Conversation
Francesc Torres & Hugh Davies

Hugh M. Davies, The David C. Copley Director, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego
HD: I would like to start by asking you how your own personal history informs your perspective on the time we are living in, and how that in turn influences your work. I am asking you this because I would describe you as being an artist, an individual, who is bi-cultural, with one foot in the United States and one foot in Spain.
FT: Because of having one foot in Spain, I have one foot in Europe.
I also was born a Catalan of Spanish nationality because of a royal marriage that took place five hundred years ago. If the interested parties would have married someone else who knows what would have happened to my ready made national status. Part of my family, the Iturrioz’s, comes from the Basque Country, another part of the family, the Torres’, comes from Andalussia, which are two very different cultures, to put it mildly. At five, because of being sent to the French Lyceé in Barcelona, I had to learn how to read and write in French. When I came to the United States I learned English and, to top it all, I became an American citizen with the bonus of becoming also a Hispanic —got two for the price of one—, all this without losing my Spanish citizenship because I took all the necessary steps to be able to keep it, which I think it must mean something. There’s, however, always a “decallàge”… something off register, like walking with one foot on the curb and the other one on the street when you are spread amongst so many sources. Even in my case where everything is, considering the circumstances, pretty well integrated. But, regardless of the reasons that make one leave one’s place of origin, once you are out there, once you take off, you never really go back. It’s like if you existed in another territory, in another level of identity awareness… You are never completely integrated in the context that becomes your new home, but, without shedding it, you do not belong any longer completely to the context you came from. So this staying between places, of course, gives you a different perspective, a different way of looking at things that you wouldn’t have otherwise. There’s no direct relationship, you know, cause and effect relationship between all these factors, but statistically, all of us who are from someplace else, we do tend to have, I think, a comparative and relativistic take on things...
HD: So would you say that you bring an objectivity to your study of Spain, for example, that you might not have if you were 100% living within that culture or that country. Do you have insights into contemporary Europe, contemporary Spain, that you might not otherwise have if you were immersed in it? Is it a privileged position that you are in? It sounds a bit like a contradiction of terms, doesn’t it?.
FT: A complementation of terms rather that a contradiction, I would say. First of all, I don’t think that one can be objective, regardless of whether you are totally immersed in one place or not. Knowledge and objectivity are not the exact same thing; one can be objectively wrong, right? I mistrust any claims of objectivity. I think that one can attain different degrees of insight or truth, to call it something, but absolute objectivity is entirely impossible because human beings are fundamentaly interpretive organisms. I think that objectivity is not even desirable. When I hear American reporters talk about the myth of impartial and objective reporting like they beleive what they are saying I crack up laughing. It’s like, oh yeah? who owns The Wall Street journal or CBS guys? You read the world, you have your opinion built on how you perceive your environment and this is conditioned by your history. By not being “objective” you take a responsibility as to how you interpret the world. You know, you have to be responsible for how you see things and what you think about them and whether or not you want to change them. So, all this said, because of my personal circumstances I may have a particular way of looking at things, maybe a twist in my perceptions that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. But as far as being more objective… Secondly, there is a certain advantage in creating a space or a certain detachment or distance, emotional and physical, between yourself and anything you want to understand. Certains things can only be seen clearly with a cool head, but at the same time if there weren’t any emotional components I don’t think there would be any need to know anything, to reach that point when reflection leads to action. Whether it’s a moral imperative or whatever. I don’t think that betting on the virtues of democracy, for example, is based only in objectivity. You can see that democracy is the best system —or the worst system with the exception of all the rest, as Churchill used to say— but what really makes you defend it is not only a cold, rational analysis; it’s an emotional response working on a moral base, and this is a very difficult fish to catch and even a more difficult one to disect. That’s why it helps in the making of art. Or it helps me, I should say...
HD: It has to do with passion.
FT: Exactly, I think that great deeds would be impossible to accomplish...
HD: Without passion…
FT: Yes. You have to be able to allow yourself a certain amount of... derangement, if you will. Of believing strongly in something, and, obviously, believing cannot be based on objectivity... it would be an oximoron. The President of the United States, for example, a gentleman that could push a button and obliterate half the world, at the very same time believes in God, and his God is one and three at the same time, they are all male, the second one is the son of the first, who was conceived in rather peculiar circumstances, and the third is a bird…
HD: I did not have sex with that woman…
FT: Right… (laughing) …no wonder why certain things require a lot of faith! You know, rationally speaking, you couldn’t take this seriously. None the less, wars have been fought based on those beliefs and a lot of people have paid with their lives as victims or debased themselves as perpetrators. So again, true objectivity wouldn’t allow for this. So, ultimately when you look at the way history functions you come to the conclusion that most of it is not… I wouldn’t say that it’s irrational, but it’s definitely mediated by emotions and subjective needs at least as much as it is by reason.
HD: I’ve always thought of you as being a particular kind of international artist. An artist who is unusually consistent at taking on broad issues, philosophical issues. I see you as a philosopher and political historian in some ways more than a self-involved, sibaritic artist, but what do you see as the challenge to artists in this day and age? What is your personal goal, or what do you see as your responsibility in your work, when you have a privileged position to be able to make work, and to have the opportunities that you’ve had around the world, major museums, to make your statements as the philosopher/political historian/artist. What is your responsibility, what is your objective, what comes with that?
FT: Well, it may seem otherwise but I am very modest, really; one shoud not ask of art something that it may not be capable of delivering, Modenism notwithstanding. There is one thing, however, that I have repeated many times and always gets quoted, perhaps because it does explain a lot about how I function, how I work. It is this: I’m not interested in art as a problem, I’m interested in art as an activity. My interests lay elsewhere. What stimulates me intellectually are things that exist outside the context of art, subjects that exist out there in the world we live in. But since I’m an artist all these things are necessarily going to sediment themselves in an artwork because this is what I do. That’s not the same as saying I’m not concerned or that I don’t care about aesthetic issues, of course I am! because what determines the merit and quality of an artwork is not the content but the language; how things are said, not what you are saying. If an artwork also has a very relevant, ambitious issue involved in it, or built in it, so much the better, it may become more significant in strictly historical terms, but that’s not going to make it, by itself, a memorable artwork. There are artists who have done masterpieces painting apples or mountains like Cézanne. There have been others, like Jericault, who instead of painting apples, painted the heads of victims of the French Revolution… Goya with Los Fusilamientos de la Moncloa, or Picasso with Guernica are other examples. These works are not memorable and deserve to be where they are because of the content. The content informs them and makes them perhaps more significant of what they would be in exclusive aesthetic terms, but as far as their value as an artwork, it’s the language that was used, and how that content was articulated aesthetically. This is the water I thread. What
I want to accomplish, ideally, are memorable artworks like any other artist. But, again, my intellectual preoccupations do not exist in that terrain, primarily because I think that, as valor in the soldier is something that is assumed, the ability of the artist in solving aesthetic issues comes with the package. So, at the risk of stating the obvious,
I make art about things that interest me, and I try to find the best way to articulate them aesthetically.
HD: This is something often missing in the perception and criticism of the so-called political art, isn’t it?
FT: Yes. One aspect that is fundamental, I think, especially when dealing with art that can be considered political or encompasses social commentary, is not to do it with a sense of a mission, you know, like a calling, like you are preaching because you think that you see something that nobody else sees, and you go out to enlighten the rest of the world. It’s a very silly idea. I think the best thing to do is to tackle an issue because is a mystery to you, an important unanswered question or a major intellectual issue to wrestle with. Then you articulate it in such a way that it becomes, if not totally clear, assimilated emotionally. It becomes a part of you by the fact of having worked with it. It’s basically what Levi-Strauss, who is not in fashion anymore, says about the function of art better than anyone else: there is the need to have an understanding of the environment in order to have control over it and be able to live in it. Obviously, in the tail years of the Ice Age, you are not going to be able to do that physically and literally, by going there and grabbing it and twisting it around and wringing it’s neck around and turning it into something else. Since you cannot do that, and also because you don’t even know how to go about it, a different device comes into play. I am talking about the symbolic manipulation of reality. In other words, totemic behavior. You make it yours, you explain it to yourself. You make it less threatening by reducing it to a level that can be aprehended, manipulated and given a meaning. And this is the only definition that encompasses all art in all different cultures throughout history. Is something that we all share as human beings, any culture does that. We all do it differently as far as each culture goes, but behaviorally speaking, we all do exactly the same, regardless of whether is with a brush or with digital technology. This is what we’ve been doing since Altamira and Lascaux. One thing is sure, that painting on the walls of a cave was not done just for the pleasure of it, an attempt at decorating the house. It was definitely a tool for linking up symbolically with an environment mysterious, marvelous and terrifying. It was threatening, incomprehensible, and somehow it had to be tackled. We’re still doing that. This is how I approach my work. There are things that are relevant to me, that are problematic to me, that are interesting to me, and if they are interesting to me then most likely they are going to be interesting to other people. But if they don’t speak to me, it doesn’t really matter how noble the subject….
HD: This leads in a way to another question I have which is when you evolve an artwork, what are the steps, I mean, like the pieces in the current exhibition, perhaps the one to talk about is “El Soliloquio de la Felicidad”, which is very succinct, very reduced, but what led to the making of the piece? Do you, for several months or years, maul over the concept of democracy and its malaises, for example, and you want to present that idea very succinctly, with great visual and aural power, but what leads up to a work? How long does it gestate? Which comes first the image or the sound, the idea? And how do you then refine that and tweak it and change it? How do you go about making a piece and how do you tell when it’s done?
FT: It’s a very organic sort of flowing process that doesn’t necessarily need to be controlled in each and every step. Again, there are a number of things I’m naturally drawn to, what I read, and think about…. In terms of general methodology, it’s very simple. The key is to turn yourself into a sponge having all your systems on all the time. Continuously absorbing information, which in a very natural way are going to be things that interest you. Formaly speaking I have found solutions, aesthetic solutions for some of my pieces, looking at window stores, lingerie shops or car dealerships. You can find information basically in anything you lay your eyes on. It’s sort of turning on an activated gaze in a way in which you can see and simultaneously translate what you are seeing into a metaphor for something else. But as far as the content is concerned, I simply go consistently about my business, looking at things, watching the news, reading the paper,…. And then, certain things at some point reach critical mass by themselves —with a little bit of help by yours truly— and they become a piece. It can be triggered by an image, or the visuals can be triggered by a particular way of articulating content, it depends, but they sort of work themselves out. Sometimes it takes a couple of years before this happens. It needs to be digested and then it evolves from an idea or intuition to a full-fledged piece. You have to let the work tell you what to do. So it is a dialogue. Of course there have been instances in which an apparently parallel process takes place, an image appearing in the analog gallery we all have above our shoulders, and I said, “whow, this is really super and would be perfect applied to this particular content”. It depends. But I always do write my pieces. Once they begin to acquire tangibility, I write them using a descriptive and discursive narrative.
HD: When you say you write them, you describe what the components will be? Or is it, on the contrary, a conceptual narrative that helps to ground the piece?
FT: Both. And also what I want to say. And what I want to happen and want to see, and if I choose an element, why is it that I am choosing that particular element and what is it supposed to do as a semantic device. It’s almost like the script of a movie, including, of course, all the technical aspects, but this is the least important. The important thing is to write a story about the piece that you want to do and then everything sort of falls into place. If it doesn’t read well, if it doesn’t make sense, you don’t have it… keep going.
HD: It’s interesting to me all this kind of juxtapositions. In terms of your themes and the content of your work, you are a very traditional artist. Big themes; Life...Death...History... And I also see a very strong connection to artists throughout time. I see a very strong connection to Goya, which is something I want to talk about later. But that is balanced by an embrace of technology that has put you very much in the forefront, internationally, in the use of new media, whether it’s photography, video or sound. And I see your approach as an artist, again, very much in the avantgarde as functioning like an architect or a film director in that you marshal these other artisans at the service of the artwork, the product that you conduct, that you direct. I’d like to have you respond to this.
FT: Well, I think that what defines installation as method more than as a field is production. It has never been studio work. This is something that you do alone, you look at it and see how it works, and if it’s no good then you perfect it, and once it’s finished it goes to the gallery or it goes to the museum and then it’s seen. Installation is all production, as you were saying: the marshalling resources in direct relationship with the objective that you have in mind. And you spend a long time in a process in which you are working only on parts of it, not with the piece as a whole. You do not see the piece; you have to visualize it in your mind. The piece is a whole from very early on, conceptually, but not as a direct hands-on process. And then at one point all this begins to accelerate and within a week becomes a piece. It becomes a piece in the space where it is shown. So my studio has always been the museum. Or the gallery space, which is fundamentally a museographic space, a staged space. Perhaps the very and early tight complicity between the museums and installation art —which is something that still remains to be analyzed in depth— reinforced the idea of the museum space as studio. So, I work in the museum space, that’s my studio. At home all I have is just an office. Once you see things under that prespective, you realize you can produce anything, even a painting, no kidding. If this sounds farfetched what about Renaissance ateliers? In which the master was only required, by contract, to paint the hands and face of the Madonna, and nothing else, leaving the rest for his assistants to do. So, it seems that we haven’t really invented anything, it’s just that we have emphasized something that it’s been there all along without most people being aware of it. You come to realize that it’s not really true that certain practices require certain non-interchangeable methodologies, especially at this moment in time. A lot of things have happened in the past 100 years that have turned everything around. That doesn’t invalidate traditional methodologies, but there are other ways. Installation is one of them. Another aspect, incidentally, which in my opinion has not received enough theoretical attention vis-à-vis the complicity between the museum and installation art, is that from an early stage, installation art generated a change within the museum of ontological proportions. It forced the Museum to go from being essentially a receptive box of historical sedimentation, to have to make a commitment in order to make possible art that did not yet exist, that nobody knew if it deserved a place in the Museum in the first place or fifty years down the line . It has forced the Museum into becoming an active agent in the creation of contemporary art, which is, I think, a revolution! No one has written anything about it yet, it just beats me!
HD: Some time ago, while in the process of securing a grant for a museum publication, I explained to my interlocutors that our collection for the most part exists only in documentation. Many of the best pieces were temporary installations, no longer exist, so there is an absolute necessity to capture those works in a publication. This is something that affects your work directly, isn’t it?
FT: Oh, yes. But the irony of it all is when you realize that ninety-five percent of the artwork we have have seen , including classical painting, it’s been through reproductions, just paper. Talk about non-permanence!. (Laughs)
HD: In a different register, here is a question that I struggle with, and I’ll ask you: how do you reconcile your interests in left-wing politics and Democracy in the best sense of the term with the very elitist nature of what we are jointly involved in? When I was a student, I turned my back on commerce, economics, banking to pursue a life of the mind and art. And then I discovered, when I got my first museum job, that it is the ultimate luxury. Potentially, anyone can buy a Rolls Royce, anyone can buy a yacht —I am exagerating to drive my point home, but to have the best Cézanne that’s truly elite.
FT: True, but if the Cézanne is in a public museum, then it belongs to everyone. I think that this problem has to be analyzed from a different prespective. The way the art world functions these days is not that different from the stock market. The fact that museums are now, thank’s to Thomas Krens, industries that generate products and grow, and occupy new market space, and need a complementary net of suppliers of parts and raw material (art), only reinforces this economicist model of art consumption. Therefore yes, being a man ideologically positioned on the left, I feel that I’m in a tight spot right now. Basically anything that I thought was socially and morally necessary has been put on hold. But I’d like to think that we will continue to progress socially, and that classical leftist political thought will continue to inform history as it develops. It still remains an extremely useful tool in social analysis and criticism. Sufice to say that nobody has described capitalism better than Marx. So, it is precisely from that prespective that I see culture and art as not being elitist by itself, it’s only elitist because the majority of the population is kept from learning the basic skills to enjoy it. It is not a matter of access, its a matter of education which superseeds the issue of ownership of the art work. Most art is or will be in museums, so it is of utmost importance what kind of cultural policies governments implement and the museums, as public institutions —an by public I also mean private institutions open to everyone—, do to connect with their audiences without ceasing to be places of academic learning . It is something that materializes in the domain of politics and ideology because policies are not politically and ideologically neutral. In my opinion acces to education is in direct relationship with the democratic index of a particular society and, unfortunately, democracy these days is more formal that substantial
HD: Explain that, I don’t quite follow what you mean by being more formal than substantial.
FT: Because, basically, in a formal democracy, the electoral process is constructed in a way that makes radical change from the bottom impossible. It is controlled by what I would call a political oligarchy that embodies every single professional politician regardless of ideology. Politicians have more in common as professionals in the management of power than as representatives of their constituencies. This is what happens in the domain of professional politics in a formal democracy now-a-days. So then what follows is this: who needs the vote more? The one who is receiving it or the one who is giving it? Obvioulsly, the one who is receiving it because that legitimizes his or her position, otherwise they would be out of work and they would have to go home. So we go through the motions of legitimizing the system in that way. The scope of possibilities within that frame of action is very limited. In the United States you can only chose between Republicans or Democrats and if you give the vote to anybody else it’s like throwing it out the window. The party aparatus decides who is going to be the candidate. If this is the government of the people… Therefore, it goes without saying that if power is not spread around, it and everything that comes with the package, including art and culture, will be in very few hands. This are precisely the issues that “El Soliloquio de la Felicidad” makes reference to.
HD: There are now in the U.S. three viable candidates, the son of a former President, the son of a former Senator and the son of a banker from Missouri. One’s from Harvard, one’s from Princeton, one’s from Yale. Hey, what happened? Unbelievable. It’s really frightening…
FT: Well, this can be perceived as a stimulating mystery, the fact that the system work so well while being so blatantly faulty…. (laughs)
HD: Look, I was at a conference several months ago with a bunch of museum directors and we were all letting our hair down. It was a conference at Harvard, of all places, about a few months back and I was saying, very sincerely, that what I find troubling is that if I’m doing my job well, as a I understand the role of a contemporary art museum director, trying to subvert the dominant paradigm by working with artists like you who consistently push the envelop, if I’m good at what I’m doing, I should get fired by my trustees who are the ones who are most fully vested in the establishment. And yet, I don’t. We do controversial artworks, we are very provocative…. But in the final analysis, we’re not… we’re co-opted, we’re not effective. And they said, no, no, you are taking a very simple and silly view of your role…
FT: I think that in general we are definitely in the system, we are not out of it and it would be hipocritical to pretend otherwise. If we were out of it, we would’t be here, literally… it’s that simple. Whether that would be wise or not, it is open for discussion. I think that as professionals, if the field is defined in a specific way, you work in there and try to do your best. If I were a doctor I would work in the hospital. If I were an assembly worker I would be on the assembly line. If I were a criminal lawyer I would be in Court So, our context is this one, what you do with that it’s a different story, it will depend on who you choose to cure, whether or not you’ll go on strike or brake the picked line, whether you represent the interests of the little guy or those of the tobacco industry. But I think that the real power of change that any particular proposition may have at a given moment is a very transitory one. So the only alternative to this is to turn the pressure as high as you can, in order to be always two steps ahead of the game, formally and ideologically. It takes a great deal of intelligence. That is why I don’t think that it’s a great idea for artists to indulge too much in elaborating on his or her language and content, because probably the best thing to do is forget something that you already are skillful at and you have explored widely and look at something else before it turns into formal retorics or ideological muzak. And then you have to do that as many times a it is necessary. Ultimately, I think it would be an intellectual mistake to place ourselves outside of our context because then we wouldn’t exist at all, leaving the field open to those who think that art should, like the perennial dumb blonde, look good and not say anything. So being in or out is not the real problem. The real problem is to what extent do you feel comfortable with it and feel that you have room to outmaneuver the situation and, also, what you do to work out the contradictions characteristic of the context that you work in. So , in a nutshell, this is what keeps me working. I find that every time that I have done an artwork, it has been an attempt to escape from something, a preconception or conventional wisdom of some sort.
HD: Can I ask you more especifically about the two pieces that are in the exhibition? The two installation in the exhibition make an interesting combination; one of them, “Perder la Cabeza” links up with your more recent work, and the other, “El Soliloquio de la Felicidad” seems to indicate a new direction. I wonder if you would describe the work, starting with “Perder la Cabeza”...
FT: In Spanish “to loose one’s head” it’s the equivalent of the English “losing one’s mind”. “Perder la Cabeza” is a close relative of “La Furia de Los Santos” for example, because it goes back to this idea of the temporary state of madness or insanity that seems to be, more often than not, the engine of history. But as the private side of what the “Fury of the Saints” was implying. In that piece I was talking, with very broad strokes, about the altered state of consciousness, or operational insanity needed in order to be able to attempt any action of transcendent nature: changing the world into a paradise on Earth, falling in love with a sense of finality, the rapture of religious mysticism, things that are based on believing that something is possible even though it would not endure the scrutiny of a cold, rational mind. In “Losing One’s Head”, however, I am dealing with this temporary absence of rationality but in more quotidian quarters. It deals with the fatal moment in which something that in normal circumstances would not be done, gets done in a moment of rage, passion, greed, you name it, and this avoidable action becomes then destiny, it marks your life forever. Then everything goes upside down and when finally a point is reached when things calm down you realize what actually happened and that it could’ve been avoided and things would have been different only if…. The piece is based on the disappearences and returns of reason complemented with the appearances and scapes of madness. “The Fury of the Saints” was dealing with derangement in epic, historical proportions. But “Losing One’s Head” is much more of an individual event, and related to all kinds of human activities, some of them having to do with elevated moral standards, others just the very opposite, like crime, which also constitutes a moment of a heightened emotional state of consciousness. It’s actually more direct, visually, than “The Fury of the Saints”.
HD: Tell me, with this piece, I understand a source is a painting of Zurbarán.
FT: Yes.
HD: And the conveyor belt is a regular airport luggage conveyor. Losing one’s luggage, losing one’s head… what is the tension with that juxtaposition? It’s interesting to me that you use a Spanish painter, and that the imagery in that Spanish painters work is very stark. This piece is very succinct and very stark, but the element of emotion of the head appearing and then leaving, is regaining one’s senses, or recapturing them, mind and body get back into synch correctly at that moment?
FT: Yes... but not for long. I have taken a lot of planes —I am not going to talk about my fateful mistakes—, so I had plenty of time to wonder and ponder over those devises, which I find both beautiful and mesmerizing, sort of mysterious. It is not as direct a relationship as you were describing, but more in terms of the kind of anxiety that one experiences while waiting for one’s suitcase, because you don’t know if it’s going to show up, it may be lost and surface in Moscow, which happened to me once. So there is this momentary state of panic, of whether or not you are going to get your belongings back. But it’s more than just your belongings, but your history, your clothes…clothes not only cover your body, they are an extension of yourself, you’ve worn certain pieces of clothing in certain circumstances, maybe very important, when you broke up with your girlfriend, or when your child was born... all these things have a life attached to them, so if you lose them you don’t lose a couple of objects, you lose part of your history. It also leaves you in a total state of unprotectedness. It was more of this sort of anxiety and panic of wondering of whether or not you are going to be getting back this part of yourself than a literal correspondence between this and the suitcase you mentioned before… however, since the head is like a little personal archive, in that sense perhaps one could relate all these connotations. The belt is cyclical, whatever is on it comes to you, it passes you by and it goes away. Keeps going around and around. So what shows up on the belt in the piece is the head of this monk. The monk is renderen three-dimensionally, knelling down, praying. He is beheaded and in the painting his head rests next to him on a stool, like he’s just taken his hat off and put it there. It’s something very common in Baroque Southern European painting, depicting the martyred saints and religious figures the way they were killed. So in the piece, the fellow is there as a three-dimentional figure, beheaded, and what comes in and goes by and goes behind the wall again is the head. So it’s a reference to this moment of temporary madness in which you’ve lost your mind, lost your head, but it comes back and when it does then you realize what you have done. There is a soundtrack with a very neurotic compulsive voice going through a very long litany … saying, I could have done this but I lost my head, I could have been that but I lost my head, I could have had her but I lost my head, I could’ve walked away but I lost my head. It goes like this for like two minutes at machine gun pace. This is answered by a very calm voice that says that there is a moment in which lucidity comes back and you realize when it was, exactly, that lightning struck and the lights went out. But, sorry, it’s too late. You are going to spend the rest of your life wondering what it could have been if... To a certain degree, it happens to all of us at least once in our lives, there is always this fateful or fatal moment in which you make a decision and do something that marks the rest of your life. Once it’s done, it’s done; there is no way to backtrack.
HD: Does the viewer need to know who the saint was or why he was martyred?
FT: Not really. I don’t think it’s necessary…. I was at one point debating whether I had to have the monk or just have a contemporary figure kneeling down and beheaded, but a martyred saint is somebody who could’ve avoided to be killed, however, based on faith —something intangible— decided to stick it out and be killed. It’s tremendous. I thought that by keeping the figure a little out of normality —certainly a Cartussian monk is less normal than somebody dressed in a trench coat— it would make the piece work better. Also there would be more tension between the figure itself and the belt which is something which you see in an airport, a modern device next to a monk with all his robes on. All these things should help to offset the viewer as Susan Sontag says “by generating a moment of creative disorientation” that serves to activate both the piece and the viewer or the text and the reader.
HD: What about your relationship to an artistic tradition, a legacy? Because I know you have used Zurbarán, Sánchez Cotán, Goya… it seems to be a very strong Spanish strain. You’ve talked about it very effectively in terms of your history. I see your work being very similar to Goya’s in your interest in history, in current events in politics and in its immediacy. You use the immediacy of video, of photography, you have recorded sound, you impress yourself upon the senses in a very dramatic and powerful way. In the way that Goya’s work was very immediate, very strong and almost like an AP (Associated Press) photography in the way he captured current events. But do you feel an affinity to Spanish artists?
FT: Not exclusively, but there are two artists that are a constant reference. One is Goya. The other one is Hieronymous Bosch, Spanish by right of conquest, as one would say. Unfailingly, they always come up for one reason or the other. Bosch because he embodies the mystery of the human psyche and nobody has been able to depict it better than him. He is a truly modern artist. His use of the triptych is also interesting to me because I think the triptych is essentially a very effective narrative devise, a reference to installation. It has practically the same structure of the classic novel; the introduction, the knott of the story and the denouement. Bosch is an unbelievable artist, I think, and the fact that he managed to die of old age in his time doing what he did is a mystery to me. He was a clergyman, a monk.
HD: But he was Flemish, wasn’t he…?
FT: Yes, but at the time when the Low Countries were part of Spain.
HD: That’s why most of his work is in Spain…
FT: Yes, he was collected by Phillip II. Poor Phillip II has always had this bad reputation of being a totally unbearable reactionary, a dark monarch obssesed with religion and death. In reality he wasn’t that extreme. He had a genuine interest in art and he was a serious art collector, like his father Charles. Phillip became Hieronymous Bosch’s protector, a rather remarkable thing considering the monarch’s religious fundamentalism, as we would call it today. Bosch was painting this corrosive commentaries on sex, ridiculing the ruling classes and even the church sometimes being appreciated by a king who, supposedly, had no sense of humor whatsoever. It’s unbelievable. As Bosch shows the dark currents of the human psyche, Goya was definitely at the eye of the historical storm. For him it was not only a matter of depicting historical scenes and war images, it was an attitude, a way of being in the world. When he painted a nude he painted the woman he was sleeping with, an aristocrat. He was a measure when it came to painting. He didn’t bother with the “metier” because he could paint in his sleep. When you see the black paintings and the power they have you are looking at the dawn of modern painting. “Head of a Dog” is where modern painting begins. He was totally involved with his historical moment. He was a witness to that moment, pure Zeitgeist. Concerns that are basically extra artistic but didn’t get in the way of his art, they made it it better.
HD: Another quote that I enjoy in that catalogue, Too Late for Goya, “The latest works, all of which are camouflaged as an epilogue to our century”. The other piece in the exhibition at the Fundación Telefónica. I see as camouflaged as an epilogue to the century as well, if you could describe what the thinking is behind this piece…
FT: I think that almost all my recent works are epilogues to this century: “Silk Stockings”, (A)Historical Prologue to the Burning of Life”, “The Crystal Continent”, “The Repository of Absent Flesh”, etc., function as such. This new piece, however, is a question mark because it may be indicating a new direction for me. Sometimes there are pieces that need to be done, but they begin and end in themselves, they don’t need to be developed any further, they stopped right there and they are an entity by themselves. “El Soliloquio de la Felicidad” could be indicating other directions, this is something that has to be seen. But as far as the content of the piece is concerned, I’ve always been fascinated, scared, indignant about the shape democracy has taken in the end of this century and what will be the beginning of the next. It was only a matter of time before this was going to surface as the subject of an artwork of mine. Everything that happens socially is based on the quality of the political dialogue, I am not discovering anything new here. This is the reason why I wanted to have the sound coming from the Spanish Parliament to activate the piece so you can visualize the intensity of the exchange between the different political ideologies involved by means of the fluctuations of the lights, chandeliers, in the exhibition space. There more lively the exchanges, the more light there will be in the room thanks to an electronic custom made instrument that translates sound into electrical pulses. I happen to have my doubts about the quality of these exchanges. The title; “The Soliloquy of Happiness”, implies an autistic monologue, you’re not talking to anyone, you’re just talking to yourself or to your people. This is what I perceive when I see and hear the sessions. Somebody gets up and says a bunch of things, gets yelled at or not listen to by the guys at the other side of the room. Then the roles are reversed. Sometimes many of the representatives do not show up. One doesn’t have the feeling that there is a dialogue there, nobody seems interested in really talking to the opponent, only talking at him. You rarely see consensus, only pacts to expedite matters. Electoral promises are not honored or get completely reversed. We, the people, don’t count. There is a tendency in which political debate has been deactivated in favor of outright railroading. A party simply decides on something because it either has the majority or has the alliance of some other party to give them the majority. So, there is no debate, there is nothing. This is it, get the vote, and it passes. Someone will benefit from it, I guess, but this is not what it was supposed to be. Something is not working and I don’t care about the tears shed y some politicians for this deficit of democracy; none of them does anything to change it. I think it doesn’t work because we have gone from a representative democracy to a representational democracy, in the theatrical sense of the word, where all the different actors, characters in the play do their thing in order to keep the play going and everybody happy. The protagonist, the audience, the guy who pays, the producer, everybody is happy, provided of course that nothing much happens. So change is always a simulacra of itself to make sure that everything remains the same. Participatory politics are also a simulacra of themselves because I don’t think that voting once every four years based on a very limited choice —which it’s not decided by the voter— passes as being participatory. The voter plays his/her role but as a secondary character. Not even the main one. Well... I’m sorry, somebody is taking us for a ride. “El Soliloquio de la Felicidad” makes refererence to these issues. It’s activated by people, but only by one group who is absent. Political systems, regardless of ideology collapse when they become charicatures of themselves. I think that this is what is happening with democracy; it has been devoided of content because politics have been devoided of any content, other than the management of power.
HD: Were the Unites States interesting you politically as well as artistically? Because I would think that for you the U.S. would be sort of “the belly of the beast” politically speaking.
FT: A lot of European friends have made this comment to me in the past, “How could you live there!” It is the Empire, the Vatican of capitalism! This is very simplistic. The same way that my Spain was never the Spain of Franco, but the Spain of Lorca, Buñuel, Picasso, Miro, Brossa, Azaña, Largo Caballero, etc., my United States is not that of Nixon, Foster Dulles, McArthy, the Cold War and anti-communist paranoia, it is the United States of the volunteers of Abraham Lincoln Brigade, John Reed, Emma Goldman, Daniel De Leon, Noam Chomsky, Rothko who was an ideological leftist, Ad Reinhardt same thing, Pollock, another one. Barnet Newman... Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Miles Davis who may have not been leftists and I coulnd’t care less...that’s my US. I never had any sort of trouble with that. I was coming from a capitalist country which in addition had a fascist regime, and I was landing in a country that was capitalist with a make believe democracy. I wasn’t choosing. I was interested in a lot of things that were happening: the anti-Viet Nam movement, the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), the Civil Rights movement, all these things, and on top of it all the art that was being produced here I thought was the most interesting around, so I came to see, to learn, to see what was happening, I didn’t know I was going to stay.
HD: In 1972?
FT: In 1972. Twenty-seven years ago.
HD: I am glad you did. One thing I would like to have you talk about as an epilogue of this conversation is something I heard you say before we started taping. You mentioned installation as a mode of working with video, sound, using objects, often objects in motion, that you feel so comfortable with this vocabulary that you are not learning much from it anymore, becomes a formal exercise, I suppose. So, you are considering leaving that vocabulary behind. The double question is, why, as an artist, when you feel comfortable with your vocabulary, when you could use this period of maturity to refine it even more is when you decide that it could be the time to look elsewhere? Isn’t from now on when your best work in installation could be produced?
FT: Well, the reason why I think there might be a change it is because when you are not really learning as much as you used to from what you are doing, then it could become a purely rhetorical exercise. It could be very good, in terms of quality, fine-tuning and everything, but that’s about it. I’m not saying there isn’t any merit or value in that, it’s just that that this is not the reason why I became an artist. What I need is to plunge into things that are new territories for me, where I’m going to be learning something, which will serve to open up fields and doors and subjects that I haven’t been involved with before. So maybe I could do my best installations from now on, but I would rather give it a shot and see what happens if I look in another direction. Everything that we did, doesn’t go away, it keeps informing what we may be doing in the future. So, it’s not a final sentence, if something comes up that really needs to be materialized as an installation, I most likely will do it, but what it feels like right now is that it will not constitute the core of my work in the way that it has in the past 25 years. Which direction is it going to take? That’s the million dollar question. That’s the exciting part. I may just go full circle and pick up where I left it, just continue. First generation installation artists, including myself, have done a ton of pieces. I wonder if doing another one would make that much of a difference. It’s only a question I’m putting to myself. So we will see. The field is totally normalized now to the point where it has almost become a token of itself. You are an artist and you want to get out of painting or sculpture, you do installation. There are problems with this. Let’s say that, all of a sudden, I want to paint, well... I will have to learn first, right? I wouldn’t just do a painting and say, “That’s it. This is a painting.” And hang it. So, with installations it’s the same. It’s a practice that emerged without a theoretical corpus. There was no theory for installation, still there isn’t any —which is just fine with me—, it was done, period, but there was a particular set of skills that had to be mastered. There were certain aspects that coincided among a group of artists doing it and that sort of gave the character to the field. But there was no theory. This is what makes it interesting because potentially one keep expanding it to infinity. But I don’t see it happening. I see too much installation work that is completely stale. This alone is enough of a reason to sail other waters in order to either expand the territory or find new ones.
27 september, 1999 La Jolla, California