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Sitting
with the Slovenian painter Zoran Music in his studio at Rue Des Vignes not
far from the River Seine in 1987, the art critic Michael Peppiatt becomes
increasingly aware of the fading afternoon light. Linking the artist's traumatic life experience to his
work, Peppiatt is acutely sensitive to how Music, by 'taking a fugitive shape
against a dark, troubled background' in each painting propped against the
studio wall, has reflected the visual manner in which ideas and memories
form. After several of his
opening questions about a barely sketched out new work fail to elicit much of
a response, he decides to put his pencil down and switch the tape recorder
off. 'What, indeed, is the
truth' thinks Peppiatt, 'and would this exchange of imprecise query and
faltering response stand any chance of revealing it? And whatever truth there was, would
it not be so much part of the painting as to be inextricable, incommunicable
in any other form'.
It is this critical intelligence that runs through Peppiatt's anthology Interviews
with Artists 1966-2012 where with great consistency he remains as equally unfazed by an
artist's deflective eloquence as by their silence. In total there are forty-four interviews with thirty-seven
artists most of whom are painters, although there are some sculptors, plus a
handful of photographers and architects. The contents page reads as a cast-list of major art world
figures from the second half of the twentieth century: Francis Bacon, Henry
Moore, Sonia Delaunay, Brassai, Jean Dubuffet, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Claes
Oldenburg, Hans Hartung, Pierre Soulages, Antoni Tapies, et al. The slant is unapologetically towards
both the European (Oldenburg is the only American) and the figurative
(Delaunay, Hartung, Soulages, as well as Sean Scully, are the only abstract
artists).
Despite being divided into five sections labelled 'School of London Artists',
'Three Architects', 'Studio Visits', 'Three Photographers' and 'European
Artists', the conversations successfully cohere not only to provide a unique
perspective on the visual arts from the sixties to the present day, but also
to evoke something of the existential atmosphere of the European post-war
experience that helped form many of these creative minds. Due to Peppiatt's background as a
former editor of Le Monde and Art International, and as an art
correspondent for the New York Times and the Financial Times, the aim for many of these
pieces is towards a magazine or journal, although some of the most impressive
(such as those with Music, Peter Blake, Tony Bevan and Hughie O'Donoghue) are
written especially for exhibition catalogues. Peppiatt also includes some new transcripts, such as the
Bacon interview, that present previously omitted material. Sometimes the pieces are part of an
ongoing dialogue established over several studio visits with years in between
them (for instance, those with Music and Tapies), while the two illuminating
exchanges with Frank Auerbach of this type have not been published before.
Over the course of four books, Peppiatt's investigations into the life and
work of Bacon have helped consolidate his stature as a critic. Francis Bacon: the Anatomy of an
Enigma (1996)
reflected a special degree of openness achieved by remaining friends over the
three decades since Peppiatt had first interviewed him for a student magazine
in 1963. Bacon is featured here
as a member of the 'School of London', a loose grouping that is a
long-standing interest of the writer.
Recollecting the relaxed nature of their exchanges, Peppiatt explains
in his new preface to the piece that their entire friendship was based on 'a
kind if uninterrupted interview' and consequently 'since Bacon talked to me
very freely, in all kinds of moods and situations, I learnt far more than I
would have done from any number of more constrained, recorded
conversations'.
In this particular discussion, Bacon is confidently direct, yet mischievous,
to say the least (but not as drunkenly so as during his infamous South Bank
Show interview with Melvyn Bragg).
For example, in one response he claims that photography rarely gives
him the shock of inspiration that poetry and drama does. But as in many of the exchanges in
this collection, Peppiatt brings his interviewee's thoughts back down to
earth by focusing on the mechanics of making the work:
MP You've got to have the
feedback from the paint. It's a
dialogue
in a strange sense.
FB It is a dialogue, yes.
MP The paint is doing as much as you
are. It's suggesting things to
you. It's a constant
exchange.
FB It is. And one's always hoping that the paint will do more for
you. It's rather like
painting a wall. The very first
brushstroke
gives a sudden shock of reality, which is cancelled out when you
paint the whole wall.
Peppiatt's grounded sensibility is also brilliantly disposed in the
interviews with Blake and
O'Donoghue. In suggesting the
scrapbook-like nature of Blake's working process and his studio surroundings,
he asks about all the different objects that are 'found things and bought
things and collections, whole collections, whole curiosity cabinets', and so
Blake wistfully replies with great understatement, 'Yes. Some of it has settled down into
being almost a museum'.
Exploring the nature of paint with O'Donoghue, he suggests to the
artist that he takes pleasure in engaging with 'the actual medium' asking 'is
it a voluptuous thing?'
O'Donoghue replies 'absolutely' before going on to describe his 'very
intense response to the physicality of paint'.
There is a range of attitudes on display in these interviews, from subjects
who are thoughtful, hesitant or evasive, through to those who are more
blustering and narcissistic. As
an interviewee, Music is full of anguish and self-doubt when he states 'You
can't say anything ... There it is.
There's nothing to say about painting', before Peppiatt leads him
towards explaining his work in terms of his harrowing war-time
incarceration. Similarly, Peppiatt
brings Auerbach to confess 'occasionally one feels one has totally forgotten
how to paint ... and then a mark may happen at any time that reminds one of
what it's like to paint, and one tries to do the thing with the energy at
one's disposal before the feeling goes'.
Meanwhile Scully knows nothing of this anxiety: when Peppiatt asks 'you don't
sit in front of the blank canvas quaking and thinking, oh my God, how am I
going to start?', the painter replies 'It doesn't occur to me'. Scully arrogantly sees himself as an
equal of Bacon, Jackson Pollock and Philip Guston and goes on to make the ludicrous
statement 'In many ways I feel I'm taking on the whole history of
painting'. Tapies fluctuates
between various degrees of confidence, but in the process, underlines his
double role of both making and viewing: 'I am the first spectator of my paintings. I strive to make them speak'.
In the Henry Moore piece, Peppiatt can't help showing his irritation with the
artist's inflated reputation as he recalls his studio visit to Little Hadam
in 1983, a time when Moore's large-scale sculptures were coming to dominate
public art. Not only does the
critic have reservations about the work, he also resents Moore's approach to
the interview, especially in his delivering of a series of ready-made
answers. However Peppiatt
acknowledges his regret that this encounter did not take place earlier in the
sculptor's career when Moore might have been less self-aggrandizing in his
demeanour.
Although there are no reproductions of actual work (only a b/w studio
photograph to commence each interview), this is a carefully arranged
collection of explorative conversations about the making of images. Many of them are revealing and
captivating exchanges, with a candidness about studio practice that might add
to the understanding and appreciation of an artist's work; and in so doing,
can reveal the authenticity of a particular approach. Not only would this book function as
a suitable guide-book for those struggling to articulate themselves by way of
the frequently superfluous 'artist statement', it also stands as an excellent
introduction to a number of late 20th century European artists
(Music, Hartung, Soulages, Piero Guccione, Jose-Maria Sicilia, Miguel Conde,
etc), some of whom receive scant attention in the UK. In most cases, getting to know them
in Peppiatt's astute company makes for a most pleasurable reading experience.
© Peter Gillies
2013
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