Richard Tuttle in "Structures" - Season 3 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

RICHARD TUTTLE: My favorite artist
is Jan van Eyck,

who gives you a picture
which satisfies

all attentiveness
to the smallest of the small

and then all attentiveness
to the largest of the large.

I mean, that's one of the things

that a picture
is supposed to do for us.

Art is... is life, you know,
and that is... you know it...

it in fact has to be,
you know, all of life.

You know, the awareness,
the beauty,

the, uh...

the ability
to give to a viewer something which

makes their life
more what it is, more what it could be.

Uh, and it's...
it's the essential....

it's like, uh, the clue
to... to everything.

It's a very kind of remarkable
thing to connect

the kind of mind freedom
that's available to us

in this particular landscape.

It's about harmonizing, it's
about living in the beauty,

not so much just looking
at the beauty.

It's about how it gets into us

and finally,
uh, feeds the spirit.

You look out
and you literally feel

you're the first person
who was ever here, you know?

A lot has happened here in time,
but then it's erased so quickly.

Part of that is the wind
and the rain,

you know, cleanses the soil.

I mean, footsteps left yesterday
are... vanish over the night.

Happily, my earliest beginnings

were with, uh, you know,
Betty Parsons and the circle

around the New York school
of abstract expressionists, and

Western space was definitely
one of the elements

in how that art was composed.

I was doing white paper
octagonals on the wall,

and we were at a show in,
uh... a museum in Dallas,

and a critic came along
and made mock introductions

of "Oh, this is Richard Tuttle--

he's interested in impermanence
in the arts," you know.

And... and she didn't...
she did that to Betty,

and... and Betty just
immediately snapped back

and said, "What's more permanent
than the invisible?"

[ chuckling ]

In any art form,

there has to be an accounting
of its opposite condition.

You're going to be
a visual artist,

then there has to be
something in it

that accounts for the
possibility of the invisible,

the opposite
of the visual experience.

A painting or a sculpture
really exists

uh, somewhere, you know,
between itself, what it is

and what it is not.

Recently I refined my sense
about where my limitations are.

In some sense, I was happy
to think that each piece

would be a kind of conjoining
of architecture and calligraphy.

Those then exist
as definable poles,

but then look in between,
and that is this rich, rich vein

that we don't really know
very much about.

As this house was being built

we talked about installing works
of mine in the Klein collection.

Yellow is a color of happiness,

but I think it's also a very
important color in general.

I was tremendously enthusiastic
about this yellow

and these pieces
that were yellow.

What's really interesting to me

is that you're weaving
two separate groups

in three separate rooms,

and so you get a division
and a fluidity

that connects with a place.

In some level, the installation,
to use a horrible word,

you know, would be
this sort of a weaving

between, uh, my persona
and their persona

um, and... and to create
a... a kind of world

in which you can invite
your guests.

[ playing classical piece ]

An exhibition might be likened
to a city.

You don't even need to go to all
the places if you don't care to.

It would be enough for a visitor
just to visit one village,

but you have a choice,
and I... I think

that's the kind of exhibition
I'm... I'm really thinking of.

I think this village idea is
a way to invite the visitor in.

Each village takes on
a personality.

You enter a room and you can
scan that in a second,

and wherever you're attracted,
you can go in that direction.

The sculptures sort of function
as a way

to help you get
into that drawing space,

which is really intimate.

Each village has
two groups of drawings.

Each set of drawings seems
to concern themselves

with, say, how the piece
meets the floor

or how the piece
meets the wall--

either concern of the floor,

which is like concrete issues,
you know,

or how it meets the wall, which
is more like abstract issues.

It's an old division between,
you know, realism and idealism.

You know, the ideal says

that the experience happens
inside of you, you know,

which then would mean
that everything

from the conception of drawing
to the color itself

is inside of you,

and the real is that
everything is outside of you.

But finally, you know,
it's art and art alone

which can actually say
what is the truth, you know?

You could say that
the wire represents form

and then this overlying is...
is... is chaos.

Where in the world do you ever
find an absence fill a solid

and a solid fill an absence?

This piece as an artwork
can simply be giving us

those two, uh,
really disparate, uh, solutions

to, uh, the definition
of matter,

uh, in one, uh, created form.

I mean, the wood chips are in
some sense a decorative element

that's an elaboration of
the underlying wire structure.

You can see the actual grains
of this piece of wood here.

You can experience that
as really a pure drawing.

Everything in life is drawing,
if you want,

and drawing is... is absolutely,
uh, quintessential

to... to knowing the self,
you know,

and I would even say
that the art that survives,

you know, from one generation
to the next

is the art that
actually carries something...

that tells us, tells society
what, uh... about self.

One would say in order to draw,
you have to be able to see.

Well, what about making drawings

about an area
where you can't see?

And, you know,
as obsessed as I am

about, you know,
the experience of seeing

and the details and so on,

what I find most interesting
is the part which I can't see.

And so that...
that's what I want to do

in this Drawing Center show--

I just want to look
at these kinds of places.

For example,
ask somebody to draw blue,

you know,
make a drawing of blue.

You know, you can't do that.

The pieces are self-portraits,
uh, I mean, as all artwork is.

Maybe it takes me ten tries
to make a drawing.

Sometimes the art is actually
in the tenth one,

you know, the final one,

and other times
it's in the whole ten.

A couple times in my life

where I... I really can look
at something

and... and say that, you know,
"I did not make that,"

but in your heart you know,
you know, you know, you know

that you... you did, uh,
go beyond yourself

or you enjoyed this, uh...
uh, kind of a... a leap.

You get beyond this barrier
that normally we live within.

Art, unlike life, needs
this heightening of reality.

I realize that culturally

we walk on a different ground
than is in fact there,

and that
the psychological ground

is a little bit higher
than the actual ground.

The emotion, you know,
of an art response,

the energy of a... of a...
does to me feel like motion.

We use that word, "moved"--
"I am moved," you know--

and yet we know
we're standing right there

and we have this experience

of being stationary
and moved at the same time.

And I guess what I'm trying
to figure out

is how to sustain the polarity

where you can be
the paintbrush of society,

but also you can make
the society your paintbrush.