WEBVTT

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[ LYNDA BENGLIS ] I was asked in the early ‘70s
to do installations all over the country. And...

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For the price of the materials and my ticket
I went to these different places

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and did an artwork.

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[ rapid jazz music ]

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They were like statements
of the reality that you’d feel

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in the conversations that artists
have with each other

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and with the world
and with their times.

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One thing that these works clearly do
is state that the process,

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the drawing, texture
equal form.

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And it’s about drawing
and these ideas have

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come from really painting ideas,
yet they’re dimensional.

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This is one thing I’ve always been
interested in exploring.

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"Eat Meat" is a sand-cast bronze.

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It has a lovely patina from
being out in the elements

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over 30-40 years.

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I think of myself as a painter,
probably because I don’t use glue.

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I found my space
so to speak

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because I was particularly interested
in painterly materials and also form

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and space and where
the gesture could take the material.

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All of them are drawn with
either a bucket or a can.

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The use of the body,
the use of the hand,

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the use of the movement
of the body.

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Dancing and rhythm,

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I was just very interested in
that kind of bodily gesture.

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- Take it down, Bill. Quick!

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They’re all polyurethane.

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The same polyurethane
that’s used in installation.

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I made a couple of pieces
of phosphorescence.

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I had to light them and they
absorbed the light and

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then the lights were
turned off on a timer.

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And what happened,

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because of the flows in the
pours and the gravity,

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what you would see is them
coming down and rising again

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at the same time.

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I’m very interested in
how things change through

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our reading of the gravity
and the form.

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If a waterfall freezes,
how do you really read it?

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You can read it going up or down
and how do you read it?

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[ static buzzing ]

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- This is my sister Jane.

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She's getting on the...

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motorbike.

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Still motorbike.

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Weight-reducing bike.

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The camera had to be turned sideways so I could get Jane in.

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She was riding the bike.

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She's trying to figure out how to turn it on.

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My father's warning her to 
hold on to the handlebars.

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And it started up.

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Now she wants to turn it off.

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And she's wondering how 
to turn it off.

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It's being unplugged.

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This is my grandmother's house. We're rounding the corner.

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She lives about ten-minutre ride in small town 
called Sulphur, Louisiana.

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There she is.

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She looks quite pale to me, and 
I was very surprised

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that she was so pale.

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She's asking me, what am I doing?

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[ creaking ]

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[ LYNDA BENGLIS ] I really had a very rich childhood I think
and also traveled to Greece very early on

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with my grandmother.

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Traveled the islands and
into the mountains.

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- Ahh!

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- Well, my bros live out there man.

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[ LYNDA BENGLIS ] 
It’s pretty classic, Greece.

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They say, even on this island that
there were the beginnings of man,

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woman, just really early,
early civilization.

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- Oh, well what do you do on a weekend?

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- Nah, man, we go looking for a 
few fights, you know.

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[ LYNDA BENGLIS ] 
I was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

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I really liked the carnival on
Lake Pontchartrain

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and the funhouse.

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- That girl is so big and so fat,

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it takes four men to hug her 
and a boxcar to lug her.

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[ LYNDA BENGLIS ] Images jumping out the
phosphorescent quality of the images.

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They seemed very real
to me at the time.

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- This image here. 
- This image here?

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- Good.
- Which image?

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- Okay, let's start recording now.

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- This image here.
- Start recording now.

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- We are recording. 
- We are recording.

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- Start recording, I said.

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No, I said start recording now.

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- This is a tape I made. 
- This is a tape he made of a tape she made

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of a tape he made in her studio
- In my studio.

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- This is a tape he made

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[ LYNDA BENGLIS ] Louisiana had a whole
area of waterways

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that led to a big lake
that then led to the Gulf.

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So there were all kinds of channels
and I knew them,

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riding around in a little motorcar.

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Being right there on the water.

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I had horses.

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- This tape on screen is raw material.

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Rephotographing his tape made it her work.

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Or commenting on it made it her work.

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Or both.

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She is heard but never seen.

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Nothing here has been rephotographed.

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[ horn honks ]

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[ LYNDA BENGLIS ] It started by an invitation
from Anand.

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Anand Sarabhai would like for you
to come to India and

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Rauschenberg and Robert Morris
are introducing me to you.

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I visited India the last 35 years.

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After about ten years
Anand said to me,

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"Lynda, I have a well here and
I want to cover it."

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I said, "Well I’d like to make a fountain."

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He said, "No I don’t want a fountain," that’s....

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He said, "I want a sculpture
to cover the well."

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I made a 15-foot trapezoid wall.

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I began drawing on this wall.

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I thought I could draw an elephant
when I was two or three years old.

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So I began drawing an elephant,
never having carved a piece of this scale.

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I grew up in a brick home,
recycled brick.

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So when I visited here,
this kind of reminded me of Louisiana.

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We have a semi-tropical place there.

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So brick is very familiar to me.

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This particular brick is soft
so it was easily carvable.

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It ended up at one end being
very vase-like and at the other end,

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being kind of elephantine.

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When I finished,
rather than a fountain,

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I had a planter for a palm tree.
So I planted a palm tree.

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There was another image that
I also created after that,

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a two-headed snake.

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And I thought of it as kind of inside-out.


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People began to come there and worship.

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Snakes can take on other forms.

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A snake could be a knot and
a knot could be the beginning of a life.

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It was a way of arriving at
something else other than

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a wall around a tree,
or out into space.

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A knot is sometime an implosion


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but a knot could also be
an explosion of energy.

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I have done both with
the idea of that form.

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It’s embryonic, it grows,
it comes about, it extends its arms, legs.

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The floral aspect has occurred.

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I was showing these
wrapped pieces of gauze.

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I was beginning to think of
the gauze as being the skin

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and the canvas wrapped in
the structure of the wire.

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And someone said,
they were like Kotexes.

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And I was insulted but I
realize they were right.

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They were long and tall.

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And for me they were
kind of ghost images

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and took the place of the
canvas and the paint.

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And then I started
tying them in simple knots.

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I was thinking of
organic cubism

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and I wanted to create a space.

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And then Stella saw
the "Sparkle Knots,"

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he was on the panel,
and I got a Guggenheim for these.

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When I was at the Acropolis
as a very little girl I remember

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being totally caught up
with the caryatids

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because they were female.

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They had an ice-like quality.

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When I discovered the
polyurethane plastic that

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looked as glass,

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I was very pleased that people
thought it was glass.

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And I had an illusion of ice,
of frozen water

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and I wanted these
"Graces" to be a fountain.

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- We are here to take this lovely girl.

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Watch what she does.

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Into the box, sweetheart.

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You know where your head belongs?

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This way. Look at that.

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Her head is here,

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her feet are here.

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Ladies and gentlemen,

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noticing that there is not very much room 
for the little girl to be in there.

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Watch what we're doing.

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Close the little box like so.

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We take a solid blade.

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We cut right down between the gazippy and the gazoppy.

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Or we could do the other end. Doesn't matter.

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And now, the other end. The gazippy and the gazoppy.

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Then we take another blade,

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and we go between the flippy and the floppy.

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[ chuckles ] You got to know where 
the flippy is and the floppy.

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Right down there, we cut 
off her gazoopakyper.

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[ mysterious electronic music ]

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[ ANNOUNCER ] To learn more about 
"Art in the Twenty-First Century"

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and its educational resources,

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please visit us online at: 
PBS.org/Art21

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“Art in the Twenty-First Century” is available on DVD.

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The companion book is also available.

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To order, visit us online at: shopPBS.org

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or call PBS Home Video at: 
1-800-PLAY-PBS