RAUSCHENBERG
97
ing what I had on the other, neither one of these paintings was an
imitation of the other, because I would work as long as I could on
one painting and then, not knowing what to do next, move over to
the other. I wanted to see how different, and in what way, would
be
two paintings that looked that much alike.
INTERVIEWER:
How, then, did some critics consider this a comment on
action painting?
RAUSCHENBERG:
I think Tom Hess said that. Again, you see, if you do
anything where an idea shows up, particularly in those years when an
act of painting was considered pure self-expression, then it was
assumed that the painting was a personal expressionistic extension of
the man. The climate isn't like that now. We've had a history of
painting here now, and I think it's unfortunately getting to be a lot
like Europe. We have enough reserve work so that it is very easy for
a tradition to exist here which also includes any new ideas, which are
immediately tacked onto where we were yesterday.
INTERVIEWER:
A painting is pushed into historical perspective before it
has
become history, as well as critically classified before it
is
perceived.
RAUSCHENBERG:
I would like to see a lot more stuff that I didn't know
what to do with.
INTERVIEWER:
In
several earlier statements, you said that your paintings
were not the result of ideas. What you've said now, however, suggests
that they stem from a certain kind of idea.
RAUSCHENBERG:
I think the ideas are based upon very obvious physical
facts - notions that are also simpleminded, such as, in the White
Paintings, wanting to know if that was a thing to do or not, or in
Factum,
wondering about what the role of accident is. Those aren't
really very involved ideas.
INTERVIEWER:
That is different from the idea, say, of doing a painting
about war, or the idea of realizing a premeditated form.
RAUSCHENBERG:
They are more physical than aesthetic.
INTERVIEWER:
Rather than posing a thesis, you are asking a question
and then doing some artistic experiment to answer it or to contribute
to an answer.
RAUSCHENBERG:
But I do it selfishly. I want to know.
INTERVIEWER:
What kind of idea, if you can remember, was present in,
say,
Monogram
[1959J, which contains a stuffed Angora goat?
RAUSCHENBERG:
I have always worked with stuffed animals, and before
that, stuffed baseballs - and other objects. But a goat was special in
the way that a stuffed goat is special, and I wanted to see if I could
integrate an animal or an object as exotic as that. I've always been
more attracted to familiar or ordinary things, because I find them a
