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RICHARD KOSTELANE TZ
for him also to take into consideration cave painting and fold it into
his own sense of the present.
I think, if you want to make a generalization, there are probably
two kinds of artists. One kind works independently, following his own
drives and instincts; the work becomes a product, or the witness, or
the evidence of his own personal involvement and curiosity. It's almost
as if art, in painting and music and stuff, is the leftover of some
activity. The activity is the thing that I'm most interested in. Nearly
everything that I've done was to see what would happen if I did this
instead of that.
INTERVIEWER:
You would believe then that
art
is not a temple to which
you apprentice yourself for future success.
RAUSCHENBERG:
It's like outside focus and inside focus. A lot of painters
use a studio to isolate themselves; I prefer to free and expose myself.
If
I painted in this room - the stove is here and all those dishes are
there - my sensitivity would always take into consideration that the
woodwork is brown, that the dishes are this size, that the stove is here.
I've tended always to have a studio that was either too big to
be
influenced by detail or neutral enough so that there wasn't an over–
whelming specific influence, because I work very hard to be acted on
by as many things as I can. That's what I call being awake.
INTERVIEWER:
People are enormously impressed by the variety of your
work. How do you look upon your past work as a painter - as an
evolution, or merely a succession of islands upon which you've put
your foot?
RAUSCHENBERG:
Looking back, I can see certain things growing, as well
as a slackening of interest in another area because I am familiar enough
with it. So far, I've been lucky enough always to discover that there's
always been a new curiosity that is also feeding and building while
I'm doing something else. I can figure out some logical reasons when
I look back far enough, but I never do when I'm making the work.
INTERVIEWER:
Let me take a particular example that interests me - say,
the White Paintings [1952]. Here you have created what, if you believe
in linear notions of art history, is a dead end. Did you look upon it
as a gesture toward a dead end?
RAUSCHENBERG:
No. It just seemed like something interesting to do. I
was aware of the fact that it was an extreme position; but I really
wanted to see for myself whether there would be anything to look at.
I did not do it as an extreme logical gesture.
INTERVIEWER:
But wasn't there an idea there - not a notion derived
from art history but of a simple experiment, which was to see
if
a
painting could incorporate transient images from outside itself? There-
