"I have this love affair with the past. I wanted to
be an ancient Greek. And one of the reasons I wanted to
be an ancient Greek was because I would already be dead."
"You can find anything you want by going back to the
past. You don’t even have to look. The metaphors start
erupting all over the place."
"They are done in the style of the nineteenth century
salon painters and they are dealing with Rome and a great
colonial power on the eve of it's destruction. In its innocence.
In it's glorious, mad, crazy innocence."
"I work very intuitively because there is a kind of
poetry to all of these works that I have to come to."
Why is time travel something
that's of interest to you?
ANTIN:
I've got this love affair with
the past. When I was kid I wanted to have been an ancient
Greek. We're talking like five years old, six years old. I
was fascinated with Greek mythology.
And I was passionately in love with the sculptures (I'm from
New York originally) at The Metropolitan Museum. All those
pathetic, broken people. It's sort of like a mausoleum of
cripples—it's pathetic. I just fell in love with them.
When I was a little bit older, I used to feel up the guys
and I every now and then I'd get caught. When I was in high
school I used to play hooky and go to the Metropolitan and
feel up Perseus and all the poor fellows. And sometimes a
guard would catch me and say, "Don't do that!"
But anyway, I have this love affair with the past. I wanted
to be an ancient Greek. And one of the reasons I wanted to
be an ancient Greek was because I would already be dead. And
I was very aware of this. You know, even as a child you can
be very logical. I was very aware that I would be dead. If
I was dead I would no longer have to go through all of the
disasters and difficulties of living. Which, I already knew
having seen my desperate mother and father, was a rather difficult
thing to accomplish. And so I thought, well, I'm already dead,
but I will have lived an interesting life.
The past has haunted me forever. In fact when I did "Pompeii"
I never used to like the Romans as much as the Greeks. But
I started realizing, as I got older, how appalling the life
of women in Greece was as opposed to the life of the Roman
women, which was infinitely better. Hardly very good, but
certainly much better. The Greeks were more Oriental, more
Arabic in some senses, and so what I gravitating to was the
image of Pompeii and what devastation was for the Romans.
But it started with the Greeks.
You can find anything you want by going back to the past.
You don’t even have to look. The metaphors
start erupting all over the place. I've always loved the past
because of the relations that I could make as an artist with
the present. I don't remember this once it's finished, but
I do all this enormous research. Once it's done, I kind of
forget it and I don’t remember it too well. Otherwise
I would be carrying a trash pail in my head...
ART:21:
Did Pompeii come out of previous
works—or—how did the process
of making this piece evolve?
ANTIN:
Pompeii is a photographic sequence.
It’s directing a whole host of actors placed in another
historical period, and it deals with art, theatricality, and
with what I think is our present-day situation. I was coming
down the scenic route, looking at La Jolla, and there she
was. The town was laid out on this incredible bay—like
Pompeii—which isn’t exactly on a bay, but it’s
filled with these beautiful affluent people living the good
life on the brink of annihilation. And in California we are
slipping into the sea, eroding into the sea, living on earthquake
faults. And we finished this piece two-and-half weeks before
9/11. So the relationships between America as this great colonial
power and Rome—one of the early, great colonial powers—were
extremely clear to me. And I think it's pretty much clear
to everybody from the work.
ART:21:
The association between the United
States and Rome is implied. It's never made explicit.
ANTIN:
One of my favorite art periods
is the Rococo. I guess I have a Rococo relation to art making
in that there is always a game-like quality. I don't like
dealing with something head on, in which I would say "Yes,
America, the U.S., and Rome, how close we are, okay?"
That to me is kind of klutzy and it's also two dimensional.
And it isn't artistically interesting.
I want to present this image of the relationship that I had
through the eyes and through the guise of nineteenth century
academic painting. Because we are dealing with England and
France, who invented Rome in a way. They invented Rome to
help glorify their own role as great colonial
powers with India and Africa and whatever they were colonizing.
And especially the Brits. They had an enormous fascination
with Roman subjects and obviously did see themselves in that
guise as the new Rome. So I thought that it would be interesting
to see our relationship through the eyes of nineteenth century
salon painting, which I've always loved anyway. It's such
campy painting. Lord... I've finished the work so I can't
remember any of them any more, I told you.
I also wanted to have someone's eyes, a single character,
who would be a Pre-Raphealite women who would look and watch
and observe everything in her wheelchair. She's in a wheelchair
and only in the end and final picture—which is the only
one that deals with the devastation and the destruction—is
she standing up. Once the disaster happens she stands and
walks.
ART:21:
Is she like a surrogate for you,
your eyes? Your alter-ego?
ANTIN:
Yes, she is in a sense the surrogate
for me, and then that becomes the surrogate for all of us
who are looking. She is watching. She's ensconced in the nineteenth
century. The works are presented in a nineteenth century ambience.
They are done in the style of the nineteenth century salon
painters and they are dealing with Rome and a great colonial
power on the eve of it's destruction. In its innocence. In
it's glorious, mad, crazy innocence.
ART:21:
Coming upon the relationship
between Pompeii, Rome and La Jolla, California—it seems
so inspired and effortless.
ANTIN:
No, these things take time! [LAUGHS]
Yes, I work very intuitively because there is a kind of poetry
to all of these works that I have to come to. And as I say,
they all unpack. Like I'm dealing with this relation between
us and Rome, and then I'm unpacking that to include what is
the other. Who else did that? England, France, the nineteenth
century? What kind of work do they have? Well, they invented
Rome. It's not so simple as that, but it all kind of opens
up and at some point I just sail through.
ART:21:
How did the series come together
in terms of all the people you worked with?
ANTIN:
It's like shooting a film. And
it's not the first time I've done that for a big photographic
piece. Obviously I did it with "One Hundred Boots,"
but the boots are very easy actors to deal with. They don't
weigh that much individually, but when you have to schlep
a hundred of them they kind of weigh a lot. Uphills and downhills.
And they don’t argue with me. When you are dealing with
people, actors, you have somewhat of a different situation.
Not that they argued with me. Everyone was delighted to wear
Roman clothes and be Romans.
Pam Whiden, who has been my assistant for many years, was
in some sense the producer. She helped to see it through.
She'd get me all these people to interview because I was very
particular about who I needed. There were people who we couldn't
use. It's very funny now because of my new project "Scenes
From An Imaginary Movie." It's based in the late ’30s/early
’40s/Second World War/Middle Europe, and these exiles
with their suitcases and their lives and their pockets and
their guts are kind of moving from country to country. And
I have S.S. men in that also. I remember speaking to one of
he actors and I said "Oh, you will be a marvelous S.S.
man, will you be in my next piece? We're shooting at probably
the end of the next summer." And he said, "Oh, my
family were German." And I said, "I didn't know
that but I know by looking at you that you will be beautiful,
you will be wonderful, okay?" And then he called me up
a few days later and he said "You know, I'd really rather
be a Roman." And every time I see him he says, "Yeah,
I'll do it, but I wish I could be a Roman."
Now the Romans weren't very lovable, but everyone takes enormous
pleasure wearing these decadent, gorgeous robes in this villa.
The actors had to be put together. I had to work out every
image.
ART:21:
Where did you stage the photographs?
ANTIN:
It was staged at my friend Marion
McDonald's villa in Rancho Santa Fe, California. And if anyone
is dancing on the edge or the brink of destruction I suppose
it must be Rancho Santa Fe—lately called the richest
community in the United States. Marian is a classics professor
in my school and she happens to have had this place for many,
many years. It is incredible and very Italianate. And we brought
in our own columns and whatever we needed. Our own frescos
and whatnot. And we shot one or two things in other places
like the Salk Center, but basically we shot it at Marian's.
