356
PARTISAN REVIEW
RIVERS: You made it seem, at least by that remark-I, didn't mean to
get into a long thing, I had other things I wanted to talk about of
course-but you were saying that immediate recognition is, almost,
for you, a sign of a lack of quality. Is that what you're saying?
BRUSTEI: I'm not saying that ...
RIVERS: I mean, if you look at history ...
BRUSTEIN: More often than not, it
is
in the modern period. It's a
Modernist problem, but one that we've lived with since the middle of
the nineteenth century.
RIVERS: So you feel that things have moved to such a point that
actually a prerequisite for quality is somehow years of not being
understood.
BRUSTEIN: I'm not setting down any principles for what creates qual–
ity. All I'm saying is that the artist who listens to his inner demons or
her inner demons and creates out of those demons, more likely than
not is perceiving something that will not be immediately perceived
by large numbers of people.
RIVERS:
It
could be someone who has a ... just some natural exuber–
ance, and he's not dealing with demons. Somehow he puts together
other ingredients and finds that from the moment that he starts to
put these ingredients together, someone says, "Oh, I see what you
mean."
BRUSTEIN: It's possible and it happens.
PHILLIPS: Did you become a painter, Larry, to reach a lot of people? Is
that why you became a painter?
RIVERS: In speaking to Marshall Berman, you were making the point
that a man who immediately is understood and liked and rewarded is
somehow immediately suspect.
BRUSTEIN: Absolutely not. Oh, no, not at all. I'm saying more often
than not in the modern period this has been true, but it doesn't mean
it's absolutely true. There's no absolute in this case. But if one looks
at the great artists of the modern period-I don't know if any of us
can agree on them-just to haul a percentage out, about ninety
percent of them had to ...
PHILLIPS: You weren't an immediate success were you Larry?
RIVERS: Was I? Well, I actuall y think that I did a gouache, I think I
finished it-this is my own experience and it doesn't say anything
about the experience of others, really-but I think a psychiatrist
friend of mine, who was actually a psychiatrist student, psychoana–
lyst student .. . I'd just finished it and dried it and he bought if for
fifteen bucks. I don't know if that answers the question, but ...
PHILLIPS:
It
does, obviously.
