Fail Again, Fail Better

00:00:00 I'm Ednner Sassin, director of the center. Um, our next program will be in February and the subject is being old in literature. Uh and then we are planning a weekend event on artificial intelligence that will involve five roundts probably one Friday night, two Saturday and a wrap up and one on Sunday plus a wrap-up. So u

00:00:34 today the program was proposed and arranged uh taken care of organized by Anmarie Lavin who will be introducing the participants and then we'll move on. So I'm Ann Marie and um I'm I'm going to introduce the participants. Um, their fulllength biographies are printed in your programs and online and on the

00:01:04 Helix website. So, I'm going to read abbreviated bios and and ask each of you to raise your hand as I read your names alphabetically. Um, so Michael Coffee has written extensively on Samuel Beckett in two books and in essays. He's also published books of poems, books of stories, and a book on baseball. Stuart Finstein is a professor of neuroscience and former chair of the department of biological sciences at Columbia

00:01:36 University. He's known for his work on the neuroscience of smell and for his books on ignorance and on failure. Christopher Lion is an art historian, critic, editor, and publisher. [laughter] He's especially known for his work on David Smith, Nancy Sparrow and on Agnes Martin and Luis Bourgeoa. Mark Palisanti directs the publications program at the

00:02:06 Metropolitan Museum of Art. He's known for his numerous and prize-winning translations of pros and poetry from the French. And he has written books on a range of subjects including translation, surrealism, and Andre Brton. >> That's not the half of it, but you know, um enough. >> Nancy [snorts] Princenthal is a New York-based writer, critic, and teacher whose book Agnes Martin, her life in art, received a pen award for biography.

00:02:37 She's also the author of Unspeakable Acts: Women, Art, and Sexual Violence in the 1970s. And Hannah Wilkkey, a longtime contributing editor at Art in America. She has taught at Bard, Princeton, Yale, and the School of Visual Arts. Okay, now you're now you're all introduced. I' I'd like to go around the circle starting with you because you're right in front of me. um and have each of you say a few words about your work

00:03:07 and the nature of your interest in our subject. Sort of what brought you here today. >> Wow. Um so you've mentioned a catalog resume of uh David Smith and and working on that I had the opportunity to write an essay [snorts] about the reception of his work. And in the course of doing that, I realized that um it was a two-way street that Smith was being evaluated, judged by the um

00:03:40 the critical establishment of his time, by galleries and so on and so forth. But he was simultaneously shaping that reception through his photography, through the things that he had to say. And what what fascinates me about the subject of failure here is not only an individual's struggle with whatever obstacles they're trying to deal with, but the way the surrounding structure that they live within, the social structure, the

00:04:11 market, the institutions, the critical establishment, and so on shape, no give that artist an opportunity to positively navigate their work. And so the notion that failure can become a generative function is something that I'm really fascinated by and I hope get a chance to talk about. >> Wonderful, >> Nancy. >> So um thank you and Marie. Um I think

00:04:44 we're probably all going to say something about the productive uses of failure because otherwise it's going to be a very glum afternoon. So, and but I you know I I think that's the meat of the question. Um as well as writing about Agnes Martin and and Wilki and other um truly sad subjects. Um I am in the in in the midst of writing about Luis Bourgeois and both Agnes Martin and Louise Bajoad um came to success and I think success is something we're also

00:05:15 going to have to try and um define. What is it? um late uh Agnes Martin didn't come to New York until um uh 1957 she was already in her late mid late 40s and you know she didn't really achieve success for another full decade um so she was past middle age when when she got any recognition at all um Louise Bourgeoa um waited a little longer this is slightly you know

00:05:47 misrepresenting what happened. Of course, they all had had moments of recognition before then. So, the question becomes um is that long period of gestation um a failure to achieve um attention or is it a productive um kind of formative um period? both Martin and um and Bourgeoa also had periods later in their

00:06:17 careers when they weren't able for one reason or another to um to carry on. So those are questions that I think may turn out to be germanine to all of us. >> Okay. Thank you for the introduction. Um well in studying Samuel Beckett, one of the things you have to grapple with is his um his embrace of failure. um in fact is positioning it as a uh as an aesthetic goal. Um not something

00:06:48 to make it work better but somehow to u I think he said um to dismantle the regime of representation. So he was trying to show um how language systems, visual understanding of things and and audio and technology [snorts] um really did not reflect um what he understood as the mystery of being. And he he sort of objected to um those

00:07:20 artists who worked in what he called the domain of the feasible. He wanted to show he could take things apart and yet maybe something would come through. Even the nothingness would come through. And he he adopted that in 1937 when he was 30 years old and stuck with it for the rest of his career till he died in ' 89. So that's something I still am failing to understand. Um and I think understand Becket is probably a failing proposition

00:07:52 anyway. But I find it fascinating and I can't quite get out. >> But he made it a successful failure. >> Yes. >> But he didn't have success for a long >> catastroph. Exactly. Um so what am I working on now? I'm working on a couple of things. Um, in particular, I'm preparing uh a three-part course uh for the 92nd Street Y on surrealism, which opens up all kinds of questions about success and

00:08:23 failure. Um, because the the legacy of serialism, which is something that I'm going to be talking about most extensively, is one that in this 100th anniversary year, uh, last year was the official 100th anniversary of it launching, is something that's been in questioned a lot. You know, what's left? What remains? Why is it important? Why does it still matter? What did they succeed and what did they fail at? Um, a little later today certainly is something that informs very much my attempts to come my my no doubt failing attempts to come to g grips with the the

00:08:54 legacy of surrealism. Uh, and then the other thing is um I'm finishing a translation of a novel by a man named Jeaneshnos. Um, and I mentioned this because first of all, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that interestingly, Echnos's work is also all about failure. And indeed, one of the stories he tells in a very brief memoir that he wrote is his failed meeting with Samuel Beckett, who he absolutely idolized uh, and completely blew. [laughter]

00:09:25 So maybe we'll [snorts] talk about that too later. Um, I think what what interests me about the subject in general is the seduction of failure, the seductive quality of failure. You know, we've talked a little bit, we've touched a little bit about the the productive nature of failure, but I think there's also a a seductive aspect to failure. Um, I mean, it's a hell of a lot more interesting than success for one thing, and it's a lot more sympathetic as well. Um, and you know, I'm sort of I'm I'm very aware of the fact that we live in a

00:09:59 American culture, Western culture, world cult, whatever you want, you know, however you want to to broaden it, where failure is considered failure. You know, we have a we have a president who's whose favorite epithet for people he doesn't like is a loser. Um, you know, people who have failed. And what this completely leaves aside is the first of all the question of what does failure mean? What does success mean? Um, and what's really so awful about failure to begin with? You know, why do we have this instinctive notion that somehow that's bad? So, maybe we'll talk about

00:10:31 that a bit too. >> I'm a token scientist. Um, and I I came to failure actually through ignorance. So, really deep into it here, I'm afraid. I started teaching a course at Columbia University some years ago called ignorance, how it drives science. And um and the course consisted of having members of our science faculty and some of our humanities faculty come in and talk about what they didn't know.

00:11:02 Uh I thought after four years of of being an undergraduate at Columbia and having your poor brain filled and jammed with facts and so-called knowledge, it was useful to actually know what we didn't know. Um and so that course went on and I eventually wound up writing a book on it. That book was sort of successful. So the publisher Oxford University Press came to me and said, "Would you like to write another book?" And I said, "My really don't know anything about anything else except actually failure. I know a lot about failure. We do that in the lab all the time." Great. Write a book on failure.

00:11:33 So I did. And the interesting thing I think though the interesting connection between the two is that if you think science and many other endeavors are driven by what we don't know uh that we're much more interested in what we don't know than what we do know just compiling the facts sticking them in encyclopedia. Um then the really deep sort of unknown is what I would call the unknown unknown. the stuff you don't even know you don't know which I know sort of many people in this room will immediately think of Donald Rumsfeld although he's not the first person to

00:12:04 have said that and it's not as actually stupid as it sounded coming out of him but um but I think that is a deep kind of ignorance that what we don't know we don't know and how do you get to that and I think at least in science the way you get to that is through failure failure is the portal to the deep unknown the unknown unknown you do an experiment you expected to get a result, you don't get that result. Um the experiment fails now the game begins. I think and with this I think it was um

00:12:35 it's a great Isaac Azimov who once said that uh that what every scientist really wants to see or hear when they look at new data a new experiment the results of a new experiment is not Eureka but oh that's weird because that means something interesting is going on. So I think failure means something interesting is going on. >> Okay. [snorts] >> And you [laughter] now what? >> I

00:13:08 any responses to to any of that from any of you? >> Well, I would I would say this generative aspect of failure is what we probably want to um we all want to concentrate on, isn't it? That what we want to think about >> the place and this connects a little bit with French literature or English French literature. Um the the artist that I spent the most time working on but prior to getting getting involved in David

00:13:40 Smith was Nancy Spiro. And you can't really think of NY's work without thinking of Anthony Narto came for her the the prod that moved her into her mature work uh through the Artto paintings and then the CEX Artto and Artto I think you know maybe gets the championship for failure in his in his actual life. I think Susan Santag says something like he in his life and in his work he was a failure. Um and yet was

00:14:12 he? >> But you know postumously his writings transformed western theater uh and and were taken up by artists as different as John John Cage and Carol Neman. I mean you know people really uh came to him and so I wondered about the sense of almost generational failure of of you know artists in one generation passing on the sort of like gene of failure to another. I don't I don't know if there's any sense in that but >> well the first thing that you think of

00:14:42 um when you think of opto is van go >> is >> is van go >> another one who's a perfect example of you know nothing in his lifetime but came to >> now this sort of preeminence >> who Artto identified >> who Arto completely identified with who he wrote about and who you know he felt was sort of his spirit brother um so so yeah in a sense the the generational shift I mean that was kind of an almost unbroken I mean the the interesting thing about you know the failure I think has its

00:15:13 kind of ground zero in in uh in Balszac's you know the the the unknown masterpiece you know 1831 the this romantic idea of the artist and the failed artist especially which is such an interesting thing is pu reaches maybe into the 50s maybe pollic is our last kind of really like you know failed artist and then there's there's a movement in that I associate with minimalism of process art of art that's

00:15:46 about incremental steps that removes in a very important sense removes failure from the table you know Chuck Close would talk about that you know I I when he was a a junior Abbeck painter and imitating um duning you know he would become so anxious like is the painting finished? I don't know. I couldn't tell. Um, but when he found his style and you think of Phil Glass, you think of Solowit, his friends, it was like the

00:16:17 next day I know exactly where I'm going to start. I want to start in the fifth row with the 13th thing and I'm so I just wondered about culture helping to eliminate failure, chance, risk and what you think about that. I think that the generational question is is really interesting and important and I think a lot of it um is scrambled by the way that um art is periodized and the way um

00:16:49 history >> um you know goes to the goes to the winners. Um and you know when I when I discovered in doing the Bourgeois research which I should have known from doing um the Martin research is that um the exhibition 10 which was this landmark exhibition for um in 1966 um for minimalism you know which is sort of the end of anst you know the end of failure the end of you know grappling with things that seemed in a previous

00:17:21 generation to have been um uh absolutely necessary for creativity. Um that show was simultaneous same building on East 57th Street with the Fishbach show called Eccentric Abstraction which happened to be sort of a springboard for um >> Louise and others [snorts] >> for Louise Bourgeoa and others who were making that's too right and Aza was in it too. So you know these things are happening at the same time and of course they lump together people who turn out

00:17:51 not to have that much to do with each other which is of course the way these you know record record setting you know or paradigm establishing um exhibitions wind up being. Um it's also the case um when I first embarked on this um Louise project um that I came across a book which was humorous to me um a novel by a woman named Idra Novi um who wrote at the time this is about five or six years

00:18:22 ago a wellreceived popular book about um both Agnes Martin and Luis Bourvo. Oh my god. Oh my god. >> Hater. Um that essentially celebrated them through these fictional characters as hermits, you know, is like people who were and this is such an, you know, it starts with Van Go or maybe it doesn't start with Van Go, it starts further back, who knows where it starts. Um it starts um with romanticism and um the

00:18:54 romance of uh being you know being isolated artists against the the you know the the world against bourgeois society against um against um everything that academic art for instance is is meant to stand for. So you know I I don't want to spend too long on this reply, but um but it was amusing to me how completely

00:19:26 misunderstanding the kinds of people that Agnes Martin and Luis Bourgeois were because of course they were very ambitious for their work. They were very involved in the art world. So was Van Go. So of course were the was Artto for God's sake, you know, and all the surrealists. You can't be an artist in the world without being in the world. You know, you can't live that mythical, although Martin did spend some rather isolated

00:19:56 periods, many artists do. But at some point, what you do is you engage with the work around you, the world around you, even if you're still grappling internally with failure. But what what really strikes me is how enamored we all are of the you know the romantic myth of the tortured solitary genius and >> that you know it affects so many people. um it's it's applied to it's it's sort of layered onto so many so many people so many artists who

00:20:29 you know if anything I think maybe the issue is more that sort of generational moment um and and generational anticipation >> because you know Van Gogh I think of also Rambo >> a lot of all the O's right u um you know these were not people I mean Rambo was I wouldn't call him exactly a butterfly, but he was definitely out there. Um, you know, I mean, he was he was involved with people. He was in his own way fairly flamboyant. >> Last decade of his life, yes, he sort of

00:21:00 went off to become a businessman in in in in North Africa. Um, but even then he was dealing with people. He was making deals. He was, you know, he was he was doing stuff. Um, and as far as he was concerned, his poetic career was a total and utter failure, which is basically why he stopped writing at the age of 20 essentially. um and you know live live spent five years sort of figuring out what he wanted to do when he grow up and then the last decade um until he died of cancer at 37 um doing doing business

00:21:30 because basically for him the definition of having failed at poetry is that nobody was publishing it and he wasn't making any money um you know it was so again we like to think of him as this sort of solitary genius in Garrett you know scrawling out these these you know the season in hell and these tortured you know or really fireworks of, you know, on on the page, uh, which they are and and, you know, completely groundbreaking and what he did with form of the time and, you know, completely ripped it up and threw it in the air and put it back together again. But for him, this was it was kind of

00:22:02 careerist when you get down to it. Uh, you know, he latched on to the Parnassians and particularly Verlin because Verlin was an upand cominging poet who was having success and he figured this guy's my, you know, he's my train ticket. Um and when it didn't work out it was like let it go you know move on to something else. It was really very pragmatic. Um and the letters that he wrote, I mean a lot of what we know about the last part of his life are through this huge number of letters that he wrote to his family mostly to his mother who of course in the you know in

00:22:33 the literature and in the in the uh in the mythology is this person this awful person who he hated and you know who ruined his life but in fact he stayed attached to her for for his entire life and he would write her these long detailed letters which were basically a way of saying hey ma look I'm making money I'm making a success out of myself I just made this good deal with this guy and sold him, you know, 50 pounds of rice or whatever it was, uh, for a profit. And this was, you know, then he moved on to gununning, which also kind of sort of made him some money. And, um,

00:23:03 you know, this was the definition of success for him. And who knows where he would have ended up, you know, Rambo the tycoon if he hadn't if he hadn't gotten cancer. But of course, the fact that he did allows us retrospectively now that the poetry has sort of gained traction and become, you know, one of the one of the monuments of of French and world literature to imagine him having, you know, having been in his little solitary world scratching it out. Uh, and that's what really mattered to him. Not at all. >> So, it's everyone has their own

00:23:34 definition of failure. Mhm. >> I I was just um I was thinking you have to have a tolerance. I'm thinking of Becca. What you said about Becca. I know all his letters were full of how he was failing to write until until he wrote and then there was a little got a little bit better, you know, fail fail again, fail better. Um but if this started in the early 30s, is that what you said? Yeah. that his his decision about how to write. But look how long he tolerated no

00:24:07 s I mean no nothing nobody knew about his work or anything until his wife got his work published and I think that was just after the war. >> Yeah was 1953 waiting for God was 1953 >> but he had published before then >> he had published before then but not to any success. Um but >> so a tolerance or or or a a liking a comfort with he was stubborn artist and he was completely dedicated. >> How compelled are you to doing what you're doing?

00:24:38 >> Yeah. His whole life someone said was all about aesthetics. Everything he saw was was seen through an aesthetic framework of some sort. >> Sorry. But um I I've been thinking about um you know the raress I think of failure as I said as a as an aesthetic goal. Um and I think there are other examples of it. I mean I'm just thinking about in the last couple of weeks. Um and you know everything from punk rock where to be to

00:25:09 to be able to play music well was not what you wanted not was not part of the scene at all. it was people who couldn't play. Um, somehow that was considered letting something otherwise that you couldn't reach into the work. Um, and I think that's what Beckett felt about his, you know, dismantling these systems of representation that it would let something else in. And in 1937, he wrote this, he met a guy, a German book seller in Germany. He was spending six months there kind of as Nazism was really

00:25:41 taking hold. Um, and they were hiding art in the basement and things like that. Um, and he said to Axel Khan, you know, I think the greatest goal of a writer today is to tear holes in the language till the something or nothing comes through. And um, I just think he kind of he evolved but never left that um that ambition till in the end in worst word hoe. you know, it's ever tried, ever failed, no matter, try

00:26:12 again, fail better. Um, that was finally the the great condensation of, you know, 50 years of work in some sense. Um, and in that work that worst ho, it's kind of interesting to look at because he demonstrates how language can be made to fail. I mean, it's perfectly readable, but it's filled with negations that, you know, the sentence sort of um cancels itself. The story cancels itself. You almost you get nowhere. Um

00:26:45 and I think that's where he wanted to try to make language be is nowhere. And yet in order to do that he had to be an absolute master of language as as his other writings show and as his translations show you know he knew what he was doing. >> Yeah. >> Absolutely. Yeah. It's interesting too. I love the reference to punk rock because um it makes me think of as well as as um of some of the surrealist precepts which is basically I mean in the in the 1924 manifesto makes a point of saying you know we

00:27:15 don't know how to write well. Um we're you know we're not writers we're not artists. were not poets. Um, and it was essentially the same kind of thing that if something was of value was going to come out through automatic writing or other forms of unconscious activity, dreams, transes, the various things that they explored. It was not about craft. It was not about making it sound good. It was not about being able to, you know, create these beautiful poems or works of pros. It was about this this kind of, for lack of a better term,

00:27:45 almost primitive state. um in theory where you were sort of letting the you know the unconscious flux seep through and of course a lot of that was was influenced by his readings very early readings of Freud um and and his interest in psychoanalysis. in Veron was a medical student uh right [clears throat] before the war and was a medical intern during the war and he was one of the first people to be exposed to Freud's ideas even before Freud had been translated into French um uh because of

00:28:16 his work uh with shell shock patients during the war and his his mentor and sort of guide and teacher uh was somebody who was aware of psychoanalysis um and there was a book that was a kind of primmer in a way of psychoanalysis written by these two French psychoanalysts where they talked about Freud's ideas that were not yet available in France but they kind of gave a prey and basically had to um preface it by saying now we know he's Austrian you know the bad guys but he's

00:28:46 still worth listening to um and and this was you know and and Berto was one of the first people to actually sort of be exposed to these and it just really struck him um and of course what really struck him about it was exactly that ability of the unconscious flux to produce these linguistic one was being crafted not the poetry that was being practiced by so-called poets but but this other stuff that he also got from his shell shock patients and he was absolutely fascinated by the stuff that they were

00:29:18 telling him which was just you know he thought the most amazing poetry he'd ever heard which basically also leads us to conclude that it's a good thing that ultimately he did not become a practicing doctor because he wasn't interested in healing anybody at all. He just wanted to keep them going, [laughter] you know, and what they were saying. [snorts] >> That brings up, I think, a really interesting paradox which may also apply generally uh in this room, which is um success can be a trap, elegance can be a trap, facility can be a trap. I think

00:29:49 many many artists have experienced that. I think Picasso knew that, you know, I mean, nobody came into the, you know, nobody came into a career as a painter with more skill and, you know, and just facility than he did. And so, you know, working against that um is something that I think um most modern artists, I mean, most artists, you know, past I don't know where we want to begin here, early early mid 19th century have um

00:30:20 looked to is how do we how do we find the um the traction, the friction that we're looking for um given our skills, given our ability, what we can do, how closely we can, you know, approximate what the academic um are are um promoting, you know, and when I was thinking about what failure actually looks like for artists um like the ones we're mostly talking about, like Becket, like um Rambo, like Artto,

00:30:52 like Brit, I mean, I think one of one of the interesting failures in surrealism is the failure to get Freud to reciprocally pay attention. >> Absolutely. Why would bother him? no use for the surrealist whatsoever. Um, but the the failure in that kind of work is when the well goes dry, right? It's not like being no longer able to sell work to the public, to find your audience, to create something compelling. It's um I think this fear haunts so many um

00:31:24 creative practitioners is how do I know there's still something there? And it's, you know, the metaphor is always about digging deeper. It's always about going, you know, to a place that looks a little dirtier, looks a little messier, looks more like a problem, looks, you know, looks like failure. And, you know, Louise Bushar was very haunted on the other side by that um emergence of objection in art was a big thing in the 80s, right? and alongside all the other

00:31:55 stuff that was happening that was very cool and and slick. Um so yeah, how not to make objection itself a commercial product and at the same time um how to still hold on to something that feels raw. >> Well, you used a really good word which is friction. Um because you know that to me sort of applies to a lot of the people we've been talking about because um you know friction is exactly what is not going on in the mainstream. Friction is exactly not what the academy is

00:32:26 doing. People don't like friction. You know they don't like being made uncomfortable and it's you know it kind of rubs the wrong way. um friction when you're doing something that is not whatever the sanctioned aesthetic, the sanctioned approach might be um it's much easier to dismiss. Now you mentioned the 80s and of course I think the you know the person I used to see in every gallery window and you couldn't get away from in the 1980s um early 80s was Mark Kustabi.

00:32:56 >> Yeah, exactly. >> Yeah. Who right u who remembers Mark Kustabi today? But, you know, those little faceless pink weird looking mannequin things. Um, I mean, this guy was ubiquitous and but it was very much the official art, you know, of of of the time. It kind of it was I mean, it was it was successful. It was it was >> it was more thinking >> Kiki Smith, Robert Gober. I mean, you know, there's there are other Nan I'm thinking of artists who were like, you know, on exhibit right now. >> I don't think Kustabby kind of rose to the level of, you know,

00:33:28 >> was very accepted. >> He's very visible. very visible and he was very accepted and you know and it didn't have much friction to it. It was it was really slick and smooth, you know. [snorts] >> Right. Right. >> So the the other side of this though is artists who read the room you know commercially speaking and decide not to go somewhere. Um, you know, I was just coming up out of the Q subway uh at 86th Street and Chuck Close Big Pictures and one of them is Alex Catz, many times larger than life-size. And I

00:33:59 remember running into Alex at the opening of the Sigmar Pula show in at MoMA in 2016. And you know he was just kind of like watching the passing show the way he does you know [snorts] and I and so I said he said you know looking at Pula's work an American artist could never get away with this and I thought that's an interesting comment [laughter] you know because it's it there are boundaries that are you know Chuck Close

00:34:30 used to say your style is what what you're doing when you're discovered >> really So there there's that other side of it, you know, that that recognition of invisible fences and boundaries. >> There are also attempts at um by some artists like I'm thinking of um Jackson Mcclo in particular, a poet who was very keen about um suppressing the ego and having the ego completely come out of it, out of the production of the

00:35:01 text production. Um, did he succeed at that or did he fail at it? >> He didn't He's not well known. He didn't sell many books. Um, won no awards. Um, [snorts] some of his work is out of print now. Um, but I think he probably felt he was succeeding some way and but the the industry and the culture marks him as a failure. >> That that's such an interesting Yeah. So

00:35:32 when you were saying earlier that everything that Becca did was involved aesthetics. I heard it. I didn't hear it. I translated my own mind too. Everything he did was aesthetic. >> And I'm wondering about how that plays a role in everything that's being discussed here. It also bring brings to mind this hunger artist. >> I don't know how aesthetic Becket was really. Um depends. and he choose your poison, but I mean he liked Irish whiskey and brown cigars and watching

00:36:05 rugby or tennis on a little television and he liked to travel um and he loved to go to art galleries. I mean as a would know um looking at paintings was a huge experience for him. I mean he he would stand in front of a painting for two hours and study it. Um so I'm thinking it's tolerating people going what are you doing this is terrible that sort of

00:36:36 willingness to take on that kind of pain at least in the near term. >> Well I think I mean Rambo is a good example because the last decade of his life was marked by a real aestheticism. You know he lived very spare sparely um in you know in in North Africa and several different places. Um you know he had his business career but his life was extremely paired down. uh and and you know sort of absorbed some of the local culture but really you know really you know he became very thin. He you know he's sort of known for

00:37:08 and and if you see pictures there are one or two pictures that have now since been discovered of him in this period where he really looks like a totally different person from you know the the 17-year-old punk that we're used to seeing with the with the wild hair and the chubby little you know baby fat. Um, and I mean this guy has got the real cheekbones and little mustache and the little cropped hair and his, you know, uh, but it was almost a kind of a reaction against I think the the um the excesses, the willed excesses, you know,

00:37:38 the deregulation of all the senses excesses of um of his of his first 20 years where uh he sort of had to turn his back on all of that uh and just go so the whole hog the other way. uh you know, no more writing, no more this, no more that, you know, practically no more food. Um and you know, and and and that was a uh a form of aestheticism, but also in a way a kind of a a rejection and an abnation of, you know, of the of the the life that he had

00:38:09 led, including his poetic output. because every once in a while the funny thing is that back in you know back in France um Verland had slow slowly begun to publish some of his poems during Rumble's lifetime. It was not like everything happenedostumously. Um, [clears throat] and there were occasionally business people who would come through and meet him as in a business context and say, "Oh, you know, I read a couple of your poems in such and such a magazine. I don't talk about that." You know, that to him was like

00:38:40 that was not happy, was not pleased, like let's move on. This is the price of this, you know, bag of rice. Um, that was it. >> [snorts] >> is something that comes up often in in discussions of Agnes Martin because um after her decade in New York or single decade living in Manhattan um continuously she um had a period of dispirits and she she struggled um with emotional stability um so did uh Luis Bourgeo and

00:39:16 there were times when she couldn't work um when she was simply too ill. Um this was a period when um she just wanted to be alone and leaving New York, which is much too much for her. She went out to New Mexico and lived on a messa with no, you know, it's ironic that she master of the grid, you know, lived off the grid. There was no plumbing, there was no water, there was no nothing. It was, you know, it was it was pretty rustic, pretty aesthetic. And that kind of consolidated her, you know, when she

00:39:47 came back into the world, that consolidated her um her fame. So she became the lady who could sit in the desert, you know, so still and for so long that the birds came and rested. This is apocryphal. Sorry. But you know, it was something that people said of her and it did represent something true to her um to her personality and and to the kind of painting that she wanted to make, which was a very grounding um very um seeking for a certain luminosity, but

00:40:17 also a certain um a certain reliable sense of organization. Um, but you know, she was also somebody who really like I mean she she liked making money. She liked success. She loved big cars. >> So she she had a succession and they were Cadillacs and Mercedes. I mean it wasn't like I'm, you know, I'm I'm going to bomb around my cheap. >> So um often the notion of aestheticism is um maybe

00:40:49 misplaced may be misplaced. No, I think I've always thought the [clears throat] grid thing expresses a sort of aestheticism and order, but inside the grid it's very expressive. >> Yes, >> I've always been astonished at how you could do that, but she did >> and you can feel I mean that's so true. You can feel the effort and I think that's something that resonates in the work and people respond to it >> because not just that yes it was visibly

00:41:20 h every line was visibly handdrawn but it was drawn with difficulty >> and um and practice and patience and care and a searching um for serenity. Um I think that's what people um look for in the work and searching for um for transcendence for you know for happiness for joy. I mean these are that was her vocabulary.

00:41:51 >> Speaking as an art publisher I think that's also the failure of reproducing her work so often. I mean just getting that quality you know you can get the basic idea but to feel the effort in the line to feel what's going on between those grids. I almost never see a reproduction of her work that has the same I mean I know some platitude to say it's never going to be the same thing as standing in front of the actual painting but there are reproductions that get you pretty close in her case >> try try doing a slideshow >> I can imagine [laughter]

00:42:22 yeah you know I I think that was a motivation for her I think >> maybe not even you know top of the agenda list um very important but I think she she really she heroically resisted cataloges, biographies, anything like that. And um of course she hated seeing her work in reproduction. >> Doesn't work. So, you know, she made work that couldn't be >> reproduced successfully. >> I think that's no failure there. >> I think that's actually fairly common in

00:42:52 20th century art. Artists pushing back against work. I mean, you know, take thinking of Chuck Close again. you know, the the the the great big uh color paintings of the uh 70s turn back into color photographs when they're reproduced. I mean, they're just they don't have any presence at all. Um, you know, or someone like Ad Reinhardt, you know, I mean, how can you how can you represent that exactly, you know, >> or see it really without spending a good deal of time or, you know, Robert Irwin, all those, you know, disappearing. I

00:43:25 mean I think disappearance is sort of a theme. You know there is a lot of post midcentury mid 20th century work that's about how close can I get to the threshold of visibility. How you know I think it's still you know >> still something that artists are working on. >> What about institutions like pushing back against institutions and the the potentially destructive aspect of having a show? I I was just reminded you're talking about Louise that that anecdote

00:43:57 that Rob store tells about when she's about to have her moment retrospective and you know they're sitting there and she's going Steuart Davis never made a good painting after his retrospective at the Whitney and and and Ed Reinhardt died after his retrospective at the Jewish Museum. That's not going to happen to me. [laughter] >> Really? >> Yeah. This is this is all in capital letters. That's not going and of creative activity. >> She did. She was 70 when it happened and

00:44:29 she just she kept on going >> objective versus I'm listening to all this trying to sort of take in where science fits in all this where scientists fit in all this. We fail a great deal. we expect to fail a great deal for I think for science failure is not one of these issues where what you try and do is develop perseverance or grit or any of that. I mean, failure, I think, for a scientist is motivation.

00:45:01 Your experiment fails, you can't wait to get back into the lab, figure out what it is that happened. Um, what what what's the interesting thing here? Why did it go? I'm always reminded of a there's a great scientist named Alan Hodkin. He was an English scientist, Nobel laureate, worked out how something called the action potential spikes electric, how the electricity in our brain works basically. And brilliant man. And um I knew somebody who was a posttock in his lab was that the only way to get Allan's attention was to have one of your experiments screw up. He'd

00:45:32 come in in the morning and he'd go from group to group, from station to station, person to person, whatever. How's things going? Oh god, the data is going. And if but if you got to one and and the person said Allan, I this experiment is just not going anywhere. I can't make this work. Allan would take off his jacket and put it on the back of the chair, sit down, light his pipe because in those days you smoked in the lab because that was how you got things done and he'd sit there for hours working out what it was that that was failing because that was the only thing that interested him. Um

00:46:03 there's a great quote by I think it's Enrico Fairmy the famous quantum physicist who used to tell his students if you do an experiment and it proves the hypothesis you made a measurement. If you do an experiment and it fails to prove the hypothesis, you've made a discovery. >> Now, I should say both of those things are important in science, measurements and discoveries. But it is nice to make the discoveries now and again, and they happen usually when the experiment goes arai. And I and I thought a little bit about the aestheticism business and the

00:46:34 style of working. And in science, it it's quite varied. I mean, there are people who like to work alone. may like to work all night long at the bench when nobody else is around or the field biologist who will go out for months living out of nothing but his backpack or her backpack and and studying some minute bug somewhere or another to people you know like to be a member of a thousand member team working on the collider in in Geneva um and they're perfectly happy with that. So so there are very different styles I think

00:47:04 that go on that way and and very different ways of working I guess. So that that part of it um but the subjective versus objective failure I don't know but I [laughter] can make a distinction between the two and there is both screw-ups. I mean well that is not the case. I mean I think in science failure is not just a screw-up. There's a great Gertude Stein quote if I can stick one of those in here in which he says um uh a real failure needs no excuse. It is an end in itself. I think

00:47:36 that's one of the most important ideas I've ever heard about failure and whether we can embrace it as an end in itself. Not, oh gee, I'm sorry I screwed up here. I won't let that happen again or yeah, that was my fault. You know, I'm too sloppy. None of that. I mean, that's not what a real failure is about. >> There's no in every failure, is there? >> There's usually more information in the failure than there is in the success, as has been pointed out. And I think artists would feel the same way >> in most cases. If that was really easy to do, I screwed something up here. This

00:48:07 can't be worth it if it was that easy to do. Um, and and then the generational thing I'll mention quickly since that was a subject that got brought up, which is of course science always in the end fails. I mean, we know that we I mean in some ways a pessimistic sort of life. I guess I know that everything I've ever done in the lab, everything I've ever published will one day be in some way or another superseded. There'll be a better version of it. Somebody will use that maybe. But I look Isaac Newton, one of the great scientists of all times, turns

00:48:39 out to be, you know, kind of wrong about two little things, time and space. [laughter] What are you going to do? Um, but still useful in certain ways. I mean, so that's another interesting thing about scientific failures is that they remain useful. There's this idea of paradigm shifts. You know, Thomas Goons paradigm shifts. But when a paradigm shifts, it doesn't really leave everything behind. I mean, that's always the impression I think people get, which is, well, all that old science is just crap. It doesn't really none of that was right.

00:49:09 Here's the new science. This is the right stuff. And that's not really the case at all. I mean, usually the paradigm shift, as it were, includes the older stuff, objectively speaking, if you will. Um, it just extends it or shows what its limitations were. I have a a colleague who's a philosopher of science named Pasak [snorts] Chang who's at the University of Cambridge who likes to point out that um this little thing here this GPS device that we have in our phones you know so it takes it takes

00:49:42 Newtonian physics to launch a satellite which has aboard it an atomic clock which is the only thing that would be accurate enough to actually send information back about position. So that's a quantum physics thing, an atomic clock. But because it's in a low earth, a low gravity orbit, it needs to have a relativistic correction or it would be about 50 meters off. So you basically have Newtonian mechanics, quantum physics, and relativity all in the service of sending back a map of a flat Earth to us here on our phones. And

00:50:15 yet, so these things don't agree with each other in any way, shape, or form. I mean, each one would call the other a kind of a failure. and yet they're all remain useful. It's interesting too talking about the generational shift because I mean this is really simplifying it to point of absurdity but it sounds like in science that generational shift is about being superseded and in art what we've been talking about is being validated you know that you

00:50:47 were ahead of your time basically you know that nobody could understand van van go nobody could understand Rambo nobody you know at the moment And it took, you know, in Rambo's case, I like to say it took the, you know, the student movement of the 1960s to sort of really make him Rambo. Um, you know, that attitude suddenly became understandable, accessible, successful, you know, whatever you want to say. >> So, I guess that's sort of comes down to a different idea about the the notion of progress in art and science, right? I

00:51:19 mean, >> is there progress in art? I mean is Bach better than [snorts] or worse than you know. Yeah. So so it's a different sort of an idea I think whereas in in science there is some notion of progress doesn't always go well but you know um I mean we you know we hate the bomb but we certainly like anesthesia. So you know you have to take a little bit of both I guess. So it's a different >> Yeah. I think the character notion would be that you know the the success was you

00:51:52 know having finally reached that point of acceptance >> in artistic terms does it progress after that >> you know >> I mean I suppose you could say in some ways people's understanding continues to be nuanced uh you know there is constant commentary about Van Go and about Rambo and about Artto and Nancy Sparrow you know um that that that builds on and and you know [laughter] sorry in [snorts] that regard supersedes maybe what came before to some extent but but the work itself

00:52:23 >> remains. >> Yeah. >> And different kinds of art have different kinds of temporality and different kinds of relationships >> to the present and to history. So you know we've from decades and centuries now lived with you know the stream of politically and socially engaged art which really you know has to track the moment. And you know many artists who do that kind of work are perfectly happy to let it go when its moment is gone. You know it's not art that's made for you know posterity. >> Yeah. >> Um

00:52:54 you know and there are um that it's sort of a spectrum I think you know from say Hans Haka um although his work continues to be relevant. Um he's a political artist who you know was looking at the cost of of real estate in Manhattan. got a show canceled with Guggenheim because of it. A little too close to the bone. Um but you know at the same time a lot of the art that we've been talking about doesn't you know hook itself to um

00:53:26 topical issues in quite the same way. Uh so I don't know what I mean you know if we need if we need the word failure in every paragraph. Is this a failure to be contemporary? um if um you're not politically engaged. No. You know, and and looking back at work that um was of its moment is of course, you know, instructive. >> What was that moment? >> Is it common or uncommon for an artist of any sort, writer, painter, whatever

00:53:57 to consider their earlier work failures? >> Do they see progress at least individually? >> Sure. Sure. Sure. Absolutely. I mean the simple example I me mentioned Chuck Close I mean he basically destroyed all of that earlier work that looked like Duni. >> Yeah. >> So and which is an interesting thing in relation to literature where >> I I would guess that if a if a writer is of a certain stature their failures end up in an archive along with their you

00:54:27 know successes. And so >> I know editor Dr. for example disowned his second novel. >> Oh really? and didn't know. It's called Big as Life and it wasn't allowed back into print. Um, [clears throat] >> but you know, for an artist, um, work that for many artists, work that doesn't jive with where they think they're going in their their art is is discarded or destroyed or painted over or whatever. >> But you also have the flip side of somebody who could have a very big early success, the first book, the first work,

00:54:59 >> and never quite get there again. >> Get it again. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, >> we all worry about that, don't we? [laughter] >> I'm sorry. >> That just >> That's a really good point. [laughter] >> There can there can be regret. >> Yes, >> there has been regret. There are there are artists who wish they had not destroyed that. So, Spiro was one actually. >> You know, I I think this is actually a big interesting question. you know, Anson Kefir made has made sort of a career of, you know, presenting work

00:55:31 that's semi-destroyed. You know, it's work that's gone through a holocaust of his own because the Holocaust is in some way um his big subject. But one of one of his best known works has to do with a huge stack of canvases that, you know, he's basically trashed in service of presenting it as a big stack of trashed canvases. >> Well, the story did something like that. >> Yes, that's right. So it's, you know, some of some of these brilliant ideas do come around more than once. >> Didn't Kafka want all of his work destroyed on his death?

00:56:02 >> Yeah. >> Max broad didn't listen. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. It's interesting in science as you were describing before you could think of um if you you mentioned that if a hypothesis is confirmed by an experiment you say well okay well the model that that's based on is now sustained is sustained a little bit but [clears throat] it's still a model and it could still be wrong we know that because of Newtonianism for example um failure in this sense is um realer

00:56:32 right it's in a way it's like authentic because you didn't plan it and [snorts] it doesn't fulfill a wish right if you have a hypothesis your wish is that hypothesis proved correct failure in that sense is a little more authentic so I'm wondering about authenticity >> as a one of the marks of failure >> I mean although he's one of these philosophers that in in the philosophy of science or among scientists there are two philosophers they know Carl Pauper and Thomas that's kind of the end of it they're

00:57:04 Actually are many more interesting philosophers of science. But Paer is famous for his fallibility ideas which is the notion that the only science you can believe is science that can be shown to be fallible that can be disproved. A hypothes hypothesis that has no way of being disproven is worthless. Um well that's another story but [laughter] yes >> criticism >> of Freud yes in fact or at least of but I guess Freud by virtue of that as well

00:57:34 but yes so um so for popular science was based on fallibility its authenticity could only be it was only authentic if it was fallible um that turns out not to be the best way to do things but um because you don't know how much should be I mean like so Newton Yeah. shown to be fallible but still valuable somehow or another. Um there's an interesting I don't they want to get into this. It's sort of a an interesting story about failure I guess. So when the planet

00:58:06 unfortunately named planet Uranus was found um by a telescope it was realized that it would take about a hundred years for it to make a full orbit of the sun. And when the 100th anniversary of its discovery came about, it turned out it was not in the right place according to the Newtonian calculations and all the rest of that. So the thought was, oh, Newton turns out to be wrong. But a couple of astronomers, a French astronomer and a German astronomer whose names have gone by for I, it doesn't really matter, had the idea that maybe there's a more massive planet further

00:58:38 away that we can't see, but that's altering the the the orbit of Uranus in just this way. And they figured they did a whole bunch of calculations based on Newton predicted where this planet would be. People put their telescope there and discovered Neptune. So Newton is proven correct. On the other hand, Mercury also doesn't have a regular orbit around the sun. It goes to something called perihelium, which doesn't really matter. But in any case, it's it's weird. And so for a number of years, people said, "Well, maybe there's a smaller planet

00:59:08 closer to the sun than Mercury that we have trouble observing." They even gave it a name. It's called Vulcan. does not exist. The reason that Mercury's orbit is wrong is Einstein's relativity which Newton could never have predicted. So it's so close to the sun, so involved in its gravitational field that it that its orbit is affected in different ways than just Newtonian gravity would suggest. So in that case, Newton is yeah fails. I'm not sure where that story is going. [laughter] >> One failure wasn't a failure. The other

00:59:39 failure was a failure. whatever it is. >> I'm I'm interested in something we didn't talk more about in your your um you spoke about um artists perhaps Chuck Close in his early days. I don't know. But the idea of is this thing finished, isn't it? You know, all that that's very difficult. I mean, one can one can understand why someone would drop painting that way. um or even write it

01:00:10 could apply to any kind of art but um the abstract expressionist stuck with it. I mean I remember >> well >> yes and no. Well, I mean there there's there's quite a little literature about tacuning embracing failure as you know fail and fail and fail and and yet again and um >> yeah that's >> yeah and that that failure has an intimate relationship with chance

01:00:42 and risk which you know in a way is related to the scientific thing I think you know >> um so and that was something that was embraced in the ax era, you know, very vigorously and pretty much set aside, I think, in the in the in the pop and minimalist [clears throat] times. >> What do you think >> it, you know, it's complicated? I was thinking also of the um you know, sort of cunian use of um risk and chance and

01:01:12 um and also >> surrealist. >> Yeah. And and you know, going back Yes. to surrealism. That's different. I think the surrealist engagement with that is a different kind of engagement with Chance from the artist alone in the studio making that last gesture. That's a >> it's a you know, but you're still with with um say, you know, someone like Pollock or um Dacuning, you're hoping to um be challenged in your mastery. you

01:01:45 you're hoping for the splatter to take a form that you're going to not quite be able to control that there's a dialogue with um with the process with the material with the paint with the you know with the tool um and it does go to a conversation that I think we started to have when we were talking on on Zoom we weren't supposed to have done that but we did um and I've been thinking about it because I've been um writing about a couple of artists who are ceramicists and you know so every time you put the work in the kil um any not anything could happen but

01:02:17 even very very accomplished ceramicists will say yeah you know I'm not sure what what this is going to look like when I pull it out and we'll even say you know there's this um interview from an an artist I was just talking to Kathy Butterley um who works in ceramics and the interviewer said so aren't don't you get nervous when you put the work in the in the kilm because her work is very very um elaborately carved and shaped and she said, "No, you know, I love the risk. I, you know, I I sort of hope that

01:02:48 something will like go wrong. You know, that creates a problem. That's, you know, that's a stimulus. That's um and you know, I certainly think that's true with with any artist who goes into a print shop. Same thing. You know, stuff happens. Soon as other processes and other people are involved in the in creating the pro product, there's risk and there's there's that opportunity for things to screw up productively. >> Well, and since we're talking about ABEX and you mentioned Pollock and is it ever

01:03:19 finished? I mean, the person of course who also comes to mind is Lee Kraner. >> Very different artist. Lee Kraner, very different artist, but was constantly asking that question about her own work. I mean for decades you know the same painting is it finished is it not touch up here touch up there and you know uh Kefirian gesture you know also famously took a number of her own works and a number of his works after he died and cut them up to make these collages. Yeah. Um so they're you know taking these failures because the

01:03:52 work was never finished. It was not going to be finished. It was a failure. it didn't happen in the way that she was envisioning and turning them into something completely different. Um, you know, a completely different kind of success. >> There there's a sense too where a work can be rescued by history that was act that's actually >> yes >> a failure by some standard. Um, we were, you know, recently I mentioned going to the Buffalo AKG Museum and we're standing in front of this 1952 Pollock,

01:04:23 which is one of their works, you know, signature works in the collection. And we're with a a curator who is quite familiar with that collection, and we all looked at each other and went, "This isn't very good, is it?" [laughter] You know, I mean, it was made just before Blue Poles, and it's like, which is often considered Pollock's last really successful picture. And yet that work was bought in 1956 by Seymour Knox and his director and it was, you know, front and centered in the museum and it's

01:04:54 it's part of the cannon, you know, even though Ellen Landal says it's a mess. Well, but has it been rehabilitated or is it that, you know, it was the moment to buy Pollock and it's Pollock and it's the big star of the, you know, he's a big star name of their collection and it's not, you know, MoMA. Um, you know, there's also the politics of of >> That's exactly my point. You know, that that history can redeem things that perhaps we've been taught to think are. But then that raised the question, why

01:05:24 did I think it was not successful? >> But has it really been redeemed? who who taught me that, you know, was it Bill Rubin? I don't, you know, was >> Yeah, but maybe you were right, you know. >> Well, >> they have they do have an interest in promoting its success and it's its viability. >> I'm just I guess what I'm trying to do is point to that structure again, that sort of, you know, complex surrounding structure with elements of history and institutional prerogatives and the market and collectors and the, you know, these all these things that shape what

01:05:55 we think of as failures. >> And when is the work really finished? Um, we've seen three major Becket plays this season. Um, they're all 60 70 years old, but they're each time it's rolled out, it's engaging with a different world. >> And >> and what would you point to as, you know, the work? Is it, you know, what Becket typed in 1957? Is that what Waiting for God is? or is

01:06:27 it the history of these performances in different languages in different countries at different decades and different times? >> That's a great point. Yeah. >> So, >> yeah, >> there's a whole history of reception. I mean, the >> Well, you see that in you see that in architecture, you know, like when you know classic architecture, okay, we're going to restore this. What are we going to restore it to? Exactly. You know, and in the same visit to Buffalo, we visited the Martin House. And I was astonished to realize that the house that Franklidd

01:06:58 Wright designed behind it for for the member of the family was completely constructed from scratch. It's not the original house at all, you know. I mean, it looks beautiful, but it's not, you know, so what what does it mean to have an authentic masterpiece, whatever? I don't I think that question's up in the air >> with it's just a matter of curiosity almost I guess. So with with Beckett I mean you

01:07:29 the examples you use were all his plays. Do you think the novels are the same situation that they are also reinterpreted regularly as time goes by or they it seems to me they have they are more of a >> what would you call it an over? Yeah. >> Well they're more connected to the text itself because they're not performative I suppose. Yeah. >> So they're not interpreted by, you know, countless amount, you know, theater companies and and actors. Um, it sits

01:08:00 there in the book. Um, except that I mean, I would say, you know, this is a problem that comes up all the time in translation. You know, why are translations always being superseded? Why is there always need for a new translation of words? And when you get down to it, the real, you know, one of the answers is that translation is a reading. um you know my translation of such and such is going to be necessarily different from so and so else's translation of such and such not only because there might be 40 years between you know mine and the last one

01:08:31 we could do it on the exact same day is still going to be different because of course what I'm translating is my reading of that particular work but then you can extrapolate that and say basically this is what we all do every single time we pick up a book and read a page doesn't matter if it's a translation or not you know my reading of Beckett is going to be different from your reading of Beckett and yours and yours and yours of the same page of the same book and it's going to be different from my reading of Becca three weeks from now because my world has changed, my synapses have changed. You know, you never you never step into the same book twice, right? So, I think that the

01:09:05 performative aspect of a play might be a little bit more overt. Mh. >> Um, and and you know, we can we can sort of sense it and quantify maybe a little bit more more easily, but I I think the [snorts] same process happens every time you open a book, every time you look at a painting, every time you hear the same piece of music over and over, you're constantly reading it in a different way. >> Bour has that story where he copies >> Kier Manard. >> Pier Manard word for word >> and insists that it's a different work. >> Absolutely. because it was done by a symbolist a French symbolist poet in the

01:09:35 1920s as opposed to as opposed to writing it back when you know >> but the same words >> but exactly the same words [snorts] >> isn't there a board story about that >> questions we could take some questions now if you would like >> sure >> we can try to fail to answer

01:10:11 >> [snorts] >> stand up. [laughter] First of all, I disagree. >> Where's your microphone? >> I disagree with the idea that all these people decide whether with we all know the anecdote that the lady who gave him hospitality

01:10:44 Genim was walking with Mandrean in the exhibition where Mondrean saw this mod painting and stopped there and Google went ahead and he said but that is interesting thing and from that point pol became the pol that we know and that is very often the case I've been my

01:11:15 to present myself I would say that I taught most of my life in school of architecture and art including Colombia and I can tell you that the only people who really decide whatever is or is not are [clears throat] >> the painter and the architect. They decide ultimately what is or what is not, not other people. Other people temporarily may prevail because they have the money because they are the

01:11:47 reason. But in the [snorts] long run, if you look at the history of art and architecture, you see again and again. Although some of the example produce great difficulties for example the book by Zah >> that completely destroyed the relationship between Zola and Sesan were friends from childhood because it was the father of Zah who actually built the vioaduct in the background of Sesan

01:12:18 paintings. >> Oh okay. He was the engineer >> and that's why Zola who came from completely different background found himself going to the same school as Zola and they remain friends for life but Zola as you know very quickly became a fundamental figure in literature of France and only died because he sided with Drifus and Dus but the point is that

01:12:48 is a a destructive work against his best friend Suzan because you doubt that he was >> Seaison's not the only model for Cloantier. It's also Manet you know the dean of is the painting that's described there. My point is simply that that his best friend Zulah regarded Sazan as a failure and he says it in so

01:13:19 many words not once but several times. He thought that the little talent that Zora that Suzan has is not well used in the way in which he devel. He did not appreciate the fact that as Suzan said [snorts] himself that Sesan would change the hand using the brush if it was too smooth and if it was too fluent. that what Suzan

01:13:52 practice was and so I didn't appreciate it. So I just wanted to refer to this great failure as a model. [laughter] [snorts] I have a thought about Agnes M. Martin and I was wondering if you would respond to it. As you know, I'm sure she was a a

01:14:24 great Canadian swimming champion. She was almost on the Olympic team and uh I have done laps at the 92nd Street Y for years. Uh and I have often thought that the tiles of the swimming pool are [laughter] you've heard this before? So the tiles of the swimming pool are her effort to recreate this grounding and serenity that you referenced

01:14:57 >> uh given the onset of her uh severe mental illness [clears throat] periods of of great intense suffering. And I mentioned that upstairs in this building uh in a previous event and I got so unkindly shot down now that in I'm on the first floor let me let me try it again because I was at the Whitney uh on

01:15:28 staff when Agnes Martin had her big retrospective in the early 90s. So I had a chance to, >> you know, think about her and read about her and so forth. So could you please come? >> Have to ask Nancy [laughter] more swimming. >> Oh, wow. >> You couldn't resist. I I do think that swimming um was um fundamental to her um development and experience. Um she loved

01:15:58 the water. Of course, she spent most of her adult life in a desert. Um, go figure. Um, but I think I hadn't ever actually thought about the tiles in the swimming pool. I I wouldn't rule it out as a visual, you know, sort of baseline kind of thing. I think the activity of swimming laps, which she was very powerful swimmer, right? Um, is, you know, has the kind of rhythm and and repetitiveness and effort that you do see in a different form in her painting.

01:16:31 But I'm I'm really concerned about the grid and the grid in the tiles >> that she associated that a feeling for all those years that she was training and well feeling athletic and and robust that that's what she was trying to recapture with the use of the grid. >> Could be. Could be. >> Could be. I mean, you know, by the time she finally came out with with the grid

01:17:02 [laughter] as a form, it was in the air in other ways, including, you know, other artists making grid-based work. So, it took her a long long time to circle back from, you know, her years as a swimmer in the 30s to um the late 50s and and really the 60s when she started. That's 30 years. [snorts] Uh well I always have I guess have sort of complicated questions but uh I am a painter and a writer and an art historian and uh for years I never

01:17:35 thought of the word failure when I saw the uh the the announcement and I thought why would they say failure and then I thought well I was educated in the French tradition from the 19th century uh with the symbolist poets and with they they began really changing changing the nature of process uh the process of what is a painting and that aspect of changing it into an unknown venture rather than certain traditional

01:18:05 modes really started a whole new revolution. And so when uh Bernard said once or a thousand times that somehow gave me the impetus and the understanding of things and by that he meant uh it can happen sometimes that you can do a gesture in a way and it comes out right away but if it doesn't happen then it could be a thousand times before you reach then your goal and so

01:18:35 when you were speaking about science I thought more that That's a little bit the way painters have been thinking and not so much any longer thinking of failure. Uh I mean in America it was a little bit different. There was a different aspect of what painting should be and the thought of success and failure were more common words in a certain way. But um I think the whole discussion seemed to me to be a process of thinking and how we think and and with painters it's a search for the

01:19:06 self. And in science, I imagine it's a a larger venture into a larger composite of physical laws. And the idea of the search for the self would of course require just as one would with psychoanalysis, a longer process of probing. So a painters's life in a way is a process of unraveling and unfolding not only a language but also a better sense of self. So I wonder you know when you use the word failure do you think that's the

01:19:38 right word for uh what we understand now I'm not speaking you know I mean in traditional thinking yes but anyway this is a long but just that there painting did change in the 19th century as to what it was and Jacometi often said that uh you know I can't capture what's in front of me and you know he did the heads over and over in the portraits again and again because the word the world kept eluding him escaping from

01:20:08 him. So what he was looking at dissolved and dissolved at every moment. So that idea of dissolving and evolving and which scientists work with in a different way uh I think is really the crux of the matter in some way or other. >> I mean just to respond to that I think you know um No, thank you. Um, [clears throat] in a lot of ways I think we could replace the word failure with striving

01:20:40 because it, you know, failure gives purpose. It gives a motivation and you know I understand to some extent in science it's important to be able to say I succeeded in this experiment and you know therefore I can create the best widget or you know whatever it is you're going for. Um, and and Lord knows in art as well, there's a satisfaction to making [clears throat] a breakthrough, getting to this thing that you think you're you're trying to get to. Um, you know, having success, winning a prize,

01:21:12 whatever it might be. But it's a little bit of a dead end at the same time. You know, it's kind of a it's kind of it sort of gets you there, but it's an ephemeral thing. Whereas, I think that, you know, failure is much more of a spur. and you know to bring it to bring it way down from the lofty to you know to much lower level I'm constantly thinking of uh my father was a big fan of what used to be called the Washington Redskins football team now the Washington [snorts] Commanders right you know you're just setting up to fail right um

01:21:43 and for some reason or other he latched on to them and for decades and decades like I grew up with him watching that football game every Sunday and you know cursing and whatever because they were constantly losing to everybody else. But every once in a while they would actually win. Every once in a while they would even win the Super Bowl, you know, it was just like that rare moment. And it kind of gave a motivation to kind of keep going, you know, to keep failing better, right? Um because there was that goal that, you know, it's it's it's it's I imagine very different from being like

01:22:14 a Yankees fan. So they won again. Who cares? You know, they won everybody. Um but, you know, but >> not lately. Well, not lately, but you know, [laughter] back back in the day, um you know, it was much more interesting to me to be a Mets fan because like every once in a while they might actually make it. Um and you know, it kind of gives you something to to strive for and to look forward to. So, you know, I think it's it's it's um it's important not to be too seduced by what I think we consider the American notion of failure, which is you didn't

01:22:44 get to where you wanted to go, you know. um which is a which is a a very limited notion I think of oh what failure is it's kind of again it's a sort of a you know it's bad it's a dead end it's like you know >> this is sort of the what they call the anacarenina principle of tool story that happy families are all happy pretty much the same way but unhappy families are >> I mean you can succeed in one particular way but you can screw up in an enormous number of ways >> many of which will be interesting so >> and I think sometimes watching the

01:23:16 striving is a interest to people. The one time that Beckett was in America, he was in New York City for two weeks to make a film called film, >> very hot summer. And uh >> with Buster Katon, >> with Buster Keaton, right? And he went to Sha Stadium. It was the Mets first year at Sha Stadium. They played in the Polaro Grounds for two years, so it was 64. And he went out with Richard Siver, who was one of the translators, one of the early publishers of uh of Beckett's work because he was in Paris. and they

01:23:47 saw absolutely the two worst teams ever assembled. The Colt 45s, I mean a team named after a handgun and the New York Mets that were both expansion teams in ' 62. And they were just total ineptitude. And after the first game, Dick Sber said to to Sam, "Well, shall we go?" And he said, "No, I love it. Stay for stay for both games." you know, he was seeing people flail around and, you know, all errors and but there's [snorts] something attractive about seeing people

01:24:19 are striding. >> Oh, yeah. >> Well, the process is interesting even for >> you'll learn much more about a base. You know this if you're you'll learn much more about baseball if you watch a crummy team play than a good team play. A good team, it's hard to see what they're doing. So, well, >> but you can see the mistakes easily and what should have been. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. And I think that's one of the interesting kinds of performances to see of a Becket play is people who aren't polished actors. >> I mean, if you want to watch Ian Mckllen and Patrick Stewart in Waiting for GDAU,

01:24:49 you're going to be disappointed cuz they're so slick. >> But if you want to watch a college or a prison troop, um >> that was very famous production of it of waiting for a dough. >> Yeah. The San Quinton players by um >> I can't remember his name now. Director >> Oh. Um >> no. Herbert. >> Oh, yeah. Herbert. Blow. Blow. Blow. Yeah. >> Any more questions? >> Thank you. >> Thank you all.

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