VET Interview styles and Inspiring Artists

By Jennifer Burke

In preparation for VET: To interview and then review an artist’s work I have been reading so many interviews of Artists who are influencing my own work at present.  I would like to share an Interview with the Artist Ann Hamilton. Although I will not get the opportunity to Interview this Artist, I do want to Interview an Artist who’s work inspires me to "art"iculate what I am trying to achieve in terms of creating an Installation, I am intrigued by the materials used and relied on to create an environment that stimulates all the senses  auditory, visual, touch and smell. I want to expose the viewer to a world where secrets are exposed. I want the viewer to enter a world "the installation" where their own body becomes part of the Installation and their experience is relying on so many senses, their response will be emotional. The key word is "experience" I want the viewer not just "looking" I want to get a particular emotion after they have had an experience, so to speak. The installation will be in control and will be designed to purposely ignite specific emotions the experiences which will be premeditated. "The viewer would be swept into an awareness beyond that of the normal viewer, intriguing the whole body. I want to bring to the surface the questions we should be asking"  Ann Hamilton. 
Katy Kline, the director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Maine, who chose Ann Hamilton for the 1999 Venice Biennale, says of Hamilton, "She invites the viewer into a set of visible and auditory conditions where their entire bodily experience is activated. They are swept into a state of awareness beyond that of the normal viewer. She tries to intrigue the whole body." - Jennifer Burke.

"Swing"The event of a thread-Ann Hamiltom at the Park Ave Armory.

Ann Hamilton Interviewed by Lynne Cooke July 1999

Over the last decade, Ann Hamilton has emerged as one of the most provocative installation artists of our time

Best known for her site-specific environments that make use of sophisticated technology, unusual and highly sensual materials, recorded sound, and literary and historical allusions, the forty-three year-old artist – who received a MacArthur award in 1993 – was selected to represent the United States at this summer’s Venice Biennale, Her installation, entitled myein, will be on view through November 7.

LYNNE COOKE: What were your first thoughts when you were offered the American pavilion at the Venice Biennale?

ANN HAMILTON: From the very beginning I responded to the fact that this is an American pavilion in another country. So I took my cues from the pavilion’s American references and its neoclassical architecture.

LC: Was the pavilion built In 1895, the year the Biennale began?

AH: No, it was built in 1929, the year the stock market crashed. A rather auspicious date. Its architecture is very Jeffersonian; there are two symmetrical wings that embrace a central courtyard. You’re very aware as you step into the interior courtyard that you’ve crossed a first threshold, and on entering the central rotunda you cross yet another one.

LC: The architecture of several of the permanent pavilions in Venice – I’m thinking specifically of the Dutch and Russian pavilions – seems designed to symbolically reinforce the nation’s values. Is that true of the American pavilion?

AH: Yes. I saw the pavilion for the first time last June, and immediately upon returning to the States I went to see [Thomas Jefferson's Virginia home] Monticello, and I started reading about American history in a way that I hadn’t before. I suppose there were some parallels to how I approached my recent installation at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art [in Ridge field, Connecticut]; for that work, whitecloth, I researched New England’s Puritan history. For the Biennale the question became: How does an architectural ideal embody a vision of social democracy? And then what are the schisms, paradoxes, and contradictions within that vision?

LC: You seem to work simultaneously on two fronts – you think through the ideas in relation to a site on a fairly abstract level, and at the same time you think in response to very specific material conditions.

AH: Yes. And I was also thinking about the rhythms of actually being in Venice. The simplest observation I had that was pertinent to the project was that you’re always getting on and off boats, so you’re constantly accompanied by a subtly shifting horizon. I was thinking about air and movement, of metaphors of descent – that was a very visceral, emotional response. And then, because it’s a very particular circumstance to be representing a national identity, I had a more conscious sociopolitical response. I came away thinking about what issues might be most pressing for us now as a country.

LC: Where did these thoughts lead?

AH: I approached the building as an object, and began working with the relationship between its exterior facade and its interior space. I began with the idea of a mirrored wall that reflected the garden in which the pavilion sits. That went through several permutations before I arrived at what we’re building now, which is a large, rippling glass screen that extends across the entire front of the building. It doesn’t dematerialize the building but renders it very liquid as an image.

LC: And the viewer must decide how to enter the building, around one end of the wall or the other.

AH: Yes. And once in the rotunda, you must again decide whether to go left or right. One thing we’ve done is remove aH of the false ceilings that had been installed in the ’60s, which covered the skylights in the four adjacent galleries. For the first time in years there is natural light coming into the space, which is filled not with objects but with something more like a phenomenon. There is a mechanical system that sifts an intense, fuchsia-colored powder slowly down the walls. The powder is very responsive to your movements – to the turbulence in the air you create but are not aware of. It’s almost invisible as it descends over the walls, which have been encrusted with small raised bumps that spell out a text in braille. There’s a continual movement, a marking of the text that doesn’t actually stay on the walls.

LC: What is the source of the text?

AH.’ It’s taken from two volumes of poetry by Charles Reznikoff called Testimony: The United States 1885-1915 Recitative [1965]. They’re incredibly wrenching accounts of acts of violence based on turn-ofthe-century legal documents. And rendering them in braille in some sense mirrors the way this kind of violence is difficult to absorb into the democratic ideal.

LC: You will also have a spoken-word audio recording as part of the Installation. What will be on the tape?

AH: I used the middle section of Lincoln’s second inaugural address, which was an extremely important speech in its time, quite radical in its brevity. It’s an attempt to ask: How do you heal the schism that comes from the inheritance of slavery and that is the basis of much of this country’s early history? I translated the text into an international phonetic code and spelled out the paragraph according to that code, and you hear my voice, in unison with itself, whispering it over and over again with urgency. The meaning isn’t immediately apparent; it’s more about the rhythm of the voices than the voices as conveyors of meaning. The quality is halfway between an echo and a remembrance that can’t quite be pieced together.

LC: Frequently, your most immediate reference points come from literature.

AH: Yes, I’m beginning to do work that is more actively about being a reader. The way one reads is almost like a signature, much in the way one might write or speak.

LC: What practical problems did you encounter in working on this project?

AH: Well, lately my process has shifted, so that increasingly a lot of what I need is highly skilled technical help. Previously, I produced my installations with the help of volunteers who worked by hand. But now much of my work requires more complicated technology – this piece, myein, is set into the membrane of the building – so we’re really pushing the limits of what’s possible.

LC: What has caused this shift away from the labor Intensive hand-manufacturing?

AH: My work shifts in response to my emotional needs from the work, and I’m now looking for different kinds of experiences. But certainly making the braille is very much a hand process. And as we were standing there today putting dots on the wall, I recognized how the underlying concerns of the work are similar to other pieces I’ve done. No matter how much you think you’re making a new work, what rises out of it are continuing concerns.

LC: Do these preoccupations – which seem hinged on a dialectic between sensory experience and information acquired through codified forms of knowledge – date back to your formative years in the Midwest? You grew up in Ohio, where you still live.

AH: It’s hard to know because sometimes you’re blind to your own interests. On one level you do this intellectualized research and you think you’re really onto something – but it’s almost as if you’re keeping yourself busy because you’re blind to deeper issues. It’s like you set up a process that allows these issues to rise to the surface. And as my research takes its own path it almost forms an organism within which each project occurs.

Interview copied from bnet art publications.

Lynne Cooke “The Ann Hamilton experience – installation artist – Interview“. Interview.

Images

This link will allow you to view images of the installation

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.

Students work and the importance of the materials they use

This is an illustration by one of my students she is 11 years old. I have noticed that, since the children have been using charcoal, pastels,( basically all Artist professional materials) their work has improved so much(the children are 4 years up to 12 and they have never worked with these materials before). The children love working with these supplies, using their fingers to blend pastels and charcoal, they have opened an amount of new techniques available to them when they are creating art, and the new materials combined with instruction are responsible for this new creativity and skill level. The children are especially happy with being able and confident to realize their ideas on paper, they are happy with the work they are creating. This goes back to something that I am extremely interested in: the process of creating art, the materials used and rendering ideas from the mind on to paper, canvas etc......................................has anyone had a similar experience in that the tools the children use can have a massive and positive influence on the children, especially unlocking the images in their minds and putting them down on paper, the work on paper is as good as their images in the mind. I know it probably is an obvious thing to most of you better materials equals better work, but this is more than that, the materials have control of the outcome of the children's work, so much so that they are craving the use of these material all of them have asked their parents to get the new supplies, especially charcoal and pastels for Christmas! The children go to a rural primary school with about 200 or less kids in the school, they never get an opportunity to work with these materials in school nor do they get a small introduction to art history or the masters. I believe that the primary school curriculum should include art as a subject rather than a pastime. Do you agree? What about the larger schools closer to the capital and in larger cities around Ireland, do these schools have a better art program for primary school children? 

Creating again

How I create and developing my Artwork

Work in progress 2012

Entry Nov 16th 2012

I have been feeling so inspired by the participants of the MA course I am taking at LIT: MA in Art and Design Education. All of you have amazing talents and ideas on art! The above work which is a work in progress.  I have to say: I am really enjoying working on this painting. I feel that I am part of a larger piece of art work, which is all of us creating work individually, but at the same time our work is inspired etc by each other, by the group, we are a collective artist----gelling.  On a certain level I feel this work belongs to all of us, give me your comments, what direction would you take from this point, as the above is a sketch. I would really like to continue painting with your input and influence!!

Entry Dec 14th 2012

The finished work Dec 14th 2012

As I have mentioned earlier I was influenced by the MA group and course to start creating work on a regular basis. When I first started the above painting I was really excited about it and the direction I thought it would go. That feeling changed half way through the work! This painting is a "perfect"example of art that I create because of a need that I have, which is to please other people and avoid criticism. I make assumptions on what is an acceptable type of art for the masses. At times these"influences" have a powerful impact on my work. It is an ongoing dilemma that I have which is: the decision to create work that I want to, work that I don't apply my own set of censorship guidelines to, (an example of this type of artwork is the installation I am currently developing) VERSUS do I create work that I think is acceptable based on my upbringing, based on not shocking 
people, not making people uncomfortable work that produces "lovely pictures"


Entry Feb 14th 2013

An interesting thing happened to me as I was focusing on the artist Louise Bourgeois for the MA in Art and Design Education course at LIT (project titled "Mull")
While I was reviewing her work I remembered why I became an artist, I felt a new confidence and began to believe I could work on an installation piece that I have been mulling over for a number of years. The reasons I did not actively pursue working on this installation are many, one in particular is this need to please and I realised that this need was influencing what I was creating. I am now feeling free to now cultivate my own creative thoughts and resulting artwork. The MA art and design in education that I am currently participating in has also had a massive impact on my moving forward with the creation of the installation. I have found a community of artists that I feel nurtures, motivated and protects me. I am creating this installation as if these artists are my audience, but not to please them, just to share my work.....

I do not plan to create work that will always shock people, it is the subject matter that I am interested in that can be uncomfortable. I am interested in giving the victim a voice in my work, I am interested in having the viewer experience what it is like to be the victim and the oppressor. I am shifting towards creating an experience for the viewer rather than a visual experience. I feel that a full sensory experience is the only way that I can communicate or say what I need to in my work. I want the viewer to be part of the creative process. I want the viewer to have a responsibility, to take ownership of the ideas and the statements I am expressing. I do not want a passive viewer. I want to create an experience.



When I create an Installation there are three stages:

1. The physical stage of the work. The process of creating the work, the exorcising of ideas, demons, giving a voice to the victim to the other. "To meaning and shape to frustration and suffering" - Louise Bourgeois. The materials selected and the forms that will take shape, I have been reading so many interviews of Artists who are influencing my own work at present. "shapes that will provide the viewer with premeditated experiences in order to invoke feelings similar to the victim or oppressor. "When does the physical become the emotional its a circle going around and around" Louise Bourgeois 

2. This is the emotional stage of the work. The Installation is displayed in a public space where the viewer can interact with it or become part of the installation and experience it. The experiences are premeditated  I have a specific set of experiences I want the viewer to have. I want to go further than Louise Bourgeois when she created her Cells, Ann Hamilton is another artist who’s work inspires me to "art"iculate what I am trying to achieve in terms of creating an Installation, I am intrigued by the materials used and relied on to create an environment that stimulates all the senses  auditory, visual, touch and smell. I want to expose the viewer to a world where secrets are exposed. I want the viewer to enter a world "the installation" where their own body becomes part of the Installation and their experience is relying on so many senses, their response will be emotional. The key word is "experience" I want the viewer not just "looking" I want to get a particular emotion after they have had an experience, so to speak. The installation will be in control and will be designed to purposely ignite specific emotions the experiences which will be premeditated. "The viewer would be swept into an awareness beyond that of the normal viewer, intriguing the whole body. I want to bring to the surface the questions we should be asking"  Ann Hamilton.

Katy Kline, the director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Maine, who chose Ann Hamilton for the 1999 Venice Biennale, says of Hamilton, "She invites the viewer into a set of visible and auditory conditions where their entire bodily experience is activated. They are swept into a state of awareness beyond that of the normal viewer. She tries to intrigue the whole body.The second stage is the active stage in this process. The work will take the shape of cubed spaces. The viewer will enter these cube like spaces that will have different materials, that take different forms that the viewer will feel as they pass through these cubes. While some of the viewers are passing through the installation there will be a viewing/voyeur area which allows other viewers to watch the reactions of people as they encounter and navigate their way through the installation.

3. This is the validation of the work. Validating and applying value to the experience. The final stage of the installation is to take the 3D shape and return it to a 2D shape, this is done by opening the installation piece just like opening a box and flattening it ou. Once the installation is "opened" it will then hang on a wall to expose the internal of the work, just like a traditional piece of artwork. The viewer can now look at and review the place that they were part of, now it is an image of their experience, they can reflect and see the innards of the thing.

Below are some photos of my journal, these are rough drawings and notes on installation.