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PARTISAN REVIEW
the French tradition, is that painters are high craftsmen, that there is
something arrogant about a painter being literate; though I have
never met a first-rate painter who wasn't highly intelligent and
extremely articulate, in his own manner. The Queen's English isn't
the only form. It doesn't matter whether he writes a Coleridge essay,
or wants to. He
is
able to communicate. Actually, painters are the
most gregarious of all artists.
I remember one night years ago being at a poet's house (Stanley
Kunitz). There were four Pulitzer Prize poets; I was the only painter,
talking to the women present after dinner, while the four poets were
in a passionate discussion-vehement-at the other end of the room,
.and finally I, rudely, male chauvinist pig, got up and said, "This
sounds so interesting, I've GOT to listen to it," and went over to the
poets. Robert Lowell was one of them. Robert Penn Warren was
another. And Meredith and Kunitz. They had all accepted that
Robert Lowell was number one.
Diamonstein:
But they were all arguing about number two?
Motherwell:
Exactly. Now painters have their own rivalries and
jealousies, but basically painters are
voyeurs
and cafe and coffee–
house people, with a more live-and-let-live attitude. Or maybe I am
naive. My wife-my European wife Renate-looks at me sometimes
and says, "You know why I love you?" I say, "Why?" And she says,
"Because you are so innocent." (laughter)
Diamonstein:
You are the spirit of several painters who haunt your
canvases, and I am thinking of Picasso and Matisse and Rothko and
perhaps even Mira.
If
that is accurate, to the work of what artist do
you most respond?
Motherwell:
Not Rothko as an influence. Otherwise yes, to an extent,
but more than anybody,
to
Piero della Francesca. Secondly, Goya.
And many others. I love painting! But there is something else that
one has to explain. For example, I regard the Van Eycks as miracu–
lous painters, I can only stand there in admiration. But it's impossi–
ble for a painter of my cast of mind to do anything with the kind of
thing they do, or with Vermeer, or with Velasquez. I've always
thought (with absolutely no factual foundation, though I have
taught a lot and known some of the great artists of the century) that
there may be, say, generically six basic families of painting-minds;
and that, at any given historical moment, the art culture needs one
family more than another, which therefore becomes historically
more prominent. In this sense, though there are many artists I adore,
I have to say that then I belong-I suppose to the degree that I can
