The Brooklyn Rail

Do I have any philosophical insights about aging? I realize now that I’m well past the threshold of seniority. I was always very interested in people who were older than me, and I was always able to communicate with them easily. Now they’re not someone else, they are me. Or, better said, I am one of them. I didn’t start out revering my elders, and I don’t do that now. However, people who’ve had long and complicated lives may have things to say that other people, with less experience and less time on the clock, don’t. A lot of older creative people are haunted by the realization that they’re no longer young. They’re not sure they can sustain what they had once done, what they were recognized for doing. They worry about the flickering of the light.

I’ve always tended to take the long view, though up until now my long view was usually based on things I learned from people older than me or on things I’d read. Now it’s wholly based on my own life experiences. At a certain point you’re past the emotional rollercoaster of being young: seeking affirmation and getting or not getting it, not trusting it, seeking it again, getting it or not, and not trusting it, seeking it again and not getting it, then freaking out. Age enables you, to some extent, to come to terms with your limitations. (There are those who never do, like Louise Bourgeois, but that’s another conversation.)  Once you’re relieved of the immature ambitions and anxieties of youth, then, if you still possess your faculties, you can make decisions and take actions that can yield meaningful results.

Now, when I don’t finish something during the day, it really stays with me. When I do, I feel very good. Regrettably, I haven’t done much due to the whole pandemic—and to Trump. I’m waiting for the worst to be over, hoping that it will indeed be over. A good day is when I’m able to paint without interruption, to concentrate on a finite number of variables, be it shape or painterly materiality or whatever. To be absorbed in that process without questioning or critiquing or quoting is satisfying. The challenge is to stay focused in the moment without being derailed or distracted. 

You mention my previous curatorial life and ask how that has informed my painting. I would simply say that having seen an awful lot of art is beneficial. I don’t have to try to be something I’m not or to meet a standard I can’t possibly meet. I focus on the matter at hand. Having an imaginary museum in your head isn’t necessarily a stumbling block. It frees you to do what only you are given to do. I want to make something that’s present, vivid, organic. I’ve done it just enough times to know what my idiom is and how to deploy it. I just have to get into the studio and, once there, keep the process in flux, knowing that there’s no definitive creation, only the thing you’re working on and what that might become. Painting, like writing, is an unceasing, unpredictable, intuitive process that’s never finished. You never write the last word or paint the perfect picture. The point is to try to produce something worthwhile. Something that justifies your time and the attention of would-be viewers. 

I don’t consider myself a scholar, much less a theorist. I’m not a person who sets out to weave all the threads of my imagination into a conclusive, unified statement. I’m more interested in particulars rather than generalities. Art historical projects I’ve undertaken, like the books on Bourgeois or Guston or Richter, can (and did) take decades to complete. Comparatively speaking, painting—at any rate the kind I do—offers immediate gratification, proof of life.

What does the future look like? I can’t wait for Trump to go down in flames—humiliated beyond description as a warning to others tempted by his hubris, arrogance, and belligerence—so the rest of us can take our minds off him and redirect our mental energy. I’ve been in a holding pattern for far too long. It’s hard not to see the train headed straight for us.

The highest order of business right now is being able to set up a rhythm in the studio that allows me to get to square one on a regular basis, then to square two and three. When I’m in the studio, I don’t necessarily feel relaxed but for sure I’m stimulated. I might feel anxious sometimes, but my anxiety is nothing like Guston’s proverbial doubt of the 1950s. I may have individual doubts, but I don’t see my situation as epically existential, though I might very well be just that. 

The future may spin various threads. I know there’s a painting out there that I have yet to make, and I don’t know what it looks like. I’ll try anything to get that painting, or several versions of it, started. That’s one thread. Another thread is the memoir I intend to write, thanks to a Guggenheim grant, about people and situations I had the privilege to know. (Being a white middle class male gave me access to corners of the art world that may have overlapped but were not part of the milieu into which I was born.) The third and most poignant thread is how to live the rest of my life in a dignified manner, in the company of people I love and trust, so as not to be a burden to them or to the scenes and activities from which I’ve derived so much satisfaction.

This conversation, recorded via Zoom on August 1, 2023, was transcribed and mutually edited.