Making Waves - David Reed on legacy of artist Lee Lozano - Interview

ArtForum, Oct, 2001 by David Reed

KS: Going back to painting, there has been a recent academic vogue for non-compositional painting like Lozano's, including a lot of French painting. Why do you think this is going on now?

DR: I didn't realize that was happening--that's terrific. I think because it was ignored, because the development of painting was ignored, it was cut off. People thought that after Pollock, that was the end of non-compositional painting, that there was nothing left to do. I think it's very clear that the legacy from Pollock and Newman can continue.

KS: So the neo-expressionist painting of the '80s was a red herring for painting?

DR: Yes, a false revival. To really revive painting you need to go back and look at this historical rupture of the late '6Os and early '70s, and then move on from there.

KS: How do you explain this absence--why is it left out of the discussion of art in the '60s and '70s?

DR: I think there are a few reasons. One is art-world politics: There were artists who had been painters who had turned to sculpture, and they wanted to focus on sculpture or specific objects, and their view became predominant. I think it was more of a polemical view than anything to do with the nature of painting. Also, Greenberg's formalist aesthetics was extremely limited and couldn't support the more advanced forms of painting emerging then. It's what often happens to advanced or experimental painting--it's attacked by the people who are conservative and don't like changes in painting, and, from the opposite side, by those who don't like any kind of painting, assuming it's all conservative. Also, a number of the most important practitioners were women. It was OK for women to do variations on a style, but to invent and propel the direction of painting was too much.

KS: Where do we go from Lozano, Humphrey, Baer, etc.?

DR: Mary Heilmann, Joan Snyder, Alan Shields, Elizabeth Murray, and Guy Goodwin all learned from that slightly older generation, took some of these innovations and incorporated them into a flat structure.

KS: And where does this leave us now, with regard to younger painters?

DR: The young California painters like Ingrid Calame, Monique Prieto, Laura Owens, and Steven Hull; in New York, Pam Fraser, Ruth Root, Elizabeth Cooper. Everything is abstract now, even if it's an image, and it can be combined and used in new ways, and a lot of painters are working within that.

KS: It's funny, because Lozano and her generation look so dry and intellectual; they're obviously addressing serious issues, but the work you're talking about today doesn't look serious, it looks fun and light.

DR: Well, maybe these issues are serious and fun. They're about a certain range of human emotion that can be addressed in painting.

KS: How can painting be emotional without being expressionist?

DR: It's one of the strengths of painting that you aren't coerced into having emotions; you decide to have them. It's not like film. I get weepy at some of the most embarrassing movies. I can even get patriotic, and I'm ashamed of myself. But some of those patriotic emotions come from having a sense of community with other people. You can have those kinds of feelings looking at a painting, too, but in a way that's not coerced: You can choose to have them.