Haim Steinbach talks to Tim Griffin - '80s Then - Interview - Biography

ArtForum, April, 2003

TG: Was nothing like that going on in critical circles?

HS: I do think Brian Wallis, for example, might have been someone to come forward for his generation, bringing these artists together. I had such a great feeling when he put together "Damaged Goods" [1986] at the New Museum. But generally, it was strange. Look at all the Nature Morte people, who were young, enthusiastic, who recognized the work of the generation just preceding them. They were focused enough to show Louise Lawler and Sherrie Levine. Yet none of the serious critics came in to start a discussion between these two generations. In fact the people at Nature Morte were dismissed because they opened a gallery--they were told they were commercial and were associated with Reagan even when they had no idea how to make money. They were just paying the rent. Some of those young artists had incredible potential. But they were vulnerable, and many of them were defeated. They just backed off. An engaging discourse would have helped to sustain them. But they were too enthusiastic and too fast-moving, and they dropped off before they were able to really grasp their own development. I see that as kind of unfortunate.

TG: Speaking of success, and to get back to your work, you once said you wished you could incorporate more valuable objects into your pieces.

HS: When my work began to be successful, each piece--the shelves with objects--was priced the way you price a work of art: Here's a work of art, and this is what the price is. Of course, that becomes a problem, because if my work is going for $12,000, what happens when you have a group of objects worth $30,000? Do you still sell it at the value of the art? I devised a formula by which there would be a price for the work--plus the price of the objects. Let's say a shelf has three cornflakes boxes and six ceramic ghosts on it. If the ceramic ghosts are $10 apiece, that's $60; the boxes, at $2 each, would make $6, bringing the total of the objects to $66. So if the price of a given work is $12,000, that's $12,066.

But my approach to working with objects is nonhierarchical, meaning I just want to get my hands on any object that I desire to use, whether it's found or bought, marketable or not. My budget is limited, however, so I can't afford everything I want. I have done some works with museums and collectors in which I incorporate artworks, but I wish I could really get whatever I want and freely integrate it into a work of my choice. But I try! I try!

Tim Griffin is senior editor of Artforum.

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KEITH EDMIER

In high school, I wanted to be a special-effects artist, so I moved to Los Angeles. But I quickly became disillusioned with the film business and decided to go to CalArts--where I also quickly became disillusioned. There was a strong conceptual thing going on there, whereas I was making installations with found objects. I started looking at art magazines, and the first thing that struck a chord was a panel discussion featuring Sherrie Levine, Peter Halley, Jeff Koons. Haim Steinbach, Ashley Bickerton, and Philip Taaffe in Flash Art, titled "From Criticism to Complicity" [1986]. What was said about appropriation and process sounded like a whole new language. It was my first encounter with post-modernism, though I didn't know it at the time, and I started thinking very differently about making art.