Nancy Spero

Interview with the artist Nancy Spero at her home in New York, 

by Jennifer Burke

Artist - Nancy Spero - 1926 - 2009

I did the below interview with Nancy Spero in 1992 while completing my last year at School of Visual Arts in New York City. When I first contacted Nancy she never hesitated to have me come by and interview her. When I arrived at her home/studio, I was taken aback about how idyllic the setting was in my view. She was in a kitchen area, which basically seemed to be just a small kitchen table, where I imagined many a discussion took place. And right across the space which was the other half of the room lay a very large canvas against the wall and  in front of it stood the artist Leon Golub her husband. Being quite young I though how amazing a life this is, fantastic space, buzzing with work energy and ideas, and having that to share with someone you cared deeply about. During the interview Leon would speak at times and finish Nancy's sentences. They had a great comradery, not just as husband and wife, but one of mutual respect for each others work, Leon understood the struggle Nancy put upon herself for the kind of work she did, for her opinions, for being different, for giving a voice to the victim, for not being afraid to force people to look at something that they may not like.
Nancy and I sat at that little kitchen table and spoke for a long time, she was just as interested in me and what I had to say. I felt she had a very nurturing side to her, I felt very at peace in their home. I will always feel privileged to have shared a Sunday afternoon with Nancy Spero and had the opportunity to watch Leon Golub painting in the background.....below is the interview.


The Interview

JB   Lets start big! What is the meaning of art to you?

Fig 1 Head with phallic, The WAR series - Nancy Spero

NS   It is all I can do, this thing called art. I do not have the capabilities of doing anything else. Recently and building up since the seventies I am fortunate to get attention, before that I was not really a burgeoning artist. I was participating in the art world by exhibiting and producing. What is art...something that is on the edge. The wonder of art is that it is symbolic you can act out or say things, that could not be achieved on a one to one daily basis. Art has to do with the school* the group you associate with, the other challenge is the art world. Leon Golub interjects at this point with a comment: We Nancy and I were restless, both of us figurative painters which was still acknowledged in Paris.......allot that was going on in the art world  did not get into the media here! Except minimalism  it was an illusion of power......what would life be like without art! We (Nancy and Leon) were in Chicago the "second city" we were the rebels resistant to the abstract expressionism which was the New York school, De Kooning, Pollack, Franz Kline the New York hierarchy.

JB   What is the other to you? with your views of not being recognized in the earlier days, did you feel like the other?

Fig 2 The WAR Series - Nancy Spero

NS   Not in the gender sense. In the art scene being the other is the artist if I am interested in the extreme, the edge, that my mind set is not working in the norm. I feel different - the artists lifestyle, the stigma of being understood and misunderstood at the same time. Yes you could say as a woman artist but I did not realize as early as you. During the revolution(the women's movement) of the late sixties I realized within this analysis of power that we(women) were subservient to male revolutionaries  so came W.A.R women artists revolution.(Fig 2)

JB   Considering the war series its subject matter and imagery are you trying to rewrite women's history-herstory therefore guaranteeing your own place is history?

NS   In a way as you mention in the war series(Fig 2). I used an image of a tongue(Fig 1) sticking out, represented me being angry with the world. It is a phallic tongue. I used Artaud as a vehicle for my message because he had been silenced by the bourgeois society. I felt lost as an artist in my society. I had seen nothing like the mental torture and the physical anguish of Artaud, his pleas to be listened to, moved me very much. I felt it clever and funny my responding to him......he would have hated me doing this. As artists we use things as stepping stones to get our message across. I decided what I wanted to focus on was the status of women, a hot subject, very controversial but not an excepted topic. The everyday occurrences in the lives of women keeps me very interested. I would not like to be brushed aside! I am talking for myself but I want to get into the public domain where it can be understood rather than a personal biography.

Fig 3 The first language - Nancy Spero 

Fig 4 The first language - Nancy Spero

                                   

JB   A Lot of articles discuss your turn towards Artuad is because of his "hysterical" voice - the Greek word hysteria means uterus and has been used to connect a woman's sexuality with madness  Do you think this is true, is your voice one of hysteria?

NS   No. I relate it to being silenced, being on the edge in a selfish society where no one is (was) generous to a living artist. I relate it to language using the image of the tongue sticking it out at the world bringing my personal outside where it can be understood. I was concerned with this going back as far as 1962 with the great mother piece, which deals with the birth of language.(Fig 3, Fig 4)

JB   I like that you are illuminating women's language in your art. Should art represent gender? Some female artists are always fighting the male view that dominant in sectors of the art world. Should your art be used to point this out?

NS   Yes, they should listen! We have spent our time in art history in the media looking at male art. It is time they look at our artwork and listen to our voice., be forced to look The reins of power have been very carefully under control by the masculine so there is a fear of appearing too feminized, its less valuable. This control is by the macho artists like Al Held, Jackson Pollack  Franz Kline.......but there are the sensitive ones....like Artaud. The ancient birth in the woman series deals with this, it is very symbolic of a different kind of power that is language. It shows this birth of language and if it is cut off that is then like a death, like the myth of the young woman who witnesses a man murder her own sister he then cuts off her tongue so she can not tell on him. The woman series is about the polarity of opposites, of ourselves in control of our bodies, moving in the world rather than being the victim  After Artaud and the woman series it changed to the actual being in control rather than anger. the shift was from internal psyche-to investigations (black paintings) becoming externalized with the sense of reality having a voice. Finding a voice with which to say there are possibilities. There are two stages of victimage:
1.   The voice of Artaud which is realistic but internalized and needs to find a way to get across.
2.   The voice that is external becoming powerful more male.

JB   With some of the images of women in your work, are you expecting them to live up to the traditional images of warrior-male, like "Running Totem Woman"?

Athena - Nancy Spero

NS   This is complex, the images are more complex than that. The sexes change. I have taken images of men and changed it into women. Sometimes women are very masculine looking. the images of the past are of men making men look more powerful. I have felt free to show women as powerful even what we would consider masculine looking. The image of Athena with her helmet, spear and shield  The goddess of wisdom and menura. I used everything from fashion model to old scrubbing lady. I have reasons some come out and some are arbitrary.

JB   In an article from Art Week Nov 26 1988 Andrea Liss writes about your "Celebration of the body as it's central archetypal icon is clearly at odds with such feminist practices of representation as those carried out by such artists as Barbra Kruger and M. Kelly for example in which they refuse to picture the female body or allow and condone a position of male spectator-ship for the viewer/voyeur....would you like to comment on this?

NS  They do not condone my artwork. I can not say at all if my artwork is detrimental to women. Their(feminist group of eighties) tactics are to treat the subject of women as elliptical. That group of the early eighties are more gung-ho seeing the image of women as object all the time throughout art history for the delight of men, that they disapprove of my imagery of women. Their attitude is very different being one of theory with art practice, mine is theory to a point but I do not want to illustrate it! It is correct that use of female imagery would allow this spectator ship  but the male spectator would get caught up short and realize that this is woman as activator, that my work is not averting the male gaze but running past oblivious or defiant-independent.

JB  Are you ready for another quote from the same article by Andrea Liss?
"Attempts within Spero's projects to unify womankind into one harmonious kinship also reduces the important historical , ethnic and economic differences among women....can you comment on this?

NS   I am trying to achieve the opposite as a matter of fact. I want surprises! Tensions! Shocks! Shocks of recognition, that these images are out of context, you have to take a second look to see what is there.

JB   In some of your work, the body is placed on the canvas, paper......in a way that  leaves allot of space around it. Can you talk about the body and the importance if any to that space you give it?

NS   I was interested in putting these images into space, this started with Artaud being isolated in his pain, in his otherness, a sense of disconnection from society. this format was more technical while the ideas are more of utopia in a way woman as antagonist to move freely in space. I do like to think of my artwork as a continuum, open-ended.

JB   I feel that some of your images are like butterflies that rise above the official discourse to be heard and taken seriously, can you comment on this idea and on the process of creating this work?

NS   In Spain I did an installation on the fourth floor of an old baroque building. I used soft plates to press images on the hard surface of the walls. These images found themselves in unexpected places right out onto the terrace. That was a beautiful ruin which appealed to a romantic side of me. One of the images which was both humorous and sinister floated on the wall like she had wings and I thought of her as a butterfly, but not just beautiful because she was sinister as well.

JB   Why did you become an artist?

Leon Golub 

NS   I was encouraged by teachers in grammar school, not by my parents.
Leon Golub  shouts across the room "There is no other area we could go into!" they laugh.
NS   I had a certain need to become an artist its intangible. In the beginning it did not seem desirable, but I was pulled in, drawn in by the visual. Its a hands on thing using the mind, its the challenge of the blank page, the blank canvas, whatever, its like a mania, a Frankenstein,  we all create monsters!
Leon Golub   (pointing to his side of the studio and then to Nancy's side) "On one side you have corruption and evil while on the other you have purity and decency"

JB   Can you comment on the art world today?

NS   Its just a can of worms.

JB   What do you think people are thinking of you and your artwork these days? That is if you care?

NS   I think they have changed their minds! Fortunately they are looking. They think I'm aggressive on some level.....you never really know, you just get an inclination of which way the wind is blowing. appreciation but still a certain amount of resistance.......that is pretty neat. I sell my work but not enough for the amount of press I get. I can see the resistance but people have put up a few bucks.
An artist can spend many years underground (no recognition) and when they surface, they will be questioned: where have you been all these years? Because of this there is a lot of bitterness and few rewards.