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Susan Weil’s retrospective show at the Sundaram Tagore gallery opened on April 20th, 2006 in New York. This particular exhibition presented 50 years of Ms. Weil’s work in various mediums; paintings, limited-edition art books and collages et cetera. The gallery has published a catalogue to accompany the exhibition. The catalogue measures 12 by 17 inches and the color reproductions jump off the page. I’m particularly struck by a photograph of a piece she created in 1949, titled Secrets. The work resembles a collage but is closer to an abstract drawing; it consists of many words written on torn pieces of paper and framed under glass. |
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Erik La Prade interviews Susan Weil
Susan Weil’s retrospective show at the Sundaram Tagore gallery opened on April 20th, 2006 in New York. This particular exhibition presented 50 years of Ms. Weil’s work in various mediums; paintings, limited-edition art books and collages et cetera. The gallery has published a catalogue to accompany the exhibition. The catalogue measures 12 by 17 inches and the color reproductions jump off the page. I’m particularly struck by a photograph of a piece she created in 1949, titled Secrets. The work resembles a collage but is closer to an abstract drawing; it consists of many words written on torn pieces of paper and framed under glass. For me, Secrets personifies Weil’s work because it seems simple when first looked at but develops in complexity. It is a work that gives a visual depth to words by transforming them into new forms and changing the viewer’s perspective is only part of the strength of her work.
Erik La Prade: When did you start working with books?
Susan Weil: Well, the first formal work I did with books was in 1980.
ELP: So, before that you were just doing painting and drawing?
SW: Painting and drawing.
ELP: Sculpture?
SW: I never think of them as sculpture but they are demonstrational, so I guess they are somewhere in between.
ELP: What is it about books and paper that draws you to that material?
SW: I very much loved the element of time in books and also I liked the complexity of relating to words.
ELP: You can go back and forth in a narrative. Is suspending time something you had in mind?
SW: A lot of my art work has to do with time.
ELP: What is it about Joyce’s work that you are drawn to?
SW: I’m moved by it. And in order to understand it, I’ve studied all of Joyce’s writings.
ELP: Finnegan’s Wake too?
SW: Yes.
ELP: (laughing) Did you finish it?
SW: Several times.
ELP: Is it the element of time in that work that draws you in?
SW: It’s magical writing, deep and complex. I love the puzzle of reading and trying to understand it.
ELP: Were you influenced at all by Surrealism, either early on or later on?
SW: No, not really. When I was finished studying art, around 1950, the art world was an exciting place because abstract expressionism was just happening at that time and the boundaries of art expanded enormously. I loved that. You could really work with your mind and your intellect and your imagination.
ELP: What were some of the boundaries before that period?
SW: There was a formality; the classical paintings then the impressionist paintings, they were all still within a certain formula. What you could do and how you could see things.
Certainly, Picasso and Matisse changed the form of that and then it just went on in its flexibility and imagination. A painting could be out there in space, not limited in any way by boundaries, it could just be afloat. It’s more of a challenge; it’s more interesting and less about a style and more about a real personal expression.
ELP: Does Schwitters’ work mean anything to you?
SW: I love Schwitters’ work. The thing about Schwitters’ work that fascinates me is how he worked with boundaries; in theatre pieces, collages, poetry and he always stamped the work with his own view of things.
ELP: Would you say it had an influence on your work?
SW: All of art and art history is part of your history as an artist but it’s not an immediate influence. You just take it all in as your own history, go from there and try to find your own voice.
ELP: I’ve found that sometimes the most negative thing can have a strong influence.
If I don’t like a writer’s or artist’s work when I first encounter it, but I still find myself drawn to looking at or reading it, a few years later I generally do like their work. Do you find you grow into the work?
SW: You change and your view of things changes.
ELP: Was Black Mountain College an influence on how you came to work with books?
SW: Not really. I went there to study painting with Joseph Albers.
ELP: What kind of teacher was Josef Albers?
SW: He was a tough teacher. He had a closed way of seeing things. As a student you were supposed to do everything precisely the way he wanted, so there was no freedom in it. He always said, we weren’t artists we were students and we had to think as a student and learn to draw your hand in drawing or control the colors and so on. All teenagers rebel against things and since I was a teenager then, I rebelled against what he was saying because I wanted more freedom in the work, but I learned a lot from Albers in spite of myself. Of course, he thought mature artists past school should have all the freedom they are able to have. But as a student you had to learn the disciplines to give yourself the control you would need later as an artist.
ELP: Did you see him after you left Black Mountain?
SW: He left Black Mountain in 1949 and I left at the same time because I was mostly studying with him. After Albers left the emphasis at the school changed. I saw him a little bit but not much.
ELP: It’s seems like Black Mountain moved to New York. Artists and writers like Joel Oppenheimer, Fielding Dawson, Robert Creeley, came back to New York and maintained their relationships, promoting what they learned at Black Mountain.
SW: The school was small and everybody was involved with what everybody else was doing. That was very meaningful. At the end of the school day, you’d sit in the dining hall and just talk into the middle of the night and share your thoughts with scientists, musicians, poets, so that opened things up a great deal. I think that was a big influence in what happened later in art, where the boundaries were lost between the different mediums of art. It gave you a broader picture.
ELP: When you left Black Mountain and came back to Manhattan did you just start working?
SW: I studied at The Art Students League with Morris Kantor and Vytlavil. The main reason was Bob was going to school on the G.I. Bill. So, one went on with one’s art education in order to have the money to live on. We stayed connected to schools longer than we might have otherwise.
ELP: How was Morris Kantor a different teacher from Joseph Albers?
SW: He was much less academic in his thinking. He would never impose that kind of thinking on his students. I was taking a studio course where the work would be critiqued once a week. Kantor had a reputation for a freer kind of teaching.
ELP: How did you and Rauschenberg influence each other as artists?
SW: You could say that all the people whose work you admire becomes part of your work and since we grew up in art together, naturally, we would share out thoughts.
ELP: According to the art historian and critic, Francis V. O’Conner, the beginning of the idea of art education in America originated during the depression, when the W.P.A. was strong and artists were working on mural projects and other things. Then the Second World War interrupted and literally ended those projects. When the war ended, all the soldiers who experienced the W. P. A. art programs returned and went to school and wanted an education in art. Suddenly, you had a big flowering of art departments, art programs, etc.
SW: It’s absolutely true. Before the war, when people went to college, it was due to pressure from their parents to be a doctor or a lawyer, engineer or something practical.
Because of the G. I. Bill, people could study what they wanted to. They didn’t have to do what Mama said. Nobody particularly wanted their kids to be artists. It was then like saying, “I think I’d like to be a bum.” The G. I. Bill gave the young men who were driven to art the possibility to study art, where they wouldn’t have had it before. You could study what you wanted to study and you didn’t have the parental pressure. I’m not saying everyone wanted to be an artist, but the people who were heading that way, avoided xx it because of parental pressure. They couldn’t pay for their own art school. It was a practical thing. When I was at The Art Students League, two-thirds of the class was on the G. I. Bill. In all of the arts, it was terrific.
SW: We were going to people’s studios and galleries and different places where people got together to share thoughts. But also, my son was born in 1951, so during a lot of the fifties I was raising a child.
ELP: Did you ever go to see Jackson Pollock’s studio?
SW: I knew Pollock in New York, when he came into the city or came to the Cedar bar or The Club, but I never went to his studio.
ELP: What was your experience with the person and what did his work mean to you?
SW: I thought it had a lot of energy and I was very moved by it, but it was part of the excitement of the time. His problem socially was that he was a heavy drinker. Also, because artists in those years would meet in the Cedar bar or at The Club, drinking was part of that scene.
ELP: Did you visit Kline’s studio?
SW: I knew Franz and I went to his studio a number of times.
ELP: Did you feel his paintings were getting beyond the boundaries that you spoke about?
SW: I thought his work was astonishing. I was very moved by it. I loved the energy.
He was a very lovely, generous man.
ELP: Did you visit DeKooning’s studio or Tworkov’s studio?
SW: Jack Tworkov was a very good friend. I knew him at Black Mountain and then I knew him in the city. We were very good friends. His two daughters would visit and take care of my son.
ELP: DeKooning’s studio?
SW: I knew Bill somewhat but I never visited his studio. I met him in other places.
I was very close to Elaine more than to Bill. One thing I felt about him, since he later had such trouble, whether it was Alzheimer’s or some other thing, is how people forget that for most of his life he was absolutely so sharp and so brilliant and verbally interesting. I think it’s very important to remember that and not just think it’s fascinating he could go on painting when he couldn’t go on thinking.
ELP: I guess going to see the work in someone’s studio at that time was not a courtesy thing but an invitation.
SW: It was always a privilege to see someone in their working environment. I’m very lucky to have been an artist in that time, in that way.
ELP: This flowering was also occurring in English departments, which began offering writing workshops, etc. The post-World World II writers that came out of the army, studied and then wrote whatever they wrote, novels or poetry. Were you exposed to a lot of literature?
SW: Literature has been a very big part of my life as you can imagine from my work with books.
ELP: Did you do any work at Hans Hoffman’s school?
SW: No. I was living in New York and it was convenient to go to The League.
You had every kind of possibility at The League. You had traditional painting and you had very contemporary painting there and everything in-between.
ELP: Did the 1960s open up another direction/area for you to work in?
SW: Sure. It was part of my general art experience. I created some dance sets for the Buraceski Jazz Dance Group.
ELP: Was creating dance sets an extension of your painting experience, going beyond the canvas?
SW: Yes. Whenever you think in a new framework, you grow into it. You feel its possibility and promise.
ELP: At the end of the 1950s, as Abstract Expressionism was losing it power and influence, so to speak, there was a big revival of figurative painting, about three years before pop art pushed it out of the picture again.
SW: They were simultaneous worlds. It wasn’t first this then that. It might have been in terms of critical attention, but all things go on all the time. It’s like a planetary system. You’re part of one universe and somebody else is part of another. In very abstract work, there are always figurative impulses. It’s always there on some level. You talk about Schwitters, Schwitters did everything anybody ever thought of doing, including his Metz collages, which were environments.
ELP: Does working with books give you a balance between the abstract and the figurative?
SW: I work both ways with the books too. It’s not a barrier for me.
ELP: Because your father was a writer, was that an influence on you?
SW: My father would read to us and share his passion for contemporary writers. The passion of the sound and the rhythms of it moved me very much as a child. I listened to it as music, not to understand it. I write everyday, but I consider myself first a painter, that’s my deepest commitment to art.
ELP: In the last maybe ten to twenty years, there has been or seems to me to be an increase in the number of artists working with books, creating conceptual works using books, even making their own books. What do you think has prompted that increase?
SW: I think it’s very natural to feel connected to word art if you’re visual artists. I’ve been talking to a lot of artists and you’d be surprised how many artists write, but it’s not the public aspect of their work. And I think this has always been so. Writing is thoughts and ideas and that’s certainly beyond the physicality of it. If you just sat down with a bunch of paints and a piece of paper and you didn’t have any thoughts about it, you wouldn’t be able to put anything on that paper. You have to have a point of view and decide on what you’re doing. I’ve been doing poem-drawings everyday of my life for twenty years without missing a day.
ELP: What is a poem drawing?
SW: Both image and word.
ELP: Maybe I’m being too general but there are the concrete poets, who mix up words and then there are conceptual artists…
SW: And sliding back and forth between. I mean it doesn’t have to go into one category.
ELP: But it is categorized because people need categories to try and explain things.
SW: That’s why I’m very happy to do my poem-drawings for myself and not share them.
Nobody has to tell me anything. But I did publish a book of fifty poems, poem-drawings in Sweden.
ELP: Did you find there was a different audience for that kind of work in Europe?
SW: Yes, but that’s a different kind of culture.
ELP: Looking back, what do you think their (the abstract expressionist’s artists) attitude toward women or young art students was?
SW: I don’t think Kline and DeKooning had any problem about accepting women fully, but I really don’t know much about Pollock because he had a much more volatile personality and probably didn’t have much room for anyone else in the basic sense. Franz and Bill and Tworkov weren’t sexist at all.
ELP: With so much being written about that period, do you think there is a certain misconception that still continues about it?
SW: It was such an amazing time and so much happening in art; I think everybody was swept up in the enthusiasm of it and I think a lot of it was very correct.
ELP: Very correct?
SW: Yes. I think as far as galleries and writers and collectors went, they were very tough on women.
ELP: As artists or people?
SW: Accepting their work or thinking it was within the realm of possibilities that a woman could be an important painter.
ELP: Why was that?
SW: Through out history that’s been a big problem. I’ve been in several women’s groups and when you talk to somebody about it they’d say “well, of course I don’t think that way, but the collectors don’t buy women.” It was always being put off on someone else. I’ve had people say to me; “the problem with taking on women is then they’ll have kids and they won’t have time for their work and their focus shifts.” That’s ridiculous. I mean, kids are the man’s kids too. Elizabeth Murray had two sets of kids. She had kids when she was young and she had kids in mid-life. She was a full-family person but she was also a very devoted painter. I could say the same for myself but it wouldn’t be modest.
