"Whatever I do is going to take a long time: we have progressed beyond self-referentiality into the hypercritical: like Beuys and Nelson before, we are dealing with romantic concerns - desire, time, fashion"
(Reprinted from the July 1986 issue of Flash Art, with permission)
A:
Well, clearly I have these influences, but actually I think I fall
closer to the anti-theoretical side of this kind of activity, for
instance my early paintings of art history texts are a clear example
of trying to express through painting the same 'activity' that Stitt
tries to express by crawling around on all fours with a neck brace
on. This may seem trivial in light of
Beuys,
but we have to reject
this 'quality appeal' on the basis of our anti-modern dislike of
the 'star cult' surrounding
Beuys. In fact, many of
my recent
paintings suggest that Beuys'
'death' was intentional, and that it
was contrived precisely to 'trivialize his work.' You may of course
notice that neither Burden nor I have 'died.' We are
willing to reject the 'easy our' of trivialization through post-modern
'star cult' status.
Q:
An clearly this is the connection between your work and that of the
constructivists, the 'false' timelessness?
A:
Actually, it is hard to say. Post-modern artists have had to take a
step back in order to 'rediscover' the past, and then another step back
to analyze the first step. This is why I use the
term
'Anti-Post-Actualism'
instead of simply 'Post-Actualism.' This term 'precisely' dictates a
second level of removal from the 'real' value of an action - it is not
a mind game, but instead a calculated
revolutionary statement: We are not willing!
Q:
And the constructivists?
A:
Well, you may have noticed that my approach, which is perhaps
'Duchampian'
if anything, is to take the style of an artist like
Malevich and copy him, but only taking fragments which were least
important to him, like the kind of tacks he used for hangings, or the
light bulbs in his studio... whatever was most marginal, and then this
'plagerism' becomes the
underlying 'marginality' of my own work. (Remember
Duchamp's emphasis on the
studio-editor). I essentially use it but ignore it simultaneously,
as if to say "these historical links are not the only
content!"
Q:
Your most recent paintings consist of 'simple' lists of artists names
in chronological order, printed in green ink on canvas by machine.
When you use the names of your current girlfriends to title each
painting, are you 'trivializing' your sources, or is it a
radical-lesbian statement against the primarily male dominated
influences of (post)modern art?
A:
Well, either interpretation would hold water, but I prefer to
think of it as a certain ordering of the universe, simply I dated
so-and-so, and I was influenced by these artists at the same time.
I don't really think it's name dropping, because I take it one step
further than that by using my lover's name as title. Also, these
'post-constructivist' paintings are 'anti-conceptual,' since the
focus is on the 'person' and not the 'idea.'
Q:
In this way, you can avoid two of the major traps of the
New York Scene,
the need to be 'innovative' and the need to be 'authoritative.'
A:
I think so, this is the primary 'mood' of my life. The 60's were
about 'learning,' the 70's were about 'having,' I think the 80's
are about the synthesis of the corporate and the radical - about
'learning as having.'
Q:
What about the 'nineties'?
A:
In New York, you never know, but I suspect that we won't see much
changing for twenty years, we've set it up that way.
