Richard Tuttle Interview: Artists Are Like Clouds

most of most artists have terrible childhoods and in a certain level you don't have art unless you would die without it I think I've I have every right to that the rotten childhood side and you for example my my case at birth my mother for some you know reason felt she couldn't take care of me so there was an aunt who had just lost her baby who was very eager to have me and then there was a grandmother you know who was ready to come and help her daughter in times of need so I was I was shifted you know around these three sort of maternal figures all of whom gave me a tremendous love or uncritical love so the dynamic was you know you have all the love you need but then you don't know who your mother is yeah you know and you know it's it's like a you just it sets up a brain or sets up a relationships of yourself and other people that that goes you you don't I mean it's not like a particularly an illness that you could go to Sigmund Freud and have cured you know or something the artists there from nature you know they come out of nature like a cloud that just happens and in my teenage years where my poor father just tried everything he could do to make me the way he thought I should should be in and finally one day I guess I was maybe 17 or so he went to my mother and said that I do not understand Richard you know he just like yeah and and she told me that he never would say that to me but he she told me the story and that it made her so happy because yeah so what happens is the artist is born in a family that has no idea what what that person is and so automatically you get all kinds of paint like they try to make you like they are or or in my case when I entered school visually speaking I was a genius level you know but my teacher had no no experience no concept of that and so my work was regarded as never all the other drawings were I already knew that all that art was my my life well and and so the teacher puts up everybody else's work and not mine I was really a big big shock but what I drew was a it looked like a could be of a kind of rainbow and with a horizon you know I didn't put my flowers from the bottom of the page or my son up in the corner this kind of kind of thing which but I did see and I I was shocked because to me that was the first day of my life and then I looked at the other children and I saw the son in the car and I admire their the innocence I mean and I remember feeling also that that that is something I no longer have in a way it was also great because I never trusted another teacher in my life you know if after that you know and so I unless I found the knowledge on something that I know myself or believe is true then then I don't take it in you know it's quite most of us are conditioned our live lives that are the result of conditioning an aspect of my work I'm very passionate about is really that it's it's food for your inner life that I would hope to go find some thing in the world that gives me nutrition for my inner life but the contrary is is where often the case where the wisdom of society sees that it's a good to stamp out the in your life as quickly and as soon as possible and to emphasize to you know educate our youth to how to operate in the world and the objective teach the so-called objective values and so on them and have to thank that teacher you know for setting me on the course of unconventional acquisition of knowledge and being in charge of the knowledge myself I sometimes I say if Aristotle can't be my teacher then I have to teach myself you know because I don't I I would have if I lived in Athens in the fourth century BC I probably would have liked to study with air so but after said I'll have to learn learn it myself human beings make artificial structures in face of nature it's quite curious because the popular idea of the artist is they are radical or bohemian or revolutionary or rebels or and and that's part of the reason why they don't get a good contract you know because they're they're marginalized their value is is lowered but I find my experience that the the artists the best artists are the most disciplined people I've ever ever encountered you know and that's how you take care of the artificial side of things when because you have to explore nature parts of nature kinds of things that happen to you as a natural person and a natural world in ways that are there's no there are no books you know that no one has ever been there before it's like going into invisibility this is a one of these classic distinctions between feelings and emotions there are certain feelings I have that I think are special or unusual valuable and I would like other people to as it were give them to other people but that's not art and people are responsible for their own feelings you know and I'm sure that other people feel that that they would like to share their feelings with me and for sure people close to me I'm interested in their feelings but but generally speaking art is about the emotions the difference between emotions and feelings and you can see that in late Goya where it's like there's this waving between the world of feelings and the world of emotions and and and probably he doesn't even know when he's making his work he doesn't know that he's actually creating this extraordinary invisibility you know an artwork of course is an accounting a visible a visible world but it's equally an accounting of the invisible world one of the most important reasons to have art in your life I think is is in that spirit that's for everybody is what they call renewal at my age hormonal II people want to make a world you know you've learned a world you've destroyed a world and time to make a world and I mean I have always intended to have a creative life my entire life until the end I've always even thought that the end would be more interesting more creative would I would get closer to what I want at the end of my life and but you're still on a kind of a wheel where you have to it's like sometimes I say it's like terrorism where and terrorism has to escalate you know the terrorist has to think of something even worse you know the next time it's not terrorism you know and like artists expect to that you you it's not art unless you outdo yourself but in my case I think I'm part of my terrible childhood is that I'm someone who can never conquer certain feelings about myself but each work or each drawing each fresh idea leads me away from something that I don't want why society is is rightfully suspicious of the artist is good the artist has to go outside the society to find the raw materials that start the whole wheel because I feel very strongly that the art the perpetration you know why we invented art is because we we have to for the health of a society we have to invent a system that produces freedom because the just like like ourselves that if you're constricted by a bad diet or by you know insufficient housing something you get sick you know it's just not not good and so the we need the freedom and so does society but the way we it works is that the artist does something that the society would never do and then and then slowly brings it in and there's oh there are always a few people who are cycling a sort of strangers on who are excited by that or who see it and then it starts this hole through the galleries and through the magazines and so on and then it then then finally it's it's in the world you know it becomes that thing comes in the world and then the art historians take over and they they weave it into the world and whatever is left and there's not much left you know but that's freedom

Channel: Louisiana Channel

Views: 131,332

Keywords: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum, art, Artist (Job Title), Richard Tuttle

Id: EEoZpS4AWLw

Length: 13min 28sec (808 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 31 2014