Oranges & Sardines Q&A: Mark Grotjahn

My favorite single gallery at the Hammer's Oranges and Sardines show was Mark Grotjahn's. Of the six artists in the show, Grotjahn was the painter most willing to lay bare his foundations. His Q&A with curator Gary Garrels in the show's catalogue is the best artist Q&A I've read in a while. So I thought I'd try to pick up where Garrels left off... [Image: Mark Grotjahn, Untitled, 2008.]

MAN: One of the things that I heard over and over again in your catalogue Q&A with Gary Garrels was how important being in front of actual art objects is for you, that being in the museum and around art is a real motivator for you.

Mark Grotjahn: Yeah. It's like the difference between seeing people having sex and having it yourself. You can get an idea but it's not the thing itself. With the image, No. 1: it's the scale that you don't have. Then you don't get the detail or see how the paint was put down or see what the color actually looks like. So at a museum you actually get to see the thing, that is you get to experience it the way it was meant to be experienced. I mean, it's great to see TV shows about nature, but it's better to see a tiger in the wild.

MAN: With a lot of the artists you told Garrels that you love spending time with, I noticed that they're painters where those details are important: How paint was put down, and so on. Take David Park: You don't get the loaded brush from JPEGs.

MG: At least you can get the image with him. With Ad Reinhardt it's pretty bad.

You know, installation shots are sometimes the best because you get the vibe of what the artist is doing with the installation. You can see the installations that Clyfford Still did in that book of the retrospective he had at the Met: They had a lot of shots of the installations. You get a better sense of the paintings as a whole rather than just the individual things.

MAN: Speaking of Clyfford Still, he's why I wanted to talk with you. I grew up near San Francisco and I had the same experience with Still you discussed: I started out a non-fan, later found myself warming to a lot of his work, then I took on the zeal of the converted. It sounds like that's how Still emerged for you.

MG: I used to go to SFMOMA and I'd always be excited to walk into the room of Stills and then when I got there I thought they were terrible. I couldn't believe that he was the painter we got stuck with in the Bay Area. It made me feel second-rate. And as it turns out, as I saw more and more, he's the best. It's different work, but it's great.

I don't know when it was that I made the switch to thinking he was one of the best. Or even why that was. I feel like I saw so many in person as a young person... I think just spending more and more time with art and thinking about them maybe having a different or possibly more sophisticated understanding, you know, allowed certain kinds of opening-up to understanding the work. [Image: Clyfford Still, Unititled, 1954, from the collection of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation. This was the Still that Grotjahn wanted to install at the Hammer, but it was unavailable for loan.]

MAN: I've seen your work for years and it was so interesting to me  -- and even surprising -- to learn that Still was a biggie for you. You're so much a loaded-brush painter a la David Park, Elmer Bischoff and such... and Still didn't even use a brush!

MG: [Laughs.] He didn't use a brush, but he did use a decent amount of paint. I think I get what you're saying. He was the opposite of those Bay Area guys in a lot of ways. He was clearly different. For me, it was more how he was it different from those guys that works for me. Is it that it was more difficult? Or is it that he was purely abstract and they weren't?

MAN: Your paint is certainly more... viscous than Still's. Not as viscous as Park's, but even within your 'rules' your basking in paint's properties.

MG: Yeah. And there's a certain way you see that the painter loves the paint and they make it very obvious. Maybe that's why I still think of Clyfford Still as more of an East Coast guy.

It's also that they're heavy, masculine works. They're aggressive and thoughtful at the same time and I like that in the work. He doesn't give you everything or make it super-obvious. He treats you as an equal.

MAN: Would you have fun installing your work with his, or 'curating' a small Still show in Denver someday or out of SFMOMA's collection?

MG:  I wouldn't pass up an opportunity to show at SFMOMA and I wouldn't pass up an opportunity to hang some Stills. That'd be great, I'd love to do that! That sounds like some fun.