Painters From The United States

"That was always the thing with Minimalism, there was no content allowed of course, but only the thing in the space, that was what Sol LeWitt was always about, and Carl Andre – it was all about avoiding content. I was always very interested in this, right from the beginning, especially with my 'Ellipsoids' [she made 1981 - 1983]. They look like minimalism, but in the end there is a lot going on there."

"Minimal art went nowhere. Conceptual art became the liberating idea that gave the art of the next 40 years its real impetus. All of the significant art of today stems from Conceptual art. This includes the art of installation, political, feminist and socially directed art. The other great development has been in photography, but that too was influenced by Conceptual art."

"Just as the development of earth art and installation art stemmed from the idea of taking art out of the galleries, the basis of my involvement with public art is a continuation of wall drawings. As soon as one does work on walls, the idea of using the whole wall follows. It means that the art is intimately involved with the architecture. It is available to be seen by everyone. It avoids the preciousness of gallery or museum installations. Also, since art is a vehicle for the transmission of ideas through form, the reproduction of the form only reinforces the concept. It is the idea that is being reproduced. Anyone who understands the work of art owns it. We all own the Mona Lisa."

"The ideas need not be complex. Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple. Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable."

"In conceptual art the idea or the concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. This kind of art is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is intuitive; it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is purposeless. It is usually free from the dependence on the skill of the artist as a craftsman."

"The artist’s will is secondary to the process he initiates from idea to completion.. ..His wilfulness may only be ego.. ..The process is mechanical and should not be tampered with. It should run its course."

"The artist is seen like a producer of commodities, like a factory that turns our refrigerators. I believe that the artist's involvement in the capitalist structure is disadvantageous to the artist and forces him to produce objects in order to live."

"Artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach."

"The artist’s aim is not to instruct the viewer, but to give information, whether the viewer understands the information is incidental to the artist."

"The idea becomes a machine that makes the art."

"I have never learned to draw a hand well enough, so why should I stop trying now?"

"My goal … not to go back to Rembrandt … but to bring the great tradition and whatever is great about it, up to date."

"You have a very strong inner rhythm. You must never lose it."

"I think every once in a while I feel the need to break my medium.. .if I have been doing a very large painting I like to drop into something in small scale. It is a challenge to go into this size. It is just to hold my own interest, and then each media has its own conditions."

"I do not mean extended, to mean esthetic definition of space. For me, it is a matter of whether the canvas allows me to breathe or not – if the canvas soars into space or if it is earthbound. When it is earthbound it irritates me enormously. I would like to soar in a canvas."

"They [the younger woman artists in American Abstract Expressionism: Helen Frankenthaler and Joan Mitchell,] are the next generation and it is another scene, another story. You forget that in my generation Paris was still the leading school of painting and this situation was being changed by a tiny handful of artists to a scene called New York, America, which never before had a leading role in the art world. That didn’t happen just by reading a newspaper. Now the next generation comes in and they may think it is rough for them but it is a pie.. .We broke the ground."

"Right up until today Pollock [her husband and famous painter; died Aug. 1956] well takes a lot of mine time.. ..and while you ask 'How much did it take out of me as a creative artist', I ask simultaneously, 'What did it give?' It is a two-way affair at all times. I would give anything to have someone giving me what I was able to give Pollock."

"I merge what I call the organic with what I call the abstract, which is what you are calling the geometric. As I see both scales, I need to merge these two in the ever-present. What they symbolize I have never stopped to decide. You might want to read it as matter and spirit and the need to merge as against the need to separate. Or it can be read as male and female."

"Well I think it [a 'Little Image' painting] does suggest hieroglyphics of some sort. It is a preoccupation of mine from way back and every once in a while it comes into my work again. For instance in my 1968 show at the Marlborough I have a painting called 'Kufic', an ancient form of Arabic writing. Every once in a while I fall back to what I call my mysterious writings. I haven no idea what this is about but it runs through periods of my work."

"In 1946 what I call my 'Little Image' began breaking through this [former] gray matter of mine. I felt fantastic relief that something was beginning to happen after all this time when there was nothing, nothing, nothing.. .The canvas is down on a floor or table and I am working out of a tiny can. In other words, I have to hold the paint so I can move it. But I wouldn’t have been using Duco [industrial paint, like Willem de Kooning did]. My paint would always have been oil and I could get the consistency of a thick pouring quality in it by squeezing it into a can and cutting it with turp [turpetine] – the way I use paint today.. .The only thing I can say with absolute assurance is that my 'Little Image' work starts about 1946 and ends in 1949."

"I went into my own black-out period [1942-45] which lasted two or three years where the canvases would simply build up until they’d get like stone and it was always just a gray mess. The image wouldn’t emerge, but I worked pretty regularly. I was fighting to find I knew not what, but I could no longer stay with what I had."

"Without getting complicated let me recapitulate my art training in the following way: the Academy first, the break with the Academy when I hit the Hofmann School which is Cubist. The next real break follows when I see Pollock’s work [1940-41] and once more another transition occurs.. .It was a force [Pollock’s work], a living force, the same sort of thing I responded to in Matisse, in Picasso, in Mondrian. Once more, I was hit that hard with what I saw... I began feeling the need to break with what I was doing and to approach something else."

"(Piet Mondrian's) comment was: 'You have a very strong inner rhythm. You must never lose it'. Then we moved on. Piet Mondrian had said something quiet beautiful to me. Hofmann was also excited and enthusiastic about what I was doing at this time [c. 1938] but his comment was: 'This is so good that you would not know it was done by a woman'. His was a double-edged compliment. But Mondrian’s evaluation rides through beautifully."

"He [ Hans Hofmann one of her art teachers] would come up to me [1937-38], look at my work, and do a critique half in English and half in German, but certainly nothing I could understand. When he left the room I would call George McNeil, who was then the monitor, over and I would ask: 'What did this man say to me?' Hoffman was teaching Cubism and that was pretty exciting. Matisse and Picasso were my highlights. It was as though I was swinging between them. First I started to work with color and then there was a heavy swing toward the linear."

"My recollection of meeting him [ Jackson Pollock ] outside of this one incident, was at a show that John Graham did at the MacMillin Gallery [1942]. He invited someone called Jackson Pollock and myself, and, I believe, de Kooning. There were three unknown Americans put into that show and it turned out we were the three and it was through that source, my trying to track down the other unknown American who was painting abstractly at that point, as though I knew them all in New York City.. ..and I promptly went up to Pollock's studio and that's when I say I met Pollock for the first time.. ..And then, you see, after I saw Pollock, met him, saw the work, I said, "I understand the third painter is de Kooning," and he said he didn't know de Kooning and I said, "Well, I do and I'll take you over and introduce you." So I brought Pollock up to de Kooning's studio. De Kooning was in a loft at that time because he was something, and that is how Pollock met De Kooning."

"I was quite active politically just previous to this, and I'm leading into this time when I was on WPA and there was a group called the Artist's Union which was organized, so that I was extremely active in that. Again that meant more meetings and fighting for artists' rights on the WPA.. .I would say it gave me an opportunity to continue through a period of where one had a livelihood to deal with and/or painting. This allowed for painting and I'd say in that sense it was extremely influencing.. ..WPA itself ended after the War Service Project and by way of terminating, it allowed you to take one of several war courses that were being offered. After which you were supposed to be able to go into that field and earn a living. I took drafting."

"That's right, and then I worked with him [ Hans Hofmann ] a little more than that. When I had time I could come in and use his studio, in a sense, that is to say, if it was a still-life class, I could be doing any kind of abstraction at that point, using that as a take-off point.. ..here again, when you spoke earlier about Cubism, I say I really didn't get the first impact, the full impact of it [Cubism], until I worked with Hofmann."

"I think I stayed in the Mural division [ WPA, early 1940's] until it became A War Service Project and then I was relegated to do a specific job. There was a coordinated move, they had a new president that was being inaugurated for CCNY and they were doing a large – trying to show how higher education was involved in promoting the war effort, with the classes they were teaching, so that I did this work for more than a year before WPA terminated."

"I think my painting is so autobiographical if anyone can take the trouble to read it."

"One could go on forever as to whether the paint should be thick or thin, whether to paint the woman or the square, hard-edge or soft, but after a while such questions become a bore. They are merely problems in aesthetics, having only to do with the outer man. But the painting I have in mind, painting in which inner and outer are inseparable, transcends technique, transcends subjects and moves into the realm of the inevitable."

"With Jackson there was quiet solitude. Just to sit and look at the landscape. An inner quietness. After dinner, to sit on the back porch and look at the light. No need for talking. For any kind of communication."

"All my work keeps going like a pendulum; it seems to swing back to something I was involved with earlier, or it moves between horizontality and verticality, circularity, or a composite of them. For me, I suppose that change is the only constant."

"[explaining the close connection between Gottlieb-Newman-Rothko:] They were friends. They all were protégées of w:Milton Avery's, the three of them. They all adored Milton Avery. Oh, I don't know if they adored him, but they revered him.. ..And Milton Avery was the big powerful mover in their lives. Of the three in terms of professionalism, Gottlieb was the most professional always. He never took unto himself this role of, "I have the key to the absolute," a term that Barney Newman was very fond of invoking. They knew each other all along. And if I'm not mistaken, all three of them were married to school teachers."

"When I started doing the 'Bursts' [paintings Gottlieb started c. 1958] I began to do part of the painting horizontally. It was necessary to do that because I was working with a type of paint which had a particular viscosity, which flowed, and if it were on a vertical surface it would just run. If it were on a horizontal surface, I could control it... I was using a combination of brushes and knives, palette knives... and spatulas... I’ve tried everything, rollers, rags, I’ve put paint on with everything."

"After doing the imaginary landscapes until say 1956, in ’57 I came out with the first Burst painting... There was a different type of space than I had ever used and it was a further clarification of what I was trying to do. The thing that was interesting that it was a return to a focal point, but it was a focal point with the kind of space that existed in traditional painting. Because this was like a solitary image or two images that were just floating in the canvas space. They had to hold the space and they also had to create all the movement – that took place within the rectangle."

"See, I never understand why my paintings hold together because I don't have any tricks for doing it and that is usually what makes a painting academic. There were some well-known devices for making a painting work hold together, ave cohesion. This seemed to be organized. But I don't necessarily have to know what the mechanism is. For me, what it really is, is something you have in yourself that makes you feel, it gives the painting a feeling of unity, of oneness, and being of all of one piece."

"Around 1950-51... I was finally getting away from the pictographs and looking for something... So it was necessary to find other forms, a different changed concept. So finally after a certain period of transition I hit on dividing the canvas into two parts, which then became like an imaginary landscape... What I was really trying to do when I got away from the pictographs was to make this notion of the kind of polarity clearer and more extreme. So the most extreme thing that I could think of doing at the time was dividing the canvas in half, make two big divisions and put something in the upper division and something in the lower section. So I painted that way... I would say roughly from 1952 to 56/57. About five years."

"Well, I was interested in a subjective image [in the 1940's].. ..stemming perhaps from the subconscious. Because the external world as far as I was concerned had been totally explored in painting and there was a whole ripe new area in the inner world that we all have. Now in order to externalise this you have to use visual means and so the visual means may have some relation tot the external world. However what I was trying to focus on was what I experienced within my mind, within my feelings, rather than on the external world which I can see."

"I wanted to do something figurative. Well I couldn’t visualize a whole man.. .I felt that I wanted to make a painting primarily with painterly means. So I flattened out my canvas and made them roughly rectangular divisions, with lines going out in four directions. That is, vertically and horizontally.. .And then I would free associate, putting whatever came to my mind freely within these different rectangles... I thought of it as related tot the automatic writing the surrealists were interested in."

"I was looking for some sort of systematic way of getting down these subjective images and I had always admired, particularly admired the early Italian painters who proceeded the Renaissance and I very much liked some of the altarpieces in which there would be, for example the story of Christ told in a series of boxes.. .And it seemed to me this was a very rational method of conveying something. So I decided to try it. But I was not interested in telling, in giving something its chronological sequence. What I wanted to do was give something, to present what material I was interested in simultaneously so that you would get an instantaneous impact from it. So I made boxes.."

"[David Sylvester asked Gottlieb, he is aware of the impact of the city New York on his painting:] Definitely I am. When I was in Paris last spring, my original plan was to go for four months and to paint there, and a number of people urged me to stay. That wanted to see what would happen, how my painting would change. But I felt strongly after being there less than a month that it was necessary for me to come back to New York, because I feel a certain rhythm in New York I don't feel in Paris.. ..there is a tempo in the life of New York which is exhilarating and I feel that this gets into one's painting. It's the pulse, not the look. I'am not involved with the external appearance of the city; it’s the vibrations.]"

"For example, Rothko and I came to an agreement on the question of the subject matter; if we were to do something which could develop in some direction other than the accepted directions of that time, it would be necessary to use different subjects to begin with, and 1942, we embarked on a series of paintings that attempted to use mythological subject matter, preferably from Greek mythology. I did a series of paintings on the theme of Oedipus and Rothko did a series of paintings on other Greek themes… ..this offered a possibility of a way out [of a. o. Social Realism and Cubism ]"

"..more significant, perhaps, was the fact that during the war [1940-1945] many of the Surrealists came [from Europe] to America and we were able to see them as just other human beings like ourselves and not as mythical characters who had superhuman capacities and talents. I think that there was a feeling after meeting them [a.o. Marcel Duchamp, Andre Masson, André Breton, Max Ernst ] personally that, well, if these men can have these great achievements and talents, there is hope for us [younger American artists]"

"Recently I was at the home of Thomas Hess and he had a painting hanging there and I said to my wife: 'Is that one of my paintings?'. And she said: 'Well, it looks like one of yours from around 1942'. But then we realized that it wasn't one of my but one of Baziote's paintings.. ..at that time, 1942, the differences in our paintings may have seemed very great, but now [1960] the difference is not so great apparently.. ..For example; in the early forties Rothko and I decided to paint a certain subject matter. Perhaps if we saw some of those paintings now.. ..they might not seem so different as they did at the time. However, at no point was there ever any sort of a doctrine or a programma or anything that would make a school. I think it was simply a situation in which all of the painters were at that time; they were trying to break away from certain things."

"My favourite symbols were those I did not understand."

"To us art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risk."

"The role of the artist, of course, has always been that of image-maker. Different times require different images."

"We were outcasts, roughly expressionist painters not acceptable to most dealers and collectors.(A reference to the TEN group of painters)."

"To my mind certain so-called abstraction is not abstraction at all.. ..on the contrary it is realism of our time."

"We are going to have perhaps a thousand years of non-representational painting."