Studio Talk; Surrealism: Karl Fortress

Now I have three panelists in the studio with me this evening and we are going to discuss serialism on the panel. Our dentist bang painter and teacher at the mass at Massachusetts College of Art. Color photos painter and oftentimes accused of being part time surrealist would imply teacher of the faculty at the University of Rhode Island. Accused of being a surrealist girl for tennis with well. How do you know. Why would someone accuse you of that. Sometimes critics decide for purely arbitrary reasons when some arrangement that they can't comprehend that they have to pigeonhole in some general category they find that almost any odd manifestation will fit neatly under the heading of surrealism since no one can thoroughly explain it. I would have guessed that serialism would have something to do with your work as well as mistreatment. It all depends on what it's what sort of a definition you have about surrealism or

what kind of a definition do you get. I don't give it any definition and I think that if you really want to discuss this subject properly you would have a psychiatry's team here. Who could deal with the subconscious. I have problems with organizing my conscious life. I certainly am not in any position to speak of what the subconscious does in terms of painting. But the general conception is that it is some sub conscious or green like quality. And there is no basis for that. What do you mean there's no basis. Well if anything the process of painting is a very conscious painting and when anyone arranges a set of disparate symbols of one kind or another or makes an odd collection of objects in the range then this is a very conscious process. It is not like automatic writing. It is not something that you're possessed and do you simply buy the most. But evasion of your unconscious is a very conscious act and therefore I feel that any definition that

lays it into the area of the subconscious in art.. I would quarrel with that WM claim. I might go along with you if you would tell us the painters you were talking about. If for example you're talking about timing and Dolly with reference to your remarks but what do you do about people like Nero Messel who are also and who even according to my two breath Tom are likely to be more legitimate surrealists legitimate in terms of Bergdahl's own definition what is Britain's definition. Well pretty much what Mr. Fortescue is talking about with regard to drawing on the sub conscious me for a kind of spontaneous process of painting and I don't think that Dalio Tanky do this at

all of course but I do think that someone like Marilyn then later of course Pollock. Well how can any painter not draw in the sun which is to some extent. Well you may draw on the subconscious but I think that Mr. Fortis is talking about in the actual process of painting and an artist like Dolly is certainly very deliberate and very conscious of what he's doing is not doesn't have an automatic. There isn't that automatic process that there is a let's say who works directly and freely and is reputed to work himself into moods or states even when when Dolly wants to work with key experiments that he dealt with where he would lapse into into sleeping and waking myself up using the key he dropped on the plate when the idea of a block seeing out of out of the conscious state and then into a sort of guns with him back in and doing exactly what you saw at that moment.

But I don't think this I think Mr D I think. Dolly and tell some guy fascinating stories but I don't really think that is paintings evidence this kind of. Process of trance or not it's very possible to press against your eyeballs and shut your eyes and induce yourself into a semi hypnotic state agency in the image of a flaming giraffe or lima bean rampant on the field of blue but when it comes to the transcription of this image and the relationship of a canvas and working out of a total thing I'm afraid that is a very conscious process. But I would still take issue with regard to me Rose painting. I think he comes closer and certainly 20 years later Pollock takes this notion up again and some of the other abstract expressionist excepted I sense him in

both of these examples that you've given a very controlled situation. I don't find that random quality. I think it a very well trained instinctive sense of order. I think when the shapes take place they're under control. Why is that why are they under control. All this is simply because the instincts the training of the mind will will insist on controlling it. I think a very simple experience is that occasionally every painter decides to you know how to do a self-portrait when he's loaded drunk or something like that at the end of a party or something. Invariably when you lose that consciousness and I don't know whether any of you have ever tried this experiment it's usually a very unsuccessful pending. This is a rather personal question if you ever done self portrait when you were drunk. No but I'll try now after hearing you mention

to someone else. Well Carl I have to disagree with some things I think that it does have to do with with something other than the conscious and I think that it does have to do with daydreams and dreams I think that that again back to break tones definition where he ends that I think by saying that something like that time stops and he refers to artists as data or data collectors. By this I was led to believe that. They seem anything that has to do with the guy in the artist is constantly seeing thing the eye is ahead of the artist ahead of his mind and thinking is a head in his conscious mind because it sees before he has a chance to think about what he's seen. And so that he remembers all these things somehow. And he then later paints them. And this is the reason that he's able to paint them very precisely

because he is he is thinking of many wooden floors or many tables when he does this it's not a certain table therefore it's not an objective thing. See it's a subjective thing that is only possible after he's thought about these things for a great deal of time. Well this could be the same this can be said to be true about anybody who paints who operates on different levels but we speaking about a specific category in which the dominant element aside from the instinct in the background the basic training is controlled by a subconscious rather than the conscious. I go along that you can get a subconscious image of some sort which is or may appear to be rational in conscious terms but to transcribe this image or to incorporate it or to organize it to make a tonal work. It is a conscious process. You can keep hitting me with sticks I hold on to that principle.

Well let me let me just go a bit farther on. And what I was trying to talk about a minute ago no. I'll try to cite an example descriptive example if we had a still life set up in the room now and you're going to paint France and I had. A tomato and a plate and a banana or something on a table and you looked at it and painted it I think would be very very different than if I put you in an empty room and said Now please try to envision a table and a banana and a tomato and paint this you see then you'll be thinking of many tomatoes many tables and so what you try to in a sense perfect one of these. All right let's take that table set up that you set up which is current dollar start with right. Supposedly it's interesting to try to find out why he has selected a tomato on a banana. Probably because of the shapes and I guess you know you don't. It's not just something that a lot of them all because my medals are nice red collar I suppose I look at that tomato and found the shape of it rather dull and the slide with the cut it in half and stick shrimps with

toothpicks from the center of the tomato. Much more dangerous hijack some completely unrelated object to make an arrangement. Yeah but I don't think that would necessarily be my subconscious that would be operating that unless my subconscious and which are not responsible for insists that what I'm actually doing is using the dagger to kill my father are all of the rest of the painters in the country. But when I just choose to stick it into a tomato as a say unrelated image I think is a very very conscious act. It MAY THE be a dagger or maybe a caterpillar. Or it may be or it may change the shape of the ball a kind of I think if the surrealist did that they would need it go at that and not make a painting of it. Let's appoint their chances that the chances are you're becoming more poetic so to speak. In other words I'm not being concerned with painterly

qualities how to paint the objects but more. But all those in the end what to paint all the so-called surrealist were very much very very much interested in that. Dolly is a superb technician and very much interested in paint quality Tanky was so raw it was this way. Margaret not great is this what I'm hearing could but it is never that in the surreal that so I think I keep driving for the real surrealists the may arouse the mass songs on them. You know the more abstract painters that grew out of the socialist movement as as you guys as getting as getting closer to what surrealism was all about Britain said so himself at one point that of the all the royalist came closest to Bien Do you seriously you have in common terms a contradiction of the word realist and going

above are sore and when you when you give these two examples and I don't question either US Miro or breakdown I surrealists in a sense break on particularly since he was a theoretician. I'm not so sure about Miron. But there I'm not going to say that they are what is precisely identified in the mind generally as surrealism surrealism has enough tangible reality and that with the kind of disquieting or as Dennis said kind of poetic imagery in it which is not normally associated with the visual content in the world. Right except that if you look around in the world you will find that as somebody else said I think Whistler that the world is beginning to imitate art you find very strange phenomena you find telephone poles with balloons attached to on rubber tires hanging from trees and you can find

imagery which is accidentally created. But in the common acceptance the word real as in in Surrey Elysium takes I think a very strong meaning and of the two you mentioned. This is either theoretical surrealism as opposed to the practical surrealism that we accept as my school category. I'm pushing I'm pushing for something now so I'm pushing perhaps for a reappraisal of the definition. The appraisal of surrealism. During March in Miami Oldenburg fits beautifully to surrealistic imagery. And they you know since he deals with lots of common objects and makes them in Congress and the Seems to me very much a part of this thought I'm sure Oldenburg would be the first to deny any. Well it certainly wasn't sort of a label which is which has sort

of come up and down and people have gone through periods of it. And if there is enough general categories so that almost anyone that deviates in a particular way can safely be categorized who deals with DV It is a surreal and no no no. Let's keep misquoting me like it might make sense to just read something official and who has a good voice for reading. Where I fish you do laugh at you. First of all it's a long paragraph thing which gives a brief history of it claims along artistic ancestry. Things like this to ancestry with the art of bosh. If you sell a guy a radon and a name here which I can't pronounce I think that this is pure theorizing and the definition States claims there are no definite indications Bosh is hailed as the first surrealist.

I doubt very much whether he is. I'll jump down and get here in 1928 also after the mes of dot in 1900 to under a Breton gathered up the remnants of the group took over the word surrealist from Apollo and there were used it in 1917 and defined it as pure psyching automatic as I'm bi which is intended to express verbal e in writing or in any other way. The true process of thought. It is the dictum of thought free from the exercise of reason and every aesthetic our moral preoccupation. This is theoretically from the horse's mouth and it goes on for another two or three paragraphs. Well I was there like it said lightly. Well we could say well we could say about that is that surrealism is essentially a literary movement and the other thing you could say from that is that it defines an attitude more than it defines any style

I think is a matter of fact we're making up a better definition. Of course he was and then you read. Well this is this is not a definition this is a series of Cretaceous context that comes under. An attempt to define anything which is subject to interpretation. When cranking your show at the Regal house you know where you are right now and there are a great many elements which might be called surreal when I come from a surrealist movement. Would you claim that this has something to do with with you were not rushing to name the elements. Candy wrappers bringing things from one from one area putting them into a different kind. Thanks using the heart and the tornado and I know that there are perhaps more. Technical on media things and then I did

too. Although in attitude a number of the paintings I do send over some realistic feel and if you want to just think of it that way I'm in my own appraisal. I would rather claim some formal lineage to Cuba. However I would concede to you some aspect of the attitude or frame of mind may be derived from surrealism in so much as as a as a candy wrapper or something of the sort may be and in Congress juxtaposition with flatly painted area particularly using candy wrappers. Well no one can be relatively old how old are those wrappers. They're dated 1937 or 8. So the antiques themselves right. Which gives another level of value to them.

I said something witty about the show with me. I was the only one that considered really. I saw it like that said made a general wisecrack about it which the artist might have resented. I said the show was very rich of glucose. I didn't resent that the label says dextrose. I want to talk about that. Serialism how how can we get them structuring into surrealism if we look at it as an attitude. Instead of the tight definition and definitions usually have to do with styles and I can't find any style that cuts across all the way through. How about someone like Mike spill with the type of thing that he was dealing with where there seem to be a fluid movement attitude almost as though this could be

part of the automatic and then I'm working into it and pulling things out. Which would be that the more conscious. Well once there's a good example of a man who has theoretically a serial West but has a dozen different styles and techniques. If you say I retrospective Max Ernst child and you call him a son real lest you go through this. A gallery of paintings and which one of these is the surrealist and which one isn't. You either accept the entire blanket which of these images were concocted which were dreamt about which were finally evolved in terms of painting so. Well is that an evolutionary process in the painting or is it a process and thinking it may be a process in the man I don't know. I'm not too familiar with his working or thinking procedures the statements of his that I've read show a very conscious

articulate man dealing with very specific ideas which are many cases his own. And I find it acceptable and it is only when it is necessary for and it doesn't in my case necessary to identify someone in a strict category. And in my case it is necessary for me to think of them as a surrealist as opposed to a surrealist with a touch of killed ism with a touch of whatever. In other words it's not my function. I'm not an art historian I don't have to categorize Ernst. I think that their next artist tries to show us how things might be at least I get this feeling when I when I see is his work. If you mention a retrospective show you know what landscapes might be like in his shows and what you just gaped are. He knows nothing. Really shows us how he shows us they can be in a very simple poetic scene an element of terror which does not have to do with the color of the

clouds or the images in the landscape he can create. Well I think that's all right a feeling of terrorism a serene situation without using very obvious you know a bloody axis there are images which would naturally connect that and that comes under the heading of surrealism as a kind of an implication which you read above and beyond the imagery or you know a lot of you know a guy on the scene how kind holds you know for a unabashed har you know kind of out outstrips any of the way any of the. Surreal city's heart is based on reality he isolates a fragment of life like a dining room car and freezes it in time and space with all of the artifacts Now this is reality to a frightening sense. Now Arthur asked a few minutes ago how you would define abstraction in real ism or was it not. Well abstraction that is the formal elements of

what abstraction mean the very essence can be discovered in an arrangement by wire it as easily if you would use it to formal pattern. I think abstractions about model of induction to form a pattern because this then gives a variety more than his do this and yet only has formal clatter but he's got all that yet of any grass to light its IT. I'm simply making a tentative statement that the abstraction in a sense exists in everything that is in every painting can be reduced to a certain form of elements. I picked not a not the most helpful imagery but for example if you want to carry the idea of realism to a certain point why has some of the same the styles or quality that some of the early characters have. But Cara character wasn't nearly so self proclaimed Childers his wife

was you have no idea how provincial your records become oh yes he's not he's awful. We're talking about work prior to 1920. There is a surrealistic quality to many whites painting I wouldn't you know I would and I wouldn't even it makes it to dance to consider all that as a model Iraq because my actual vote you know I think that it's it's I don't associate director you know really observation that the level or height of that observation that Wyatt tries to assume you know with anything that is just surreal or what we're trying to describe the world or that word or define it. You see the surrealism. Possibly in the sense of it's rather gentle nature we can say that it is in a way poetic but not in the way that a nurse does or even to care go is whether you think it's it's good or bad or not I don't think that the current was really that bad.

Well I I think there was and there's an assumption that was made earlier than that I just can't go a long way from that is that. The rational is the organized well defined and understood part of the human mind and then some conscious is somehow disorganized and unless the work has a sense of the disorganized it cannot be so real. I buy it seems to me that psychologists are talking about the subconscious now being very organized and very well well kind of fight and conscious behavior and right now with this is probably self but I think if we so what does this do to the whole idea of surrealism as it was discussed earlier. Well we take surrealism very lightly which is the only way we can take it as a definition. Oh I don't say that but the subject matter for this or realist or super realist says Art. It might have been interesting to have a psychologist discuss Joe that we should have

psych chi at us and historians and critics who enjoy the lineage game definition game but I think that what we're talking about is merely. Herbert Reed calls a super realism that they get involved. But Tom's definition mean they go to a different set of subject with your dreams and so on. And the disquieting contrasts and so on that may come from this kind of thing. I mean in a sense you know when you when you think of surrealism in terms of the super real the extreme real then I think that you almost have to include a number of the wire. I mean you know I think you know you know I mean I think some of this if wife is then why the U.S. is it seems to me to be a very good primitive painter. He is he is primitive and in the same kind of provincial way that risotto was primitive and there's a kind of there's a kind of terror if you will in the landscapes of

risotto. But the but there was terror and Bosh was the first real it's the great war and death and well not according mother I've a body that writes manifestos loves to go back and claim so many lives are huge. You know we were going to end up with John who was the first Cuba is the exact you go far enough back. Never thought of you know in those days. Well someone will just wait and then do it yourself and you know it and I didn't know it turned out that PRL Francisco is really the great spiritual grandfather. Plus all women birth these connections may seem very tenuous now but believe me if it's mulled over for the next hundred years or so you come up with some very surprising conclusions. I think if we don't if we if we go back to surrealism. Excuse me if we go back to surrealism Now if we can accept surrealism as an attitude.

Then we can. It seems to me to make sense out of it as it as it was and to being a very strong influence and contemporary. Work also contemporary life. Yes I mean a drive down a drive through Boston Providence is very surrealistic experience can be stressful enough that a great deal of the surrealism crept in by the back way and very contemporary films in which time sequence and with space. And a lot of the imagery. Now this this is what this is about. I jump back a bit that you mention space because we take Dolly who is that the best known of the other you know excuse me have what I call the illustration of surrealism and then we find that Dolly if we if we if we look at his form and we look at that Carol scarily look at they space we find. Absolutely. You know all this pain

that had been there for 300 years or 400 years before his face is sequential traditional his rendering of his farm doctor lied and so on. He thought then this is what I was again getting out of trying to get at the fart is that what new comes out of surrealism comes to guys like me and not through. Well you mentioned the way painted I was referring to earlier too about the artist not being concerned about heart of pain which I still disagree with some of your comments I don't think that my greed is concerned with heart of pain I think you found this. Or develop this this way of painting very thin and somewhat illustration a bit more personal way of working and this would suffice there was just a matter of what to paint you see what you're saying is oh you know he's not he's not involved anyway with with the painting as many painters are sent have been since that time with the types of techniques and everything that they're going to use as he was just he uses them for their own sorry he uses the use of the materials he and I think the more technician he had

camps to get textures I think the thing that would disqualify him on my account as a sort of realist is that he is one of the few painters with a great sense of humor. Oh yes my great great. I saw a very rare element in yeah and surrealism. My general suspicion is that the SIM card groupie is not a result of the subconscious motivations but I can say that Nero is not doesn't have a sense of humor. Oh no I did not. That's no good but it's a different kind of wrong. Yes but the the act of trying to be poetic or being able to be poetic and a sense transcends then ascends you know just painting as such. You see and in the sense that the way something is painted if I might harp on it for a bit is as you say not as important as the poetic qualities and I think this has something to do with what surrealism means well in that my great aunt had to hang in there and stand out so much

arms but certainly Dolly don't do very much in the way of an ovation and painting is still perfectly traditional painters but when we get to these other people it seems to me that the innovation is part of the process of painting is very much tied up with trying to. He vocally expressed another dimension. I said All right the nature of the materials and their use their usage and by me roll another wire slash just as it was great and there is just great technical innovation as a way to use as material which takes time. I mean Israel might just drag back martial Gorky went through a very specific period which was identified as a realist. If we if we if we absolve ourselves of the burden of solving the problem and rather arrive at some kind of Russia now

where there are elements of almost any of the traditions if you want to call us really his vision which are useful and which can be adopted and employed. Without necessarily being categorized. If we accept surrealism as an element to deal with regardless of how we choose to define it. From what from what you've been talking about. William Klein I'm I get I get the feeling that surrealism is very definitely with us today. That's how he knows it is in the art as well as being in abroad in any community in society particularly the city is built. We use the term neo to imply that there is a new way of us that Geck to that but we don't use the term neo surreal with what you have and you have been in a sense there's more surrealism than there is that. I don't I don't know why the contemporary thing as a surrealist I.

I find myself traditionally going back to whatever incoherent definition we have of surrealism. I want to apply it to the immediacy of if we've got if we play the game lineage then what do we do with Oldenburg. We've got to go back to the surrealist to find any precedent for that at all. If I say it with my own play by this kind I mean I don't want to go back to a little burg. But he would yeah I mention him with regard and he would not which object but part of the spirit part of the wit and part of the contradiction that was to dot it was about his you know the dark. I can accept that without necessarily being comfortable with it. Well in the early early the early years of abstract expressionism were interesting

because surrealism and cubism were for the first time in a century wedded. I speak here in the 40s work of Gorky by the well decoding particularly in which these things do come together and depending on who you talk to how much of each other is in the pudding. And if we think if we think of surrealism as another to rather than as a definition of particular feel it with what's out of it. I think that I can agree that there is a good deal of Syria with us today. Certainly I find it very often in architecture walking to many buildings and find yourself outside of the empirical space that you're used to put into a different dimension to the whole thing that's wrong I think I was just reflecting on Neo died and and the pop guys that came right out of that right after that as that. You know a supermarket is a lot funnier than Warhol. I think I've

really been in tears laughing in supermarkets reading labels and cathartic Wheaties and all of these kind of things. And what's so funny about we vs. What do you I think you know a supermarket is a very funny scene. Why tell me what's funny about you say that with a straight face. I can't I can't tell you how funny it is a straight face because I live to think about it. But when you find the row upon row upon row of ketchup bottles all the same size and but lots of different brand names and and all the same price. And then on top of those are rows and rows and rows of breakfast cereals banana wackiest that's a very funny name and when you read what banana lackies are about and then and then I remember coming across a cereal called Uncle Sam cereal.

I don't know if this is in the Boston area or not but this spent there was in red white and blue shiny chromium sort of thing. And the and the label had to do with the I you. Well it was a kind of a laxative cereal if you will. That you know that you know. Well you know you can make all kinds of associations here it's just a fun do nothing of modern technology. What. Cathartic or laxative cereal is that modern technology didn't exist before modern technology maybe it's possible. If that's true that's true but I forget what point I was making sure that my son just squirm. Well I think if we try to find some credential here for this attitude of surrealism and autism they are fairly closely related.

Then bringing this attitude you know to. Contemporary to the contemporary scene. A supermarket may know only one aspect there. Are. A lot of these things a lot of the C can find in that scene so much wit and so much humor. It's not presented that way and that's why we need Warhols and the other people that's why we need it. I guess that the DOT us and surreal is after all open for teacup as far as it is a priceless example of this kind of attitude. Humor then the essential ingredient in green in surrealism or use of the terror that you were talking about earlier an essential part of Syria. I think they're both there I think I'd just like Dali migrate a very serious illness for those things that I guess you could be serious and funny also humorous or really the smartest of all please let me also deadly serious.

Let's go I guess. But Dolly certainly seems to me to be perhaps the most humorless of the lot and for me why his paints don't endure. If you're trying to get to the chili added to the surrealism what were doing. What is it. What is it what is it what is it in the supermarket that makes you feel that it's a real what is it in your drive through in Boston this evening made you feel slightly surreal. The attitude has been where you find it. I don't want to use a gun. Well you know if I was going to say it's in the irrationality of the world as we find it and yet constantly liberated that this is a rational place that way that reason is appealed to constantly every

every kind especially in the sciences and technology reason has appealed all the time to justify you know what is what after all is a very mad scene. I mean you can't really say that 23 different brands of ketchup in uniform bottles is a result of 23 sub conscious executives working out some flaws. Question right here of course time. So that when you read saying is that serialism has evolved to a series. Of conscious. Efforts which mean placing jacks to positions I would use the word absurdities in the place of efforts. If you if you are still collecting a word about making a gadget is there now. But there's a kind of an absurdity when you make it beyond the point of any kind of reality. There is an absurdity in the combination of things and I'm sorry I didn't. I'm going to look for that cathartic scenario but the idea of combining a laxative with a breakfast food which is an old switch on the old joke of people that stuffed macaroni with

baking soda so you would have in the gesture and cure it simultaneously here somebody has brought it you know to life that what is and I love that cereal. Uncle Sam. I'm sure we're going to get you. Maybe we can get some thief in promoting. Oh I can't. Wait. I'm not sure like you look a little bit wrong. All right so you drive you drive through the city of Boston as you drive. Do you feel surreal this think Oh why should I feel and getting from Newbury Street out here tonight why should I feel. With with with all the signs lights directions on the low pull of notations. Directions not having such a feeling of accomplishment when I got here. An extraordinary feeling of accomplishment that I got here as I mentioned to you when I came in the door. Something that should be a matter of course and not even that not even really attended to. But the feat of

coming for 10 years through Boston which I don't know he lated me now there's something you see when we go to the club are you actually. Well I drew the idealism that says in a way it does because I feel a part of my elation came from outwitting all the traffic engineers sign designers and what is there some element in this visual humor Sonora park experience that you had some fragment of it which may consciously or unconsciously appear in one of your paintings. Absolutely. My pains about signs eyes signs numbers letters and that's very much of what we are about we all have numbers who were identified by name or Social Security numbers driver's license whatever peculiar flashing arrow that you encountered on the way here may appear in the painting. This I think is a very rational relationship this is not a sub conscious.

You're not going to sit in front of a blank canvas and suddenly we'll think of this. Errol it comes from a reality of some sort from the experience. Irrational as you describe it but a very specific experience. Therefore I'm very anxious to hold the word the word real as them and not let that get sloughed aside I've always considered myself a realist painter a realistic painter you know I think you're having the realist experience while you were driving. In that when you reflect now on the signs and then it becomes a surrealist thing you see. Well it's not surreal it isn't real it all has nothing to do. Reality Behind us would think we know but it it tends to show it seems to me that tends to show what the irrationality of reality right which is a very high form of reality. When the reality is switched on you is something that they've always known. For me it's

something a little difficult. Today I try to make a left hand turn to Dartmouth Street and all of a sudden I found out at Dartmouth Street was a one way street going down both both sides going going the other way and I was really thrown from that I wasn't quite sure where I was even though I knew I was at the corner. You know very unnerved me at the same time. I wasn't there because you can go you can make a left turn. You deliberately run. This wasn't a dream sequence that you just didn't happen to you in bed this happened you were at the wheel of a car right. Well this didn't you're not you're not saying that everyone who drives an automobile is why wait an hour and I'm not saying that I'm going to drive an automobile as a bona fide a qualified surrealist or idealist. But I think that you can have a type of surreal experience when you find the world as you knew it changed in some way.

Yes you might want to go to Selma at that juncture at that particular moment. The question is do you take this experience and rationalize it on a flat two dimensional canvas collar at design and arrange it. And that the end frame it. I don't think that that amount of logic or reason which is applied to the experience interferes with the experience in any way at all. I think that the reality of the experience is there. And the best way that you can interpret it and communicate it. You know you go ahead and you do it. Yes but you could have this experience and it could be valid. And I would even qualify as being so I realized. That the moment you attempt to communicate with this experience you are as was pointed out in most places using all of the traditional forms. It was made very very clear that no new innovations in terms of space color the things that

Dolly's paint. Well Bill yes that the bill talked about an interesting aspect to this as I was talking Eugene Swenson who was beginning to write a book or rather a chapter book. To be called Psychedelic art. And in talking with him about this he admitted to me that he had as yet and he had done some research in this area and found no art produced as a result of psychedelic experience. It would seem to me in some of the aspects of surrealism we talked about that masculine LSD and so on would have been beautiful for what broad Tong's talking about. And yet because of what you say because of what happens in the inhibitions that occur to the two to the reasoning apparatus the formation of a painting or the building of form becomes

virtually impossible. Now one may wallow in all kinds of. Pleasant or unpleasant sensation sensations but that seems to me is not yet the point lower making anything of it. Anyway I know but generally only in a kind of brief way I touched on this this control this euphoria which comes from trying to paint if you're drunk. However experiments that have been conducted with LSD among painters and some painters that I knew that worked under it it had a positive sense in accenting a kind of color. It didn't change the individual style of work. There have been some experiments conducted in New York before it became you know something for kicks scientific experiments conducted you know which painters were asked to listen to music and make drawings or paintings as matter of fact Arthur. You were involved in some experience of this sort of a local area weren't you.

And they found that there was no change in the person's thinking their style that was just an accentuation of sensibility. Why would you expect a person to change with taking drugs or with their sleep. They're still the same person. I imagine that these these are not familiar with these drugs but I imagine they do have a change they must have some psychic I can't describe the change in speaking to some people. Had similar experiences and it's interesting you know that say artists or critics someone whose. Vision has been cultivated and whose particular sensitive since this is a great deal of their life found various drugs to the fact that those visual sensations very little whereas people who had not cultivated or developed any visual acuity found that particular

perceptions were heightened considerably. Which is interesting but yet it did effect in people I have talked to who did affect the motivation. Aspect of the process that is to say it was more comfortable to sit and enjoy what sensations they may have and then their visual ones were not noticeably affected then to then to try to do anything than try to paint a picture or build a piece of sculpture. Thank you and isn't sure that color is most affected form in painting under these experiments. I can't answer for it all I know from my little experience which I have had directly as a kind of an accent to ation of certain sensibilities and that may vary with people. If a man is not instinctively a colorist I don't think it will create that in him the FI highs and say you may. And I don't think you can make a uniform standard. Different people are affected by different

things differently. I think one of the reasons why many people feel that way color aspect is supposed to be so strong is that Huxley was one of the first people to write about the drug experience. And at that time he was slowly going blind and his world was now closing in on him Saturday and on under the drug he certainly saw things that he maybe didn't see. When I saw it I also remember that I actually was a writer writing about his experience which is quite another thing where you think you have to hang about in the States. Why didn't we segue very nicely from surrealism into psycho sour Nelly with hardly ever written raising an eyebrow. Would you like if you're a bad boy. Yeah you know I'll find sex coming across a guy with that raised eyebrows.

So you know I think that they recently came up Karl has said is that they both deal with psychic experience or so we seem to feel. Well but then you know doesn't deal with us I just about to say that about what painting doesn't mean I think it I think is just one of one of the important points in my painting is that it was like you can go where you get if you don't have psychic involvement they are are the answer is What if you've got if you've got stalking involvement with painting you're going to convert you're going to having you're going to have I can't think of the man that does the little girls with the big said I was which is keen on me to get out there you guys with no sight. Thanks. Really those that are at equally terrifying sight somewhat. Your sensibilities are psychopathic if you're trying to say and I think they would be rather interesting or exactly the same lined up just above the ketchup bottles in the

supermarket. All these as a matter of fact I am surprised that they have started selling his reproductions since they have well textured paintings and specialty shops it's just a question of time. They are selling. I think I heard that but I think that a Christmas card or something it seems to me at Winterfest I saw some on the wall for sale. Yeah well that's that hardly Winterfest term really qualifies as a supermarket. I accepted your point I think you're speaking of surrealism this let's talk about what you know it's a surreal experience you can't say anything nice about anything let's not talk about it with us. Now surrealism is not a term of deprecation. No it isn't but it's a term which is fairly amorphous when have a member of said it or hang it on anybody with any positive assurance. Bill came closest to you know getting down to the purity in terms of my son and Miral

curious both of them as we should have a third one in the Minnesota Mining and the royals. But. If you take his concept he had knowledge as I should be speaking for him knowledge of this. I surrealism and everything else is sort of manifestations of what I really object to the other people as being. Having more to do with what I would describe as a literary experience dollars paid to be read or studied history. I wonder whether your different definition of lame claim as in have a great deal to do with the fact that you and abstract ideas perhaps and that you are. I mean looking like him just really isn't. I make no claims to be an objective man story. Can I go one step further and ask if your subjective abstract artist it's another kind I'm doing objectively one whom

I'm highly skeptical of objective things so I would say yes I'm subjective where you think it's going to go. It's like reason that's always appealed to but I've never seen it really. Again I go to the sciences without pain deprecating and they're constantly. Presenting us with objective facts and objective studies like they appeal to then that then reason to support they objective surveys and so on. And this is this that to jump back is what makes the absurdity that Carl was talking about because you have a reason here and everyone understands reason as being something else. The reason is an absolute thing. And so the highways are designed and the signs are put up. Under the banners of objective research and reason. And yet you find it to be terribly frustrating experience to go down an expressway at 60 miles an hour and not knowing where you're

going to try to manipulate your automobile and read at the same time this is a very that kind of thing. And this is what makes that thing absurd is because you have both here the reason claimed on the one hand and you have one with what is reality. An experience we have had and this seems to me is where the surrealists come in and start to say things start to make calm and start to signify things in their painting to show us in a way you know to take a piece of that. I saw immobilized isolated immobiliser I can just say look you know it's crazy given a certain set of facts a certain number of studies given certain limitations of man's understanding you know highways are probably being built as rational as rationally and as reasonably as they can be built with today's technology. Well it seems I think it's certainly a far better way than then and I sitting down

and I dreaming about it. Yes but on the other hand are having Dolly designed to know what I have my horses a much easier way to get around. Yeah but I find that all of this rationality and reason I find the planning the engineers and I'm certainly no authority on highway construction. I discovered very odd things by just glancing through the casual backyards of newspapers of people planning superhighways which will be completely outdated in 20 years if the normal way that automobiles keep procreating themselves kind of building for eventual destruction. I mean that might come four lines and six lines is 12 planes land obsolescence. Yeah but. So you plan a 12 lane highway and before you get to the end of it you discover that it is completely inadequate. Can you think of anything more absurd than the idea of obsolescence. That's only as we know it. Really very sad. You build something I thought was a part

and for your sake buy another one. Why should you when you have that when you have the technological capability. Over the last few years. But you don't have the technological ability to know how this thing is going to be used for five years. So they want to build something that will last for a hundred years. You know a society that is very rapidly changing doesn't make any more things and building it and for the people who were actually building it to fall apart in five years makes more sense because it is possible to learn to separate little Bianca under the Tommies it's inside another system great changes in the automobile last 50 years or refrigerate one of the deals are built to be obsolete and I saw a refrigerator. Oh I know but there are also there are also one you may not accept as they're also punters who operate with the theory of obsolescence and is they've neglected the craft to such an extent that somebody by using a piece of tape party and all of the other miracle things will be a headache to restorers in 25 years or so and their answer is simply you're buying new

software every five years whether to buy a new painting. If you subscribe to that we keep see coming to me going is this the function of the artist. Well you know if it's a function of everyone else it might just as well I thought lay out the whole notion in this thing and you know in our contemporary culture when I just hand crafting a painting or sculpture as a bit of an absurd idea. Anyway yes it's sort of you know what what it what it is a hand craft or you're saying that yes I did the first one to see my own folly. It seems nothing like it's a very archaic situation to be a painter. Absolutely absolutely. The word handcrafted incidentally is very interesting. It's a word which has come in two recent use it is an object made by a machine in which somebody gives it two or three licks with a human hand and therefore qualifies under the term crafted. Which I think

is nice since definitions of our most material things already keep changing and moving about. It's not very much wonder that we're having trouble with surrealism. WM claimed Carl for a test and his being thank you very much for joining me this evening on studio Doug.