Anodyne
Saturday, May 12, 2007
 
Peter Halley interviews Sturtevant, Index magazine, October 2005:

HALLEY: Would you go back to the work you were making in the mid-60s and describe how you came to those decisions?

STURTEVANT: Well, that work was the result of some very long-term thinking. It was not something that just popped into my head, that's for sure. See, in the 60s, there was the big bang of pop art. But pop only dealt with the surface. I started asking questions about what lay beneath the surface. What is the understructure of art? What is the silent power of art?

HALLEY: How did you translate that concern into making, say, your Johns Flag?

STURTEVANT: If you use a source-work as a catalyst, you throw out representation. And once you do that, you can start talking about the understructure. It seemed too simple at first. But it's always the simple things that work.

And, later on:

STURTEVANT: [T]he reviews for that show were the same as always -- that I was reviewing history, or that the pieces were all copies, blah blah blah. I realized that if I continued to work and get that kind of critique, then the work would get diluted. So I decided to wait until the mental retards caught up. And indeed they did.

HALLEY: What were your concerns during those ten years?

STURTEVANT: Oh, I played a lot of tennis, Peter.
- posted by cjb @ 9:39 AM


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