Nancy Spero in "Protest" - Season 4 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

NANCY SPERO: Even though I have over 500 
images in my art at this point to choose from,

nevertheless I have what you call “stars.”

Like stars in Hollywood, they’re appearing 
and reappearing in different roles.

Certainly the ancient Egyptians, 
the musicians, are stars.

And I had made a design with many 
of these ancient Egyptian images

for this subway station here in New York City.

See a continuum, see a procession.

Now this procession is kind 
of formalized and dance-like.

Let’s say it could be for an opera.

After all, this is Lincoln Center.

I’d like to think that I have all 
layers of conceptual in the art,

that it...it’s easily read.

But on the other hand, I do 
hope that it’s more complicated

and that it’s not just one 
easy read and then that’s it.

See I have too much stuff.

This is from about....

This is a lot of years and 
many different people printing.

I guess maybe my art can be said to be a protest.

I don’t know if it’s railing against the 
world or something, but I am protesting.

And as an artist, I…

I am privileged to create in things 
the way I think that they should be,

you know because that gets 
out my message to the world.

See I’m interested in messages.

And if people want to take something 
from it, I am thrilled of course.

The War Paintings are certainly a protest 
because it was done with indignation.

The U.S. had gotten involved in Vietnam 
and I remember during that time,

reading newspapers and I remember this 
terrible image of like this woman running from,

you know from her house that had 
been set afire by helicopters.

I thought of the victims in Vietnam

and what they would think of these war machines.

And that was working on me and then 
I started painting the War series.

But I felt then that the symbol of 
the Vietnam War was the helicopter

and that became my primary subject matter.

I think the political came by having 
a partnership with Leon Golub.

My husband, my partner really of over 
51 years, he’s recently deceased.

Leon always had some sort of 
foot in the political in his art,

whether it was overt or not.

And I think that that aspect of 
his thinking influenced me a lot.

This back and forth of ideas and discussions,

I think that Leon’s painting is incredibly ugly,

which makes it incredibly beautiful.

But the main thing is the 
power and the action in it.

It was pretty damned difficult 
contending with someone who was so,

not only did he do big 
paintings and fantastic ones,

but you know what, he...he was really 
brilliant and that’s pretty hard.

I had a really hard time 
contending with such a person.

But I decided I, I just had to do my thing

and so I started doing very small work.

Very small work.

Figures that are sometimes 
an inch tall or even less.

Almost microscopic. And so 
in a way that’s a retort.

And also it’s a retort to the large works 
of the mostly male New York artists.

Leon of course always in my mind was an exception.

How totally sympathetic he was to my art.

Over the years the work has evolved 
from a more traditional format

of either the rectangle or the square 
or whatever in front of one’s eyes.

And if we move our eyes, it would be 
eventually nothing there but blank wall.

And so I have let it continue.

This is in Malmö, Sweden that I 
showed it, THE BLACK AND THE RED.

This was an enormous room.

In seeing this huge, huge gallery, I just 
kind of took a deep breath and I put…

I put the paper piece around in a single band.

I continued along printing on 
the wall like a trompe l’oeil

to reiterate the images in the printed piece.

And when the show was over, I could 
pick up and take THE BLACK AND THE RED,

that which was on paper, but I 
couldn’t take THE BLACK AND THE RED,

that had been printed on the wall.

It’s like theater, when the 
play is over, it’s finished,

it only stays in the memory of 
those who saw it and remember it.

SPERO: So we’ll have a few 
on the ground, yeah. Wow.

SAM KUNTZ: ...(OVERLAP) have 
them on the ground or not?

SPERO: No, no I thought we’d...maybe 
just a couple on the ground you know.

Yeah.

Ooh, that’s good.

Ooh, ooh, that’s really white.

Oops, oops, oops.

Yeah, yeah.

SPERO: I was invited to be in the Venice Biennale.

I thought, what in the devil am I going to do?

And I was thinking about one of the 
paintings I had done in the War series.

And in that I had done a maypole 
with bloody severed heads

hanging from gaily colored 
ribbons from the maypole.

And finally I thought to literally make a maypole.

So I just started working on the maypole with 
the help of Sam Kuntz and Marybeth Craig.

Marybeth’s in printing the images

and so Sam has been working her part of 
the magic in transforming these heads.

SAM: Nancy has such a facility to 
render an expressive, pained figure.

And what’s amazing to me is that 
if you look at these carefully,

they’re very small and the line 
has been drawn very quickly.

And this expression is articulated perfectly.

I mean and...and they’re 
all different. It’s not....

I mean it’s, it’s a kind of freedom that she has.

SAM: Some of these might even have 
been done as part of the War series

which would be 1966 through ’68.

She saved some of these heads that were 
never incorporated into any of the pieces.

And so now we’re blowing them up 
to make printing plates of polymers

so that we can print a back 
on aluminum on a large scale

and make these disembodied heads.

SPERO: But I feel that the images I 
did long ago which I can’t recoup.

You know I mean I cannot 
re-draw them, in the same way.

I’m on another ...I’m on 
another direction altogether.

But I thought that I couldn’t cannibalize 
what I have done forty years ago.

I have the idea of printing on 
the metal and then cutting it out.

So I’ve envisioned it then that it 
would be on this metal and that maybe,

I don’t know how we’re going to do this,

but have a few kind of together.

And so if they banged up against 
each other it would clank.

If one goes into jail for instance and hearing the 
clank of the door and there you are, you’re....

I mean it even leaves me breathless now,

thinking about that, the sound of it.

And there you are.

I mean, there one is in this jail you know

and one can’t get out until that 
guy with the keys or whatever left…

lets you out.

And, and, and so it is all of these 
things running through my mind

and what it means to be metal and severed heads.

And so it kind of got a feeling of…

of the resemblances of all this brutality.

Just trying to show the insanity, 
really the insanity of war.

I actually have cannibalized my own 
work to kind of liberate myself from

what I have done and what I 
really want to do in the future.

For Spain I had this idea of the repetition 
of that image that I so blatantly liberated,

I saved from the ancient 
Egyptian, uh, Mourning Women.

Then I thought that somehow to emphasize this…

this kind of prayerful, looking up as if 
looking up to heaven or god knows what,

I decided that it should be on the 
ground, like a real funeral procession.

In the gallery in New York I 
retitled and kind of redid it again,

but entitled it Cri du Coeur.

It was the first piece after Leon died.

Like a “cry of the heart,” but to me it must 
mean something kind of like intense emotion,

almost like praying, a cri du coeur you know,

plea-ing you know with heaven or…

or something like that I think by the gestures.

It’s almost...it’s always so strange,

it’s so empty and then you just put one…

these stupid little things in and…

and it’s too much then. This is good.

Maybe over near.....

Why do I do art?

What isn’t a reason for doing art?

I don’t know, it does need something.

That’s why it’s not finished, 
because I can’t think you know what…

what to do.

SAM: Maybe it needs something 
to throw it off balance.

SPERO: Mm-hmm, Mm-hmm.

SAM: Something awkward.

SPERO: Mm-hmm, Mm-hmm. I think I have 
to think about it in another time.