“I believe very strongly that if you’re not
in your studio physically most every day, you’ve
denied the possibility of anything happening. So even
if you’re reading a detective novel you should be
there.”
“I let go of whatever I needed to, and I
kept what I wanted. And I do a lot of that in making painting.
I edit. ‘Is that doing anything for me? Is that
carrying its weight in that part of the canvas?’
And if it’s not, it’s scraped out.”
“Painting...if I didn’t do that I couldn’t
live here. And probably I couldn’t live anywhere,
because I don’t know what else I would be doing…”
Talk about what
influenced this painting, "Red Studio."
ROTHENBERG:
Matisse’s "Red
Studio." I had just come back from having a show
in New York. I didn’t want to be in the place where
you can’t continue what you are doing and don’t
know what you’re going to do. I had never tried
to do an interior this specific, but I didn’t know
what to do, so I said, “I’m going to try
it.”
I had a lot of fun painting it. I’ve started the second
painting about the studio and I have a third
painting in mind. I had a blast with it. I had a lot of fun
using fifteen and twenty different color reds. I think it
has a funny kind of presence. It feels like my studio. I think
the second painting will expand the sense of where a person
paints. In the third studio I want to make the room implode
and put the corners in the middle.
ART:21:
There's a floating quality to
the work, what is that?
ROTHENBERG:
I had been looking at Matisse
and reading a book about Picasso and the relationship...of
his paintings to his studio. And I thought (since I wasn’t
locked into any subject at this moment and I didn’t
want to enter a work stoppage and be sitting around here in
an empty room), “I’m going to try painting my
studio, but I’m going to try painting it red à
la Matisse. It won’t be the same—it won’t
be subject to the same symbolism, because
I’m not a symbolist. It’s simply some of the elements
which exist here. Dogs, tables, bare canvases, rolls of paper,
and me.”
It’s the second self-portrait or attempt at a self-portrait
I’ve ever done. The other one had paper tabs as in a
paper doll mask, and this one apparently has no neck or arms—just
clothes and shoes. But I wanted to be in there in my studio.
It’s me barely present, me there—not working,
not sitting down reading, not messing with the dogs. Just
my presence, which is as much or as little physicality as
that bare canvas in the background or that table or this stretcher
bar. It’s just me in my studio and a self-portrait.
A presence of myself in here, where I always am.
I think artists almost always end up turning to what’s
around them, what’s in their environment or outside
their window. Not all artists, and certainly not abstract
artists... But I spend a lot of time in this room. It’s
not red. It’s white. But I wanted to give it the vivacity
of a special and heated-up kind of place. I’ve never
painted a painting like this.
ART:21:
Where did you start?
ROTHENBERG:
The first thing was a bare canvas
on a wall with dots for staples. Then I started locating that
piece of furniture, that dog. As I said before, I almost always
end up looking down into my spaces in any kind of painting
I’m doing these days—whether it’s a result
of living in New Mexico or being on a ladder. But I started
to locate the spaces. Then it was the t-shirt, then it was
the pants. Then it was working the spaces between the objects
and using about fifteen different reds to activate the different
parts of the studio. I still think I have a little more work
to do on it. But it came easier than I thought it could. It
seemed too complicated for my brain to handle, yet it wasn’t.
That was a fun thing for me to know—that I can handle
more complicated spaces. And I don’t know where it will
lead.
ART:21:
You started by drawing on canvas?
ROTHENBERG:
I started with drawing. I think
in this case I was a little scared. I was pretty timid, so
I started with a pencil and then I quickly got into a dirty
brush till I got where the window is. I didn’t know
how to paint this table, but I painted the table anyway. And
then as quickly as I could, I laid in this ocher tone to begin
to find out what reds I was using. I used a dirty red tone.
And then I used eighteen different reds and grays and some
purple. But I laid down the tone that I knew the painting
was going to have. And I figured out then what was going to
be white and what was going to be yellow, and how much color
the painting could carry and still be the red studio. And
it just evolved over the days. You see dead spots and you
enliven those. And then that makes that spot maybe look a
little dead there, so you put some orange up there and it
all responds to what you’ve done.
I think Jasper Johns said, “Do something and then do
something else to it, and then do something else to it.”
And there you go, you’re painting.
ART:21:
Does the painting resemble a
map?
ROTHENBERG:
Yes. This is in one corner, that
is in one corner. That’s my favorite wall to paint on.
That’s a piece of furniture I got from a bar. That’s
my file cupboard. That’s the chair I sit in. This is
a stretcher bar that was in my field of vision. Those are
some of my dogs. Everything in here is literal, painted to
the point where it’s there, but not to the point where
you know what this is this and this is and this is. It was
a blast to paint.
ART:21:
Can you talk about abstraction?
ROTHENBERG:
I can’t use the word ‘abstraction’.
I’m a very literal-minded person. I know my paintings.
I know this isn’t a real figure, because it doesn’t
have any arms. At one point it had hands in the pockets without
arms attached. And I thought, “Well, are you doing a
figure or are you doing this presence? You’re doing
the presence.” So I let go of whatever I needed to,
and I kept what I wanted. And I do a lot of that in making
painting. I edit. “Is that doing anything for me? Is
that carrying its weight in that part of the canvas?”
And if it’s not, it’s scraped out.
ART:21:
How has moving from New York
to New Mexico changed your work?
ROTHENBERG:
The first year was a very hard
adjustment—just to the amount of light here. When we
built the big adobe fireplace I said, “That’s
where I would like to live, that’s what I would like
my studio to be like.” So I made modifications in my
studio plan to cut out some light and to reproduce the New
York situation of bars of floodlights. I’m glad I did.
ART:21:
What gets you into the studio?
ROTHENBERG:
We have developed a pattern.
Bruce [Nauman] usually makes the coffee, we read in bed for
twenty-five, thirty minutes. Shower, sometimes. He does the
horses. I feed the chickens and the dogs. He throws hay and
gets the newspaper. I walk the dogs for half-an-hour, forty-five
minutes, looking for arrowheads and whatnot. Then, the studio.
I look at what I did, look around, read, don’t get much
done before noon. Go in and eat lunch, go back to the studio,
sometimes I work out. But the bulk of the afternoon, until
5:30 or 6:00, is studio time, painting time.
I believe very strongly that if you’re not in your studio
physically most every day, you’ve denied the possibility
of anything happening. So even if you’re reading a detective
novel you should be there. I don’t go to the studio
at night anymore, unless I’m on a deadline or fussed
at Bruce, then I go back. It’s my sanctuary. It’s
a great studio, it’s a great place to have a studio.
ART:21:
What makes you continue to paint?
ROTHENBERG:
What makes me continue to make
paintings? I don’t know how to do anything else. If
you don’t know what you’re doing out here in the
Southwest, in this kind of isolation, if you don’t understand
that you’re supposed to work and have a purpose to every
day, you’re going to float off into the stratosphere,
or move very quickly back to an urban center.
You have to commit to your work. You have to find things that
interest you and find interesting ways of rendering them.
You have to fight yourself at every turn so that you’re
not repetitive or taking an easy solution. I’m able
to work through periods when there’s no real important
idea in my mind. Bruce is different. Bruce suffers much more
than I do because unless a piece is fully realized and cooking
in his brain for a while, he doesn’t have to make work.
That’s why he’s gotten so interested in ranching,
riding, and horsemanship—because he needs to fill his
days with something substantive that’s not dependant
on artistic inspiration.
I can draw, I can learn to make a clay pot like the pots that
are on the land. But painting...if I didn’t do that
I couldn’t live here. And probably I couldn’t
live anywhere, because I don’t know what else I would
be doing but reading all day.
