Talking with Doug Wheeler IV

Last in a series. Links to previous posts: Re-introducing Doug Wheeler. Talking with Wheeler part one, two, three. LAT art critic William Wilson reviews a 1968 Wheeler show.

Today Doug Wheeler is 69. He lives in New Mexico, on the San Ildefonso Pueblo near Santa Fe. He has a studio there and he can park his plane nearby. (He flies around the way some of us drive. Among his regular trips is the flight from New Mexico to California, where his wife lives.) Wheeler is surrounded by friends: Larry Bell, Ed Ruscha, Ken Price, Bruce Nauman and Susan Rothenberg all have places nearby. He sees each of them a few times a year. And he is still making work.

"I'm working on something now I don't feel comfortable talking about it," Wheeler told me. "It's about space, but then again space has always been the main thing I care about, how I can create in a space. The twisting and the torsional qualities I can give to a space. Now I'm trying to activate space in a different way than I have before, and hopefully get out of the same arena Irwin and Turrell were all mixed up in. I love to be in that same company, but we'll see. It's risky. But still I am who I am. I'll still do a lot of these big projects along with you-wouldn't-be-surprised kind of things."

One of the things that Wheeler has been working on involves how sound impacts our perception of space. It's not a totally new concept for him -- he's made drawings that relate to that idea since at least the mid-1970s. Wheeler also created some pieces that Panza owns that deal with microwave absorbers. "They trap sound so that you have a really silent place," Wheeler said. "They've never been realized so they're things that -- other than working with them in my studio -- they've never actually been. The Guggenheim owns one, I think."

As we were winding down our chat, I asked Wheeler how much art history and his place in it matters to him, how much he thinks about it, whether he's frustrated at how scholars seem to forget that he was as much a part of the beginning of Light and Space as anyone.

"You know, I completely keep away," he said. "I don't know why. I never felt that I had a home [in the art world] so I just don't... It's like this: You are an artist regardless. You can't do things that can damage that, so I don't do things that will damage that. If that means I'm completely unknown that's OK with me so long as I don't lose my love for what I do.

"I had to make choices a long time ago that people told me I was crazy about. I turned down Leo Castelli, which was crazy. But the situation would have been one that I was subject to a kind of control. I didn't want that. I could see the control he had over his artists. He explained to me why he picked the people he picked. He had this whole elaborate scheme of how he did things. It was brilliant, but at that place in my life I couldn't keep taking one step forward and ten back. I couldn't do that anymore.

"As far as the art world, I don't know. I don't see scholarship in it. So I lost faith in it. My job is to make what I make, and if I want to do that or not. Then, do I want to share that or not. So it's kind of like that.

"I have a number of things I really hope I can do, but I'm not good at courting the people I need to court. Rich people I don't really like very much, so it's kind of like that. I don't need to prove anything at this point in my life. I do what I can do and if I can, that's fine. I went to art school to be an advertising person and after I while I felt, 'this is all messed up.' Then I got my first offers from two major ad firms in New York. I had to make this decision, was this what I really want to do? And I thought I'd make art. I won't make money but I'll be in really great company. That was my decision.

"So that's kind of where I'm at. I burned bridges because I don't give in very easily. Later in life I have compromised some, but not enough I guess. At least not as much as people would like. It's kind of what you have to do, you have to do the best you can possibly do. I guess I'm always striving for perfection but I know I'll never get to that."

Previously: Re-introducing Doug Wheeler. Talking with Wheeler part one, two, three. LAT art critic William Wilson reviews a 1968 Wheeler show.

[Photo at top: Wheeler's Eindhoven Environmental Light Installation (1969), on view now at the Hirshhorn.]