Susan Rothenberg in “Memory” - Season 3 | “Art in the Twenty-First Century"

ROTHENBERG:
If you don't know what you're doing

out here in the Southwest
in this kind of isolation,

if you don't understand that
you're supposed to have work

and a purpose to every day,

you're going to float off
into the stratosphere

or move very quickly
back to an urban center.

[ scraping ]

The first year was a very hard
adjustment just to light--

just to the amount
of light here.

So I did make modifications
in my studio plan

to cut out some light

and to reproduce the New York
situation of floodlights.

I love red.

I use a lot of red.

I use innumerable tubes
of white.

Uh, I try to dirty down
most of the colors that I use

rather than use them
in their pure form.

You squeeze a tube of color
and you see this bright green

and it's just frightening.

You know, it's this pure color
that somebody mixed up

and you just have to
immediately get after it

[ laughs ]

and, uh, make it, you know,
fight with orange or something.

I tend to make all my paintings
looking down.

It's just a point of view
that I've established

since living here.

I think you don't have that
in the city,

but living on the hills
and ups and downs and stuff.

And then being on a ladder
so much,

I'm starting to have
this kind of natural way

of not looking at something
but down on it.

Say there was a dead cow
in the creek once--

which there was--
mysteriously.

Um, I saw the cow
from about 40 feet above.

And that painting became
"Galisteo Creek."

So I've taken
what I learned outside

and brought it
into these interiors.

And now that's pretty much
what I want to do with them.

And the studio painting
became extremely green,

but that was out of
the preceding body of work--

the "Domino" paintings--

where I felt free to take green
right out of a landscape context

into any operation I cared to.

Green became
a very exciting event.

It felt fresh.

Red-- red is just like
part of my internal palette

a... a warm, warm tone.

And then my other favorite deal
is dirty white,

because...

it would be
too bright and colorful.

[ laughs ]

And it's not my nature.

There's got to be traces
of 15-year-old turpentine

in those cans.

Every painting carries through
the same brushes

and the same moves
as the last painting.

But again,
if I need a clear color

and I don't see that any of
my cans are going to give me

anything but, you know,
the dirty down,

I'll start a new can

and actually once in a while
wash a brush...

so it will be free
of old colors.

I was a very social kid up
through college, past college.

And, uh, no, and I don't think
anybody that knew me

in high school or college
would ever have thought that I

would have been
successful at anything

much less spending
80% of my life alone

in a white room...

[ laughs ]

making work. It's... it's odd.

It was a wonderful world
in the early '70s.

Artists worked with dancers.

It was very mixed up.

It was very interdisciplinary.

I performed with Joan Jonas,

and that was so much fun.

And I had studied painting.
I was interested in painting.

When I got a studio
and first started painting

and then I started getting
a little attention for my work

and I had a show
and I sold a painting.

So then I started making
more paintings,

trying to find out my identity.

And when I stumbled
on the horse,

I went, "Okay, this can be
my Jasper Johns Flag."

This can be nothing to me,
because I don't like horses.

I can draw a line through it
and make it flat.

I can take all the things
that I've learned

in the last couple years

and negate painting
as much as possible

in terms of illusionism
and shadow

and composition
and stuff,

and that was my run
from '73 or '74 to '80.

And that's what I guess I made my reputation on,
because they were acceptable

as paintings and
acceptable as, um...

not going backwards.

But most artists really wish
they had a series

where one painting would lead
to the next painting,

and it would be
a variation on it.

And that's what happened
in my early career-- the horses.

But the paintings
are more of a battle

to satisfy myself with now and
I do not have a sense of series.

This, as you see here,
these are two snake paintings.

Two paintings that are about

this idea I had called
"meaningless gestures."

And two paintings
that are a reflection

of my domestic situation
in the house there.

And each of them,
the second painting

seems to complete the series,

which is weird,

because I'd like to get
a hold of something

and be on that idea
for a couple of years at least.

But that's not happening
at the moment.

I'm able to work through

periods when there's no real

important idea in my mind.

I can draw;
I can learn to make a clay pot.

At least I find some reason
to work just about every day.

Because the block
is the terriblest.

It's just terrible.

It's terrible to have a couple
of months where you can't...

You're disheartened, because
you think everything stinks.

You just do.

It happens.

If you're not in your studio
physically most every day,

you've denied the possibility
of anything happening.

So even if you're reading
a detective novel,

you should be there.

And then sometimes you just

throw your book
down on the floor,

march off to a painting

and say,

"Ah, something's wrong
here and I'm, you know... " Pull the table over,

throw my painting shirt on
and get going.

And sometimes hours pass
that I'm working.

But I almost always do something

before I go in the house
to watch the news.

I mean, even if I put

a wrong stroke on something or change a contour,

and that's
the only stroke I did, I do it

just to have done
some work that day.

[ bird cawing ]

No, I think I'm remarkably lucky
to be on this piece of land.

It's not that I think
any special thoughts.

It's just...

I walk usually
about 45 minutes.

It's just completely
part of my pattern,

you know, and sometimes I walk
fast with exercise in mind and sometimes I amble.

It's a wonderful place to walk.

There's three or four
different terrains to walk in.

It's meditative.

I'm always looking at the ground to
look for a beador an arrowhead

or what seems to be
two pieces of the same pot.

If you see...

I think that piece goes there.

That one definitely goes there.

So it's a small piece
of a

11th- or 12th-century pot.

I keep looking at this painting
and thinking, why can't I just nail it--

just make it be whatever
it's supposed to be and move on?

So it's constant reviewing

and I can't say what
makes me say that's wrong,

that stays, that goes,
this should be longer.

It's, uh, it's sitting there
and looking,

and going, "Uh-uh,

I have to do something."

And it had to be done
with color.

One's been bugging me for--
it's been around the studio for

four or five months
on and off, reworked.

And I kept thinking,
"Oh, it's okay.

I'm not interested any more
in doing this, so it's okay."

But it simply... wasn't.

It's closer I think now
to where I can leave it.

It's very few paintings
that come fast and sharp,

like the small snake painting in
there was two days, three days,

and I don't want to touch it.

It is what it is
and it's... it...

It's, uh, I like it.

I'm not really
a "less is more" person, but

I figure...

a hand on a table
suggests a human being.

I don't want to get too literal
about things.

I want the viewer to be able
to do the work, too.

And I find a dragonfly beautiful

and a snake beautiful.

Yeah, and many things beautiful.

But it's not a... a...

a goal to try for it or expect to achieve it
in my own work.

I'm trying for,
let's take truth...

[ laughs ]

some kind of truth
about some kind of thing.