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NANCY SPERO: Even though I have over 500 
images in my art at this point to choose from,

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nevertheless I have what you call “stars.”

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Like stars in Hollywood, they’re appearing 
and reappearing in different roles.

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Certainly the ancient Egyptians, 
the musicians, are stars.

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And I had made a design with many 
of these ancient Egyptian images

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for this subway station here in New York City.

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See a continuum, see a procession.

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Now this procession is kind 
of formalized and dance-like.

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Let’s say it could be for an opera.

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After all, this is Lincoln Center.

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I’d like to think that I have all 
layers of conceptual in the art,

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that it...it’s easily read.

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But on the other hand, I do 
hope that it’s more complicated

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and that it’s not just one 
easy read and then that’s it.

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See I have too much stuff.

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This is from about....

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This is a lot of years and 
many different people printing.

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I guess maybe my art can be said to be a protest.

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I don’t know if it’s railing against the 
world or something, but I am protesting.

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And as an artist, I…

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I am privileged to create in things 
the way I think that they should be,

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you know because that gets 
out my message to the world.

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See I’m interested in messages.

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And if people want to take something 
from it, I am thrilled of course.

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The War Paintings are certainly a protest 
because it was done with indignation.

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The U.S. had gotten involved in Vietnam 
and I remember during that time,

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reading newspapers and I remember this 
terrible image of like this woman running from,

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you know from her house that had 
been set afire by helicopters.

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I thought of the victims in Vietnam

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and what they would think of these war machines.

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And that was working on me and then 
I started painting the War series.

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But I felt then that the symbol of 
the Vietnam War was the helicopter

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and that became my primary subject matter.

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I think the political came by having 
a partnership with Leon Golub.

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My husband, my partner really of over 
51 years, he’s recently deceased.

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Leon always had some sort of 
foot in the political in his art,

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whether it was overt or not.

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And I think that that aspect of 
his thinking influenced me a lot.

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This back and forth of ideas and discussions,

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I think that Leon’s painting is incredibly ugly,

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which makes it incredibly beautiful.

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But the main thing is the 
power and the action in it.

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It was pretty damned difficult 
contending with someone who was so,

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not only did he do big 
paintings and fantastic ones,

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but you know what, he...he was really 
brilliant and that’s pretty hard.

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I had a really hard time 
contending with such a person.

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But I decided I, I just had to do my thing

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and so I started doing very small work.

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Very small work.

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Figures that are sometimes 
an inch tall or even less.

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Almost microscopic. And so 
in a way that’s a retort.

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And also it’s a retort to the large works 
of the mostly male New York artists.

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Leon of course always in my mind was an exception.

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How totally sympathetic he was to my art.

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Over the years the work has evolved 
from a more traditional format

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of either the rectangle or the square 
or whatever in front of one’s eyes.

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And if we move our eyes, it would be 
eventually nothing there but blank wall.

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And so I have let it continue.

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This is in Malmö, Sweden that I 
showed it, THE BLACK AND THE RED.

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This was an enormous room.

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In seeing this huge, huge gallery, I just 
kind of took a deep breath and I put…

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I put the paper piece around in a single band.

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I continued along printing on 
the wall like a trompe l’oeil

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to reiterate the images in the printed piece.

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And when the show was over, I could 
pick up and take THE BLACK AND THE RED,

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that which was on paper, but I 
couldn’t take THE BLACK AND THE RED,

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that had been printed on the wall.

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It’s like theater, when the 
play is over, it’s finished,

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it only stays in the memory of 
those who saw it and remember it.

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SPERO: So we’ll have a few 
on the ground, yeah. Wow.

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SAM KUNTZ: ...(OVERLAP) have 
them on the ground or not?

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SPERO: No, no I thought we’d...maybe 
just a couple on the ground you know.

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Yeah.

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Ooh, that’s good.

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Ooh, ooh, that’s really white.

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Oops, oops, oops.

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Yeah, yeah.

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SPERO: I was invited to be in the Venice Biennale.

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I thought, what in the devil am I going to do?

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And I was thinking about one of the 
paintings I had done in the War series.

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And in that I had done a maypole 
with bloody severed heads

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hanging from gaily colored 
ribbons from the maypole.

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And finally I thought to literally make a maypole.

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So I just started working on the maypole with 
the help of Sam Kuntz and Marybeth Craig.

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Marybeth’s in printing the images

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and so Sam has been working her part of 
the magic in transforming these heads.

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SAM: Nancy has such a facility to 
render an expressive, pained figure.

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And what’s amazing to me is that 
if you look at these carefully,

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they’re very small and the line 
has been drawn very quickly.

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And this expression is articulated perfectly.

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I mean and...and they’re 
all different. It’s not....

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I mean it’s, it’s a kind of freedom that she has.

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SAM: Some of these might even have 
been done as part of the War series

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which would be 1966 through ’68.

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She saved some of these heads that were 
never incorporated into any of the pieces.

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And so now we’re blowing them up 
to make printing plates of polymers

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so that we can print a back 
on aluminum on a large scale

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and make these disembodied heads.

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SPERO: But I feel that the images I 
did long ago which I can’t recoup.

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You know I mean I cannot 
re-draw them, in the same way.

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I’m on another ...I’m on 
another direction altogether.

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But I thought that I couldn’t cannibalize 
what I have done forty years ago.

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I have the idea of printing on 
the metal and then cutting it out.

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So I’ve envisioned it then that it 
would be on this metal and that maybe,

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I don’t know how we’re going to do this,

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but have a few kind of together.

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And so if they banged up against 
each other it would clank.

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If one goes into jail for instance and hearing the 
clank of the door and there you are, you’re....

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I mean it even leaves me breathless now,

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thinking about that, the sound of it.

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And there you are.

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I mean, there one is in this jail you know

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and one can’t get out until that 
guy with the keys or whatever left…

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lets you out.

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And, and, and so it is all of these 
things running through my mind

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and what it means to be metal and severed heads.

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And so it kind of got a feeling of…

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of the resemblances of all this brutality.

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Just trying to show the insanity, 
really the insanity of war.

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I actually have cannibalized my own 
work to kind of liberate myself from

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what I have done and what I 
really want to do in the future.

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For Spain I had this idea of the repetition 
of that image that I so blatantly liberated,

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I saved from the ancient 
Egyptian, uh, Mourning Women.

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Then I thought that somehow to emphasize this…

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this kind of prayerful, looking up as if 
looking up to heaven or god knows what,

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I decided that it should be on the 
ground, like a real funeral procession.

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In the gallery in New York I 
retitled and kind of redid it again,

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but entitled it Cri du Coeur.

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It was the first piece after Leon died.

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Like a “cry of the heart,” but to me it must 
mean something kind of like intense emotion,

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almost like praying, a cri du coeur you know,

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plea-ing you know with heaven or…

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or something like that I think by the gestures.

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It’s almost...it’s always so strange,

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it’s so empty and then you just put one…

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these stupid little things in and…

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and it’s too much then. This is good.

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Maybe over near.....

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Why do I do art?

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What isn’t a reason for doing art?

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I don’t know, it does need something.

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That’s why it’s not finished, 
because I can’t think you know what…

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what to do.

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SAM: Maybe it needs something 
to throw it off balance.

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SPERO: Mm-hmm, Mm-hmm.

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SAM: Something awkward.

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SPERO: Mm-hmm, Mm-hmm. I think I have 
to think about it in another time.