Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Included: 1 ROBERT STORR action figure, no batteries required. Simply wind spring and set interview switch to "on."

STORR: ...I also think that either there is an evolution in the work or a paradox that was always there, which is the fact that, on the one hand, technically they belong to the tradition of fine studio painting and, on the other hand, that something apparently arbitrary or mechanical has been done to pictures made in that tradition. After all, you are a master of the disruptive technique as well. the thing that makes it blur is not a machine but a bigger brush or squeegee. it was never so mechanical; it was never so arbitrary, correct?

RICHTER: Yes.

STORR: And then again, you said earlier that what seperated you from other artists was not simply that you have this technical command but that you have the ability to recognize when a work has achieved a certain rightness.

RICHTER: Yes.

STORR: So the defining quality of what you do is both a matter of the mastery of materials and a question of recognition and decision. It was never about violence done to the picture in the same way that some people have seen this kind of disruptive physicality as aggression, pure and simple.

RICHTER: Yes, that's true.

STORR: In some ways, what you're up to is closer to what [Alberto] Giacometti did than to the kind of painting that is usually described as wild or violent. It is about working away at the image and at the paint until you can see something.

RICHTER: Yes.

STORR: So, in that respect, your approach is similiar to Giacometti's but involves a different formal language with a different set of conventions, and is being pursued at a different time.

RICHTER: Yes, that sounds good.