The Me That Writes
When I was three I could read and write at such an advanced level that it was supposed I would be enrolled in college by the beginning of my teens. Yet, this was not to be. I had come down with scarlet fever the winter of my sixth year and for five days suffered a delirium. My frail and weakened body shivered in an ice bath for days in order to keep my being from slipping back whence it came. Two weeks had passed since the fever broke and the doctor gave his permission for me to return to school - the place that I loved most. But upon my restoration, it was clear that I was not the same child. I could no longer read or write.
I had to reteach myself. What was simple and effortless before had become a mess of cobwebs. Disappointment was common and helplessness was my unceasing adversary. Yet, weakness is not in my nature. Determined to claim what was rightfully mine I spent the next twenty years fighting a battle between my capacity for thought and my literary deficiencies. |
The gossamer snares have long gone away even if I do have momentary lapses in grammar. But my love for writing has only increased over the years. It is an old friend who knows me best. As a professor, I have great sympathy for those whom find writing difficult and take considerable lengths to encourage and mentor their desires to tame the beast. Yet, artists and designers often find themselves battling the word, precisely because they are visual beings.
But in an academic setting, this can work against them. This is why it is so important to stand up for their rights for communicational equality. I know to the rest of the world this sounds strange, but if you are an artist who thinks in images, this is a very natural concept. Chuck Close, a national treasure, was the first person to introduce me to this idea.
Chuck and my good friend Lorenzo Pace are both great artists. Moreover they are both dyslexic with words, but not with images, Ask yourself if you cannot draw a face, something you see everyday, how can you judge an artist who can, but finds writing challenging.
But in an academic setting, this can work against them. This is why it is so important to stand up for their rights for communicational equality. I know to the rest of the world this sounds strange, but if you are an artist who thinks in images, this is a very natural concept. Chuck Close, a national treasure, was the first person to introduce me to this idea.
Chuck and my good friend Lorenzo Pace are both great artists. Moreover they are both dyslexic with words, but not with images, Ask yourself if you cannot draw a face, something you see everyday, how can you judge an artist who can, but finds writing challenging.
FORGOTTEN FIND:
ORPHANED WORKS FROM NEW YORK
By Anthony Crisafulli
Written for educational purposes
Pushed to the back of the BK Trading Post Used Furniture Store room is a large box, filled with unwanted wall hangers. That’s all they were, orphaned art, no longer wanted, remembered, or loved until Robin Lilarose stumbled upon them. One doesn’t usually find original work, expensively framed with stickers on the back indicating the artist, title, media and year of completion in second-hand shops in Reading, Pennsylvania. But if you do, this collector’s advice is “take them all.” Ms. Lilarose brought them home, put on her Sherlock Holmes hat, and over the next several years tracked down their genealogy. And what a genealogy they have! They were all part of a single collection that once belonged to Mineral Technologies, and hung in their headquarters
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within the iconic Chrysler Building on Lexington Avenue in New York City. The collection was carefully built for Mineral Technologies by the prestigious firm Modern Art Consultants, who also curated collections for Bank of New York, Dun and Bradstreet, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Toyota, Time Warner, and ASCAP. Representing an exquisite understanding of works on paper of the 1980s and 90s, the grouping includes artists such as Lowell Nesbitt, Joanna Pousette-D’Art, Nancy Azara, Peter Ruta, and unexpectedly, the poster pop-art innovator William Weege, who with “Big Daddy” Roth, put the 1960s San Francisco graphic art scene on the map.
It was not yet spring when Diane LaBelle, CEO of Charter Arts, first told me that Ms. Lilarose wanted to donate the collection to the school for its benefit. She asked if my wife, who was an experienced gallery director both in New York and Philadelphia, and I, an unholy mix of critic, curator, and collector, would collaborate on this project. Some people like my wife possess a sharp mind and good instincts, and can tell you immediately what she thinks of the work. I admire this quality, but unfortunately do not possess it. I suspect this is why she was a director and I only a critic. Artworks to me are like people; I need to spend time with them before I can make up my mind, and not a little time.
Twenty years ago, I was distraught because everybody liked Rembrandt. They praised him for his colors, his use of light, and his mastery. But I hated Rembrandt more than I hated Pollock, and I couldn’t tell you why. So, I decided I had to do something about it. My solution was slightly unconventional, but novel. I flew to Amsterdam to the Rijksmuseum, which houses the best Rembrandts in the world. When the museum opened at 9 A.M. the day after I arrived, I paid my admission and proceeded to the Rembrandt room, where there was a long wooden bench. I cleared my head, sat down, and looked and tried to see something in the work that I had never seen before, something brilliant. When it was 5 o’clock, I left, and came back the next day at 9 and repeated this process for four days. The first day, I couldn’t see anything. The second day, I was bored. The third day, I think the word got out, as people looked at me more than the Rembrandts. But at the very last hour of the fourth day, the paintings became familiar friends. I haven’t been back to Amsterdam since, but whenever I see a picture of one of my old friends, I am filled with appreciation.
You probably have to be a little crazy to love art as much as I love art, and I’m too old to apologize for it, and too vain to attempt to justify myself. So I can tell you with all honesty that when I first saw this collection of work, I didn’t fully appreciate it, and there were only two or three pieces that spoke to me; Richard Pitt’s landscapes, Peter Ruta’s painting of Central Park, and the William Weege piece. But I once didn’t fully appreciate Rembrandt either, so I removed all the art from the walls of my house, printed out large scale photographs of each piece in the collection, and tacked them up in hopes that familiarity might build a bridge to understanding. I waited, and as the pieces slowly began to speak to me, I had come to realize that they were more than they appeared to be.
It was not yet spring when Diane LaBelle, CEO of Charter Arts, first told me that Ms. Lilarose wanted to donate the collection to the school for its benefit. She asked if my wife, who was an experienced gallery director both in New York and Philadelphia, and I, an unholy mix of critic, curator, and collector, would collaborate on this project. Some people like my wife possess a sharp mind and good instincts, and can tell you immediately what she thinks of the work. I admire this quality, but unfortunately do not possess it. I suspect this is why she was a director and I only a critic. Artworks to me are like people; I need to spend time with them before I can make up my mind, and not a little time.
Twenty years ago, I was distraught because everybody liked Rembrandt. They praised him for his colors, his use of light, and his mastery. But I hated Rembrandt more than I hated Pollock, and I couldn’t tell you why. So, I decided I had to do something about it. My solution was slightly unconventional, but novel. I flew to Amsterdam to the Rijksmuseum, which houses the best Rembrandts in the world. When the museum opened at 9 A.M. the day after I arrived, I paid my admission and proceeded to the Rembrandt room, where there was a long wooden bench. I cleared my head, sat down, and looked and tried to see something in the work that I had never seen before, something brilliant. When it was 5 o’clock, I left, and came back the next day at 9 and repeated this process for four days. The first day, I couldn’t see anything. The second day, I was bored. The third day, I think the word got out, as people looked at me more than the Rembrandts. But at the very last hour of the fourth day, the paintings became familiar friends. I haven’t been back to Amsterdam since, but whenever I see a picture of one of my old friends, I am filled with appreciation.
You probably have to be a little crazy to love art as much as I love art, and I’m too old to apologize for it, and too vain to attempt to justify myself. So I can tell you with all honesty that when I first saw this collection of work, I didn’t fully appreciate it, and there were only two or three pieces that spoke to me; Richard Pitt’s landscapes, Peter Ruta’s painting of Central Park, and the William Weege piece. But I once didn’t fully appreciate Rembrandt either, so I removed all the art from the walls of my house, printed out large scale photographs of each piece in the collection, and tacked them up in hopes that familiarity might build a bridge to understanding. I waited, and as the pieces slowly began to speak to me, I had come to realize that they were more than they appeared to be.
TWO PIECES FROM THE COLLECTION
LOWELL NESBITT,
“White Iris on Purple” 45x32 serigraph, 1981 “White Iris on Purple” is a fine, competent representation of superrealism. It has often been suggested that the flowers in Nesbitt’s work, as well as those of Georgia O’Keeffe, were a guise for raw sexuality. I think that’s hogwash. No other craze has done more damage to both the viewers and makers of art than that of post-Freudian psychology. Of all the things we can say about Nesbitt, “guised sexuality” is not one. Andy Warhol is the only artist in the 20th century who lived bolder or grander than Lowell Blaire Nesbitt. He painted on a spectacular scale, and lived even larger. His paintings reached the gargantuan size of up to 20x30 feet. His technique was incredible, and his parties in his 12,500 sq ft. New York studio were legendary. It was not uncommon for Larry Rivers, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, and the rest of the Village people to end up at Lowell Nesbitt’s place after the Cedar Bar had closed. It was Studio 54 before Studio 54 was itself. But Nesbitt, socially, is best remembered for his intimate friendship and undying loyalty to the controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. In 1989, I had just gotten back from living in England, and for the first time in my life, I was painfully employed. I don’t recommend it. When the Mapplethorpe controversy broke, heated discussions were everywhere as to the appropriateness of both Mapplethorpe’s photographs and the Corcoran’s decision to cancel his solo exhibition. |
“The Perfect Moment” was a photographic retrospective that had already shown in Philadelphia and Chicago with no objections. The subject matter was divided between portraiture, floral studies, and a very graphic examination of the homosexual S&M subculture. A lot of people had an objection to this work because firstly, it was partially funded by the NEA, secondly, the Corcoran was going to show this in a public space where school kids frequented, and thirdly, the images were as shocking as they were formally beautiful. Mapplethorpe’s proponents objected to these charges, as the NEA only gave $30,000 to the entire traveling exhibition, the controversial images were exhibited in Philadelphia and Chicago in a separate age restricted area, and nobody has the right to censor the artist. The Corcoran canceled the show, which caused Nesbitt to retract his $1.5 million bequest from his will. The show did have a controversial final run at Cincinnati’s Contemporary Art Center, which ended in protests, arrests, and formal charges of obscenity.
When I look back at 1989, I realize that the objections to Mapplethorpe’s show were simply the ramifications of the cultural fear that surrounded the AIDS epidemic. His show was really at the height of AIDS hysteria. We were all in denial about AIDS in the 1980s, but we all knew it was happening. My good friend Kerry McGill told me that his mom wouldn’t even let him drink from a public water fountain, and she was a doctor! You had two parts of the gay population, the one part that ran from it and denied it because they didn’t want to be lepers, and the other part which said, “I’m already infected, so I’m going to stand up and be heard.” Looking back at the Mapplethorpe show, I don’t think anybody of any consequence really cared that somebody made a picture of someone peeing in someone else’s mouth. It’s weird, but I’ve seen a lot of weird things in my life. “White Iris on Purple” is not just a flower on a colorful background; to me, it represents an innocent time before the Grim Reaper ravished the art world. It’s hopeful and playful and beautiful and precious and lovingly alive.
When I look back at 1989, I realize that the objections to Mapplethorpe’s show were simply the ramifications of the cultural fear that surrounded the AIDS epidemic. His show was really at the height of AIDS hysteria. We were all in denial about AIDS in the 1980s, but we all knew it was happening. My good friend Kerry McGill told me that his mom wouldn’t even let him drink from a public water fountain, and she was a doctor! You had two parts of the gay population, the one part that ran from it and denied it because they didn’t want to be lepers, and the other part which said, “I’m already infected, so I’m going to stand up and be heard.” Looking back at the Mapplethorpe show, I don’t think anybody of any consequence really cared that somebody made a picture of someone peeing in someone else’s mouth. It’s weird, but I’ve seen a lot of weird things in my life. “White Iris on Purple” is not just a flower on a colorful background; to me, it represents an innocent time before the Grim Reaper ravished the art world. It’s hopeful and playful and beautiful and precious and lovingly alive.
PETER RUTA,
“Central Park” 39x31 gouache on paper, 1988 Art is always about the painting, and it’s never about the painting. “Central Park” is a gouache on paper depicting an outcrop of trees that spring in front of the whale-like rocks that even glaciers could not move. Through an opening in the trees, the view is drawn back, first to the New York skyline, and then downwards towards the lake. The work is spontaneous and unlabored. Peter Ruta, at the age of 98, is one of the most prolific landscape painters in New York. He was born in 1918 at the end of World War I in Germany, and his family quickly relocates to Italy. When he’s 18 years old in 1936, he emigrates to the United States to work for an uncle who had an art reproduction business, and studies at the Art Students League. Under the tutelage of Jean |
Charlot, in 1939 Ruta goes to Mexico to further his Fresco education. Louis Henri Jean Charlot was born in Paris. His father was a Russian ex-patriot who supported the Bolsheviks, and his mother was a half-French Mexican Jew. Charlot was a major force along with Pablo O’Higgins and my grandfather’s good friend Diego Rivera in shaping the Mexican Muralist movement of the mid-20th century. Ruta also studied with the famous modern painter Will Barnet at the Art Students League. I studied with Will Barnet’s son, Peter Barnet, and went to his studio on several occasions, and I can’t help but notice a similarity of color and hue that both of these artists share.
Ruta joined the infantry during World War II to fight in the Pacific Theater. In 1945, he was wounded at the retaking of Bataan. After the war and his recovery, Ruta resumed his art education and in 1949, was awarded a Fulbright to study in Italy. He settles in Venice after the Fulbright, where he becomes a friend and frequent guest of Peggy Guggenheim. When he returns to the United States, like many artists, he dabbles in the pop movement, where most of his images were drawn from newspaper clippings of President Kennedy from election to assassination, but after Kennedy’s death, he returned to traditional pictorial concerns.
In 2004, his work was celebrated with a vast solo exhibition and a book, “Picturing New York”, authored by Andrea Henderson Fahnestock, the curator of the Museum of the City of New York. In February 2016, Mr. Ruta was celebrated by the Westbeth community, the artist residency on 12th Street in Manhattan, as the oldest living active professional painter in New York.
An Interesting aside; sometimes, you find things that are just too juicy not to mention. Andrea Henderson Fahnestock, the author of the book on Ruta, is the second wife of the investment banker Anthony Fahnestock, who was instrumental in overseeing the launching of Snapple and Au Bon Pain. He sat on seven boards and tragically died at 52. But what’s interesting is that his first wife was the White House Lolita, Mimi Alford Beardsley (remarried). Mimi attended Miss Porter’s School, the same prep school as Jackie Kennedy. She had written the White House requesting an interview with Jackie for the high school newspaper. Jackie was not available, but her social secretary, who also attended Miss Porter’s School, afforded her an interview wherein she briefly met the President. While attending her first year at Wheaton College, the White House contacted Mimi and offered her a summer internship at the White House press office.
Ruta joined the infantry during World War II to fight in the Pacific Theater. In 1945, he was wounded at the retaking of Bataan. After the war and his recovery, Ruta resumed his art education and in 1949, was awarded a Fulbright to study in Italy. He settles in Venice after the Fulbright, where he becomes a friend and frequent guest of Peggy Guggenheim. When he returns to the United States, like many artists, he dabbles in the pop movement, where most of his images were drawn from newspaper clippings of President Kennedy from election to assassination, but after Kennedy’s death, he returned to traditional pictorial concerns.
In 2004, his work was celebrated with a vast solo exhibition and a book, “Picturing New York”, authored by Andrea Henderson Fahnestock, the curator of the Museum of the City of New York. In February 2016, Mr. Ruta was celebrated by the Westbeth community, the artist residency on 12th Street in Manhattan, as the oldest living active professional painter in New York.
An Interesting aside; sometimes, you find things that are just too juicy not to mention. Andrea Henderson Fahnestock, the author of the book on Ruta, is the second wife of the investment banker Anthony Fahnestock, who was instrumental in overseeing the launching of Snapple and Au Bon Pain. He sat on seven boards and tragically died at 52. But what’s interesting is that his first wife was the White House Lolita, Mimi Alford Beardsley (remarried). Mimi attended Miss Porter’s School, the same prep school as Jackie Kennedy. She had written the White House requesting an interview with Jackie for the high school newspaper. Jackie was not available, but her social secretary, who also attended Miss Porter’s School, afforded her an interview wherein she briefly met the President. While attending her first year at Wheaton College, the White House contacted Mimi and offered her a summer internship at the White House press office.
Four days into her internship, she was invited to join others, including the President, at the White House pool for a swim party, and then later that night for a “drinks” party. During the booze-filled session, President Kennedy offered to give Miss Beardsley a private tour of the residence. Upon entering Jackie Kennedy’s powder blue bedroom, the 45-year old president and the 19-year old intern Monroed on Jackie’s bed. They continued the affair for the next 18 months. She would often accompany the President on long trips on Air Force One, and after President Kennedy met with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan weeks following the Cuban Missile Crisis, Mimi was spotted by the Secret Service hiding on the floor of the President’s limousine. The affair ended in August 1963, but she continued to work in the White House. Mimi was supposed to be in Dallas with the President on the fated day he was assassinated, but the Alfords and Fahnestocks were getting together to plan their upcoming
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wedding. After the affair was made public, Mimi Beardsley wrote a tell-all book, “Once Upon A Secret; My Affair with John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath.” When asked about the affair, Mimi said, “If I was 19… I would do it again… It’s hard to say I wouldn’t.”
I am thrilled that I had the chance to get to know this collection, yet I am also humbled. Art will do that to you. I had no idea how instrumental Nancy Azara was in helping form the feminist art movement in New York City. She’s amazing, and I should have known more about her. I also should have known the work of William Weege better. I love Richard Pitt’s early work, but I had no idea he did landscapes, or that Lisa Mackie’s paper pieces that I’ve seen in June Kelly’s gallery a number of times have changed so much over the last 30 years. I had no idea that Lynn Schnurnberger, the famous author and New York philanthropist, started out as an artist and not a writer. She has done more to help children in New York through the arts than anyone I know. And another thing that’s really neat about this collection is that almost all the artists represented lived within a mile or two of each other, and nearly all have books written about them. They probably saw each other at the same rack in Barnes and Noble and never realized how connected they were.
So, do you want to know why I love art so much? Because it connects us. It connects the individual we would never have known to their most inner vision and how that vision of the world looks exactly at that moment. Think about this for a minute; I’m not experiencing red, I’m experiencing your red. I’m not experiencing a picture, I’m experiencing your picture. The artist is the most vulnerable person in the world because they invite you into their eyes and into their soul. And what I’ve learned over the years is that not only Rembrandt, but all art, deserves not only a second look, but a second home.
-Anthony Crisafulli
I am thrilled that I had the chance to get to know this collection, yet I am also humbled. Art will do that to you. I had no idea how instrumental Nancy Azara was in helping form the feminist art movement in New York City. She’s amazing, and I should have known more about her. I also should have known the work of William Weege better. I love Richard Pitt’s early work, but I had no idea he did landscapes, or that Lisa Mackie’s paper pieces that I’ve seen in June Kelly’s gallery a number of times have changed so much over the last 30 years. I had no idea that Lynn Schnurnberger, the famous author and New York philanthropist, started out as an artist and not a writer. She has done more to help children in New York through the arts than anyone I know. And another thing that’s really neat about this collection is that almost all the artists represented lived within a mile or two of each other, and nearly all have books written about them. They probably saw each other at the same rack in Barnes and Noble and never realized how connected they were.
So, do you want to know why I love art so much? Because it connects us. It connects the individual we would never have known to their most inner vision and how that vision of the world looks exactly at that moment. Think about this for a minute; I’m not experiencing red, I’m experiencing your red. I’m not experiencing a picture, I’m experiencing your picture. The artist is the most vulnerable person in the world because they invite you into their eyes and into their soul. And what I’ve learned over the years is that not only Rembrandt, but all art, deserves not only a second look, but a second home.
-Anthony Crisafulli
The Phoenix Rises: The Remarkable Chuck Close
by Anthony Crisafulli
Modern American Art has only produced two great
portrait painters, the first, Andy Warhol, was a product of the Pop movement which dominated the 1960’s. The other is Chuck Close -- who emerged as the preemanate trompe l’oeil painter from the Pluralist Era. In 1974 in Arts Magazine, Henry D. Raymond’s lead essay argued that the artists from the Pluralist era, “have two sources of self-esteem. They have broadened the base of the buying public while being taken seriously by the art world. They have their cake and also eat it. They make visual embodiments of societal values. Their world is cool and beyond freedom and dignity. They share their public’s mistrust of the instinctive and the spontaneous and the messy. They lust after specificity and certitude . . . Their culture believes in things and little else.” The following interview with Chuck Close is an in-depth and intimate re-examination of his life, career and |
reflections on American art since the 1970’s. As this interview unfolds one thing is abundantly clear, Chuck Close is more than an extraordinary artist; he is, indeed, a remarkable man.
Crisafulli: What’s on your mind these days?
Close: Well, certainly working methods or processes are always in the back of my mind, but then no painting every got made without a process. For me it has always been the way I have tried to keep moving. The one variable that became more interesting to alter
would be that one that would change what I considered in the studio. If I would have just changed subject matter or other aspects of the work, I’d still be doing the same thing. I can still find more to do or get worried it might become too outmoded or I can get too good at it. So, one thing that I try to do is keep altering various aspects of the working methods or traditions or materials just to keep myself engaged in what I’m doing and if it seems like a fresh experience to me then hopefully the viewer might find that too. I always like the journey to be part of it. I drop crumbs along the trail for the viewer to follow whether intuitively or analytically.
Crisafulli: What’s on your mind these days?
Close: Well, certainly working methods or processes are always in the back of my mind, but then no painting every got made without a process. For me it has always been the way I have tried to keep moving. The one variable that became more interesting to alter
would be that one that would change what I considered in the studio. If I would have just changed subject matter or other aspects of the work, I’d still be doing the same thing. I can still find more to do or get worried it might become too outmoded or I can get too good at it. So, one thing that I try to do is keep altering various aspects of the working methods or traditions or materials just to keep myself engaged in what I’m doing and if it seems like a fresh experience to me then hopefully the viewer might find that too. I always like the journey to be part of it. I drop crumbs along the trail for the viewer to follow whether intuitively or analytically.
ANDY WARHOL
Andy Warhol (1928) was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and attended the Carnegie Mellon University where he majored in pictorial design. After graduation (1949), Warhol moved to New York where he established himself as a commercial illustrator working for such magazines as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Glamor and The New Yorker. Although he found success in the commercial world of illustration and art directing through out the 1950s it would not be until the 1960 that Warhol would find his true aesthetic voice. But when he did, it
set the art world on fire.
set the art world on fire.
Crisafulli: Your newer work reminds me of digital imaging, is it still about the photograph or is it moving somewhere else?
Close: There’s still a photograph in there somewhere. But I know absolutely nothing about that other stuff. I’m totally technologically illiterate. I’m going to be dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century as one of the last people to have the slightest idea what a bit or a byte or whatever the fuck those things are. But I do know enough to know that on some level I am doing something similar. All the work from the beginning, even the continuous tone things that people think looks like photographs were actually made in incremental units; building blocks about six inches square. It’s just that nobody saw the units because the edges were fudged and smooched together appearing as if it was a continuous surface -- but in fact it was built unit by unit. It was a way to focus on one area and maybe not worry so much about the whole. Breaking it down gave me an arm’s length distance from what I was doing. I’ve often thought it was, in some ways, a little like quilting or crocheting, that you could pick up and put down. You got a few minutes you sit down and work on your quilt. You maintain an almost naive belief in process: you start on it and keep working on it and eventually finish it. It’s a kind of a leap of faith. Crisafulli: Does this allow for more time for rumination? |
Close: I suppose it does but the interesting thing is it allows more room for intuition. When I had everything in the world open to me and I was working all over my painting at once I made the same fucking painting over and over and over. When I could invent any shape, I made the same shapes over and over. When I could use any color, I would use the same color combinations over and over. One of the things that grew out of this way of working was I could construct a situation that would not allow me to make the last painting; which would force me to make a different painting. It was
a way to pre-ordain movement, not necessarily growth, not necessarily progress, but, at least movement, to move from where you are to somewhere else. That was part of the appeal. When I narrowed things down by having quite severe, self-imposed limitations I find myself making shapes I’ve never made before, I found myself using colors I’ve never used before, making edges and things I’ve never made before. I found it incredibly liberating. Crisafulli: I had this discussion with a friend before I came in here about a very similar thing. We was talking about a buddy of ours who had certain financial resources at his hands and how it might
have stunted his growth. Close: Absolutely. It can be crippling. Nobody in this country is as crippled as the children of the wealthy who are living on trust funds and such, because nothing they do makes any difference. On the other hand, I was born poor white trash. So I always knew if I was going to accomplish anything I was going to have to cut my own path... no one was going to keep the door open for me. Furthermore, I had really severe learning disabilities so I wasn’t going to be able to take the normal route. I grew-up so dyslexic, I couldn’t memorize anything, including faces -- which is rather funny. Somebody that I’ve just seen on the street is as familiar to me as somebody I used to live with. I have to keep reinforcing and seeing the face over and over and over at regular intervals to keep it in my brain. You can see where this could be problematic but visually informing. A strange ramification of this imparity is that it is much easier for me to remember something that is flat than something that is three dimensional. If you move your head a quarter inch, it’s a whole new image and I have to learn the image all over again... but if it’s flat, I move my head and it doesn’t really change. So I think that I was driven to work on something that wasn’t going to change. I guess that’s why I was probably more interested in scanning the faces of those I know and love and committing them to memory than I was probably to anything else. Crisafulli: How do you limit your deviations? Were you ever tempted to do something that was not a portrait? Close: I do other things. I did photographs of other things. I do nudes, I do flowers, and stuff like that, but I never cared enough about them to want to make a painting. So there’s that aspect; that simply cared more about people than about rocks or trees or whatever. I get plenty of opportunity to make shapes and stuff. You know, I make a million interesting little shapes. I don’t really have a desire to make some big abstract shape. It’s the one thing I find infinitely sustaining. I would not have predicted thirty years ago that I would find it so sustaining and that thirty years later I would still be engaged in painting portraits. Everyone knows or cares about faces. Whether they want to admit it or not you get a sort of a mirror whenever you look at whomever you are with, whomever you love. You’re bombarded with flat images, TV, movies, that sort of thing, but everybody knows something about faces. Believe me, you fuck up a face a little bit and everybody is a critic. Whereas if you were to make a texture of a bark of a tree a little off; nobody but a botanist would care. |
Crisafulli: What did you think of the last biannual?
It featured much young painters? Close: Klaus Kertess was my first dealer back in the sixties, and I’ve known Klaus since the sixties. I have tremendous respect for him and I was very interested to see what would come up in the biannual. I know that he cares about painting. I thought that finally painting didn’t end up being that important in his biannual even though there was much conjecture that it was going to be a painting biannual. I thought the photography was far more interesting. Crisafulli: Do you think the Biannual is a survey of what’s best going on or just what’s going on? Close: In the fifties it really was a survey of what was going on. It was practically everything that was going on. Practically had the entire art world in that... even up to the sixties and into the seventies you could see every gallery that showed contemporary art in New York in one afternoon. You started at 68th street-- until the end of the sixties you didn’t have to come downtown. It was possible to know everything that was going on in the art world. Now that’s impossible so the role of a survey show is, I guess, to show you some of the stuff you missed from the galleries you didn’t go to. Now it becomes much more as a guided tour of what that person found significant. Crisafulli: You said something once about how you thought of yourself as an artist of the seventies who developed in reaction to the pluralism of that time period. Close: I don’t know if it was a reaction to it. The seventies were an interesting decade because, as opposed to the sixties and eighties, the seventies had no art stars. It was a pluralistic decade, many different things were going on, and I think it was great for artists but it confused the shit out of curators and collectors and critics because they would like to have the weeding out process to occur within one stylistic point of view or one attitude so they can say that this person is clearly better than that person. How do you compare someone who is doing conceptual stuff with somebody whose doing earth works, with somebody else who is doing some kind of process stuff, to someone else who is doing minimal stuff, all at once? You really had to make difficult judgments about what was important. If you look at the artists of the eighties or the sixties many of them peaked, I think, very early and started a long and steady decline. Sometimes I think its like flying to Boston in a shuttle. You just barely get up to altitude, when you’d like to level off and fly a little bit you actually start to descend. Crisafulli: Is that because their popularity happened so fast? |
My generation all came to New York in the
middle to late sixties, people like Brice Marden, Richard Serra, Joel Shapiro, Elizabeth Murray... we were all able to develop without being in the white hot glare of spot lights. I think that was a real advantage. |
Close: I think it was because there was such
tremendous interest, such popularity... every move was analyzed and strategized. There wasn’t time to let them slowly develop their work. You know, there are certainly exceptions. I think that is why so many artists came up in the late sixties but were really thought of as seventies artists. I think they are doing some of their best work right now. There are kind of “legs” to that generation, which have made them more like long distance runners than sprinters. Crisafulli: I just finished writing an article on the “Brilliant” show at the Walker Art Center, which takes a serious look at the growing popularity of young artists from the UK. They seem to have some relationship, although more in practice than in theory, with the artist from the seventies. What do you think? Close: Actually I have a lot of interest and curious faith in what they are doing. I think part of it is that they don’t have a tradition; they don’t have the same kind of baggage that they bring into the studio everyday. People in other cultures, there really wasn’t local precursors... But they have to be careful not to be sucked in too fast. You always have to watch somebody like Charles Satchi. Look what he’s done to make and perhaps destroy some careers. If you let someone own that much of your work, they end up having much too much power. I never wanted anybody to have that much power. In the eighties there were grants and
incredibly lucrative market situations. Now, both are gone and this seems to be in disarray. Where do you think it all began? |
Close: Something began to happen in the seventies.
I remember hearing a word I had never heard before in my life. I was sitting in the Spring Street Bar, having a drink, waiting for a friend and I heard a couple of artists sitting next to me. One said, “I’ll do this piece if I get funding.” What the fuck is that? I never heard the word before. All of a sudden it crept in and you wouldn’t make art unless someone was going to be paying for it. Artists who used to be pushing things around in studios began designing things on the back of cocktail napkins at thirty thousand feet on the way to their next commission. It changes the nature of the art. All of a sudden artists started saying things like, “wouldn’t it be amusing to see ten more of these paintings where the colors would be red, blue, and yellow instead of blue, green, yellow, red?” Then they would get some “assistantto” make it. But you would never do that yourself. You’d get bored in ten minutes. Then you ended up where artists, instead of having a show every two or three years, would have, maybe, three show simultaneously in three different galleries. There are only so many kinds of art you can make and make enough to fill three galleries every year. When we think about financial pressures and stuff like that in the art world, we think of it just as dollars and cents as what happens to the artist when he or she starts to make money... but it’s all these things which are the byproducts which really change the art world. Sometimes it’s going to change for the good; sometimes it’s going to change for the bad. Crisafulli: Is there anybody that is writing now that you identify with? |
Close: It’s interesting. I was just at a dinner last
night talking about whom people were reading and, boy, it was quiet. I think the modernists lost when Robert Storr stopped writing criticism and started Elizabeth Murray functioning as a curator. I think he was really a wonderful art writer and critic. Now we get him in catalogue essays but we don’t get the regular monthly articles he used to write in Art in America. I think the poets are often interesting, Schendahl... one person that I find really interesting right now, what’s his name? The guy who is out in Nevada, in Las Vegas... shit... I’ll have to look up his name. It’s such an odd place for somebody who’s an art critic. He used to run Reese Bailey gallery in New York. He had a clean, welllighted space. I really like the way he writes. He’s writing about things other people aren’t writing about... things like beauty. In the eighties, when everyone was going the way of the political ideologue, waving their bony fingers of condemnation, you avoided the bandwagon. Crisafulli: Why? Close: I think I was always too slow to jump on one. I felt that I’ve been running... along... in... slow... motion... while everybody else is driving by in very fast cars. They can swerve and move and make all the adjustments more quickly. I feel like I’m ten or fifteen years behind my ideas. I have these things I want to do but they take so long for me to do them. For me to do a series of paintings can take five or six years when that same number of paintings... you know, if I do three paintings a year or four... so I might do twenty paintings over a six year period. No one thinks that twenty paintings are a lot of paintings in a series, right? Most people would think that twenty paintings are a few months. They would have series after series after series... The fact that one of my series is spread over a much longer period of time means that all these other things will come and go and I’m still doing it. In a way it does insulate me. I don’t think there’s time for me to incorporate political stuff in my work. Crisafulli: Actually, I saw one political thing you did; a television commercial about handicap access in Soho. Close: Ok, that’s good. Crisafulli: You were afraid, after you were chair bound, that your work would be seen as something that was done by a handicapped person in a diminutive way. Close: Right. Well, I don’t mind being seen as an artist with a handicap; I didn’t want to be seen as a handicapped artist. We all have handicaps. I know people who are able bodied who are far more paralyzed than I am. It’s been incredibly... talk about sustaining. One of the interesting things about being in a wheelchair and having to reinvent a way to work has really focused me. It has really prioritized a lot. There are so many things I can’t do any more that used to be competing things that brought me pleasure. Well, now I can’t do that. I have more of my eggs in the art basket. I have just my relationships with my family and friends and my art and that’s just about it. It’s made me a more focused person, perhaps a narrower person, but narrowness has its pluses too. Crisafulli: There’s a new kind of mythology that’s in your work now. I think people identify certain styles of your painting with the accident. Close: See, I don’t think it’s really very different from where I would have been anyway because it was already moving in that direction. In fact a new book that has just come out which is about my life since I was in the hospital -- we decided to put in the work from the show just prior to going into the hospital. So you could see where the work was going. It didn’t change, I don’t think. Yet, it did re-engage me in what I was doing in a way that did make a real difference in the work. I’ve always loved limitations. I loved them when I was able bodied. Having been learning disabled I was dealing with limitations of a sort which, I think, put me in a very good position to deal with the limitations which came along. They just became something else to overcome. |
Crisafulli: When you have these limitations do you
find that you confront them in terms of making an ideal? When you paint do you think to yourself, “I want to make this painting look as if this accident had not happened to me?” Close: No. The first thing I tried to do though when I was still in the hospital and I was trying to go back to painting was strap these brushes on my hands and nurses or assistants standing at either side of me... They could only hold my arms up a few seconds and change the brushes, pull them out of the brush holder and put new ones in. There were times when I just sat there with tears streaming down my cheeks as I was sitting there trying to paint. I thought, “Jesus Christ, this is too damn hard!” On the other hand it was simultaneously reassuring that I could still do it. The first paintings I made were actually tighter and had smaller marks, smaller increments than what I had been doing just before I went into the hospital. I think I did it to prove to myself that I had enough control, so that looseness wasn’t just because I couldn’t do it. Looseness wasn’t just lack of control. Things were loosening up anyway and I wanted to do it... but I didn’t want to do it in some kind of spastic way as if I had no control. So I had to prove to myself first that I could still do it the way I used to do it. Crisafulli: What’s going to be in the new show? Close: The new show is work of the last few years. Two portraits of Roy Liechtenstein, one full face and one profile, I thought for a little bit that it was going to be a diptych but it didn’t end up to be, and a painting of ninety-two year old Paul Cadmus, and Dorothea Rockburne. The Paul Cadmus and the two Roys are color paintings and the Dorothea Rockburne, Lorna Simpson, and two self-portraits that are black and white. The incremental units have steadily been getting larger and larger until now they are over two inches square. So now it’s much coarser, much harder to resolve the image from an average viewing distance. They deconstruct, dematerialize, and flicker even more; they coalesce with greater difficulty. They flirt with almost not reconstituting themselves again. They play back and forth between the flat read and the marks on the surface warping into the image. Crisafulli: What else do you love besides Art and how does that play into your aesthetic? Close: I guess the literature that I love the most is literature where you never quite lose the sense that you Close: I guess the literature that I love the most is
literature where you never quite lose the sense that youare reading words and love the way words trip off the tongue. At the same time we are swept away with the narrative and the imagery and the story being told, where you go back and forth between the artifice and the story itself. I want to find where I’m at with each mark with its adjacent marks the way a writer will... there’s never a time a writer does anything more than shove two words up against each other. If you don’t like that word you cross it out and put in another and see how it effects the next word I do a kind of “rough draft” where I go through the painting once. Then, I turn the painting on its side and I go through it again. I do some more fine tuning and adjusting, and then there’s a sort of final editing process and its all about gradually moving something towards what I want instead of preconceiving it. I find the resultant color by putting some color down very arbitrarily and moving that somewhere else and then moving that closer to what I want by putting another color. That’s always been what interested me, even in the early work. Between those early continuous tone paintings and these, the work became more and more about the increment, but the increment used to be quite small: a sixth of an inch, an eighth of an inch, a quarter of an inch dot. There was no room in a dot that small to have much variation. - Anthony Crisafulli |