0:00:10.213,0:00:14.793 [ RACKSTRAW DOWNES ] I was driving across the landscape [br]and there was this endlessness in Texas. 0:00:15.480,0:00:17.960 There’s almost nothing. It [br]is deserts and there’s just 0:00:17.960,0:00:21.600 a little bit of scrubby vegetation [br]here and there. Then suddenly in the 0:00:21.600,0:00:26.540 middle of all this emptiness were these [br]pink mountains around the edge of it. 0:00:29.160,0:00:31.421 Every direction there were these hills. 0:00:36.360,0:00:38.920 Perched around in this empty landscape were these 0:00:38.920,0:00:43.789 tiny little structures made out of [br]pipe with corrugated roofs on them. 0:00:44.133,0:00:49.434 Because in the desert, shade is the most [br]priceless thing you can get, shade and water. 0:00:50.916,0:00:55.003 Took me an hour or so to [br]understand that it was a racetrack. 0:00:56.120,0:00:59.920 And so these corrugated roofs [br]were shelters for the horses. 0:01:00.880,0:01:06.309 There was a judge’s tower. And then [br]there were two spectator shelters. 0:01:06.760,0:01:13.351 I was fascinated by these lovely little airy [br]structures which lived so lightly on this earth. 0:01:16.400,0:01:19.900 And I ended up making five drawings that really [br]interested me. 0:01:19.900,0:01:21.647 One of them I never painted, 0:01:21.647,0:01:25.941 but I made four large paintings that went [br]together. They’re all the same height. 0:01:26.220,0:01:28.788 Two winters I spent on those four paintings. 0:01:34.760,0:01:39.586 I was interested in sparseness [br]and extreme clarity. 0:01:39.586,0:01:45.201 Each thing was different. Mountains were pink, the [br]structures were silvery-white. 0:01:45.201,0:01:50.734 The desert floor was a sandy yellow. I actually went [br]out and bought some new tubes of paint. 0:01:56.811,0:02:00.683 I first came out to Marfa because of [br]the mountains. 0:02:01.800,0:02:06.356 I had been painting for many years in New Jersey, which [br]is flat. 0:02:06.356,0:02:10.775 And the Texas coast near Galveston and High Island and [br]Beaumont, 0:02:10.775,0:02:12.717 all flat as could be. 0:02:20.190,0:02:23.489 I’d been to Utah, I’d been and [br]seen these magnificent mountains. 0:02:23.489,0:02:26.800 And these weren’t magnificent [br]and I liked that about them. 0:02:28.411,0:02:33.892 In the meantime of course I came out here and [br]painted Judd’s buildings instead of the mountains. 0:02:42.856,0:02:48.892 Those two buildings there, standing in the [br]prairie like that, without their other ten, 0:02:48.892,0:02:56.585 those sites were a little bit like ruins and construction [br]sites both at once, because they were abandoned construction sites. 0:02:58.840,0:03:00.958 I was fascinated by those things. 0:03:00.958,0:03:05.159 They weren’t shapes our culture teaches us [br]that buildings should be in. 0:03:17.440,0:03:24.136 And then I came down to Presidio and immediately [br]responded to those sand hills up there. 0:03:24.136,0:03:28.786 They’re not classic mountains at all, but very odd. 0:03:28.786,0:03:31.344 You’ve got height and you’ve got depth, 0:03:31.344,0:03:35.819 looking down and looking up are real ideas [br]in painting. 0:03:35.819,0:03:40.143 And they’re very different from painting on the flat-scape or painting on the [br]level ground. 0:03:43.536,0:03:49.444 I was astonished at the drama of the light as it moved around those forms. 0:03:49.444,0:03:55.147 The way those shadows were first on one side [br]and then on the other side of the late afternoon. 0:03:55.147,0:03:56.974 Totally different. 0:04:10.080,0:04:16.087 It’s not my drama, it’s a drama of the sun [br]making this effect on that mountain. 0:04:16.087,0:04:18.669 I want to keep my emotions out of it. 0:04:18.669,0:04:22.942 My emotions should [br]be the emotion of respect for that form. 0:04:22.942,0:04:24.794 Almost reverence. 0:04:27.049,0:04:30.995 I go over that same little shadow [br]over and over again till I get that shape. 0:04:30.995,0:04:37.142 It has a character. It has ex...some kind of [br]little curlicue there where that rock sticks up. 0:04:37.142,0:04:41.255 And you’ve got to get that curlicue [br]and you’re not satisfied till you get it. 0:04:44.111,0:04:50.498 There’s a rapport between my image and that real [br]thing out there. They answer to one another. 0:05:03.240,0:05:07.200 I get very possessive of my places [br]and I don’t want any other artist 0:05:07.200,0:05:10.040 coming around here and messing [br]around and painting my places. 0:05:10.040,0:05:15.004 Or photographers or any other kind [br]of image-maker. I want it to myself. 0:05:17.280,0:05:21.404 As you stay there longer you discover more. 0:05:21.640,0:05:24.536 You are constantly learning from the site you’ve chosen. 0:05:24.536,0:05:29.480 And I often feel that I could go [br]on working on a painting almost indefinitely. 0:05:32.360,0:05:37.286 Towards the end of a painting you begin to look [br]around and you say, "Now, I wonder why I didn’t stand over there," 0:05:37.286,0:05:39.954 "Why did I stand in Point A [br]instead of Point B?" 0:05:39.954,0:05:44.378 [ laughs ] And you think, "That would have made a terrific one [br]too from over here." 0:05:44.378,0:05:48.743 "But I’ve kind of, I’m done here. [br]I’m finished, I want to move on." 0:06:13.080,0:06:17.728 When I left Maine, it was an emotion very much [br]like that that’s made me do it. 0:06:17.728,0:06:23.988 I was painting a line of hills and my hand [br]said to me, "Get out of here. 0:06:23.988,0:06:29.184 "Don’t do this anymore. You’ve made that line of hills so many times, you need to go somewhere [br]else. 0:06:30.150,0:06:33.047 And I put my house up for sale that day. 0:06:38.459,0:06:46.412 One of my favorite writers on painting said that landscape artist [br]seems to have to move to a new location in order to reinvent himself. 0:06:46.412,0:06:48.755 And I think there’s some truth there. 0:06:53.801,0:06:56.639 I don’t think of myself as being a landscape [br]painter. 0:06:57.004,0:07:01.735 In the popular envisioning of that term, 0:07:01.735,0:07:09.508 a landscape consists of a painting with a--a field and a pond and a tree and a mountain in the distance, et cetera, et cetera. 0:07:09.637,0:07:11.956 It’s a sort of [br]recipe thing. 0:07:12.106,0:07:19.114 I hope very much that my paintings don’t look like recipe paintings, that I’ve gone [br]to other places and seen something different. 0:07:20.574,0:07:24.133 I like to say I paint my [br]environment, my surroundings. 0:07:25.634,0:07:30.371 It gives you the idea that it is a physical [br]thing that surrounds you and it does, 0:07:30.371,0:07:34.200 it takes us immediately away from [br]the flat plain image of the world. 0:07:34.651,0:07:39.643 Surroundings implies that the [br]landscape does really curve around you. 0:07:39.965,0:07:46.374 Because I follow the curve that I see the [br]curve also expressed this way on the canvas. 0:07:52.194,0:07:57.373 And if you’re standing on a high hill and you look at a straight [br]road down here and the foreground of your painting 0:07:57.373,0:08:03.095 down below, it’ll tend to...it’ll curve up like this [br]and the horizon will curve down like this. 0:08:03.095,0:08:08.295 So you get this sort of almond shape composition [br]that does repeat itself in my painting. 0:08:16.219,0:08:20.819 That whole idea of the wandering eye [br]popped into my head back then. 0:08:21.184,0:08:25.654 That you don’t see an image all at once, [br]you see it part by part. It unfolds. 0:08:32.440,0:08:35.360 The first painting I did like that [br]was of the Natural History Museum, 0:08:35.360,0:08:37.753 before they built the big dome there. 0:08:38.354,0:08:44.920 I thought, "If I stand here and paint that marvelous [br]thing there, against the light, you can’t see that 0:08:44.920,0:08:48.697 it’s red, really. It just is a darkness. You don’t [br]know what it is." 0:08:48.890,0:08:57.619 And then I look to the left and down the street, 81st Street I think, and then [br]down the avenue which is, Columbus maybe. 0:08:57.920,0:09:01.378 I’m turning my head nearly a 180 degrees. 0:09:02.280,0:09:05.000 So that you really have gone a [br]long way. You’ve gone the whole 0:09:05.000,0:09:08.360 way through the building and [br]you’ve arrived at this vista 0:09:08.360,0:09:12.553 and then you’ve arrived at the opposite [br]vista in the other end of the painting. 0:09:17.320,0:09:21.295 Perspective is not what I’m interested [br]in, that is for sure. 0:09:21.660,0:09:24.932 I went out into the landscape and started working, 0:09:24.932,0:09:27.726 boom, just as though I were an abstract painter. 0:09:27.941,0:09:36.426 And I didn’t start out with the idea, [br]well you know your vanishing point is here and then your flanking trees are here and [br]here. 0:09:36.619,0:09:39.158 I didn’t construct it like that at all. 0:09:40.339,0:09:45.720 I began to find that things, perspective [br]told me it didn’t seem to be true to my eyes. 0:09:46.064,0:09:51.718 And I’m not sure what is true to my [br]eyes, I’m not sure it’s something that I can really ascertain or write down, 0:09:51.868,0:09:56.387 but I know that everything changes as you make [br]the minutest movement in your head, 0:09:56.580,0:09:58.948 and still more when you [br]turn your shoulders. 0:10:07.200,0:10:11.579 There is no solution to the representation of the [br]world. 0:10:11.837,0:10:20.778 As soon as you take a three-dimensional world in which there is movement and [br]place it on a two-dimensional surface, 0:10:20.778,0:10:23.500 you move into the world of [br]metaphor, inevitably. 0:10:23.500,0:10:29.598 And perspective is an attempt to standardize [br]the metaphor of the depiction of space. 0:10:36.720,0:10:40.160 The fact that you have these problems though [br]are of course the reason that makes you 0:10:40.160,0:10:41.729 want to go out and do it again. 0:10:41.729,0:10:43.694 It’s always alive. 0:10:43.694,0:10:47.826 And I don’t want solutions, that would not be interesting to me. 0:10:47.826,0:10:52.835 The process itself is an unsolved problem and always will be. 0:10:52.835,0:10:54.444 [ chuckles ] 0:11:11.724,0:11:17.831 My first trip down here, I passed a little [br]group of beehives. 0:11:17.831,0:11:21.384 And I liked the way they were grouped in this big empty landscape. 0:11:26.366,0:11:34.320 I just put those beehives in the back of my head and I was down on the Rio Grande, [br]drawing a water gauge measuring station 0:11:34.320,0:11:38.609 and the man came up and stood behind me [br]and watched me draw for a little bit. 0:11:38.609,0:11:41.603 I turned around and I said, "Excuse me, but 0:11:41.603,0:11:47.454 "you don’t happen to know who owns those beehives up the [br]Casa Piedra Road, do you by any chance?" He said, "Yes, I do." 0:11:49.795,0:11:55.111 When the snow starts to fly up in Colorado, he brings those bees down here to the Rio [br]Grande 0:11:55.111,0:11:57.776 and sets them up in these small groups. 0:11:59.365,0:12:03.177 And had about six drawings of beehives [br]I made all in one day. 0:12:03.177,0:12:07.628 And I looked at them and I thought, "You know, [br]they are kind of fun, they really are." 0:12:07.628,0:12:13.201 And I started coming back down in November so that I would [br]have a longer time with the beehives still there. 0:12:13.824,0:12:18.235 He got here late one year. He put them all in [br]these enormous yards. 0:12:18.235,0:12:24.821 One in front of a little mountain on the side of the Rio Grande and one out [br]in the middle of the plain towards Candelaria. 0:12:24.821,0:12:27.954 So I said, "All right, I’m going to work with these [br]two sides." 0:12:27.954,0:12:30.831 And all these hundreds of beehives, and I got going on them, 0:12:30.831,0:12:35.535 and I got the stretchers built and everything. I said, [br]"I’ll never finish this before he moves them away," 0:12:35.535,0:12:40.825 "So I’m going to take these sketches," which were [br]oil sketches, for the big canvases, 0:12:40.825,0:12:44.481 finish the sketches up [br]like highly finished paintings. 0:12:44.910,0:12:50.814 So I ended up with those two rather small paintings [br]with many, many, many, many beehives. 0:12:59.253,0:13:03.198 I painted a power plant generating station [br]in the middle of the prairie and 0:13:03.198,0:13:10.278 I struck by this enormous lump sitting in this enormous [br]flat-scape in which nothing happened. 0:13:10.278,0:13:13.912 It was absolutely miles and miles and miles of nothing. 0:13:14.363,0:13:16.751 [ laughs ] [br]And I thought it was wonderful. 0:13:16.751,0:13:24.401 Now that was a structural juxtaposition of two disparate things [br]and sitting there and that could make a painting. 0:13:29.680,0:13:34.520 As I worked on that thing, a lot of detail [br]of that power plant and fence lines and 0:13:34.520,0:13:37.194 ditches and roads [br]came into the painting, 0:13:37.194,0:13:39.241 but very minutely. 0:13:39.241,0:13:45.807 The main impact of that painting is this huge lump [br]sitting on this empty tabletop of prairie. 0:13:55.739,0:14:01.263 As you paint you’re exploring. "What is [br]the structure? What is the interest here?" 0:14:01.628,0:14:06.346 You go to a place and you are attracted [br]to it for reason "A," 0:14:06.647,0:14:10.239 but once you start painting, [br]reason "A" disappears. 0:14:12.000,0:14:16.576 Some factory workers are out having [br]a good time in the evening playing softball. 0:14:16.576,0:14:22.437 It’s the girl’s team tonight. And you say, "This is kind of nice. This is good [br]that these people are getting out and having a good time." 0:14:24.000,0:14:27.458 That’s the reason you start. And then [br]everything else becomes important. 0:14:27.458,0:14:30.918 How long should the shadows be of this tree [br]in the late afternoon? 0:14:30.918,0:14:36.610 How do you get the scale of these buildings around [br]here to work with the scale and the figures? 0:14:36.868,0:14:45.222 Blah, blah, blah. All these other considerations come in [br]and that initial idea is completely lost and forgotten. 0:14:45.222,0:14:50.960 And you’re involved with other things. [br]You’re involved with the softness of light on the tall grass and the way it changes 0:14:50.960,0:14:53.670 when it gets to the mown [br]area of the grass. 0:14:55.044,0:14:59.091 Why is it doing that and how do you [br]express that in the, in the movement of your brush? 0:14:59.091,0:15:01.759 All these other things [br]become important to you. 0:15:02.038,0:15:07.510 And that old theme, that literary theme that first [br]attracted you is finished. It’s gone. 0:15:15.928,0:15:19.681 I’m interested in big open spaces which are empty. 0:15:22.151,0:15:28.450 Emptiness, like the emptiness of the racetrack [br]area there with those sparse scatter of buildings. 0:15:30.320,0:15:34.080 And then the marvelous markings [br]on the floor in the arena that 0:15:34.080,0:15:38.523 Judd discovered, that’s like [br]the tracks on the racetrack. 0:15:40.520,0:15:44.047 I had first got interested in those [br]markings on the floor in the World Trade Center. 0:15:44.283,0:15:48.645 When I painted, that flooring had all [br]be ripped up 'cause they were vacated spaces. 0:15:50.234,0:15:55.642 On that floor you saw all these wonderful [br]scratches and markings and stains. 0:15:55.642,0:16:00.449 The history of that floor is just written very richly [br]all over there. And I like that history. 0:16:01.523,0:16:04.663 That’s what I mean by saying "reverence" for things [br]out there. 0:16:04.663,0:16:13.099 Something as anonymous and minute in a sense and inconsequential as [br]a scratch is something. It’s a real thing. 0:16:14.280,0:16:18.110 It’s like you and I, it’s a personality. [br][ chuckles ] 0:16:18.563,0:16:21.933 It looks empty, but it really, I, I see fullness there. 0:16:22.191,0:16:27.221 Yes. And I’d like [br]you to see that fullness too in my painting. 0:16:46.637,0:16:49.904 [ ANNOUNCER ] To learn more about [br]"Art in the Twenty-First Century" 0:16:49.904,0:16:51.904 and its educational resources, 0:16:51.904,0:16:56.760 please visit us online at: [br]PBS.org/Art21 0:17:00.089,0:17:03.906 “Art in the Twenty-First Century” is available on DVD. 0:17:04.053,0:17:06.697 The companion book is also available. 0:17:06.697,0:17:10.547 To order, visit us online at: shopPBS.org 0:17:10.547,0:17:15.188 or call PBS Home Video at: [br]1-800-PLAY-PBS