Karen Gunderson, CLEAR VOICE OF BLACK : Interview by Alessandro Ryker
A: Her name and surname, Norwegian through and through, are just the tip of the iceberg. Karen Gunderson is, in fact, a cocktail of ancient passions: Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and, since the 19th century, American Indian. She was born in 1943 into the bosom of a middle-class family in Racine, Wisconsin, on Lake Michigan, two hours north of Chicago. “I had my first taste of culture when I began college”, she confided over the phone from her New York studio, in 2004. I have never talked to her before, and her voice is so soft that it takes me a while to adjust to the fact that it is a woman’s, “married to Julian Weissman in 1979 and a mother of a son, David, born two years later. I feel confused and, but suddenly I decide to put as first the prophetic question about crisis in art: a classical question that doesn’t look really for a concrete answer (it doesn’t need: in art crisis means no crisis), but for clues to get into the artist we are talking at…
A: What is your opinion of the crisis in art? Does it exist? Is painting dead?
K: Your questions have a complex answer. Ever since the 1960’s, I have heard critics and artists state that painting is dead. They have come to this conclusion via their own work. In the case of Ad Reinhardt, I think he must have felt that he made the ultimate discovery that nothing could follow logically, but I think it is inappropriate to think that one can stop the rest of the world from painting just by telling them they can’t or they shouldn’t. How do those who have made this claim decide that painting is finished? Perhaps they think if they say it is so, that makes it so. They set up a rationale for not painting and then expect everyone to follow it because of their idea. In a way, in terms of the art world, Richter “brought back painting”, and he was able to do it because all the critics who said painting was dead could rationalize that he was exploring the reasons for painting by painting in all the different ways he paints. I think he just wanted to paint… not kill painting for everyone else. I look around and see great paintings being made by artists like Lucien Freud, Odd Nedrum, William Beckman, Sol Lewitt, April Gornik, myself and many, many others. Painting has not died, but maybe it has for those who cannot find the place in themselves where painting can be an expression of their intellectual pursuit. As with the death of royalty- painting is dead, long live painting! |
