| ART:21: |
What makes you come
to your studio?
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| ROTHENBERG: |
No place else to go. (LAUGHS)
No, I feel very strongly about putting time in, whether you’re
working or not. Reading a book is fine, but if you’re
not here it might pass you by. And sometimes you just throw
your book down to the floor, march up to the painting and
say—“Something’s wrong here!” I pull
the table over, throw my painting shirt on and get going.
Sometimes hours pass.
I almost always do something before I go in the house to watch
the news. Even a wrong stroke, a change in contour—just
to have done some work that day. There’s the occasional
day when I just don’t bother. I go to town, I meet people,
go food shopping, whatever. But basically I am here from about
eleven until five o’clock.
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| ART:21: |
Do you find peace in the studio?
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| ROTHENBERG: |
Yeah, especially when there are
houseguests or something. I say “I have to go to work
right now,” and the sense is, "don’t come
in". It’s very peaceful with four dogs snoozing
around me, it’s great. And I read a lot of fiction,
biography, magazines, whatever is around.
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| ART:21: |
Can you talk about drawing
versus painting?
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| ROTHENBERG: |
The gesture of
drawing—it’s very different from painting, and
I’ve tried to bridge the difference by working with
paint on paper as well as charcoal and pencil and graphite.
One drawing I did on my stomach, kneeling and crouching over
this big piece of paper, so that I couldn’t have any
perspective and so that I didn’t have that back and
forth space between me, my arm, and the wall. And it turned
out quite distorted, but it’s interesting. But the other
way I’d like to think about drawing is cradling a board
in my hand and drawing, without trying to emulate these big
gestures that painting takes.
I haven’t drawn at all lately. I’m always engaged
and embattled with the paintings and so anxious to move on
that I have to bring these paintings around me to some kind
of finality. I’d like to roll them or stretch them and
put them on the rack so I can find out what I’m supposed
to do next.
Most artists really wish they had a series where one painting
would lead to the next painting and it would be a variation
on it. That’s what happened in my early career—the
horses. Now the paintings are more of a battle to satisfy
myself with and I do not have a sense of series. As you see
here: there are two snake paintings, two paintings about this
idea called meaningless gestures, two paintings that are reflection
of my domestic situation in the house. With each of them,
the second painting seems to complete the series. I’d
like to get a hold of something and be on that idea for a
couple of years at least—but that’s not happening
at the moment.
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| ART:21: |
Maybe two paintings is a series?
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| ROTHENBERG: |
Two paintings? I don’t
know. Luckily I don’t have a deadline, so I don’t
have to think about how these works would hang together and
whether it would be too disjunctive. It’s an ongoing
thing. And at least I’m not blocked. At least I find
some reason to work just about every day.
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| ART:21: |
Have you had periods of being
blocked?
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| ROTHENBERG: |
Several months sometimes. I make
myself do something, but it’s terrible to have a couple
of months where you’re disheartened because you think
everything stinks in your studio. It happens—you go
through all kinds of stuff—most of it’s pretty
solitary. That’s what books are for. (LAUGHS)
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| ART:21: |
Did you always imagine doing
such solitary work?
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| ROTHENBERG: |
No, I was a very social kid up
through college, past college. I don’t think anybody
that knew me in high school or college would ever have thought
that I would be successful at anything—much less spending
eighty percent of my life alone in a white room making work.
It’s odd.
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| ART:21: |
Why did that happen?
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| ROTHENBERG: |
I think I went through a depression
when I was around 25. I did a couple of solitary trips to
Europe, lived in Greece for a while, and tried to live in
Israel. I came home, went to my parents’ house, and
packed a suitcase. I tied the suitcase to a skateboard and
took a train to Nova Scotia. I was going to go find a school
to teach in. I thought I was going to teach English. (LAUGHS)
English teacher.
And when the train was at an overnight stop in Halifax, I
walked around McGill University. I had time to kill and I
met this woman, she was a folk singer. She invited me to her
house for dinner and then I was to go back to the station
at midnight. I don’t know what happened but I went up
to the ticket counter and I cashed in my Halifax ticket and
I bought a ticket for Manhattan. I got on a train full of
Hasidic Jews. I put my suitcase in a locker at Grand Central.
I started walking. At 14th Street somebody I had gone to college
with yelled my name. I said, “I just got into town,
I don’t know anybody, I don’t know what I’m
doing here.” He said, “Here’s my keys, I
live on the top of the building on 23rd Street and Eighth
Avenue.” And he was able to tell me where everybody
from Cornell was in the city at that time, including Gordon
Matta-Clark and Alan Saret—both practicing artists.
I had a loft within three months. It was a miracle turnaround.
I thought I was supposed to be there, thought I was probably
supposed to start painting again. And I met people whose names
you would know in every discipline—Phil Glass, Richard
Serra, Keith Sonnier, dancers, musicians. It was absolutely
like, “No you’re not going to Halifax, you’re
going to New York, you’re going to meet people who are
going to take care of you, you’re going to find your
way.” It was a strange moment in my life. I was social
the first year or two, then I had a baby and that was the
beginning of actively wanting solitude. Weird story, huh?
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| ART:21: |
It’s interesting.
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| ROTHENBERG: |
Yeah, that moment where I cashed
my train ticket in is just so bizarre to me. It was as though
somebody took me and turned me in a different direction.
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| ART:21: |
You seized the moment.
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| ROTHENBERG: |
Yeah, I don’t even know
what was in my mind right then but I made it to the ticket
counter and changed the ticket.
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| ART:21: |
You used to paint before you
got to New York?
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| ROTHENBERG: |
Yes, I had painted in college
and while I was living in Greece but I wasn’t very serious
about it. In the first year I also danced in Joan Jonas’s
pieces and I apprenticed with Nancy Graves. I went to every
concert and dance performance I could, I just embraced the
city. But after my kid was born I couldn’t go out and
party so much. It was the beginning of the solitary time,
and it suits me fine.
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| ART:21: |
Is any of that present in your
work?
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| ROTHENBERG: |
That’s a hard one. I’ve
done paintings about more psychological kind of stuff. I know
that there’s something theatrical going on in, and I’m
not sure I understand it. I started thinking about how many
artists are making movies and I thought, “I’m
going to make my own movies and make them in paintings. I’m
going to make them like love affairs and fights and anger.”
Then I started to think, “What about making meaningless
gestures that mean nothing?” And I thought that was
amusing. So I’ve done these two paintings and now I’m
stuck about that idea.
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| ART:21: |
How can a gesture be meaningless?
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| ROTHENBERG: |
Well, what is a meaningful gesture?
When the gesture fits the action I suppose. When it doesn’t
fit any action, then it’s kind of meaningless. Like
that painting over there, that’s a meaningless gesture.
There’s a pair of clothes and an arm making a motion
towards them...
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| ART:21: |
This gesture could mean many
things?
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| ROTHENBERG: |
Yes, but I don’t attribute
any meaning to it. I just found a gesture and painted it three
times. People read all kinds of things into my paintings that
make me say, “Huh? What you think you’re seeing
is not what I intended to be there.”
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