Scott Ingram: Hey Jennie, so my thought is to ease into this conversation by giving a little background on where and how these ideas about Ellsworth Kelly started in our work. I’m thinking back to the first work of Kelly’s that I ever saw. In 1992 I had moved into a large warehouse space in downtown Des Moines, the Percival Gallery was about 4 blocks away and they had a large green “pie” shaped print on paper. It was about 60″ wide and probably 24″ tall, a woodcut as I remember it. A beautiful print that a 23 year old kid could not afford at the time.
Shortly after moving into the warehouse I walked into a museum for the first time and began working for the Des Moines Art Center in the prep department. The DMAC has a vertical canvas titled Yellow Blue, 1963, oil on canvas. It is a beautiful painting. A few years later I helped to install a stainless steel Kelly sculpture in the lawn of a private collection in Des Moines, that really blew me away.
Over the years I don’t know how many hundreds of works by Kelly I have seen, but I have to admit that for as much as I appreciate his work, I’m not a big fan of his recent canvases. I love the works on paper and sculpture but I think the edges of the canvases lose definition for me because they are slightly rolled. It kind of makes me crazy to think about the precision he gets in his sculpture and printmaking and the detail and definition you find in his drawings. The rolled edge on the canvas seems easy.
Jennie C. Jones: I totally know what you mean about the edges, and I feel a fondness for the older works as well. Especially, the works on paper. The “Drawings on a Bus” series was the best thing I saw in NY a few years ago and I was thrilled that it was recreated as a publication. Its amazing that he produced so many drawings in his early years–enough that he can pull from them now–re conceptualize them in groups OR use them as studies for new paintings almost 50 years later. They still hold their weight.
Well that was a digression, I’m glad to hear the story of how Kelly has woven in and out of your story as an artist. I mentioned in my talk at the High Museum of Art, I disliked his work in college — especially the series they installed at The Art Institute of Chicago when I was a student.
I think also at that time and what I still grappled with is somehow needing permission to operate as a formalist and what that means in the larger conversations surrounding gender and ethnicity. In grad school I had a negative first impression when I saw Ellen Gallagher’s paintings around 1996. I think I felt as though she was almost at that place of universal language, an artist of color who was going to be a contemporary formalist of sorts–but instead of being say in conversation with, Agnes Martin, she was still tethered to identity politics in the tiny mark making of lips and eyes. I was at once jealous of her lovely works and angry that they had to operate with signifiers. I indeed, qualify my aesthetic, but link my modernist intentions to their precedent in music history and audible formal contributions of jazz. This is a very old point of contention dating back to the Harlem Renn. and essays like the “Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” by Langston Hughes, nothing new. Just a bigger market! ANYWAY, I guess I wish I knew what Kelly was listening to back in the late 50s. Both in Paris and in New York! just read the first paragraph that sums it up: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/360.html
SI: As I sat in your talk at the High Museum last Saturday I couldn’t help but think about your Breathless series in relation to Kelly’s Automatic drawings that he started in Paris in the 50′s. I guess you are thinking of them in terms of collage, or are you seeing them as drawings? Or do you see a difference between the two? i know we spoke of them in conservation terms and the shifting over time or the staining on the paper. Which I find very funny, thinking of Kenny G as a stain.
JCJ: I embarrassingly confess that I don’t know the Kelly drawings you are thinking of. I think perhaps the leaf drawings –simple contour line, are the ones that cross my mind. But I have to say the Breathless series is something I never put in the Kelly compartment in my brain, as they are so whimsical and open that I think of them in the Non Geometric realm, whereas Kelly –even knowing his line drawings still is the master of the Geometric to me. The master of balancing space and depth of field. What I think of as emptiness as fullness.
SI: I was also thinking about your other drawings and collages on view at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center right now, I couldn’t help but think about the very Dutch aesthetic in much of your work. Your “Red, Black, Blue- Woofers, Wires and Such” really made me think a lot about Rietveld’s architecture and his Red Blue chair as well as the Schroder House in Utrecht. You probably well know that Rietveld and Mondrian were quite friendly.
JCJ: I understand your connection to architecture, especially after seeing your work and visiting your studio (which were both great!) Afterwards I saw the buildings we drove past in a new way. I thought of your story about Kelly and how he sees the world, light shadow, hard edges, and the colors in nature.
I’ve often read the term ‘architecture’ when speaking about Modernist Music composition and that is my modernist inspiration — another formula or structure.
SI: For me this is the crux of where our conceptual ideas meet our visual resolutions, combined with ideas of re-mixing, re-contextualizing Modernism.
I guess the conversation was going to swing this way at some point, but I am interested in your thoughts on appropriation. My work personally would be nothing without it and I believe that neo-appropriationism is the final movement or direction for art to take. It is a card that was in play long before Warhol’s soup cans, but I don’t think until recently has it been at the forefront of the art dialogue, it took Richard Prince to make it a medium. What I am ultimately talking about is the appropriation of the conceptual. Assuming not just an object or an aesthetic, but an idea. I am really interested in the way you borrow the look of an object and place it in a context that makes the viewer search for content in a household object. I am referring to the speakers in your installation, wrapped with their fabric grilles nudges at the principals of canvas, of wrapped linen, really poking at painting.
JCJ: I totally know what you mean. I think appropriation is a word that is associated with post modernism, but still I think of it as modernist– appropriation to me begins with Picasso’s ‘relationship’ to African sculpture OR the Dada use of newspaper ad clippings as poetry and in collage. I also think all art-making takes its cue from something, someone at this point–therefore either you address that or not, you use that as the blatant ’meaning’ or you kind of pretend to be somehow original. What you address as, neo-appropriationism (which I like a lot!) in my own practice I would call neo- modernism, used in literature but not in the visual realm, a term that has sporadically been used to describe a philosophical position based on modernism but addressing the critique of modernism by postmodernism. I think your work is both conceptual and about conceptualism, NOT appropriation. Both of our work is a form of revisionist history in a way too.
Appropriation is something else all together when it comes to music, sampling and mixing actually changed the law. Especially as both the music “industry” and art “world” are so lucrative and the art world unregulated no less! I love this quote and have used it before when asked about copyright and how much I manipulate pre existing recordings.
“The primary objective of copyright (or here for us, appropriation) is not to reward the labor of (original) authors, but [t]o promote the Progress of Science and Arts.” “To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by which copyright (appropriation in art making) advances the progress of science and art.” - US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (Italics – Jennie C. Jones)
SI: You are also doing something that i really enjoy, which is borrowing from design. Lifting the essence of the walkman designs and putting them on paper. I did this in my Holland Drawings when I was lifting corporate colors from commercial vehicles, buildings and shipping containers in the Netherlands. In so many ways it isn’t even re-assigning content because it still has its origin, if the viewer is informed. Which to me starts to talk about being aware and informed. I was also doing it in my chair drawings for Knoll.
JCJ: What I love so much about your Knoll drawings is that they revert the objects back to the core gesture from which they came. Someone once said to me in a studio visit ” you only make drawings!”, implicating for a career I would forever be in a ‘low market’ Fuck you! I’m not sure when works on paper became so much less important than other media. I explained that everything started as a drawing–I pointed to the molding lining the ceiling of the room, the table, the chair he was sitting on etc. All these things were manifested from a drawing. This is the crux of why your work and the subtle kind of awareness in your life translates to a paying attention, and attention into practice–from buildings to corporate color pallets to the curve of an armchair.
For me it was making low tech sound pieces on ‘vintage’ audio equipment, that brought awareness. Holding these clunky devices –how could I ignore their aesthetic. Hence the Walkman Compositions–to me that was in direct conversation with the Bauhaus, addressing fundamental questions of craftsmanship vs. mass production and the practical purpose of formal beauty in commonplace objects.
SI: I also think the formalist properties of what you are dealing with are really interesting. It is a battle I have had to face since 2000 when I met Kelly and made a life changing shift in my work. It hasn’t been until recently that I came to grips with my formal qualities and realized that I wasn’t interested in the formal, I was interested in the timeless. I know that isn’t popular and trendy, but I know it’s true to what I feel I need to be creating. I need to look at history to move into the future.
JCJ: There is for sure a timelessness to the language of formalism, minimalism. I think sometimes I know that it is cliché and I do it anyway to emphasize my relationship to the absence on some level of women and artists of color in that genre. My first works using speakers as proxies’ for voice in a way were over the top ‘modern’.
SI: I have been watching the Michael Jackson memorial and thinking about barriers, specifically in the context of you being an African-American woman working in such a formal way. I smile and shake my head knowing it is an iconic white male artist that you are channeling in a very empowering way. It is also interesting in relation to the jazz references you are making as well, based in black culture and adopted by many older white males. (which makes the Kenny G pieces even more hilarious) Grappling with ideas of permission, I believe, get thrown out when it prohibits you from creating without barriers.
JCJ: You are right! 100%. I’m glad the art world has shifted out of the “post black “conversation a little bit. Seems in the age of Obama, perhaps, we can have deeper conversation about art, aesthetics and ideas, like we are doing with this correspondence. Oh that smacks of corny humanist idealism, but….
SI: It is interesting though, you seem to have reached a “happy medium” and charged the work by including the concepts of jazz into the work. Which is based in black culture, as well as it’s creator. Ultimately, Charlie Parker is bigger than Ellsworth Kelly. It really would be interesting to see what Ellsworth listens to.
JCJ: Thats a thought bomb. Maybe the title of a book I’d like to read “Ultimately, Charlie Parker is bigger than Ellsworth Kelly: Mid Century-Modernist Art and the Birth of the Music Industry”
SI: I think it is something that Jerald Ieans and Odili Donald Odita probably deal with in their paintings, beautiful painters, but not really making race the central issue in their work.
JCJ: True, also elder artists like Alma Thomas, who I like to reference. She gets put in the category of folk art. I love her work. This one reminds me of your nail polish paintings and Barnett Newman.
Alma Thomas in her studio.
SI: So I took the weekend and waited to respond, I needed to let this all soak in a little bit. You mentioned something that I think is interesting and an issue I have been facing for awhile now myself. Drawing, when did it become a second rate art form? I work primarily in drawing. You made a comment at the Contemporary about drawing prices never going over 1200 bucks. For the most part that is correct. It’s interesting to me because I would place prints in the same type of genre along with works on paper in general. I am interested in unpacking this idea a little bit because as commonplace as this thought it, there is a constant contradiction. Ed Ruscha comes to mind first, he has made a career on paper, whether it was, drawings, prints, books, photography you name it. His canvas to paper ratio has to be well over 100:1. I also think of Henry Darger, and Bill Traylor, whole careers on paper. Even Rauschenburg got away from canvas later in life, but made prints his whole career, Johns too.
JCJ: All points well taken in referencing artists who are known or lived more from their works on paper. I didn’t know that about Ruscha–funny because I only really remember him for the canvases. I’m really not sure when the decrease in interest or value occurred. I wanna think it was in the 80’s boom, bigger paintings and individual artists as incorporated “cultural producers” . Thats why I think I was so moved to see more and more Kelly drawings appear in Chelsea. They are not just a peek into his thought process for the bigger works , but they stand on their own completely as pieces.
SI: I personally love working on paper and have enjoyed the challenge of making it a little more than a work on paper. I think it is unfortunate that people think that a drawing is the beginning and not the end of a work of art. The immediate is what I enjoy about it so much. I’ve been spending the last 5 days in my drawing studio pushing ideas out of my head. Some will be the beginning of something and others will just be drawings, but they are always part of a bigger project. Some of those drawings will make it to the fabrication studio and be paintings or sculpture, but it will still be an important drawing in my process.
JCJ: I love paper too, obviously and for me there is also the element of always working in a series and I feel they are like pages of sheet music. I think there is a deeper connection between writing, mark-making and music notation. I’ve not explored that too much on a more blatant level.
I would imagine that for you may be looking at blur prints and that relationship to architecture my be there as well. Like how you mention some things will stay as drawings and others move ahead to fabrication. My first collages started as impossible installation plans. Hundreds of earbuds pouring out of a red ‘conduit or woofer. (Not totally impossible but…)
SI: I just had a thought, maybe the collector that thinks a drawing is sub-par, isn’t really a collector. I’m going to work on that theory for a moment.
JCJ: It was a curator and business type who had a gallery in the 80s actually! His concern was one of sustainability. How will I live off of my work eventually if I remain in a certain price bracket. Well, I’m now on my second year of living from my work as I heavily pursued grants for the more conceptual aspects of my ‘practice’. All is well, it’s more that the words ‘just drawings” really struck a deep chord in me. I’m still making them.
SI: I am also glad you inserted the Alma Thomas piece, I love Alma Thomas and that was really nice. I was thinking about Jack Whitten again the other day too, who was hanging out with Christopher Wilmarth back in the day. I am a huge fan of Wilmarth. I can’t even imagine what those studio conversations were like, but I don’t see them being about race.
I don’t know if it is the “age of Obama”, maybe that’s just a good barometer. But I started seeing something interesting watching Kojo Griffin’s work develop, as well as Laylah Ali. I grew up in small town Iowa, I wasn’t taught racism, but I lived in a white community with a George Washington Carver monument in a pocket park a block from the town square. If there is one thing I learned in a farm community, it’s that black and white cows all milk the same color. Now I’ve lived in Atlanta for nearly 15 years. For me Kojo and Laylah leveled the playing field and talked about an almost lack of race. I guess for me I like seeing the conversation shift. I’m interested in the focus on aesthetic and idea. It’s not a perspective I know coming from small town Iowa.
JCJ: What’s funny for me is I think especially for Laylah most kids I know where talking about how she was using her alien characters as proxies ( a word I used before for my own use of speakers in conversation with each other).
I do think that there is that read on her work, social narratives that look a bit like afor futurist versions of Jacob Lawrence Great Migration series. Also the scale and materials are the same small, tempera. She is actually the artist who kind of gave me the comfort to own working on a small scale, and use the intimacy of that. It is interesting that there s another conversation historically among African American artists, just like how I would equate Alma Thomas with Ellen Gallagher is a way. I’m so happy that you knew her work, many people don’t.
Jacob Lawrence
Laylah Ali
Kojo Griffin
Jacob Lawrence
As for the age of Obama, who knows–maybe that’s just me talking smack. I love your statement about cows! I’m from Ohio you know, I still have my days in NYC where I think I can’t live in this town. That’s why I hide out in Brooklyn so much, love the trees and the neighborhood feel.
Filed under: Interview, Jennie C. Jones, Scott Ingram
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