reconsidered and within limitations. If I had the wall and the wall gives. It might of necessity that you must do
revalued, in different contexts, idea for the hanging pieces and not be a whole new country out this or that?
are the formal concerns of shape, think 'I want to fill this room there, but there is something more RS There is a necessity. I do not
colour, surface and scale? with colour', immediately my to do. think I would theoretically
RS Yes, I find links with popular mind starts clicking and so the BR You really have done only work it out that this is the way,
imagery are very important when gap between the realization.of one set of serial paintings, which that 'x' and 'y' have been done
they happen because they possibilities and the actual getting were the pictures from the and so therefore I must do this.
are a kind of release, and they down to the physical thing of Gallery dell'Ariete shown in I am very strict with myself in the
become quite overt in some of the making it, is almost 1968 in Milan. 1 wonder if you way I conceive the painting and
paintings. But I could not fit instantaneous. could speak about the issue of in most of the way I execute it. I
them in again. BR Do you still feel related to sequence versus serials, and why do sometimes have indulgences
BRI was surprised that, as you developments in New York ? you are interested in sequence. in execution, and sometimes
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