Page 90 - Studio International - September October 1975

things happen. My indulgence, RS No. It is more that one's tendency toward literalism on be seen to be the big statement,
possibly, is leaving the strings all concerns have fitted in with the one hand, and a drive to it is just part of a continuum.
hanging around. theory. They have probably been transform personally on the BR Too many people are
BR Why do you leave them conditioned by ideas gained other hand. watching closely. Do you think
hanging? visually more than through RS Yes. I'd rather personalize the fact that the critical public is
RS It makes them visible, and it writing. Afterwards, I make my fabric than find it. so enlarged and sophisticated,
is always establishing the own rules, which seems to be a BR Or have it made. It is as if relatively, determines the options
vertical ... I sometimes get a technical convenience rather you have to, in some way, upon the artist ?
little excessive in the number of than a theoretical one. transform it yourself. RS I think it does affect the
strings I use, and then I start BR For example? RS I find that having an enormous artist.
editing and cutting them off. But RS My theory is that painting choice of materials is not very BR The quality of close scrutiny
I really prefer to let them remain should be single surfaced - good, and 1 do not think I have - what does it do to you?
the length they are. however disturbed it may be it the kind of sensibility to choose RS I do not feel in that position
BR In your work, particularly as should be one single surface. materials. I cannot make collage. because 1 do not think my feelings
one sees it in retrospect, it is as The paintings change because if I started to make a collage I are closely scrutinized, but one
though there was a tremendous they have been unsatisfactory. would go on forever, if you make imagines situations in which they
amount of self-criticism. BR One does see a number of a mark then it is you who has could be, in which one's every
RS I think there is. I sometimes serious technical changes in your made the mark and you can alter move is noted. I feel, in my
wish, when I look at the work. Why, for example, did you it, you cannot just take it away. present state, that I have a
paintings, that I had come up with change to acrylic paint and could You add to it and change it. tremendous freedom to go wrong
a kind of infallible facture for you describe the manner in BR That you bring up collage because 1 am not in the public
the painting. That, whatever one which paint is applied in the 1969 suggests to me how your work eye.
did, they were always painted in works where you start getting located itself very much with the BR Why do you never abandon
a certain way that was great and layering effects? single image, non-relational painting canvas: why did you
right and unquestionable. With RS I started using acrylic paint composition aesthetic, which become a canvas painter?
my painting the viewer is always because 1 was using oil paint like dominated American art in the RS I never liked work in resin
questioning: why did he do that? acrylic a lot of the time, sixties. There was a single image, and fibre glass. I never liked just
Why did he paint it in this way? thinning it down very much. a single surface that you were the sheer look of it; it always had
You know how you do not Acrylic was very easy to make working with, but it was very a tacky, odd surface. So I really
question the surface of a liquid and dried very quickly. The much an attack on cubist go in a roundabout way to avoid
photograph. trouble is that the brush strokes aesthetics. other material, and I also think
BR Or a Mondrian? tend not to have the life and RS I think that is probably one initially I did not abandon
RS Ora Mondrian. If paintings quality of an oil paint mark. The of the total underriding things in canvas because they were the
have not left the studio for a long paint, when it is thick, seems to my work. I really do believe in only materials I used and the
time and they are around, they go dead in the early pieces, but that. The one image. forms were evolving very quickly
do sometimes tend to get that coincided with a need not to BR Why? out of a rectangular canvas. The
reworked, and if they are around make brush strokes because the RS It is like a dream of one's box structure on the front of
long enough I can put them away surfaces I was painting were too youth. In a way, 1 almost felt as Piano is made out of separate
in a half-finished state, or in a distorted to make brush strokes if I had formulated that idea keyed stretchers, real stretcher
fed-up state, and then bring them on at that time. myself: someone else might have corners, even with bizarre
out. BR What about the use of spray done it, butI wrote an article on angles. If I had really thought
BR Do you do that? and different kinds of paints? Jackson Pollock . about it, it would obviously have
RS Not a lot. I do not take a RS I had to experiment : I could BR When? been best to make it solidly and
knife and rip it, I just put it away not do it with straight acrylic RS In 1956. 1 used the phrase cover it with the canvases if I
and it can come out again and I paints. 1 was using mixtures of 'one-image' then, and it is really needed to, but 1 didn't do it.
can work on it. One reason I put polyurethane, even oil paint over consistent with me. I think it is Thus, having made these big
it away is basically that the paint the top of polyurethane, and in one of the things 1 have held to objects in canvas, 1 just stuck
is not right; but sometimes, if it spraying, the spray marks had a throughout my work. You drop to it. I have done some things on
has been there long enough it has very particular kind of quality. I away, and don't live up to it, but aluminium and also on wood.
dried, and you are far enough thought of spraying originally as one's changing of the canvas BR What happened?
away from it, and you can really a way of getting consistent format was to escape the cliché RS The surface is not right. I
think about the painting again surfaces. I did a little spraying of painting a ragged rectangle. tried painting the aluminium,
and use the painting one has and it never worked for me that BR Do you think that your point and you have to put on vinegar
already done as a kind of under- way, and I found out that of departure was Abstract or something like that before you
painting. The painting is spraying made a very Expressionism as opposed to could get paint to stick. So,
important. Although I did talk particular kind of line, and also Cubism or various English eventually, I had to have the
earlier about the possibility of it was a line that was beyond the purists' styles, English landscape aluminium pieces just anodized
doing nothing, just accepting length of the brush stroke: you styles ? 'a colour' so they were more like
materials, I think that would be could spray forever where, with RS Yes. What has made my a multiple than an individual
very difficult for me. the brush stroke, you have to paintings different from the work work.
BR Why? end because the paint gives out. of my British contemporaries is BR How do you feel about
RS The experience of the painting Then 1 found the spray surface that I have continued to stay multiples, do you think they are
would be over too quickly: disappeared into the emulsion of close to the paintings of the valid?
making, conceiving; conceiving, the canvas, so I brushed on top major Abstract Expressionists. RS Yes I do. This is the way 1
making; looking - voom: gone, of it just to give the surface a BR What was it that attracted you like using processes. This is
all in a day. kind of reality - it was touched. immediately to them? where I am prepared to get
BR Weren't you thinking of BR Is it a spatial quality that you RS The first Pollock, the first involved in other processes. But
weaving your own canvas at one are attempting to get with the Francis and the first Rothko I my kind of physical three-
one time? layers of paint, with the graphite saw around 1956 were dimensional multiples have
RS Yes. But 1 was thinking of it, and paste and materials like that? tremendous: they looked like never been immensely successful
not to make myself more self- RS It is a space, the way that fur what paintings should be. It because people do not realize that
sufficient, but as a possibility of is a space: you can sink your seemed like 'the start', the thing it is like a new product line and
changing the quality of material. fingers into it. It is still a surface you could not reject out of hand, you dash into it with very little
Again, it is focusing in on fabric, but it has hidden depths. something to build upon rather experience, and end up with all
something: you focus in on the BR There is an interesting than to go against. those objects that get broken
threads and the warp and weft analogy between your alteration BR Do you think that painting easily or chipped.
of the canvas - there is the chance of materials, which remains today can have the same kind BR Do you think the role of the
of making a canvas where the within a literalist context, and of ambition that it could, for artist is changing in our society ?
warp and weft would be very the literalist use of materials in example, in 1951 ? RS No. I think a mass society
important. You would be making Stella's paintings where he has RS It can have the same kind of goes on without any kind of
it: it would not be like weaving. found materials which have ambition. Since one has seen relationship to the artist. We do
ButI think it would end up different kinds of specific those paintings one has become try and link ourselves in and
looking like those terrible surfaces with identifiable qualities much more aware how the think about it, but !cannot see
Yugoslav knitting things. It is a differentiated one from the painting world works. Now the how it can be related to a mass
danger. other, literally. It is almost as if attention on various society.
BR Have theoretical concerns it is a parallel to your manifestations is so close that BR But, in a sense, the production
played a very large influence in unwillingness to go into you can never make the big of multiples and prints, or the
your work? fabricated design. There is this statement, because it can never extension of the number of works,

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