RAUSCH
EN BERG
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you see and if you look but also what you
think
when you see it. I
just knew that if you were standing in a strong breeze, which was part
of the painting, that something different would happen.
If
I did make
a point, it is that even the air around you is an influence.
INTERVIEWER:
It's a way of saying to the spectator that the Metropolitan
Museum right now, with all the pollen in the air, is a lot different
from midwinter.
RAUSCHENBERG:
Also, looking at pictures from one place to another, and
also from one season to another, makes them different. That's why,
then, the business about masterpieces and standards is all archaic.
INTERVIEWER:
The notion of masterpieces presumes that if someone puts
the
Mona Lisa
in a stuffy New York museum and you have to push
your way through a large obnoxious crowd to see it, you should still
be greatly impressed.
RAUSCHENBERG:
Put it in the Greenwich Village outdoor show and see
what happens. Put it in the Louvre and send it in with an armed
guard, and people will see it. I like the idea of that kind of dramatic
carrying-on, for that's part of our time too.
INTERVIEWER:
Now that you have become so involved with theater, have
you given up painting?
RAUSCHENBERG:
No. That was a mistaken rumor. Giving up painting is
all part of that historical thing.
INTERVIEWER:
Will you be able to work on a painting while you are do–
ing theater work?
RAUSCHENBERG:
Absolutely, I always did that. You see, it sounds interest–
ing for the painter to give up painting.
INTERVIEWER:
It's the myth of Duchamp. Actually, I was thinking more
of Claes Oldenburg's statement that when he did a theater piece he
temporarily gave up painting.
RAUSCHENBERG:
The last year before I went away with Merce [Cunning–
ham] when I was doing a lot of theater [1963-64], I did more painting
than I ever had before.
If
you're working on something, it seems to
me that the more you work the more you see, the more you think; it
just builds up.
INTERVIEWER:
You would prefer, then, a more varied regime than a
single setup.
RAUSCHENBERG:
Absolutely. I find that when I'm working on paintings,
I can do drawings I like very much, although I am forced to adjust
to flat surface and a different scale.
INTERVIEWER:
How did you become involved with theater?
RAUSCHENBERG:
I've always been interested, even back in high school.
I like the liveness of it - that awful feeling of being on the spot. I
