Conversation 8
6:17 p.m. Friday, January 6
MoMA

A: …hold this as we walk you realize; my pockets are stuffed.

J: It’s, yeah, I don’t mind carrying the recorder.

A: So it can be my leash I guess. We could…

J: That’s right. The mic’s clipped to your…

A: [Garbled] William Wegman for a double portrait.

J: If…

A: [Garbled] with an itch on her belly.

J: So here we are in front of Alex Katz’s “Upside-Down Ada.”

A: Whose whose eyelashes remind me of cancan dresses.

J: Do you know what I was thinking about, before you came to meet me today, was all the shades of pink that appear on her lips.

A: And it’s great the way her head divides the yellow and—the background colors, very…

J: That is great to think…

A: Matisse.

J: Yes.

A: Also the dangle of her hair’s nice and…

J: Don’t…

A: spideresque.

J: don’t you like how hair falls from her face: revealing it entirely? Joe Brainard once went to New Haven to look at this painting. In his journal he calls it his “all-time favorite.” He says Ada comes through the frame to meet us half-…

A: I’d like to see the dress, the um drawing show. I feel more of an affinity to drawing than painting.

J: Yeah I yeah I agree. So let’s spend a minute here then make our way toward the drawings exhibit.

A: Pull once to turn left, twice if right.

J: Ok. So what do you think about her posture here? I think it’s crucial that she’s upside-down. I mean, first of all, gravity pulls the hair from her face, revealing it as we’ve discussed, and also…

A: But it seems to cascade, doesn’t it?

J: It…

A: It doesn’t just fall with gravity. It maintains its…what’s that called, the weave, the way someone’s hair bobs? Wave.

J: Wa…

A: The wave of her hair’s maintained upside-down. It reminds me of waves in Hokusai.

J: I imagine she’s lying flat on her back, that I’m looking from—her posture, in other words, suggests intimacy, an intimate environment.

A: Yeah this is where we part. I tend to not interpret what I see as narrative (I don’t mean that judgmentally in any way). But I don’t read into um…what you’re saying makes sense I guess. It could…

J: Well I was thinking about the the first time we look at somebody. Only through a series of encounters, through a developing intimacy, can we view somebody from this perspective.

A: I think you think that because, when we first met, you were lying on a rug while I was standing.

J: Good point. I’ll adjust this mic. Would you mind holding the…

A: Not at all.

J: It’s the first time we’ve pinned it right to your collar. I…

A: That’s fine.

J: hope this turns out. So let’s take a walk to the drawings exhibit. We could follow the girl in the miniskirt.

A: I don’t know which level to head towards. I love when you can’t tell immediately if an attractive Japanese person’s male or female. It’s the same in Japanese prints.

J: So eventually…

A: (I’ll grab a guide.

J: Please do.) we could look at the William Wegman as well. We’ve talked the past few days about Ed Ruscha, and there’s a photograph Wegman took of Ruscha, and Wegman placed this photograph next to his dog, and the similarity between the dog’s and Ruscha’s expression is alarming.

A: Is that…

J: They both have alert yellow eyes.

A: I think I just developed a a crush on a man for combining an aquamarine sweater with a teal oxford beneath. I don’t if you saw...

J: Yeah, you’re wearing…

A: Kristin’s co-worker rode, former co-worker just rode by.

J: I’m going to stop it and adjust…[Tape stopped] Yes. Ok, so you were saying: Kristin’s co-worker.

A: Just just rode by, while we stood on the escalator.

J: Is that…

A: Elizabeth Murray. I say we move on if you don’t mind because these opening panels suggest late Frank Stella.

J: Sure.

A: [Garbled]…ing wrong with decorative. But I don’t know if, I’ve liked some of her stuff but, well, maybe not.

J: What do we have here? [Pause]

A: Are you as confused as I am about how C-prints—do you know what one is?

J: No. Oh, oh, a chromogenic print.

A: And what does that mean?

J: It’s a bright glossy photograph.

A: That’s all?

J: Yeah.

A: It doesn’t require any…

J: Yeah, and I’ve just realized I fall into silence when I look at artworks, so I think we’ll have to wander and not look closely.

A: I prefer to drift.

J: It’s interesting…

A: Brice Marden next to…

J: how this project determines our pace through MoMA tonight.

A: Yes, though another determining factor’s that my pants are stuffed, my pockets are stuffed with cameras, dollar-bills, a cellphone, so my balls seem strangled.

J: You mentioned a young man’s belt…

A: Should we?

J: Oh did you want to take the elevator? We’re actually on the sixth floor now.

A: Ok.

J: We can go nowhere but…

A: Let’s find those drawings.

J: Right.

A: I think maybe they’re on the…is it the second floor, and farther back, where the Demand show…

J: Are are you thinking of the Odeon drawings?

A: No. I don’t want to see—Redon?

J: Redon, right.

A: Again: not all that interested. I don’t know about you, but…

J: Yeah. Yeah I…

A: A fine blue light between escalator platforms. It’s always green in shopping malls.

J: I read an Antin piece about escalators. He thinks about how the…

A: You see?

J: Yes, I do see. How the…he compares our life to an escalator.

A: So does Nicholson Baker in The Mezzanine. He realizes it’s better to not walk but stand, to…

J: Is that right?

A: simply ride.

J: Yeah Antin talks about how we develop affection for certain steps, certain identifiable steps within the revolving series, and how we try to get back…

A: Steps we choose or…

J: Yeah, yeah it’s just: on certain steps we’re lifted to prominence he says, and then we notice we’re reaching the top and that a descent’s inevitable so we start to jog backwards; but we don’t want to reach the bottom since since we wouldn’t want to return to previous naiveté or ignorance, so, he says, we try to keep jogging backwards desperately within the upper quarter.

A: Excuse me could, hi, could you tell us where the drawings show is?

First Security Guard: Third floor…

A: Mm-hm.

G1: and when you’re on the third floor behind the escalators.

A: Thanks a lot.

J: Thank you.

A: I guess we’ll return along…

J: You pointed out a guy’s belt a moment ago. You’re wearing a pretty snazzy belt these days. The metal tip’s…

A: It’s a gift from my father. It’s…Greg Norman? Greg The Shark? He’s a golfer I think.

J: The golfer right?

A: I guess it’s got a shark-like quality to it. It’s pointy.

J: Yes.

A: Feel the fin; it’s dorsal in that way.

J: That’s right.

A: Dangling backwards I mean.

J: It’s highly pornographic I find.

A: I know how you find it but I haven’t thought so. Is this what the guard meant?

J: Um this is photography. We could look at William Wegman while we’re here, and skip the new, new…

A: I I wanted to see the new photographs as well.

J: Sure. It’s not as great as the preceding photo exhibit. My favorite photographs are now in the vault. So…

A: Peter Henry Emerson: seen that.

J: so how was your day today?

A: I, I in fact had the computer crisis today. I printed up…

J: You’re kidding me.

A: seven sections of my dissertation. I had a good afternoon overall. This is just…

J: You were at CUNY?

A: playing around, this isn’t the dominant thing that happened but—oh what a nice series here.

J: You may want to speak in a regular voice.

A: I printed two versions: one for me and one for you. So I had fourteen about-ten-page papers all emerge in a poof and scatter themselves. [Whispering] Well, then let's go someplace where…

J: No it’s ok. I don’t think we’ve disrupted anybody’s evening.

A: I don't want to shout though. [Silence] I'm staring and not talking again. I guess we should…

J: Right.

A: keep moving. I like the idea…

J: The Wegman the Wegman…

A: of an action sequence.

J: the Wegman’s back this way if you want to take a look.

A: Sure, but we’ll have to pause our…

J: Should we first stop at this picture of nineteenth-century Oregon? Before…

A: Um, it’s pretty crowded there.

J: Ok. We need in fact to turn around. And take a left now. And we’ll round this corner.

A: Do you think anyone’s aware of our twirling? I think we just lapped…

J: Yeah I am a little dizzy. I don’t have a B.F.A. in dance but might…

Second Security Guard: Guys, whatever interview you guys are doing, do it outside the galleries please.

A: Can we go this way to get out?

G2: No.

A: [Garbled] nice West-Indian man whom I don’t want…

J: [Whispering] So we have been ejected…

A: Rejected.

J: from the galleries. I caught a glimpse of William Wegman. There’s a funny short of him spraying deodorant under his arm; have you seen this one?

A: No.

J: He he keeps saying the deodorant’s got to make him smell fresh all day, that he doesn’t know any more powerful brand, and this continues for a couple minutes—the sound and sight of deodorant…

A: Do…

J: until his armpit turns foamy from…

A: If you’re into autistic pleasures today do you know if the Michael Snow’s still up? The the…

J: I’m not sure.

A: three-minute film loop? No I’m sorry: the forty-minute loop of…I think it’s called “Solar Flare”? All it is is a drape placed before a cracked window, smacking against the wall?

J: Oh. I know what you’re saying. That gives me special bliss.

A: I laughed cont…con…

J: Do you want to walk towards video? We could speak just outside if…

A: Well I think we, I I I…

J: the guard detects us.

A: I have no problem getting expelled from numerous galleries.

J: I think that last guard had marital problems, because other guards have seen and cheered us on in their own way.

A: I don’t see how we’re obtrusive.

J: We’re talking in ordinary voices. [Laughter] That that young woman on her phone received some good news or bad news.

A: She’s flattening her nose into the wall. I say we tend to…or I say we accelerate each time we pass a guard—just a little burst…

J: Sure.

A: so it doesn’t damper conversation.

J: And if we catch ourselves staring without talking one of us should revive the other. The, what do you think of this Ad Reinhardt?

A: Ahhhh, I’ve reflected enough in front of Ad Reinhardts that I now don’t have a visual experience.

J: Really?

A: I’m just someone standing…

J: The Art Institute has a nice Reinhardt collection. Is that where you first saw him?

A: Maybe. I mean, this is often the problem at the MoMA, right, that you kind of know it all anyway?

J: We’ll have to head over to Chelsea.

A: There’s a—did you see, at P.S. 1, the Wayne Gonzales? He had, do you remember um Lichtenstein’s Chinese landscapes at the M.F.A. about eight years back when we both lived in Boston? Vaguely pointillist? Pastel hues?

J: A Lichtenstein exhibition you’re saying?

A: Yeah.

J: No I don’t remember it.

A: The Gonzales work is similar in many ways. There was a painting of the White House, if you saw…

J: Oh yes. Yes.

A: That guy. He’s got a show in Tribeca that closes tomorrow.

J: Perhaps we could meet there.

A: It may be good.

J: I know you’ve been reading, um…

A: Let’s look at this Agnes Martin.

J: some John Cage, and that you’ve been listening to his compositions. Have you listened to Morton Feldman?

A: Hasn't every...

J: What do you think of his work? Your description of that subtle White House painting (which is largely absent) made me think of Feldman’s music (which is largely silent).

A: Right. It’s hard at the moment to distinguish him from other composers. I keep hearing Boulez. I’m blanking. I don’t have anything particular to say.

J: Ok.

A: Did you say Milton Friedman or Morton Feldman?

J: Morton Morton Feldman.

A: Right.

J: We’re standing in front of a giant grid.

A: Yeah Agnes…

J: “The Tree” by Agnes Martin: what do you think of her?

A: I love her work. Though some some people get mystical around it…

J: I can see why.

A: I find tactile delight more than spiritual shimmer.

J: As though the lines were wires or something? I mean how can you explain this tactile delight?

A: I just think they’re—it’s nice to see a variety of thick-thin, blue-black.

J: So the colors for you register tactile impressions?

A: Yeah. [Garbled] and variations in size. You know it seems like a work divided into fixed intervals. Of course it’s not. Again…

J: Like the Ann Pibal we saw at at P.S. 1.

A: That’s much more dramatic but yes.

J: So you do perceive asymmetries here?

A: Oh undoubtedly. Do you not?

J: I do. For example, some lines stray beyond their boundaries.

A: It’s definitely drawn. If you…

J: She wanted to include imperfections?

A: Yeah, if you look at this little wavelet pattern where units start…

J: And does…

A: [Garbled] certain bar seems thin, then others are going to follow, and then there’s recognition this is happening; she makes her way back to uniformity but soon drifts again.

J: You have two pieces of fuzz in your stubble. Do do you like this “Target”? I remember talking about targets and bull’s-eyes the other night.

A: That Kenneth Noland?

J: The Kenneth Noland.

A: It makes me think Helen Frankenthaler. I’m not…I can’t grasp how this stuff works. It’s something like canvas isn’t primed.

J: A large part of the painting’s untreated canvas. What’s that supposed to make us reflect upon?

A: Materiality or…do we have to…

J: You think?

A: A pretty obvious answer I know.

J: The canvas itself is involved in the work? It’s not, in other words, blank...

A: Yeah we’re supposed to be aware of physical presence, of the gallery space, of a cute Korean girl posing beside Marilyn Monroe (looking strangely like Marilyn, if you…

J: Oh yes. And once again her abdomen’s bared by the shirt lingering above her belly button.

A: Did she just have an itch? People always scratch in those sweaters. These are fun, these David Hockney…

J: Yeah are these the, are there any Hockney photocollages in MoMA?

A: I’m sure they have several but…

J: Now what do you think about the partially-obscured faces in this Hockney painting, the women with their profiles blotted?

A: What do I think of it?

J: Yeah.

A: I don’t know. It reminds it reminds me of “Demoiselles D’Avignon” obviously—the faces look wooden like masks modernists…

J: But but…

A: But personally I enjoy the slabs of paint. They give a solidity to the figures.

J: That’s what I was thinking. Since the eyes get left out (and all delicate facial features) the figures acquire massiveness. They seem immobile—as if one has been, for an eternity, handing a tea cup to the other. What is the name of…

J: Yeah I had that thought when you mentioned limbs. I celebrated this past Thanksgiving in Northampton, and there was a twenty-pound bird at the dinner where I, which, at the dinner I attended.

A: Lots of Matisse in the background, the pattern…

J: I’d say so.

A: This is…

J: I don’t know this artist.

A: I know the name, Kitaj…narrative paintings one couldn’t decipher unless you struggled. I…

J: So we could try to find the drawings show. Or we could go back into William Wegman. I could discretely place the recorder…

A: That that sounds distracting if you don’t mind.

J: Going back to the Wegman?

A: Yeah.

J: What’s that white canvas over there? Are you familiar with…

A: Is it one of Rauschenberg’s early white paintings? Oh, Robert Ryman. Have you seen the screens Rauschenberg did at Black Mountain?

J: No but…

A: Very similar.

J: I walked by The Met the other night while talking with Amanda on the phone, and thought I saw…

A: The combines show?

J: There’s a Rauschenberg display right, you…

A: Yeah I’d see it.

J: We’ll have to squeeze through a…

A: This is fun.

J: little gap between two walls.

A: Wow. I say we move on…

J: Sure.

A: from the Mimi and Peter Haas Gallery to another.

J: Maybe we can ride more escalators. That was…

A: Exciting.

J: particularly exciting, yeah.

A: So did I explain, so, with my papers: I ended up with two-hundred unnumbered sheets from various parts of my dissertation scattered across floor in no particular order, just…

J: You’re kidding.

A: just before I came here.

J: But you were able to assemble them?

A: They’re in my bag in disarray.

J: Total disarray, wow. So I won’t be receiving portions printed for me?

A: Maybe sometime. Should we, we haven’t gone right on the sixth floor yet…

J: No we haven’t.

A: though it still looks crowded. I see a Demuth painting, some Hoppers…

J: Oh yes.

A: I can push…

J: Let’s take a look at these Hoppers if you don’t mind. I’m a particular fan.

A: Sheeler.

J: I I like the this painting here: this house by the railroad, with the tracks undermining the house.

A: And always bits of dramatic light, no? The glow in the windows different from the harsh sun outside; a whiter sky, somehow subdued by the…

J: Do we do we do we…

A: home.

J: do we never perceive such light in reality? Is that an entirely painterly light would you…

A: Hopper often modulates—look there’s Quinn, Bill’s brother.

J: It would be great to hear how Bill’s doing. But it would be nice to look at Joseph Cornell boxes.

A: I know.

J: Have you looked at Joe Brainard’s beach boxes?

A: I’ve heard of them.

J: Yeah in Bolinas Journal. And by the way (I talked with a guard this afternoon) did you know MoMA has a research library in Queens, where graduate students get access to holdings from the vault?

A: I know about a film archive. I don’t know it it’s…

J: Do you want to look at these mystical Mondrians?

A: I love early Mondrian. Like this is what: a pier, this is waves—based on waves…

J: “Pier and Ocean 5.”

A: breaking on…

J: Really? So this pattern derives from close scrutiny of waves breaking…

A: It’s much splotchier than I thought.

J: I’m always dependent on titles to to be keyed in to what Mondrian’s representing, or is representing not even the right word?

A: Yeah I don’t know. It’s what he calls his painting. But are you saying there’s a problem with…

J: Well.

A: that disparity?

J: Well I…

A: I think it’s…

J: Well he’s paint…

A: nice to complete the study ourselves.

J: But I’m I’m saying: if the works were untitled, like Stephen Shore’s photographs, I wouldn’t have a sense that nature’s the subject.

A: Right, and…

J: That’s that’s all…

A: you believe we’d be missing out or…

J: [Garbled] compositions provide a sense of harmony, and perhaps we can make the leap and consider harmonious nature—that’s possible. It’s not a necessity.

A: But I would say that, like harmonious nature itself, that doesn’t, that leap doesn’t always have to be articulated for us. You could say with Heraclitus that nature loves to hide and…

J: Nature does love to hide.

A: and that the ultimate proof of—oh who cares.

J: But Upside-Down Ada doesn’t love to hide. Could you…

A: Could I say why?

J: No, could could you say that Katz is then departing from Heraclitus’ maxim ?

A: Umm...

J: That Brainard may be departing too?

A: I didn’t mean to start discussing…I don’t know; to be honest I don’t…

J: Ok. I realize that was a big question.

A: It’s not the size.

J: It’s not a simple yes or no.

A: I don’t think there’s correspondence between visual and literary art in that way.

J: Can we head back to those Mondrians? I felt almost near…

A: We could find Cornell. I’d love to see the Cornell.

J: Let’s do that.

A: Oh wait some Schwitters collages. I’d really…

J: Sure. Sure. We’ll take a look. [Pause] Now did you see a lot of Schwitters this past summer?

A: These are pretty great. Let’s get away from that guard. Um this summer in Germany you mean?

J: Yes.

A: There was some huge Expressionist extravaganza. I didn’t see Schwitters. You know he had a big influence on Brainard’s…

J: Really?

A: Yeah they—Brainard and Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett went to the Art of Assemblage show (I think at MOMA in fact, very early sixties) which shaped each person’s aesthetic but Brainard’s especially.

J: [Garbled] pigeon-footed girl. Was Schwitters active with the Dadaists?

A: Which…

J: The timeline makes sense.

A: I think he was Berlin Dada…

J: And what gave rise to his desire to make collages? Is it, was it an exercise in reorganizing materials which bombard us everyday…

A: In…

J: somehow refreshing perceptions of them?

A: I sense certain people can only make collages, and it’s not necessarily a choice of theirs. I consider aphoristic writers similar in this respect. You could argue that Nietzsche or Wittgenstein was demonstrating his epistemologically-sensitive consciousness by partaking in the aphoristic style, but really I think that’s all they—that it was as much something to suffer through as something to decide upon.

J: Right, what also…

A: So for Schwitters, for Brainard, I assume their attention caught rhythmic patterns, and occult harmonies as Emerson would would call them…

J: Yes.

A: and that they happened to be around at the right time, when there was a great diversity of material: both new industrial production and older vernacular traditions, commercial illustration and hermetic art. They grasped the beauty in pasting stuff.

J: I remember in in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein making a remark along the lines of, rather…

A: Could we look at the Malevich too?

J: Sure. I remember, in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein portrays himself as wanting to leave the world as he found it, and I’m trying to make a connection between that sentiment and the impulse to make collages.

A: Everyone…

J: I think collagists, in recycling materials which preexisted themselves, didn’t make…leave the world as…

A: You could say that. Or or you could say—and this is why I do feel that verbal discourse related to art is bound to inaccuracy—you could also say there’s a strict, a meticulousness in their work and that, while it may seem indiscriminate in its use of materials, I think Schwitters would be pissed off if, you know, if this gear affixed to the glass casing…

J: Oh sure.

A: There’s a fierce assertion of order that you definitely find in the writers as well.

J: Yeah Wittgenstein was so careful with his own work he published only one book during…

A: Right.

J: Part of Philosophical Investigations, I think, being published posthumously. [Pause] So you’re going to a film downstairs with Kristin?

A: We’re going to…Stanley Kubrik. Have you seen Barry Lyndon?

J: Yes and it’s…

A: Worth? Worth seeing?

J: a very long film.

A: Yeah.

J: I…

A: Kokoschka, you want a little Kokoschka?

J: Yes. Um, you know I’d rather look at Schwitters for an hour than watch that film.

A: Is it plot-driven?

J: It’s totally plot-driven.

A: The last time I saw a period piece—I’m I’m trying to move away from the person we’ve, who we recognize. There’s a…

J: It would be nice to talk to Quinn…

A: [Garbled] avoid conversation.

J: but this, this isn’t the right circumstance.

A: Correct. We both enjoy his presence very…

J: Do you still want to look at the Malevich?

A: It’s when he and Popova are obsessed with Leger, whom I’ve never really appreciated. Maybe you’ve been able to.

J: Well, I once was standing in front of a Leger when an old man who smelled like cologne put his hand on my back, and told me he’d lived in Paris with Leger as his roommate—or, not his roommate, his next-door neighbor.

A: Did the man’s arm then turn into a pipe?

J: No. No. He let it linger, and I thought I’d stand there with his arm around my, with his hand on my back, not wanting to move and seem prudish or discomforted…

A: Should…

J: but but eventually I did move. Pardon?

A: Vuillards.

Between December 2005 and January 2006, Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch recorded forty-five minute conversations for thirty consecutive days in New York City. Half of them took place in the café of Union Square W.F. (a natural grocery store) over liberal samplings from the store's bakery cases and deli counters . Other locations included MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Opera House, Central Park, Prospect Park and a Tribeca parking garage. The resulting document forms a cumulative dialogue with topics ranging from fellow consumers and spectators, the urban scene, and the aesthetic / political / intellectual issues affecting their lives. More excerpts from the project can be found here.