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Lari Pittman in "Romance" - Season 4 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

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    Lari Pittman:
    I think as chaotic as American culture is—
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    sadly, ironically, or even perversely—
    I thrive on that.
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    I’m able to carve out
    a tremendous amount of freedom
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    and even more particularly in Los Angeles.
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    I can control this idea of aesthetics and beauty—
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    micromanage it more here
    than I could in cultural situations
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    where there is such a strong,
    established code of aesthetics—
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    that it’s still the wild west on some levels,
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    that you can still paint 
    it any which way you want.
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    I want to offer a painting that
    somehow the viewer has to stand in front of it
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    and almost not believe it.
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    But in the act of not believing it,
    what they’re actually seeing,
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    they get swept away in it.
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    Everything about it is fake and artificial,
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    but they get transported somewhere far away.
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    That’s a great thing.
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    The work is visually available to everybody.
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    Multiple viewers can approach it very differently.
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    For example, I’m always excited when
    the UPS man or the water man comes in,
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    to the front of the studio, and makes a delivery—
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    and they immediately just respond 
    to the work and thumbs up,
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    that type of thing.
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    I will not high five though.
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    But I’m also interested that 
    the work occupy a denser,
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    critical territory that would 
    require a different type of audience,
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    maybe a different type of visual literacy.
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    The work is not confined to one demographic.
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    The work has the capacity to 
    navigate between these very,
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    very distant polls of the 
    populist and the elitist.
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    There’s a very, very strong 
    Mediterranean core to who I am.
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    And quite frankly I need a lot of sun.
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    I was born in Glendale, California,
    but my formative years were in Colombia.
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    My mother is Colombian.
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    My father is southern,
    from the United States,
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    from a Protestant background.
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    So I grew up in a very...not 
    a contradictory world,
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    but a hybrid world.
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    I had a pet chicken named Jaime,
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    that I remember my aunt 
    Ligia bought for me at Sears
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    when we were living in Colombia.
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    Then we moved to my mother’s 
    family town near the equator.
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    I was not going to leave Jaime behind.
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    My father asked the captain or the pilot 
    if I could bring the chicken on my lap
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    and that was fine,
    it was all cleared.
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    My grandmother was with us 
    living for a while in Cali
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    and I requested that we make 
    a traveling outfit for Jaime,
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    so we made a vest.
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    I was just very proud and I was never made fun of.
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    It was just that kind of 
    idea of totally normative.
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    And so my father was with me
    and I was allowed to have my chicken,
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    fully dressed for travel on my lap.
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    I think that that kind of pre-condition of
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    allowing me to express a fey side,
    I guess, as a young boy,
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    was given full reign and never, ever commented on,
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    and I think that that’s why the 
    decorative aspect of the work
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    comes systemically, organically,
    naturally to me because
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    it was really allowed to bloom and blossom
    and wasn’t curtailed or curbed when I was a child.
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    I’m grateful for having a charmed life
    and a certain amount of privilege
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    I’m very excited and thankful for.
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    But even within that framework of
    living somewhat in a bubble,
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    I think what keeps me radicalized is
    being aware of the overwhelming hatred
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    that is exhibited by the American population
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    and through actual legislation 
    against homosexuals.
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    I can lead quite a pretty life (LAUGHS),
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    but it’s always quickly clarified by those
    very aggressive strains in American culture which,
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    in a way, wonderfully puts me in my place.
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    I will not leave painting.
    I won’t leave it.
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    I won’t leave it down.
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    I think it comes from a deep cultural pathology
    that maybe homosexuals might have.
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    That is, you fix something up—
    that kind of service component of one’s kind,
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    of looking at things and fixing them up.
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    That’s kind of how I looked at
    painting in the ‘70s,
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    because it was a completely
    abandoned thing.
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    And I was kind of thrilled that it was abandoned.
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    And I maybe had a chance to fix it up.
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    The impetus for this painting
    really comes from Mexican retablo
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    which is a devotional painting on tin
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    and I think it dates roughly 
    from mid to late 19th Century.
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    I’m an avid collector of these anonymous painters—
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    of these retablos that were 
    used as devotional imagery.
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    I’m attracted to them ironically as an atheist.
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    I’m attracted to religious art
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    simply because it usually 
    shows a hyperbolic moment
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    like the suffering or martyrdom of the saint—
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    or, in this case, a very dramatic moment
    in the life of Christ.
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    So I do look at this religious image
    through a secular lens.
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    And then, actually,
    this little painting was able to
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    give me the cues for the color 
    palette in the painting itself.
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    Although now I need to have a more 
    destabilizing color introduced in it.
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    I’ve always taken from the retablos,
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    but it’s more about a type of painting technique—
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    a kind of decorative, applied arts technique
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    by which they embellish the 
    surface of the retablos.
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    And that I’ve been doing for over twenty years.
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    But this was the first time I sampled so directly.
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    I think it was because it was about figuration.
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    Every morning, I have a walk about,
    looking at all the cactuses that we’ve planted.
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    Really studying them.
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    This is the first time that instead of inventing
    or fabricating a painting,
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    that I’m actually referring to
    something very specifically
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    that I’ve been looking at every morning.
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    What I think still has to happen
    in a painting like this is that
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    we’re seeing the setting and 
    we’re seeing a list of nouns.
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    And there are a list of adjectives.
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    So the nouns are all being modified.
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    But, linguistically, what isn’t happening 
    in this painting is the verb yet.
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    In all of the paintings—
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    and especially in the ones that I showed
    in New York at the end of last year—
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    it really is a form of poltergeist or 
    animism that’s inhabiting the scene.
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    The tableau.
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    Clearly, something is occurring 
    in this area of the painting.
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    Some sort of shift of identity of a space,
    but we can’t name it.
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    But, then, a way for me to 
    somewhat sublimate it back down
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    and for it not to seem too spectacular,
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    I’ve placed a spider web over it to somewhat...
    like a net, to somehow corral the effect a bit.
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    It’s a central part of the painting,
    but again it’s still not enough
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    for it to be the verb of the painting.
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    And somehow I think the verb of the 
    painting has to occur somewhere in here,
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    somehow to activate the branches of the cactus
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    even at the expense of it being 
    a little bit more allegorical.
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    That I wouldn’t mind.
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    I’m not resisting the invasion of
    that aspect of my private life,
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    which is the garden really clearly
    finding its place in the work.
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    I don’t respond to the idea of nature at large.
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    I prefer landscaping.
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    And landscaping as a way to
    push back a little bit the chaos of nature,
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    of the kind of violence of it.
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    So it’s imposing a type of 
    rational gardening structure
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    over these cactus and succulents.
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    We’re not as keen on a type of naturalism
    so the garden has a very decided mannerism to it.
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    The cactus are the surrogate structure.
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    And the garden is one elaborate metaphor.
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    One of the things that gardening 
    induces in the gardener,
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    for good or for bad,
    is a rumination on mortality.
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    Because you have a concentrated and
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    very compressed relationship to 
    the life and death of plants.
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    You think about that a little bit more
    than if you didn’t garden.
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    It becomes a heightened 
    synopsized life and death cycle
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    over and over and over again.
Title:
Lari Pittman in "Romance" - Season 4 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21
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Video Language:
English
Team:
Art21
Project:
"Art in the Twenty-First Century" broadcast series

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