Page 91 - Studio International - September October 1975

is an aspect of this relationship. example, when you begin to fold BR It is very rare for a modern RS It plays a very important role,
RS Yes, I like the idea that work and to cut, can you explain how artist to have the kind of especially for people who cannot
could be owned by lots of people, these new processes come into patronage that the renaissance travel and see exhibitions. At
but in fact the prints do seem to your work? artists had. Can you see that kind best, it enlivens the dialogue.
go to a limited number of people. RS Folding was the aim - I had of patronage reoccurring? Painters talking to each other
The people who buy paintings been working with these bent RS Not as a continuous thing. I seldom get to the nitty-gritty
also buy prints, rather than surfaces and I was bending them. think there will be a few points. One can almost number
- people only buying prints. I They were basically like a front- commissions for the lucky few. the times one has had a deep
think prints are much too faced view of a box on a pedestal. Otherwise it will be in the hands conversation with another painter.
expensive. I did an unlimited Or one could read it as an of professional commission- BR Do you feel, at this moment
print for Habitat which I thought isometric drawing of a box that decorators. in your career, isolated ?
was one of my best images, and was always there growing out BR How do you reconcile the RS I have an awareness of being
it was also very attractive, very of the base, and finally coming contradictions between making isolated, but I don't feel it. In my
sunny. They were selling for into focus. I was making some a very private personal work, I have all kinds of
three pounds or so but very few drawings and it occurred to me statement, and then wanting a associations with all kinds of
were sold. that the simplest way of altering large public to appreciate a people, but the connection seems
BR Why was that? something was either to cut it or statement that is, after all, hidden.
RS I just think that people do not fold it. Just to fold the corner up subjective? BR Is there a theatrical element
need it, or want it - was enough - it changed the look RS It is subjective at certain in your work ?
unfortunately. Or someone has of it, the quality of the flat levels and very open and public RS Certain of the works do
not done a really hard sell on it. surface, and so it developed out at other levels. I feel and want relate to a very old-fashioned
BR Why do you put so much of that, folding in sequences. the work to have an aspect to it idea of theatre. Not a theatre of
emphasis on the decision-making BR Do you think there is a that is very simple-and easy to performance, not a living theatre.
moment ? It is as if, in your work, relationship in your work appreciate. Unfortunately, At times I have used the
there is a state of fluidity, or between the painting and the people look in such a way that proscenium as an element, and
experiment, that goes on, and printmaking? they expect not to understand. 1 now my paintings could be like
suddenly you make a number of RS Yes, in certain ways. The idea have done pieces which at certain scenery moving up into the flies.
decisions. Then you play the rest of folding is much more easy to levels are very understandable or I am very interested in certain
of the game according to those realize in terms of paper than very readable. I cannot see why kinds of theatre people, like
rules. specifically in terms of canvas they couldn't be loved by a lot of Edward Gordon Craig or
RS The decisions 1 make seem at and stretcher. It is a paper thing, people. Adolph Appia, whose sets pre-
the time so basic, and I can really folding. And then later on, when BR Do you think there is that dated the 20th-century taste for
live with them and believe in I was folding, cutting and possibility of different levels of simple rather than decorated
them: it is a whole set of rules. It interlacing pieces of paper, appreciation in your work ? forms.
somehow builds up into this translating those into paintings RS Yes. I think the work - the BR So you do not think theatre
whole fabric of decision about became a very complex carpentry scale of it, the colour, structure, is a threat to art, or that
making things. Once you have exercise whereas it was relatively and those kind of things - is theatrical elements compromise
set the pattern going, then it is simple to do in paper. But I glamorous and moving. the purity-of painting?
just the sheer logistics of making followed this through and had the BR Don't you feel that your most RS No. But I don't really like
it and doing it. With these rod/ stretchers made, and 1 think the recent work on Grey Slice is performance art very much; I
tube/kite paintings, everything paintings themselves are getting more reductive, minimal don't know what it is doing in a
fell into place so well that I extraordinary, and beautifully and difficult? gallery a lot of the time.
found all the sources quickly, done. RS That is difficult because it is BR In your earlier work, you
and it was good. I was really BR Which way do you see your an acquired, solitary were very much affected by
watching, you know, drifting art developing? appreciation. You would not experiences in your daily life: do
around, searching for ways of RS I would like to do paintings want that hanging in a bank. you find that the case now?
making a light-weight painting. for specific spaces. A lot of one's BR When one looks over your RS No. The kind of experiences
BR Why did you do that? work has been so big that it is work, there is a total investigation I would like now would be to go
RS Because I was ending up impossible to think of domestic of surface, a total investigation of to other countries; see other
making these kind of tanks, or spaces at all. It is not the kind of colour, and then a redefinition/ buildings and more exotic things
battleships - it took six people art that people can have: it is alteration/redefinition. The most which I feel could be nourishing.
to lift one of them onto the wall, ridiculous, like a boat built in a recent work attacks the problem Urban culture and commercial
and the motivation behind them basement. of how the painting is hung. It cinema I enjoy, but they don't
was the idea of light-weight BR Then why do you do it so draws attention to and reports on send me back to the studio.
things floating up into space. big? the fact that the painting is a BR Is there some sort of conscious
They were incredibly heavy. RS One gets carried away by one's physical object that hangs on a primitivism in the way you make
BR Lead clouds. own sense of scale. When ten feet wall, and is suspended and also your new paintings?
RS Right just like that. They sounds small, you start saying subject to the world of gravity. Is RS Yes. Technically, my skills
are primitive and I really want
had hidden wing nuts and things twelve, and so on. They will not this methodical quality in your to get into a basic hand-made
like that, very secretive and go through doors. In many of thinking deliberate? thing: hand-made without
awful. I could not go on doing them 1 did want to invade space, RS Quite deliberate, but it also sleight of hand. I like the idea of
it, so 1 was trying to find a way but a lot of the paintings 1 think has to do with the time element. the string and the knot - binding
of making something else. of as quite modest happen to be If my work was, say, jotting down something is very basic.
BR Do you think that there is a big. notes, it would be much more BR Is this an anti-technology
morality in taking BR 1 personally believe there is flighty. The thing that chains me statement: how do you feel about
responsibility for decisions? an evolutionary tendency in to the methodical approach is the art and technology?
RS It's very difficult to think modern abstract painting towards actual making: this leads to RS Not too happy. I do not
about morality, because I do not a public art, an environmental art, method. The actual time involved particularly want computers or
think that those kind of and that there is now a possibility leads to making the work rigorous laser-beams in my life and even
decisions about technique and for realizing works of this nature. because you have time to reject, less in my art.
physical considerations are Would you be in favour of public and think again. It is much more BR Do you think of yourself as
necessarily moral. But they can art ? difficult to shift one's position having a personal style?
be symbols of moral standards. RS Not as a full-time jumping around if one is making an object. RS I think 1 have a personal
BR You make a decision and then from one commission to the next, BR I am still trying to get at style, but not a trade mark.
abide by whatever the but I would certainly like the what you would define as the
consequences of that decision opportunity to do it occasionally. biggest change in your work.
are. Is that part of your If one was working totally in the RS It is difficult. I always have
character ? public view one's work would this feeling that I never learn. I
RS Yes. Within the painting at suffer enormously. pick up a paint brush, but I still
least, I can follow things BR Would you work differently? don't really know what I am
through and get things done, but RS Yes, if I was working going to do. I pick it up now with
in other aspects of my life I do consistently in that field. Ideas as much confidence as I did in
not follow things through. In occur within the privacy of one's 1960 - or lack of confidence.
painting I try to. studio and through doing things BR Do you think art criticism • 'Seven Exhibitions 196I-75' at
BR There are changes that occur to no purpose, but to do things to plays a central role in artistic the Tate Gallery until
in your work as a result not only a purpose - to fill space (a) or to consciousness today, or do you September 28
of technical changes but also satisfy committee (b) - then I do think it is overrated in terms of its
changes in processes. For think the work is compromised. importance?
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