IN CONVERSATION WITH
When my retrospective exhibition at Indiana University was cancelled, I read with amazement the email announcing the administrative decision. It is where I earned my Master of Fine Arts; where I returned to the professorship and gained tenure. This happened just as I had begun to embrace the influences of the Midwest in my practice. By then, my intellectual maturity made it clear that my condemnation should be directed at the administration, rather than at the students, workers, and professors at the university. But I confess that, on some level, I did not find this rejection painful. It felt as though they had given me tangible proof to act upon. With the help of friends, we pushed back. We took the time to assess, reflect, and respond to the many press requests that came in over the following weeks. There was, of course, all the logistics to figure out— artworks in transit, plans to revise— but most of the effort was geared toward speaking up.
Over seven decades, did you ever seriously doubt the path you’ d chosen?
There were difficult moments when I doubted the path I had chosen and wondered why I had not answered the call of mathematics that pervaded my student years. Once committed to making artwork, there were moments when I could not see the path forward. Painters call such moments dry spells. When they come, I usually flounder, stubbornly making and destroying, until I find a continuation of the path. As I consider my aesthetic journey, there are two extraordinary periods when the‘ dry’ was substantial. One was approximately two years after I earned my Master of Fine Arts degree. After spending six months consciously testing styles, I decided to focus on how our eye sees. Those six months led to the geometric stilllife series in my painting. I told myself I had found a beginning and that this quest would fill a lifetime. It lasted from 1965 to 1979, and then came a barrier I recognize now, in hindsight. Again, I floundered and tried all kinds of things. I was rescued by a study I had done five years earlier: I had gathered autumn leaves, studied them, and drawn them extensively. I realized that nothing I made was as beautiful as any single leaf. I concluded that if I wanted my paintings to be as beautiful as an autumn leaf, they would have to grow like all things in nature. But how do you make a painting grow? The intention remained, and step by step I found a path— first by learning from the leaf, comparing it to a city map, and identifying principles that could guide shape formation in painting. I abandoned perspective, shading, and all references to gravity. The path opened again for me, and it has been open ever since.
CLICK A KEYBOARD BUTTON
You taught yourself to program decades before“ digital art” was a category. What led you to trust that medium, and how do you feel now that AI and digital art are so celebrated?
I told myself that, as an artist of my time, I should use the technology of my time. My study of art history showed me that every revolutionary movement in the arts used the revolutionary technology of its time. The minute I executed the first graphic command, I sensed something compelling and unexpected. The act of programming consumed me. Four years earlier, I had departed academia and closed the doors on the art world; I was free to think and enjoy the amazing things that appeared on my cathode-ray tube. One artist friend occasionally came to see me, and we would giggle with delight at the surprising colors, movements, sounds, and rhythms. I told myself people would think me very strange if I told them that, to see a painting, they would have to click a keyboard button. As for AI, I don’ t think it is intelligent. It is basically knowledgebased— composed of all the knowledge of the past, with certain limitations. For example, the vast knowledge accumulated over millennia of Asian and other non-Western cultures is missing. It is wonderfully useful but it is not creative. I think that to be creative and truly intelligent, a machine would have to know not only all knowledge but also all ignorance, past and present. Who could teach ignorance? To teach all that we do not know would mean that we know it— and if what we already know is all, then we stagnate.
Furthermore, we are social creatures: our idea-laden communications continuously travel the globe and touch all populations. A spark of discovery can happen quietly and travel far, often undetected. For AI to be truly intelligent, it would have to possess all that we do not know, as well as all the talking everyone does, all over the globe. Good luck doing that. But why even try— why disregard the beauty of mankind’ s gestational growth?
The computer is a versatile instrument, useful across all areas of human activity. As for me, I remain a maker of pictures, committed to the notion that a maker of things must know the material they use. Electricity is also a material, as is computing. Many disciplines can exploit this medium, as they all also rely on letters and words— let equality rule in pictures and open the door to all kinds. Still, a leading edge of exploration will always exist in the language of pictures. I remain committed to knowing the medium of my art, and I remain persuaded that abstraction is visual, cannot be commanded verbally, and is a reflection of our present reality— a reality we earnestly seek to help guide the future of pictures, pictures that give birth to modes of visualizing that help feed and house us.
MUSEUMS THROUGH A CHILD’ S EYES
Issue 05’ s theme is“ Museums Reimagined by / for the Young.” What do you hope a young person encounters first in a museum: knowledge, surprise, pleasure, or a sense of belonging?
A museum for children should educate, surprise, and please the child. Children develop very quickly, so what might intrigue a five-year-old could bore an eight-year-old. I would imagine a children’ s museum could be divided into three or four stages. Further, a museum for children should include materials to expand knowledge across all areas of human culture. It should have a curriculum as varied as a school’ s. I can imagine a museum for the youngest children, where trained professional staff, in plentiful numbers, watch the children and help them play and learn, allowing them to wander through the various rooms untrammeled. A balance might be encouraged by well-trained staff between a child’ s ability to explore freely
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