Wolfgang Laib in "Legacy" - Season 7 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

(ambient electronic music)

(tapping bowl)

Every human being should know what the sun
is,

and I don't have to explain to somebody what
the sun is,

and I don't want to explain to somebody what
pollen is.

That is something which I sifted it there
to enjoy it and share it with many people,

but it's not my task to explain this.

That is the secret and the beauty
and the power and the potential of all this.

(tapping sifter)

For me, the pollen is the beginning
of the life of the plants and not less.

The pollen has an incredible color,
but it's not a pigment for a painting.

All the pollen I collect is in the close vicinity
of the village where we live in southern Germany.

And the most beautiful is the dandelion pollen.

When you sit days and days in a dandelion
meadow,

it's an incredible experience.

And it's something totally different
than what our society thinks

of what you should do or what you should achieve
in an hour or in a day or in a week or in

a month.

(tapping sifter)

The pollen piece at MOMA was pollen from hazelnut.

They blossom in very early spring.

For one month about, I can collect one jar
of pollen.

The pollen which was here at MOMA
was from the early '90s to last year.

(tapping sifter)

It's about 15 to 18 seasons.

This was by far the biggest pollen piece I
ever made.

The other pollen pieces I made
were like one-quarter of this piece.

My father worked as a doctor
in a small town in southern Germany.

There was this one friend, Jakob Braeckle
is his name,

who was this artist from a local town.

He was the only friend of my parents.

He showed my parents many things
which somehow became very important

for our family and for myself.

And I think this glass house which my parents
built

and which we are still living in

somehow wouldn't have been possible without
him.

We had an incredible, beautiful relationship.

I think the main influence was
he was very interested in Chinese philosophy

and Laozi and Brancusi.

When I was 15, I could remember by heart
all chapters of the Tao Te Ching.

My favorite chapter was one, number one, and
number 25.

This exhibition at Sperone Westwater,
the space is a very difficult space.

It's not an easy space.

It's a very interesting space.

I think I found a very beautiful solution,
to use two floors with an old work, with beeswax

ziggurats,

and then combine it with new work,
with all these brass ships.

This installation was for me the first time
I did something like this.

Test the integrity of all this, it's like
one piece.

My beeswax step pyramids which I made,
I give the title Ziggurat,

which refers to Mesopotamian step pyramids.

For me, it was always very beautiful
that you can do something today in the 21st

century

which is not an imitation
but which has a connection to art which is

4,000 years old.

Question: what is the boats actually made
out of?

— Brass.
— Brass?

— Brass, yeah.

They actually brass boats?

Brass, yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Very simple brass.

Right, right, right, right.

Even the tips?

Even like even like the tip?

Yeah, yeah, it's one piece which I just folded.

Oh, okay.

It's not welded, nothing.

Just like paper folding.

Ah, got you.

Oh, how did you get the brass to bend like
that?

Yeah, I did that.

You did it?

Yeah, I made all the ships myself.

Ah, got you.

Once in in high school, I wrote like a 10-page
thing.

It's about Brancusi, and it was about Laozi.

And the teacher came, and in front of the
whole class,

he said, "Wolfgang, you really cheat.

You had the Laozi lying there under your table.

I don't believe this."

And then I got really upset,
and then he said, "And who is this Brancusi?

I don't know who this is."

(chuckles)

"Who is this?

I never heard about this man."

And then I then I stood up
and somehow by heart, in front of the whole

class,

I recited the whole chapters out loud.

I got so emotional.

When I look back, it was already this very
strong strive

for something totally different.

Pollen is far from the other works,
but still, I feel in such a major exhibition,

in a gallery,

it's very beautiful to have the shelf of pollen
jars there.

So this is beech.

This is pine.

This is hazelnut, the same which is now at
MOMA.

And this is from moss, a very fine...

It's an extremely fine...

It's nearly like a liquid, so fine, it really
falls.

It's also very good.

Smell it.

Yeah, my father had this incredible interest
in art,

and then, towards his midlife, it was a real
crisis for him.

He had begun to paint
and made really very beautiful white paintings.

But then for him, of course,
it was impossible to become an artist,

so there was a real tension.

And for myself, I was then a teenager,
and not like a normal teenager who would oppose

his parents.

I was following everything what my parents
did.

I think we only lived three years in this
glass house,

and then there was this travel to Turkey.

People in small villages invited us into their
homes,

simple houses with rooms totally empty, with
some pillows,

and my parents came home, and all the furniture
disappeared.

The main thing was that we wanted to have
only the art

in a space and not to be disturbed by anything
else.

The beginning of the '60s,
my father saw these books about Indian tantric

art.

He was somehow so struck by the drawings,
which looked like a Mondrian, but were like

400 years old.

And then he said, "I want to see this country
where this is coming from."

And this was actually the reason
for the first travel to India of my parents.

And we, my sister and I, we were like 15 years
old.

India is overwhelming.

I mean, it's for everybody overwhelming.

And I remember the first night in Delhi,
we arrived like five o'clock, and then we

took a walk.

You could not walk on the sidewalk.

It was people were lying there, like one after
the next.

It looked like a cemetery.

My parents began to weep.

So it was a real emotional experience on every
level

and then seeing all this artworks and all
this architecture

but also the human existence, which was even
much more...

It was the deepest experience, I think.

My parents began to support a village in south
India.

I have this studio now there some years.

People always think that I became a Buddhist,
which is not true at all.

I chose not to enter a monastery.

I became an artist,
and art is about not knowing where you are

going.

(tapping tub)

I was very interested in art when I was in
high school.

For me, artists were like semi-gods,
and when I met then some artists

and it was for me such a shock (laughs)
and to the other way that I began to study

medicine

with all the ideals you can have as a doctor,
to save mankind and humanity.

In German university, you can go to any lecture
you want,

so I went to philosophy and psychology and
psychiatry,

and I was searching, searching.

I couldn't imagine to go write a thesis in
a lab.

Then I found a professor who said,
"If you have really a good idea

which is totally independent."

Then I asked him if I could write a thesis
on the hygiene of drinking water in south India,

which would give me a total freedom
from all this kind of thing.

And he said, "Go ahead.

If you do it well, there's no problem."

And that's what I did.

And then I went to all these villages
around the village which my parents supported

and stayed there for half a year.

And that was somehow when I came back,
it was such a intense experience that I...

And I began to carve this brahmanda, this
egg.

"Brahmanda" means "the egg of Brahma,"
so it's like a universal egg.

The beginning of the universe, that was the
idea.

I made this work in 1972.

This was a boulder from nearby, from a quarry.

It's a very hard stone, and I worked here
on top of this small hill near the forest

for three months.

It was a very intense time,
thinking of what I want to do with my life.

Finally, when it was finished, just before
Christmas,

everybody thought I would never come back
to the university.

All my friends, they called, and,
"Where is Wolfgang?

What is he doing?"

Finally, when this was finished,
I said to myself and to my parents

that I would not become a doctor.

I really wanted to become an artist.

But I would finish my medical studies,
which would take another two years.

From 1972 until '74,
when I then finally left the university,

these two years were so important for me,
was, I think, the most difficult time in my life,

where all this tension built up,
and then, only like half a year later,

I made the first milkstone.

(milk pouring)

The first milkstone was the direct answer
to what I had seen at the university and in

the hospitals.

I'm still amazed that I could give such a
direct answer

with such an artwork.

How temporary milk is and how
eternal a stone is.

Art is, for me, also that it can have these
connections

over many centuries or thousands of years.

I always thought about beeswax.

It's very close to pollen.

The first wax pieces were very small works.

I wanted to have just only beeswax,
but then, of course, it's not stable really.

It's not an easy, practical thing to do.

I work from the inside, and somehow,
I had to have my head inside these small pieces,

and I remember this experience
of just having only your head inside.

What an incredible experience this was,
and I had really the idea to make a space

which not only your head is inside,
that your body is inside,

just surrounded by beeswax and nothing else.

The beginning of the beeswax spaces I made
were for exhibitions, so it's a different

technique

where I made slabs which you can install.

The one which I made now at the Phillips,
they can be permanent,

so I put the wax directly on the wall,
and it's like one piece, and you cannot remove it.

My smallest wax room I ever made.

So it's a more intense experience.

The aroma of the beeswax has a deep feeling.

It's like going into a cave or going into
another world.

If the beeswax is in the dark,
it doesn't have this golden glow,

and it's a very simple way of having this
golden glow,

with just a simple light bulb,

because that gives this yellowish light on
the beeswax,

which has a connection to the medieval paintings,

the golden background.

I began these works in this small village
in southern Germany for myself.

I was 27 or so, and I had the first pollen jars.

I had the first milkstones.

I felt this is the most important thing in
the world.

This will change the world.

I was extremely naive.

I had this strive to show this as soon as
possible

to as many people as possible in the world.

(visitors chattering)

My idea of exhibitions in showing this was
about this.

I felt this is the essence of life
and this is something which holds the world

together.

And it was not about becoming a famous artist.

It was really, I felt, this is what I searched
in medicine

and somehow I did not find it in the medical
science.

I feel I never changed my profession.

I did with these things what I wanted to do
as a doctor.

(visitors chattering)

(ambient electronic music)

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(ambient electronic music)