Andrea Zittel in "Consumption" - Season 1 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

(upbeat music)

ANDREA ZITTEL: Painting and sculpture,

they're forms of representation.

In some way, these are all attempts to

talk about my own subjective

interpretation of the world,

and to also do something that will relate

to other people's experiences within it.

I grew up in very suburban southern

California.

I think my parents had this fantasy about

building a country home in the middle of

nowhere. So my dad built our home on the

edge of a mountain. By the time I was in

high school, it was completely built up,

it was suburbia. It was only after I moved

to New York that I realized what a gift it

was to come from someplace so normal.

I moved to New York in 1990, and the first

place I lived in was this really tiny

storefront, also in Brooklyn. At that time

I was doing really different work. I was

actually working with animals and breeding

them. For instance, a breeding unit, not

only would it influence the way that the

animal would develop, but it would also

have everything built into it that the

animal would need for living. So you know,

after doing this work and living in this

tiny space for a while, I think that it

started to make perfect sense to try and

create structures like that for myself to

live in. The living unit was meant to

function for every single thing that I

needed. You know, I didn't have a shower

or a bathtub, so it had this large plastic

sink that I could take baths in as well as

wash my dishes in. It had a built-in

kitchen area, it had a desk area, it had

a sleeping area. It was sort of like

building a house, just something I could

own, and would be permanent and it would

just go inside of the houses that other

people would own. I literally believed

that when I made that piece and I had it

completely perfected. That it would solve

all of my problems, you know? And it was

this really wonderful period of my life of

feeling like I was moving towards this

concrete direction. And the irony is that

when I finally finished the living unit

and it was perfect there was nothing left

to do to it, I felt completely despondent

and very sort of, like, listless, and

depressed. And at that point in sort of

gauging my own reaction I had this

revelation that no one really wants

perfection. We're obsessed with perfection

we're obsessed with innovation and moving

forwards, but what we really want is the

hope of some sort of new and improved or

better tomorrow. I think that my work's

always been influenced by the places that

I've lived in. In fact, if you look at

every body of work, you can trace it back

to particular circumstances that I've had

to deal with. Well, I mean, the kitchen is

a good stop, sort of, on the A-Z tour

because what I said about the kitchen and

how I used the kitchen. Andrea is not a

cook, right? Which is really obvious

because she's got a teeny, tiny

refrigerator and- my chicken lived in the

kitchen. And her chicken lived in the

kitchen. But you have this huge table in

the presentation room which facilitates

big dinner parties. We did stay strict to

Andrea's, you know, sort of utilitarian

bowl system of the small, medium, and

large bowls. –So you just used bowls for

your dinner parties? There were times

when we just used-–I've always wondered

if you cheated. - Oh, yeah. I think it's a

really nice thing to talk about, is this

floor. I always felt it was this modernism

put into a domestic framework. One of the

things, too, that I wanted to do with

this house was to sort of reflect the

earlier generations of modernism.

I usually point to the outside,
because that's really one of

the most beautiful parts of the house.

Particularly a garden in Brooklyn.

The bathroom at the A-Z, Andrea's house,
is the tour de force of the house.

It's sort of the epitome of
organization, comfort, and utility.

I mean, the floor is really particular in
that Andrea hand-laid every tile, right?

Painstakingly.

Well, they come in square foot
sections, but I did that by myself.

And then you'll notice that the medicine
cabinets, instead of throwing all

of your stuff under the sink abyss,

is organized in "Correction,"
"Tools and implements,"

"Subtraction," and "Addition."

And "Addition" is sort of obvious
things of –

cosmetics, skin lotion, deodorant.
And "Subtraction"?

Is things for cleansing and taking away.

And then everything on top is
organized, labeled accordingly.

That's sort of it for the bathroom, huh?

For nine years I've been
doing the uniform project,

where I have one garment
that I'll wear for a season.

Originally it was for a six-month season,
now it's for a four-month season.

Oh, this is a really good one.
This is from last spring. And it's rayon.

They kind of get worn out and
tattered by the end,

after wearing them for four months.
It started because I had an office job

and I was supposed to wear
something respectable to work

but I didn't have that much money.
Sort of colorful spring dress.

You know, most of the time, we can
afford, like, one fabulous outfit

that you really love to wear.
But there's some sort of social stigma

against wearing the same thing two
days in a row.

So I decided that, you know,
in my case, actually, like,

variety seemed more oppressive
or restrictive than continuity.

So this is basically your standard
personal panel.

For several years, I could wear anything,
as long as it was made out of a rectangle.