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Anti-Post-Actualism

An Interview with Karen Eliot


"Whatever I do is going to take a long time: we have progressed beyond self-referentiality into the hypercritical: like Beuys and Nelson before, we are dealing with romantic concerns - desire, time, fashion"
(Reprinted from the July 1986 issue of Flash Art, with permission)

Q:
How would you compare your most recent objective paintings to the self-referential hypercontinuity of post-modern 'artists' in the progression from Warhol to André Stitt? Are you concerned with that 'constructivist flavor' and the other members of the blood and guts school of time-based media?

A:
Well, clearly I have these influences, but actually I think I fall closer to the anti-theoretical side of this kind of activity, for instance my early paintings of art history texts are a clear example of trying to express through painting the same 'activity' that Stitt tries to express by crawling around on all fours with a neck brace on. This may seem trivial in light of Beuys, but we have to reject this 'quality appeal' on the basis of our anti-modern dislike of the 'star cult' surrounding Beuys. In fact, many of my recent paintings suggest that Beuys' 'death' was intentional, and that it was contrived precisely to 'trivialize his work.' You may of course notice that neither Burden nor I have 'died.' We are willing to reject the 'easy our' of trivialization through post-modern 'star cult' status.

Q:
An clearly this is the connection between your work and that of the constructivists, the 'false' timelessness?

A:
Actually, it is hard to say. Post-modern artists have had to take a step back in order to 'rediscover' the past, and then another step back to analyze the first step. This is why I use the term 'Anti-Post-Actualism' instead of simply 'Post-Actualism.' This term 'precisely' dictates a second level of removal from the 'real' value of an action - it is not a mind game, but instead a calculated revolutionary statement: We are not willing!

Q:
And the constructivists?

A:
Well, you may have noticed that my approach, which is perhaps 'Duchampian' if anything, is to take the style of an artist like Malevich and copy him, but only taking fragments which were least important to him, like the kind of tacks he used for hangings, or the light bulbs in his studio... whatever was most marginal, and then this 'plagerism' becomes the underlying 'marginality' of my own work. (Remember Duchamp's emphasis on the studio-editor). I essentially use it but ignore it simultaneously, as if to say "these historical links are not the only content!"

Q:
Your most recent paintings consist of 'simple' lists of artists names in chronological order, printed in green ink on canvas by machine. When you use the names of your current girlfriends to title each painting, are you 'trivializing' your sources, or is it a radical-lesbian statement against the primarily male dominated influences of (post)modern art?

A:
Well, either interpretation would hold water, but I prefer to think of it as a certain ordering of the universe, simply I dated so-and-so, and I was influenced by these artists at the same time. I don't really think it's name dropping, because I take it one step further than that by using my lover's name as title. Also, these 'post-constructivist' paintings are 'anti-conceptual,' since the focus is on the 'person' and not the 'idea.'

Q:
In this way, you can avoid two of the major traps of the New York Scene, the need to be 'innovative' and the need to be 'authoritative.'

A:
I think so, this is the primary 'mood' of my life. The 60's were about 'learning,' the 70's were about 'having,' I think the 80's are about the synthesis of the corporate and the radical - about 'learning as having.'

Q:
What about the 'nineties'?

A:
In New York, you never know, but I suspect that we won't see much changing for twenty years, we've set it up that way.


The Fake Is More - Karen Eliot's Painting in the Critical Discourse

Reproductions

  1. AMY, acrylic on canvas, 1985
  2. CINDY, acrylic on canvas, 1985


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