August 17, 2006
Lawrence Weiner gives good interview
An interview with Lawrence Weiner was included in this week's ArtInfo.com newsletter. He is his usual engaging self:
Interviewer: There’s an implicit political stance in your work. Your work consists of verbal statements, but you scrupulously avoid giving your audience orders.Weiner: I don’t tell anybody to do anything.
In order to hear what I have to say, or to see what I have to show, why should somebody have to do something? I don’t get it. My presumption is that, as artists, we are integral parts of society. Therefore our questions of the material world are legitimate questions and they have a legitimate reason to be presented.
That’s not to tell somebody else that in order to be able to understand me you have to spin around three times or genuflect or do something else. I don’t believe in the order. I think that it’s a fact that if you tell somebody, “Three lines on the wall,” and they’re really interested, they’ll make the three lines on the wall, but they don’t have to. They can imagine what it looks like, and it’s just as good.
This isn’t being goody-goody. This is saying, “I demand my rights as a human being to present what I see as an objectification of my material circumstances, but I don’t require the right to give other people orders.”
Interviewer: I’m not sure that I understand.
Weiner: It’s like graffiti. All graffiti has a right to exist anyplace as long as it says, “My children are hungry,” or “The sky is blue,” and not just “Me! Jose!” As long as it’s not just an existential plea, it has a right to exist. It’s the same with public art. All public art is made by artists for themselves, because they’re part of the public. They pay taxes, they take the kid to the dentist, just like everybody else. It’s just like wearing Yankee baseball paraphernalia. We have as much right within society as anybody else, not a privilege, but a right.
Last year, Hatje Cantz published Having Been Said: Writings & Interviews of Lawrence Weiner, 1968-2003. It clocks in at almost 500 pages, and is worth the hefty cover price.