Parachute, 1 mars 1977, Printemps

[" iRACHUT $2.50 PRINTEMPS 1977 Mflnm sans wnm.rç directrices de la publication FRANCE MORIN, CHANTAL PONTBRIAND EVE ROCKERT CARPI, CHRISTIANE CHARETTE, RAYMOND GER-VAIS, REVON REED, PHILIP FRY, NORMAND THÉRIAULT, NANCY MURRAY, LIZA BEAR, CALVIN HARLAN, CALVIN TOMKINS, PHILIP GLASS, TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, NICOLE McCALLUM SYSTÈME GRAPHIQUE: ROLAND POULIN PIERRE BOOGAERTS PARACHUTE n\u2019est pas responsable des documents qui lui sont adressés ou non réclamés.tous droits de reproduction et de traduction réservés.les articles publiés n\u2019engagent que la responsabilité de leurs auteurs.PARACHUTE est publiée avec l\u2019aide du Conseil des Arts du Canada.PARACHUTE, C.P.730-Succursale N, Montréal, Québec, Canada H2X 3N4 (514) 522-9167.publication trimestrielle \u2014 le numéro $2.50, abonnement $9.00 étranger $15.00 (par avion).Dépôt légal à la Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec et à la Bibliothèque Nationale du Canada.4ième trimestre 1976.Atelier des Sourds (Montréal) Inc., Montréal Rive-Sud Typo Service Inc, St-Lambert.courrier de 2e classe.ISSN 0318- 7020.COUVERTURE: PHOTO: PIERRE BOOGAERTS Nous remercions Leslie Cotton de sa collaboration à l\u2019article sur Charlemagne Palestine paru dans le numéro 5.Nous désirons remercier les personnes suivantes de leur collaboration: Le New Orleans Museum of Art, William A.Fagaly, conservateur en chef, E.John Bullard, directeur, Tina Girouard, Dickie Landry, Linda Benglis, Robert Rauschenberg, Keith Sonnier, Liza Bear, Calvin Harlan, Tennessee Williams, Philip Glass, Calvin Tomkins, Rena Small, Ida Kohlmeyer, Madame Jack Landry, Madame Yvelle Girouard, Mae et Joe Sonnier, Gerard Murrell, Catherine Blanchet, Russell Dupuis, Revon Reed, Paul Tate, Herman Mhire, M.et Mme Stanley Grinstein de Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles, Madame Muriel Bultman Francis. 6 PRINTEMPS 1977 4 LE SUD À VOL D\u2019OISEAU quelques notes à partir de Five from Louisiana par Chantal Pontbriand 7 LYNDA BENGLIS an essay by Tennessee Williams et une entrevue de France Morin 12 TINA GIROUARD, Two trees in the Forest, an interview by Liza Béar 18 RICHARD LANDRY , an interview by Philip Glass 22 ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, an essay by Calvin Tomkins 25 KEITH SONNIER, an interview by Calvin Harlan 29 LOUISIANA CAJUNS STILL SAY: \u201cLÂCHE PAS LA PATATE, MON NÈGRE\u201d, by Revon Reed (texte français et anglais) 32 RÉFLEXIONS SUR LE PROBLÈME RÉGIONALISTE par France Morin 35 DOROTHEA ROCKBURNE by Nancy Murray 38 YVES GAUCHER, The Last Picture Shown, par Normand Thériault For Jan Swidzinski and Hervé Fischer 42 LE POTAGE OUTAOUAIS a contextual prescription/description by Philip Fry 44 INFORMATIONS 3 B9M9H èâis mâmmm msmsm&î, msss252&S2S3L 'gS2SS25&§æ&& usaisiss f£êsêsës&$5m J:S5| ,3&aâ :.\u2022¦\u2022.?s^4 '£«a @«1'éh 'SïjS>i, S*-'.,, LE SUD À VOL D\u2019OISEAU quelques notes à partir de Five from Louisiana par Chantal Pontbriand Ce que contient ce numéro de Parachute concerne tous ceux qui vivent hors des grandes métropoles artistiques.À l\u2019heure où l\u2019existence de ces métropoles est mise en doute, de l\u2019intérieur même, on peut dire que ce numéro s\u2019adresse à tous, puisque tout artiste, qu\u2019il vive à Tokyo ou à New York ou à Montréal, a des racines.Ces racines, il les assumera où qu\u2019il choisisse d\u2019habiter.comment ne pas être influencé dans sa vie future par la famille, la race ou l\u2019ethnie, le milieu social, urbain ou rural, les média de communication, la distance ou la promiscuité.C\u2019est tout cela qui forme la sensibilité chez l\u2019individu.Ce bagage culturel, chacun l\u2019emporte avec soi, où qu\u2019il aille, et choisit d\u2019en tenir compte à des degrés divers.Les migrations vers les métropoles artistiques demeurent probablement aussi grandes qu\u2019elles l\u2019ont toujours été.Après avoir expérimenté la vie d\u2019un grand centre, ceux qui veulent partir partent et ceux qui veulent y rester, restent.Alors qu\u2019autrefois, ceux qui étaient partis et avaient pu rester, avaient réussi, et que les autres avaient dû partir à cause d\u2019un échec.Aujourd\u2019hui, il y en a qui partent non pas parce qu\u2019ils n\u2019ont pas réussi à s\u2019intégrer dans le \u201cmilieu\u201d mais parce que leur développement personnel les pousse ailleurs vers d\u2019autres environnements que l\u2019environnement urbain et systématisé imposé par New York, quand il s\u2019agit des États-Unis, Aussi, l\u2019illusion qui domine ce système n\u2019est plus aussi grande et certaines conjonctures socio-historiques ont fait que New York ne peut plus revendiquer les honneurs d\u2019autrefois.Certains artistes n\u2019ont plus le souci de la réussite, de la consécration.Ils ignorent les grands centres ou choisissent de les abandonner au profit d\u2019un développement individuel sans recours aux formules, aux traditions ou aux théories.Certains conservateurs de musée, par ailleurs, ont adopté des politiques visant à aller chercher en province des alternatives à la stagnation de l\u2019art.Les expositions majeures, dont un des objectifs est de consacrer des artistes, sont continuellement remises en question: que ce soit la Biennale de Paris, Documenta, ou la Biennale de Venise (toutes ont été fortement contestées).Toutes ont peine à survivre ou encore à recevoir l\u2019appui des artistes.Les années \u201960 ont permis à un certain nombre de galeries remarquables de se mettre sur pied à New York et d\u2019ouvrir leurs portes à de jeunes artistes qui offraient des perspectives nouvelles et des problématiques intéressantes: l\u2019époque des Naumau, Morris, Judd, Sonnier.Ce n\u2019est plus le cas, le marché est à la baisse et les collectionneurs n\u2019ont plus l\u2019esprit de risque qui les animaient il y a encore quelques années.On n\u2019a qu\u2019à visiter les foires qui ont lieu annuellement en Europe pour se rendre compte que même les moteurs de l\u2019avant-garde comme Castelli ou Son-nabend ne s\u2019avancent plus sur des terrains incertains comme autrefois et optent pour les éléments les plus sûrs de leurs galeries Oldenburg, Lichtenstein ou Rauschenberg.Ce ne sont sans doute pas les artistes qui utilisent des média éphémères ou audiovisuels qui rentabilisent l\u2019existence de ces galeries auxquelles, par ailleurs, on reconnaît toute la hardiesse et l\u2019enthousiasme dont ils ont témoigné par leurs rôles dans l\u2019évolution des arts des dernières années.D\u2019autre part, l\u2019échelle des valeurs est dictée dans le domaine de l\u2019art par un système dont la cohérence et l\u2019axe central se retrouvent encore uniquement à New York.New York demeure le lieu de consécration qu\u2019on le rejette ou non, le lieu des revues à gros tirages, des grands musées et des grandes galeries, des collectionneurs importants, l\u2019endroit qui donne le pas, où sont jetées les bases décisionnelles, où se sont élaborés les paramètres de jugement.Pourtant, en milieu régionaliste, et tous le sont face à New York: Paris, Montréal, Milan, Toronto, New Orleans.on revendique son autonomie, son identité, pour ne pas dire son histoire.On désire croire ferme à sa survivance, sans aller jusqu\u2019à croire à son autosuffisance culturelle.On se dit aussi que les distances ne sont pas grandes de nos jours, que New York est facilement accessible, à quelques heures d\u2019avion, etc.On s\u2019abonne aux revues d\u2019avant-garde et même, on peut recevoir chez soi le Soho News Weekly qui donne l\u2019impression de suivre la moindre manifestation à New York comme si on y vivait.4 Finalement, cette perspective raccourcie donne davantage une idée fausse et illusoire de l'art contemporain en filtrant la totalité de sa production par les média d\u2019information.La proximité est là, mais le rapport est biaisé.Ce qui manque: le contact direct, la possibilité de percevoir l(es) oeuvre(s) en-train-de-se-faire.Il y a donc double décalage: le biaisement que génèrent les média permettant à l\u2019illusion de s\u2019inscrire comme réalité \u2014 la survivance dans un système socio-économique qui ne tient souvent que grâce à des béquilles: l\u2019enseignement à perpétuité, les bourses du gouvernement, et autres.Pour être artiste en province, on doit se munir d\u2019une de ces béquilles, selon plusieurs facteurs, dont celui du pourcentage de la population qui s\u2019intéresse à l\u2019art et de l\u2019attention que portent les collectionneurs et les institutions locales aux artistes importants de leurs régions.Dresser la liste des pours et des contres de la question de la décentralisation n\u2019est pas notre propos pour le moment.On constate néanmoins que l'on cherche, pour une raison ou pour une autre à l\u2019heure actuelle, des alternatives à la métropole, et d\u2019autre part, que les régions se débattent et s\u2019efforcent et d\u2019exister et d\u2019émerger en tant que point d\u2019intérêt pour l\u2019art contemporain.Souvent, cette poussée au niveau des arts est accompagnée d\u2019une poussée économique ou politique, qui engendre la prolifération de nouvelles idées, de nouvelles écoles d\u2019art, de nouvelles galeries, de musées, de collectionneurs et, au niveau artistique, une région développe un sous-système.L\u2019éclosion économique ou politique n\u2019engendre pas nécessairement un renouveau artistique, bien que l\u2019énergie créatrice ait possiblement besoin d\u2019être soutenue par un climat politico-socio-économique correspondant, ouvert et \u201cmagnétisant\u201d.Il y a donc un retour aux E.U.vers les différentes régions, un regain d\u2019intérêt pour ce qui germe en dehors de New York: la Californie et le Sud semblent être les deux régions les plus en vue.Ces régions sont par contre fort différentes l\u2019une de l\u2019autre de plusieurs points de vue: histoire, économie et culture.Ce numéro se propose d\u2019explorer plus avant l\u2019une de ces régions en se basant sur un point de départ qui est l\u2019exposition Five from Louisiana, qui a lieu du 28 janvier au 27 mars au New Orleans Museum of Art en Louisiane.C\u2019est à Paris, en octobre dernier, que j\u2019ai entendu parler de cette exposition pour la première fois.J\u2019y ai rencontré Dickie Landry et Tina Girouard qui tous deux font partie de l\u2019exposition.Pour eux, la chose était extrêmement significative: ils allaient exposer pour la première fois dans un musée de leur contrée d\u2019origine avec trois autres artistes de la Louisiane: Lynda Benglis, Keith Sonnier et Robert Rauschenberg.De plus, ces artistes sont nés dans la partie francophone (cajun) de la Louisiane, ce qui n\u2019est pas sans leur attribuer une identité particulière.En explorant plus à fond la problématique à la base de Five from Louisiana qui est celle de la confrontation d\u2019une région face à une métropole, en s\u2019intéressant, à titre de québécois, à une autre région du continent nord-américain, nous avons senti l\u2019intérêt de consacrer quelques articles à cette exposition: aux artistes (entrevues et textes), au contexte socio-culturel (que nous développons plus loin), au problème régionaliste (ce dont France Morin traite plus particulièrement), et à la renaissance de la francophonie en Louisiane, ce sur quoi Revon Reed fait le point dans un texte intitulé Lâche pas la patate.Quelques-uns des textes au sujet des artistes ont été tirés d\u2019un supplément spécial paru dimanche le 30 janvier dans le Times Picayune, de New Orleans, paru à 323,000 exemplaires et distribué en Louisiane.Ce supplément devait servir de catalogue à l\u2019exposition.Les entrevues des artistes ont été menées par diverses personnes, selon leur choix; il en est de même quand il s\u2019agit de textes; Tennessee Williams nous livre ses impressions sur Lynda Benglis.Liza Béar, rédactrice du magazine Avalanche, a interviewé Tina Girouard.Le compositeur Philip Glass a interviewé Dickie Landry qui fait partie de son ensemble et qui est un ami de longue date.Calvin Tompkins a écrit sur Rauschenberg.Calvin Harlan, professeur de Keith Sonnier lorsqu\u2019il étudiait à l\u2019University of Southern Lousiana, l\u2019a interrogé.Pour nous permettre de saisir le sens de Five from Louisiana et le processus de réintégration que sous-tend l\u2019exposition, France Morin et moi-même sommes allées en Louisiane pour une dixaine de jours avant l\u2019ouverture, ce qui nous a permis de suivre tout le montage, d\u2019interviewer à notre tour chacun des artistes et de leurs collaborateurs et de rencontrer quelques-unes çles personnes qui ont pu les marquer lorsqu\u2019ils étaient encore en Louisiane.Calvin Harlan, par exemple, a enseigné à Girouard, Landry et Sonnier.Il est l\u2019auteur de Vision and Invention, où ses méthodes d\u2019enseignement sont explicitées.Revon Reed est professeur à Mamou, d\u2019où Keith Sonnier est originaire, et est considéré comme l\u2019un des principaux animateurs de la renaissance de la culture cajun.Il a d\u2019ailleurs publié aux éditions Parti-Pris un livre intitulé Lâche pas la patate: portrait des acadiens de la Louisiane.Clifton Chénier, qui était là avec sa bande pour jouer le soir du vernissage, est un musicien cajun noir qui joue avec Dickie Landry depuis longtemps.Nous nous sommes rendues dans les bayous, cette partie de la Louisiane où on parle encore français et là, nous avons rencontré un esprit fort particulier et retrouvé la saveur de la culture française amalgamée, non pas assimilée, à plusieurs autres cultures: américaine, noire, espagnole, indienne.Cette exploration d\u2019une des parties les plus actives et les plus originales du Sud américain, nous a permis d\u2019intuitionner l\u2019importance de la diversité culturelle qui subsiste dans certaines parties des États-Unis malgré l\u2019esprit de Melting-Pot, forte idéologie de base de l\u2019Amérique, qui a longtemps fait partie du American Dream et de ses multiples miroitements économiques, sociaux et culturelles.Précisons, avant d\u2019aller plus loin, quelques données.Organisée par le New Orleans Museum of Art, en particulier par William A.Fageley, Five from Louisiana est en préparation depuis quatre ans.Elle fait partie d\u2019une série d\u2019expositions qui doivent souligner le travail d\u2019artistes d\u2019un intérêt majeur dans l\u2019histoire de la Louisiane.Ces expositions ont été mises sur pied en hommage au Bicentenaire de la Révolution américaine.Les trois expositions qui ont précédé celle-ci étaient consacrées aux peintres Richard Clague (1821-1873) et John McGrady (1911-1968), au photographe Clarence John Laughlin.Five from Louisiana est la dernière de ces expositions et comprend donc le travail de cinq artistes qui ont acquis une réputation internationale et qui sont d\u2019origine locale.Pour chacun d\u2019entre eux, il s\u2019agit, comme mentionné plus haut, d\u2019une première exposition dans leur état d\u2019origine, alors que leur travail est déjà connu ailleurs aux États-Unis et en Europe.Tous ont adopté New York à un moment de leur vie comme principal domicile.Lynda Benglis et Keith Sonnier partagent leur temps entre New York et Los Angeles.Rauschenberg est souvent à New York, lorsqu\u2019il n\u2019est pas chez lui en Floride.Tina Girouard et Dickie Landry vivent à New York mais passent une bonne partie de l\u2019année à Cecilia dans les bayous.Il semble assez invraisemblable qu\u2019aucun de ces artistes pense cependant à revenir s\u2019établir en Louisiane.Le centre de leur vie professionnelle est ailleurs, les ressources dont ils ont besoin pour continuer leur travail sont ailleurs.Mais là n\u2019est pas la question,est-ce possible aujourd\u2019hui,pour un artiste qui désirerait le faire, de demeurer en province et de pouvoir poursuivre pour autant son métier avec des avantages similaires ou équivalents à ceux que connaissent les artistes de New York?Et si cela est possible, qu\u2019est-ce que cela signifie?Pourquoi aujourd\u2019hui aller à New York quand on veut être artiste?Faire valoir son travail, s\u2019intégrer dans un milieu plus stimulant, trouver des débouchés pour son travail dans une galerie, en Europe, ailleurs, être remarqué par un musée important.sans doute ces motivations relèvent-elles d\u2019une question politique et commerciale.Si cela en est ainsi, jusqu\u2019à quel point la déchéance économique de l\u2019Est des USA et la renaissance sudiste peuvent-elles avoir des répercussions culturelles.Jusqu'à il y a quinze ans encore, le Sud, le Sud \u201cprofond\u201d comme on l\u2019appelait alors, avait comme caractéristique principale d\u2019être rural, agraire, stable religieux et raciste.La disparition apparente du racisme, l\u2019industrialisation et le décollage économique ont tôt fait de modifier considérablement cette image désuète du Sud.Les Sudistes perdent leurs complexes face aux autres américains.Les changements dans le Nord, accompagnés de graves problèmes politiques et économiques (la défaite du Vietnam, la faillite de New York, par exemple) influencent les relations Nord-Sud.La crise de l\u2019énergie engendre un regain d\u2019intérêt pour les généreuses ressources qu\u2019offrent la Louisiane, le Texas et d\u2019autres états du Sud.En Louisiane seulement, on exploite 5,500 puits de pétrole le long des bayous, dans le delta du Mississipi et dans la mer.Les marins et les ouvriers des plantations deviennent des employés des industries de pétrole.Les villes grossissent (Lafayette La., par exemple, est la ville qui dit-on compte aujourd\u2019hui le plus de millionnaires aux USA.) La Nouvelle-Orléans est le troisième port le plus important au monde: c\u2019est le débouché de tout le Middle-Ouest américain.L\u2019aéroport d\u2019Atlanta est le deuxième plus grand aux États-Unis après Chicago et avant N.Y et LA.Bref, le Sud connaît une expansion industrielle économique de 4.4%, comparativement à 3.4% ailleurs aux E.U.Aussi, les années soixante donnent lieu à l\u2019avènement de la Campagne des Droits civiques.Pour la première fois, les noirs ont une identité légale identique à celle des blancs.Tous ont désormais les mêmes chances de promouvoir leurs intérêts, de connaître un même bien-être.Mais l\u2019intégration est lente et difficile, même si dans certaines villes, comme Atlanta, le maire est noir, dans les écoles, tout n\u2019est pas réglé: on institue le \u201cbusing\u201d qui force les enfants à fréquenter des écoles intégrées.En réaction, on ouvre de plus en plus d\u2019écoles privées pour contrer cette procédure qui veut empêcher que les enfants des mêmes quartiers, noirs ou blancs, demeurent entre eux.Les noirs ne sont pas les seuls complexés du Sud,il y a les \u201cpetits Blancs\u201d en Géorgie, en Alabama, en Louisiane.Eux aussi, l\u2019ère de prospérité qui enveloppe le Sud va leur permettre de sortie de leur isolement, d\u2019abandonner les quelques acres de ferme qu\u2019ils possèdent au profit d\u2019emplois stables dans les usines, les industries, ou alors, ils agrandiront leurs propriétés et avec de la machinerie nouvelle profiteront davantage de leurs investissements.Le coton, culture difficile et pue rentable, est remplacé par les arachides, le riz, la mais, la canne à sucre, le soja.On voit beaucoup de petites maisons de bois qui semblent être à l\u2019abandon dans le Sud de la Louisiane, par exemple, mais ce n\u2019est plus pour autant un signe de pauvreté: les habitants ont émigré vers des demeures plus modernes, symboles de leur nouvelle richesse.Le Sud est stable: l\u2019homme qui y habite a été formé par une tradition agraire et son attachement à la terre est grand.L\u2019homme du sud a le sens de la continuité comme l\u2019européen, et étonnament, le changement technologique n\u2019a pas trop vite altéré cette façon de voir.On a l\u2019impression que la religion et l\u2019éducation sont encore des valeurs primordiales pour les sudistes.On appelle la \u201cCeinture biblique\u201d cette zone qui va du Texas à l\u2019Atlantique, parallèlement au Golfe du Mexique.À cette religiosité blanche, on peut ajouter l\u2019apport mystique du vaudou antillais.Ce sont ces traditions sociales et culturelles, modelées par des influences d\u2019origines diverses, développées en paix pendant plus d\u2019un siècle, qui donnent au Sud un mode de vie tellement particulier qu\u2019il résiste aux contraintes et désavantages de la poussée économique et qui donnent à la vie présente son sens nostalgique.5 Ce sud est américain dont la géographie et le climat, dont les moeurs et le mode de vie sont si différents du reste des États-Unis, est-il identifiable culturellement?En littérature, les noms de William Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson.Carson McCullers, Truman Capote, Shirley Ann Grau, Walker Percy, et de Tenes-se Williams nous viennent immédiatement à l\u2019esprit.En musique, c\u2019est le dixieland et la Nouvelle-Orléans, la floraison du jazz et du country-music: Nashville, Tennessee, Macon, Georgia, Austin, Texas, Lafayette, Louisiane, sans négliger cette immense fête populaire en Louisiane qu\u2019est le Mardi-Gras.Certaines formes d\u2019artisanat sont encore vivantes: le tissage, courtepointes, et la vannerie.Par le passé, l\u2019axe de développement de cette région a toujours été le Mis-sissipi: ce fleuve devait déterminer bien des choses culturellement, toute une atmosphère que l\u2019on retrouve très bien dans les romans sudistes, dans la musique, dans les arts plastiques.Pour ce qui est de la tradition picturale ou plastique elle semble être inexistante en rapport avec l\u2019importance de la musique ou de la littérature.Il faut bien sûr tenir compte des artisanats locaux et du Mardi-Gras dès que l\u2019on cherche une sensibilité particulière à cette région, il n\u2019y a donc pas eu véritablement d\u2019école de peinture ou de sculpture spécifique dans le Sud jusqu\u2019à maintenant.Richard Clague et John McGrady sont des cas isolés dans l\u2019histoire de la peinture américaine et plutôt que de se réclamer de mouvements locaux, on peut supposer qu\u2019ils étaient plus en rapport avec ce qui se passait en art au même moment ailleurs aux E.U.ou en Europe, qu\u2019en rapport avec des groupes dont ils auraient pu être les figures de proue.Afin de comprendre qu\u2019elle pouvait être ces rapports pour un peintre travaillant dans le Sud au XIXe siècle ou au milieu du premier tiers du XXe, il vaut la peine de s\u2019intéresser un peu plus à ces deux peintres.Richard Clague, né à la Nouvelle-Orléans en 1821, étudie en Europe où il fréquente plus ou moins l\u2019école de Barbizon.Il développe une approche pastorale et peint souvent des scènes de campagne avec de l\u2019eau, des arbres, de petites maisons et des animaux, inspirées de la Basse-Louisiane.Clague, bien que son travail puisse s\u2019apparenter à celui de certains peintres contemporains ailleurs aux E.U.n\u2019a jamais eu de contact avec ceux-ci et tout son héritage artistique et culturel était français.Il en était de même pour ses collègues artistes car la Nouvelle-Orléans à cette époque gardait encore beaucoup de son héritage français et les relations avec l\u2019Europe se vivaient directement et non pas via New York qui devenait rapidement la métropole économique et artistique américaine.Clague accueille très souvent de jeunes peintres de la Nouvelle-Orléans dans son studio selon la manière française et les amène avec lui pour peindre la nature de la Louisiane.On remarque que les scènes représentées par Claque s\u2019apparentent assez bien à ce que la photo offrait comme cadrage à l\u2019époque, on remarque aussi que le traitement de la nature n\u2019aspire pas au grandiose, comme c\u2019est souvent le cas dans la peinture américaine de l\u2019époque: la nature est vue comme étant une chose à l\u2019échelle humaine, où la vie est calme, paisible et ensoleillée, le tableau est baigné de lumière, la présence de la végétation est rassurante, protectrice, tout est là pour mettre l\u2019homme en confiance, exprimant une forme de douceur et de mélancolie, ptutôt pertinente aux concepts de la nature qui existaient en Europe à l\u2019époque avec Rousseau.Quatre-vingts ans plus tard, vers 1930, commence à peindre John McGrady (1911-1968).Le courant qui prédomine alors aux États-Unis est le régionalisme.C\u2019est l\u2019entre-deux-guerres et une attitude isolationniste survient à la suite d\u2019une dépression économique qui touche l\u2019ensemble de la nation.Le régionalisme veut être un mouvement essentiellement américain et se défend d\u2019employer les voies excessives de la peinture européenne contemporaine.Les artistes veulent être vraiment représentatifs de leurs régions et veulent partager à travers l\u2019art les difficultés éprouvées par le peuple américain pendant cette période, McGrady étudie au Art Students\u2019 League à New York, mais il a tôt fait de réaliser qu\u2019il ne serait pas heureux à peindre les rues de New York; il devait peindre le Sud: les noirs, la campagne, les fêtes, etc.et toute cette imagerie, il allait la traiter d\u2019une façon réaliste alliée à sa vision fantastique et humoristique des choses.\u201cFor McGrady, painting becomes almost an act of creation: the body of his medium receives the soul of his inspired dream, and the resulting painting lives as a unique entity.Ultimately, because of this, each painting is a self-portrait, a representation of a portion of the artist\u2019s soul.In effect, McGrady\u2019s most fantastical paintings provide a tentative answer to Pascal\u2019s mystery of the union of body and soul; for they suggest that man is capable of using his soul to move beyond his body, to create new relities for himself.And, unlike the surrealist painters of the period, who painted only symbolic manifestations of the mind or soul, McGrady provided a recognizable form for the dream.\u201d3 À partir d\u2019une tradition de peintres-portraitistes itinérants, de quelques peintres de renommée nationale comme Clague ou McGrady, de manifestations vernaculaires comme l\u2019artisanat, le Mardi-Gras, le vaudouisme , la musique populaire, la littérature orale créole, noire, française, indienne.où donc sont les traditions stylistiques dont le Sud pourrait se réclamer?Le Musée de la Nouvelle-Orléans organise depuis 1915 une biennale qui regroupe les artistes des états suivants: Alabama, Arkansas, Floride, Géorgie, Kentucky, Mississipi, Tennessee, Carolines du Nord et du Sud, Louisiane et Texas.Ces biennales sont ouvertes à tous les artistes de ces états et constituent pour eux l\u2019occasion de montrer leur travail et d\u2019exposer dans des galeries locales éventuellement.Chaque biennale est sujette à l\u2019expertise d\u2019un jury qui fait des recommandations en faveur d\u2019expositions solo pour l\u2019année suivante.En 1967, Robert Doty, qui était conservateur du Whitney Museum of American Art à ce moment-là, trouva que l\u2019art issu du Sud exprimait une qualité en rapport avec un néo-surréalisme ou une fantaisie teintée de psychologisme prononcé.Cependant, ce qui semble correspondre le plus à une tentative d\u2019identifier ou de topographier artistiquement le Sud, est, comme partout ailleurs, une tendance à explorer une multitude de courants ou encore à défier les catégories et les styles.À ce propos, Jane Livingston, jury invité à la Biennale de 1975 commente:.\u201ccertaines régions aux États-Unis semblent avoir soutenues à travers les années et les décades mêmes des traditions stylistiques identifiables.L\u2019École de Chicago, par exemple est caractérisée par un vocabulaire de formes surréalisantes, (the Hairy Who et H.C.Westermann, qui sont apparus à Chicago pendant les années 50 et 60, sont des exemples de ces phénomènes); la région de San Francisco a absorbé et rapidement transformé l\u2019École de New York sous l\u2019influence de la\u201cbeat-generation\u201det du style qui avait pris ses origines à San Francisco dans les années 50.Puis, ce style s\u2019est développé dans le sens d\u2019une école de peinture vers les années 60 jusqu\u2019à maintenant.Aujourd\u2019hui, ce style absorbe une imagerie fantaisiste un peu à l\u2019image de ce qui se fait a Chicago et des média divers: on fait du dessin, de la peinture surréaliste comme de la céramique.Les sculpteurs qui travaillaient dans les années 50 et 60 dans divers média en créant des constructions organiques élaborées soutiennent cette association constante au surréalisme que nous avons remarqué dans différentes régions.De San Francisco, à la fin des années 50, est venue une infusion d\u2019énergie artistique dans le Sud de la Californie, ce qui a crée plusieurs sous-styles: l'artisanat et la \u201ccar-culture\u201d alliés à la céramique et aux plastiques dans les années 60; l\u2019émergence de l\u2019art d\u2019environnement centré sur la lumière et sur l\u2019atmosphère per se; différentes manières de \u201cpeinture\u201d accrochées aux murs: des oeuvres abstraites fabriquées avec des brindilles, du tissu, du ciment, des plastiques, de la corde, des perles,de la lumière projetée \u2014 courant qui s\u2019est développé partout au cours des années 60.\u201d De même, on peut inférer que le Sud connaît aussi cette prolifération de sous-styles dont l\u2019origine tient à la fois de traditions stylistiques modernes \u2014 Matisse, Cézanne, l\u2019expressionnisme, le surréalisme et le dadaisme.\u2014 et de formulations vernaculaires ou d\u2019approches technologiques.Jane Livingston écrit encore: \u201cD\u2019une façon évidente, on remarquera.une prépondérance à l\u2019imagerie fan- tastique .c\u2019est-à-dire que les oeuvres, sous forme de peintures, de sculptures ou autres, ont tendance à représenter une vision fantaisiste.Les mythologies personnelles semblent être de rigueur.L\u2019humour et l\u2019ironie, teintés parfois de cynisme, un certain côté psychologique très complexe, semblent émerger de l\u2019environnement sudiste même.De plus en plus, une véritable sophistication sous-tend le côté naïf ou ingénu dans l\u2019imagerie employée par certains artistes du Texas, de la Louisiane ou de l\u2019Alabama.on n\u2019y trouve pas de préciosité, ce qui pourrait facilement être le cas quand il s\u2019agit de ce type d\u2019art.\u201d4 En octobre 1976, eut lieu, sous les auspices de la Appalachian State University, un séminaire organisé par Jane Livingston, Marcia Tucker, ex-conservateur au Whitney Museum of American Art, et William Fageley, intitulé Southern Rim Conference.L\u2019idée à la base de ce séminaire était de rassembler un certain nombre d\u2019artistes qui vivent dans le Sud ou qui en proviennent, dont le travail y est en tout ou en partie exécuté, ou qui conservent des attaches en rapport avec le Sud.Il y a donc aux États-Unis une volonté de reconnaître la force des idées et des styles indigènes, de cesser le boycottage opéré par certains mécanismes centrifuges inhérents à l\u2019attitude monopolisante de New York.Des conférences du type de celle-ci visent à regrouper là où c\u2019est possible des forces qui peuvent offrir une alternative organisée à New York, à mettre en valeur les attaches régionales, les racines, les processus d\u2019intégration de celles-ci au travail de l\u2019artiste et le rapport entre ce travail et le contexte artistique contemporain en général.Là n\u2019est pas la seule tentative de donner forme et cohésion aux manifestations de l\u2019art contemporain dans le Sud.Encore faudrait-il souligner le travail des institutions telles que les nombreux collèges et universités dont certains ont des départements d\u2019art extrêmement décloisonnés et ouverts, le fameux Black Mountain College, en Caroline du Nord, l\u2019Institute for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, les musées qui comme le N.O.M.A.et le musée de Houston sont bien au pas de l\u2019actualité et encouragent les artistes locaux par des politiques soutenues, quelques galeries commerciales comme Simone Stern à la Nouvelle-Orléans, sans oublier le Contemporary Arts Center à la Nouvelle-Orléans qui vient tout juste d\u2019ouvrir et qui compte bien devenir un espace permanent pour les manifestations multi-directionnelles de l\u2019art actuel: la danse, la musique, la performance, le vidéo, la sculpture, la peinture.Finalement, ce centre incarne ce dont chaque ville de province rêve: un immense espace ouvert où tout est possible.Où, sur place, on peut assurer une présence de l\u2019art contemporain dans sa propre ville, avec un dosage parfait de manifestations qui viennent de l\u2019extérieur comme de l\u2019intérieur, comme une pulsation, en flux/reflux constant, sans les pressions d\u2019un système économique monopolisant comme il est vécu à New York.Pour certains, l\u2019existence de ce type de centre peut correspondre à du déjà vu/déjà vécu, car, enfin, les véritables laboratoires de l\u2019art meurent comme ils naissent, c\u2019est-à-dire qu\u2019ils n\u2019ont pas le temps de devenir des institutions, ou les individus à la base font d\u2019eux-mêmes table rase pour recommencer à neuf.Plusieurs questions restent à poser: ces alternatives sont-elles des faux-semblants, animés par un sentiment de nostalgie de la part de ceux qui ont connu les grands centres d\u2019activité, visent-elles à combler des carences ou des vides, à combler cette distance face à la métropole, ou seraient-elles enfin le reflet de nouveaux départs?La question demeure: le Sud en est-il encore au stade du rattrappage?1\tHarlan, Calvin, Vision and Invention; A Course in Art Fundamentals Prentice-Hall, New York 2\tReed, Revon, Lâche pas la patate: portrait des acadiens de la Louisiane, Parti-Pris, Montréal, 1976 3\tMarshall, Keith, John McGrady, 1911-1968, catalogue du New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, 1975 4\tLivingston, Jane, 1975 Artists Biennial, catalogue du New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, 1975 LYNDA BENGLIS ¦ I : », An Essay by TENNESSEE WILLIAMS New York.September 1976 TENNESSEE WILLIAMS.New Orleans playwright and author is a five-time winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award (1944-45.1947-48.1955.1960-61) and was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize (1948.1955) His plays include The Glass Menagerie (1944).A Streetcar Named Desire ( 1947).Summer and Smoke ( 1948).The Rose Tattoo (1951), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ( 1955).Orpheus Descending ( 1957) Sweet Bird ot Youth ( 1959).Period of Adjustment ( 1960).and The Night ot the Iguana (1961 ) In addition to writing the film adaptations for a number of his Broadway plays, he wrote the screenplays for Baby Doll (1957).Suddenly Last Summer (1961).and Boom (1968) He is the author of the novel The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone (1950) and his autobiography Memoirs (1975) Of course I was a bit mystified when I received an invitation to write a critique or impression of a painter-sculptor, as advanced in her art as Miss Lynda Ben-glis.I wondered why the invitation hadn\u2019t gone to someone practising in the same field such as Tony Smith or Fritz Bultman.The only plausible explanation which occurred to me was that the persons in charge of the exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art preferred a simplistic approach, not a sophisticated one.Well, a simplistic approach is all that I have to offer.(I have sometimes been virtually hypnotized by great paintings, having once stood for an hour before Bonnard\u2019s Breakfast Table in the art-show at the San Francisco World\u2019s Fair in 1939: and having been almost equally entranced by the water-lilies of Monet and certain paintings by Van Gogh.But these works are not avant-garde and those of Miss Benglis certainly are.) It was agreed that Miss Benglis and I would meet at my hotel in New York.First of all let me say it was a delightful meeting.She is charmingly direct and informal.My favorite drink, Johnny Walker\u2019s Black Label, was also hers and she also preferred it straight.In the course of her talk she did not put down other painters.(It had been my unhappy experience that those who practise in the same field of art, literary or plastic, are often unable to understand each other's work, and in extreme cases, you feel that they tolerate each other\u2019s existence with reluctance.) Although she had brought with her a lot of brochures containing colored and black-and-white photographs of her work, she was hesitant to show them, seemed more inclined just to talk.Of course I knew how she felt.Revealing your work to someone not yet acquainted with it is.to a shy artist, about as embarass-ing as undressing completely on a boulevard at high noon.I almost had to snatch the brochures and reviews from her hands.When we got around to a discussion of painting, what interested her most was that I had known Jackson Pollock as well as Tony Smith.What was Pollock like in the summer of 1940, when I met him in Province-town?Well, I assured her that he seemed to be a healthy, happy man, then, not the tortured, almost crazed man that he became toward the end.Like his great instructor, Hans Hoffmann, his paintings were an expression of a pure and beautiful exuberance in the state of being.I\u2019m fairly sure that Miss Benglis has worked on canvas at some time in her young life but she had not brought along any photographs of them.What she had with her that she allowed me to see was more in the nature of \u2018objects\u2019 or totally abstract mounds of paint that she said she allowed to \u2018happen\u2019, to assume their own form with a minimal interference on her part, as things occur in nature.With her \u2018knots\u2019 it was different.She had very definitely tied these knots herself in shapes of her designing.They had titles which alluded to what they were meant to express.About them was a luminous quality.They could hang parallel to a wall rather than protruding into the room.Their spirit was infectiously *#T4 light, especially when suspended in a series around the gallery wall.I told her that I could not even tie a shoe-lace: she confessed that she couldn't either.But these were definitely not laces for shoes, they were much more complicated knots than sea-men or boy-scouts learn to tie and she had tied them all securely, masterfully and meaningfully.Knowing there are times when the less is the more, I think that you who are going to visit the New Orleans Museum to see these phenomena for yourselves and to meet Miss Lynda Benglis yourselves will be content that I say no more.Miss Lynda, I love you and thank you for the roses! 7 Come 11, 1976, photo: France Morin LYNDA BENGLIS in conversation with France Morin Entrevue réalisée le 30 janvier 1976 chez Madame Felton\u2019s Inn à la Nouvelle Orléans.France Morin: Was the environmental sculpture in the Delgado Great Hall, called \u201cLouisiana Prop Piece\u2019\u2019, done especially for Five From Louisiana?Lynda Benglis: It was done for the show specifically.There would probably be no other place in which I could use that type of prop although ideas of prop pieces are just pieces using found subject matter or subject matter that has already been formed.That idea has interested me, beginning with the dildo or the idea of the photographs then developing into one prop piece using columns pedestals.I would not have done a Mardi Gras prop piece without the environment of the Museum and without the help of Ida Kohlmeyer; it just seemed that because of her talent in arranging and her vision, it was the most logical thing to do.FM: Was it in any way nostalgic or sentimental?LB: It was for me a way to re-acquaint myself with New Orleans essentially.There would have been no other reason to do it, really.So in that sense it had to deal with strong feelings about New Orleans, about Mardi Gras.mostly I think my relationship with Ida, it was really a way of getting to know myself.The idea of the Mardi Gras subject matter prop piece really generated through my visit with Ida in September of 76.A further germination of ideas of Tableau also occurred to me after having visited many Hollywood sets \u2014 (ex.King Kong at MGM, etc.).FM: Why did the Bow-Wow reappear in New Orleans, is it because of the tape you made at ARTPARK?LB: Well, it is a kind of publicity ploy, I would say for the tape and a way for people to get to know the image of the dog, a kind of tease, a public tease, to keep that image alive until the tape is edited, much in a way, say like King Kong was kept alive.FM: .A kind of trade mark.LB: Right.FM: Where did the idea of the Bow Wow originate?LB: The image per se it was found, was a toy; it was actually copied from a toy as I was helping Stanton Kaye, who is a collaborator again \u2014 and these collaboration pieces that I have done, I guess I have been the energy behind it but the people that have collaborated with me have been very equal if not more so than myself \u2014 you can\u2019t divide feelings and you can\u2019t divide essences; it\u2019s like sweetness and sourness, it can\u2019t be measured essentially so I really have this feeling about those people I have worked with.It is the same thing in any large production and these are small productions, you can\u2019t measure the talent or the energy.These pieces are not all mine they are really shared, it\u2019s real collaboration.FM: What\u2019s the idea behind the amazing Bow-Wow?LB: The dog is based on a real dog, a real hermaphrodite dog, human-size costume worn by its designer, Rena Small, in a real carnaval.I don\u2019t really want to give the whole thing away, but essentially the confusion of the genitals with the tong so to speak, I think it is a sort of modern day story, fable, it is sort of a pun in a way on extensions and there are many levels of confusion say that the tong looks like the genitals \u2014 in the story he wanted to cut off the dog\u2019s genitals but rather he cuts the tong off.He thinks he has cut off the genitals or the penis, so there is an idea of confusion language-sexuality which does have to do with accidents, accident meaning life as a series of accidents and you make certain decisions about those accidents.It\u2019s hard for me to explain without getting specific, and I don\u2019t want to be specific because I feel all art is involved with a certain kind of irony and a certain kind of play with imagery.So the story itself is one thing, and it is really a matter of presenting it in terms of images, and it is going to be presented in a very ex-pressionistic way because things are exaggerated: the way it\u2019s shot, the lighting, all these are considerations, the costuming, the expressions, the acting, so all of these really make up the story, it\u2019s not just a story.FM: Most of the artists in the exhibition Five from Louisiana are dealing with different mediums, like yourself: static objects, environment, video, etc.and that eclectism seems to be working quite successfully.What would you attribute this?to Living in an economic center that permits eclectism more than a regional center.More casualness?LB: / think it is a matter of living in an environment, a large city, Los Angeles or New York where there are a lot of artists, having reached a certain point in thinking about what art is, that art is anything that you call art and really playing with their energy, their sense of creating forms, not on static forms and space but ideas.I think art exists in a realm of idea, as well as of physical, visual reality objects.I don\u2019t say it can\u2019t exist in objects.I think there is a great deal of focus on people just making icons, I like to think of them as icons, fixed situations and space and I think there is just as much reasons to focus on that as there is on anything else.I happen to think for myself and my interest, I like to do as much as I can in any area that interests me and I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve really covered that much territory.I could get into performance.I don\u2019t seem to be interested in that aspect, that idea of performance I think maybe because I can make things tighter in performing on video and in other words, I can keep planning and editing and spearing down so performance as such interests me through a medium say like video.I have not thought about stage performance as such interests me through a medium say like video.I have not thought about stage performance, dancing, but when I was doing large polyurethane pieces, they were environmental.Presenting them, getting them together, the production of getting a large show together is very much to me as a performance is.Performing is essentially working in an isolated environment presenting something, a final product that exists in a limited time, so I think the prop piece exists in a way as a kind of performance.FM: When you did your show at the Clocktower of metallized knots, for that occasion, thinking of the holiday season you draped the balustrades with flashing Christmas lights and for your show at Paula Cooper it was again more building up an environment than just displaying static objects in the space.LB: Right.My feeling is that each artist does create an environment or feeling or an ambiance anyhow, and why not call the attention to that aspect as well as the aspect of the individual icon.Even those icons in an exhibition seem to have to a adjust to an environment so it is a matter of arranging.I think those things are interchangeable essentially.FM: Transforming a place of exhibition into an environment involves a notion of theatricality.LB: Once I remember Pincus-Witten visited me in East Hampton and he said your work is theatrical, I said \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with that\u201d (at that point he was talking about the polyurethane pieces).I said \u201ctheatricality is not particularly a bad adjective\u201d.I think that was thought over \u2014 that was meant to be a criticism \u2014 so much now is theatrical.I am involved with those icons since they are really involved with feelings or gestures that have to do with a physical presence that one can identify with, in other words, when one looks at them they take on an anthropomorphic gesture and most of my work has that kind of feeling of movement in physicality, in that it suggests the body or brings up bodily \u2014 responses whether we think of the wax pieces it could be oral because the was is very sensuous and suggests taste or whether it\u2019s the knots which suggest limbs, the viscerals or the polyurethane pieces which suggest wave formations or again viscerals in someway.I think that all these are an effort on my part as a tridimentlonal artist to bring about feelings that are in some way known to the viewer, that are of nature, in other words.prehistoric in a way or things that people know about when they look at them, although the forms are not specifically recognizable, the feelings are.I\u2019m interested in that.That in itself is a form of theater.FM: Do you think it had anything to do with the fact that you are a woman?The way your work was looked at, or talked of.LB: / think because structurally they were not hard edged.I really don\u2019t know.At that time, very few women were exhibited; there are a lot more now but then I was among the first ones.I had been picked up for an article in Life (February 1970) two men, two women (Van Buren, Serra, Benglis and Hesse) I was picked out because I was a woman, I was being looked at because I was doing interesting work but also connected to the fact I was a woman so I was one of.FM: .the beginners LB: Yes beginning, in that sense.In that sense too I was lucky because it was among my first exhibited work and it was immediately recognized.FM: It could be partly because of that but don\u2019t you think also because of the emergence around 1970 of a post minimalist stance \u2014 minimalism was really on its decline \u2014 and we started to talk, among other things, of sculpture in pictorial terms.LB: / think it was also having to do with the ideas that were being formed.but yes it was because of that to.I think it was all reasons, one really didn\u2019t take precedence over the other.Perhaps, I got more attention, maybe faster, than somebody else, because I was a woman and because the work in terms of ideas was right for the time.FM: What about the very special attention you always gave your announcements for shows?One being a Hollywood style chromo of yourself for a show in 1974.Another one being a photograph of you as a child dressed for a party in Greek evzon costume.LB: Then that was upon looking back recognizing the fact I was being given this attention for many reasons and if there is a movement now, I think the Feminist movement as such is one of the stronger recognizable ones \u2014 stronger that it is recognizable I would say and specifically recognizable.I felt I wanted to make statements in that particular category and I do think of art as being different kinds of statements about particular categories.LB: What about the ad in ARTFORUM in November 1974?LB: I\u2019ve been involved, in the very beginning say for about two or three years with notions of sexuality, also notions of the star system, isolating myself and mocking myself on the media whether it would be the video or photographs.I had taken, prior to that ad, a photograph of me in front of a car, I had my hair pushed back and a double-breasted suit on.I was looking very tough.It was not an unknown image being in front of a car.It was self-referential, I did have that car, I was very involved with that car in Los Angeles, a car is a very important symbol, say it\u2019s a kind of extension of the body.It was referential in that art world and Los Angeles had long been using kind of funny announcements in some ways more self-referential and punning the star system in Hollywood as well as their own situation there.It was very natural in that sense in terms of idea, but also it was warmer, it was easier to take off one\u2019s clothes at the beach so all these things just developped gradually out of a system I was experiencing there, as well as say being very aware of the feminist mouvement and wanting to make a sort of statement; I could make a pin-up out of myself; that would be fine.A lot of the feminists there who were really hard core feminists got very angry, they thought, well OK you have an OK body, so you can do that.that was the basic criticism, which is totally illogical.It was silly, because anybody can present themselves looking good, given the right makeup, given the right camera angles, it\u2019s all about illusion anyhow, art is about illusion essentially.That was a very bad criticism.I knew I had hit upon something with that particular ad and I call that the soft core ad.9 ¦ l^ÿSt0?jaak^-v- ^ fef r%* ;l &* » a s& ¦ \"- * 4» ijjÉÊfl\t11S ! t \t- %f4|! | « It Louisiana Prop Piece, 1976, Musée de la Nouvelle Orléans.Photo: NOMA.The car essentially was the first thing.Prior to the car, however, I had done a photograph when I was eleven years old in a Greek soldier\u2019s outfit and I used it as an announcement; that again was referential to early experience, I had done the soft knots, the cloth sparkled knots, they were made out of the same kind of cloth as the Greek soldiers costuming.I used that photograph three times for three shows.Prior to that, I had done a video tape drawing a mustach on myself on a photograph and that was again a kind of reference to Duchamp and a self-reference.I had been using my face or myself in the video and this built up notions of female sensibility, it was another tape I did, I got tired of people asking me: \u2018\u2018Is there such a thing as female sensibility\u201d and I decided to really sock it to them, I said yes this is it.So mainly what I did was self-referential, self-mocking, mocking of sexuality to the extent that I said if all these things are out, then nobody will think about them anymore.If they can laugh at them, if they can feel less self-conscious about it, then it\u2019s all there; you know we have greater freedom if it\u2019s there and that\u2019s how I felt about all of those things.I must tell you about the ad in art forum that the timing was extremely important.It could have been at no other time, because the media were very sensitive at that time, it was the time of the Nixon\u2019s resignation.Everybody everywhere was very sensitive.I am glad I have witnessed that.FM: The context may have been more difficult or different, but do you think there is such a thing as female art and male art?LB: Yes.I do feel that there is.Because, as I said, it\u2019s one of the recognizable movements, woman artists have focused on femaleness as subject matter, so I think in that sense certainly it is recognizable, as to say something essentially abstract, looks more male or female, I think all that really depends on our culture, on our associations.How we are going to group it finally, we don\u2019t know enough about psychology to say of a body whether it is male or female in terms of physicality, or whether it is male or female in terms of psychology, maybe we will never know enough to say so.I think that\u2019s what art is about, describing those areas of feelings that have to do with bodily sensations, bodily feelings but it\u2019s also a total response, all art is about total responses.I get back to that sweetness and sourness; you can\u2019t measure essences nor can you measure femaleness or maleness; you can structurally identify it, but you can\u2019t measure it, so in that sense we will never know enough about it, we will only say someday that this was an era in terms of focus of femaleness so this was an era in terms of idea when the feminist movement was structurally in the society.It functionned in one way and the art world only mimics the society.I don\u2019t wish to separate myself from it, I don\u2019t wish necessarily to be a part of it, but I am a part of it whether I want it or not.FM: How long did you do the soft knots before you did the metallized ones?LB: / think about a year and a half but I had applied sparkling metal flakes to them, so it naturally moved me into thinking about a metallic finish and then in Portland, I met someone who had actually done metallizing on the surface of wood and said that there were metal guns that could actually spray the wood, so I decided to see if I could not find someone that had that kind of equipment and to try to metallize the cloth since he had mentioned you could even metallize a rose bud, I love the idea of something alive and organic being metallized.This was in \u201972 or \u201973.In Los Angeles I found someone who was metallizing.We rented the gun because they had never used one.Since then, I realized that these guns existed everywhere.They were used to reinforce machinery after it has been worn down.It was also used decoratively around 15 years ago.FM: When you were doing your polyurethane and latex pieces people have talked about Pollock, when you did the soft knots people have talked about Oldenburg.How do you feel about that now?LB: Well, I was very aware of the connections.There are always connections in art in order to explain one image and its relationship to the other so it did not bother me that much because Pollock was rooted in a different kind of tradition with subject matter and Oldenburg was also rooted in a différend kind of tradition with subject matter.They were trying to do different things and their image came about in a certain way and my image came about in a certain way, it could be related in a certain way in terms of writing and criticism as such, people have to do that in order to have an understanding of the culture.FM: Do you feel criticism often deals with just trying to pick up the right drawer for your work based on history of art rather then on the work itself?10 LB: Exactly, even if, as you say, at the beginning they have to talk of other people\u2019s work because they did not see enough, I think the best criticism goes behond that no matter if it\u2019s at the beginning, relating your work in a broader cultural area not just in visual artistic terms.FM: You said the other day at Newcomb (university) that you were interested in the different realities of video.What did you mean by that?LB: Well, I meant that film has a different kind of space, a more illusionistic space, by illusionistic I mean deeper, a more glamourous look, it\u2019s more removed, the frame time is different, it creates another world; video is another kind of space, another world, it\u2019s of course flattbr.There are in terms of the monitors sound limitations, because of the monitors, not because of the recording capabilities at this time really, so I think these spatial dimensions are really relevant in the kind of image that we see on video.Acting looks differently on video than it does on film because it is less formal and more continuous than in film, by more continuous I mean there is not that frame time, it\u2019s continuous time.FM: How do you feel about exhibiting in Louisiana?How do you relate to your roots?LB: For me it was a time to come to some sort of understanding with my beginnings as an artist rather than my home at this point.My home meaning Lake Charles, Louisiana, where I was born.Really, New Orleans was another kind of home for me and I have many different homes at this point in my life, I really feel at home in many different locations but New Orleans was the city in which I had my first drinking experience, my first sexual experience, my first knowledge of art, so for me it was dealing with my first early adult years.It was important for me to see a first 15 year period here, I was looking back, it was not really looking back it was just looking at things and reexperiencing the sets or the people in a different way, terms because I am different than I was then.The knowledge that you can continue your life and feel the same way you do but have other aspects brought in is very enriching and very rewarding.In that way it was one of the best things I\u2019ve done, exhibiting here, it was a painful thing in that things didn\u2019t always seem to go right, I had some work dammaged but I had it repaired.I was very lucky and I learned that in my particular work now I could repay anything; maybe I needed the experience of looking at 15 years to find that out, or that kind of pressure before but I\u2019ve never had a situation where I didn\u2019t know up until the last few hours whether or not something was going on the wall or not.FM: Even if you all come from Louisiana originally, you are all well-known now internationally, did that create any problems with the local artists in New Orleans?LB: Well, I think generally there was a lot of openness.When we went to that art meeting, the first criticism seemed to be how to break that barrier, how to explain yourself that you did choose to go to a large city, to make connections of ideas, to make connections in terms of exhibiting the work and that work was recognized because both of these things came into play.So I think the artists remaining outside the market places or outside the area where there is a greater density of art always feels as though maybe it\u2019s happening there and not where they are located and I think in the past this has been very true, however, those things do happen only when there is a great density; but in terms of communication it\u2019s changing, with the flights, artists coming and going, talking, exchanging, and talking of this area it will have more of that because of the new Contemporary Art Center that is being established and the museum being more aware now of the necessity of bringing in contemporary artists.FM: I think it is still very difficult for a regionalist artist to make it if he or she is not going to a market place like NewYork.Do you feel, living in New York most of the time, that the art world has changed that much since the beginning of the 70.It\u2019s more a matter of individuals than of movements.LB: Yes I think there are more galleries now to present the artists whether it would be in New York or Los Angeles.At the moment, that\u2019s what\u2019s happening and because there are more galleries there are more individuals that are running those galleries to relate to more individual artists, because of that there are more artists to relate to more artists within that or those cities.There will be different kinds of art coming out.And all these artists do know other ones in other cities or countries it all connects.But underneath in the hierarchy, I believe in art for art\u2019s sake.Because we have a much broader base to work from, I think there are a lot of different kinds of critics, visions and things do get recognized sooner or later wherever they are.Art can exist outside the major cities, it can exist anywhere but the major cities call for a larger density of that kind of energy and sometimes that energy is recognized in the works.So that\u2019s one thing.And also structurally the reasons for it existing are built up so it\u2019s more believable as a cultural statement so it exists.There are cultural statements made outside because there are culturals outside.Necessarily it\u2019s going to be a stronger cultural statement where it has the backing but it does not mean that it\u2019s necessarily greater art.Art can exist anywhere.FM : What do you feel about art and politics?You don\u2019t think art is political in its essence?LB: / don\u2019t think art in its essence is political, it can be used for propaganda purposes, if it\u2019s geared that way, of course, but it can be political if it\u2019s directed that way.It is used for political purposes not only because one can make political statements (essence wise) but because it functions at that cultural economic level.It can function politically in two different ways: economically as well as subject matter wise.FM: What about your collaboration with Robert Morris?LB: We had done a video piece together, I think that was the beginning of the exchange.It was called Exchange.Perhaps we approached each other as individual artists with different interests, he has a ten-dancy to try to get to know what each artist does.I think he is a great ecclectic and he is very good.He had been involved with his theatre performances with some of the things I was interested in.You might say I saw him coming, he really interested me for his past work so it was with that in mind that I became involved with him in these exchanges so to speak, but we did a lot of talking about art and different things that were going on, fantasising about things we could do, or would do.The ARTFORUM ad was in a way a kind of mocking of both sexes and I could have done it with a male.I started thinking about it and I did photograph myself in the nude with someone in Venise.Later Morris came with me to buy the dildo and we had different poses but he had been involved with playing with me, involved with taking photographs of himself in different poses in Polaroid and I had him play with me with the dildo, so there was a question of maybe doing a large pin-up male and female in that way, mocking, then finally the dildo was a kind of double statement it was the ideal thing to use, it was both male and female so I did\u2019nt really need a male and it was a statement I really wanted to make finally by myself.I was encouraged to do it by Pincus-Witten and by Morris.They kind of gave me permission and I payed $3,00-0.00 for the space, I don\u2019t think you do anything in this world without say the permission.FM: Do you have any ideas of what you are planning to do after this show in your work?LB: / don\u2019t know.I really reached the point where the knots the 7 come 11 series is the last series I will do.I feel like stopping that.I knew that 7 come 11 was a gambling, term, it had to deal with ultimate chance in that game if you throw a 7/11 you are out of the game.If temporarely.I said: That\u2019s exactly the way I feel about the knots\u201d.I will be editing Bow-Wow.I also want to get in color paint now I\u2019m tending to go into that direction after maybe three years and a half of the metallizing and working on the fabrication also, this wax molding.I just have ideas of new work but I really don\u2019t know what it will be.FM: Do you feel like adding anything?LB: / could say something about the metals, the ideas of the metals, that I was attracted to them because of notions of energy that the metals have and the quality like muskrat you are attracted by something that shines and also the fact of our resources, it was kind of a funny thing to be involved with, if I could have casted in gold or silver I would have and it just interested me to cast in things that were culturally important, in other words, they melted bronze as in times of war and till, somehow, these things are so useful to us, just as I was attracted to things that had no use say flimsy, decorative and then I began wanting to go from the sleasily decorative (the early sparkled knots) to something that appeared to be more frozen and solid in form and more permanent, but it\u2019s only a mock idea of permanence because bronze can be melted in times of war.So I am not really involved with notions of permanence only in form and content.I have been criticized for that notions of permanence or not, environments or not environments, artists are criticized for this.LINDA BENGLIS, born October 25, 1941, Lake Charles, Louisiana.Lives in New York and Venice, California.B.F.A., Sophie Newcomb College, New Orleans, 1964.Max Backman Scholarship, Brooklyn Museum, 1965.Is part of Paula Cooper Gallery in New York and exhibits in the United States and in Europe.fit-* BOW-WOW at the opening of the exhibition FIVE FROM LOUISIANA New Orleans Museum of Art.Photo: NOMA.11 »i\u2014>» ESTATE mm*cmcv / Chinatown TINA GIROUARD TWO TREES IN THE FOREST an interview by LIZA BÉAR Tina Girouard in San Antonio, Texas, 1972, with her father, Whitney L.Girouard, Sr., a rice farmer who taught agriculture and mathematics in Louisiana and Texas.Photo: Richard Landry.1970, New York City.Tina Girouard after Role Change I, a video action in which she adjusted her self-image to reflect a psychological change by giving herself a haircut, using the TV monitor as a mirror.Photo: Michael Kern.Lucille, a black cat and family member since 1972, was rescued from Doyers Street, Chinatown, scene of the legendary Tong Wars, when more murders were committed per square foot than in any other street in New York.Moving Out of 10 Chatham Square, N.Y., Summer 1975.Facing out, left to right: Mary Heilmann, Tina Girouard.Facing in: Richard Landry, Liza Bear.The five-storey Chinatown building functioned as homebaseworkshop for Tina & other artists and performers, and checkpoint for migrant Cajuns from 1969 to 1975.Photo: Gerard Murrel. PART I at WBAI Radio Station, New York, Oct.27, 1976 I announce: \u201cThis is Liza Bear at WBAI, New York, with Radio WAVE, an artists program.Tonight s guest is Tina Girouard.We re doing this show live with a Cajun audience: potter Mercedes Deshotel, sculptor John Geldersma, and photographer Gerard Murrell.We\u2019ve brought some things with us to Studio A: a table cloth from Louisiana, six red apples, chutney, walnuts, grape juice, Wasser brot, crisp rye bread, Danish cheese, carrots, Merce\u2019s home-made bread, Tina\u2019s juke box, and a wilting spider plant.In the background you should be hearing.you should be hearing.you should be hearing a tape of barnyard clucking sounds recorded at Indian Bayou.It s unusually hectic here at BAI; there are people in all the adjoining studios; we re going to try to cool down and take it easy.\u201d I ve just returned from Toronto, Tina from Geneva.I\u2019m conscious of place and transition, airplanes and congestion.I have very little voice.Tina\u2019s given me some notes on her piece Swiss Self, a solo performance at a Geneva gallery.I read out her list of props which I translate from French and then I formulate what I want to know.Liza Béar: When you go to other places, to do works, do you feel a need to redefine yourself in terms of that place?Tina Girouard: Well, Swiss Self was a current self-portrait taking place in Geneva .I\u2019m interested in reality and in making reality stronger, and one way of doing that is to bring things from the place into the piece.LB: How did you want to present yourself to the Swiss?TG: Well, as myself in their place.I used Swiss money because we think of Switzerland as the bank of the world.And a cowbell, because that\u2019s very special to Switzerland.The Swiss bell their cows for the Alps, and this bell was more like a church bell.It weighed about 15 pounds.I also used a scythe .i was staying in the country, and I got the bell and the scythe from the farmer down the road.They had something to do with me too .because they were from the farm.LB: Did you grow up in the country?TG: I grew up on a rice farm between De Quincy and Lake Charles, in the country, a place that has no name .LB: What did the performance consist of?TG: The only experience similar to it is a sand painting.I made a kind of effigy with the materials\u2014there were also a lot of wild flowers, raffia, lengths of cotton from Louisiana, bamboo rugs, a washboard, a watch, a bar of chocolate\u2014at the places where my head, my hands, my feet, and the erogenous zone (the other brain) would be.And then I laid myself out on it and sprinkled 10 kilos of Swiss money over the whole thing, as another layer of the pattern.I just lay there for a while.There was a video camera on' the ceiling facing down, so the audience was also getting an overhead shot .The scythe was really important, because the portrait is a kind of life-death portrait.LB: Uhhuh .A lot of your work has been done with other artists.Could you say something about how that developed?I know we both came to New York on the same day, July 28, 1968.TG: Well, I\u2019d come straight from undergraduate school in Lafayette, and within a couple of months of being in New York, I started working for other artists.I danced with Deborah Hay on and off for a year, and through her workshop I was introduced to Trisha Brown and Steve Paxton and the whole Judson thing.And during that first year I also got involved with the work of Keith Sonnier and Richard Serra.And of course, as I got a little more serious, I took a more active role .There\u2019s something about working with other people: you must spend some time in solitary concentration, and know who you are and what you have to do.But that can also narrow you down, and I\u2019m always opened up by working with others.LB: Do you ever think about what you\u2019ve derived from particular collaborations?For instance, your Bridge-Proposal with Barbara Dilley .TG: .what came from that?I think my whole idea of portraiture.This is two years after the fact, and I realize that, in a way, Barbara and I were trying to make portraits of each other.I was trying to do it visually and she was trying to do it with activity.LB: And did it work?TG: Did it work?Well, of course it did.It worked very definitely for both of us, for a couple of years.And it was a real kind of nurturing new experience.Our first performance, incidentally, was at USL .The last piece we did, we collectively got a group of sixteen people together.About half of them were professional, and half had never performed at all.LB: That was Juxtaposed-Contained-Revealed at The Kitchen, right?TG: Right.We presented psychological portraits or persona projections.I worked closely with each person to develop an image of them using costume that released or revealed an aspect of their persona that they hadn\u2019t been able to .that hadn\u2019t come out in their life Yet.We used geographic associations, characters from movies, that sort of thing.I wanted them to be perfectly comfortable.I didn\u2019t want them to be coat-hangers.And Barbara gave them something to do, a role to play .In that work, everything that had to do with space, what the performers and the performance area looked like, those were all my decisions.What happened during the performance was Barbara\u2019s.LB: Have you ever gotten into a more active kind of dramatization?TG: Of course.Last year I did a piece called Scenes with four simultaneous scenes: Work, Rest, War, Sport.Certain elements like the timing were abstracted\u2014we had a timing rehearsal\u2014we called it a race.But each person had to develop his scene alone, for the scene to be really theirs.I can only give the simple reduced idea, and all the details, the camouflage has to come from them.If you try to choreograph someone\u2019s every move, it becomes a rehearsed piece, a theatrical piece, rather than an experience in its own right.And I want my performances to be experiences.LB : You don't think of them as improvisations though, do you.TG: No.Not as free improvisation or improvisation on a theme.It's more that we develop a vocabulary of possibilities during the preparation, but the order in which it\u2019s used, or which particular elements get called back, that\u2019s up to the individual performer.So the detail is what\u2019s improvised, the camouflage.And the detail\u2019s very rich and very important to me because that\u2019s what brings life to whatever you're doing.That\u2019s true in the stencils also .Basically I\u2019m interested in more than one thing happening at the same time.LB: In a performance or in your life?TG: In a performance, in my life, whatever.In terms of my art activity, I\u2019m into simultaneously working with video, performing, making static pieces\u2014drawings, stencils\u2014and all that\u2019s my work .LB: You don\u2019t have any preferences.TG: I don\u2019t have any preferences.LB: You're very egalitarian about your art activity.TG: Exactly.An idea or a concept comes to mind and the way it reaches fruition is not really controlled.Video may be the most direct way, or if something has to be stated very statically, coldly, cleanly, then I use painting .LB: By \u201cpainting\" you're referring to fabric, not canvas and oil paint .TG: Yes.I have Solomon\u2019s Lot here.It\u2019s eight pieces of silk given to me by my mother-in-law.It was left in her attic by Solomon Matlock, an Arab relative of hers and drygoods salesman in the early Forties.I do special pieces with Solomon\u2019s Lot, and it has inspired a whole visual interest in pattern and the juxtaposition of pattern.LB: You've made at least six or seven videotapes: the Maintenance tapes, Mardi Gras Suite, Four Quartets.TG: The Maintenance tapes were made over the last six years.They\u2019re concerned with role change and in each one of them I\u2019m giving myself a haircut.The hair is the one part of the body that\u2019s alterable, and I\u2019m also interested in the idea of maintenance.Even portraiture becomes maintenance to me.LB: In what way?Keeping up appearances?TG: Keeping up with your own\u2014yes\u2014images of yourself, or helping someone else keep up with theirs.The first few tapes are quite austere.There\u2019s no one in the room and I\u2019m manipulating all the video equipment.It\u2019s rather intimate, like putting the viewer on the other side of the bathroom mirror.Whoops, I forgot.Suzie Harris and I collaborated on Role Change III.We discussed what kind of haircut I should get.It was midnight, also a night with no moon .LB: How does a haircut .TG: .relate to the moon?I know the answer to that one.LB: No, change your identity.Does it really change you?TG: The haircut is after the fact.The haircut is necessary after a change has gone down.LB: How drastic were the haircuts?The first was from long, \u201960s-type hair to .TG: That one was absolutely essential.Down, ready to go, get to work, no longer drooping .video camera, indulging in whatever .LB: In what?TG: Indulging in Keith\u2019s fantasy, I guess.I wanted to get into my own fantasy, my own work, so I just said, Okay, let's shed the skin, shake off all this.I could make a similar statement probably behind each one.LB: So they marked a break in your life activity.TG: Yes, it\u2019s something like catching up with yourself.First you change and then comes the physical broadcast .Using video for the Maintenance tapes was using it as a tool, making a mirror out of it.What I was trying to communicate to the witnesses is something .LB: The witnesses?TG: The people who would see the tape.LB: That\u2019s an interesting choice of words for the audience.TG: I\u2019ve always thought of the audience as witnesses.They see my self-image, and at the same time they\u2019re having the mystery and myth of video taken away.I think the tapes reveal a lot about my attitude to the performer and the experience of performing.I don\u2019t think it should be a scary experience.I don\u2019t think you need all that adrenalin.I tease and say it\u2019s nonadrenal performance.LB: Uhhuh.TG: And the way I direct my performers is to keep them really cool, so that when we\u2019re performing we\u2019re really doing this act that\u2019s .we\u2019re integrated to each other.The preparation is purely psychological.It\u2019s whatever you need to be there then\u2014to be totally in the present.LB: Mmhhuh .Would you like to play something?TG: On my juke box?Let\u2019s see if there\u2019s anything appropriate.LB: If not, we could ask Bill Kortum the engineer to play the next cut from .would you like to do that?(I signal to engineer) TG: Yes.This is Black Snake Blues by Clifton Chenier.PART II At 93 Grand Street, a week later.TG: The restaurant, Food, represents a real break in my scheme of things.LB: How?13 TG: Because for that year, 1971-72, that was my work.LB: The whole year, Food was the work?TG: Yeah, I\u2019d have to say so.I did other things then, but maintaining the restaurant was really the primary activity.At the time I was also beginning to feel .I don't know .that the work was just too complicated.LB: Whose work?TG: My own.LB: What were you doing at the time?TG: All my time was spent thinking and planning and arranging, and in the case of a performance, rehearsing.I wanted to really have a spot where I was alone and in total control; I wanted the power.I have that power when I\u2019m making objects.LB: Yeah, I understand that .Let\u2019s get back to Food a second.What did Food do for you at that point?TG: It cleared the table.LB: It satisfied all your needs for organizing and being with people, a project.TG: Yeah, big project.All of my friends, all of the energy, was poured in there.(PAUSE.The phone rings.) When you went to the phone I realized that .LB: .we left out Chatham Square.TG: Chatham Square was happening at the same time, reaching a zenith.Chatham Square is a space in Chinatown where about thirty different people lived over a period of about six years.LB: Including me .I\u2019ll say what it meant to me.I think it represented the best and also the most elusive kind of social energy for a certain period, because it was based on some shared values that were largely unspoken.There would never be any down talk.TG: That may have been the influence of the place.Chinatown is just thousands of people stacked right on top of each other but with an oriental sense of privacy.It\u2019s amazing.LB: Isn't that a Cajun characteristic too?TG: Well, it is.Even in Cecilia, this tiny town with 600 residents, we don\u2019t know ten people.Town suicide, town murder are never spoken about really either.It\u2019s always, \u201cComment ca va?Ca va bien.\u201d Well, Chatham Square was a launching pad for a lot of us.LB: You did a lot of collaborative work there.At that time, the social and the performing energy were very closely connected.TG: Well, I like people, and I like working with large groups of people.I don\u2019t like seasoned performers; I much prefer to work with people who are naive about performance, and who look on what I\u2019m doing as a celebration of themselves or their ego or whatever .I try to make the experience really good for them, and meaningful to them individually.With Food and Chatham Square I had about 15 primary relationships going: I was living with seven and working with seven more.There wasn\u2019t much time for anything else.LB: To be alone.TG: To be alone, to have a stretch of time where I could develop independently of the group.LB: Or to draw something out from the relationship.TG: Right, to conclude.LB: Instead of always acting it out.TG: Or always being caught up in the maelstrom of an energy like that, a big ball of energy.In my mind, there are two ways of working with people: with a lot of people, someone must take command.And then there\u2019s collaboration on a much more concentrated level.They\u2019re completely different kinds of work.With a large group of people, I may pick up on certain individuals and what they\u2019re adding to my original plan, or on the general mood\u2014the place always has something to do with that.In a collaboration, you set out looking for those things: you start outside yourself.That\u2019s the difference.LB: Did you have a close relationship with your six brothers and sisters?Did you do things with them?TG: Yes, I guess I really did have very private, one to one relationships with almost all of them.There was one sister who did the acrobatics from when I was very little.She would tie me in knots, which is why I\u2019m so loose now.And another brother who\u2019s an engineer taught me perspective drawing.When I was 13 or 14, he brought back a Leica camera from Germany, and taught me how it worked, made me do an experiment.Another brother was a car freak, and at one point I had a lot of information on how to fix an automobile.I gave over my swing set which was an A-frame to him at a very early age to lift motors out of cars .I think the most interesting thing that my father did was when he was working for the government.LB: What did he do then?TG: He took Cung-Dinhquy, the minister of agriculture from Vietnam, all around the United States to look at agricultural achievements like the Tennessee Valley Authority; Louisiana for the rice.He knew Sukarno and taught Indonesians agricultural methods and .this is great .instead of sending a whole bunch of tractors to Indonesia, he sent just one John Deere tractor, a very simple machine.When it got there, instead of contacting the farmers, they contacted the blacksmiths and machinists.They took it apart, they all took a part home, made one identical to it and brought it back, and started making their own tractors .Then he went to start a school of agriculture in La Paz, Bolivia, near Lake Titicaca, and instead of living at the Embassy house, he moved out with the farmers.I\u2019ve really gotten back to knowing my family in the last few years, and they\u2019ve been listening to me.I talk about attitudes, social, political etc.that are broadcasting some aspect of the art community, and they\u2019re very receptive to those ideas.LB: Has your relationship to Louisiana changed in the last few years?TG: I think it\u2019s grown stronger rather than weaker.I do have this different cultural background, and going back there\u2014I realize that now\u2014is more about getting in touch with that.Maintaining my own root, my own base.LB: Do you feel closer to that than to the art activity around you in New York?.Or is it hard to say?TG: When I\u2019m there, I'm there, and when I\u2019m here, I\u2019m here.I\u2019m trying to be there more often.I go there to gather myself as well as gather materials, and right now I\u2019m trying to make a working situation, to have a studio so that I can work there.LB: Well, that's a pretty strong commitment.(PAUSE.) TG: I know what it is I\u2019m trying to communicate on an abstract level.LB: A certain peace, or a certain stillness?TG: In most of the pieces that I\u2019ve been working on recently, I've been wanting to get a world view, one that has a past, a future.LB: That's very ambitious! TG: Of course it is, and it\u2019s going to take me a long time to work out all the details.LB: It sounds like an encyclopedia .but that\u2019s not a feeling.What is the feeling that you're trying to communicate?That you're aware of being part of something more than just yourself?TG: Exactly.LB: It\u2019s a realization that you're part of history, part of geography, part of a nation, part of a region .TG: Part of being on the earth .LB: As well as being an artist.TG : Right, and hopefully that extends then to the people who are performing in the work .LB: So that they can relate?TG: Or so that they can start to look at their life in a different way.The mood that you\u2019re talking about, that\u2019s being in the place at that time, and dealing with it as though it were a knife and fork and spoon.LB: Functionally.TG: Yes.I\u2019m being very tough on myself with these still pieces where I just make a picture and lay it down there and it doesn\u2019t move at all.LB: You used to be very restless.TG: The audience now moves around like mad.They talk, they become very animated in a still piece.They hang right in there to the very end.The stillness becomes very powerful.I don't know if that\u2019s what I intended to do, but that\u2019s what's happening.Now that I've done maybe thirty portraits, the people I\u2019ve worked with are beginning to see themselves in lots of different ways.So that the experience of having had one portrait made opens up the whole Pandora's box of portraits, a flashing on the self.TINA GIROUARD, born May 26, 1946, De Quincy, Louisiana.Lives in New York.B.F.A.University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette, 1968.Is part of Holly Solomon Gallery in New York.Exhibits and performs in the United States and in Europe.LIZA BEAR, editor and producer of the contemporary art journal AVALANCHE founded in 1970.Liza Bear is currently working on her own videotape FALLACIES and a series of five programs for Public Television.14 ' _ CD \u2014 CD r -X OQ co (D Q_ u m ;vx \" % D Costumed Portrait, Nancy Lewis in the persona of\tC Costumed Portrait, Tina Frye in the persona of Waltzing Wanda Willow\tMatilda Penelope Shunk ; r4* jf/*1 JW»' j wl V-jdjfc./**\u2022 v «r >\u2018L* *RfCS PINWHEEL Pinwheel is a combination performance, sculpture and videotaping event.The title refers to the sculpture which was realized during the performance.This image was the cog at the center of the performance arena: it was made from Solomon s Lot, a collection of 8 lengths of silk.For the exhibition Pinwheel is installed in the Ella West Freeman Gallery of the New Orleans Museum of Art.The performance consisted of four square areas, joined together to make one square with Pinwheel at the center.Each of the four areas represent a world, i.e.animal, vegetable, mineral and other.The activity was the making of the world images, similar to the American Indian ritual of sand painting.Each part or prop was added ceremoniously by the actors.The objects were introduced from a staircase located at the top of the performance arena.An example of some of the four images is as follows: a deus machina (a Greek god machine) to allow the performer to \"fly\u201d into place; and a fog-producing device to end the performance by obliterating all the images.The video was used to give an overview of the emerging image, as though seen from the sky.Two cameras were used: one remaining completely stationary above the performance arena; the second recording close-up details to allow the viewer a more intimate experience.(One bird's eye view, one x-ray vision).The finished tape consists of edited material from each of the two tapes, with appropriate sound added.I have been inspired by the religious paintings of Tibet, and by the rituals of the American Indian.It is an attempt to place myself and the actors in a context symbolic of the universe, and for a moment broadcast an image out, reflect the universe back to itself like a mirror.My own world view will be reflected in the choice of elements and participants.The participants will reflect their \u201cself view in that the accoutrements they desire for their representation were included.This is somehow connected to Mardi Gras, where people masquerade.Here we are masquerading not a thing, but all things.TINA GIROUARD STATEMENT BY A WITNESS (Spectator-auditor) by Calvin Harlan The spectator-auditor is slightly removed from spectator-auditor-operator in this event, but removed nevertheless.This means that he tries to tell what he saw, heard, felt and understood from an outer circle.Another spectator-auditor would tell something a bit different.The Preparation of the Special Place Lengths of multi-colored flower-patterned cloth are lowered from two opposite sides of the balcony.The balcony is the World Above, the Sky Zone or Heaven.The cloth is drenched in the sacred.It is blessed and it carried its protective power to the World Below.The lengths of cloth are caught by two performers below and are shaken and straightened out like banners \u2014 scattering the golden pollen?The performers above, descend and help the ones below arrange the cloth in such a way as to form a square precinct with four quadrants.It is now apparent that these four areas within the square will be occupied by the four performers in very special ways.The Pinwheel The performers, two males and two females, each dressed and made up in contrasting ways, ascend to the balcony world and reappear at the top of the stairs with a large golden hoop.They pause and then slowly 16 PINWHEEL PINWHEEL descend.They place the hoop in the center of the square.It becomes a mandala or sacred circle.The performers ascend once again as a group and return with eight shorter lengths of patterned cloth and cast them upon the stairs.These pieces are brought down in pairs and placed across each other, are then raised and lowered.Finally, they are tied to the hoop.After all eight pieces have been tied, in such a way as to fill the hoop, the whole is raised, lowered and centered in the square precinct.It becomes the hub, the cog-wheel or radial of the quadrants.It suggests a canopy, an ephemeral shield or shelter which will occupy a position between the upper and lower worlds \u2014 and under which the artist-performer or shaman may safely, secretly \u201cmake magic\u201d or stage an event?The Performers and Their Quadrants Each performer claims his or her separate area or arena.Each ascends the stairs to the upper world and brings back objects \u2014 sacramental gifts?, power devices?, fetishes?, amulets?, \u2014 pertaining to his or her nature, role and function.Person, costume, color and make-up, person and every detail of his or her area and activity within that area must correspond totally.VEGETABLE Starting in the upper-left quadrant: Green, Earth, the Present.Foliage, Herbs, Fruit, Vegetables, Flowers.Nourishment, Health.Woman/Woman.Very Slow.ANIMAL The upper-right quadrant: Black, Fire, the Past.Fur, Live Creature in cage, Rocks, Wood, Rattles, Raffia, Fire.Aggression, Protection.Man/Man.Swift.MINERAL The lower-right quadrant: Red, Water, the Future.Metal objects, Metal glitter, Manufactured things.Balls, Diagrams, Concepts, Pictures.Ego-centricity, conflict.Man/Woman.Very fast.OTHER The lower-left quadrant: White, Air, the Eternal.Abstractions, Disembodied Powers, Transparencies, Token objects, Technological devices, boxes, mirrors, Veils.Detachment, Control.Slow.The performers of the upper quadrants are stable, at one with their worlds.The performers of the lower quadrants are in some conflict with themselves and their worlds.They are needy, greedy.They try to draw power from the upper-left and upper-right quadrants, respectively.They exhibit the most strange \u2014 but curiously familiar \u2014 behavior.Mineral, dressed like a clown-priest, moves about erratically, pops fire crackers, photographs himself, draws a diagram in blue on his red floor \u2014 a Coper-nican diagram about the procession of energies in world and cosmos (slow increasing, mean diminishing, swift diminishing, mean increasing, which correspond to Other, Vegetable, Animal and Mineral).compulsively he studies his pictures and charts, bounces a large red white and blue ball (earth) and a small black ball (moon) with hand or machete, waves his machete, talks to himself through a long phallic microphone, scatters glitter about his area (in amusing contrast to Vegetable\u2019s way of making neat mounds of corn meal), mutters nonsense in contrast to Vegetable\u2019s plaintive love song, lullaby.Other, dressed like a male-female entertainer or ring master in white top hat and tuxedo, wearing high silver pumps and silver finger and toe nail polish, is the very opposite of Animal, she manipulates and controls her world and that of others with electronic devices and machines.She rules by powers and abstractions.Her objects are mathematical and data objects.Her realities are abstract or abstracted realities (money, jewelry, unseeable miniatures of all kinds, mirrors, watches, etc.).She is plugged-in to her world via microphones, amplifiers, television monitors.She rules at a great distance and by propaganda and network connections.She draws some of her cold energy from Animal, who lives in community.What is happening here?The performers are not actors.They either never had or never needed a script, or, if they found one, it was in fragments.N à A ; H «*\ti SE2Ï RICHARD LANDRY An interview by PHILIP GLASS At the Big Apple Recording Studio, New York, November 11, 1976 18 Philip Glass: What is your first memory of playing music?Richard Landry: Pots and pans in my mother\u2019s kitchen.PG: Really, how old were you?RL: Four or five.I would take the covers out of the oven and hit them like gongs, or place them in the rain for random sounds.PG: Your brother was a musician, wasn\u2019t he?RL: Yeah, he was eight years older than I was.He was playing saxaphone in the high school band.PG : Was he your first teacher?RL: Well, he put the instrument in my hand and said, \u201cThis is the way it\u2019s supposed to sound.\u201d He more or less gave me'my start.PG: Would you say that there was music in the house you lived in?RL: Sure.He practised all the time and I later found out my mother was a harmonica player.PG: I\u2019m trying to get a picture of where music fit into your daily life as you were growing up.RL: I joined the high school band system which starts you off in the fifth grade, but I already had a head start by just picking up the instrument at home and playing, and watching my brother.Then in the sixth grade, he left and went off to the Air Force for four years during the Korean War.He sent back a couple of records: Duke Ellington was one.PG: Was that the first jazz you heard?RL: That was the first jazz I heard and I just fell in love with it.PG: What was the music you were playing before that?RL: I was singing in the church, the Catholic Liturgy, the Gregorian Chant.I started that at an early age too, about six or seven.I sang the Requiem Mass for about four years, every morning at six o\u2019clock mass.PG: Every morning?You had to go to the church and sing every morning?RL: Uh-huh.Sometimes I would be the only one, or the organist and myself.PG: Did you ever play the organ too?RL: On times off, but I was always more interested in woodwinds.PG: So up until you started getting those jazz records, the first music really was church music and band music.What about country music, the kind of bands you ended up playing with later on?RL: Well, there are night clubs all around Cecilia where I lived.About a quarter of a mile down the road, there\u2019s a black night club and I used to hear their music from my house, just the bass line.You couldn\u2019t hear anything else.PG: How old were you when you started playing in night clubs?RL: I was in tenth grade.My brother and I played with this band, Harry Gregg orchestra.They worked steadily two or three nights a week and would sneak me into the clubs.We played all the hit tunes of the day, yesteryear, waltzes, or whatever.My recollection of the first night is that I played about four or five notes because I couldn\u2019t read the music.PG: Was that before your brother went away?RL: This was right after he came back.I began to meet all the musicians in the area.They were very advanced players, very articulate players and I learned a lot from them.PG: What was the music you were playing then?Was it mostly hit tunes in those clubs?RL: Hit tunes .songs from the 30\u2019s and 40\u2019s.PG: There wasn\u2019t any country blues playing there?Someone like Clifton .?RL: I didn\u2019t meet Clifton Chenier until a few years ago.That was all happening then but it was a tradition that was not looked upon as music to be listened to by people I was playing with.Their idea of music was much more advanced.In jazz they listened to Count Basie and Duke Ellington, and Stan Kenton; in classical music Beethoven, Bach and all that.But country music was taboo for them .\u201cDon\u2019t listen to it, it\u2019s no good.\u201d PG: Just to get a picture of it, that wasn\u2019t what we call Rhythm \u2018n\u2019 Blues in the North?Or, perhaps Pop?RL: It was not even Pop.People in the band did their own arrangements of songs, wrote their own tunes.PG: What tradition was it really out of?RL: The Big Band thing, Stan Kenton, the big swing bands.After my early experience with Harry Gregg, I made a friend, Bud Brashier, who influenced me greatly.His ability to play and write music was just incredible.Anything he touched turned into music.I began hanging around with him while he was playing with a quartet, and that group of people led to another group of people: Rusty Gilder, Robert Prado and myself.There were two groups of fours: one group about ten years older than we were.We all began to interact and eventually formed a band.PG: About a eight-piece band?RL: Right.Then we\u2019d have these marathon sessions at Lloyd Hebert\u2019s house in New Iberia where we\u2019d play for 72 hours, we couldn\u2019t stop.It was all improvisation on standard tunes, and things we wrote ourselves.I didn\u2019t like arranging other people\u2019s music.PG: That was up until you went off to college?RL: I actually started college in \u201956 but met John Gilfrey in \u201954 and took clarinet lessons; because at the nearest university i couldn\u2019t major in saxophone.I met John while he was a band director at a nearby high school.While there he would say: \u201cI\u2019ll be teaching at the university in a couple of years and you\u2019re going to be the first chair clarinet because I\u2019m teaching you the right way.\u201d He really knew his music and instruments.I studied with him for two and a half years.Then I enrolled in the University of Southwestern Louisiana in \u201956 and a year later I was sitting in the first chair clarinet.PG: Was that the university orchestra?RL: No, the university band.PG: So you played with the band?RL: Yes, there were more people and it sounded better.PG: At this point now you\u2019ve talked about several different kinds of music.Whal was the first piece of contemporary music that you can remember hearing?What was your reaction to it?RL: Modern music?The first thing I really fell in love w ith was the Samuel Barber piece, Adagio for Strings.From that I went backwards to Bartok, Schoenberg, Webern and Ives.Then I began to give concerts of their music.PG: What pieces did you play of theirs?RL: I played the Ives Central Park, In the Dark .those small chamber pieces.PG: Did you get a group together?RL: Sure, I got the best teachers and we performed together.PG: Was there any other contemporary music going on there at that time?RL: Of course not.PG: You got involved in contemporary music as well as jazz.RL: Yes, but jazz was more accessible than contemporary music.PG: By this time you must have been very aware of the tendencies in modern jazz .If we could go back to that a little bit .you talked about the first record you heard of Duke Ellington .When did you first become aware of people like Monk and Coltrane.RL: Well, Coltrane is a later date, but I saw Charlie Parker once in New Orleans.He got up on stage and did his number.It was just incredible.PG: So you were aware of that.RL: Yes .I began taking the radio away from the family on Saturday nights to listen to jazz, live from New York.PG: Were you encouraged to play that kind of modern music, that kind of progressive jazz?RL: Yes, I met Robert Prado and Rusty Gilder at the university in \u201956 and we found out we had the same attitude, the same desire to play jazz, so we formed the quartet I mentioned before.PG: That\u2019s the most interesting for me in a way; it\u2019s most unusual for someone who came from the kind of background that I did.There were different kinds of music, but you didn\u2019t say that one was more important than the other.RL: I learned a long time ago that music is music; if it\u2019s done right, it\u2019s good.PG: You were able to accept all different kinds?RL: Sure .except rock \u2018n\u2019 roll when it first came out.I just couldn\u2019t take it.I couldn\u2019t believe it.PG: Did it seem so crude or so .RL: It was too crude .well, listen to those first recordings; out of tune.For a musician who\u2019s been playing and trying to develop some kind of perfection in tuning, these people come along and kind of destroy it in a way.PG: / think this is important because you were really outside of an urban environment which is so rigid in a way, that there was something much more open about the way music was treated in terms of the kinds of music and in terms of what people did.RL: Yea.We did it ourselves.PG: You did contemporary music and jazz yourself, and if you wanted that music you had to do it yourself.(PAUSE) PG: When was the first time you left Louisiana?RL: I came to New York in \u201957 because my brother was in Columbia Graduate School in Education.I came up with a drummer from Louisiana at which time I heard Bud Powell, Miles Davis and Monk at Birdland, which was open at the time.PG: Now, you went up there in '57 and you said you went up every year after that.RL: Just about every year for two weeks or a month.There was music all over, but in those days I was just getting used to seeing and living in a big city.My God, I came from a town of three hundred! PG: Did it ever occur to you when you came to New York to study flute that some day you might be living in New York?RL: Sure.It would have been five years earlier if the circumstances would have allowed it.My interest in flute playing began in high school after acquiring my first flute.It wasn\u2019t until the university opera director asked me to play in Puccini\u2019s Tosca, that I gave up all other instruments for a period of two and one-half years.I got further involved with flute, through lessons, with Arthur Lora in New York.He was a student of Barrière who perfected the transverse flute mechanism.He was also, at one time, Toscanni\u2019s principal flute player.He just stripped me of everything and said, \u201cThis is the way the flute sounds and this is what you have to do to make it sound like this.\u201d I went back to Louisiana and went to work, 12 or 14 hour days practicing.PG: You were in school at the time?RL: Right.I was finishing up.That was a bad period, because of some trouble I couldn\u2019t leave the state for five years.PG: So that was the end of the trips to New York.RL: That was the end of everything.I started a whole new lifestyle.I joined a rock \u2018n\u2019 roll band, the Swing Kings, through which I met a lot of now famous people; Otis Redding, BB King, Wilson Pickett.PG: Those are the people who you played with then?RL: Yes, I played with some of them.It was great.PG: So that wasn\u2019t all so bad then?RL: No.It just pushed me off in another direction.PG: So contemporary music was more or less out?RL: No.I kept up with it.I kept ordering flute pieces from Italy, like Berio.Eventually, I met Calvin Harlan, a former art teacher at the university who knew I was interested in contemporary music, and we began playing together.I liked the man so much, I respected what he was doing and saying.I began wondering what the hell art was about?PG: How long did you study with him?RL: Oh, a couple of years.PG: Were you actually drawing? A Quadraphonic Delay Solo in concert at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, 1974 ISfc RL: Yes.PG: Who were some of his other students?RL: Keith Sonnier and later Tina Girouard, to name a couple.He just had his head full of information.He wasn\u2019t like everybody else in the music department where music died in the late 1800\u2019s.He was interested in all music.PG: Isn't that true about a lot of the art people, and that\u2019s something that attracted us to them .RL: They\u2019re interested in everything.That\u2019s why, when I did finally come to New York, I approached it through the art world.I didn\u2019t like the music world.PG: That was personally my experience too.In a way that\u2019s kind of how we met really.Two musicians that met through the artists.I think that is something very peculiar to our time.At the Big Apple Recording Studio, New York, November 12, 1976.RL: Good Morning.PG: OK, here we go.We were talking about coming to New York.What was the date of that?RL: That was August, \u201968.PG: What did you think you were going to do when you got to New York?RL: I thought I was going to teach in the public school system because I had a degree in teaching or do studio recording work.PG: You didn\u2019t do either of those things.RL: Well, I began rehearsing with you and recording music with William Fischer, a friend and composer.I was copying music for him and doing a lot of sessions at Atlantic Records.I did sessions for about seven or eight months and found out I didn\u2019t like it at all.I was not creating anything; it was real commercial you know.PG: You\u2019re still in touch with Bill now, aren\u2019t you?RL: Sure.I still do sessions with him.I did one last December with David \u201cFathead\u201d Newman.PG: So you were working with Bill Fischer, and you were working with me, and you were working with Keith Sonnier .RL: Yea, mainly working with you and Keith .he was living just a few blocks from me and since I had just gotten this camera he asked me to photograph some of his pieces, some of his finished work.So I began shooting photographs of his work, and started helping him set up his neon pieces.From that kind of static situation, we got interested in video, which was new at the time.We worked six, seven hours, just doing something in front of the cameras.Seeing the possibilities.We never knew exactly what we wanted to do until it was being done.PG: At that point were you thinking about doing work of your own in the area of video?RL: At that time Leo Castelli bought video equipment to be used by his artists, so when it wasn\u2019t being used by Keith, I had access to it.I began making tapes for myself, maybe three or four remain from that period.PG: Since you came from both disciplines in a way, you were kind of suited to do that work.RL: In the early tapes the image was always based on the idea of looking at ones hands, or the source of where the information comes from, the sound.When I was studying the flute, or clarient, or saxophone, the teachers would say, \u201cStand in front of the mirror, and look at your hands, or look at your lips, because that\u2019s how you correct yourself.If there are mistakes, you can see them.\u201d PG: So that imagery is really part of your personal history.What you saw when you were playing.RL: Yeah.I always look at my hands or my lips.That\u2019s true in Six of Hearts, Divided Alto, Sax I, Sax II and 1, 2, 3, 4, but the guitar tape, Six Strings for Agnes Martin, is focused on the strings, that\u2019s still the source of the sound.PG: It\u2019s unusual because your personal relationship to it has to do with autobiographical imagery, but to the viewer, the image becomes very abstract.One thing that interests me particularly is when you combine two disciplines .like photography with video.That is something that intrigues me and I wonder how that came about, when your work in that area became independent, and how that led to the kind of drawings that you're working on now.It seems to me that that\u2019s a line of development that clearly came out of video.RL: The photographs are a natural by-product of the video because I needed photographs of the tapes for publications.PG: Did you always think of the images as a fact in themselves.RL: Yes.In fact, with the first two tapes, I immediately began photographing them to see what would come out, using different cameras, lighting and speeds.I had done this hand clapping piece, 1, 2, 3, 4, and I always saw it in my mind as a photographic piece, almost like a flip book.PG: The drawings came out of the video, didn't they?RL: The basic format is of a video screen.The possibilities of dividing the TV screen are infinite.The drawings represent some idea of my knowledge of the studio and what the equipment can do.What I am doing now are sketches for a video project that I have in mind.The tape will start off with the fullscreen and then go into the screen divisions with action happening in the background.(PAUSE) PG: By 72 you had another group together, the first group that you had in New York.RL: They were all friends of mine from Louisiana who filtered up here because I was here.It included Prado and Gilder from the original quartet in \u201957.PG: Was it the concert at Castelli\u2019s downtown gallery that first exposed your own music?RL: Yes.We had been playing at my place on Chatham Square every night because the musicians were all living there.We played all the time.PG: That was made into a recording, that concert?RL: Yes.It is available on a two record album called Solos.It\u2019s part of a five-hour concert and was released by Chatham Square Productions, our independent label.It\u2019s at this point that I met Kurt Mun-kasci who was this young engineer who had access to a 16-track mobile studio.We hired him to do the Castelli concert and later he moved in with us at Chatham Square.We had a resident engineer who was interested in the music and the work.The group continued with concerts at 112 Greene Street, and shortly after that Robert Prado died.The group idea was abandoned.I came back from Louisiana in January '73, after the funeral, and did a solo concert at Bleecker St.I liked doing solos, I just kept doing it.Then Kurt and I developed a quadraphonic delay system.PG: You described that once as a support system for solo work.RL: Yes.It allowed me to have an ensemble situation without an ensemble.It consists of four 15-inch speakers and two Revox tape recorders, which cause four delays; so you have my original sound, with four repeats, fed thru the four speakers sequentially.The speakers are placed in the four corners of the room so that the sound circles the room thru the four channels causing a vortex of sound.I can then play around the columns of sound.In the past year or so, I have made several studio recordings using this system.Currently, using the capabilities of a 16-track recording studio I\u2019m experimenting with even more sound repeats.I have made one saxophone piece where I am playing with 15 of my \u201cselves\u201d.PG: Do you have concerts lined up for this year?RL: I have a concert at The Kitchen in New York on December 16th and 17th and at the New Orleans Museum of Art on January 30th.I'm also trying to line some things up in California in March, and, of course, there\u2019s always a European tour.PG: And then you have a video project coming.RL: I\u2019m trying to get some work done.I haven\u2019t done a tape in two years.I\u2019ve been so busy doing other things like the concerts with you, and concerts of my own.Things have been really boiling and coming full circle to where I\u2019m back into music now .and photographs and video are something that I do under special situations.PG: What about collaborations which have been a part of your work?How do you feel about that now.Are you talking to anybody about that, or do you feel that that\u2019s a period of your life that you've exploited and are not interested in?RL: It\u2019s a period of my life that I exploited and the outcome was not as I expected, and I think it will be a long time before I would collaborate again.If certain things are made clear, then it\u2019s not difficult.If things are not clear, then it\u2019s very difficult.PG: / guess that\u2019s always true of collaborations.They\u2019re tricky things to pull off.RL: I\u2019d like to do music for different things.I\u2019d work with film, plays, whatever .PG: One of the things that strikes me, in talking to you about your work, is the ease with which you\u2019ve been able to collaborate with other people, and at the same time to maintain an independent artistic identity.RL: Well, with the music thing .see, I\u2019ve been playing so long that I don\u2019t think anything would get in the way now of my idea of music or my idea of what sound is supposed to be.PG: In my view you were contributing to other people\u2019s work to a certain extent, and then at another point you were doing independent work.The ability to do all of those things and to maintain a personal integrity is something very difficult for a person to do.RL: Well, it\u2019s not easy.I\u2019m in the middle of a tornado sometimes.But then I sit down and look back and it all becomes very clear that I\u2019m doing my work and doing other people\u2019s work, too.PG : What are some of the things that you want to do?RL: I have this show in January, which is the reason we\u2019re having this interview, of drawings, photographs, video and a solo concert.It\u2019s the first time that all of my work has been brought together.20 PG: Does that seem like a natural format to you?RL: It\u2019s something that I\u2019ve been thinking about .\u201cwhere can I give a total impression of my work.\u201d So I am very pleased with the New Orleans show, it\u2019s even in the right place, my home state.PG: It seems that part of a description of you as an artist would include all of that.That for you to have a show, it should be all at once.That\u2019s interesting and, I think, completely unique.You\u2019re able to work in unrelated media and not in any second hand way.If you are a video artist, then you doing video; if you\u2019re a musician, you\u2019re really doing music.There are artists who go into other médias and never really become part of that media.You're able to identify with the media,.to work in it.DL: I couldn\u2019t just sit down and just play music.I learned that a long time ago.I can\u2019t do music everyday.I used to do it.I did it from age 7 to the age of 28, four or five hours a day.I get to the point where I said, \u201cI\u2019m just beating my head against the wall.\u201d I got far enough technically.So, looking back at that, I can\u2019t do music all the time.I enjoy doing photographs.It\u2019s another reality.I can\u2019t see sitting down in one place anymore .I mean, the twentieth century is not geared for that.Sure, I\u2019m able to keep them separate, but now they\u2019ve become so close that I\u2019m beginning to wonder how to keep it all going.PG: One thing that is very clear from this interview is that you keep going by keeping going.¦ DICKIE LANDRY, born Novermber 16, 1938, Cecilia, Louisiana.Lives in New York.B.M.E.University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette, 1962.Is a member of the Philip Glass Ensemble.Is part of the Léo Castelli Gallery in New York (videotapes and graphics).Exhibits and performs throughout the United States and Europe.PHILIP GLASS, composer and musician, is the director of the Philip Glass Ensemble, and founder of Chatham Square Productions.organized to record his own music and that of the Ensemble.Distinguished by a repetitive-structure, modular-form style, his compositions are designed for the resources of the ensemble, electronic keyboards, flute, saxophones and voice, and are frequently of extended duration.Studies with Ravi Shankar and a continuing interest in non-Western music are acknowledged as an important influence in his work He has recently completed music for an opera.Einstein on the Beach, performed twice at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York in November 1 976.C V/.C-C, 1976, 16 x 20 (detail), black and white photographs (détail) 7\t// M 21 ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG An Essay by CALVIN TOMKINS New York.December 1976 '*¦\" .* SSP* WjZ* l mm ||*1 ! ; [\u2022 t A t \u2022 : Z*** ¦, ; - .\u2022 S*.s~ -*\u2022 \" v », J§ >:.«* v * w- >\u2022 ^§T>-& ' -* \"5 jsl:k.- * ' .- $L «É?1 '\u2022 - -fjjn \u2019>i \u2022.\u2018Mfijjiiffifi Back in the fifties, when Rauschenberg's work was just starting to be seen and discussed, the easy way out was to call it \u201cneo-Dada.\u201d Soon enough we found it to be just the opposite.Dada was a furious judgement on the past, a denial, a process of exclusion.With Rauschenberg, everything gets included \u2014 real dirt and growing grass, the funnies, scrap lumber left by Con Edison, busted parasols, flashing lights, bedclothes, pinups, dead birds, live turtles (with flashlights), clocks, Velasquez nudes, the Sistine ceiling, mosquitoes, J.F.K., a glass of water, Dante, photographs, video, past-present-future and not just painting and sculpture, either, but dance, theater, music, and (in a pinch) literature as well.It was not even a Dada gesture when he threw his leftover constructions into the Arno, after his 1953 show at the Galleria d\u2019Arte Contemporanea in Florence; he was about to go home, he had packing problems, and besides, it seemed irresistible to write and tell the irate Florentine critic, \u201cI took your advice.\u201d Seeing Rauschenberg\u2019s all-white paintings at the Stable Gallery that fall, Barnett Newman turned to Willem de Kooning and said, \u2018\u2018What\u2019s the matter with him?Does he think it\u2019s easy?\u201d (At that point, of course, de Kooning probably thought the same thing about Newman).To Rauschenberg, the difficulty lay in another direction.\u201cI don\u2019t want a painting to be just an expression of my personality,\u201d he said once.\u201cI feel it ought to be much better than that.\u201d Everything he does is in some sense a collaboration.Sets and lighting for Merce Cunningham in the early sixties; his own theater and dance pieces at the Jud-son Church and elsewhere; printing with Tatyana Grosman and Ken Tyler; and always, his own private collaboration with materials.Studying with Albers at Black Mountain made him rebel against careful manipulation and control.The important thing, he decided, was to let the colors retain their own dignity and excitement, not to subordinate them to his own ideas and tastes: \u2018\u2018I want to do something with color that will be just as exciting as the color all by itself in the jar.\u201d And then there is collaboration with the viewer.\u201cI would like to make a picture that creates a situation in which there is as much room for the viewer as for the artist,\u201d he told a French critic in 1965.Like Duchamp, he Relieves that the viewer\u2019s active participation completes the creative process.The first time Merce Cunningham asked him to make a set for a dance, in the fifties, Rauschenberg was characteristically enthusiastic.A few days later he called and asked Merce to come down to the studio.\u201cI did, and found that Bob had made a marvelous object that hung from the ceiling, with ribbons trailing from it,\u201d Cunningham recalls.\u201cBut I knew right away that it wouldn\u2019t do, that it would be too difficult to install in the kind of places where we were performing then\u2014college auditoriums, mostly, with no fly space to hang anything.Bob understood completely.Without a moment\u2019s hesitation he said he\u2019d do something else.What he did the second time was a construction with a lot of color and cloth and mirrors on it, which stood up by itself on the floor.It was in two parts, and the dancers could go between them, and it was open at the bottom so our feet showed.I used it for a piece called Minutiae, with music by John Cage, and it was perfect.I loved it because you couldn\u2019t tell just what it was.One critic complained about it for that reason \u2014 she said she didn\u2019t know whether it was a bath house at the beach or a fortune teller\u2019s booth or what.That was just what I liked about it.\u201d The Minutiae set, which has since been described as one of the most important sculptures of the fifties, is now in the Rauschenberg retrospective mounted by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.And for the first time in a decade, Rauschenberg is working on a new Cunningham set, for a dance that will have its premiere in New York on January 18th, and that, as The New Yorker\u2019s Harold Ross used to say, encourages us to go on.When asked, some years ago, how he thought his work differed from that of the Pop artists, Rauschenberg thought a bit and then said, \u201cI feel that when I §|§||§| IffP ¦mm ¦ 'mm use an image, it has more room to move around in.If I use George Washington in a picture, for example, I may start out thinking about George Washington, but sooner or later it just becomes \u2018that green shape.' \u201d Some artists start with an idea and go on from there.Rauschenberg never does that.He starts with simple curiosity (not so simple really).\u201cI don\u2019t think of myself as making art,\u201d he has said.\u201cI do what I do because painting is the best way I\u2019ve found to get along with myself.And it\u2019s always the moment of doing it that counts.When a painting is finished it\u2019s already something I\u2019ve done, no longer something I\u2019m doing, and it\u2019s not so interesting any more.The point is, I just paint in order to learn something new about painting, and everything I learn always resolves itself into two or three pictures.\u201d It is amazing how much like the real world his work is.\u201cOver and over I\u2019ve found it impossible to memorize Rauschenberg\u2019s paintings,\u201d John Cage has written.\u201cI keep asking, \u2018Have you changed it?\u2019 And then noticing that while I\u2019m looking it changes.\u201d To say that he is the most influential artist now working is to miss half the point.His work is not so much an influence as a resource \u2014 a mother lode that is never mined out because he constantly replenishes it.Rauschenberg is the American possibility in art.ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, born October 22, 1925, Port Arthur, Texas.Lives in New York and Captiva, Florida.Studied at the Kansas City Art Institute, the Academie Julien, Paris, the Black Mountain College, North Carolina and the Art Students League, New York.Is part of the Léo Castelli Gallery, New York.Has adopted Lafayette, Louisiana as his home town.Has had exhibitions in the United States and in Europe.CALVIN TOMKINS is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine and the author of many bestselling books including Living Well is the Best Revenge, a monograph of 1920 s artist Gerald Murphy: The Bride and the Bachelors, a collection of pieces on the art world: Merchants and Masterpieces, a history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York: and The Other Hampton, a collaboration with his wife Judy, a well-known photographer.Mr Tomkins current book.The Scene, published by Viking Press in 1976.is a series of essays on the art of the 1960 s and 70 s including a chapter on E A T.or Experiments in Art and Technology, a nonprofit foundation started by Rauschenberg in 1966 in collaboration with Billy Klüver.a scientist from Bell Telephone Laboratories.Spinnaker (Hoarfrost, 1974, 821/2 x 49, wall hanging with collage and ink direct transfer on satin.Opal Reunion, 1976, overall 84 x 194 x 36, wall-mounted panel with collage, watercolor, bird wings, boat oar, ink direct transfer, doorskin silk, polished stainless Formica, fabric, and pencil.« j * K; r o sm H '\t\u2022' ' ne*' ife V ¦'¦\u2022¦:¦ .t*\"\u2022*.\u2022\u2022\u201c Vs k\tI\t\u2022 BÉgjS|£^f » r ^\t- -.PSSP 'ÿ fs 5 \" Æ.ï.:s&f \" \u2022- -\tV : «Rt -,>, \" ?ripa Æ ¦., '\\~y'- y V.-.\t.'\t\u201c - i»\tî '5 V ' *\\*&?* î *T .\t\u2019 .v -\t- - , '- ¦\t.\t- ~~ V .; ' - ¦ .' ';\u2022: x e>5 ® ~j co ^ (D O q.co t: O «O O -O < c c s c co CD o O (0 c ° ~ c 0) 3 c 2 -Q < M09v0f: ' 1* * : ^ * »v; r ' T \u2019fÿîfl'fe .v's,:' / jjgijj|| g^ev srm - » ,* Wi IIÉSPfs culture: it allows people to be comedians.It allows people to live with insane people; it acknowledges everybody as a person.It acknowledges every aspect of life, because it\u2019s all around you, unconcealed.I have very few friends.I really manage to live in a little village in New York City.I see or talk by phone to them every day or so.They are people who put something into my life culturally, physically, in any way.I couldn\u2019t come back to a rural area, rural Louisiana, to work, I could go to a more ethnic area, say, Haiti, or South America.I love South America.The thing about the Spanish, even the Spanish in New York, is that they let you know pretty much \u201cwhere they're at\u201d.They don't conceal their physicality; they don\u2019t conceal their emotions.And that\u2019s one of the most horrible things that has affected western culture: we\u2019re tied up from the mouth to the ass, till we just can\u2019t get it on.CH: Have you read Octavio Paz on that subject\u2014the face and the ass?KS: I haven\u2019t.(PAUSE) CH: You lived in Paris.Did you sense while there\u2014 aspects of the old Paris, perhaps\u2014anything like New York City: the ability of artists to exist there, to function enthusiastically there?KS: The only kind of experience I had was of the Paris of that moment, and it was interesting for me to live in my first large city.I went straight from Mamou to Paris! First of all, I dealt with being alone; I dealt with how to observe what was going on around me; how to amuse myself; how to live on little.More than actually making work, I made attempts at making work; but I really didn\u2019t accomplish much until I came back to America.CH: How much did you absorb of what someone has referred to recently as the \u201cold modern\u201d?KS: Enough to know that I didn\u2019t want to have anything to do with it; it was spent; it was somehow over.Well, actually, it was important in one respect: I saw good oil paintings in Paris.I hadn\u2019t seen an oil paint- ing till I went to college.But, to see good painting in abundance was pretty interesting\u2014to actually experience a real work and not a reproduction.And the understanding of the work was enough to sustain me.I have never really stopped being a student.Now that I am working on the satellite project, I know I have to study the information for a couple of years before I can begin to realize a work.And being an artist has been good for me as a person; because I am constantly taking in things that alter my life.I\u2019m interested in things that are pretty ethereal and move pretty fast and have a lot to do with mental reflection.I\u2019m a real hedonist too: when there\u2019s something to do, and I like it, I\u2019ll do it all\u2014every last bit! So that I\u2019ll know what it\u2019s like when it\u2019s over.And that pays off in making work.It hasn\u2019t paid off in the way I run my life; but, in my work, yes.By the time I\u2019ve conceived a work, I\u2019m pretty sure of it.CH: You describe yourself as a hedonist.I\u2019ve often thought there\u2019s actually a certain French quality in your hedonism.I sometimes see a touch of Satie, a bit of Matisse in you.KS: Sure.CH: Those two artists, composer and painter, while being very French, are not the same, either.There\u2019s a Matissean sensibility in your work, where color is concerned, and being able to make art from ephemeral materials.And the Satie element is a refusing to take things\u2014art itself\u2014too seriously, and almost always injecting in the work a great deal of critical humor: \u201cPlay this melody like a nightingale with a toothache\u201d.KS: But, coming back from Paris to New York, to actually see American work being made at the time\u2014 the mid-60\u2019s\u2014was 20 times more exciting to me than the French school.I had really learned how to look at work in Paris, so I had no trouble appreciating this new American art.I was thrilled to be back and be a part of it\u2014 to be back, not in Louisiana, but in another urban situation, getting a different kind of \u201ccharge\u201d from that of Europe.CH: Quite early in your work you seemed to have found a way to exercise a native sensory acuteness and, at the same time, to frustrate its uses.I\u2019m think-of your way with color in the video piece called Mat Key and Radio Track.There, again, I see you handling color and shape and continuity in the most spontaneous, seductive way, and, at the same time, subverting what is happening with them.That\u2019s what I mean by the \u201cEric Satie touch.\u201d Cage has it in his Fontana Mix.KS: I understand what you\u2019re saying and I think you\u2019re correct.Both kinds of responses are built into the work, because I think that that\u2019s how people really experience things.CH: Especially now, in the environment of this quarter of the 20th century.KS: Unless video tape has the kind of casualness that television has in the home, the work will never be really understood or even looked at.The big problem with the way people view video is that they try to make it like a painting and show it in a museum, when it really should be viewed in the home with a drink or a cigarette or whatever.CH: Would you agree with Allan Kaprow when he says that, until someone can handle video with as much ease as one handles the telephone, nothing very interesting will happen?KS: I tend to think that will only happen when we have the facility to send and receive video images; so until TV gets back to some localized state, it will not benefit citizens\u2019 use of it.Right now we\u2019re being fed the news in serial format.I mean, CBS \u201cMovie of the Week\u201d comes right out of the news; only it\u2019s about six months later.CH: Then, in connection with ease of handling of video, including color, there is\u2014isn\u2019t there: \u2014your working against the medium, working against commercial TV, incorporating it by wringing its neck a bit?KS: In a way, sure.Actually kind of showing it up for what it is.CH: In other words, you are using TV as it comes to us daily and are \u201cfrustrating\u201d it, too?27 KS: Sure.I went to a (CTS satellite) blast-off at Cape Kennedy\u2014 I don\u2019t know if I told you this story.An Indian chief from northern Canada was there as well.It was a French-Canadian satellite aimed at linking all the small settlements in northern Canada.He was an incredible guy: a big, fat, tall Indian.He looked very much like the Indians of the Northwest Pacific coast area.CH: Who the hell invited him there?KS: I asked him; I said \u201cHow did you know about this?\u2019\u2019 He said that, in the small village he lived in they had set up a surveillance tower.He was coming to Cape Kennedy to plug them all in to make it work like local TV! He was there three days.He was much more cooled-out than anybody else.And a lot more interesting to talk to about satellites.The people there are so specialized.I tried to start a conversation, say, abou) the fuel that was used, or the angles of deflection of the rays they send back\u2014and they would say, \u201cWell, I only design this one screw,\" \u201cI don\u2019t know anything about fuel or about what this satellite is going to do.\u201d I mean, that\u2019s how scary it is! That\u2019s how these networks, like ITT, Western Union, the COMSAT Corporation\u2014who use satellites to spy on us, to psychologically rape us\u2014deprive us of having any thought, of being able to relay our thoughts in this fantastic medium.And the remarkable thing is that $80 billion of our money is being paid to the industries to do research for the government through NASA.NASA has become like Kennedy Airport.All they do is send satellites up.It\u2019s German one day; Indian the next day.More and more, they\u2019re slicing up the atmosphere.And they\u2019re in cahoots, of course, with the FCC, which controls our space bands.They tell us what we\u2019re going to hear.And the interesting thing is that most of the people who work for FCC at one point work either for NASA, ITT, Western Union: it\u2019s all one big grab bag, and we have access to none of it.CH: What\u2019s all this meant to achieve, in your opinion?KS: From their point of view?Well, for one thing, they can keep us in the dark forever.CH: Control?KS: Control.They can talk to Moscow by pressing a button; but we can\u2019t.We can\u2019t see what the Ruskies are doing.The most intelligent use of satellites has been in India, where they're used for educational purposes in rural areas.Also, of course, it can be turned over instantly to the government.But little villages are plugged in.They learn which color pills to take to avoid having more bambinos.They make their antennas out of chicken wire, the way Mexicans do, and can pick up from certain satellites.They hang the TV set in a tree in the village and the people sit around the tree and watch the programs.CH: You found out about this while in India?KS: I actually found out about it through research and through an Indian friend from Ahmadabad, whose parents had been involved with the Indian educational system.I didn\u2019t see a sign of satellites while I was in India, because I was doing a sound piece in New Delhi, which reminds me a lot of being here.And then I went to Madras, an incredible place, to hear Indian music and see the temples.CH: You have always responded happily to non-European cultures.KS: It\u2019s amazing: I\u2019ve been to Europe many times in the late 60\u2019s to work in German factories, for instance, to build that whole BA-O-BA light series in the iron works but I did all the drawings for them either in Merida or in New Mexico or South America.The Germans could turn them out.I\u2019d got to the point where, if the forms were not too \u201cbaroque\u201d .especially the ones toward the end, the ones with glass units .I could just send the drawings to Germany and they would build them exactly to plan.I knew the \u201cpalette\u201d: they had the best kind of light, they lasted the longest; and they had various size tubes.Whereas, here in America, we still just have this 16 or 18 mil.standard.In Germany you can get 25 mil.\u2014as big in diameter as a 500 piece, which is like a fluorescent fixture, but you can span a lot more space and there\u2019s a greater color variety.You have two basic colors, neon gas and argon gas: one is red and one is blue, and these are pumped in with the mercury alloy that activates the fluorescent powder coating inside the tube, and that makes a different color.The red will make the yellow, orange and pink; the blue gas makes green and an incredible purple.Then the tubes can also be made of tinted glass, and that, of course, results in another color or colors.One of my pieces in sculpture shows at the New Orleans Museum of Art organized by Walter Hopps had a tinted tube at the top and a fluorescent coated tube at the bottom.CH: / saw it, and there was something very strange about the color as it played against the wall.KS: There are two tubes: one at the top and another along the side and at the bottom of a piece of cut glass that\u2019s coated lightly with latex\u2014my one romantic allusion to Spanish moss! It was so hard to do it, because I didn't want anybody to really get that! I didn\u2019t want it to be that evident, yet I wanted it to somehow .Those fluorescent light and glass pieces remind me a lot of driving in Louisiana.Coming back late at night, and in the distance seeing a club somewhere through the fog.About the most \u201creligious\u201d experience I\u2019ve ever had in Louisiana: coming back from a dance late at night and driving over this flat land and, all of a sudden, seeing these waves of lights going up and down in this thick fog.Just incredible! Much better than any kind of Immaculate Conception or Ascension scene I have ever viewed in church! CH: You also get that beautiful light late afternoons in winter through Spanish moss.KS: Now I think since I\u2019ve been in other climates and latitudes\u2014especially since I\u2019ve moved into my new place in New York, where I don\u2019t any longer have an enclosed box to live in but look straight out across the lower end of the Hudson River\u2014, I\u2019m really looking at nature, how the sun works and how light comes into a room.I\u2019ve kind of opened up my life a bit more, too.I\u2019ve become a lot more open.I\u2019m out of the box.I think I\u2019m finally out of Malone Dies room.I hope so, at least.(PAUSE) CH: Something rather unique has happened in this country, perhaps secretly over the years but not so secretly\u2014more openly\u2014since the early 60\u2019s, and that something is this: Americans have learned how to be critical of all the superegos that reside in the culture.KS: The American myths.Well, we\u2019re allowed to look at them.CH: Yes, we can look at them and say, \u201cWell, who are you?\" \u201cWhat are you?\" \u201cDo I need you?\u201d \u201cCan't I do as well without you?\" KS: Right.Well, European art is still plagued by the existentialist pitfall, which is close to what, in America, I call the fascist void: where you're up against the wall dealing with your own little narcisstic self.And the interesting thing is that really came up for me when I first did work in video: because the initial appeal in video is seeing what the hell you look like! And, as soon as I had digested that narcisstic feedback, I became intensely interested in what video actually does, rather than what it can reproduce.The fact of its doing became more important than the fact that it stores information.And the remarkable thing about video and audio, when you\u2019re not just recording for recording's sake, it\u2019s like a dreamland; it sets up a magic state or a state where, once you get over the fact that everything you do is recorded, all of a sudden you open to how you\u2019re recorded, what you actually say, what in fact you are, how you use the time.It\u2019s sort of why I became less interested in painting.Making a work in time has nothing to do with making a static image.So I use little \u201ckeys\u201d to things you\u2019re familiar with when you watch it, in order that they may set up clues to what to look for when you watch it.CH: The familiar, daily TV inserts, against which you play .KS: All those works using recorded time AM-FM, N.Y., Quad-Scan, NY-LA Hook-up, which are two-way radio and telephone pieces, come out of the work Channel Mix, which was actually mixing four channels of local TV in New York\u2014each on opposite screens (20 ft.projections).All four images were amplified.So you were \u201creading\u201d information in quadruplicate, which is analoguous to how one uses TV: you do other things along with it.Movies set up that experience where you\u2019re in the black void of the theatre and you\u2019re socked with the screen.CH: You're totally in the dream.KS: You\u2019re in the dream.But in video, the only way you're in the dream is if you are in it: my earliest tapes, from \u201969 to '71, like Painted Foot, or Negative, dealt with the narcissistic and erotic suggestiveness of the medium.Now I\u2019m much more concerned with the broadcast capabilities of the material, what\u2019s actually being fed to people .and having access to that broadcasting.CH: Well, until your visit this time, I had never seen those video pieces, and I hadn\u2019t realized to what an extent there is a real edge, another kind of critical edge to your work.KS: I\u2019m pretty astute as to .say, if I\u2019m working with a certain material, I know how it\u2019s made, what it is being used for, who makes it, and who is getting paid for making it.I think to be an artist who is actually making a statement about the culture .not a rural culture, but about the cultural fix .that the world is in .is the last free place to be in.Edited by Liza Bear and Keith Sonnier.KEITH SONNIER, born July 31, 1941, Mamou, Louisiana.Lives in New York.B.A.University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette.1963.M.F.A., Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1966.Is part of the Léo Castelli Gallery in New York.Exhibits in the United States and in Europe.CALVIN HARLAN is presently professor of painting and sculpture at the University of New Orleans.He is the author of Vision and Invention: A Course in Art Fundamentals, an art textbook published by Prentice-Hall.Inc.which is currently being published in Spanish in Spain, His former pupils at University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette include Tina Girouard.Richard Landry, and Keith Sonnier.28 patate Lâche negre mon ^^4*^ >pï NA >7 -, A»v ,,/' ¦¦ ¦ ' ' Une deuxième composante'15) doit être introduite et elle n'est pas la moindre: la couleur joue, en s\u2019affirmant ou même en étant niée par le tableau, un rôle majeur dans cette peinture.Revenons donc au texte de l\u2019artiste.\u2018\u2018LA COULEUR\u201d (Danses carrées (1965), Signais, Silences (1966) Ragas (1967) ne sont pas inclus dans \u201cPerspective\u201d: ces tableaux importants sont éparpillés, d\u2019où difficulté de leur rassemblement.) 1965: dépendance du dynamisme énergétique de la couleur pour l\u2019énoncé de ta rythmique du tableau.1966-1967: avec l\u2019introduction de la ligne horizontale comme principal élément structurel, (c\u2019est) l\u2019utilisation de la couleur, du dynamisme énergétique aux études de mutation de plus en plus subtiles et complexes essentiellement axées sur l\u2019utilisation de gris dans le champ coloré de tous les tableaux.Début de la dématérialisation du tableau (Ragas) jusqu\u2019à la fin de 2 Bruns 2 Gris, 1976, 9\u20196\u201d x 16\u2019, collection de l\u2019artiste, acrylique sur toile.iiiiSio : p m S3 mi 3* 1967: tableaux gris-colorés.GRIS: * Non-objet Non-objectivité *Non-physicalité Non-tableau * Non-impact Non-couleur (tableau unique) Non-échelle Non-structure>,e> processus de réduction et d\u2019abolition constructive des éléments jugés jusque-là essentiels au tableau.Intention à la perception pure (subliminale) non pas par l\u2019objet mais à travers une situation = a)\ttableau unique = structure b)\tsomme des tableaux = couleur.Deux expériences indépendantes et différentes mais complémentaires en soi.1 c) participation essentielle du spectateur a la création du tableau ou de la situation.d)\tl\u2019échelle plus grande que nature (est) utilisée pour (arriver à) la dématérialisation de l\u2019oeuvre et (pour) remplacer l\u2019expérience visuelle de l\u2019oeuvre par une expérience physique de l\u2019oeuvre individuelle aussi bien que de l\u2019oeuvre collectif (la somme des oeuvres individuelles).Deux expériences distinctes mais connexes.De 1970 à 1976: tentatives de réunir la somme des deux expériences des \u201cGris\u201d dans une même situation, l\u2019oeuvre (prise) individuellement réintégrant l\u2019expérience structure/couleur dans une même situation tout en gardant les non-constructifs des \u201cGris\u201d Principe: L\u2019EXPÉRIENCE DE L\u2019OEUVRE COLLECTIF 39 Rouge, Bleu, Vert, 1971, 66\u201d x 90\u201d, acrylique sur toile, collection Germaine Gaucher.Orange, Ocre et Jaune, 1974, 72\u201d x 144\u201d, acrylique sur toile, collection de l\u2019artiste. EST PLUS QUE LA SOMME DES EXPÉRIENCES DES OEUVRES INDIVIDUELLES = 1976 (OU) LES DEUX RÉUNIES DANS UNE.\"