Interview with an Anonymous Artist

National Art Education Association

Interview with an Anonymous ArtistAuthor(s): Cindy NemserSource: Art Education, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Jan., 1970), pp. 32-35Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3191401 .

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INTERVIEW WITH AN ANONYMOUS ARTIST

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BY CINDY NEMSER

This interview takes place on a stretch of barren marshland somewhere on the coast of southern New Jersey.

INTERVIEWER: (looking around suspiciously) Well, I think we will be safe here. Now, tell me, who are you? Where can your work be seen?

ARTIST: Please--no names, no places. I speak for a group of artists whose identity must remain a secret. Their art is disguised as non-art. To reveal its location would destroy its validity.

INTERVIEWER: You mean your group never shows at museums or art galleries? ARTIST: Absolutely not! We believe that art viewed in the context of commercial art

galleries or publicity-ridden museums is doomed to be experienced in a

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narrow, inhibiting manner. You come to those places primed for an aesthetic experience. You feel gypped if you don't have it, and, what's more, it better be the right kind of aesthetic experience.

INTERVIEWER: How could you do away with this unbearably artificial situation? ARTIST: There is only one solution. We must get art out of the galleries and museums.

Artists must confront the public on the city streets, the town squares, and the local countryside. Robert Rauschenberg said he was acting in the gap between art and life. We believe that that gap should be eliminated entirely. We want to make an art that resembles life so closely that the viewer will be unable to disentangle the one from the other. Then he can respond to art without any preconceived aesthetic assumptions.

INTERVIEWER: Then you would not let your viewers know that they are having an aesthetic experience?

ARTIST: Certainly not. In fact we deliberately withhold all clues that might reveal what we are up to.

INTERVIEWER: But don't you believe that one gains more out of an aesthetic experience by knowing something about its aims and intentions?

ARTIST: Not necessarily. By being able to respond to a seemingly natural phenomenon or situation, the viewer can react in a completely natural manner. He could never achieve much spontaneity if he knew he was viewing "art." Through anonymous art the passive spectator is transformed into an active participant. He becomes deeply involved as a total being, bringing to the experience all his own deep-seated emotions and ideas. At last he can react with genuine feeling, not the artificial simulated response he has been taught to associate with a work of art.

INTERVIEWER: If your productions are so life-like, how can you call them art at all? ARTIST: Let me assure you. Our creations may imitate life, but they are as carefully

conceived, constructed, and executed as any traditionally accepted art form.

INTERVIEWER: What kind of art experience do you offer? ARTIST: Here are examples of the works of three artists who choose to remain

anonymous. Artist #1 works on natural scenery. He adds globs of jello to the other assortments of flotsam thrown up on the sea-shore. He festoons the beaches with bright yellow ribbons, and stains the ice with vivid Day-Glo paints. The waters of the ocean nearest the shore turn bright green after he saturates them with vats of green paint.

INTERVIEWER: He sounds like a mod queen Mab-a landscape painter in the most literal sense of the word. What about Artist #2?

ARTIST: He also plays pranks on the natural order. Streams flow upward because of his manipulations. By his ministrations, carved-out hollows of sand, resembling the work of some amphibian creature, appear on beaches.

INTERVIEWER: (pointing to the right) You mean that large hole over there might be his doing? ARTIST: It's possible-but I don't think he knows this territory.

INTERVIEWER: Does anonymous Artist #3 redecorate scenery, too? ARTIST: No. He prefers to do his aesthetic acts in a man-made setting, and incorporate

people as well as objects into his events.

INTERVIEWER: He sounds like a happener. ARTIST: He isn't. There's none of that self-conscious posturing in his activities. His

most recent creation consisted of a brilliant series of consecutive actions. First, he arrived in a small Midwestern town passing himself off as a research soil sampler. He took various specimens from the locale and departed. A month later, dressed in artist's regalia, he returned in a small panel truck which contained some undisclosed objects. In the backyard of a rented house, this eccentric intruder erected a tent which he kept brightly lit day and night. His erratic behavior caused a minor sensation among the local populace. Peeping Toms came from everywhere to check up on these strange goings-on. Then as suddenly as he appeared, the mysterious interloper departed. Within the confines of the tent, the perplexed townspeople discovered five apple seedlings, nurtured by the earth samples of their native soil.

INTERVIEWER: A nice performance indeed, but I'm rather disappointed. After all, messing up- I mean manipulating-the scenery, and mystifying the man on the street are not exactly innovations in this day and age. Famous and not so famous artists are doing similar things right at this moment. To name a few:

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Oldenburg, Heizer, Oppenheim, Kaltenbach, and Long have already invaded the urban complex, the town square, and the more remote backwoods regions.

ARTIST: True, these people are making an effort to reach out and communicate with the general public. Nevertheless, they are simply making futile gestures.

INTERVIEWER: What brings you to that conclusion? ARTIST: They are afraid to go all the way toward merging art with life. Falling back

on the traditional gallery or museum exhibition, they inevitably mark their efforts as art, not life. Their activities and creations may look and sound unorthodox, but their means of presentation is depressingly conventional. The press releases go out, the opening occurs, and the critics and reviewers arrive and dutifully record. Why, only recently, a whole plane load of artists, critics, and coordinators were carted up to the Cornell University museum to view the "natural phenomena" constructed by well publicized artists. The critics did what was expected of them, and the first description of their venture into the hinterlands has already appeared in detail in John Perrault's column in the Village Voice.

INTERVIEWER: What about artists who do not show in galleries or museums? ARTIST: Just by identifying themselves they mar the spontaneity of the viewer's

experience of their art.

INTERVIEWER: But without galleries and museums to promote them, how do these artists become known to the public?

ARTIST: They form groups and issue statements in esoteric art magazines. Then the media gets to them, and their names appear in major newspapers and periodicals, not to mention appearances on the Today Show.

INTERVIEWER: Well, if you wish to dispense with all the claptrap and publicity seeking, why are you telling me about your ideas and intentions?

ARTIST: My dear, we as artists must acknowledge our debt to the past as well as our responsibility to the future. It is our duty to art to assume both obligations by informing a small art-oriented group about the actual motivation behind our activities.

INTERVIEWER: I guess the art historians will place you between the earth movers and art dematerializers, acknowledging, of course your debt to the abstract conceptualists, and documenting your influence on the erotic perceptionists.

ARTIST: Yes. It will be annoying to be categorized along with the rest, but we will have had the satisfaction of having done right by past and future generations.

INTERVIEWER: Your stoicism is admirable, but don't you think that you are being just a little elitist by keeping your secret confined to a small "in" group?

ARTIST: Heavens, no! Don't you see that those who don't know that they are involved in an art experience are the real beneficiaries?

INTERVIEWER: And you really think you can remain unknown?

ARTIST: (gives a sigh of resignation) We'll try our darnedest, but I suppose the media will get to us eventually, and then everyone will know about anonymous art.

INTERVIEWER: I can just see it. People will be constantly on the alert. They will begin to expect a happening on every street corner and an artist in every backyard.

ARTIST: Say, it might not be bad at that! Imagine, we as artists will influence man's everyday living consciousness. We will have altered his whole way of perceiving his environment. Certainly loss of anonymity is a small sacrifice for bringing about this idyllic situation.

INTERVIEWER: Your selflessness is overwhelming. I don't know how to thank you for all the time and trouble you've taken to give me this interview. It took great moral courage on your part to reveal yourself to me.

ARTIST: A man must do what he has to--but, please, do me one favor.

INTERVIEWER: Anything you ask. ARTIST: Please get this interview down on paper before your next deadline. Anonymous

art has remained unknown for too long-and one more thing. INTERVIEWER: Yes.

ARTIST: When the dreadful moment arrives for us to step forth and disclose our identities, make sure you spell my name right.

Cindy Nemser is a staff critic for Arts Magazine.

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Interview with an Anonymous Artist