press release
This exhibition presents a snapshot of New British Painting.
Introducing a young generation of artists, the exhibition celebrates
contemporary painting through the current practice of their
work. Many of the works have not been exhibited before, and
some have been made especially for this exhibition.
Marta Marcé, inspired by board
games and geometrical structures, creates colourful abstract
images. Katie Pratt will produce some
new work for this exhibition, illustrating the sumptuous textural
surfaces for which she is well known. The depth of Danny
Rolph‘s work is achieved by layering sheets
of industrial plastic roofing. By painting on the front and
back of successive layers, his bold shapes and images are made
more complex by the resulting real space relationships. Hans
Scheirl (originally a filmmaker) will show a site-specific
installation commissioned by the John Hansard Gallery. The careful
installation of objects and the painting of a gallery room’s
walls will provide the backdrop for the creation of the bright,
schematic imagery. Clare Woods paints
on aluminium, using the techniques of gestural abstract expressionism,
thereby exploring lush textural surfaces.
This exhibition has been curated and organised by the John
Hansard Gallery. It is the first of two parts, each featuring
five artists, which will run consecutively. Part
II runs from 17 February – 7 April 2004.
A publication including artists from both exhibitions will
be published during March 2004.
artist's interview
DR:: Danny Rolph
BB:: Bernadette Buckley (John
Hansard Gallery)
Interview conducted, 27th November 2003
BB:: Thank you very much
for agreeing to do this interview for us. I thought I’d
start just by asking you about some of the work you’ve
submitted for this exhibition, New British Painting Part …if
you could just tell me something about that work, about how
it came to be etc.
DR: There are four pieces that I’ve
sent down to the show – one small piece, two medium sized
pieces similar to the ones you see around you [in the studio]
and one large piece, which is the biggest painting I’ve
worked on for about 8 or 9 years. I see that as a key painting
actually. I think its hitting the spaces I’ve been attempting
to reach in these size paintings a lot quicker and…without
romanticising the whole process, it sort of painted itself.
I can’t remember making any mark on that surface, or any
decision. It just sort of fell into place... I think it was
an accumulation of whole processes of making work, rejecting
work and all the decisions that are made. It just blossomed
really quickly for such a big painting. So you begin to distrust
something that falls into place that quickly. It does something
far more potently with concepts of spatial depths…you
know the spatial illusions, spatial delusions as well... I’m
really pleased with how its turned out.
BB: And that’s something that you’re
really concerned with in your work as well isn’t it…that
whole idea of spatial illusion in particular. Could you just
say something more about that and why it is so important to
you?
DR: Well it comes out of my love of paintings
in previous centuries and what I perceive to be the important
components of that. And there’s space within different
forms of artistic expression manifesting itself in silences,
in music, in haikus, in different forms of poetry. But in particular
what struck me the first time going to Florence and seeing the
Giottos or the Fra Angelicos was the control of space and the
amount of space that could be proposed within these paintings
painted directly on to a wall. And then that was reinforced
by my love of Duccio and Cimabue and their work and Piero obviously
in the National Gallery and something that’s this big…the
same size as a TV… contains this infinite space. Or Vermeer…
The space is infinite, it’s timeless and yet it’s
about that moment in time…it slows you down; it absorbs
all the light out of the room…it almost sucks the life
out of the room...it focuses in on what you’re seeing.
But the great stuff...what I see as great is the stuff that
can do that. It stops you in your tracks but also reveals the
nature of its construction and the way that the flourish of
a stroke or a decision or a slightly skewed perspective sort
of focuses in on the nature of the art of making painting and
Mannerism in particular.
BB: Yes you mentioned El Greco earlier and
Duccio now as well and in these works there is a very ambiguous
sense of space…to our eyes anyway. Do you see yourself
as part of that tradition?
DR: Absolutely. These are decisions made with
a paintbrush on the surface – the fact that people used
to work on wet plaster is pretty strange. Why did people start
to paint using the same stuff, this pigment, this muddy stuff,
onto this material called canvas? It’s an extension you
know …I just work on this stuff which is used for conservatory
roofs called twinwall, and it just fascinates me…Joseph
Albers said that he was only interested in what a painting does,
not what it is. I don’t think you have to make that separation.
I think the two can completely co-exist. And its not a massive
revelation. What a painting does and what a painting is, is
very very key and these are what I enjoy...the way that a Frans
Hals painting falls apart in front of your face and then sort
of comes back…you know like one of his cavaliers or whatever.
And then the same in great impressionism or in Matisse…the
same principles are there. I looking for these things but I’ve
also always subconsciously picked up on these things after 20
years of looking at them.
BB: The category of painting is becoming quite
stretched now isn’t it…if you think of someone like
Julian Opie as being a painter, or Bob and Roberta Smith’s
work being bad painting…then there are lots of different
kinds of criteria coming into play in the genre of painting
now aren’t there? Do you think we’re becoming confused
about what painting is?
DR: No I don’t think so. I think what
we’re doing is seeing painting from just a lot of different
positions. We’ve basically you’ve got the same set
of materials …not so much Opie…but you’re
using this muddy stuff which is put on to something which is
nice and smooth and we find our own expression through that.
Now granted, with print media and different new technologies,
this is adding something else to it. For a lot of artists, it
may be the initial source….I’m completely stimulated
by discarded printed materials…everyday process, the colour
of beans and packaging and everything like this. But its digested,
its within me, it doesn’t mean I want to replicate that
flattened smooth matt space. And a lot of artists are very conscious
of this and some people try to replicate that or add something
new to it. We all just bring something different to it, that’s
all.
BB: Yes but I suppose if you look at say Gary
Hume’s work, it would seem to have a closer relation to
design. You can see that your work has a love for contemporary
design, but it is in terms of colour rather than in terms of
its surface.
DR: Yes in terms of colour rather than in
terms of manufacturing as well. Also this whole idea of the
graphic quality within an object or in my case within a painting
which is also an object…is key. The graphic construction
of a Piero painting, you know The Flagellation of Christ or…
there are loads and loads of paintings from history….
their graphic strength comes through the dynamics of the composition
allied to various other factors, its size, the technique employed.
What happens just standing there, allowing the paintbrush to
find that subject…the way that a Titan completely opened
up these spaces to everyone.
BB: In terms of composition, how do you make
decisions about your composition…about how one solid or
one not-so-solid element relates to another?
DR: Totally intuitive…as far as that
can be…as far as any decision can be intuitive. I really
think that the most important thing that happens to me during
the day is the journey between home and the studio and I’m
not just saying that for effect…but that 15 minutes, or
however long it takes is the time when everything that I am
as a human being, and interested in….economics, politics,
history, philosophy, everything … I can separate myself
from and I come in here and this is the space in which I paint.
Now within every decision, every decision that I make on these
surfaces, because it’s made by me, retains a sense of
everything I’ve decided not to paint. So it’s almost
like I start with all these answers… in the sense that
I chose these materials. So I’ve got these givens. I’ve
got this thing called paint. I’ve got this surface. I’ve
got the tools to apply this paint to the surface. Then through
a series of actions or decisions, hopefully I will achieve a
question. So it’s not a series of questions working together
to achieve answers, I think it’s the other way around.
I have all the ‘answers’ in terms of materials and
so I look for questions. I think that’s the way a lot
of artists have worked.
BB: Well certainly, speaking to Katie [Pratt]
earlier on…she describes her work in terms of processes
of making decisions and systems by which to make decisions.
And yet even though one can see that you have this is common,
your work is entirely different.
DR: Oh yeah, Katie’s position is quite
different. I respect it because I respect the idea that people
work in ways that are completely different to mine…I’m
intrigued by it. If I deliberately set out not to have a system,
that would be a deliberate act. It would be counter-intuitive.
It would deaden the whole process. But because I come in with
this idea of just making a painting…I don’t come
in with the idea of making an abstract painting. I just make
paintings which end up in this generic space called ‘abstract
painting’ and it’s as simple as that…it really
is.
BB: And this word ‘abstract’ is
becoming increasingly more problematic actually…
DR: It’s always been a problem
BB: Yes but I meant especially during the
course of this show because everyone in the show is using it
– this word with single quotes around it…
DR: Oh give it a great big ‘A’…we
all know what it generally means in terms of visual arts. It
generally means you’re not re-presenting something that
exists elsewhere. It’s not a mirror on other things…reflecting
objects or people. It’s an unfortunate word, but there
are worse words. You know, I’ve been teaching a bit over
the years, and what people call themselves always make me laugh.
I always thought ‘this isn’t abstract’ because
I don’t abstract from something that exists. This is just
gesture. This is real. This is real time and action. And then,
teaching a bit over the last 7/8 years, and hearing some of
the quite redundant terms that people call themselves…there’s
this term called the ‘maker’. A ‘maker’
apparently is somebody who doesn’t paint. They’re
terrified of calling themselves a ‘sculptor’. For
fuck’s sake what’s that? A maker? God forbid, it
sounds like some kind of Craft’s Council objective. Where
does that come from? We all make. So what does that mean then…that
painters don’t make? Of course we make an object that
exists on the wall. This is real time, real space – literal
or real allusion
BB: But it’s interesting the anxiety
that exists around these terms…whether its ‘abstract’
or ‘creativity’ or ‘making’ or ‘painting’
or ‘sculpture’ or whatever. It can make it very
difficult for us to talk about what’s going on in the
work.
DR: People are embarrassed by these words.
Artists are embarrassed about asking these questions. But to
the general public…I mean someone speaks to me for the
first time, they say what do you do? I say I’m an artist.
They say what do you do? I say I’m a painter. They say
what kind of paintings do you make? These are the 3 questions.
I used to go through this elaborate process of trying to describe
something and then I would see them just going glassy-eyed and
looking like this…so it’s easy to just say ‘an
abstract painter’. It throws the ball back in their court
and then something else comes back and you can hear the sort
of palpitations.
BB: DO you think it’s a problem though…and
this is something I’ve been discussing with some of the
other people in the show as well….do you think that it’s
a problem that viewers in general don’t have the visual
literacy any more when it comes to painting. They can’t
necessarily tell the difference between a Damien Hirst painting
and a Joseph Albers painting. Is that a difficulty for you…the
way they look at the work?
DR: No. See, it depends. In the UK we haven’t
got a great tradition of visual culture…you know our churches
due to the Reformation…all the stained glass, all the
adornments were ripped apart, taken away, so it’s never
been properly trusted. I don’t want to go into this because
this has been covered by lots of people over the years, so I
don’t think there’s that much trust anyway. And
I don’t think it’s a problem if people don’t
know the difference between say Hirst or Albers if they look
at an object and prefer this object to that object – which
we always do, we prefer this person to that person. We prefer
this music to this…That’s fine, but it’s nice
when they can try and understand why they prefer that object
to this object. I think it’s that, you know, it’s
okay to say you like something more than something else..that’s
great. But there’s that next level of understanding, why
you prefer this, why you don’t like that. Who made it
is unimportant…it’s just recognising why these are
different objects.
BB: And what about then highly critical viewers,
say critics who almost without thinking about it would put painting
in this ‘traditional’ bracket…or would see
painting as being ‘reactionary’ in comparison with
installation or site-specific work. Does that worry you at all?
DR: No not at all. Painting’s a constant.
We don’t have to defend anything about painting or any
forms of expression – they just are. It has this unnerving
sense of constantly walking to the precipice. We were talking
about Abraham earlier, and Iasaac…this act of faith…leap
of faith. It has this constant ability to almost fall apart
in front of our eyes and yet then build itself back up. It’s
a fantastic constant that reflects and is a mirror of our times
in which we make the stuff.
BB: But one of the things we’re of course
very interested in, in the artworld, is this whole idea of the
new. We’re obsessed it you might say…
DR: It’s a very Victorian idea though…it’s
like the industrial revolution…newness equals radical,
or new technologies equal something that’s more important.
Yet technologies are instantly replaced by newer technologies
so the obsoletion of these technologies is far far quicker than
this ancient caveman activity of just making a mark on the surface.
I do think we have this blind faith…this Victorian mentality
that whatever is new is more valid that what went before. And
you know it’s not the case is it?
BB: And of course there still is an equally
big focus on originality even though the concept of originality
even though over the last 20 years so much has been done to
challenge this notion of originality.
DR: Well concepts of originality are driven
by other agendas. I just don’t think its relevant. Any
forms of expression in whatever media…if it works, it
works. I’m not down on any other form of media at all.
BB: Is that behind your choice to not paint
on canvas, but to paint on industrial materials?
DR: I love the fact that you can take this
elegant everyday industrial material which is used for conservatory
roofs and then through the act of daubing with this muddy stuff,
you respect this surface and you want to paint on it, yet you
ridicule it, you cut it up, or paint on it. So it’s disrupted.
So there’s that great ambiguity there about the act or
these collisions, these purposes. But then there’s also
the fact that, as you walk across this, as you scan across,
what you’re seeing is obstructed by the nature of the
glare from the light in the given space. So it’s about
obstructing the viewer as well and I’m interested in that.
I like the way that light refracts and the way that that operates
especially in architecture…modernist architecture in particular…the
way that you can’t really see the whole thing, you can’t
really see the detail and then all of a sudden you move across
it. It demands something more of the viewer and then it reveals
itself again. Just think about the way the great big Sebastiano
Del Piombo painting at the National Gallery, The Raising of
Lazurus…it’s about 12 foot by 15 foot. Do you know
the painting, it’s at the end of the corridor…and
you enter that space and the lighting is appalling and you can’t
really find the space where you can register it as a whole.
I enjoy that. I enjoy the fact that it’s obstructed and
you have to walk around to really get an idea of what’s
actually happening in those spaces where you can’t see
because of the glare. And it’s this idea that it’s
hidden, yet it’s there, that interests me.
BB: Yes that reminds me also of Holbein’s
Ambassadors and the way that that’s hung. The skull is
a kind of open secret…we all know what it’s supposed
to be and we all know that if you get into a particular position
then you will see it, but at the same time it’s kind of
concealed from you by virtue of the fact that you can never
quite get into the position you need to be in to read it properly,
because of the way that it’s hung in the gallery.
DR: And also the way that films work. Screen
as well. What isn’t spoken about a lot is the way that
say, this generic term ‘abstract painting’ can be
related to film as well and to notions of the screen…
the big screen… the way that the space evokes in Pollock,
that panoramic scale….the way that when you scan across
the screen (I’m not just talking about film or TV but
also a computer screen ), the way that that thin brightness
is pulsing there. There are these pixelations and it breaks
down into this other stuff and this sense of unreality. We’re
seeing this whole totality and then it breaks down very quickly,
the closer we get to it, or we get a glare off the sun coming
through the window. It actually comes out of a lot of sensations.
BB: You could feasibly see the surfaces that
you paint on as screens. They have that resonance with TV screens
or computer screens…that same shimmering effect
DR: Yes this is really key. We live in times
when we’re surrounded by screens. It’s a fantastically
honest way to construct something. Say you’ve got 3 layers,
front/back, front/back, front/back…you have 6 different
planes. So there’s literally 6 different planes as well
as everything that’s in between and an illusionism can
manifest itself. So yeah it does relate to notions of screen
and also to how windows in architecture work. I really admire
those tiny windows in the Corbusier building or the windows
in Toledo Cathedral are very very simple no stained glass. It
just allows, permits light to create a volume of space. These
are the factors which are key and they do seem to manifest themselves
into this thing that I end up with.
BB: One of the things I was reminded of in
looking at your work (and again this has to do with the notion
of optical illusion) was Marcel Duchamp’s roto-reliefs
– the works on glass that are put into motion and that
spin and create an optical illusion. I thought of them for 2
reasons. First of all because they start with that transparent
surface, but second of all, because they create this kind of
confusion in the viewer – you’re not quite sure
what you’re looking at and the spaces are confused into
a sort of hovering effect. And it’s interesting when thinking
about painting, to see in it a kind of lineage from Duchamp
because Duchamp himself rejected painting.
DR: Supposedly and yet continued painting.
I like that idea of painting hovering and going back to that
Sebastiano painting I think that’s what that does. Apart
from those little light things in the National Gallery. It’s
spatially ambiguous. You’re constantly moved about by
colour and shape and its size, the formal components that are
there. And you’re taken around by the nature of the composition.
I love Duchamp’s Large Glass. Obviously there’s
two sides which are as important as each other. He frees painting
in a certain way, just as Picasso, and Manet freed painting…Courbet.
There are a lot of people that free it up. Maybe Duchamp is
the great catalyst for reinforcing the nature of the graphic,
rather than the painterly. He was great.
BB: The other thing that I return to as regards
Duchamp’s as well, is his term the ‘infra-thin’–
you could almost say that there was an infra-thin space between
the two different planes in your work…a space that you
see but you don’t see; that’s not of the painting
but it’s in the painting. It’s a space that creates
this system of oppositions and reversals that Duchamp loved
DR: That’s true. It’s like traditional
print-making processes as well, where you’re working back
to front quite a lot. You make an image and when it’s
printed you have to realise that it comes round the other way.
I’m interested in that impression. I do like the thinness,
or the illusion of thinness as well. Because some people have
spoken about them in terms of constructions and I don’t
see anything further away from constructions. Yeah they’re
constructed but they’re about pictorial traditions and
the difference is that they’re on a different sort of
surface. I’m really fascinated by the complexities of
pictorial decisions. My eyes were really opened to this again
last year when I went to see the Matisse/Picasso show was on
at the Tate. A friend of mine is a trustee so we walked around
the Tate Modern at night on our own, so none of the Barbar jacket
brigade were there…no hundreds of kids. It was just me
and him. Prior to that time I was working on paintings which
were propped against the walls. They were still dealing with
similar issues but they had a lot more overt sculptural and
architectural association by the fact that they leaned, on the
floor up to the wall and so the space behind that wall became
active. I was beginning to feel that they laboured that point.
And then seeing these Matisse paintings…it was this massive
revelation {laughs] that no, actually everything could just
happen on the wall. It would demand more of the pictorial for
it to be on the wall. It’s hardly just a revelation to
say that something actually should just hang on the wall, but
it was for me. I was just a visual reminder after 5/6 years
of making these propped paintings, that I wanted it all to happen
just there. And I think spatially, the space is far more ambiguous
and tense by being sandwiched closer together as opposed to
being separated and speaking more about the nature of its construction.
Whereas this way it’s thinking more about the nature of
it’s illusion. And all these other pictorial elements
which blew me away about Matisse.
BB: One of the other things that goes on quite
a lot in your work is to do with the layering isn’t it?
It’s a kind of layering that makes you flip all the time
between something that looks a bit solid, like a solid shape,
and something that’s very opaque and shiny and translucent.
And it means that you have to have a kind of schizophrenic vision
to look at it.
DR: I think that’s a good description
actually, because what they are… they’re a series
of decisions made over a period of time. Obviously every day
I come in, free of everything that I’ve been thinking
about. I do a crossword, I do a couple of little watercolours
and then I start daydreaming, making paintings process. That
sort of layering process…your talking about opacity or
translucency …it’s a reflection of just what happens
then at that time. It happens in real time. That’s what
Bergson spoke about when he said “I am time”, as
opposed to the past and the future being abstract ideals. We
are time. We live time. We are real time and I like the idea
that. These reflect that and they reflect a series of decisions
made over a period of time. I think they contain that and I
think they expose that because there’s so much of that
…these conflicts. And I think, in a tangential way, that
reflects the nature of the majority of us really. It definitely
reflects me. One minute I love something like the street and
the dizzy rascals and at other times I love Bach or Rilke’s
poetry, Kirkegaard…whoever…
BB: So there’s that constant disorientating
flipping between one thing and the next. Would you say then
that painting is a kind of mode of orientation in the middle
of all that or not?
DR: Maybe it’s just that unnameable
space…that space which you can’t quite pin down.
I see these. I’ve spoken about this before… but
I see these asnd all my patterns as locations, as existing somewhere
between the physical facts and the metaphysical. And I’m
not afraid to use those terms. I don’t think they’re
physical and I don’t think they’re metaphysical.
I think they’re located somewhere between those spaces.
I think that something has to be more than it’s parts
but I don’t think it has to have this overt sense of allegory
of the metaphysical state. So I think there’s a space
between and it’s a thin space. It’s when it takes
on an aura it doesn’t feel like a painting and yet it
is a painting. It’s that unnameable space that intrigues
me. That location.
BB: And yet they’re difficult concepts
to grapple with. We’re so nervous at the end of the 20th
century, of terms like transcendence and the metaphysical.
DR: Great words. It’s good because they
aspire to the great guys. You look at great artists like Sol
le Witt. Compare Sol le Witt to someone like Robert Mangold.
Or these Minimalists as opposed to these Conceptual artists…horrible
terms. But it’s like the conceptual artists were prepared
to make this leap of faith, to think about how they can imagine
it to be. It might never exist, but there was this ability to
imagine something rather than the concrete facts, or limitations
of ‘what you see is what you see’. You know say
Robert Morris’ sculptures or whatever. I still think there
are strengths to them but I love that separation, that mindscape,
the way that Daniel Buren and Arte Povera work really.
BB: Again that’s something I was going
to ask you about, because you can see that evident link to Arte
Povera.
DR: I absolutely love them – especially
Giovanni Anselmo, Pisteletto are really key. Luciano Fabrio
and Marisa Merz who died a couple of weeks ago, which was a
real shame. That sort of respect and ridicule of the material
and understanding of space and questioning of space more than
anything.
BB: Would you say that painting itself has
become a kind of Arte Povera in general now. If you compare
what painting does not with what say Olafur Eliasson has done
in the Tate and the huge funds that goes into generating a work
like that…In comparison with that, working in the studio
is relatively cheap, relatively direct and relatively immediate
and has the same kind of advantages…
DR: I hadn’t thought of that but it’s
true and most of us are poor as well [laughs] So it’s
poor art being made by poor artists. That’s a good point.
I like Eliasson…I prefer other work that I’ve seen
by him, but a lot of these artists they get big opportunities
and they perform big stunts and that’s what they end up
looking like…stunts. Luckily enough I’ve seen quite
a bit of opera over the years (I’ve got friends who worked
in the Colliseum and in the Opera House) and I’ve seen
a lot of mirrored ceilings and a lot of smoky rooms…bit
like a queen concert and all these trompe l‘oeil effects.
Which are fun and have their place. And to be fair, I think
that’s the best use of the Turbine Hall I’ve seen.
But it’s not great - it’s a bit overblown. But I
loved his show in Venice and it’s the same sort of yellow
in that room. That room…the way that everyone’s
colour is bleached away. We become black and white and it’s
almost like we’re in some 1920s film. Everything is quite
fantastically wrong about the space…I just love that.
BB: Do you think that that, in general, is
what the function of painting is?
DR: Disorientation I think is the key. This
is where maybe the distinction lies. This is Maybe Painting’s
function, for me, Painting’s function is not necessarily
to disorientate but to re-orientate, as opposed to the traditional
concepts of a lot of quite tedious work in lots of media and
including painting…which starts off at A and moves to
B to C to D. I like the fact that you can start off with D and
move to C and maybe end up with J. It’s that lateral as
opposed to that literal
BB: It’s about how the painting invents
you as a viewer rather than you as an inventor of a painting?
DR: Absolutely and also I want to make painting
just for one person. Not for a committee, not for a patron,
not for a curator and not for myself. Just for one viewer. This
may be a person I’ve never met and am never likely to
meet, but it has to engage the viewer.
BB: Is there an ideal viewer for a painter
like yourself?
DR: I don’t think there is. I think
it can be someone from any form of life…it hasn’t
got to be an artist at all…preferably not actually. But
I think there’s an ideal viewer for each different painting,
each different object. And they may be the same viewer, but
I don’t think they are, I think they’re different
viewers. But there’s always one. I hate the idea that
this would appeal to a lot of people, or this would sell because
its got this component. That doesn’t interest me. I hate
art that just looks like therapy for the artist. I just think
its rubbish.
BB: But what would the ideal viewer, if one
existed, what would they do when they’re in front of your
work? Would they simply absorb it, enjoy it, what’s their
role?
DR: Hopefully to feel, to have sensations
from it…maybe just one sensation…maybe to make them
feel happy, feel sad, feel glad. I try to make paintings that
are free of dread as well, which is probably the only conscious
thing I try to do. Which is quite a peculiar thing to start
with but I’d like to enable the viewer to feel a frisson,
maybe a relationship or a distance with what they’re looking
at….but to hold them within that space, question the nature
of where they’re standing as well as how they’ve
looked at things before.
BB: So it’s not just about seducing
the viewer but about questioning them…
DR: No its about questioning. Suddenly they’re
questioning their own concepts of what they think objects do…not
necessarily just what paintings do. But they’re valid.
They’re questioning their own validity and decision-making
as well. Or maybe just enjoying something. Because it’s
so different from the thing that’s next to it on the wall.
And so different from the carpet or the lights around it…it’s
distinctiveness is the key.
BB: And if you were to make a painting that
was filled with dread, why would that be such a difficult thing
to do?
DR: Because that would be a determined act..
to make that. Now I know that you can argue that to make a painting
free of dread is a determined act, but I just like fact that
this isn’t telling you how to live your life. This isn’t
saying how you should live your life, this isn’t say you
should go out and kill someone, this isn’t saying you
should follow me at all costs. I think that it permits the viewer
to just daydream, to loose themselves a bit. And yet they can
find that from physical stuff, so there are lots of dual purposes
actually here. This is the problem with talking about this stuff.
BB: This was one of the things that came up
in talking with Katy [Pratt] as well….that having to negotiate
between being in control and being out of control. These aren’t
quite the terms that you’re using, you’re speaking
about “loosing yourself”. And that seems to be something
that was once traditionally associated with painting in that
we’re supposed to enter into some kind of haze. I don’t
know what loosing oneself means necessarily.
DR: Thank God it is an unnameable quality,
but I think loosing oneself in relation to painting maybe is
about…to use a term we used earlier…transcending
its physical nature…basically you’re experiencing
something and then its secondary ‘hit’ is that,
oh God it’s a painting. I have that experience in front
of Vermeers all the time. I’ve been looking at the Guitar
Player in Kenwood House for years since I was about 8 or 9.
Coming from North London, I used to spend quite a lot of time
up in Hamstead. And still every time I look at it, 25 years
later, it’s just as radical and as changing and unbelievable
as the first time I saw it. I recognise it’s a painting
but I don’t see the painting.
BB: How important is it to be in front of
the painting? There will be people, say, watching this video
for example on the internet or people looking at an image on
the invitation card in reproduction, how does it compare to
that?
DR: It’s preferable. Images exist in
different forms and work, or they don’t work in different
forms. Obviously these are made to be looked at by someone standing
in front of them and yet there is certain work, which works
really well when reproduced in different media. I quite like
the fact that this is hard to reproduce, because of the nature
of what light does to the surface and the glossiness next to
the mattness of something. All these qualities are lost when
you’re not in the space with it. Things work in different
ways.
BB: But then this is one of the difficulties
when you start to talk about painting isn’t it. That it
begins to sound almost as if you’re in some kind of magical
realm, that you have to be exposed to the original itself in
order for it to act effectively on you. That’s not the
sense I get in talking to you about your work at all but it
is one of the problems that speaking about painting seems to
produce.
DR: You can gauge a lot through looking at
work in reproduction
BB: You’ve got your postcards there
all around you.
DR: Yeah they’re quick reminders of
places I’ve been to and paintings I’ve seen and
straight away they trigger that memory so many they’re
acting for me in that way. I’m not looking at the sensation
of paint I can’t really pick that up. But what they do
is trigger a certain association or memory. There’s a
fantastic painting by Tiepolo in the Pasadena in California.
I’m just constantly consistently thinking of this painting.
I’ve got a reproduction of it. I look at it and I’m
back in the sky around those angels.
BB: This is maybe an unfair question, since
it’s always easier for us to think about the painting
of the past, but what is the painting of the future going to
be?
DR: I think the artists that I’ve admired
through history have painted the future. It’s in real
time in real space they’ve made real marks. But great
paintings I think are in a way, memories of the future anyway
because they’re not Salon paintings which replicate that
horse or replicate certain scenes. I think great painting possesses
a sense of memory of the future
BB: Thank you very much indeed Danny Rolph
